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Latest Comments by adamhm
Linux hardware vendor Entroware has unleashed Hades, their first AMD CPU desktop
14 January 2019 at 5:42 pm UTC

The conversation about PS/2 keyboards here reminds me of a funny post I saw a while ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/7t6zpu/anon_on_keyboards/

Anyway, I personally wouldn't buy a prebuilt desktop system (it's easy enough & much cheaper + more fun to build it yourself and you have a lot more choice/control over what parts go into it), but I'd be very interested in a good Ryzen laptop. I got an Entroware laptop for my mother almost two years ago & it's generally been very good so far; more than enough for what she uses it for. That said, I was unimpressed by their choice of SSD (made by a manufacturer I've never heard of before: Biwin) - it became noticeably slower over time, and recently had to be replaced as it started showing signs of failure (severe slowdowns + SMART data reporting lots of errors).

DXVK 0.95 is out with various D3D10 stability fixes, CPU overhead reduction and more game fixes
13 January 2019 at 1:18 am UTC

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoI know. I just want to be able to play the originals too.

I played through the Humble Store DRM-free version of the original Bioshock a while ago; it ran great but a DLL override was needed (disable d3d10) and the correct display resolution had to be set manually via ini edit. The original version of the second game isn't available DRM-free anywhere AFAIK (yet- it should be coming to GOG at some point along with the first one) but it probably just equires the same tweaks.

Epic Games have confirmed a Linux version of their store is not on the roadmap
30 December 2018 at 5:36 pm UTC Likes: 13

Quoting: mylkaexclusive titles work on consoles because you cant crack them as easy as on PC!!!!!!

exclusive titles on PC in just 1 store will lead to piracy and not to changing a store..... if its a SP game of course

i can already hear epic: mimimimi piracy mimimimi

And then the publishers will get all butthurt over it, and rather than simply making their games available in as many places as possible and trying to improve the experience provided by their service so that people will want to use it over the competition, they'll waste loads of time and money implementing and maintaining various increasingly aggressive DRM schemes, further driving people away. And then later they'll all be claiming "The PC market is dying!" (edit: and they'll be blaming piracy for it rather than admit that it's due to their own actions driving potential buyers away)

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for Linux has been officially cancelled
29 December 2018 at 3:59 pm UTC Likes: 5

If they don't give refunds, take the Windows version and then leave a review on Steam/GOG at launch. At the start of the review bring up this incident & make it clear to readers that they are scumbag developers who should not be supported; perhaps suggest some alternative games made by more worthy developers.

As for the review- see if it works in Wine/Proton and then harshly review it based on that, emphasising its flaws/everything that doesn't work quite right. If it doesn't work at all in Wine/Proton then mention that.

Do your best to dissuade potential buyers and make this cost them as much as possible - hopefully a lot more than just giving out refunds would have cost.

GOG are doing a Black Friday sale with some good Linux games cheap
24 November 2018 at 7:16 pm UTC

Quoting: g000hWondering if your Witcher 3 GOTY script enables playing the game near perfectly on Linux?

I was very impressed by your Shadow Warrior 2 script which worked perfectly for me, despite not having the latest Nvidia graphics drivers on my Debian Linux install. (I'm still on Nvidia 390.87 :/ ).

As tuubi pointed out, you'll need newer drivers for stream output support - it will still work without that, but some monsters will be invisible or distorted.

Snapshot Games have cancelled the Linux version of Phoenix Point
10 November 2018 at 5:24 pm UTC Likes: 1

This is *extremely* disappointing news :(

QuoteLinux requires a large amount of specialised graphics programming as it uses OpenGL as opposed to DirectX on Windows.

And yet Mac will apparently still be supported; a platform which only supports an old version of OpenGL (support for which has been deprecated and will disappear in later MacOS releases) and Apple's own proprietary "Metal" API that supports only Apple devices... what's that about "specialised graphics programming" again? (similarly, DirectX is an API that only Microsoft stuff supports)

Either way they're still going to be dealing with another graphics API. At least OpenGL is neither vendor nor system specific. Or better yet, what about Vulkan?

QuoteAs driver support for Linux is not as comprehensive as for Windows and Mac, we would be required to make a number of adaptations to graphical shaders for them to work correctly.

Several years ago maybe... but today they're generally in great shape. I've been using Linux for almost 6 years, and the rate of improvement of the graphics drivers in that time has been phenomenal, especially for AMD GPUs. Not so much for Nvidia, but at least their proprietary drivers have always worked quite well in my experience.

Also again I'd like to point out that OpenGL on Mac is an outdated version and from what I've heard even then it's a bit "patchy" with regards to support.

QuoteIn order to release on Linux we have to build and test many different distributions, each with their own set of complications and adaptations required. As of this time we do not have the studio resources to adequately create and test all of these.

lol. This again :/ Ubuntu is the de-facto "standard distro"; Valve only supports Ubuntu officially, GOG only supports Ubuntu officially (along with its variants such as Mint), most developers only support Ubuntu officially etc.

(also the community should avoid directing new & less skilled/experienced users towards other distros IMO; it's those users that are likely to be the ones lying about what distro they're using to try to get support when they inevitably run into problems and don't know how to go about resolving them)

QuoteWe also have other issues such as complications with input devices, especially game controllers along with some Linux specific Unity bugs, such as not being able to correctly render the video player.

I'm guessing this is the crux of the matter, as I've heard lots of complaint about bugs with Unity on Linux. More devs really need to complain & try to get these issues fixed rather than simply drop the Linux version :/

Quoting: GuestDoes not help with purchases from GOG (which it supposedly is, or was going, to come to).

https://www.gog.com/forum/general/adamhms_linux_wine_wrappers_news_faq_discussion/post3

Nightdive are having issues with the Wine-bundled Linux build of System Shock 2
2 November 2018 at 10:02 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: ImnotarobotIt works for me after fiddling. I just think it's ridiculous to have a wine game in the store and advertise that as Linux. It's bullshit and think that it only gives Nightdive worse reputation. Kind of a dumb move from them from the beginning if you ask me.

There's nothing wrong with Linux releases of old games using Wine wrappers; it's little different to old games using DOSBox, or more recent games with some of VP's eON ports. The important things are that it works like a Linux game, runs well and is actually supported.

Nightdive are having issues with the Wine-bundled Linux build of System Shock 2
2 November 2018 at 7:52 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestAh well, I would like a way to prevent all the games (under Wine or not) from changing the gamma! Don’t touch my gamma!! :p

Hence it would be nice to have as an option that can be enabled/disabled on a per-game basis (and overridden by the user)... display gamma changes are much less of a problem than changing display resolution though. Just use xgamma to restore the original setting & it's all fine, whereas something changing the display resolution can really screw things up depending on the desktop environment, drivers etc.

Currently I work around it in my scripts by having them record the initial gamma settings on startup and then restore it after Wine exits (and for Proton wrappers for games that normally alter the system's display gamma their scripts include an option to preset the gamma to work around the inability to change it ingame).