Quoting: rustybroomhandleSo, are the game designers, writers, artists, etc. all supposed to jump in and help finish the Linux port? No, they carry on with the next project.

It cuts both ways. Those designers, writers and artists need programmers too. Which is why most studios have them employed with doing expansion material (or 'DLC' ) or concept art for other projects. This is fine if they're not using other resources. If they're going to show off a new game at E3 it stands to reason that they've poached programmers for the new project too.

Larian sought crowdfunding for Divinity: Original Sin two years ago. Among the promises in that campaign was a Linux port. That they won't deliver before moving on to newer projects is simply indefensible. It's a slap in the face of every backer who wanted a Linux version and helped the project come to life in the first place.

Much like Amplitude, it's clear that Larian's priorities lie elsewhere. I would have preferred no promise of Linux support than to be deceived time and time again.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Maybe they broke something with nvidia? Right now with mesa on my 7870 with settings on mostly medium it rarely dips below 30 FPS with an average of mid-to-high 30s and a high of 50. Which isn't impressive but it's good enough for playing. I used to get graphical glitches with broken textures on some levels in the terrain but they fixed that a while back for me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

How unfortunate. I would prefer that devs at least try to mess around with Linux instead of outsourcing, doubly so if it's a non-native port we're talking about. At the very least, it builds experience in-house which can then be applied to future games and content. Techland's presentation on porting clearly showed that things would have been easier if the porters (and Linux) had been part of the main development process instead of having to deal with whatever changes the rest of the programmers thrust upon them and playing catch up. I can only imagine how much harder the work of the external studio will be in keeping the game updated and running well. Given the generally resource-heavy nature of ArmA I can't say I have much hope for this experiment of theirs.

As liam points out, we're a tiny fraction of the market but it's still a very chicken and egg sort of situation despite the good things Valve has done for us. Market share is a great motivator in getting developers to port to us but I think that so is experience with the OS in general. The Techland guys seemed to be happy with their overall experience on Linux and I think that they'll push for their bosses/colleagues to integrate Linux into their workflow because of that experience. If more developers were familiarized with the environment things would definitely be easier for us Linux gamers.

But, ah, maybe I'm showing too much wishful thinking on that last point.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Tie Fighter is my favorite Star Wars game of all time and one of my favorite space games. The 1995 collector's edition Tie Fighter is the definitive version to play. It has better resolution than the original DOS, voiced characters and includes expansions. The 1998 version was a different engine and I felt that the music was subpar. I'm glad to see that GOG included the 1995 version with their Linux release as it had previously been missing from the special edition.

I'd be all over this and buy it if it weren't for the fact that I made a backup of my own disc over a decade ago and still play it every once in a while through DOSBox.

Might pick up X-Wing since I lost the disc for that years ago though.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I played Spec Ops: The Line on a friend's console a few years ago. It's a game with an interesting story but is rather linear and probably not worth playing through again. It's good that it'll come to Linux but I think I'll pass on this one.

Good on VP for improving their technology. I think there's a lot of older games that developers/publishers don't care about anymore that they could port competently but I'd just as soon not see wrappers for newer games. I'd rather see newer games ported ideally in-house but if not by either Aspyr or Feral who have generally delivered consistently good ports.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It'd be lovely to have a high profile game like this on Linux but I have to worry about performance. I was a fan of Operation Flashpoint but the series lost me a while ago due to bugs and graphics issues. The ArmA games can be very taxing on hardware. Still, if and when it comes out I'll be mighty tempted to pick it up. The military sim aspects of these games are without peer.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

A brief follow up to a comment I made regarding intellectual property: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33qcaj/the_experiment_has_failed_my_exit_from_the/

As it stands I don't feel the current program is friendly to modders. Not having a say in intellectual ownership over content once in the workshop is a dealbreaker for me. I hope these are just teething problems but somehow I doubt it.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I don't mind the concept of paid mods but there are 3 problems in the current execution:

1) The split for skyrim mods are ridiculous. A modder only gets 25% and must get at least $100 before being paid. Other games/developers will be better about it, hopefully.

2) There is no guarantee that mods will continue to work with future versions of the game. They won't necessarily get updated. The 24 hour grace period is nice but it does not mitigate the risk to the buyer long-term.

3) I'm not sure how intellectual property for purposes of publishing mods will work out. What of paid mods that use components of other mods, a practice usual in the scene? Furthermore, there's already been mods uploaded without permission from the original owner and while they might crack down on some egregious cases I'm not sure there's a practical way to impose a proof of ownership because of how the internet works.

I'm especially interested in seeing how 3) pans out. We might eventually even see litigation on it since I can imagine copyleft and copyright licenses emerging over mods in the future and developers getting sued over sold mods that have other people's work and material in it. Or it might be a non-starter if the developer owns all derivative content to being with according to courts.

What I hope from this paid mod system is that the most sensible modders that do it for the love of things will simply set it up so that they can get an optional donation and thus avoid splitting the community for games with multiplayer components.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Good for them finally getting close to release. They've had a hard time of it.

This game is inspired by all sorts of shows in the tokusatsu genre like Kamen Rider, not just Super Sentai (which is what Power Rangers is based off). Despite this, and not having used any copyrighted material, they were bullied by Saban (the owners of the Power Rangers trademark in the west) and threatened with legal action. The devs are a tiny indie Brazilian team and caved under pressure even though the case had no real legal standing. This is probably because they had no financial resources to fight any potential court case and were afraid of an injunction against them in North America. It would have been an unlikely outcome as parodies/homages in entertainment media have been consistently protected by US courts numerous times.

I wish them luck and success but I've yet to make up my mind if I'll pick it up. The thought of directly or indirectly supporting copyright trolls isn't appealing to me. It's a shame because the game looks fun and the devs obviously have a lot of love for the genre.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Shame sales aren't even higher but, yeah, they sound about right given our overall userbase. Hope things keep on growing. Still not sure Steam Machines will succeed but I think that Vulkan and the continually improving drivers and environments have already assured that we'll get even more games in the future. That said, I already have more games than spare time in my steam library but I see that as a challenge ;)

View this comment - View article - View full comments