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Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
Open source RTS Zero-K is coming to Steam, with a campaign being worked on
6 November 2017 at 8:11 pm UTC

Quoting: kydrosso many RTS, and the MMOs?

MMOs aren't just a different genre of game like say FPS, they're a completely different kind of economic problem. I suspect the point at which it becomes worth it to support a platform involves bigger numbers for an MMO, so unless we gain market share there won't be a lot of them.
Luckily, near as I can make out every metric except the Steam survey shows Linux growth lately. Crossing fingers! (Not that I care about MMOs--I care about market share. Enough growth to get MMOs is just one more part of the virtuous circle I'm hoping for where removed barriers and more available software lead to growth which leads to more available software such as MMOs which leads to further growth etc)

The first dev-diary for 'Surviving Mars' from Haemimont Games and Paradox is here, looks good
4 November 2017 at 7:56 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: MayeulCScientific accuracy is a nicety, I won't let this stand in the way of a good game. That said, it can also make a game good (or not, it's up to the game designers).
Yeah, all else being equal, scientific accuracy is good. But all else is often not equal; say you wanted to do Barsoom-style-Mars or Space:1889--then the last thing you'd want would be scientific accuracy.

The first dev-diary for 'Surviving Mars' from Haemimont Games and Paradox is here, looks good
3 November 2017 at 5:41 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: slaapliedjeOn that note, I was trying to figure out how you'd even have 100 mile per hour winds... if there was too thin of an atmosphere to properly have winds? I'm pretty sure there are large dust storms on Mars, but are they more in the upper atmosphere? I recall the first pictures before we'd landed anything on there was always showing that it had nasty weather patterns, and giant dust filled hurricanes. But it seems all the rovers aren't seeing that, except for maybe some sand dunes on the edge of craters.
You might find this interesting.

Spoiler: It's the first Google hit for "Mars storms".
Dunno if slaapliedje did, but I did.
So, the winds only get to 60 mph and the atmosphere is 1% as thick. I think that's not quite as wimpy as it seems at first glance; if I foggily recall my grade 11 physics, the energy would vary with the square of the velocity. So like, to have as much impact as a full-atmosphere wind of speed X, a 1% atmosphere would have to be at velocity 10X cuz 10 squared = 100. Soooo, if I'm not getting this all totally mangled, a 60 mph wind on mars would have the pushing power of a 6 mph breeze on earth.
Still not exactly capable of threatening to push over a rocket and stranding a certain astronaut, though.

The first dev-diary for 'Surviving Mars' from Haemimont Games and Paradox is here, looks good
2 November 2017 at 3:57 am UTC

Quoting: Kels
Quoting: Patola
QuoteUnlike Tropico, which Haemimont Games previously worked on, they're going for a more sandbox approach instead of following some sort of campaign.

Oh, come on!!! I hate open-ended games like that, a Campaign is the way to go. I like to play games like if I was reading a book, follow along an interesting, captivating story, not arranging random pieces of loosely coupled fragments of tales here and there. I guess I'll have to buy [url=undefined]Maia[/url] instead.

Oh, I missed that part. Personally, I'd rather have the choice between campaign and sandbox, given the choice.
So, given the choice, you'd like to be given the choice?

Wine 2.20 released with more Direct3D work and more fixes
31 October 2017 at 9:22 pm UTC

It feels weird to me that as near as I can figure, the latest stable release is 3.0 but the latest development release is still 2.x. Wha?

Wine 3.0 expected this year with Direct3D 11, roadmap for future releases includes OpenGL Core contexts
30 October 2017 at 5:53 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: ShmerlThat's great, especially Wayland plans.
This is a thing that I haven't seen talked about a whole lot, but I am so glad Ubuntu dropped Mir. Everyone talks about them dropping Unity for Gnome, but frankly that doesn't matter much. There's lots of those things and one more or less is no biggie.
But Wayland is the kind of infrastructure it's so much better if there's only one of it, and going forward it could matter quite a lot to Linux gaming that we didn't end up with both Wayland and Mir making things complicated.

Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV to both receive expansions in November
27 October 2017 at 11:16 pm UTC

Quoting: Colombo
QuotePatches cannot objectively be both free and not-free at the same time.

Here, there is the logical error you are making.

How can it be a logical error to essentially quote one of the foundational axioms of symbolic logic? I can imagine it being an error, but not a logical one.

Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV to both receive expansions in November
25 October 2017 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 3

It is a problem, but on the other hand it certainly seems to be true that while with many games, people buy it when it's new, play it for 15-20 hours or something, and then done . . . with Paradox games people tend to buy the base game, play it for 30-40 hours, buy a DLC, play for another 12-15, buy another DLC, rinse and repeat, with a few extra stints of just going back to it and losing a weekend without having bought anything new, adding up very often to hundreds of hours. So if you talk $$$/hour of entertainment, Paradox tends to actually stack up fine against most of the competition near as I can figure.
And it would be frankly financially impossible to just put out a game with the depth and complexity of something like CK II with a dozen DLCs already rolled in at launch. They'd have to ask for megabucks for the game (and so it wouldn't sell), except they'd probably fold before release just developing the damn thing for as long as it would take. So while the situation isn't perfect, I'm not sure what I'd advocate as a solution.

Space Pirates and Zombies 2 to leave Early Access on November 7th
25 October 2017 at 4:44 pm UTC

I like Spaz one. I've heard this is very different, so I'll have to consider it separately on its own merits. Sounds like it might be good though.