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Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
Looks like Homefront: The Revolution might be gearing up for a Linux release now
4 October 2016 at 5:56 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: EhvisIt's difficult what to make of the reviews. This game has a pretty low rating, but most of the reviews on the front page are positive. Which contrasts quite a lot with "Valley", which has a very high rating but quite a few bad reviews on the front page.

Word of advice: Ignore amateur "reviews", read real reviews to make up your mind.

Why?
Sure, real reviewers are on average more practiced at writing well and analyzing gameplay elements and so on. But if I'm an average gamer, it's also the case that the ratings of average gamers may be closer to my experience than those of reviewers, who are not average gamers but rather jaded aficionados and so may, for instance, put a higher value on novelty than I would and generally like somewhat different games.
Not only that, but professional reviewers generally have significant systematic motivations other than giving the most honest or objective reviews. There definitely seems to be, for instance, a serious skew towards over-positive reviews of big hyped AAA games.

The Steam Hardware Survey for September 2016 shows Linux has grown some more
3 October 2016 at 6:52 pm UTC

Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: Mountain ManI still wish Valve was more proactive about promoting Linux/SteamOS. If you're particularly cynical, you could strike the word "more" from the previous sentence.
It's not ready yet. You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.
Steam for Linux has been out for nearly three-years. It's long past the point of first-impressions.
Very true. And yet it's also true that it's not ready yet, which brings us back to your previous point about wishing Valve were (more) proactive. If they got the lead out, it would be ready.
My best hope at the moment is, they're waiting for Vulkan to become widespread; then they'll go for it, slot in the multimedia support and such that Steam Machines need, and do a relaunch. A bit forlorn though.

The Steam Hardware Survey for September 2016 shows Linux has grown some more
3 October 2016 at 6:51 pm UTC

Quoting: skinnyrafLast Saturday: a survey on my Debian box, yay! The previous weekend: I had to launch Steam in desktop mode on my Steam Machine to repair it and, yay, a Steam survey on SteamOS :)

Yay! Um, except I thought SteamOS didn't display at all on the survey. So your response got lost in the ether I guess. That's another unknown: Would Linux be noticeably bigger if SteamOS were included? (Probably not, to be honest, but Valve are certainly playing their cards close to their chest on that)

'Hybrid Wars', a futuristic top-down mech shooter released with day-1 Linux support,
30 September 2016 at 4:06 am UTC Likes: 5

So it's a futuristic top-down mech shooter. Well, that's nice, I was so sick of all those medieval-setting mech shooters.

Steam now has above 2,500 Linux & SteamOS games available
28 September 2016 at 4:43 am UTC

OK, so here's a question, and maybe an article: At the current rate of growth in number of games for Linux and for Mac, how long before Linux has as many games as Mac?
(Assuming they're converging at all. If Linux and Mac are getting games at roughly the same rate, you'd see a situation where Linux has a larger and larger percentage of what Mac has, but never gets to 100%. Although, even if that's how it is now, I agree that Linux is likely to start overtaking in future if trends continue--like, if and when Vulkan starts seeing serious uptake, Mac ports/versions will be noticeably harder than Linux ports. And Apple does tend to be pretty stubborn about their NIH syndrome)

Aveyond 4, a popular Windows RPG released for Linux
23 September 2016 at 11:27 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: RadialAppsOur site is facing the GOL Effect! The primary site is dead due to huge traffic from here :D

Well, that's pretty cool! Wonder if Liam ever expected the site to have an "Effect"?

'Firewatch', the first person mystery adventure game has a major update, new game mode and Unity update
22 September 2016 at 4:48 pm UTC

Quoting: DrMcCoy
Quoting: sub(There are people that tend to love it, though!)

I do. I love me some David Lynch movies.

Hell, I also still maintain that his Dune movie is a work of genius. It only works if you have read the book, though.

You mean, like, a sort of send-up or ironic commentary on the book?
Because otherwise, two words: "Weirding Module". And in general, the tone contrast was like someone decided to make a movie from a John le Carre novel and ended up with Doctor Strangelove.
At that, no matter what you might think of the movie in other ways, it really needed cutting. There were all these empty minutes, filler where nothing happened--and I don't mean that it had scenes with dialogue that went nowhere or something, I mean whole minutes spent looking at the bloody moons or something, with no action, no dialogue, nothing! Even if one fundamentally liked Lynch's Dune, it could have seriously used a Phantom Edit to tighten and de-clutter it.

The GameCube and Wii emulator 'Dolphin' can now boot every GameCube game
20 September 2016 at 5:43 pm UTC

I went and read the whole piece, it was oddly interesting. I'm left with just one question: Who are these Factor 5 people?

EVERSPACE, the amazing looking space shooter should be on Linux before the end of September
14 September 2016 at 10:02 pm UTC

Quoting: MyeulC
Quotegraphically impressive space shooter
Is that a new genre? :D

It looks nice. I however miss evochron mercenary's newtonian accuracy. I am increasingly getting tired of those "planes in space*, but with rockets and asteroids". This is nice a few times, but I would like to see some originality here.

Gives me an idea: Imagine Kerbal Space Program, with somewhat more powerful/futuristic engines available. Except, there are people attacking your planet with spaceships and maybe simple rock bombardment. You get advance warning and can track their orbits and have to send out ships to intercept using KSP-style orbital mechanics.

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, a fantasy solo RPG with turn-based battles will come to Linux
13 September 2016 at 4:19 pm UTC

Ohhh, I remember the book thingie from back when! It's a classic -- by which I mean, it was lame as hell. Back when tabletop RPGs were fresh and new and just starting to gather bandwagon, and they thought "Can we come up with some way to do this solo?" and the answer was a choose-your-own-adventure book with a couple of combat events where you rolled some dice. Like all choose-your-own-adventure books, the basic problem was that having all the different stuff to flip around to meant any given story line had to be really short and boring. The thing managed to be hackneyed and cliche even though it was practically the only example of its precise type of thing.

Making it into a computer game does avoid all the problems that make the choose-your-own-adventure book so sucky (which is why there are so many more of the former than the latter), and I'm fond of Steve Jackson, but still--was this really worth doing a remake of?