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Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
Space Hulk Ascension Strategy Released For Linux
16 November 2014 at 9:41 pm UTC

I remember when this was a board game. It was kinda fun.

Arcen Games Is Making A 4X Strategy Game, To Be Released In Q2 2015
16 November 2014 at 9:06 pm UTC

That sounds like it might be cool, I'm a big 4X fan, and Arcen Games is a class act. Will buy pretty much for sure.

Developer Who Sent A Death Threat To Gabe Newell Decided Not To Leave His Studio
16 November 2014 at 8:56 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Von
Quoting: DamonLinuxPLValve was right that the studio removed the game from their store ... can not be threaten others.
I disagree. They've pulled the plug not on one person, but the whole company (what, 2 or 3 more people in there?) It's an ugly overreaction and a statement “we can do what we damn want with your games, deal with it.”
Gotta say if I ran a company and someone dealing with my company threatened my life, I would stop doing business with that person. And you know, I don't have a responsibility to do business with anyone I don't want to. If I'm willing to take the hit to my profits, I can stop doing business with people because I don't like their tie. Now that might be an overreaction, but cutting someone off because of a death threat? No, that's even good business--it's bad if everyone else you might do business with thinks you're a pushover who lets people treat you like that.
But good business or not, money or no money--no. Too bad. A death threat?! Mess with me like that, I don't do business with you. Why would this be a controversial concept?

Some people here seem to be under the impression that Steam is a public utility. While that might be nice, it isn't, it's a private outfit that gets to decide who it does business with.

One key difference between Mr. Dawe and Mr. Dork is that the latter quit because he sinned and the former quit because he was sinned against. Coming back because you conclude you have more fortitude than you feared and can suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous trolls a bit longer is not wrong. Coming back because you unilaterally decide there's no need for penance after all is a bit skeezy.

Rich Geldreich On The State Of Linux Gaming, And It's Not Good
11 November 2014 at 4:23 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: BeamboomWhat worries me more than the technical hurdles is our market share. Cause with less than 2% of us being on Linux how can you possibly argue that devs should spend a lot on Linux optimizations?

To put it simple: We NEED SteamOS to do the magic on those numbers, or we'll remain a smaller gaming platform than Mac. It's just how it is.
This. We've always had a chicken/egg problem with gaming and game-related graphics performance issues (and some other issues) on Linux. That is, nobody would port games to Linux or make Linux be good for games because our market share was small, and we couldn't grow our market share because no games and to the extent there were games, there were bottlenecks when it came to making them good.

There are signs of this deadlock breaking thanks mainly to Valve and their determined efforts of late to move gaming to Linux. But it's not dead yet. There remain a group of technical issues--mostly drivers, development tools, X being obsolete, OpenGL's ability to compete with DirectX. And there remains the market share issue. Now some of the new engines make porting, or rather developing a game to be cross-platform to begin with, so easy that when using them it would actually be well worth it to make sure the game ran on Linux even if it only meant 1% more sales; the "porting" potentially costs well under 1% of overall game development costs. But even if this leads the majority of games coming out to technically run on Linux, that won't by itself create market share or momentum. And if the market share does not increase, the technical issues likely will not be fully solved and may even get worse as technology on other platforms moves forward while Linux lags.

To solve the market share problem, which in turn is very likely to lead to sufficient effort being spent on the technical problems to make Linux a competitive or even superior gaming platform, right now what we really, really need is a successful launch of the Steam Machines. If they come out and take hold, that would be a lot of users using Linux specifically to do graphics-intensive stuff for which they pay money. It would be an increase in critical mass from an open source development standpoint, and it would vastly increase the field of companies and people with a financial stake in the graphics side of Linux. I mean, Linux is already big, even dominant, in many fields, but few of them require it to make topnotch use of a PC graphics card. Server-related problems in Linux get solved; desktop ones, let alone gaming ones, not necessarily.

Basement - A Drug-dealing Strategy Game.
6 November 2014 at 11:03 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Metallinatuslol It looks extremely fun :P
I wonder what the SJWs must think about it!
. . . Serbian Jehovah's Witnesses?

GOL Survey Results: October
3 November 2014 at 5:45 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Hamishthere are an increasing amount of people actually playing games on Linux with more than one head, although still probably not enough to truly justify adding it to the survey as of yet.
Not surprising that people with more than one head would use Linux; I expect they're used to thinking differently about things, not going with "the herd" and so forth.

GODOT: The Open Source Engine Behind The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça & Pizza Boy
1 November 2014 at 8:13 pm UTC

Quoting: antarctician
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI bet the loading screens take forever. You'll spend ages "Waiting for Godot".

Actually, when it comes to Free Software, I believe even Richard Stallman agrees that games (and their art, for instance) can't necessarily be Free Software. So you can be an FSF-level believer in freedom for software and still agree to an exception for games.
Well I agree with this, however one should make the distinction between the games and the tools used to create them. It's good to have free software libraries and game engines to create games, but it's better to consider finished games as media products such as music and movies rather than software.
I didn't intend to imply otherwise, just so we're clear.

GODOT: The Open Source Engine Behind The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça & Pizza Boy
31 October 2014 at 5:11 pm UTC Likes: 1

I bet the loading screens take forever. You'll spend ages "Waiting for Godot".

Actually, when it comes to Free Software, I believe even Richard Stallman agrees that games (and their art, for instance) can't necessarily be Free Software. So you can be an FSF-level believer in freedom for software and still agree to an exception for games.

The Last Dogma Is Now On Greenlight, Offering Linux Version Exclusively For SteamOS
30 October 2014 at 7:52 pm UTC

Quotean alternate reality world, where US actively campaigns for world domination
How is that "alternate"?

Aspyr Media Plans More Linux Games In The Next 6 Months UPDATED
30 October 2014 at 7:50 pm UTC

Quoting: WorMzyI don't know I love it yet? I wonder if that's a cryptic hint at something. Hopefully it's more substantial than a pigeon dating simulator. :P
More substantial?! That simulator was absolutely essential to preserving the sometimes fragile relationship between Ernie and Bert!