Latest Comments by F.Ultra
The developer of BYTEPATH has shared some sales data including how Linux sales went
28 February 2019 at 7:36 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: SpykerI think we need the equivalent of GamingOnLinux in French, to spread the word about Linux gaming here in France (u_u)
According to this, France is a total hotbed of Linux use--nearly 13% of sales! We're talking like double the level of the Anglosphere.
Also to a lesser extent Brazil and Russia. Although of course this is a pretty small sample.

Linux is quite vibrant in France (they even had their own distribution, Mandrake, back in the day)
I used to use it. In its heyday, it was the best desktop Linux there was, hands down.

Same here, got it pre-installed on a machine from Compaq (yes Compaq soled machines with Linux pre-installed for a while) back in 2001/2002 I think it was which my wife used as her main machine for several years before the hardware broke down.

The developer of BYTEPATH has shared some sales data including how Linux sales went
26 February 2019 at 8:55 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: SpykerI think we need the equivalent of GamingOnLinux in French, to spread the word about Linux gaming here in France (u_u)
According to this, France is a total hotbed of Linux use--nearly 13% of sales! We're talking like double the level of the Anglosphere.
Also to a lesser extent Brazil and Russia. Although of course this is a pretty small sample.

Linux is quite vibrant in France (they even had their own distribution, Mandrake, back in the day), Germany (SUSE) and Scandinavia (Linus heritage after all) (I wonder what the sale stats for Scandinavia for this game is) and I remember that Brazil had some big projects for requiring Open Source for government systems a few years ago.

The war of the PC stores is getting ugly, as Metro Exodus becomes a timed Epic Store exclusive
29 January 2019 at 9:28 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: TobyGornowJust want to add that you were forced to create a Steam account in order to play CS and Half-life when you bought the Orange Box. For me Epic is just giving Valve a taste of his own medicine.
How pissed I was at the time but little by little, I was buying less physical copy from my brick & mortar retailer (Bankrupt today) and now I have more than 400 titles in my library just because it was cheaper. Did I do that alone ? Don't think so...

It's evolution of the market, maybe Valve has been too greedy, the new player is strong and full of arguments, who will survive ?

And the exact equivalent of that would be if Epic would only sell Fortnite on the Epic Store, something that few if any here complain about.

The war of the PC stores is getting ugly, as Metro Exodus becomes a timed Epic Store exclusive
29 January 2019 at 9:27 pm UTC

Quoting: tonRWait... WHAT?!! Subsidiary got more power than Parent company?!
Man, this is from 'Linux-friendly' company (or corporation?).

THQNordic tweet

ADD Quote:
QuoteThe decision to publish Metro Exodus as a timed Epic Store exclusive was made entirely on Koch Media’s side as Metro is their intellectual property. They are a sister company of THQ Nordic (Vienna), which is the reason why we can and will not comment on this matter. We do not want to categorically exclude the possibility of timed exclusives for any of our games in the future, but speaking in the here and now, we definitely want to have the players choose the platform of their liking and make our portfolio available to as many outlets as possible.

The answer is right there in your quote, "sister company", not "daughter company". Looking at the Wikipedia page for Koch Media we see this:
QuoteOn 14 February 2018, THQ Nordic announced the acquisition of Koch Media for 121 million EUR. Koch Media continues to operate as its own, separate subsidiary of THQ Nordic, and there are no plans to restructure following the acquisition, nor any cost saving measures on the horizon.[

So apparently as part of the deal to buy Koch, THQ Nordic signed some form of independence clause.

Valve have detailed some changes coming to Steam in an overview post
19 January 2019 at 2:49 am UTC

Quoting: const
Quoting: Mohandevir
Quoting: eldakingValve has its many flaws (their hands-off approach to curation or their subpar treatment of indies for example). But they are still so far ahead of the competition it's just hard not to support Steam.

Yep! And when you read the complete post... It's quite shocking (unfair? Surprising?) when people say that Valve takes a 30% cut without doing anything... I don't see Epic offering an equivalent infrastructure now and not before a long, long time...

Edit: I hoped we would get news about new hardware, but Valve being Valve, we still may have surprises. :)

The sad part is that they take the "we want to add all those features" part as an excuse to not support linux.

And the really sad part is that remove that excuse and they would find some other reason for not supporting Linux.

The developer of Smith and Winston made an interesting blog post about supporting multiple platforms
12 January 2019 at 1:29 pm UTC Likes: 2

Also 100% hilarious to read all the mansplaining tweets from Windows devs to Ethan Lee "informing" him on how impossible it is to develop for Linux and how fragmented it is. Having porting games to Linux for over a decade have probably not given him any form of experience in the field so let's inform him!!!

The developer of Smith and Winston made an interesting blog post about supporting multiple platforms
10 January 2019 at 8:11 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: metaldazza
Quoting: BeamboomI don't understand how different compilers can expose different bugs in the same(?) code. I mean, a bug is a bug isn't it? Or is it because the use of different libraries expose bugs caused by those particular libraries/APIs? If so, how will the code run smoother on a different set of libraries if the bug is related to that other library?

I don't get this?

This is a good question: At a very basic level different compilers warn about different things. Although the C/C++ standard defines what is an error very clearly different compilers will warn about different things. Often this isn't that important and isn't going to save your bacon but a good developer listens to their compiler. There is a reason the compiler isn't happy and it can reveal false assumptions and you'll find yourself saying "I have no idea how that ever ran".

Different compilers do have different standard libraries though and they can be more of less forgiving. Visual C++ STL (Standard Template Library) has extensive debugging output in debug builds that catch errors quickly and precisely at the expense of debug builds being very slow. This also has the effect of using more memory and changed memory usage can also hide or expose different kinds of bugs. So macOS and Linux not having these is "good" as in different and in the case difference is good but not better or worse (I am not saying one compiler is better than another, just different).

Another big difference between standard libraries is the way they allocate memory within the application heap. So the OS gives your application a chunk of memory that only it can use called a heap and the application allocate's and frees blocks within that heap. Each standard library has different algorithms for how allocate and free work and you can even replace them with your own if you are brave/foolish/clever/stupid/genius. So when you allocate a piece of memory, use it, free it and then illegally use this piece of freed memory you get different behaviour. Annecdotally on Windows you get away with this a lot more often than on UNIX where you will more often (but not always) crash almost instantly making it easier to track down the problem. On embedded platforms (consoles for example) where memory is tighter you also get different behaviour as the OS vendor will tweak the memory allocator to be more aggressive about recycling memory than on a desktop where "memory is limitless".

Hope that helps and vaguely makes sense?

Matches 100% my experience from 30+ years of coding. Especially fun with the "change of memory regions" is when the code crashes reliably but when you add some simple "printf ()":s to write out some values just before the crash happens then it stops to crash :)

And I'd say that the single most important thing that happened to me when I switched from Windows to Linux back in the day was getting access to Valgrind. That is one very very good tool!

Unity have changed their terms of service, which has essentially blocked SpatialOS and streaming services
10 January 2019 at 7:18 pm UTC

Quoting: MaxPower
Quoting: x_wingIt's a little ambiguous, but in the paragraph it talks about "...transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user devices", so it shouldn't affect steam links as is not steam the one that is streaming but the user to himself. In other words, the full paragraph refers to what distributors can do, but not what end users can.

If it does not apply to Steam link, what about twitch ?

Twitch players are users of the game and have not entered into any license deal with Unity so they should not be included either, IANAL however so don't take it as 100% certain but it would be strange if a license between a developer and Unity would spill over to the end user.

The Silent Age, a thrilling point and click adventure now has a Linux version
6 January 2019 at 3:56 pm UTC

Quoting: g000h
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: F.UltraIt only shows Windows and macOS now?! Was just going to purchase it when I noticed that the steamOS icon was gone.

I have installed it native for Linux right now.

From Steam? That is where it's only Windows and macOS right now (seams like I forgot to mention that it was on Steam that I saw it).

I'm not sure what happened to the SteamOS (Linux) icon in the Steam client for this game. From the sounds of this post it appeared, and then you are reporting that it isn't there. I can confirm that "right now, while writing this" the SteamOS icon is not present.

BUT, the game is in my library, and I am performing a native Linux install on it right now. Not Steam Play / Proton / running a Windows game on Linux.

I think this is a game that the developers have released as Linux native, but they aren't happy to fully support Linux so they are suppressing the SteamOS icon. (Like Facepunch did with Rust, quite recently. But that doesn't stop Rust running fine on Linux - I play that regularly, and get all the updates... on native Linux.)

Now.. to launch The Silent Age, and have a little play... It comes up with a nice little graphics settings config screen, and I'm choosing 3840x2160 resolution, non-windowed, Best settings.

Played it for 45 minutes. All running fine. Hope this info helps.

Thanks, yes that looks like the case. Just bought and installed it and Steam never complained that it wasn't native like it does with SteamPlay/Proton so it's probably just like you wrote.

The Silent Age, a thrilling point and click adventure now has a Linux version
5 January 2019 at 6:19 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest
Quoting: F.UltraIt only shows Windows and macOS now?! Was just going to purchase it when I noticed that the steamOS icon was gone.

I have installed it native for Linux right now.

From Steam? That is where it's only Windows and macOS right now (seams like I forgot to mention that it was on Steam that I saw it).