Quoting: BrisseNot really. Not once have I used the launcher for anything else than clicking "Play" :)

Heh, that's kinda what I figured. At least it's good to know those Platinum ratings for it on ProtonDB are probably correct now! :)

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Quoting: BielFPsI wish Valve could force developers to put at least one actual image/video of the gameplay in the store page.
[…]
XCOM 2 it's a good example.

I have to quibble on a technicality: of the sixteen pictures there, if we discount the ones without any HUD, there's still eight showing gameplay. The other eight still look like they're from the game—they look like the enemy reveal animations or action cam shots when your soldier goes to shoot—though it's possible they might have the HUD turned off, I'm not sure. So technically at least half the pictures show actual gameplay situations, if not all of them. :)

Quoting: BielFPsBy just looking at the pictures, I could think that's a third person shooter game (Like Mass Effect for example) but watching a gameplay it shows that's a top view turn-based game.

That said, you do have a point: the actual selection is pretty atrocious. Only two shots show the strategic view, and barely anything (three shots) is shown of the base-building and management portion of the game (which altogether make up at least a third of the game). There are two shots of the HUD from when about to shoot an enemy (a big part of the game, as any player can attest!), but—and I agree this is a problem—there's no shot of the standard view of a random turn with soldiers and aliens scattered about the map.

My guess is Firaxis picked the shots for players of the first XCOM who were following the pre-release news, already knew what the game would be like generally, and wanted to see the cool new looks…which, of course, leaves it pretty poor at intimating the actual nature of the game for someone who isn't familiar with it.


On another note, that new search looks great—finally I can simply sort by "games which have on-line co-op on Linux" when looking for a new game for me and a friend to play. :D

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Quoting: BrisseI'm playing the 2013 HD Remaster through Proton without any problems. Before Proton, when I used Wine, I had to bypass the launcher to get it to work, but in recent versions of Proton even the launcher works.

Oh, the launcher works now? I had to bypass it when I first tried getting the game to run back when Proton first came out. Am I missing out on anything by continuing to bypass it?

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Quoting: Brisse

Quoting: PhiladelphusI'm really confused seeing Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on there

It's the predecessor, not the sequel. The first one already has a Definitive Edition. The second one has an 'HD Remaster', but is getting a Definitive Edition as well in the future. Yes, it's a bit confusing :)

Quoting: Liam DaweThis, the key is the "(2013)" in the name.

Whoops! Reading comprehension failure there. :D Yeah, I have the AoE II HD Remaster, and am looking forward to the Definitive Edition for it—at least now I can go back to hoping that that will work with Proton! :)

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Quoting: TyronYes, its a separate server and client thing like Minecraft. Yes it requires port forwarding, it does however attempt to do that automatically using NAT-PMP and Upnp which works on about half of router setups. For the other ones port fowarding or upnp has to be set up manually.

Thanks a lot, that answers my questions. I'm no stranger to port forwarding, but unfortunately the cheap consumer-grade hunk-a-junk router I'm stuck with in my current living situation just refuses to do it* so I'm afraid this is a no-go for me. :| Oh well.

*Some Googling suggests this is a widespread experience for this model.

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I'm really confused seeing Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on there since according to its Steam page it doesn't release till November 14th. How are (that many) people playing it already? :S: Too bad if it doesn't work though, I was looking forward to it. :(

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Since a quick perusal of their site didn't answer my questions, I'll ask here: how does multiplayer work? Does it use a separate server and client system like Minecraft? Most importantly, does it require port forwarding to work?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyA bit moot currently since I believe Mac has at least 5 times our gaming market share at the moment, so the market is larger porting to Mac anyway.

I just checked the latest Steam Hardware survey since for some reason I thought the market shares had been closing lately :S:, but yeah, the most recent results have Mac as 3.7× the Linux share.

Quoting: ShmerlPersonally as a developer I'd give macOS the least priority, due to Apple being extreme lock-in proponents, and due to macOS compatible hardware not being gaming oriented to begin with, especially for anything even remotely demanding. As @Purple Library Guy said above, Apple can be even viewed as gaming hostile, so that's another reason to simply avoid t.

Oh, indeed, I mentioned there were other considerations besides pure possible player numbers that go into such decisions, and I too get the feeling lately that Mac is more hostile to gaming than Linux is. I suppose that's our hope, given how the numbers aren't on our side at the moment. :)

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Quoting: ShmerlThey mean to say, they'll release for macOS, but not for Linux. And it's a Unity game with minimal dependencies really. Though probably, this line of thinking isn't common.

There's an interesting line of thinking there. Say you're a developer (only familiar with Windows) making a game. Looking in terms of nothing but raw numbers of potential players, you release for Windows first. Then, you have the resources to port to a second OS: MacOS or Linux? Assuming your game works for maybe half of Linux players (using Proton), then the potential market is probably larger porting to Mac.

How much larger would the Linux audience need to get than the Mac audience (or how badly would a game have to run on Proton) to make it a better choice to port to Linux? Obviously other considerations come into this choice than pure numbers, but it's an interesting thought.

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Wow, has it only been a year? It feels like I've been replaying my childhood nostalgia with Age of Empires II for longer than that already… :D

Proton's allowed me to experience some amazing games (e.g., Eastshade) over the past year that seem unlikely to get a Linux version, so I'm quite thankful for it. As long as I get to play a game, and show up as a Linux gamer to the developer to maybe encourage them to go native in the future, I'm happy. :)

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