Latest Comments by Cyril
Party-based fantasy RPG Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness gets a Linux version
11 October 2021 at 12:41 pm UTC Likes: 1

That's how it should be done, great!
A Linux/macOS release after a big month of the Windows one is perfectly fine, and it's during Early Access too.
There are so many KS projects that dropped Linux/macOS release during EA because mostly excuses... and then still have delays when the full game is out (or miss Linux completely)...
And yet, there, they provides these on GOG too, so often Steam is the only place to have EA for your OS.
As a backer I'm very happy with that!
But I didn't find the time to try the game yet.

GOG removes HITMAN after customer backlash over online features
11 October 2021 at 11:37 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: DaiKaiser93
Quoting: Ehvis
Quoting: DaiKaiser93
Quoting: x_wingSo they remove this game because it requires an online connection to play some missions but they will still have other games that you can only play multiplayer if and only if you have galaxy client. They can apologize all what they want but this smells more like a PR damage control.

For what I gather IO was blocking single player modes with online due to the modes having leaderboards.

There are plenty of games (also on gog) that have daily challenges with leaderboards that only work with an online connection. The only difference is that you can apparently earn starting costumes and items for the normal game with that. Not entirely sure because I never cared about those things. It does seem a bit overblown to me, but everybody knows how crazy people can get for simple things like cosmetic items.

Precisely, IO really dropped the ball with the implementation, I mean Streets of Rage 4 (Linux build) in GOG doesn't have online yet I can access the weekly challenges

Slay the Spire have daily "challenges" too, but the way it works it's not an issue like this Hitman.

A look at the top 100 Steam games and how many will work on Linux and the Steam Deck
6 October 2021 at 4:06 pm UTC

Quoting: Ehvis
Quoting: CyrilI'm just really surprised how nobody mention that Cortana is a shit that spy on people...

Same as Google, Siri, Alexa and such. Nothing new there that is worth mentioning. At least in a game it stops listening when you quit playing.

No it's not the same Cortana is installed by default on Windows and you can hardly disable it (majority of people won't anyway).
Yeah it stops listening in-game, but then continue listening back at your desktop, lol.

Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine recreation fheroes2 v0.9.8 out now
6 October 2021 at 3:55 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: scaineI never played any Might and Magic games. Might give this a shot next year though - perfect Steam Deck material!

Be careful, "Might and Magic" games are very different games than "Heroes of Might and Magic" ones, despite sharing the same universe in some episodes.
I never played Might and Magic ones neither but I can strongly recommend playing the "Heroes" ones.

A look at the top 100 Steam games and how many will work on Linux and the Steam Deck
6 October 2021 at 3:49 pm UTC

Quoting: ShabbyX
Quoting: elmapul
Quoting: ShabbyX
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: ShabbyX
Quoting: BielFPs... that Phasmophobia requires Cortana to use the voice functions of the game, ...

Wow, that's so braindead.
They did this to take advantage of the Cortana's AI, despite the "Windows dependency" part, I think this was actually pretty smart of them.

That's a sure way of making sure your game is completely unplayable in 5 years is what that is.

at the worst case scenario, they disable this feature and the game do work.
you seem like someone who prefer an game to never exist than to exit for a few time.

Disclaimer, I know nothing about this game, if the feature is entirely optional, then sure, that's fine.

If it's a core part of the game, then making it depend on some tech existing and shipping by the operating system is braindead. API's change, technologies change, it's not like the Cortana API has been standardized. In a few years Cortana will change enough that the game would be borked.

Adding voice recognition to games is a smart idea, sure. Just the technology used to implement it was wrong. They could have used some third party library (open source preferable of course) they could ship and not worry about it changing.

Again, if the feature can be disabled and is entirely optional, then sure, go nuts.

I'm just really surprised how nobody mention that Cortana is a shit that spy on people...

GTA III & Vice City reverse-engineered code taken down on GitHub again by Take-Two DMCA
6 October 2021 at 12:04 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: BeamboomBut it is important to maintain a nuanced perspective on things. We should acknowledge that the need for DRM is legit, Just like anti cheat. It causes problems for non cheaters, but we understand the need for it.

But it needs to be a good solution for both. And if we acknowledge the need for some sort of way to make life harder for illegit usage, this whole discussion about DRM can get on a more realistic and constructive path.
Being categorically anti DRM is in my opinion just as irrational as being against any form of anti-cheat.

It is not, not at all. But whatever...

GTA III & Vice City reverse-engineered code taken down on GitHub again by Take-Two DMCA
4 October 2021 at 9:33 pm UTC

Beamboom, you seem to not understand difference between a law and a DRM, for you it's the same?
The subject of piracy is really off topic there, I spoke about DRM because Scaine mentioned it and what you replied about that...
Telling me your perception of history of piracy etc is useless, and my age is useless too.
People of about all age and all experience in tech say that DRM is a real issue, but you doesn't seem to understand.
It's not the same issue as a law which have to defend a corporation/product/anyone/anything by a political way, the purpose of a DRM is to control you and to forbid you to do some things, by a technical way, despite the laws. It's absolutely not the same thing.
It means that the technical has replaced the political, it's serious. I thought it was obvious but it seems not after all.
It's my last post about that.

GTA III & Vice City reverse-engineered code taken down on GitHub again by Take-Two DMCA
4 October 2021 at 1:01 pm UTC

Quoting: Beamboom
Quoting: scaineIt would be the kind of brain dead thinking you often see from publishers (re: DRM).
I don't think it's brain dead to defend your own intellectual property. You will have to be on the extreme left politically to think so.

So, you accept DRM and find it a normal/good way (maybe the only way?) to defend their intellectual property?
You accept a system that restrict your freedom of what you buy only because it protect corporations and give them more power?
You will have to be on the extreme right politically to think so.

Free and open source racer SuperTuxKart 1.3 is out now
30 September 2021 at 1:04 pm UTC

Quoting: heidi.wenger
Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: heidi.wengerOk i try to remember i was just wondering why is that snap package not on that main site where the article linked? But only this tar.xz thing?? Which i couldnt do anything with

They publish the a tar file because is the easiest way to deliver the game for all linux platforms (as long as they have tar and xz installed... which is almost an axiom).

As Liam mentioned, you can run anything you want from your file browser if you know how to do it (in many will require a right click) but keep in mind that most of the instructions you will find are terminal focused. So, the instruction I shared with you implies opening a terminal on the directory where you extracted the game and execute the installation script.

I don't understand. That snap thing was like a click. But this "axiom" was just... sorry... "shit" ?

You're new to Linux aren't you?
If no, you lack some knowledge about how Linux works etc I think, or maybe you never downloaded apps outside the repositories?
If yes, like above, before saying "it's bad" you have to understand how it works. Coming from Windows, Linux is indeed very different from it (without speaking some politics, freedom etc).

My advice would be to open a new topic in the forum to discuss about all those aspects you don't understand properly and want to, as it's pretty off topic here as Liam said.
And I'm sure a lot of GOL users would be happy to discuss that with you.

Thatcher’s Techbase, the Doom II mod where you take down Maggie Thatcher is out
26 September 2021 at 10:17 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: DuncJust to be clear: anyone who openly dedicates a work to people who hate, or defends that dedication, surrenders the right to complain about “hate speech”. Period.
Nonsense. Category error. Laws about, and discussion of, "hate speech" are not about individuals. There's plenty of perfectly legal talk about individuals that would be considered hate speech if it was about some identifiable group. What you can't say about individuals is governed largely by things like slander and libel laws, which mainly proscribe false factual statements, not expressions of hatred as such.

And there are good reasons for this, both in terms of societal health and in terms of whether such speech can be morally defensible. Obviously, it can't be accurate to ascribe some negative feature to all members of a group, since on average people are people. For a constellation of reasons of which "it just can't be true" is only the beginning, it clearly can't be morally defensible to preach hate against all members of some racial, religious or other whole category of people. It is also damaging to society to set groups within it against each other.

Hatred of individuals is a rather different story. To take a somewhat extreme example, where I live in British Columbia there have been a couple of notorious serial murderers, Clifford Olson and Willie Pickton. Everyone hates their guts, obviously, because they are (or were, I think Olson finally died in prison) horrible, vicious people without conscience who did monstrous things. So nobody's going to complain a whole lot about hating those two guys, or expressing that hatred, saying very bad things about them and so on. But say someone wasn't an actual murderer--say they were a con artist who bilked old pensioners of all their savings, leaving dozens of people destitute and in some cases homeless. I think the case is pretty strong that it would still be OK to hate that person, express hate towards them and so on. So the question isn't whether it's OK to hate individuals, or say bad things about individuals because you hate them; the question is where the line should be drawn between people that it's OK to hate and people that it's not OK to hate.
Then there are people one knows personally--the horrible boss, the school bully or whoever. I find it hard to say nobody should ever be allowed to hate anyone personally.

So, then, Margaret Thatcher, and politicians. Should politicians be exempt due to the particular nature of what they do? There is often a sort of presumption made about politicians that, no matter what their expressed ideology, they should get a pass of sorts because they should be assumed to believe that application of that ideology and their policies will have net positive effects, no matter how absurd it might be to believe such a thing. It's rarely expressed this explicitly, but politicians are assumed to be acting in good faith--or at least, even if we have doubts that they really are, we should sort of pretend to believe it unless there is proof to the contrary. And having assumed that they are acting in good faith and that their chosen policies are intended to benefit everyone, or at least the most people possible, in the long run at least, we can then follow a logic saying that one shouldn't hate them for those policies, no matter how damaging they might be: The politician was doing their best, they didn't intend to do damage, so hate is not legitimate.
(Incidentally, this may be one of the reasons for the outrage much of the political and commentator class had about Trump--he made it so incredibly obvious that this professional courtesy was not deserved, with the transparency of his willingness to say absolutely anything that was convenient for him in the moment)

I question both ends of that. First, many politicians are quite consciously engaged in deception, trying to convince the public to embrace policies and ideologies that they know perfectly well will harm most of that same public, because it benefits them personally or a relatively small group they consider themselves to belong to. They are virtually identical to the confidence trickster above, only on a mass scale. It is clearly as legitimate to hate them as it is to hate anyone causing major harm for profit.
Others are in an odd middle ground . . . they believe in their ideology, more or less, but deep down they know there's something dodgy; they tell lies that they know are lies in specific, but tell themselves that the spirit of what they're saying is true; they carefully avoid looking at the impact of what they do, or thinking about anything that may make them feel uncomfortable. Hypocrites, cowards, just not looking at the side their bread isn't buttered on, but not quite consciously doing damage for profit. Should one hate such people? Perhaps not, although I'd find it hard to object to "contempt".

But even if someone is completely sincere, just how much damage should they get a pass for? At what point does stubbornness become an insufficient excuse for dealing death? Which brings us to Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is clearly responsible for a mountain of excess deaths and mass impoverishment--far more than any serial murderer or confidence trickster. It is possible to persuade oneself that she sincerely thought this would in some way be for the best in the long run, but it's hard to persuade oneself that she cared. Thatcher was callous, apparently utterly lacking in empathy; she may not have been enthusiastic about the damage she caused as such, although there were times it seemed she thought anyone crushed by her policies deserved it, but she clearly was at best indifferent to the suffering and death she caused, and she encouraged others to be similarly callous. Any non-politician who caused as much damage as Thatcher did with as little conscience, there would be no controversy about hating them. Should she get a pass because she was in politics?

I think not. And indeed, I think serious excoriation and hatred of people who do that much damage serves a social purpose: Discouraging other people from getting ideas about doing the same. Oddly, I don't personally hate Thatcher. I think she was evil, but I'm a Canadian--my relationship to her isn't personal enough for hate. But I'm not going to say hating her would be illegitimate. I'd probably really hate her guts if I was British.

Purple Library Guy strikes again.