Latest Comments by scaine
Developers And The Dreaded Platform Listing Of "PC"
17 November 2013 at 5:22 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from liamdaweFor me I feel it was needed, most newbies who hear of Linux will probably think of Ubuntu anyway. Every single person I have ever asked in "real life" has only heard of Ubuntu and I talk to people about Linux quite regularly.

That's my experience too. But since I exclusively use Ubuntu at home and work, it's probably not that surprising! The people I talk to about Linux are usually only talking about it because of my association with it, against the company policy of Windows or OSX.

I reckon I'm creating my own little bubble there.

Developers And The Dreaded Platform Listing Of "PC"
17 November 2013 at 4:37 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from ShmerlQuote
QuoteIt is the only distro Steam officially supports for a reason.

I'm not sure what their reasons were - Valve didn't really explain it clearly. And in the future, I'd expect them to drop Ubuntu as a base, if they want to stay in touch with the majority of the Linux world which said strong no to Mir, and will use Wayland.
So you shoot down one guess, Shmerl, that Ubuntu is the most popular distro, then fire off two wild guesses of your own, that Steam will drop Ubuntu as a base, and that no one else will ever use Mir.
Since we're speculating wildly, here's my wild guesses. Valve will continue to back Ubuntu for the simple reason that they're the only Linux distro which is both focused on the consumer space AND has a company/resources behind it.

Also, Mir. Yeah, now that's a super-heated topic, but really it's too early to tell. If I were wearing my cynical hat though, I'd suggest that Canonical's earlier backing of Wayland, only to drop it for Mir was suspiciously close to the point that Valve got involved with Linux after seeing how Windows 8 was turning out. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Mir was born so that Canonical can work more closely with Valve's vision of SteamOS in a way that they couldn't with a community run display protocol such as Wayland.

The Original Wasteland RPG Will Come To Linux
14 November 2013 at 7:21 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from TheCycoONE
Quoting: Quote from Bumadar
Quoting: Quote from Anonymous
Quoting: Quote from BumadarAlso available as abandonware and runs perfect in dosbox

You obviously don't know what abandonware means... Anyway the new release has a number of improvements over the original. Personally I'd appreciate not having to pull out the booklet for the flavor text.

I do know what it means, but the simpel fact is the game is available on many of the abandonware sites thus my comment stands.

Bumadar, you're confused.  Abandonware has never been legal.  Some people don't consider it unethical because there are no legal alternatives for acquiring a particular product, but the publisher could still sue.  Now that Wasteland 1 is for sale again, any ethical defense is lost, and downloading it from an abandonware site is no different from downloading GTA V off a warez site.

Yeah... but, Bumadar never said it was legal. He just said it was available on abandonware sites. So "confused" is the wrong term there. :)

But nice clarification. I actually thought "abandonware" was a real, legal thing, not that I've ever been interested in using it. Good to know.

The Funding Crowd 23 (Oct 29th - Nov 13th)
13 November 2013 at 10:13 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from DrMcCoyI'm sorry to say, but you're far too late for Oceania, which failed to reach its goal 4 hours ago.

EDIT: They do have some weird pre-order on their website though...

Yeah, I'm not sure why they're still advertising an expected delivery of Sep 2013, since we're now nearly halfway through November.

Funnily enough, Oceania only got in after a recommendation from a reader commenting on the last article, so it's a shame we couldn't quite get the word out on it.

So, as noted at the start of the article, we were a bit late with this issue, and a couple of the projects were always going to be a close call. Scale, for example, had to be rewritten at the last minute as they got a big push today and hit their target, and have less than 3 days to grab the final $18k to nail Rift support.

[EDIT : $8k. Dunno where I got $18k from!]

PixelJunk Shooter Released On Steam
12 November 2013 at 9:28 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from adolsonSo, I've shown you mine - you show me yours! Shooter is #1, but what are a few others you liked?

I've not played TerRover, but agree that Braid and Limbo were superb. I'd still put Shooter above them though (although it's a tough call for Braid...).

I played Might and Magic:Clash of Heroes on Android and absolutely loved it. Epic battles, very, very strategic. Is it Indie? I didn't realise.

And I didn't realise that Sony published the PixelJunk series. Good to know.

Other notable, quirky games? Possibly not Indie, but Dead Nation was a lot of fun, Hydrophobia had a great atmosphere, Landit Bandit was just... fun, and the DoubleFine games - Stacking and Costume Quest, both of which are now available on Linux which is great.

But yeah, Shooter is still up there for me. It's in my top ten, I think. Just. And if you exclude the big names (Driver SanFran, Drake, Vanquish, Borderlands, Skyrim, Portal, Zelda, Mario), it's in the top three.

PixelJunk Shooter Released On Steam
12 November 2013 at 5:48 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from adolson
Quoting: Quote from scainecertainly the best to grace PS3

I disagree with that statement

Go on then, I'll bite. What do you think was the best indie game to grace the PS3? Because I played an absolute ton of games on the PS3 besides the triple-A's and this was the stand out for me. In fact, all the PixelJunk games were.

The only non-Triple-A titles that could be said to surpass them, in my opinion, would That Game Company's titles - Flow, Flower and Journey. But I'd have to be convinced that you can call "That Game Company" an indie.

PixelJunk Shooter Released On Steam
12 November 2013 at 12:50 pm UTC

Pretty much one of the finest indie games ever, and certainly the best to grace PS3, now available on Linux. Absolutely awesome. I played the opening bout of levels last night and it's flawless with my Xbox wired controller. Just brilliant.

And at only £5.24, a complete steal. Hours of entertainment.

Local co-op only (like the original PS3 version), but it's primarily a single-player game anyway. Fun with two, but not essential.

Steam For Linux Has Its First Birthday Today!
7 November 2013 at 1:30 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from Xodetaetl
Quoting: QuoteLots of games on Steam don't use DRM.

I wish they advertised it on the games' profile.

A common, and justified complaint. They should man-up in that regard. Name and shame and all that...

Steam For Linux Has Its First Birthday Today!
7 November 2013 at 12:38 pm UTC

Lots of games on Steam don't use DRM. You can use Steam to buy them cheap, download them, then never use Steam again.
http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

But then cheapness is only one benefit of Steam. For me, the bigger value is in the community, knowing what my friends are playing, competing for achievements, jumping into their games, using the Steam voicechat to emulate LAN parties, starting up threads about the games and their linux support, and modding games simply by "subscribing" to workshop content.

Steam has its drawbacks, but the platform is pretty awesome. Like most social platforms, you get out more if you put in more.

Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
6 November 2013 at 3:57 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from Xpanderonly thing that seems to be missing is the Tesselation

http://www.overclock.net/t/1439965/metro-last-light-windows-vs-linux-graphics-comparison

And yet the graphics are absolutely stunning regardless! Actually, in that thread, the lack of tessellation makes most of the textures look more natural. It's the framerates that I find pretty staggering. The fluidity of the game while producing such graphics is really nice. Very smooth.

It's crashed for me twice now, which is disappointing, but I'm about 5 hours in, so it's not particularly prominent. It's just a shame that you can't skip the two minute tunnel intro when you start the game up! Pretty infuriating sitting through that!