Latest Comments by scaine
Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
6 November 2013 at 11:44 am UTC

Quoting: Quote from CaldazarSo you shouldn't accept tolerate Steam's DRM just because it is more convenient but because you weighted the good Steam brings vs the bad.
Boycotting Ubisoft or EA for example is a completely different decision although based on the same premises.

No, I don't personally accept that. It's definitely about convenience for me. Steam has DRM, which is technically bad, but I don't notice it. At all. Ever. And if do, ever, notice it, then I'll re-evaluate whether Steam is good or bad. At the moment, it's all good. Everything about Steam is good, for me :
1. Prices are reasonable, sales are incredible.
2. Downloads are fast, really fast.
3. Updates are automatic.

There are literally (again I'll stress "for me") no downsides. 

YMMV, I accept that.

Oh, and Stallman is very black and white on his website, which is what I base my information on. There is no middle ground with his views there. Don't have children. Don't use WEP or WPA on your WIFI. Don't give money to beggars. There's a lot of very hard black/white views on there and he endorses those views by using his name as the website. It's his website.

Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
6 November 2013 at 9:54 am UTC

Wow, Dima, that quote makes Stallman sound like a reasonable guy. And "reasonable" isn't a word I tend to associate with him. He's very, very black and white on most issues and I find a lot of his views extremely unpalatable. Check his website for examples, of which there are many.

Totally agree though with your/his view though. Wouldn't it be great to see Steam help get to the point where Ubuntu (or Linux generally) is commanding a fair proportion of games-playing market share? At that point, those users have a voice. And if they vote with their wallet then, they'll have a viable impact on sales and can actually drive change. Right now, if you vote with your wallet, you won't be heard. You won't even be noticed.

Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
5 November 2013 at 8:21 pm UTC

You know, I've just realised that this awesome news about Metro comes just one week before the incredible PixelJunk Shooter releases on Ubuntu via Steam too! I'm gonna have to work hard at not getting divorced over the next couple of weeks! :D

Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
5 November 2013 at 8:20 pm UTC

Quoting: Quote from ShmerlSupporting DRM is inherently bad, since it helps its proliferation. I hope we don't need to go into lengthy discussion why DRM itself is bad. But it's bad enough to avoid it outright. So there is some conflict here. You might want to support games which push better drivers, but you don't want to support ones which proliferate DRM. For me second issue has higher priority.

That's an admirable stance, but not one I can get behind, sorry. It's a little too Stallman for me. If you take that stance and apply it to everything in your life you'll be giving up a fair list of things. In fact, off the top of my head: every console, Steam, some Desura, all Apple products, most Android products (unless you bypass Play and take your chance on the malware infested third party appstores), every Bluray disk, BBC iPlayer, Netflix, Lovefilm (pretty much every online film repository bar Youtube), most DVD's (the ones encoded with CSS certainly, and good luck knowing which are before you buy them), most e-books and certainly anything to do with Kindle. There's probably lot of other examples, but most of that list affects me directly.

In fact, about the only thing that isn't governed by DRM digitally these days is music. And probably that only because of radio stations.

So, yeah, pretty admirable. But not for me. I like a balance, and a little DRM is acceptable provided it in no way gets in my way. And for me, Steam doesn't.

Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
5 November 2013 at 3:23 pm UTC

Humble Bundle might have started a pebble rolling down the mountain, but it would still be up there in the peaks if it wasn't the mighty push that Valve gave it when they started encouraging developers to go Linux all those months ago. They're not perfect, but I don't see how they've "turned sour" and are now "bad news for Linux".

Metro: Last Light Released for Linux on Steam
4 November 2013 at 8:31 pm UTC

Fantastic news! Just bought it, finally. Shame I missed all the sales, but I'm glad I'm going to be helping the hopefully large sales spike from this news! Can't wait to play this, the first one was a near-masterpiece and this follow up gets great reviews from my circle of friends who already own it on Windows.

Shaman : Shadows of the Last Immortal On Kickstarter & Greenlight
4 November 2013 at 2:33 pm UTC

As featured as our third Hidden Gem on The Funding Crowd #22! Definitely looks like an intriguing title, a little bit different from just about everything else out there. Mind that your pledge is for the first episode only, but they're not looking for much funding and you can get involved for only $10.

The Funding Crowd 22 (Oct 14th-28th)
3 November 2013 at 9:17 pm UTC

Sure enough, I see that Oceania failed in February this year and has recently relaunched, Crosby. It's already on the Crowdfunding wiki but isn't currently nominated for a write up. If you feel like writing it up, we'd be delighted to have your help - just PM either myself, s_d, speedster, or muntedefems and I'll add it on. If you can't, it'll fall to the current team of writers I just mentioned to find time to do so, but we have a busy list of nominees already. I'm not personally interested in MMO's, but perhaps one of the others is.

Shadowrun Returns RPG Officially Available On Linux
2 November 2013 at 11:04 pm UTC

I've been playing through the beta, I'm 11 hours in with not much in the way of an end in site yet. I haven't hit any bugs of any kind so far. All very slick. There is a lot of reading in this game, but that's good for atmosphere. It could use more/better audio generally though. A lot of the scenes do lack a bit of atmosphere, but the fighting mechanic is robust, very XCom-like over all. I've really enjoyed this one and glad I backed it on Kickstarter. It's been a lot of fun so far.

Painkiller: Hell and Damnation FPS Game Now In Beta For Linux
30 October 2013 at 12:38 pm UTC

I played for an hour yesterday and the experience was nearly flawless. Like philip550c, my PC is pretty hefty - a 3rd gen i7, 16Gb RAM, and an Nvidia gtx670, so I put everything on "very high" and played at 1920x1200. Couldn't tell you the framerate, but the gameplay was fluid, in a way that twitch/skill-based shooters need to be in order to work well.

No missing textures, but the initial film-based cut-scene lacked music. The in-game engine cut-scene was perfect though. No other issues that I could tell, but it's early days I suppose.

Really enjoying this so far and can't believe it cost me less than £4.