Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by TheSHEEEP
Keith Packard's video from 'LinuxConfAu 2018' talking about Virtual Reality and Linux is up
29 January 2018 at 9:02 pm UTC

Quoting: beniwtv
Quoting: TheSHEEEPI did try it at a VR arcade. Played some zombie shooter with a friend. It was fun for an hour or two - if I had been alone, it would have been even less.

Sorry, but I don't think that is enough to get a good picture of VR games and it's capabilities.
Funny, first you make the suggestion, then you say it's not enough.
Grasping for arguments, are we?

I don't need to do or play more than that to see what is going on. As a gamer for over 20 years and a 3D programmer for more than 10, I know more than enough to recognize this whole thing for what it is:
Lots of hype with not-nothing but fairly little substance behind it.

There'll be some games, I can see some use cases in the medicine or military sector. Maybe there'll even be a few movie-like experiences made for it - I mean, besides porn.
An industry of some size will be established around it.

But this is not the hottest thing since cars or the internet. Its use cases are too limited. Too little gain for the consumer for too much effort (and cost, obviously).

Quoting: beniwtv
Quoting: TheSHEEEPWhat developer would ever go the extra mile to offer that?
Just one I know of the top of my head:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/238280/Legend_of_Dungeon/

Some others I found searching 5 minutes (there are probably others as well):
http://www.playfulcorp.com/#lucky
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/1026648920729545/
All of these are good examples for my points, so thank you.
Not one of those games offer better gameplay due to VR - of course not, because they (would) work just the same with a normal monitor. There's a small increase in immersion due to the hardware, but due to the player just looking at the field, that is very, very limited.
Just not enough for all but enthusiast devs to bother with it. I could see it as an interesting tech to play with and implement in a game from the developer perspective - but a worthwhile one? Eh...

Quoting: beniwtvLook, nobody says you should like VR or get VR, but please make sure you inform yourself about the subject, before calling all gloom and doom.
I'm not calling gloom and doom. I'm calling it what it is: A gimmick with limited use cases, too cumbersome, conceptually flawed and expensive all around to ever spread really wide.

Keith Packard's video from 'LinuxConfAu 2018' talking about Virtual Reality and Linux is up
29 January 2018 at 1:34 pm UTC

Quoting: calfretYou apparently have never actually tried VR. ... Give it a shot at a VR arcade before throwing the idea out completely.
I did try it at a VR arcade. Played some zombie shooter with a friend. It was fun for an hour or two - if I had been alone, it would have been even less.
After the initial phase, I could only think about what lame gameplay that game actually had. And of course it had to. No way you could play something more challenging with that headset on, cables around and the weird "controllers" in your hand.
It was really just that - a fun gimmick for a while.

And yes, it was clunky and heavy. At least in contrast to wearing exactly nothing on your head.
You can also completely forget about interacting with the world around you - say, someone wanting to show you something (or simply wanting your attention for other reasons). For that you gotta remove the set, then put it back on, etc.
No amount of technological advancement will solve these issues. There are conceptual flaws.

Quoting: beniwtvIf we take out the "specifically made for VR" games (which I don't think is the best example of VR), there are some really good games for VR out there - Serious Sam / Talos Principle / Everspace for Linux, Lone Echo / Doom 3: BFG Edition with VR Mod / Star Trek Bridge Crew / Fallout 4 / Elite Dangerous for Windows, Resident Evil 7 for Playstation VR, just to name a few.
Of course it works for some games, I'm not denying it is an improvement in some cases.
But, not surprisingly, only for first person games.
Which in itself limits the viability extremely.

Good luck playing in VR something like Europa Universalis, Street Fighter, Factorio, StarCraft, Sonic... the list is endless.
It would take an extreme amount of effort to make non-FP titles even somewhat usable in VR - and the result would still at best be at the same level. You won't see a noticeable increase of immersion when playing a non-FP game in VR. What developer would ever go the extra mile to offer that?

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI can tell you this though: VR is indeed the future. All the big names are signing onto this for both production as well as gaming enterprises.
Amazing. Despite me bearing the name, it is you being the sheep.
You being dragged blindly into some hype that has little to no basis.
All the big names have been signing into this for years. And it went... precisely nowhere. Sure, it spread a little. And it will continue to do so.
But this will at no point reach any spread even close to majority.

"All the big names" always jump at any hype as it could turn out to be profitable.
It is certainly no proof of anything except the fact that there is a hype, if you think otherwise you are strangely naive.

Remember when 3D in cinemas was THE THING? And where are we now? A certain portion of movies (mostly action) utilize it, the rest doesn't and of the movies that utilize it, maybe 30% utilize it well. For the rest it was a waste of money to spend the extra cash to see the movie in 3D. And that stuff was praised as THE FUTURE decades ago.
In a few decades from now, the exact same will be VR. An accepted thing, a tool, a gimmick, probably normal to see every now and then but certainly nothing the majority deals with regularly.

Keith Packard's video from 'LinuxConfAu 2018' talking about Virtual Reality and Linux is up
29 January 2018 at 8:20 am UTC

Quite honestly, I still see VR as little more than a gimmick.

I can see absolutely no breakthrough for a tech that requires you to have a rather clunky and heavy (even the lightweight ones) device on your head all the time.
And don't even get me started on most of the games made specifically for VR. Horrible stuff. Remove the VR aspect from them and what you're left with is games that wouldn't even sell on mobile because of simplicity and bad design.

With the improving tech and otherwise ease of use, I can see it as a gimmick with a somewhat increasing audience, though.
But they way some people jump at it as if it was THE FUTURE... lol

Reminds me a little of the Wii or Kinect when it came out.
Forget about those pesky controllers and keyboards! Right.

KING Art may be doing a Kickstarter for RTS 'Iron Harvest', they're asking for feedback
26 January 2018 at 1:49 pm UTC

What a weird question...

QuoteOn which platform would you like to play Iron Harvest on the most*?
*We are developing IH for PC first. The Kickstarter campaign and all Alpha/Beta builds will be PC-only. We’d like to gauge the level of interest in versions for other platforms.

Windows PC
PlayStation 4 / PlayStation 4 Pro
Xbox One / Xbox One X
MacOS
Linux
And it is single-choice.
Should be multiple choice, really. Even people who dual-boot are rather likely to pick Windows as they just know it makes most sense.

The developers of game launcher 'Launchbox' on porting it to Linux, due to Windows 10 privacy issues
26 January 2018 at 1:46 pm UTC Likes: 2

Hmmm... I'm happily using Steam, so a launcher would have to have an easy Steam integration (including downloading/installing Steam games), etc.
The Steam client itself is severely lacking in the library department (unable to filter my own games by tag, or anything really)...

I'd really only see an advantage in an additional game launcher if it is better than Steam in that regard.

Rise to Ruins has a 'minor' patch adding 11 new maps
17 January 2018 at 1:54 pm UTC

One thing I didn't like when I tried the game half a year ago (or more?), was that especially in the early game, there is basically one build order to rule them all and if you don't do it more or less exactly like that, you're toast.

Another problem was that once you fail, it means starting all the way from 0 again. There was no way to rebuild or continue from day X or so. Which wouldn't have been such a problem if the first days weren't pretty boring (once you get the hang of it).

Has any of the above changed somewhat?

Tale of Toast, another open world MMO that's going to release with Linux support
16 January 2018 at 10:00 am UTC

Quoting: 14
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: Purple Library GuyFree to play without any pay to win . . . say, how do these outfits make money exactly?
Being a truly good game helps.
Just look at Path Of Exile - probably the best Hack&Slash game out there, way better than Diablo 3. It is a Windows game, but runs on Wine.
And they finance themselves only via cosmetic items in the shop. Bought some useless fluff just to support them as I felt bad for not doing so.
I agree with this, but, personally, my money output is nowhere near $15/mo. I've probably spent about $15 total per F2P game that I spent so many hours that I felt I should really pay some money.
They don't need every player to do that. F2P games are financed mostly by whales (people who spend absurd amounts of money on them) and people who maybe spend 5$ every now and then (or like me, kinda buy "one game worth" of stuff in their shops once). What exactly the distribution of those is for PoE, you gotta ask the devs.

Most people probably play forever without paying anything.

Tale of Toast, another open world MMO that's going to release with Linux support
15 January 2018 at 6:13 am UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: Purple Library GuyFree to play without any pay to win . . . say, how do these outfits make money exactly?
Being a truly good game helps.
Just look at Path Of Exile - probably the best Hack&Slash game out there, way better than Diablo 3. It is a Windows game, but runs on Wine.
And they finance themselves only via cosmetic items in the shop. Bought some useless fluff just to support them as I felt bad for not doing so.

The “Fall 2017” update for Civilization VI has finally made it to Linux
12 January 2018 at 10:25 am UTC Likes: 2

Seriously, how messed up can your production pipeline be if an extension takes considerable work per platform?