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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: Whitewolfe80I have seen it justified plenty of times on Reddit

Any examples? Linux users are generally supportive of developers who release for Linux. Anyway, as I said, instead of focusing on piracy itself (which probably will always exist in some form), developers can focus on positive stuff that can reduce it - removing DRM, being more open in their communication to have more direct relationship with the community, and so on. All that builds respect. I.e. it's the opposite of what legacy publishers are normally doing (DRM, complete distancing from the community and etc.). On average, I'd say Linux developers are doing a better job than usual in that. Good examples are companies like inXile, Obsidian and the like.

Just go to any reddit forum that mentions the words Bethesda and linux. They are not going to remove DRM if anything I forsee companies spending more and more on it. For every person that legit buys a copy on gog,all it takes is one guy/girl and it's up on a torrent.

Oh I grant you having a dialogue with the end users helps but there will always be that crowd and its not just on Linux, it's on Windows and Mac too. That just flat out refuse to pay for anything entertainment related. I get pirates are everywhere but when the Linux games market is so small (in comparison) anyone effecting the success of a port on linux is f**king us all over.

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Quoting: TheBardFeral is doing a lot for linux, buying on their store helps them, Valve is doing a lot too, helping them is helping us. Itch does support Linux too. And of course every developper store suppporting Linux is very nice too. But GOG? What do they do for Linux? Ignoring one of the most voted feature, having lots of Linux native games Win and Mac only. If GOG would have wanted to support Linux, they would have already resolved those issues. Why choosing a company where we are only second-class citizen over ones who treat us well?

GOG is a game store. So it cannot be compared to others producing/developing games and game related software. Do you want a supermarket to have cows to produce milk? No, they bet milk from those that produce it and make it available to us. It cannot sell me stuff though that the producer doesn't want to distribute via the supermarket. You have to live with that, it is (most of the time) not in their hands to decide to sell something.

GOG OTOH does support the idea behind Linux - freedom. What they sell to me is mine, and there's not a single further restriction after that. This is why I use GOG (and other DRM-free stores(*)). And why I will not use Steam. And don't care what Feral does.

(*) Sadly, quite some of them have closed by now. That is what Steam did for us. Thank you....

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Quoting: manus76And with a quote from Adam Smith we might summarise the whole discussion about Apple: '...that I have fresh bread and rolls every morning is not because of the baker's goodwill, it's because of his greed' (or something to that effect, quoted from a failing memory).
I suggest we leave it at that and do not open this usual can of worms, it might turn too political and heated.

That's fine in a competitive market where there are many bakers, but should one baker have a monopoly on the supply of wheat... your bread will most probably be stale, and most --certainly-- a lot more expensive.

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Quoting: Kuduzkehpan

Quoteit's perfectly possible for open source software to succeed under capitalism; as you say, we know this because plenty of it does.

OSS cant be monopoly. it may be tool for monopoly.

Just in case you've misunderstood, monopolies are not desirable in capitalistic economies. Sure, one of the big problems of the system is it depends on competition to keep the market healthy, while every one of these competitors strive to beat their competition, in effect striving to attain a monopoly of their market.

The system obviously doesn't benefit the society itself -- meaning the people the society consists of -- without strict rules and state oversight, because it is not in the financial interest of uncaring companies to be satisfied with balance and stability. It's all about unlimited growth, which is just as absurd as it sounds.

I'd argue there's no economic system currently around that's any better though, because all of them tend to be based on flawed, simplistic models of societies where the human element and other critical factors are almost completely ignored. This goes for capitalism as well.

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I gave up to try to convert people to use Linux. Sure when someone ask me I will recommend it of course. There are two reasons why I stoped.

First, you have to do the whole support and then someone else is talking about a cool application which runs only on windows, Linux is replaced by windows as fast as possible. A friend of mine was happy with Linux using Inkscape and Gimp. Then someone showed him Photoshop (the one for >$1000 some years ago). The next time I visited him, the Linux system was replaced by windows and Photoshop, of cause he did not pay for it.
Not sure this is possible today with all the DRM. As long as someone gets the application for free, there is no pressure to use something else.

The 2nd reason is that I always felt like I have to defend Linux against the other OS (often that includes the applications). People don't like changes. And usually there don't care about rights and security as long as its easy to use. How else could someone explain why so many people using cloud systems? And has anyone read the EULA of windows 10? (I'm sure not even one lawyer of MS knows that thing in full.:)

What I do if someone ask me for help with her or his computer I ask what OS is installed. Sometimes there don't know what that means or that there are alternatives to windows. If its windows I say that there should find someone else. Why should I spend my spare time to fix a system form a multi billion $ company? MS should give there costumer better support.

One last thing. Reading the postings in this thread I read about capitalism. As I understand that this means the market are all what its needed to do the regulations. But for one thing, there will never be a pure capitalism like there will never be a pure communism. The other thing is that capitalism always will lead into monopolies like we have with windows. MS had never a real competitor in the OS market. And in the other market there where very aggressive to competitor.
(For people who are interested in how the money system works and understand german, look in youtube for 'Bernd Senf'.)

Just my 2cents

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I enjoyed kol's jokes so much, this one will be an instant-buy, and even if it's just half as good, I'll be happy

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I guarantee that Overload will easily be the best one. It's being made by the original creators of Descent 1 and 2.

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Quoting: Whitewolfe80I agree i did notice it but it is a small thing as long as the units don't have it am okay with it. Def going to pick this up, yeah co heroes 2 looks better but the frame rate is so variable this looks like it should be rock stable.

Yeah I know, I'm just being picky, I still want the game cause it looks great. :D

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Quoteit's perfectly possible for open source software to succeed under capitalism; as you say, we know this because plenty of it does.

OSS cant be monopoly. it may be tool for monopoly. OSS may replace commerical closed sources softwares where stuations are critical. DNS servers, universities , R&D , medical. But in capitalist regime these must be support by organisations communities or so. Unless they become commerical economy driven thing.

And both ms and its softwares are showdown of capitism. Closed source ,copyrights, lock-in. DRM. And so on. And all of these hurts both people and linux(FOSS) This is why we need socialist economy. there is 1 or 0, there isnt something between 1 and 0 there wont be.
And actually "market" is not correct term for linux. Neither the bazaar is.
Also socialism is reason why lesser number is using linux. Many has no problem with capitalism and its toys.

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I never expected to see a Suda 51 game on Linux. Wow.

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And with a quote from Adam Smith we might summarise the whole discussion about Apple: '...that I have fresh bread and rolls every morning is not because of the baker's goodwill, it's because of his greed' (or something to that effect, quoted from a failing memory).
I suggest we leave it at that and do not open this usual can of worms, it might turn too political and heated.

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Darkest Dungeon was a game I loved originally, and I don't normally go for hard games. I loved everything about the game right up until my best team got 100% killed in like the second room of the titular dungeon. Then I realized that I had zero interest in sinking another 10 or so hours in to get my B-Team up to snuff only to wipe out before the boss again.

Sunless Sea, on the other hand, even when bad shit happened, I still felt like I was making progress. Even if that progress was just "Well, I should never say that again!" I learned something every time so even though the game was just as brutal, at no point did I feel like I had wasted my time.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: ColomboIt still lacks tons of content, especially in the midgame. There isn't really that much to do, only useless clicking when you are trying to manage stuff, that should have been automated in the first place.

Part of the problem is the insistence on "pure" real time. I wish there was a sort of "skip time to the next alert" button.

I don't think so. Stellaris is plagued by so much problems that are common to TB strategies as well (in fact, one of the reason why later turn in TB strategies takes so much time is because they often don't do automation of stuff).

Problem is that they screwed it. You can see, especially at start, that Stellaris wants to be exploration game. If you had 2-5 planets, its kind of make sense. Or just star system. You could make really good game in more cramped up galaxy with much more expanded the pre-FTL game. Game based on exploration, first inside your own solar system and so on.

But they insisted on huge galaxies and the Grand Strategy thing, so the combat is boring, it contains a lot of other boring underdeveloped subsystems (I am sure they will "correct" a lot of it in DLCs, but screwed up Paradox DLC policy is another totally different topic).

You can see that with every patch, they are trying to correct this. They are adding superthings at the end, galactic events, megastructures... But there is still this midgame that is boring, especially since weapons and ship design unfortunately went into "Go for the troops with most pips" thing.

Why I am angry?
They have strong 2 hours of game. Then it starts to be boring. Once you play it again, you will get most of the same events as last time at start, so it starts to be boring.

But because you played it more than 2 hours, you can't return the game any more.


Paradox used to be company that I used to trust, not any more.

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Looks great! Will probably pick this up

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How much this game costs in your country?
The GOG version of this game in Argentina costs 11.39U$D (including Event0 for free) and the Steam/itchio version, 19.99U$D...

...I just bought the GOG version, by the way.

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Quoting: qptain Nemo

Quoting: g000hHow do you feel about Darkest Dungeon? Tried that one? [ I like how the game plays, but it is just too mean a game. I don't play games to start the next run worse than the previous one. Gee, my whole party is diseased and insane. On top of that, some RNG event has just taken 8 items out of my inventory. Pow! ]

64 hours into Darkest Dungeon so far. Here's the thing.
I don't love the design philosophy of DD. I kinda hate it. It's a game about grinding and minmaxing, that rewards you with more grinding and punishes you with even more grinding. It's a tough game and there is no shortage of salt for this game in me. I strongly prefer how games like King of Dragon Pass, Black Closet and Gods Will Be Watching are designed. They're tough as nails but they're dramatic rollercoasters. You win some, you lose some. Darkest Dungeon is just one mostly unrewarding grueling journey through adversity where you will never ever feel like you have anything resembling upper hand (except when you go back to lower level dungeons after you have leveled up fully upgraded characters and a shitton of trinkets, but even then you can only feel so triumphant while having to essentially replay stuff you have already overcome numerous times). But. Darkest Dungeon is very well balanced and very well designed. You might find this statement surprising but here you have to take into consideration what it aims to be, a constantly harsh punishing experience. It nails that perfectly. It's kinda too well balanced for my taste. That's kinda my main issue. I'm a gambling man, I like to have some leeway, to take risks, win big and take punishment if it didn't pay out but not have to grind all over again every time I fail. But I'll never be able to say DD is badly designed or that the designers don't know what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. And it's enjoyable for many different reasons, it's a well made game, and I will probably stubbornly endure it to the end, as I'm getting close having beaten almost all regular bosses.

Hmm . Not sure about DD. I was always on the fence about buying it.
First of all , disclosure , I did not play just watched people playing it on stream/youtube.
To me it just seems sadistic for no good reason. I see hard games like Dark Souls or even Dwarf Fortress but both seem to provide enjoyment to their audience.
This like you said initially just seems to reward and punish grind with yet even more grind.
And the RNG seems totally broken. No matter how good you are you loose everything at once.
To me it just seems a game for the most hardcore sadomasochists.
Good luck in your endeavor though.

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I really liked the new blizzard level. It's so much fun and flying through those accelerators gives both a speed thrill and it also brings a new depth of complexity to the game. I once managed to chased down a robot who was trying to hide from me by taking the shortcut through the accelerator and by coming out just beside the bot took it by complete surprise.

The time bomb was super cool as well. The new features almost makes the Overload a 7- or 8-degree-of-freedom. Getting updates like this every month or so keeps the game alive. Even though the game does not contain a full campaign right now and if it was released today I would still consider it as a full game just from the challenge levels. That's how good the implementation is.

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Quoting: JJNovaI'm thinking SwiftPaw has ties to Full Bright.

Hey bud, could you help me get a refund for Gone Home?

Ah, allegations of compromised integrity to "counter" an argument. A classic move.

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Quoting: JJNovaI'm thinking SwiftPaw has ties to Full Bright.

What? :D

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Can two people play this game on the same computer?

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Quoting: manus76

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: manus76So should Apple (and Microsoft) just say: 'Listen guys, we abandon Metal (or DX11/12 in the case of MS) and support Vulkan. That means if you primiarily game you won't need to use our OS, and hardware either, just go with linux'. Does that make sense for a commercial entity to even consider such a thing?

Well, the theory of capitalist competition is that people use one product over another because it works better, has nicer features, is cheaper and whatnot. That's what's supposed to be good about it--that this competition stuff will result in good cheap products. If that's not how capitalism really works I don't have a duty to defend its dysfunction. Traditionally the supposed remedy was laws enforcing real competition and disallowing various kinds of anticompetitive behaviour--including, but not limited to, antitrust laws. Again, if the political climate is such that passing or enforcing such laws is impossible, then that's how it is--but if there ought to be a law, then surely one can at least complain.
And if capitalism never actually does the stuff it's supposed to do, if it doesn't "make sense for a commercial entity to even consider such a thing" as actual competition by creating better products rather than by erecting barriers to entry, that doesn't mean I should rearrange my notions of what's OK to include stuff that's harmful, it means I should start questioning the virtues of a system that does not work as advertised.

Not a personal attack, more an admission of my own failing (and probably dementia): even though I studied English and thought I was pretty competent at it, I haven't understood anything above.

Maybe you're used to assuming that there doesn't have to be a reason for markets to be good, they just are by definition, and so someone talking different seems incoherent? But the original theorists of capital, like Adam Smith and Ricardo and so forth, didn't treat capitalism and markets as ends in themselves, but as means to an end. They were justified to the extent that they were useful, to actual people--or could be made, by government regulation or social custom, to be so. If you can assimilate that idea, I think my comment is more or less understandable.

(Side note: It is actually often the case that a lot of people speaking ill of a corporation for antisocial behaviour has produced some changes to the corporation's behaviour. I wouldn't expect it to work in the case of Apple, since their misdeeds are relatively subtle and require some knowledge to understand. But it's not like getting mad at companies is completely useless--to the contrary, they tend to consider their public image very important, whatever their private amorality.)

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I'm thinking SwiftPaw has ties to Full Bright.

Hey bud, could you help me get a refund for Gone Home?

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Quoting: Jan

Quoting: slaapliedjeHas anyone done a side by side comparison of graphics for a PC vs Mac to see if they 'console-ize' Mac versions? I know I tried playing Total War: Attila on my Mac and the fan went crazy, the frame rate was barely more than a slide show, and I thought it was going to melt. I just figured the Intel chipset in it couldn't handle it, but it did make me wonder what kind of person uses solely a Mac for gaming? I'm really curious how their numbers are higher than ours, unless it is some sort of 'inside job'.

There has always been a group of dedicated Mac gaming enthusiasts -- just visit insidemacgames.com and learn more about the topic. Most 'hardcore' Mac gamers used to buy the old-school expandable Mac Pro (which still supports the latest Kepler GPUs) or the high-end iMac, which usually has a decent graphics card (the Nvidia 680MX in the 2012 model was the fastest mobile GPU available back then).

Most Mac users nowadays run a MacBook (Pro). Thanks to official eGPU support (Apple offers a dev kit with an AMD RX580) this won't be a bottleneck in the foreseeable future. My own experiences with unofficially supported eGPUs on the Mac have been mixed. It worked after some Terminal hacks, but the official solution should be stable.

If you ask me to portray an average Mac gaming enthusiast? Creative professional (designer, audio/video editor, etc.), scientist or student who needs a reliable working machine with little to no support costs, well designed (both OS and device), standard software support and likes to play games in his/her spare time. All on one box. Some dual-boot with Windows (Boot Camp), but the majority doesn't. Only half of them use Steam, the remaining 50 % buy their games off of the Mac App Store (according to Feral's numbers).

Hmm, I'm still wondering if there is any dumbing down of graphics during porting. A good example is some of the things like PhysX that wasn't supported by OpenGL/nvidia driver when Borderlands was ported to Linux means that the water effects aren't as cool looking.

Frontier Development simply just didn't release Horizons for mac due to lack of OpenGL 4.5 requirement.

Generally the 'Creative professionals' tend to be more casual gamers, not hard core ones. Always exception to every rule, that's for sure. I don't know about scientists using macs all that much, seems to me there are quite a few Linux distributions and tools out there specifically written by scientists for scientists. I think Macs are mostly used by sys admins who need to have their computers watched over by IT, but still need a *nix of some sort.. and students and the Creative types like you said. None of those are usually all that hardcore of gamers. Hell, even people into VR right now aren't really getting the 'Hardcore Gaming' experience. That's probably the biggest complaint right now with it, is you have to have a hardcore rig, but there aren't really any (or may, aforementioned E:D is certainly hardcore) that support VR yet, so people label it 'niche'.

So with that in mind, A) SteamVR on Linux required Vulkan. B) SteamVR is going to use Metal on Apple, and C) SteamVR is going to use DirectX/Vulkan on Windows. What do you think makes things easier to port to?

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It always surprises me just how many people are willing to defend lock-in and anti-competitive practice. There's a world of difference between "making money" and "taking money". The "Windows tax" present on the majority machines is a prime example of "taking money".

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76It doesn't work like that: if Metal and DX bring Apple and MS money (and they do) then that's all that counts.

For crooks yes, goals always justify the means. Wasn't that the whole point of the discussion above (in the context of lock-in)? We aren't arguing really.

Probably, I just don't consider them crooks. Anyway thx for the civilised and interesting discussion, let's agree to disagree, move on and enjoy the glorious world of linux gaming, cheers :-)

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Quoting: manus76It doesn't work like that: if Metal and DX bring Apple and MS money (and they do) then that's all that counts.

For crooks yes, goals always justify the means. Wasn't that the whole point of the discussion above (in the context of lock-in)? We aren't arguing really.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76So should Apple (and Microsoft) just say: 'Listen guys, we abandon Metal (or DX11/12 in the case of MS) and support Vulkan.

Yes, same as Adobe recently did with Flash, saying they will abandon it, and will support HTML (common open standard). MS kind of officially didn't do it with ActiveX and Silverlight, but de-facto did by supporting modern HTML in IE / Edge. I don't see why graphics need to be any worse in this sense. That would be competing on merit (let them make their systems better than the rest, instead of forcing lock-in through tools).

Admittedly, all that happened because HTML won, and balkanized lock-in lost in the browser wars. In graphics situation is far from healthy, with lock-in being very dominant, like early days of the Web with "best viewed in IE" and the like.

It doesn't work like that: if Metal and DX bring Apple and MS money (and they do) then that's all that counts. Any lofty ideas about openness, getting rid of lock-in etc. are irrelevant at that point. You think abandonig flash by adobe was dictated by the company's goodwill and benevolence? The same with other examples, i'm pretty sure it's all dictated by economy and nothing else.

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I really liked the old game. The only criticism was the mix of how slow it was with difficulty. Had no problem with it being a hard game or with the permadeath, but combined with its pace, it just meant it took ages to get back to where you were and it became a bit of a grind. I sunk a lot of hours into it, and never reached the end of the game. I hope they add some more balance to it, but I'll pick it up either way when it's out of EA.

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Quoting: manus76Not a personal attack, more an admission of my own failing (and probably dementia): even though I studied English and thought I was pretty competent at it, I haven't understood anything above.

I think @Purple Library Guy is saying, that monopoly and monopolistic (anti-competitive) practices are reasonably considered harmful to the free market, and normally are supposed to be prevented by anti-trust law and etc. But if the law fails to prevent it (because of political dysfunction, corruption, and so on), it doesn't make those practices any less damaging and crooked, and neither is whitewashing them a good thing.

You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law

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