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Latest Comments by ugly
Get Wasteland 2 Director's Cut FREE in the GOG Winter Sale, lots of Linux games going cheaps
14 Dec 2019 at 8:39 pm UTC

Quoting: wvstolzingConnect isn't seeing my steam copy of Dusk -- first time I'm running into this problem; previous Connect transactions had never caused a hiccup.
Mine didn't pick up at first. But a few minutes later it showed and I was able to claim it.

Quoting: BotonoskiIf your experiencing crashes in Wasteland 2: Directors Cut at the loading screens, enter the command "ulimit -n 4096" into a terminal and then run the game via that same terminal window, probably best to make a bash script if this works for you.
I found that the better way is to edit /etc/systemd/system.conf and /etc/systemd/user.conf

In both files change the line:
#DefaultLimitNOFILE= to DefaultLimitNOFILE=32768

Note the removal of the #. Since I made that change, the game has only crashed on me once.

As a side note, kind of disappointing that a game that I paid to back on Kickstarter that I never got around to playing until now ends up being free in the middle of me finally playing it.

Chooseco are getting indie games using 'choose your own adventure' taken down on itch.io
14 Dec 2019 at 8:28 pm UTC Likes: 7

I work in IP law.

For trademarks, the key is that the trademark owner has to use the mark (in this case, Choose Your Own Adventure) in association with particular goods and services.

Chooseco does have a registered trademark and their description of goods does include video games: Chooseco's mark [External Link]

Anybody that has a registered trademark risks losing their mark if they allow their mark to become generic. So, if you are a trademark owner, you do need to police your mark like this. So, this is not 'trolling' like you see with patent law. From a legal standpoint, what they're doing is exactly what they're supposed to do.

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) does a search when you apply for a trademark. If they don't find another registered mark (for the same goods or services) that would be confusing, they can allow the mark. But they generally do not do extensive searches outside of registered marks (that's left for the public to do when the mark is published, but most people don't monitor that).

Their mark was registered in 2003 (they might have earlier registrations, but I didn't check). So, a good question would be whether Choose Your Own Adventure was being used to describe video games by other people prior to 2003. Just because they had a Choose Your Own Adventure mark for books in the 80s, doesn't automatically give them the rights to the mark for video games.

Another question would be whether Chooseco is actually using their marks. A quick look at their registration and they include a whole bunch of things as the goods and services (movies, games, etc.). They did provide a 'specimen' as proof that they are using their mark, but the specimen appears to be a DVD movie. If they're not making video games, then their mark might not be valid (you should not be allowed to have a trademark if you are not actually 'using' it). But, Chooseco could argue that a movie that is interactive is a video game.

But, there really doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what is happening here. Chooseco isn't doing anything underhanded. And, in the big picture, it's not like they're doing anything particularly harmful. It's not much of a burden to describe the game as something else.

Reminder: Update your PC info for the next round of statistics updates
27 Oct 2019 at 10:32 am UTC

I had my Skylake CPU blow up on me about a month ago. So I'm on the new Ryzen now.

I kept most of my old components (RAM, PSU, GPU). But after a few weeks of instability while gaming (random resets), it looks like whatever surge took out my Skylake CPU also damaged my old GPU (Radeon 7850).

I bought a Biostar RX 550 (cheapest modern GPU I could find) for testing, and all the resetting issues disappeared. I'm in the middle of some not particularly demanding games (Wasteland 2 and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night). At 1080 and highest settings in those games, the RX 550 is surprisingly capable.

So, I'll stick with the RX 550 until I can find a good deal on a higher end card. Hopefully by then the new AMD cards will be better supported on Linux (and a price cut would be nice too).

Wasteland 3 has an impressive new trailer for Gamescom
24 Aug 2019 at 10:41 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: WendigoI hope Wasteland 3 will be more stable. I really loved Wasteland 2 but quit playing before I could finish it because the game crashed at about every second loading screen.
I'm playing through Wasteland 2 right now (I backed it but never played it until now and would have saved a lot of money if I was smart and just waited).

I agree, it's one of the crashiest games I've played in a long time. But there is a fix for the many crashes at the loading screens. The issue has to do with how many files can be opened at once, so you have to increase the limit. At the terminal if you enter ulimit -n then you will probably see a low value by default.

There are two files that you need to edit (not sure if you need to do both, but I did).

In /etc/systemd/user.conf and in /etc/systemd/system.conf

You need to change the line from:
#DefaultLimitNOFILE=

to:

DefaultLimitNOFILE=32768

After a restart ulimit -n should be at 32768.

This fixed 90% of the crashes for me. The game went from nearly unplayable and now I'm nearly at the end (it's still smart to save often because it still crashes occasionally).