When my GTX970 started giving me problems I picked up a 1660ti to hold me over. It's a decent card that I'll use in another build, but the 6GB memory is a limiter for a few games that want 8GB+ for high rez textures. The RTX3070 is very attractive while the 3080 and 3090 don't appeal to me at all. The price is right for the 3070 as well.

Power consumption and heat are considerations for me. I'm waiting to see what AMD brings to the table with RDNA 2 before I form any strong opinions. Plus, I want to see Phoronix and Anandtech benchmarks before I get too excited.

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Excellent write up. I was curious about the game play and found the stream informative and it was fun to watch you wade through the challenges.

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I have been testing out some demos on the Steam Indie Arena Showcase for Gamescon. Most of the demos are Windows only and were buggy, crashy, or just not that fun, but there were a few that stood out. These are the best of the bunch so far.

Everspace 2 - (proton): It runs great and the controls and combat feel really good. This could end up a real gem. The studio has said they will have a Linux client on release (there is a GoL article with details). Unless something changes this will be an EA purchase for me.

Mutropolis - (native): A point and click sci-fi adventure. It runs well and has an interesting setting and plot. This one is on my wishlist now for whenever I decide to do a P&C adventure.

Solasta Crown of the Magister - (proton): Solasta is a party based RPG with turn-based combat. It is set in the D&D universe. I absolutely love character design, building, and combat. The writing and story plot are interesting but the dialog is rather cheesy. Unless something changes (like it breaks through proton), I'll be buying this after release and I know it runs well.

Far: Lone Sails - (proton): Far is a side-scrolling realtime management game set in a post apocalyptic world with distinctive stylized art. You operate a large vehicle with multiple compartments. The purpose is to keep the vehicle moving forward which is a lot more challenging at points that it seems. You need to add fuel, release steam pressure, raise and lower wind sails, and similar tasks. Along the way you'll stop to pick up fuel or be stopped by impediments. The impediments are little mini-puzzles that become progressively more difficult. This isn't really my sort of game, but I also spent a lot more time trying it out than I had planned as I just wanted to "get a little farther" before saving and quitting.

Other than that I've been swimming in the insane grind that is Boundless.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: randylI played the previous demo, which works great through Proton, and it was rough, but compelling. I've downloaded the updated demo for this Indie Games Arena booth event and will try it after work today.

Everspace1 ran much better in native opengl.

The previous Everspace 2 demo didn't have a native client to compare with that I know of. When I installed it previously it defaulted to using Proton. This demo is Windows only as well, as the article points out.

Everspace 2 plays so much smoother and the combat component is much more satisfying than my memory of the previous demo. I am still very much looking forward to the Early Access. This is by far the best demo I've played so far in the Steam Indie Arena for Gamescon event.

Mutropolis is the other demo I've enjoyed so far and offers a Linux client to test with. They aren't similar games so not really comparable.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: randylI have mixed feelings about this. I'm not a fan of studios that rehash a recently released game and then charge owners of the original edition again, and even then owners only get a discount until it releases. >Observer_ was released in 2017 and that version isn't even available for purchase on Steam any longer. This feels like something that should have been an upgrade to the original, for previous owners, and maybe with the content split off as a DLC. I have several games in my library where the studio did just that, upgraded existing owners for no additional charge and/or added the content as DLC. >Observer_ had been on my quite long wishlist up until now. I almost bought it during the last Steam Summer sale, but I'm glad I held off. I want to see how they play this out.

Well, for owners of the original, it also has got the price of an upgrade and DLC (5 bucks here).

The article seems to indicate that owners only get this deal until the game officially releases.

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I have mixed feelings about this. I'm not a fan of studios that rehash a recently released game and then charge owners of the original edition again, and even then owners only get a discount until it releases. >Observer_ was released in 2017 and that version isn't even available for purchase on Steam any longer. This feels like something that should have been an upgrade to the original, for previous owners, and maybe with the content split off as a DLC. I have several games in my library where the studio did just that, upgraded existing owners for no additional charge and/or added the content as DLC. >Observer_ had been on my quite long wishlist up until now. I almost bought it during the last Steam Summer sale, but I'm glad I held off. I want to see how they play this out.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library Guy...

My friend, you really really need to organize something really big to change that situation. Bosses firing people with no reason is unacceptable.
You can't start anything without basic rights. Sorry for being ignorant about that, but USA seems like hell to me right now.

Each state has it's own laws about this. In Oregon it's we're called a "Right to Work" state. It has advantages and disadvantages for workers. In a very hostile unregulated capitalist society "right to work" can be both a blessing and a curse. My boss can fire me today for no reason, but I can also quit with no warning and no requirement to give notice.

In some state there are NDA and non-compete "contracts" or rules that don't allow workers to just quit without notice. From my perspective these rules may sound good but are generally more worker hostile and company sympathetic. For example, in that state I may not be able to quit without notice even if a better job offer comes along. I may also not be allowed to work in my same industry doing my job for 6 months to a couple years due to "non-compete". This is what Bethesda tried to pull with Carmack and his Oculus technology. In some states companies own what you create even on your own time. If you leave the job early or break contract with them then you may be sued for compensation. There are other draconian laws that limit what fields people can work in without approved certifications and training, even if someone has been trained or certified in another state. All of these rules are designed to serve businesses over workers.

I'm not a lawyer and am just providing a generalized summary from my experience. Since there are 50 states that means there are 50 different sets of rules for everyone so I could be missing a lot and there is some nuance to it all.

In short, US employment rules are heavily pro-capitalist and corporate business over workers.

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I played the previous demo, which works great through Proton, and it was rough, but compelling. I've downloaded the updated demo for this Indie Games Arena booth event and will try it after work today.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: randylI can't help but think we create our own special hell for ourselves by loudly clamoring for Linux support and then driving developers away with low sales and a frustrating development experience.

"driving developers away with low sales" is a kind of weird turn of phrase. It's not like we Linux users create the low sales. Low market share is our biggest problem, for sure. If it was high, developers would, as they do with other platforms, gripe about its problems but work with them anyway.

Good point. What I had in mind when I wrote that is the "no tux no bux" type of mantra that gets thrown around when developers don't meet Linux users demands. We withhold our money until we feel our laundry list of expectations are met. Maybe it's stretching a bit, but I feel we're a very hostile crowd when our expectations aren't delivered on a silver platter with a thank you note. I've seen studios comment in the past that they've delivered Linux ports, as the community of users demanded, but then never saw sales for that actually materialize. Maybe studio expectations are high. Maybe there is just a very vocal crowd that sounds disproportionately larger than it is and studios didn't do enough actual market research. Whatever the case, whenever we're told, no we're not getting a native port, Linux land seemingly becomes very hostile and institutes a hostile campaign of negative feedback and even harassment sometimes. I know I've been guilty of that in the past and I think it not only promotes a toxic discourse, it sets us back. I probably could have communicated that much better. Sometimes I get tired of hearing myself pontificate so I try and summarize without better explanation. :D

Anyway, I guess from my perspective there is a problem, but it doesn't appear to be broadly shared, especially here. That's okay. I support this site because I think it's doing great work to move our ecosystem forward, not because I agree or am agreed with. My hope in these discussion is to promote critical thinking and get people to ask questions or look at established paradigms from different angles and perspectives.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: grigiThere is no real fragmentation in the Windows ecosystem because you don't have a choice.

Tenchically the windows linker is significantly more fragile.
They solved muti-versioning by namespacing all the symbols.
Whilst that works, it significantly reduces the ability to just test to see if a different version of library X works better than the original one.

There is fragmentation in Windows 10 now, thanks to their build / update system.
You now have release.build. if you are running 2004.#### then you can run WSL2, if you have 1909.##49 versions higher than work allows me to run, then Microsoft has backported the WSL2 stuff...
Oh, and if you don't have a specific build or later, if you have certain virtualization features enabled, you can't run VMWare workstation...
While this is a very particular example, it does show that there can be incompatible issues within Windows 10, as they are basically now doing what MacOS X did for many years, just doing small changes, but big enough to cause issues.

Host hardware can only run a single VM platform at a time. You can't run ESXI alongside KVM, HyperV, or any other virtualization hosts. Enabling low level virtualization on any host is mutually exclusive with other hosts. That's true regardless of the OS. So it makes sense if you enable HyperV you can't run KVM for example. It's been that way for a really long time. This isn't a Windows 10 thing or even a Microsoft thing. Virtual Hosts/OSs want full control of all the hardware. If you enable WSL2 you're running both Win10 along with the Linux distro in HyperV. That is why you can't run VMWare workstation or KVM/Virtualbox on Windows 10 with WSL 2 enabled.

Besides, that isn't even what my point originally was. My point on fragmentation had to do with developers trying to write distro agnostic programs (games) for Linux natively and being frustrated by our ecosystem. It didn't have anything to do with VM hosts being mutually exclusive.

By the way SuperGiant won't be making a Linux port of its upcoming game Hades. They heard community reports that it works good enough on Proton and they hope that works out well for us. I wonder if it's just our anemic marketshare. Or maybe it's stuff like the Steam Linux Runtime based on Ubuntu still using an ancient version of GCC that breaks on modern OSs. Regardless of the reason, the end result is we've lost another Linux friendly developer for the time being. I can't help but think we create our own special hell for ourselves by loudly clamoring for Linux support and then driving developers away with low sales and a frustrating development experience.

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