Quoting: SkullyWine devs themselves state that you can expect 50% performance in wine.

This is a Wine thing, and not necessarily applicable to all wrappers.

I don't think Liam is saying that anybody should put up with lesser performance on Linux, just that whether or not they're happening via wrappers is irrelevant - it's the issues themselves (poor performance, poor stability, whatver) that we should be reporting, regardless of whether it's "native" or not.

Ideally we want native ports, but that's not going to happen for a lot of legacy titles. If we're being offered Linux support (proper support, with bug fixes and maintenance), then that's the important thing, and having presence on Linux will be more likely to lead to greater commitment, which I reckon will translate into more native ports longer term.

I can't see CD Projekt pulling teams off The Witcher 3 to port The Witcher 2, but having the latter out there on Wine makes the former much more sellable and could justify a native port in a way that the W2 on its own might not have been able to.

If they don't support the game, then sure, they don't deserve support from the Linux community, but if they do (and it sounds like they're working on fixing the situation up), then what value is there in shunning them?

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Really nice to see this turnaround, Liam! :D

One comment regarding Wine - it contains a lot of workarounds which are designed to replicate particular behaviours of particular Windows versions or to enable a particular game to do a particular thing.

The end result is a hugely impressive piece of work that allows us to run most Windows apps, but from the perspective of providing support for one game, there's a fair bit of non-relevant cruft in there. Stuff like eON has the potential to be more targeted, more streamlined and more performant (that it isn't at the moment is disappointing, but not so relevant).

It also seems like a huge balancing act to keep regressions out and Wine as a platform stable, and it's not guaranteed that modifications to Wine made by developers to benefit their own application will necessarily be mergeable. Though there are submission guidelines, coding practice guidelines, unit tests and automated test services to make that easier, not all devs/porters (although this sort of thing is more packaging than porting IMO) will be in a position to focus on them if they also have a game to ship.

It's OK to be disappointed by a bad port, and it's OK to want a refund, but there's no reason or value in being rude about that. Make sure that what's wrong is being communicated back to developers so that they can make fixes and/or avoid making the same mistakes in the future. If they choose not to, then they'll eventually wind up not being able to make money. If we choose to not give proper feedback, then there's no chance that they'll receive it.

The alternative is that comments like, "let this be your one, and only venture into the world of Linux," end up being the only voice out there (in the context of The Witcher 2, that would probably also mean no Linux support from GOG).

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Quoting: EikeI plan to buy it when it's complete.
Sounds like a story which doesn't deserve months of waiting between the parts.

I would most definitely suggest the opposite. If you do hold off until the last part is released, I'd recommend leaving some time between acts for your experiences to settle and resonate rather than playing through it in/as one act of consumption where the nuance and detail of the game get lost in the progression of the narrative as you plough ahead into subsequent parts.

There was a time when "getting stuck" was normal in games, and that was what pushed players away from their screens to ponder what they'd seen, experienced and learned. That's shied away from today as more and more content developers seek to avoid risk of letting players get distracted. Sword & Sworcery EP presented an interesting mechanic to encourage taking breaks. I like to think that KR0's episodic releases have similar value.

The game itself perhaps asks us to consider this. Shortly after starting Act III, you can come across some characters arguing about whether they should wait until something is finished before viewing it.

What's finished? Would it be better if it were finished? Can we be sure of that?

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Quoting: Xpanderyeah probably the statement is about the price they sell.. not that how many units they sell or how popular it is or gonna be.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there. This is an acknowledgement from Alienware that the type of premium they put on their more traditional range of machines won't fly in the Steam Machine marketplace.

There's still value in it for them though - having brand presence early in the Steam Machine ecosystem should firmly establish them there, and I expect that they'll be recommending Alienware branded peripherals to go with it (which they probably have a hefty markup on).

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Quoting: wleoncioI see, but do you know of any records of a game acquiring "Signs of Linux Support" status and then reverting back to "No Linux Launch Config" or something like that?

Worms: Clan Wars did this in February. You can see the Linux config and oslist changes appearing and then being removed in SteamDB's history for the app [External Link] if you go back far enough.

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There's new stuff to unlock with the last update (pretty sure I didn't see golden armour before that), and there's more on the way according to a forum thread I spotted.

On one of my machines, I've bought everything in the lobby and can't spend any diamonds I find anymore (looking forward to seeing those extra shopkeeper areas unlocked).

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Quoting: scaineI remember that I was absolutely gutted to discover that it was a Canadian dollar project and I have trust issues with my credit card, so I couldn't/wouldn't pledge. Damn.

Whelp, come June 1st, you'll be able to pick it up on Steam :D

Quoting: drmothJohn's been talking about how good the writing is in this project in his video updates...I hope this is the case.

I've had the opportunity to play the latest development version and the writing has been notably improved over the initial beta and earlier alpha versions :)

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Oh sweet. The press release I read yesterday didn't say anything about Linux. To clarify a bit, only six have gone up today. The rest of the 28 will be released in batches over the coming month or two (dates here [External Link].

We've done a couple of the Pajama Sam games for Game Club [External Link] and have plans to do more Humongous titles to celebrate the Steam releases.

People are more than welcome to join us. We had Dave Grossman for PJ Sam 3 and hopefully will be able to wrangle him and/or other guests again.

Edit: Oh, and according to the manual [External Link], they're shipping games with ScummVM.

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Good work on following this up. I spent a while trying to find a 2K/Firaxis source or press release for this (just in case it was yet another misunderstanding that propagated itself across a whole stack of news sites).

I loved Alpha Centauri, and it seems like the Beyond Earth team are the right people to make a spiritual successor.

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For anybody who's interested, here's the panel during which it was announced (jump to 20:15 for the question that sparked it).

View video on youtube.com

I made a SteamLUG StarCitizen organisation [External Link] for Linux users a few weeks back that people are welcome to join if they're interested ^_^

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