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Latest Comments by tuubi
Game developer revokes a user's Steam key after negative review
21 Oct 2018 at 12:59 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: DelicieuxzThe GPL license was for "personal, non-commercial purposes only" while Best Buy and 13 other companies distributed the GPL firmware commercially.
The companies tried to add a clause that disallowed commercial use of GPL licensed software (BusyBox) they had modified and incorporated in their products. In effect they had added additional restrictions.

The purpose of the GPL is to protect your rights to use or modify the code as you see fit, and distribute it freely. But to ensure that the recipients of your modified code also retain these rights, you are not allowed to publish the code or binaries under terms that conflict with the license.

None of the court cases are about modifying personal instances of the software, because the license simply does not care. It also does not try to prevent you from selling products that either incorporate or entirely consist of GPL licensed software, as long as you freely provide your customers with the source code as well and do not try to restrict the rights granted them by the license.

GPLv3 does add some clauses that might be harder to enforce in more corporate-leaning jurisdictions like those in the US. I'm not sure if the explicit protection against actual laws that restrict writing and distribution of certain kinds of software would stand a chance against the DMCA over there. Which is kind of silly in a country where corporations themselves can effectively override the law with EULAs and Terms of Service. Not that the EU is much better in this regard, but at least the laws over here retain a shred of decency. For now.

Game developer revokes a user's Steam key after negative review
21 Oct 2018 at 6:49 am UTC

Quoting: chancho_zombieMy favourite principle of common law is Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos which translates to "whoever's is the soil, it is theirs all the way to Heaven and all the way to Hell"

bluntly putting it: If you f**ck with land property we will drink your blood and take your soul.
I'm pretty sure the principle refers to the land owner's rights to the air above and the ground below their plot. I like your dramatic interpretation though. :)

Rocket League's Halloween event is live, cross-platform 'RocketID' feature delayed and more news
18 Oct 2018 at 1:50 pm UTC

I think the beach is the only one that regularly exhibits the audio bug for me. That's where it happened in Liam's recent Rocket League stream as well. I almost never play anything but the regular soccar though. Might also happen on some of the special arenas.

Embrace, extend, and protect? Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network to 'protect Linux and open source'
17 Oct 2018 at 4:06 pm UTC

Quoting: KristianDoes anybody here know of actual Switch titles that use Vulkan on the Switch?
I don't really follow console gaming news, but Doom (2016) and Wolfenstein II might be likely candidates.

Embrace, extend, and protect? Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network to 'protect Linux and open source'
17 Oct 2018 at 1:31 pm UTC

Quoting: KristianThe reason I suspect such a hypothetical situation might be useful is because DirectX has a lot of mindshare, tools, tutorials, books etc and most of all games that actually use it. Have many games ship with DirectX support vs support for open API's?
Direct3D 12 is a completely new graphics API and it isn't that much more established in the industry than Vulkan. As far as I know, only a couple dozen games have released on Windows with D3D12 support thus far, and none of them are D3D12 exclusive.

Quoting: KristianBy the way is Vulkan seeing any widespread adoption by Switch developers? AFAIK Nintendo only offers Vulkan as an alternative to their own API's. If Vulkan was the only option for a major console that would also help alot.
I don't think it matters. As long as a cross-platform API is properly supported, it doesn't need to be the only option. Nintendo wouldn't be a likely candidate to do something like this anyway.

Embrace, extend, and protect? Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network to 'protect Linux and open source'
17 Oct 2018 at 10:10 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Kristian"even if Microsoft hypothetically released an open DX12 spec, (deliberately) breaking their own "standards" and making competitors scramble for compatibility with their own implementations would be par for the course."

Them not doing this, or anything like it, was intended as part of my hypothetical.
I still don't see the point. What would DX12 bring to the table that Vulkan doesn't offer? Many companies have invested a lot in Vulkan support and know-how already. Why would they want to switch to another API now, equivalent or not?

DX12 is more limited in scope and hardware support by the way. It only needs to support XBox and anything that runs Windows 10. Vulkan is supported everywhere from the Nintendo Switch to specialised safety critical aircraft hardware. Vulkan could replace DX12 as is, but not the other way around.

Embrace, extend, and protect? Microsoft joins the Open Invention Network to 'protect Linux and open source'
17 Oct 2018 at 8:03 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Kristian
Quoting: cprnDirectX can't be ported to Linux per se, it's a bunch of Windows core calls. Its API can be re-implemented on Linux, that's what wine does and yeah, maybe wine folks would benefit but nobody else, really.
Hypothetically DirectX would be suitable as an open standard, replacing Vulkan, right? I mean from a purely technical stand point, they could open source it and turn it over to some standard's body or something. I ask because I am not well informed enough on the technical aspects.
Neither am I, but I infer from what cprn said that DirectX is fundamentally different from Vulkan in that Vulkan is a sort of set of specifications of how stuff is supposed to work, which is then implemented in different OSes and stuff, whereas DirectX is instead an implementation of thingies that tell Windows specifically what to do in language Windows specifically understands . . . an implementation which no doubt has some documentation which may superficially look like a specification, except they aren't, because the specific code comes first and the description of what it does comes second.
DirectX 12, or more specifically the graphics API Direct3D 12 is very similar to Vulkan. Both APIs were built on AMD's Mantle, and I don't see a technical reason why hardware vendors couldn't implement both in their Linux drivers. Vulkan 1.1 even added a bunch of DX12 compatibility extensions which makes the difference even smaller.

However, even if Microsoft hypothetically released an open DX12 spec, (deliberately) breaking their own "standards" and making competitors scramble for compatibility with their own implementations would be par for the course. They don't exactly have a stellar record when it comes to playing fair. I wouldn't trust Khronos either if they had their own platform to push. Instead they have all the interested parties working on a common spec. (Note that even Microsoft is a Khronos "contributor" member.)

There's also the fact that MS would never give up total control of the API. They like their lock-in as long as they're the big dog with nothing to lose.

NVIDIA have released the 410.57 driver as well as a 396.54.06 Vulkan beta driver to help DXVK
15 Oct 2018 at 7:27 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoFinally, about a month later, it has arrived to Ubuntu.
You're free to build PPAs at weekends.
Actually the PPA skipped 396.54.06 completely. Don't know why, not interested enough to ask. 396.54.09 on the other hand was added to the PPA with a delay of a single day, which should be good enough even for the impatient among us.

Saturday Mag: Linux gaming news odds and ends plus a look at a few things on sale
14 Oct 2018 at 2:43 pm UTC

Quoting: chui2chIs there any eta when the new Nvidia driver will end up in the https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/dev [External Link] ppa?
396.54.09 is now in the PPA.

Valve have updated Steam Play with the 3.16-1 beta based on Wine 3.16 and new DXVK
13 Oct 2018 at 9:09 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: edoyou are not mentioning the most interesting aspect. D3D11's Stream Output, now games like Giana sisters and etc will work.

Btw, sad to see they dropped mac support with this release
I didn't think Proton had mac support.

Also that Giana Sisters game is really fun, but really hard! Granted, the same could be said of the original one as well. There is an improved version of that for the STe that actually uses proper scrolling and such :)
I think I saw news of a brand new Special Edition fan release for the Amiga as well with better graphics and audio etc. The original game was a great Mario clone but it wasn't exactly technically impressive on the Amiga. Mono sound, catchy music but crappy audio samples, limited (ST) palette etc. Not that it bothered me back then.