Quoting: inlinuxdudeOkay, I'm probably being pretty dense here, but if someone could please explain to me how this game is at all "roguelike" (as the description states), I'd really appreciate it... It does not remind me of rouge AT ALL from the screenshot...

Nowadays the term roguelike is applied quite liberally to anything and everything with procedurally generated content, random loot and/or permadeath.

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@titi: Valve didn't invent closed betas. Not even the paid access bit. I have no problem with them, just the way this is marketed and handled by Steam.

I'm with @beamboom on the Early Access issue. The concept is misleading at best. They should call it "pre-order with beta-access" or something, but that's admittedly quite a mouthful. In any case, these games are quite obviously not ready to be sold, and definitely would not be seen in a brick-and-mortar shop until out of beta. I don't get why reviewers tend to overlook that fact. It's a preview, not a review if the game is not finished. Your average gamer will obviously overlook this fact, which is why I think EA should not exist in the form it does right now.

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Quoting: GuestI have another question:

Are you interested in the Vulkan API?

This would be more relevant in a survey for game developers than gamers.

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Quoting: kozecSo, I'm probably going to play devil's advocate on this, but I quickly scanned last 10 pages of discussion and wose thing that mod guy said about Linux is "Sure Linux is good for coding and so on, but for gaming, you want Windows." What's, frankly, truth, at least right now.

The thing is, this is utterly irrelevant. Why would we be asking for Linux versions of games if we were willing to install and use Windows to play them? No, I don't want Windows, even for gaming. Neither do Mac users, I'd assume.

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Quoting: sigz

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: sigzAt best you will have near same fps as in windows in some cases, most of times you will get lower fps, and you will never have a 30% more fps on linux than windows.

You might if someone had to port a Linux game written around an OpenGL renderer to Windows using Direct3D, but that won't happen. You know, with OpenGL being cross-platform and all.

Well, Planetary Annihilation is a pure OpenGL game, it has been done with multiplatform in mind, I tested it under windows and I got 20% more fps than linux (Of course I talk about my system only, I didn't found any comparison benchmark)

That'll happen, depending on the driver/hw and the amount of optimization a developer puts in for a given platform. Also, not relevant to my hypothetical scenario at all.

Quoting: GuestFeral's version is called "indirectx". Unless that's been changed in recent times. I'm sure Feral will correct me if I'm wrong.

Ah, thanks for the info.

Quoting: Guestdx9 might well be easy enough, but dx11 isn't quite so simple. And you don't want to strip apart an entire game codebase to replace everything if you can avoid it - something like togl is really the only way to go.
You will get performance hits because of trying to essentially emulate how DirectX does things, and then there's the mess of converting HLSL bytecode to something GLSL compatible.

This was pretty much my point. There will be overhead if you emulate an incompatible API, source based or not.

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Quoting: sigzAt best you will have near same fps as in windows in some cases, most of times you will get lower fps, and you will never have a 30% more fps on linux than windows.

You might if someone had to port a Linux game written around an OpenGL renderer to Windows using Direct3D, but that won't happen. You know, with OpenGL being cross-platform and all.

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Quoting: GuestI can't comment on SteamOS internals, but it's a source code based interface of DX, as far as I know. I don't mean they implement DX using OpenGL, but that they provide the same interfaces at a source code level, as far as the game code is concerned. It's all compiled natively in the end.

You mean Feral's using something like togl for their ports? Have they confirmed this or is this based on your own research? As Valve showed back in the day, this can work well for most dx9 level stuff at least, but some stuff in the APIs will require a lot of intermediate processing to make the interfaces "compatible". Especially if the original code gets creative with threads. This approach is valid though if they need to keep their changes separate from the original codebase for... reasons.

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Quoting: mulletdeathOddly enough, given all the joke reviews on other games, all the ones I saw for this one are accurately negative.

Good. Although if this was a Steve Ballmer simulator with chair-throwing and all, you might still get those joke reviews. Or if someone made a Torvalds simulator where you flip the finger to shitty companies or something. Although I don't think Linus would feel offended, so maybe not comparable.

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Quoting: BeamboomProblem is, journalism is not about opinion. Never was.

That was my point. A movie critic is not a journalist, and a game reviewer is no different. Recently there's been a lot of confusion regarding the meaning of these terms in public discussion. This has been further muddled by main stream news outlets failing to make the distinction.

Quoting: BeamboomAnd I wish there were more journalism within gaming media. Not just amateurs who believe their opinions are just as valid as anybody elses.

Good journalism clearly separates fact from opinion and identifies them as such. Research is diligent and sources are provided. (One pet peeve is the trend to cite "experts" with no further elucidation.) Editorials and opinion pieces are fine and even useful. You can't expect every reader to be informed enough on the subject to make their own analysis. Obvious spin, marketing and propaganda are different of course, although I guess it's the less obvious kind that does the "damage".

Journalism is supposed to disseminate unbiased information, but that doesn't do much to help you decide if a piece of entertainment (like a game) tickles your fancy.

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: tuubiI'm more concerned with the rest of the media, where even previously highly reputable news outlets are rapidly losing their standards.

They aere challenged indeed, but I put that blame on the amateurs, who almost force through low journalistic standards with their poor fact-checking and sloppy, left handed work. If that is the competition, what can serious media do to meet that competition?

I blame the fact that it has become accepted that as long as easily digested "clickbait" brings in the readers, it's okay to give up on journalistic integrity. I guess good journalism does not survive hard capitalism.

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Quoting: BeamboomAnd if they are sadists, they install Linux on that box. ;)

You mean "masochists" I assume, although I don't agree. Linux is bliss after the self-punishment that is Windows. ;)

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