Looking forward to this one! Aaron has done a good job with ports in the past.

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Nice work, I'm glad I'm not the only AMD user anymore. You should try benchmarking Talos. I'm not 100% about the rebranding/naming scheme but you should have more or less the same card as me (7870) with more vram, right? I'd be interested to see how much of a difference that makes since I also run the RadeonSI drivers.

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Nah, it's Medieval II: Total War. Makes sense because Feral has a working relationship with Sega as a publisher (they've ported Empire and are working on Company of Heroes 2) and because they've brought over other games in the Total War series. 1001 Nights was compiled during the Islamic Golden Age and part of that timeframe is covered by Medieval II.

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Well argued and explained.

I've long disapproved of wrappers being used to bring newer games to Linux. I agree that it hinders us in the long term since devs won't even bother to learn how to code for other platforms and we'll therefore always be second class citizens in terms of support and priority. Recent controversy and FUD-spreading regarding using Linux and developing for the platform should show that the more developers that understand our ecosystem and are able to use crossplatform engines, the better we are as a 'brand'. When it becomes relatively hassle-free for developers to target Linux because the engines support it out of the box and because they are familiar with the environment, I think we'll see more and more good quality ports that don't rely on wrappers. With UE4, Unity and others we're making steady progress. All that's needed is for more developers to step outside their comfort zone and gain some experience.

I concede that it might not make economic sense to port older games natively and am willing to accept that a wrapper might be the most realistic solution there. Then again, Feral and Aspyr did port Empire: TW and Civ5 respectively within the last year. And both games, while popular, have been out for five years or so. So it might be a case by case thing.

In the end, however, try to reward devs who show support and spend resources making their games run as well as they can on Linux. The ones that clearly don't care or do a half-assed job and aren't communicative get avoided in the future.That's why I'm a big fan of Paradox or the small indies that actually read feedback on their forums and work with the community to fix problems on Linux.

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Quoting: Segata SanshiroI thought the Pokemon card mod was pretty cool. Still, after 16 years I have no idea how to actually play the card game (how many people really did?).

I'm glad that people have modded in Magic: The Gathering. None of the Magic games look like they'll come to Linux and I've been an on and off fan of the card game since the mid 90s. It's sometimes impractical to get a hold of certain cards so virtual deck building is the only recourse. It's the same with Pokemon cards, I'm sure.

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Quoting: KeyrockI don't have much of a problem with it. People forget that the two Shenmue games, while beloved by fans and generally liked by critics, did not do well financially. In particular, Shenmue 2 lost SEGA quite a bit of money.

This is more on Sega than anyone else. They didn't do budget control and had unrealistic expectations. The Dreamcast was ultimately a flop for them. It's a different situation when you have the 100+ million install base of both Steam and the Playstation 4.

Quoting: KeyrockIn the end, Kickstarter still serves the same ultimate purpose, it allows a game to be made that wouldn't have been otherwise. If Shenmue 3 or KC: D don't make their Kickstarter funding goal then their financial backers don't fund the project and the game doesn't get made.

In a perfect world, maybe. I'm wary of big comapnies turning to kickstarter becausse it minimizes risks to them while pushing it all on us. And, of course, maximizing profits with a large amount of what are basically preorders. I'd rather only smaller studios who otherwise couldn't make games use crowdfunding, ideally.

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For me it's always been a case-by-case basis. Developers with a good track record in bringing over games to Linux, like Harebrained Schemes, are much more likely to get my support when it comes to crowdfunding. I think that in the case of Japanese developers I think they're much more conservative when it comes to PCs and it's only just recently that we're seeing companies like Capcom and Sega bring their games onto Windows. I think it's an almost alien concept to them, historically speaking, that people play big-name games on PCs, let alone on other operating systems. So, yeah, crowdfunding might be a way to show them that there's interest in other platforms.

The reply I got when I asked the Shenmue III kickstarter if Linux was a possibility was:

QuoteThank you for your message! 
The PC version will support Windows. Everything else is currently under consideration. Any further news on this will be announced on the Updates page.

Even though UE4 is a multiplatform as it gets I don't think they even considered that there would be interest in other platforms.

Do I want to see more crowdfunding for ports in general? No, not really. Not if these are titles with established publishers with existent cashflow. It's asking too much from a community that's already plenty generous. But I guess money talks and it might be the only way to get some of these holdouts invested in bringing ports to Linux.

That said, I think that it would be good for everyone if Valve acted a bit like Sony here and helped finance ports for SteamOS/Linux. It's in their best interests if they want Steam Machines to succeed. I would even go as far as suggest that they need to be aggressive and secure timed exclusives, but I don't think that's too likely.

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@scaine
AFAIK the game is steam-only, so any other webshop that sells it should hand you a steam key. IIRC Aspyr has a relationship with gameagent, so they get a bigger cut there (it's the store that's linked to if you go to the buy section on Aspyr's webpage). In that link the game is tagged with 'steam' so I think it's safe to assume they'll give you a steam key :)

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I'm not sure where you're seeing the SoTN in this. Judging from the video, I think the visuals are messy and the different layers tend to blend into each other which makes it hard to see what's what. The lighting effects don't help things either. The harvesting and crafting side to it doesn't really appeal to me either and I hope that they don't make it too tedious. In fact, I'm a bit skeptical of the so-called arpg elements working well in general. Guess I'll wait and see how it turns out, but I can't say that this looks too promising.

The title threw me off if I'm honest. I expected this to be a Ghosts 'n Goblins type game which I think is a niche that hasn't been fully exploited.

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Quoting: EikeAdditionally to "Europa Universalis IV: Common Sense", they offer "Europa Universalis IV: Common Sense Content Pack" - did they really start to sell DLCs for DLCs?!?

They have an a la carte model for DLC. They separate spritepacks and music from other material so people can pick and choose what they'd like. Not everyone thinks cosmetic stuff is worth buying. It's the same with the more thematic expansions - Res Publica is skippable unless you like playing republics for instance.

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