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Latest Comments by BTRE
Star Wars: Tie Fighter Special Edition & Star Wars X-Wing Special Edition On GOG For Linux
28 April 2015 at 6:07 pm UTC Likes: 1

Tie Fighter is my favorite Star Wars game of all time and one of my favorite space games. The 1995 collector's edition Tie Fighter is the definitive version to play. It has better resolution than the original DOS, voiced characters and includes expansions. The 1998 version was a different engine and I felt that the music was subpar. I'm glad to see that GOG included the 1995 version with their Linux release as it had previously been missing from the special edition.

I'd be all over this and buy it if it weren't for the fact that I made a backup of my own disc over a decade ago and still play it every once in a while through DOSBox.

Might pick up X-Wing since I lost the disc for that years ago though.

SpecOps: The Line For Linux Is Official, Being Ported By Virtual Programming
27 April 2015 at 7:55 pm UTC Likes: 5

I played Spec Ops: The Line on a friend's console a few years ago. It's a game with an interesting story but is rather linear and probably not worth playing through again. It's good that it'll come to Linux but I think I'll pass on this one.

Good on VP for improving their technology. I think there's a lot of older games that developers/publishers don't care about anymore that they could port competently but I'd just as soon not see wrappers for newer games. I'd rather see newer games ported ideally in-house but if not by either Aspyr or Feral who have generally delivered consistently good ports.

Arma 3 Certainly Looks Closer To A Linux Version
26 April 2015 at 5:56 pm UTC

It'd be lovely to have a high profile game like this on Linux but I have to worry about performance. I was a fan of Operation Flashpoint but the series lost me a while ago due to bugs and graphics issues. The ArmA games can be very taxing on hardware. Still, if and when it comes out I'll be mighty tempted to pick it up. The military sim aspects of these games are without peer.

Steam Officially Starts Allowing Paid Mods In The Workshop, People Are Upset
24 April 2015 at 6:11 pm UTC

A brief follow up to a comment I made regarding intellectual property: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/33qcaj/the_experiment_has_failed_my_exit_from_the/

As it stands I don't feel the current program is friendly to modders. Not having a say in intellectual ownership over content once in the workshop is a dealbreaker for me. I hope these are just teething problems but somehow I doubt it.

Steam Officially Starts Allowing Paid Mods In The Workshop, People Are Upset
24 April 2015 at 2:37 pm UTC Likes: 7

I don't mind the concept of paid mods but there are 3 problems in the current execution:

1) The split for skyrim mods are ridiculous. A modder only gets 25% and must get at least $100 before being paid. Other games/developers will be better about it, hopefully.

2) There is no guarantee that mods will continue to work with future versions of the game. They won't necessarily get updated. The 24 hour grace period is nice but it does not mitigate the risk to the buyer long-term.

3) I'm not sure how intellectual property for purposes of publishing mods will work out. What of paid mods that use components of other mods, a practice usual in the scene? Furthermore, there's already been mods uploaded without permission from the original owner and while they might crack down on some egregious cases I'm not sure there's a practical way to impose a proof of ownership because of how the internet works.

I'm especially interested in seeing how 3) pans out. We might eventually even see litigation on it since I can imagine copyleft and copyright licenses emerging over mods in the future and developers getting sued over sold mods that have other people's work and material in it. Or it might be a non-starter if the developer owns all derivative content to being with according to courts.

What I hope from this paid mod system is that the most sensible modders that do it for the love of things will simply set it up so that they can get an optional donation and thus avoid splitting the community for games with multiplayer components.

Chroma Squad, A Power Rangers Inspired Tactical RPG Releasing For Linux This April
20 April 2015 at 12:34 pm UTC Likes: 1

Good for them finally getting close to release. They've had a hard time of it.

This game is inspired by all sorts of shows in the tokusatsu genre like Kamen Rider, not just Super Sentai (which is what Power Rangers is based off). Despite this, and not having used any copyrighted material, they were bullied by Saban (the owners of the Power Rangers trademark in the west) and threatened with legal action. The devs are a tiny indie Brazilian team and caved under pressure even though the case had no real legal standing. This is probably because they had no financial resources to fight any potential court case and were afraid of an injunction against them in North America. It would have been an unlikely outcome as parodies/homages in entertainment media have been consistently protected by US courts numerous times.

I wish them luck and success but I've yet to make up my mind if I'll pick it up. The thought of directly or indirectly supporting copyright trolls isn't appealing to me. It's a shame because the game looks fun and the devs obviously have a lot of love for the genre.

Sales Statistics For Linux Games From Different Developers, Part 4
18 April 2015 at 9:24 pm UTC Likes: 1

Shame sales aren't even higher but, yeah, they sound about right given our overall userbase. Hope things keep on growing. Still not sure Steam Machines will succeed but I think that Vulkan and the continually improving drivers and environments have already assured that we'll get even more games in the future. That said, I already have more games than spare time in my steam library but I see that as a challenge ;)

Freedom Planet Officially Released On Linux
18 April 2015 at 4:04 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: xuwangNote that the Linux version is just a wine wrapper:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/248310/discussions/0/617320628006926698/

It isn't :P

Storm United, A Beautiful New FPS Now In Early Access, We Have Keys
18 April 2015 at 11:23 am UTC

Runs great on mesa on my radeon 7870 to anyone wondering if it runs on open source drivers.

Just What Are Feral Interactive Teasing This Time?
8 April 2015 at 10:51 am UTC

Though I think that tcit is right that it's Bioshock I'd love Homeworld Remastered. As unlikely as it might be. There's a tenuous Gearbox connection and that's enough for me to hope.