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Latest Comments by STiAT
Cities: Skylines - After Dark Patch & Expansion Released, Some Initial Thoughts
25 Sep 2015 at 10:18 am UTC Likes: 1

Almost had no impact to me in what I'm building (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 20th, 22nd district of Vienna). But it looks beuatiful :-).

For the Money issue, this usually is only an issue in the beginning, and it means you're growing your city too fast! You need to consider that you'll need to build new expensive buildings within each milestone you reach (especially if you need to build facilities in several districts, as it's for police and fire department in the industrial and housing zone), so it's a pretty good idea to settle close to that milestone and let the city run, and only do necessary maintenance tasks to save up cash, and maybe prepare for where you'll build which things with the street layout, get up your energy to a level that you can expand faster once you reach the milestone, look that the garbage system won't be overwhelmed by new citicens, as well as water supply, sewers and energy supply.

You can afford to loose some people (you won't loose enough to get a significant drawback in money), and you can afford that the housing is not fully satisfied, that's not a huge issue. Especially in the beginning your maintenance costs are not too high (if you didn't overbuild).

Company of Heroes 2 Reviewed For Linux
16 Sep 2015 at 11:26 am UTC

I've still a huge issue with FPS in the game, dropping below 1fps pretty often, never going above 30, even on lowest settings (i7 and gtx760, 8gb ram).

Still have hope for that being improved in the future.

Looks Like Grid Autosport Could See A Linux Release Soon
14 Sep 2015 at 11:02 am UTC

I badly want a linux release on this game. A proper racing game is still missing in my collection.

Don't Count On Any EA Frostbite Powered Games On Linux
14 Sep 2015 at 10:58 am UTC

I wouldn't buy EA-Games anyway, even if they were available on Linux.
Too often I was disappointed after I spent my money on their games.

Obsidian Entertainment Say Linux's Future Is Good With Pillars Of Eternity
2 Sep 2015 at 9:41 pm UTC

I've had asked them on Twitter myself, since I bought the expansion pass... good to see that I'll still be supported in future expansions and this wasn't a waste of money ;-). Though; I pledged 130 Euros for PoE, so 24 for one addon wouldn't have been that much :p.

There is also a note on reddit from Darren about it (one of the founders).
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/3izxkn/obsidian_on_the_linux_version_for_poe_around_one/cumfr5j [External Link]

From this point of view, having to learn it, building the infrastructure, limited debugging capabilities (very true, I've dabbled with Unity and Linux Support in the past, and the testing / debugging process was a pain in Linux) - ye, the Port was probably a loss. But it isn't. They have learned a bunch (skill can't be taken off you and is an investment in the team), they now do have a infrastructure in place (which can't be taken off them, except if somebody breaks in their offices and clears it .. which I hope won't happen :D). Ok, and the Unity testing process due to tools being available gets better now, but that's not their doing but Unity finally listening to the developers (as them, so to say) calling out for wanting debugging tools in Linux. But we really can't blame them for not having the skills and tools, but they should have known when they did the kickstarter goal that Unity is not just export & release :p. Well for some it is, but that won't work well, in this case: Cool they did go the extra-mile of testing/debugging it properly.

For now, I judge it that we're safe for PoE sequel. Even if Darren states there are no plans on dropping linux development, I doubt they wouldn't check before their next game. In the end, they want to generate money to generate their saleries. But I personally think that for especially content creators it's complicated: They want as many people to enjoy their content as possible. So if it's not a huge loss, you may see some "I think we can afford to do it and still profit a good deal" too.

Considering Linux a 2 % share means they still generated (roughly estimated) 20 milllions out of it, having ~4 Millions in pledges only calculating steam sales a revenue of 12-16 million (don't forget, the minimum pledge was less than the sales price). Before taxes of course, but still a bunch of money which should be enough to be working on some new stuff ;-). Ye, not by us Linux gamers... but I hope that gets better some day. I don't see the market share jumping up to 5 % despite Valves investments, but I can see the development costs reducing in future by better tools for developers, especially with Vulkan, Unity having Tools, UE4 etc. If the content creators cut even or do some profit, they might just do it more and more.

Feral & Co for some reason seem to be able to make a living out of porting as well. The majority may come from OSX ports, but the company still exists :D.

Obsidian: Developing For Linux Was Not Worth It
31 Aug 2015 at 12:28 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest...
1.) They don't know about SteamOS.
2.) They know about SteamOS but don't know it's actually Linux.
3.) They know about SteamOS being Linux but don't have faith in it being successful.
4.) They know about SteamOS being Linux and see it being successful but still doubt the market share will justify a Linux release.

Did I miss something?
Well, due to the Engines supporting Linux anyway, they can always re-evaluate and port titles. There is no need to port now, for SteamOS/Steamboxes with Linux maybe coming in 2016. If ever.

Obsidian: Developing For Linux Was Not Worth It
31 Aug 2015 at 12:15 pm UTC

Quoting: hardpenguinJust read this:
https://medium.com/@adrianchm/indie-developers-cannot-count-money-ccb6d32229e8 [External Link]
Same but different. The main cash-points they'd have had anyway. We're not talking of what the production costs of the title were, they'd have had them anyway. And they were not funded by a Indie-Fund, but on Kickstarter, so they don't have the additional 25 % cut they'd have otherwhise. We're talking about the additional money they got for a "could-not-have-been-that-much" port. Even after taxes, if the port wasn't profit, they've had more than one person doing linux stuff all the time during their production time, or in other words more than 12 person month at pretty high wages (>10k/month) and benefits (medical care etc.) in developing/testing for linux. I highly doubt that. Really.

Obsidian: Developing For Linux Was Not Worth It
31 Aug 2015 at 10:29 am UTC

I bought the whole Withe March series expansion pass, so they better keep supporting it :dizzy:

What we know from humble, Linux-Players usually pay more than Windows-Gamers. I, in example, had a 130 € pledge for Pillars of Eternity.

@Cheeseness I'm running with the steamspy data (Owners: 509,875 ± 18,537, http://steamspy.com/app/291650) [External Link], so we're running towards 500.000 copies instead of 400.000. Humble bundle did show off that linux gamers usually pay more than windows gamers (would be interesting what linux gamers pledged on kickstarter, I was in with € 130 for two copies, making one copy worth 65 €). Interestingly, if I calculate with 500.000 instead of 400.000 and 1.5 % of the userbase, 70 % after-tax and paying 45 € I get to 236.250 € as you do with 400.000 - typo?

But I certainly agree, if the port was not complicated like hell, 236k certainly sounds like a profit to me.

Vulkan Looks Impressive Against OpenGL In A New Intel Demo
31 Aug 2015 at 9:51 am UTC

Quoting: Creak
Quoting: PeciskSony being with Khronos isn't rumor and I don't see them any reason why they would have to deny low level API implementation. They aren't Nintendo.
Sony is indeed part of the Vulkan team, but I think it will take some time before the new API gets its way to their PS4. First because they need to test it thoroughly in order to make it as stable as their previous API (a derivative of OpenGL) and also because it's most probable that they will wait for their console sales to go down before introducing the new API that will make their machine faster (most players don't know about Vulkan, heck I even know game devs that doesn't know about it).
Sony being there could have different reasons. Sony recently ported games to Linux as well, so they might be interested in Vulkan from that angle.

We shouldn't forget that the PS4 API is still even lower level than DX12 or Vulkan, which can only be since you only have one CPU/GPU to support. So they might support Vulkan additionally to their API, but I'm sure they won't consider replacing their own API for the reason of performance optimization. If Sony supports it in the PlayStation, the game developers would still need to port it to the XBox one. For PC, it wouldn't matter if DX12 or Vulkan (Linux share isn't a gamebreaker, and Apple probably won't support it on their OS due to their Metal API). I see it the way that the game developers will adopt DX12 for XBox and PC (Windows), PS4 API will remain being used (because you can optimize even more than with Vulkan) and Metal for OSX. At least for AAA titles.

For the mobile world we'll probably see higher adoption. Engines support it due ot Android adopting it. That wouldn't help us in any case, except for the point that a lot of developers will be familiar with the Vulkan API, but hey - that are not the AAA developers.

Mabye some developers (due to the engines supporting Linux/Vulkan) will release for Linux. But most consider the additional development (you still need a complete seperate code-path for the draw calls), support and QA required not worth the trouble.

The only thing which really matters and is a strong PRO vor Vulkan is, that it will support older Windows versions, and my guess is that Win7 will have a significant market share for some time to come.

Company Of Heroes 2 Released For Linux, Port Report & Thoughts Included
28 Aug 2015 at 10:50 pm UTC

Quoting: grenadecx
Quoting: grenadecxDecided to test the port out since it's free for a couple of days.

So my specs are:
OS: Ubuntu 15.04 ( with Unity/Compiz with "Undirect fullscreen" )
Graphic card: Nvidia GTX 780 with 352.30 drivers
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz
RAM: 16GB
Resolution: 1920x1080

I should be able to run this game on medium settings without AA with quite a good performance. While I can't compare it with Windows version, this is what I believe.

Anyways, I turned everything to LOW or OFF. And decided to start the campaign. I get somewhere around 20-50 fps, usually around 25-30, with some micro stuttering. Sure, I didn't play for long but why would I when I have that horrible performance.

Horrible.
FYI I just tried the game from Windows 10. With everything set to High, Vsync off and AA off - This game runs about 120-150 fps.

I'm amazed that this game runs so poor on Linux. This port is for sure quite epic. Feral, you might have had a good track record, but you just wiped it out.
We've seen better Feral ports for sure, with more quality in the initial release. Still, at least for me (considering myself having "heavy" issues), it's still playable. I'll get my OGL debugger running tomorrow and check what's the real issue, but I'm quite pinned to the theory it's particle calculation at explosions.

We'll see how Feral responds, as far as I know them, they're looking into the issues. For me it seems like they may draw each particle instead of using glDrawArraysInstanced/glVertexAttribDivisor .... in a sane way (which tends to be harder as you'd think combined with physics / physx). It's all about the life-time of particles.... and that could be the reason for the memory issues either. But that's pure speculation, the Feral guys know what they're doing (and I'm sure they do know better than I do, being a hobby OGL developer/porter), and they'll for sure get their debuggers running as I'll do.

Feral may didn't do that port as good as they could. They got the +1 for doing dozens of other ports they just did right, and they delivered this one at least playable, which in my standards isn't enough, but hey - we can play it. And I'm sure in Ferals eyes that's not enough either, considering that they seem to maintain their ports / patch them.

On the other hand, that's a good example for a "not so good native port", for the discussion about DX wrappers / engine "implants" for a DX/GL Layer. It's not all about if you do it really native, it's mostly about how good you do it.

For me, personally, TW2 was as good playable as this one. One being a wrapper, one being a native port.