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Latest Comments by omer666
Classic open source FPS Xonotic 0.8.6 released with new game modes
25 Jun 2023 at 8:10 am UTC

Yes, Xonotic is IMO the best open source FPS ever, and I really appreciate to see some more effort going into it.

Classic LucasArts games emulator DREAMM adds early Linux support
23 Jun 2023 at 3:22 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual
Quoting: CyrilNot open source, so not interested... And the reasons given, seems too much selfish for me.
Out of curiosity, what justification would you accept?

I don't think there's a more common reason for releasing an application under a proprietary license than, "I would like to reserve the exclusive right to commercial exploitation."

Interesting to note the developer of this emulator originally worked on official ports to other operating systems for LucasArts in the '90s.
Can't talk in Cyril's name, but we've seen many such (really good) projects, like Kega Fusion or pSX just to name a few, disappear with their dev altogether after a few years.

Let's say it's okay if you've got one of these games laying around but you can't take this as a permanent solution for playing these until it's open sourced or it's become an official way of running them bundled on Steam.

Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
29 May 2023 at 7:44 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: benstor214“People who emulate games are all committing piracy.”
I can't remember somebody saying this. Could you cite it please?
Quoting: Mountain ManRight, "game preservation", by which most people mean "free games". :tongue:
Just as a side note, and I know that it is not a fair use in any way, but having those games around "for free" is also part of what I'd call preservation. I mean, who has the money to buy a vintage Catlevania? Retro gaming has entered a new era when professional collectors entered the game and prices are skyrocketing across all platforms.

I am a "retro gamer" myself and still buying games for my Sega systems from time to time, but for example buying PAL Saturn games is something you can't reasonably afford nowadays.
Also supplies are getting scarce because of CD rot, hardware failure and life hazards, so what can be done about this?

Add in community patches and translation that would have never happened either way, and you've got the big picture.

I am all for developers and editors charging for their IPs, but as of today there is no complete offer from any historical hardware maker, so that's where our good old geek community comes to help. That may sound ugly and I apologise for saying "piracy" may in some corner cases be of "public interest," and I still think some additional legislation should be put into place so that we are able to get to a middle ground where everyone is satisfied, but in the mean time we should be thankful this exists at all...

Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
28 May 2023 at 3:38 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: CyborgZeta
Quoting: Pengling
Quoting: KlaasI've read so much about troubles with quality of the Joy-Cons, but to be fair poor build quality seems to be everywhere. Logitech has had trouble with the quality of the micro switches for the buttons for a long time and they've stopped using optical mouse wheels and have switched to cheap encoders (OT: encoders are always a huge pain – the biggest German electronics compendium has a very long article for workarounds).
It's true that poor build-quality is everywhere nowadays, but the Joy-Cons are of unusually poor-quality - going on my own experience, you'll get anything between 6 to 18 months of gentle use out of a brand new one*, and in the UK while I was a Switch owner you had to pay the cost of a new controller to get them repaired. I believe this has changed now, however.

*I'm a woman, though, so I don't know how well these things last in rougher hands. I've seen reviews suggesting that it may be as little as three months in such cases.

I learned to repair them myself (to their credit, they're designed to be very easy to repair), but there came a point where, on top of everything else that I mentioned, I ended up asking myself why an end-user should have to repair carefully-used almost-new products constantly. :unsure:
Honestly, stuff like that makes me sad to hear, regardless of my feelings towards Nintendo today. My experience growing up with Nintendo handhelds was they they were extremely durable and reliable; even the original "phat" DS could withstand a drop on a concrete driveway without it breaking a sweat. And as far as console were concerned, the GameCube had long been my gold standard for reliability; I never had a single problem with it. The only other console I have that can match it in the regard is my PS3 Slim. My JP Dreamcast is pretty old as well and runs good...but I only acquired it last year, and don't know its entire history prior to my obtaining it. Had fun playing Sakura Wars 2-4 on it though!

Apologies for the rambling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA_uS4nMvtA [External Link]

More on subject: maybe they are planning on releasing a Wii Classic running Dolphin? Would be quite fun ^^'

More seriously, hating on Nintendo for this would also mean hating on Sony for terminating both Bleem and Connetix Virtual Game Station...

Console market is ultra protective by design.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 announced for $269 with 8GB VRAM
25 May 2023 at 4:22 pm UTC Likes: 1

What disappoints me the most is the power consumption, but that was to be expected. Still a good option but I may prefer the RX 6600 over it, and buy the generation that comes after.

If You Like… Diablo
15 May 2023 at 4:54 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Eschguy
Quoting: StoneColdSpiderI can vouch that the Torchlight series is really good....... Both are great games.......
Yep, both are great. I think I prefer the first one, but 2 has multiplayer. Too bad they didn't make any more of them.
I also recommend playing these two. Worthy of note, Diablo 1 & 2 game designers were involved in the creation of the first two Torchlight games.

ASUS ROG Ally releases in June priced competitively to the Steam Deck
11 May 2023 at 2:59 pm UTC Likes: 10

To think this device could have been $50 cheaper without the Windows licence...

FNA gets Direct3D 11 support on Linux using DXVK and vkd3d
3 May 2023 at 6:48 am UTC

That's nice to see because DXVK is not tied to Wine and Proton, and can be used very efficiently for native gaming. Allowing devs to port their games natively without the hurdle of rewriting their graphic stack or learning yet another language -- especially when it's a solo project -- is valuable.

UK CMA blocks the Microsoft takeover of Activision
27 Apr 2023 at 12:54 pm UTC

CoD exclusivity on Xbox would actually be a good thing: I'm tired of seeing people playing that poor excuse of a game, and that would be a good opportunity to push more interesting IPs forward.

Fedora 38 is out now with GNOME 44, official Budgie desktop spin and more
19 Apr 2023 at 6:59 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: brokeassben
Quoting: HohlraumI love what Fedora does but once I started using other package systems 25+ years ago it's really hard to give up the massive package repositories provided by deb and arch based distributions. Finally, they've tried for years to improve the speed of their package managers but they are terrible every time I give them a try.
Same. My first Linux experience was Red Hat then Fedora once the first version of that released. Didn't realize how slow rpm packages were until I switched to Debian and Arch based distros. Maybe I'll give it another go now that Flatpaks are so common and don't have to rely on rpms so much.
This has changed a great deal when Fedora switched to DNF. I've used both Arch and Debian for several years and I could barely tell the difference.