I say, that is a really rough preview indeed. :p

Some other ideas from the top of my head:

more advanced way of managing articles with easier formatting tools;
perhaps a temporary storage to auto-save in case of browser crashing;
associating a thumbnail image with an article, displaying it next to the excerpt on the main page;
easy and quick article browsing and search, perhaps a tagging system.

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Quoting: "oak, post: 4375, member: 152"There's even support for downloading from the Ubuntu Software Center!!! Woohoo!

Yeah... woohoo... :(

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We should start a campaign for including Desura keys in advance. Just sayin' :rolleyes:

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It's nice that we'll be getting the game. However I was extremely unhappy with this "poll of priorities" of theirs. I consider it unprofessional and very biased.

Firstly I'm crossed with the developers who mixed porting a game to other OS, an important decision, with obviously mandatory features like tile-sets and the likes. It shows absolutely no interest other than earning money and leaves the fate of the few in the hand of the uncaring many. Thus if the porting didn't make it into the final stretch (which it barely did, mind you) they could always say something like "there's not enough interest" - we'll obviously Windows folks aren't interested cause, you know, they are a majority and obviously don't give a damn about other OS. Hence the results showed just how selfish the gaming community is since almost every Windows user put all the other features as more important than allowing more people to play. It's just mind-boggling! In fact, it got me so riled up that I'm considering writing an extremely heated critique about their selfishness as soon as I have time to spare... :mad:

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I have absolutely no clue as to what is going on in this game...... :(

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Quoting: "motorsep, post: 4266, member: 154"If I could, I would prefer developing game without even going into community portals until the game is done and released.

Well, technically you can do that... but I suppose then you'd never know about what needs changing until it's too late. Only other solution that comes to mind would be to do what the Indie Stone guys did and find a PR consultant. :rolleyes:

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I'm maybe a lot of things, like too demanding and even too critical, but I'm definitely not blind... yet. In the screenshot the text writes 'Min mana to cast' and 'Max mana cast', as well as 'Runes: Direct + Fire' which is what my earlier question relates to. If this is only a placeholder, then could you be so kind as to explain what this new system of spell handling will be?

As for the quickbar, I never said there should not be shortcuts for using potions/spells/whatever. My statement was that I'm not a fan of 'bars like that', meaning I dislike the positioned middle-down on the screen design combining spells and potions in a single long window, mostly because it's been overused in almost every such game pre-today (exceptions excluded). There are a lot of other ways to make quickbars and I only implied that you could consider revisiting the design when you have time and not copy WoW. Personally I find it best for a 1st person RPG to not have too much stuff on the screen (like a huge noticeable 'quickbar') because it could ultimately break the immersion into world and the character you're portraying (think Oblivion or King's Field).

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Could you explain the idea behind spellcasting? I figured out that you'll need specific runes to cast specific spells, but how will the Min/Max mana system work? Is it a chargeable?
btw, personally I'm not a big fan of quick bars like that. It's something I typically associate with MMOs and even then I find them distracting, but that's just me. :p

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Questions whether Steam is a good thing for Linux gaming (or any sort of gaming for that matter) is a rather difficult one to answer. From what I've researched so far, it was stated that they're planning on turning it into a social network akin to Facebook. This could be something extremely good for the gaming community as a whole, yet it still doesn't say anything about fixing the [URL='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kw3AFJmctk']current problems with the service[/URL] (only video I could dig up; too tired to search for the rest). Never forget that Steam is, essentially, a well-branded DRM platform - something that the Linux community has been fending off for quite some time, even more than proprietary software. This move might put a serious dent in the whole open-source campaign in the long run, yet I dare not make assumptions until the first signs of trouble occur. On the other hand, a vast majority of the consumer base has been married to Steam for so long that upon switching to Linux they've either duel-booted or kept used it through Wine. There's no question that this is something they've been eagerly anticipating ever since first mentions of the port were made. One of the things many of them don't seem to understand though is that, by the end of the day, the number of available Linux titles relies solely on the developers, not Steam itself. Though to be perfectly honest, Valve has a huge impact on many things that happen within the gaming industry. I'm certain that as soon as they become available on Linux many publishers (except for EA which now has Origin) will follow in an attempt to make a profit. So to sum it all up, the biggest plus in this whole story is that Source is getting ported; the rest is debatable.

I do wish I had a stronger more subjective feeling about this whole affair, but given the limited amount of information available I just can't care enough to be involved. It's going to happen no matter what I think or say, and not like Newell's going to come by here and indulge my curiosities on the subjects of why, how and where all this is heading. Thus not much more to do except speculate, wait and see. Personally, what really presses my buttons about all of this is the news itself. The fact that so many Linux users will be talking about nothing but Steam until the port is ready means that so much work done by so many people in an effort to get funded (Indies) or accepted by a wider audience (Desura) will once again be overshadowed by the giant marketing grip surrounding this story which, no matter how hyped, shouldn't make the world stop just yet.

Now, if Valve was to announce something like "we're rewriting our licensing agreement" or "we're joining forces with DesuraNET" then I believe I would have a heart attack on the spot... Just sayin' :rolleyes:

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Quoting: "Kame, post: 4107, member: 102"Can ANYBODY just go around buying random acres of rainforest for $160?

Sometimes in some places. Not sure how the whole things works. What I do know is that, if it has to be bought, then I'd rather it goes to some ecological organisation than a tycoon - though personally I'd prefer it wasn't for sale in the first place. You can read up more on the subject [URL='http://www.worldlandtrust.org/projects/buy-acre']on their website[/URL]. The HiB page states "This is our humble estimate for acres preserved, based on payments that are coming in. It does not account for merchant fees, canceled payments, or other merchant related issues. It takes approximately $160 to preserve one acre."

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