Quoting: fleskProbably not on the top of your list but Norway is starting to get noticed on the indie scene lately with popular games like Teslagrad, Among the Sleep and Savant-Ascent out and Dreamfall: Chapters, Earthlock: Festival of Magic and Shiftlings in production. The company behind Shiftlings is also making Oliver & Spike: Dimension Jumpers, which looks awesome, but it's primarily intended for consoles and there hasn't been any word on Linux support yet.

Norway is a very good idea! Lots of games and a very interesting country as well. That will be top of the list for now, but remains the only country on the list so more ideas welcome!

you are forgetting okam studios godot engine

I saw the engine, but couldn't find any mention of Linux support or any other games by OKAM which support Linux. Can you find something confirming support? If so, I'll get the editors to add it in :).

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always wondered why noone ever implemented a trackball into gamepads

The reason was that they would be a nightmare to clean, and that they are quite heavy (which is fine if it's on a desk, but not so good if its in your hands). The cleaning thing makes sense, given that the whole experience is meant to be easy and they can't expect people to take out the ball and remove dead skin, bits of nachos, etc. Otherwise it would have been preferable.

I do get the controller, it looks promising, but its understandable why they're taking so long over it - it needs to be just right since it's the main selling point of the Steam Machine. The trackpads do worry me a bit, they will probably work on some games better than others, but then again that's probably why they decided to include a joystick.

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Glad to see this finally got released as it was too broken to play before and was quite looking forward to it.

Looking forward to more of Ryan's ports as well.

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and if it will be available without the machines

The controller will be available separately, I wouldn't have built it otherwise. Not 100% if it will be at launch though, if they can't produce enough in time, they will probably prioritize the off-the-shelf vendors.

@Rattlehead - if the KFA2 is not available in Russia, the only other GTX 750 ti cards on the market are full sized, so you would have to maybe get a bigger case (probably a good idea if you want the bluray drive too). If you still want it small, you should try a cube-shaped case, just check on pcpartpicker.com to see if the parts are compatible. Of course, a blu ray drive in the case from the article should be possible, but probably only with a 2.5 inch HDD.

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However if you're going for the most economical you should really promote this website as they help you find the cheapest high quality parts available.

I did ;), it's in the article. I used the site myself when making the build, I highly recommend it too. The only downside is that it doesn't have every part out there, for example the graphics card wasn't there. I'm sure you can find the Galaxy one in the States for closer to $120 too, but without the help of PCPartPicker and not really knowing the retailers, it was very difficult. If anyone finds it cheaper, let me know and I can change it in the article.

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Now, if you want a little bit of extra performance, I'd recommend a tiny SSD (no more than 40-60GB), an FX 8xxx processor, and a 1TB Harddisk. I often find that 1TB haddisks offer a lot more advantages for the money (maybe 1-3€ more, depending on the site, from what I saw).

That's precisely what I was trying to avoid with the build, this is supposed to be "barebones" cheapest thing you can build (hence the title) which is able to play big games at 30-60fps on 1080p on the highest settings. While better and more expensive hardware is nice, it's not strictly necessary and only marginally improves gaming performance in most cases. I would agree though that if you have a bit more money to spend, maybe a larger hybrid SSD/HDD is worth it, but rather than upgrading the CPU, I would just get a heatsink and overclock it.

"in the us it's safe to say that consoles are cheaper"
yeah right you forgot to account for online fees #pcmasterrace #consolesareterrible

I didn't mention xbox Live fees etc specifically, but did mention the greater cost over time - "Obviously, over a very short period of time, having a console would be considerably more expensive". My point was more that PC gamers obviously know this, but console gamers (which Valve is trying to attract) don't necessarily see it that way, and changing (unfounded) perspectives that PCs are expensive will be hard work for Valve.

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Thanks guys, means a lot since this took considerably longer to do that expected (prices had changed since I built mine a couple of months ago and finding the parts in the US took a while).

* Given recent pushes for reducing driver overhead, that CPU might last even longer than one might expect...and it already will handle any game just fine.

That's a very good point actually, one which I hadn't considered and also means the graphics card will last even longer. With that on top of what I mentioned, there's no reason the FX 6300 shouldn't do the job until the next generation of consoles come out. Even if there's some big technological change which catches us off guard in the mean time, there's always the option of adding 1ghz to the clock speed and spending £20 on an after-market heatsink rather than buying a new CPU.

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It's sad to hear about your troubles Liam, I really hope things get better. It saddens me more that you have had negative comments and I would like to compensate a bit for that negativity by saying that you have made a great site and a great community surrounding it.

I'm sure lots of people will chip in and keep things going while you are away, we're Linux gamers after all. I'll add my bit and try and do a couple of articles per week.

Thanks for everything!

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Does anyone have any idea if this will have local multiplayer?

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Having a decent city builder on Linux is essential. The only other decent city builder out there (SimCity is no longer considered by anyone with a brain or dignity) is CitiesXL, but with the demise of the developers, the game never got updated and will never get ported. This looks pretty good from the trailer, hopefully it will be far better than the mess that was Cities in Motion 2.

Paradox is really a great developer. It was the first major developer to commit to releasing all games on Linux (even at the same time as the windows release) and makes the best strategy games out there, that make Civ 5 and others look like a children's game in comparison. They have been intent on taking away all my free time since I bought the first Victoria game in 2004, have probably spent thousands of hours on their games, now they're going to take away even more precious time with a x0city sim.

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