Very good looking trailer! The Meshuggah-esque djent bass line near the end was unexpected but very refreshing. Keep an eye on the composer!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Very sad to hear it!

Arcen Games are very dedicated to their craft. I played AI War 2, had much fun and bought it twice in the end with all of the DLC just to support such an amazing company. They have a very active community on Discord, their patchnotes are verbose, top-notch and patches are plenty. They are very serious about linux. I remember when they wrote a multiplayer component to AI War 2 they spent some time to tackle the issue of crossplatform play - they added multiple frameworks so no one will feel excluded (in the age of aggressive cost-and-feature-cutting). Yes, they are not alone and there are some games that do that, but I feel that it should be pointed out and cheered.
And just look at this page [External Link] (or any other on their website) isn't it great? I have never seen anything like that level of deep-dive overview, ever.

I hope they will not get any flak for this decision and I wish them the best

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It seems really impressive for a laptop, I've got to say. But I don't think the pricing is ridiculous at all. Just look at what one particular fruit company is offering - their minimal setup is still pricier. And yes, it's not fair to compare because different architectures, different operating systems and all of the shenanigans by the fruit company. But, you know, why not?

Some employers like to give options to their employees: "do you want the greatest fruit-computer like a sophisticated man of culture that we like or some whatever boring pee-see, like a genetically inferior caveman loser?" I'm paraphrasing.

So you can pick whatever non-fruit computer you like, but the budget is set and it's BIG. So why would anyone want to be a sophisticated man of culture in that sense, when you can be a whatever with the big F-off computer like that and not locked in a walled garden.

"Give me liberty, or give me fruit-like computer" - as one of the founding fathers of America had said. I'm paraphrasing.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I had a mixed feelings about Darkest Dungeon and ultimately didn't like it for various reasons. I can see why it got so big and why so many Darkest-Dungeon-like games were spawned. This one is somewhat like Darkest Dungeon, but has some interesting twists in the game mechanics department. I started it couple of times and played a couple dozen hours, but never to the end (and I blame GOG for that). Anyway, I can recommend it (especially if it's free) just for the effort it made.

• Music is catchy and nice. I still remember some of it, after couple of years. Check the intro music [External Link]


• Graphic design is memorable, kinda ugly in an artistic and particular way and it's consistent throughout


• Has tongue in cheek and other ironic or otherwise humorous moments despite the depressing setting (which helps a bit)


• Has interesting inventory, combat and survival/resource-management mechanics - it's very refreshing to see. Although, I found wanting more depth out of it, but I played on some easy difficulty and maybe that's why. Anyway, I feel that there could be some more cooking and designing done to it in some DLC or the next chapter (if they will decide to do it - I don't know)


• Quests that challenge your ethics (or not) give a bit of a role-play element


• Linux Native

I think this game deserves more players.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I would say that while the story is the main thing about this game that people appreciate, the underlying game mechanics are tired, stale and undercooked. Hohlraum already voiced his dissatisfaction in the comments, but I think that the storage management is just one ingredient of the sad cocktail of mechanics holding this game back.

Let's take a step back and look at SOMA. I think that it's a great game. One of the greatest in fact. This game changed me as a person, just a bit. But the lingering effect of the overall story and consequence of my decisions are still with me and I would say that it's almost not even a game - it's an experience! SOMA is built on its story, otherwise it's a walking simulator with hide-and-seek mechanics. Which are... not very interesting in the first place, not my thing and are getting old pretty fast. But despite all of that, you're in for the story and the story is great - it's one of a kind. I highly recommend anyone to experience it.

That's very interesting from the game design perspective, because usually you have game mechanics as the foundation and then the story is tacked on (take almost any game from almost any genre from the golden era - FPSs, ARPGs, platformers etc.)

Subnautica is about story, but they thought that it would be natural to slap on survival mechanics to it. I'm firm in a belief that there's nothing else as stale as a survival mechanics. There was almost nothing done for years by game designers, it's all the same everywhere - you have one, two, three countdown meters that you replenish with some one-use items. And there must be an inventory system to manage such items, which usually represented as a series of chests and whatnot. Basically it's just a busywork compounding on itself all the time for you to do for it's sake. It's a thing in itself. And I kinda hate it.

Yes, there are games that are built with this mechanics as a foundation and I would say that there's a good examples of inventory management with various quality of life features. But I would be hard-pressed naming good examples of a hunger-shmunger meters. Okay, many people like Don't Starve. I don't. You can call me biased hunger-meter-hater, I won't bite. BUT! At least Don't Starve was really built around this mechanic - you have 2 meters and you have an intricate dance of managing them. They are integral and foundational for various reasons. And it's a good design, I just don't like the gameplay that much.

In the case of Subnautica, the survival mechanics are tacked on and it shows. More than that - the designers made hunger and thirst meters at first, then they started to realize that the thirst meter is too much of a borefest and busywork, that they relegated it to it's own "more hard" difficulty, that is not default as far as I can remember, but also they just negate it altogether in the late stages of the game. You just don't need to drink, basically, past some point if you choose.

Tiny spoiler about how it's made:

Spoiler, click me

There's a technology you see, that enables you to "recycle" your watery excretions for the consumption. I say, give me other recycling technologies, that will satisfy the hunger meter once and for all. If I'm drinking my own excretions, I can manage to also eat some of them.

And the inventory management is a mess and was without ANY quality of life things that anyone would expect. Third of your inventory is for various devices that you will need, plus oxygen tanks. Another third is for food and water. So basically you have one third of your inventory for resources in a game about exploration! That makes you go constantly back and forth to your base or some locker somewhere. Then you have 10 lockers and you need to go for each one while unloading and then cycle through them again if you need something crafted. This is ridiculous and a waste of time.

What mods were recommended when I played couple of years ago:

• QModManager (for installing and managing mods)


• MoreQuickSlots


• BluePrintTracker


• EasyCraft

Don't install mods with maps or about mapping - it will spoil the game most likely.

TLDR: Subnautica is a great exploration game with a great story and immersion, that tanks heavily in a busywork-mechanics department. You should treat it with a collection of mods to make those mechanics somewhat bearable. And don't enable thirst-meter - it's a waste of time

Spoiler, click me

and piss

.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: michaldybczak

Quoting: voxWhen KDE team will fix their major bugs then I'll consider switching permanently. Otherwise I don't see the appeal.[...] I don't want to have a risk of losing all of my opened programs in case of a crash.

This is not a KDE issue. It's a Wayland issue, so all Wayland sessions on all possible DEs are affected.
I'm running Wayland on Plasma 5.27 a second week, and it's very stable, although I have a hybrid GPU with Nvidia. The only crashes I observed were when I tinkered with Kwin settings, or with system tray. So basically, two situations where it crashed spontaneously. Those situations are not everyday actions, so stability wise, Wayland became pretty good nowadays, comparable with X11. However, if you work with graphics, video programs, it's too big risk. I can set LO to save my documents every minute and for the most part, I will be fine, but most work situations won't be so forgiving.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll consider it. There's still a dreaded "on release" bug that is present in xorg for 18 years (but can be patched in a hacky way) that is not even considered a bug in Wayland (and it drives me insane). I need to go to therapy at this point, I believe :D to move past my expectations and inner conflicts about open source software. That's the real problem.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Brissethe Steam Overlay does not work

Terraria had a notorious bug with the steam overlay in X for years. It tries to render, but the whole surface is glitched and doesn't work. Not sure how is it even possible to break an overlay like that, but I've seen it with my own eyes multiple times.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: drjoms

Quoting: vox

Quoting: lejimsterI keep trying to switch over to Wayland, but there is always a few quirks on gnome that wind me up and put me off using it full time, I really should test KDE as it's probably just gnome issues. Anyway, I wonder if this will have any benefits over gamescope? Even less latency? I was planning to do some testing with gamescope as it works so well on the steam deck but I haven't got around to it yet. Does anyone here run gamescope on their PC?

I'm on KDE and I have the impression from the internet discussions that Wayland on GNOME is considered more stable/mature/whatever. There are some bugs or absent features in KDE that may make Wayland experience worse. I'm still on X11 and waiting. You can track some of the problems here: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers [External Link]

You can have both, X11 and Wayland on same machine.
Thats what I have. gnome 3 for wayland(albeit i can use it with Xorg too) and XFCE4 for X11(because if I could have XFCE4 on Wayland - id have this one instead).

I know that I can have both, but It's not obvious to me what's the point really? When KDE team will fix their major bugs then I'll consider switching permanently. Otherwise I don't see the appeal. Yes, variable refresh rate on multiple monitors is great (for example), but I don't want to have a risk of losing all of my opened programs in case of a crash. And I don't want to touch gnome, I'm sorry to say, even if its wayland session is more mature and stable. So I'll just wait. Maybe I'm missing something, can't really know for sure :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: lejimsterI keep trying to switch over to Wayland, but there is always a few quirks on gnome that wind me up and put me off using it full time, I really should test KDE as it's probably just gnome issues. Anyway, I wonder if this will have any benefits over gamescope? Even less latency? I was planning to do some testing with gamescope as it works so well on the steam deck but I haven't got around to it yet. Does anyone here run gamescope on their PC?

I'm on KDE and I have the impression from the internet discussions that Wayland on GNOME is considered more stable/mature/whatever. There are some bugs or absent features in KDE that may make Wayland experience worse. I'm still on X11 and waiting. You can track some of the problems here: https://community.kde.org/Plasma/Wayland_Showstoppers [External Link]

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I was interested in Manjaro numbers after their last mishandling of the hardware accelerated decoding situation. Because that forced me to leave, although ironically I was one of the proponents of the system in a big discussion here just days before. And it seemed to buff up the Arch (and arch-derivative) metrics at the expense of Manjaro in the past months a little bit. Can't be sure of course, but its interesting how things change now in comparison to 5 or 10 years ago in the land of distributions.
And I must say thanks to Liam for bringing the Linux share Steam statistics to light and reporting on it. That's very interesting to observe and think of the possible consequences later down the line.

View this comment - View article - View full comments