Motorsport Manager has been on my wishlist for a long time, so I'll be getting the BTA for sure!

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: hummer010

Quoting: tuubiI'm severely allergic to this backlight nonsense,

You know, I used to feel the same way, and then I bought a laptop with backlit keys. I liked the backlit keys enough that my next laptop had to have 'em.

Can you actually buy a reasonably high-end (business) laptop without a backlit kb these days? I've used a couple, but they didn't change my mind about desktop keyboard backlights being just pointless bling. Not quite as pointless as cooling fan LEDs, but still.

Fair point on the desktop part. I don't have a desktop though, just a laptop.

I pretty regularly wind up using my laptop in the dark, so I like having the backlit keys. They default to off, and I only turn them on if it's dark. Whenever I try and use my wife's laptop in the dark, I'm frustrated by the lack of backlit keys, especially since I'm not as familiar with her keyboard.

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Quoting: tuubiI'm severely allergic to this backlight nonsense,

You know, I used to feel the same way, and then I bought a laptop with backlit keys. I liked the backlit keys enough that my next laptop had to have 'em.

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I love Zachtronichs - but I still haven't picked up Shenzhen I/O or Opus Magnum.

I'm not sure my brain can handle that much Zach....

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Quoting: ShmerlI hope there are no technical difficulties with GOG release.

This. I've owned it on GOG for many years.

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For those of you that already have this, is it any good as a single player game?

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Quoting: MaturionBut GOG's Linux support is just bad, Galaxy isn't available on Linux four years after it was launched.

I see this a lot, and believe me, I want Galaxy on Linux as much as anyone*, but is this the only metric we can use to measure Linux support? Humble doesn't have any client for anyone, but they support Linux. I'd much rather use GOG's mojo setups for Linux vs. the "whatever the dev wants" situation at Humble.

A quick perusal of gogdb.org shows that GOG sells 2218 games, of which 598 are available on Linux. That's 27% of their games on Linux. In 2018, GOG has released 156 games so far, of which 59 are available on Linux - that's 38% of this years releases on Linux.** Seems like pretty good Linux support to me.



* - I'm not sure I'll ever actually use Galaxy, although incremental updates could get me there, but I want Galaxy on Linux just so companies can stop using the lack of Galaxy to not release Linux versions on GOG.

** - With GOG's bundling, and multiple packages of games, I'm not positive these numbers are super accurate. They should be pretty good though. The database dump from GOGDB lets you filter out packs and dlc.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: namikoShmerl, I say this with the kindest, most honest, and honourable intentions... you're a holier-than-thou arrogant ass who doesn't properly listen to anything people say if they contradict your own opinions. Nobody likes someone who won't listen.

I've been watching this from the sidelines, and although this isn't incorrect, I think it would also be fairly accurate to say others haven't really been engaging with Shmerl's position either. Rather, the underlying framework has been roughly "The kind of opinions Shmerl is putting out are 'fanatical', therefore Shmerl is a 'fanatic', therefore everything Shmerl says must be wrong and it's more important to hector him than to discuss because there's no point treating 'fanatics' with respect."

Shmerl's position is not quite as extreme as some have been characterizing it. Basically, he does agree that we don't know the mental state of Feral decision makers, but claims something along the lines of
(1) Whatever their mental state is, it clearly does not involve making an effort to release DRM-free software, thus that mental state cannot be anti-DRM in the same sense as that of others who do make such an effort.
(2) Anyone who releases things with DRM and makes no obvious effort to release anything without DRM is in effect pro-DRM. Even if somewhere in their hearts, Feral decision makers do prefer DRM-free software, such private virtue is worthless if it has no functional result. So for Shmerl, Feral are pro-DRM in the sense that their deeds are the same as the deeds of a pro-DRM group would be; their mental state is almost irrelevant.
(3) Since they won't tell us their mental state, leaving nothing except their functional results as a guide, and their functional results are identical to those of a pro-DRM group, but not identical to those of an anti-DRM group, he thinks it reasonable to treat and describe them as if their mental state matched their actions.

Martin Luther King made roughly the same argument about US "liberals" who were not themselves pro-segregation but resisted the civil rights movement on the basis that it "rocked the boat" and so forth; he considered them almost more of a problem than the actual racists.

The arguments against describing Feral as "pro-DRM" are also compelling. They come down to
(A) We don't know their mental state, so it could be anti-DRM or at least not actively pro-DRM.
(B) There are known, and perhaps unknown, barriers to publishing with GOG, with GOG under Linux in specific, and to some extent to publishing ported games DRM-free at all. It is plausible that Feral may merely not be anti-DRM enough to outweigh these barriers.
(C) We like Feral because they port lots of good games to Linux so we want to give them the benefit of the doubt on moral issues. This is basically an emotional argument, but not less important for that; it can be restated in a more cynical political form--ignoring imperfections in one's allies for the sake of the major objective is an important element of "realpolitik" thinking.

These positions are to some extent talking past each other. Arguments (A) and (B) are arguments about Feral's internal state, which don't really speak to Shmerl's functionalist position--he doesn't care very much what their internal state is. And argument (C) is based on the idea that Linux advocacy is more important than DRM issues. Shmerl seems to have a different politics which considers DRM issues more important, or at least as important, as Linux advocacy. I myself consider the spread of open source operating systems (mainly Linux just now) the more important strategically, but if I did consider DRM (and the legal issues surrounding it) the more important then someone doing something else good wouldn't cut much ice with me if they're doing DRM bad. So again, that's not something people should be expecting will convince Shmerl.

As to arguments with Shmerl about whether DRM is important at all, or whether Steam's usually-pretty-transparent DRM is still a problem . . . Shmerl isn't stupid and he's clearly looked into this stuff a lot. There really are fairly important political and legal issues involved in DRM, and Shmerl clearly cares more about the principles than the details of one scheme versus another. People who don't know or care about the issues Shmerl has read up on are not going to convince him of anything. (I personally think DRM is a relatively minor symptom of much bigger issues around globalized capitalism, and it's not going to get better unless the global trade and "intellectual property" regime are changed in a big way. But that doesn't mean nobody should care about it.)

So you'll just have to agree to disagree. This expectation that all of you dogpiling on Shmerl and not really coming to grips with his position just naturally should have got him to shut up and see how wrong he is, is a delusion.

That was extraordinarily well articulated. Kudos to you.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPOr reading the same book dozens of times.

I do this all the time. I've read Lord of the Rings at least a dozen times. And I do it for the same reason I replay games.

I'm not very patient. When I read a book, or play a video game, I always start out planning to experience it all. Inevitably, I get impatient, I skim what I'm reading. I ignore side quests or speed through things. I get to the point where I'm speeding to the end.

Then, I play / read it again, and pick up more of what I missed the first time around. And again. And if I really like it, again and again and again.

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Quoting: Mountain ManMost publishers only really care about hindering pirates for the first week or so since that's usually when a hot game will put up its best sales numbers, and people will be more likely to buy if they can't simply download for free.

This is the crux of the matter right here. Are the people who want to pirate a game really more likely to buy it if it's not available to pirate? Or are the people who buy the game in the first week or so the people who weren't going to pirate it anyways?

I don't know the answers, but my gut feeling says that the pirates don't readily become buyers just because it hasn't been pirated yet.

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