If it's cheap I'd consider getting a copy just to see all the different doodles characters.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: GuestGNU/Linux users can afford to ditch Valve. Something else would fill the void, quite easily.

It was literally decades before Valve filled the void in the first place. If we abandon Valve, how many more decades will we wait before someone else replaces them?

Valve only did anything as a backup plan. Gaming was growing before they did anything, even desura was there first. If Valve get uppity, I would simply go elsewhere. Power is with the users in the end, and it's good to remind companies of this sometimes.

I think you're a bit naive about this. Microsoft does not retain a desktop monopoly more than 20 years after Win95 because power is with the users in the end. Well, maybe "in the end"--as Keynes said about market equilibrium in the long run, "In the long run, we are all dead".
Monopoly power exists. Perhaps equally important, network effects are powerful; every major network* that the Linux platform is shut out of reinforces its status as a second-class citizen. Steam is a very major network; deliberately shutting ourselves out of it would reinforce the status of Linux as a second class citizen. That would be a really stupid strategic move if one wants Linux use on the desktop to prosper.

Not that any of this matters. Vanishingly few people are going to leave Steam because of something like this; calling for a boycott is an irrelevance.

* "Network" should be taken very broadly here to include any software ecosystem thingie that people on other platforms can and do use a lot. So for instance, MS Office, or DirectX. That's why it would be good if Vulkan supplanted DirectX 12, and it's good that Office runs on Wine (even though I personally don't like Office and never use it outside of work).

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These do seem to be cases of copyright infringement, but for the most part don't seem to be cases of open source code being ripped off. Rather, in the summaries and linked posts I see again and again references to proprietary non-commercial code, which I take to be closed-source blobs with licenses which allow sharing but not resale.
Thus the problem is mostly people violating closed source licenses which do not allow commercial use. I had been intending to ask whether these folks have talked to the Free Software Foundation, who might be able to help and/or give useful legal advice--but if the issue is non-Free software, that might not be a relevant question.

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I want to build the boat from Waterworld. It was a crappy movie, but that sailing boat was by far the best character.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'm hoping the big patch will fix a bug that's been a pain for me; this one doesn't unfortunately. On the Galaxy map, the colours for different empires aren't displaying, so I can't easily tell what territory is whose. I can hover the mouse over a star to tell whose territory it's in, and sometimes if I look closely I can spot edge effects that let me know where the colours would be if they were coloured in, and of course if I zoom way out I get the empire names. So I can work around it, but it's annoying. Cherryh is totally reworking territory, so crossing my fingers.

This is a driver problem. The latest mesa 17.2.6 fixes that.

Thank you very much, that's nice to know.

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So I know this is kind of off the "Gaming on Linux" topic, but does anyone know how well key Windows productivity software runs on Wine these days? Like Office, or CAD things, or Photoshop, or financial or tax stuff? My instincts are that most of those should be less of a problem than games because they aren't leaning on the graphics hard like games do, but hunches are unreliable.

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Quoting: dmantioneOnly when that happens, it makes sense to construct a second city. Migration of population to the new city is automatic in the new city and is affected by the amount of habitat, polution, and morale in the city.

There can also be tactical reasons. It can be worth it to build a city just to grab the territory the new city is on, so that even if it might not technically be worth it yet to snag that strategic resource, it's better than letting your enemy get it and deny it to you.

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Quoting: PhiladelphusHow does it compare with Civilization: Beyond Earth? I was excited for that but somewhat disappointed with it. I like the 4X-on-an-alien-planet vibe though and this looks similar, so while it looks interesting I'd love to hear from people who've played both.

It's a bit simpler, no clever web-shaped tech setup, and no real other dimensions to progress--no choices of political economy like in Alpha C, no harmony/purity/supremacy thing, no culture advances et cetera. It does have a couple of cute innovations of its own, like the concept of "operations" which are things you can do anywhere on the map a limited number of times--some operations, like orbital insertions of units, you have to build as one-offs which hang around until you use them, while others, like scans or orbital bombardment or nukes, have dedicated buildings which give you one every X turns. Tech tree is somewhat randomized, meaning you can't really have a standard order of grabbing stuff.

It's also much bloodthirstier. You will do a lot of fighting. You will fight the native buggy things. You will fight the AI, which will attack even if you were getting along great pretty much the moment it sniffs that you have a small army. You will fight the extra, "eclipse" buggy things. You will fight the invaders from some advanced hostile race that gate in. You will maintain a big enough army that if your focus is more growth and expansion you will constantly curse the need to devote precious city production and upkeep to making and maintaining more units.

Micromanagement of production and resources is both important and significantly different from Civ games. Learn how it actually works or be hooped.

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I'm hoping the big patch will fix a bug that's been a pain for me; this one doesn't unfortunately. On the Galaxy map, the colours for different empires aren't displaying, so I can't easily tell what territory is whose. I can hover the mouse over a star to tell whose territory it's in, and sometimes if I look closely I can spot edge effects that let me know where the colours would be if they were coloured in, and of course if I zoom way out I get the empire names. So I can work around it, but it's annoying. Cherryh is totally reworking territory, so crossing my fingers.

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Quoting: g000hThere is one BIG problem with this though. Not all Linux gamers are going to want to set their Account Preferences to only show Linux/SteamOS games in Search Results.

Actually, that makes me think of another hiccup in the scheme: The only way to have your wishlist show non-Linux games to the developers as wanted for Linux is . . . to make it so you don't see non-Linux games when you're searching for things to put in your wishlist.
(Ooops. Looks like other people have already pointed this out)

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