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Latest Comments by Purple Library Guy
Doom (2016) could have been on Linux, id Software made a Linux version sound easy to do
25 Mar 2018 at 3:50 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: strycoreI see this as a good thing. First, if you want to play Doom on Linux. it runs great on Wine, for the exact same reasons the ID team got it running easily on Linux.

Second, this give a slap in the face of a small but vocal subset of the Linux community, made up of people who believe Linux ports are only a matter of engines, middleware, DirectX vs OpenGL, etc. There's nothing wrong with those Linux users, except they have to stop being so naive, hence this is why the ID move is badly needed for those users to wake up.

Steam on Linux has been around for a while now, people should start to understand that Linux ports don't get done because they are easy to make, because the game is using SDL or Vulkan or whatever other library native to Linux. Linux ports happen because business managers sign contracts to get the port done. That's it. Software developers do not make business decisions, releasing a Linux version of a game is a business decision, not a technical one.
You say that like the two are separate. Business decisions revolve around whether a course of action will make a profit. What something in the computer gaming industry will cost is a technical question. If it technically will cost 120 (mythical) man-months from developers clocking in at $100,000 a year each to port something to Linux, that is a different business proposition from if it will cost 12 or 3 such man-months. Profit = revenue - costs. If costs are lower, it takes less revenue to make a profit. So, the correct answer in a business decision depends on technical factors. Like whether a port is easy to make.

AMD has announced 'Radeon-Rays' an open source ray tracing SDK using Vulkan
25 Mar 2018 at 3:32 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: TheRiddickMS and NVIDIA would be very happy if Vulkan died off, or developers steer away from it. But realistically who wants to forever be locked in to Windows10 and XBOX1 platform? at least who in their right mind would...
Actually I think that many studios would be happy to be locked to a single platform like XBOX1 if this also meant that all customers where locked into it and there where no middle man taking 30% of the profits.
That would be the rub, though (well, one of them). Once all your customers are stuck on one platform and you're dependent on the tools made by the vendor of that platform, they can take as much of your profits as they want, because you have no other choices. It's the vendor's tools or you're not selling anything.
Why do people think companies struggle so hard to gain monopolies? Why do people think laws got passed against monopolies in the first place?

Try to out-drink Satan in Afterparty, the new game from the developer of Oxenfree
23 Mar 2018 at 4:38 pm UTC Likes: 3

Only thing is, Hell sounds kind of fun. Why are they trying to escape again? (Well, I might be since I'm really not a party person)

Croteam will have an interesting talk at GDC this year about game performance
17 Mar 2018 at 12:16 am UTC

Quoting: lucifertdark
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: lucifertdarkThe only reason I keep Windows around is for Lightroom as it sucks in Wine.
Have you tried Darktable? I've never used Lightroom so I can't say how well it compares, but for me it's more than enough.
Thanks for the reminder about Darktable, I tried it a couple of years ago & wasn't impressed at the time, I'll have to install it & see if things have improved since then.
Always worth re-checking open source projects that aren't good enough for your purposes every 2-3 years; things do gradually change.

The developer of One Hour One Life on keeping games code & assets open and not launching on Steam
17 Mar 2018 at 12:01 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: orochi_kyoThese extreme hipsters are annoying, I support open software and indie gaming, but if big companies opens a door to developers for publish their games, why not taking the chance?
Steam contrary to console platforms are not signing exclusive deals, you can release your game everywhere, GOG, your site, Itch, Steam, etc.
Its Steam, not stupid Monsanto or Bayer.
Exactly how did you work in Monsanto here? Let's not go down the rabbit hole of those pro pseudoscience anti-GMO folks.
GMO crops are a lot like DRM on games. DRM makes games harder to play and maintain, and doesn't do what it's advertised to do (stop piracy), but it does allow invocation of draconian laws to control consumer behaviour (and in some cases, the behaviour of competitors). Genetic modification is bad for the crops and the consumers, but the point is it lets you patent those crops and thereby shut down competition, control farmers, etc. For the corporations involved, the actual benefits any given genetic modification is supposed to provide are almost beside the point (except "Round-up Ready", because that lets them sell vastly more herbicide).
Don't get me wrong, I find the technologies of genetic modification fascinating. But, they are currently not mature. Before CRISPR, the main approach involved sticking a gene on a tiny golden cannonball and shooting the thing randomly into a cell's nucleus and hoping something stuck. Imagine shooting code randomly into a computer program and expecting it to do only whatever that piece of code was "supposed" to be for. If the patenting angle didn't allow for monopoly profits they'd still be largely in the lab.

Eastshade, an absolutely gorgeous looking adventure game about a travelling painter will come to Linux
14 Mar 2018 at 6:46 am UTC Likes: 1

Guess I'm a bit old school--people keep talking about Leaving Lyndow and I keep seeing it as "Leaving Lindows [External Link]".

Strategy game Northgard is now on Linux, it has a few launch issues but it's engrossing
10 Mar 2018 at 3:09 am UTC

So, wait a minute--you cross the sea to a wild unexplored place, send scouts out to get an idea of what's out there, wipe out or at least set up defences against local menaces, and then . . . to start occupying territory you have to purchase land?!
From who, Odin? Skraeling real estate agents? Lucky Leif's Land Registry?

Kongregate have announced their own store and client 'Kartridge', will not support Linux
10 Mar 2018 at 2:31 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: inlinuxdudeKongregate, Kartridge

If they're going to go with this "K" instead of "C" thing, they should be required to have a KDE client...
Yeah, I was thinking it was weird that something sounding like a KDE project didn't even support Linux.

Khronos Group has released Vulkan API version 1.1 today, new NVIDIA beta driver & AMD driver available
8 Mar 2018 at 2:34 pm UTC

Agh. Early in the morning, hit the wrong button--quoted myself instead of editing.

Khronos Group has released Vulkan API version 1.1 today, new NVIDIA beta driver & AMD driver available
8 Mar 2018 at 2:32 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut information in the modern world is infinitely reproducible for almost zero effort. The barter model of one thing for another thing is based on me giving you a thing which I then no longer have.
That's still what is happening. Many users are giving money for a game, together (hopefully) compensating for the part of their lifetime the developers invested in making it and no longer have.
Uhm, no it isn't. The developers make a game, yes. It costs them time and effort, yes. But what they then give to people for money, the game, is something they still have after they give it. There is a whole lot of effort, ingenuity and reality-distortion (eg DRM) going into maintaining the fiction that each copy of a piece of information is an individual separate thing that the seller is giving up, so we can pretend the model people accept for vegetables and steel is optimal for information as well. But it isn't--we could give everyone access to information with less effort than it takes to prevent access. We can't do that with vegetables. We would be far better off coming up with ways to compensate creators--of games and quite a few other things--that did not involve artificial rationing.