I only ever used GitHub for the free source access to Unreal Engine (not that I ever actually did anything with it), some stuff to do with Eco (again, basically never used it), and for the odd bug report/comment/issue watch.

Just deleted my account, too. Not that mine really mattered in the first place, but eh. Spring cleaning. ;)

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Quoting: LeopardGo to Steam settings and clear the download cache.

I hadn't tried that... so I just uninstalled the game, hit that clear download cache button (with the associated logout / log back in) and re-installed... same issue. I wonder if maybe my local node I'm downloading from just hasn't caught up yet?

I'm in no rush anyway, since I'd rather just pull these into Retroarch, but still. :) Thanks for the tip though!

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Huh. Even after uninstalling & reinstalling it, and using the Verify Integrity of Files thing, I'm not getting anything beyond the raw ROMs and manuals it seems. No front-end or anything, and of course it launches with an error to that effect. I'll give it another couple days and try again, maybe.
steamapps/common/Sega Classics $ find .
.
./uncompressed ROMs
./uncompressed ROMs/GAXE_W.68K
./uncompressed ROMs/SONIC_W.68K
./uncompressed ROMs/SONICSPI_U.68K
./uncompressed ROMs/SONIC3D_UE.68K
./uncompressed ROMs/SONIC2_W.68K
./uncompressed ROMs/Sonic_Knuckles_wSonic3.bin
./uncompressed ROMs/ROBOTNIK_U.68K
./data
./data/g0005.pak
./data/g0008.pak
./data/g0031.pak
./data/g0014.pak
./data/g0041.pak
./data/g0021.pak
./data/g0042.pak
./manuals
./manuals/GA_PC_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf
./manuals/13 STH2_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_v6.pdf
./manuals/S3DB_MG_EFIGS_US.pdf
./manuals/DRMBM_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf
./manuals/14 S3K_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_v6.pdf
./manuals/STH1_PC_MG_EFIGS.pdf
./manuals/SS_PC_MG_EFIGS_US_150ppi.pdf

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My understanding is that here in Canada, simple drawings of underage characters 'designed for sexual gratification' can get you in serious trouble, potentially jail time. I think it's a pretty stupid law, but we get a lot of bleed-over from the US.

That said, this sort of thing is wholly unsurprising. I've seen it happen in other communities, and I know a few friends whose otherwise perfectly legal (i.e. definitely not underage), but otherwise suggestive or 'pornographic' art commissions get them in trouble with payment processors - PayPal is notorious for this, in particular - which puts a bit of a dent in recommending what looks to be another American company, namely itch.io, from being the saviour in this situation.

Yes, they have Stripe as an alternative payment processor, and I'm not sure what their rules are like around this stuff, but putting up an Adult VN or similar on itch.io, charging for it, and accepting PayPal for said payments? Could end up causing serious trouble. Plus, all it takes is for these puritan groups to smell blood in the water and go after them next, fresh off their 'win' against Valve.

It's a cultural problem with the US, wrapped up and enforced with legal BS. But that could describe a whole lot of only tangentially related topics that aren't fit for here. ;)

Treat the US as 'damaged' and route around it is all we can do, for now. Maybe something in Europe will work better, but who knows at this point. Too early to tell.

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Good news, following up a bit from my earlier notes - I think (knock-on-wood) that the startup and further crash bugs I'd been having have been fixed. I had Stardew Valley installed but not really played on my machine for quite some time, and I figured that maybe things got out of sync somewhere.

Turns out one of the first troubleshooting steps I should have done ended up fixing my issues - the good old 'Verify Integrity of Game Files' button in Steam. It updated a single, ~780 byte file that was out of sync.

Probably a startup script. But hey, now I can launch it directly from Steam properly! And for the next hour or two last night, I didn't have a single lockup or crash-to-desktop.

ProTip: If you have problems with a game, try that button.

(also ProTip: To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies.)

One game-related issue we did run into a couple times, unfortunately while I was deep in the caves, mid-monster-fight, is that if the host (or 'someone'?) triggers an in-game cutscene, everyone sees that cutscene as well.

...and gets insta-teleported to where that cutscene took place upon its conclusion. :><: So fair warning, there!

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Quoting: ScooptaYou probably don't even need to do that. You can probably just open the ports it uses.

Digging through the comments on their blog post, someone mentions it might be UDP/24642 that needs forwarding, and it *should* work. :)

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I've got the Steam version, and though I hadn't tried to play it much before the beta on this system, I've got the (apparently) Mono-related bug with termcap.

FYI, if anyone else has got the whole really-quick-black-screen-then-crash bug when trying to start from Steam, I've been able to manually start it outside of Steam by adding TERM=xterm to the beginning, e.g.:

TERM=xterm ./StardewValley.bin.x86_64

I tried switching my launch options in Steam to: 'TERM=xterm %command%' but that didn't make a difference. Maybe it's calling some other script that overwrites TERM?

However, playing with my g/f on her new farm (fresh start with both of us on the beta - her on Xubuntu 18.04, and myself on Gentoo), she was totally fine, even launching from Steam, but I would crash to desktop every half hour or so. Thankfully, I could quickly relaunch and reconnect just fine (LAN), and my character woke up in their bed, teleported from wherever they were, with all their inventory and such intact.

At one point, the game itself froze on my end completely, rather than CtD, but I could Alt-Tab out, kill it and restart it.

It's a Beta, I get it, so I'm not really complaining, just figured I'd report my experience. :)

It was still loads of fun to team up in the caves and murder a bunch of monsters, back-to-back (playing with a controller feels a lot easier for me, since there's a bit of a disconnect between what you click on and where you swing - it's based around the last angle you were moving at), or let her, the vastly more experienced player, run around town doing all the errands while I'd stick at home, chopping wood and busting rocks to gather starting materials.

One other thing we found out, particularly because my lumberjacking-and-rock-busting drains energy quite quickly, is that one player (even the host) can go to bed, say 'yes I want to sleep for the night', and their energy will slowly start to refill while the other people are still up and playing. The day will roll over only when all players are in bed, but if someone (me) is burning energy fast, you can have a mid-day nap while your friends are up and about in town, get half an energy bar (or more) back, then go chop some more. :D Cheesing it a little, maybe, but it helps give us something to do. I got into a routine of having 3 or even 4 naps during the day, so I could be a tree-munching machine in between.

Definitely worth braving the crashes, as long as the host is stable, and lots of fun even with just 2 people - I can imagine a full team of 5 would be pretty awesome.

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At least they give you the option to change it, even if the defaults are the exact opposite of what they should be.

How about defaulting everyone to completely private, and then a nice little ad on their page or whatever going 'hey, you can show off your game library and/or wishlists if you change these new settings we introduced!', so people can opt-in?

Nah, that would actually be doing the right thing, and we can't have that...

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A bunch of people are asking me "What is it I don't like?" - short answer: I'm not into rogue-likes. Long answer...

Yahtzee can be a bit... polarizing in his reviews, but he kind of hits where I got disappointed with the idea about half-way through his earlier review (warning: foul language, very fast-talking):
View video on youtube.com

He actually likes it, in the end, but as a rogue-like. I'm not into rogue-likes, that's all. :) Quake evokes constant motion and freedom, where a mistake could just mean a Quickload or worse, restart of the specific level you're on. Strafe, as a rogue-like, sounds like it has a really heavy emphasis on self-preservation so you don't have to fully restart the game because of a dumb mistake (or worse, a horrible glitch).

Procedurally generated levels sound great on paper, but I find that any sort of 3D procedural generation tends to get very stale and repetitive, very fast... and then the layouts can end up nonsensical. One of the great things about the games that Strafe tries to evoke is their extremely well-polished, memorable level designs, with tuned difficulty curves over the course of a campaign. Levels that you can memorize, you can look for secrets in, so when you remember where that BFG is and grab it early, you can have that sense of accomplishment as you blow everything to smithereens without so much as a second thought.

Rogue-likes tend to have you praying to the RNG gods for something that makes your run actually playable, and if watching other people play various ones (like Binding of Issac, especially), you tend to either rapidly turn into an overpowered demi-god, or get completely shafted, with very little in-between. Personally, that's not my cup of tea. But if that's the kind of thing you're into - the kind of thing you can stream for people with really good replay value and surprises every time you play, I'm sure this totally fits the bill.

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I can totally appreciate that they have a Linux version of this finally (wasn't it a stretch goal from their Kickstarter or something wayyy back?), but yeah - the vibe you get from casually watching trailers for this is 'omg modern Quake'. Kind of like how Ion Maiden is very obviously not just 'a new game set in an updated BUILD engine', but a new game that deliberately hearkens back to 3D Realms titles like Duke3D, Shadow Warrior and Blood.

Then I started looking a little deeper, and it's very much not what I'd expect from a typical 'modern retro' Quake-esque shooter. Maybe some of the raw in-game mechanics are similar, and definitely the art style, but it's otherwise overarchingly a very different style of game. A style of game that, unfortunately, is really not my thing, personally, which is unfortunate because I loved these guys' marketing style, and I want to want this game.

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