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Latest Comments by apocalyptech
Wine Staging updated, allows you to play DOOM on Linux
21 Dec 2016 at 10:01 pm UTC Likes: 3

Whoa! I am quite excited about this, though I wonder about this note from the patch's github:

Shortly after loading the game is going online to obtain auth tickets from services.bethesda.net and intialize your saved profiles. At this point it will hang on the red screen (still trying to figure out why it's doing so). The only way to prevent it from hanging is to disallow the game to initialize the auth ticket and stuff. Which means:

    settings won't save between game restarts
    no save games (checkpoints are okay while the game is still running)
    no multiplayer

To prevent it from hanging you can edit /etc/hosts and add this lines:

127.0.0.1 dfw-gobbler.doom.amok.systems
127.0.0.1 services.bethesda.net


+set devMode_enable 1 won't help because it still communicates with bethesda servers, but will allow you to open all maps. (it was useful in a previous version of the patch with a bug in it which i've never posted)
... Does the new Doom title really only support "cloud"-based settings and savegames? Super lame if so...

Steam store updated, Valve still haven't fixed filtering to only Linux games on the homepage
8 Nov 2016 at 1:53 am UTC Likes: 1

Yeah, I personally don't really care much about the homepage itself - my most useful view is just my bookmarked 'recently-released-on-Linux' search. The one thing I still want is a way to exclude Early Access titles from there, and that's still missing. I have no idea why that's not just an option under "show selected types."

New user statistics refresh, come check out the new data from Linux gamers
1 Nov 2016 at 2:02 am UTC

What I would like feedback on, is how often to remind users to make sure their details are up to date, and what the preferred method would be?
Yeah, some kind of notification would be nice. I actually just stumbled across that gamepad question by pure accident last week sometime, and hadn't known it was even there. Though I'm not sure what form that should take, either. Perhaps something in the sidebar of the site which tells you which questions you've not answered yet?

New user statistics refresh, come check out the new data from Linux gamers
1 Nov 2016 at 2:01 am UTC

Quoting: MohandevirWhat is a typical use case for "Windows manager only"?
In my case, it's mostly because over the years my required featureset out of any window manager has become "works exactly like icewm," which is admittedly unfair to other WMs out there. I mostly just find other WMs lacking in features that I use all the time in icewm, such as specifying window layer ("on top, above dock, below," etc), setting windows to occupy all virtual desktops, focus-follows-mouse combined with auto-raise, conciseness of window decorations, window selections based on virtual desktop, and a bunch of other minor things like that.

Now, I'm sure that much of what I'm used to could be replicated in other WMs/DEs with enough configuration work, but it's difficult to argue with the ability to just keep on using essentially the same config I've been using since 2000/2001 or so. Also with the bigger DEs you're often either sidelined into using unmaintained software once they move to new major versions and start doing things you don't like, or forced to put up with design decisions you no longer agree with.

I'm sure many other folks use plain WMs due to bloat in the bigger DEs. I actually switched to icewm from KDE, way back when KDE 2.0 came out, and it was a bloated sack of $#@%. :) You can imagine what I think of modern desktop environments, knowing THAT predeliction.

Quoting: WorMzyThey're particularly popular on Arch
Heh, that wouldn't surprise me... I actually started fitting that bill this year when I switched over from Fedora (which I'd been using since 2010 or so), and was WM-only during my Fedora years as well, so it definitely occurs on other distros too.

This Halloween, become a psycho in 'Slayaway Camp', a comically gory puzzler with day-1 Linux support
29 Oct 2016 at 10:02 pm UTC

Quoting: ysblokjeI bought as soon as I saw Jim Sterling reviewing it and noticed it had a steamOS icon.
Yeah, I'm glad I saw that Jimpressions video, too! I'd noticed the game pop up in my "newest released games for SteamOS" search a little while ago, but I actually didn't like the trailers on the store page - I tend to go pretty cold for trailers which use postprocessing and stuff, focusing more on atmosphere and cutscene type stuff than the actual gameplay. But then I stumbled across that Jim Sterling video and pretty much immediately turned around to buy the thing!

I too would recommend it, for anyone who enjoys this sort of puzzle game and can enjoy the cutesy, blocky slasher/gore aspects of it. I've been having quite a bit of fun with it over the past day!

Black Mesa, the very popular fan-made recreation of Half-Life is now on Linux in beta
28 Oct 2016 at 2:25 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: CreakWhat's the official position of Valve on this fan-made remix?
I don't know if there's ever been an official statement, but the impression I got was that they only started selling it on Steam with Valve's approval. (It's also quite high profile and has been available for purchase on Steam for quite awhile now - if Valve disapproved, I'm sure it'd be gone by now.)

I really want to try this game, but the "fan-made" side and the "not until it's finished" estimation don't inspire me a lot.
I played this in Wine back when the free version of it was released, years ago, and even back then it was an amazing game. Being fan-made really doesn't enter into it apart from being all the more impressive once you realize where it came from.

I know that this for-sale version is on a different version of the Source engine than the free version was, and the free version itself wasn't totally bug-free (was quite crashy for me), but really the main thing that's not done yet, in re: finishing, is just the ending Xen levels. You get remakes of the entire game up to that point, which is a good 90% of Half-Life, and those Xen levels from the original aren't too well thought of nowadays anyway. (They mentioned long ago that they wanted to do something quite different with Xen, which partially accounts for why those levels still don't exist in Black Mesa.) There's a *lot* of game there!

Anyway: personally I wouldn't let those concerns get in the way of checking it out, if those are the only two concerns you have.

Steam to get a massive update soon, Asia revenue increased nearly 500% since 2014 and more
12 Oct 2016 at 7:32 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: FutureSutureI hope that the update brings the option to turn off a number of Steam features such as achievements, tracking of time spent in game, badges, and other stuff I simply do not want on my profile. I am all about options.
I'm mostly hoping that it'll finally give us the option to only see Linux games when browsing, and to filter out Early Access if we want. (I've never really understood why Early Access isn't just another checkbox in the "Show Selected Types" box, while searching.)

Steam to get a massive update soon, Asia revenue increased nearly 500% since 2014 and more
12 Oct 2016 at 7:25 pm UTC Likes: 4

I wonder what percentage of all that growth is crappy Unity asset-flip garbage which somehow made it through Greenlight. :)

'Farabel', a turn based strategy game is officially coming to Linux after a days work
27 Sep 2016 at 3:09 pm UTC Likes: 2

Oh, wow! For years now I've had this idea for a dungeon crawler where you start right at the end after defeating the main boss, and the game is all just fighting your way back up out of the dungeon, losing levels and abilities to fatigue as you go. This sounds quite similar, and saves me the trouble of having to figure out a way to make something like that Actually Fun!

Quite excellent, looking forward to this.

‘The Hive’, a story driven fantasy game that plays like an RTS leaves Early Access, some thoughts
26 Sep 2016 at 1:31 pm UTC

I really despise it when games don't have a manual save feature (or at least save-on-quit coupled with autosaves). It's a tacit admission by the game devs that they believe their vision for the game is more valuable and important than their customers' time. "We won't sacrifice our game's INTEGRITY just so that someone doesn't waste potentially hours of time!" I've put up with it in some cases, like with Bioshock Infinite - more than once I'd be carefully exploring an area, have to leave, and discover when I booted the game back up that I had the same area left to explore just 'cause I hadn't triggered the next checkpoint.

I'm also sure that there are plenty of XCOM players who will chafe at the idea of savegames being a "core mechanic." Certainly XCOM is a game where many players (admittedly, perhaps even most) resort to savescumming, but that's an intentional choice on their part. If you don't want to savescum, then just bloody don't!

Anyway, just one of my pet peeves. :)