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Latest Comments by svartalf
Valve officially confirm a new version of 'Steam Play' which includes a modified version of Wine
22 Aug 2018 at 6:46 pm UTC

Quoting: minidouenthusiast users are also able to try playing non-whitelisted games using an override switch in the Steam client
There's a couple I picked up just to help my nephew figure out how in the heck to make happen that're in my library- I know what I'll be trying this evening... X-D

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 9:43 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: wleoncioFrom the players' side, this can't be said enough times: be civil, everyone. Videogames are not something to lose your rag about. A few immature and impatient people costed all of us a native port of The Witcher 3. We may be just 0,5%, but we have the potential to be the best userbase when it comes to giving devs useful feedback.
I think you're going to find that this was an excuse, not reality in the case of Cdprojekt. They had a lot of difficulties with their "solution" that had legitimate complaints thrown at them over it. This was a differing example of someone thinking they could all but simply click a button and magically have a game without a lot of QA (If you think the woes there with the game "port" they did had much of any QA, I've some lovely land out West of where I'm currently day-job consulting (Ft. Lauderdale) that's "dry" and only has a few gators on it...PROMISE. X-D

They got it fixed, but not before a lot of goodwill on their was burned. They were dubious about it in the first place- and the ire was just the excuse they needed to not do another one. Half-hearted efforts using WINE-like layers unless you've got the thing dead on like Feral's got with some of those, well...it's not good for the studio or their customers. It just pooches the prospects on both sides...and blaming the upset, and legitimately so, customers about it; or the ones asking for a new version (Hey, you did that other one...) is mudslinging the OTHER way. I don't consider THAT acceptable either.

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 9:14 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: GuestUnity3D is not known for good QA as well with regard to Linux, however, they usually eventually address their issues in future updates. Nvidia has had it's ups and downs as well. These things are to be expected and really nothing new. Mature software doesn't and shouldn't rely on the bleeding edge of engine and library releases for this reason. You wait for major releases to stabilize before you base your code around it. It's a sensible development model.
Yes. Very much so. You either take SOME risks on bleeding edge stuff, have your stuff dead-on instead of so-so, or you wait.

There's a reason I'm...unlikely...to use Unity for any game I'm fielding anytime soon. And yes, there was more to that remark than meets the eye.

;-D

As for Facepunch and Rust, I've largely said my peace, wound down a bit- I'm unlikely to natter on much more about it. Doesn't do well, as Liam's rightly pointing out here- it's enough to bitch once and move on. I find the "updates only" mentality to be also...problematic...symptomatic of a studio I wouldn't trust ever again. Oh, if they fix the engine or the drivers we'll fix our game, but we won't sell it to you anymore? Seriously?

X-D

It's time to shrug, mutter "go f*ck yourselves", turn our backs and move on. Seriously.

Quoting: GuestIn the end, with regard to Facepunch, this comes down to Ego (with regard to their successful game sales), attitude, and lazyness. Game developers with far less resources, using Unity3D, are able to manage a Linux release without drama or games.

Looking at Facepunch from a bigger picture, they have probably peaked in just about everything, sales, creativity, and fanfare. And the Linux gaming environment has changed since the early days of Rust. We all have more options and Linux support is almost expected when looking at Steam titles. So in the end, what Facepunch does is of little consequence in the big picture. Facepunch can fade into the background and nothing will have been lost.
Hm. Sounds almost like PUBG, doesn't it?

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 9:02 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdaweSure, you as a long time developer probably have a lot more insights than I do about actually making and shipping games (and yes I remember who you are ;)). I value your opinion, as I do for anyone. I just don't like resorting to slinging mud at people.
Good. I'd hoped you'd remembered. :-D

I agree, mudslinging is inappropriate. Having said this... I'm not. There's a bit of justification, if only in legitimate IRE going on here. They just have opinion, where I've some experience and am being selective about the commentary, even if it IS ranting. X-D

I do hope my negotiations pan out. It'll mean a few rather wicked things to transpire. But then, I've had a few false starts on things in the past. I just wish that me and my partner in crime on the Myth trilogy franchise could get Take2 to wise up on things and remember they actually OWN that stuff... Be even more fun then.

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 8:59 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: LeopardFacepunch dev clearly states he won't / he wasn't doing a QA regarding Linux builds. And you're saying that is understandable due to low market share.
There's a reason why I've been commenting on this.

The whole, we're not/won't do QA is bullshit. Pure and simple. QA is a function of the product as a whole. If you're not doing proper QA on all of it, you're doing it wrong. On an engine like Unity, Unreal, Crytek, etc. you exchange a bit of peak performance for an abstraction layer. Pure and simple. It's supposed to be almost largely 1 GAME that way. But there's potential for failures in the engine if someone hasn't exercised it properly on the target in question. That equates engineering analysis on that target to be fed back to the engine developer so they can fix it or incorporate the fixes YOU found when digging a bit deeper. You should have a moderately dedicated staff to DO that work and be able to handle any of the platforms and be able to do it as needed and per priority. If they don't have time to do that, what are they facing under Windows?

But it does require work on things. If they can't and won't do the work...was it really all that good a game?

I'd opine, "NOT".

Is it a symptom of much worse going on? Yeah...actually, it is.

Quoting: LeopardThan it must be also true for all devs too , since market share is not specific to Rust. It is on nearly every game.
Hardly. I need only point to myself or the likes of Feral Interactive to show that this was bullshit.

Which is why I am bitching right now about all of this. It's lame on their part, really. Someone earlier on pinned it. Facepunch thought they could just click a button and crank out Linux binaries and not QA it at all. Heh. If you're not as much engineering driven, you're in for a nasty, nasty surprise. I'll bet they're overwhelmed with the WINDOWS bugs.

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 8:46 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: liamdaweI'm just deciding not to take it as personally as some are. Nothing more, nothing less.

I've always been realistic about Linux gaming and some people choose to be the opposite.

Totally understand things can get emotional, but I won't have people call out my integrity for not sending abuse to a developer.
As it probably ought to be. In my case, I am taking it as an affront. Why? Because I work in that industry as well as a few others and I really do take umbrage at bullsh*t being flung about- which is what that was... X-D

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 8:36 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: liamdaweNo one has been "victimized", do you even understand the meaning of that word? No one has been singled out and Facepunch aren't being cruel.
I'd hesitate to say not been "victimized"... It doesn't require being singled out. Though, if you think about it with Garry's response, yeah, we all got singled out there. I was silent before...not anymore as indicated above.

You can't and SHOULDN'T go where he did. And this was all an excuse. In all honesty, you paid for rights to the engine...but that doesn't let you off the hook for your game. In most cases, you got SOURCE CODE to the damned thing (I know I will be for the stuff I'm working on...) and you should be able to debug it because if it's an "Unity" or "NVidia" so-called "bug"- the likelihood of it being a shader fail, a vertex fail, or the like goes up quite a bit. There's all sorts of stories I could tell you all about my stint as an AMD employee at Marlborough before they closed down the offices there. Omitted shader constants that NVidia compensated for at the cost of actual performance. Idiot things in a AAA title where the 'tards didn't read the OpenGL spec closely (Always read a "may" as a "shall" unless you're targetting a single known accelerator brand and line within the same... You'll get better results. The mentioned was a bug in a VERY popular AAA title whose franchise has changed hands a few years back. Game went from +100 fps in a scene to 10 seconds per frame. Wasn't the driver, though you COULD fix it with that.)

If they're not fixing it, it's a cop-out because if it's "broken" on other targets, the odds are fairly stiff it's broken and you just don't know it on Windows. Pure and simple, QA shouldn't CARE about targets and the excuse he fobbed off is...embarrassing and disappointing from someone who IS in this industry. Happens all the time, yes- bit that hardly excuses it. I'm just as pissed with Bungie, all things considered, about Destiny 2 for similar reasons, really.

Facepunch are no longer selling the Linux version of the survival game Rust (updated)
27 Jul 2018 at 8:31 pm UTC Likes: 8

Meh. I'm...unimpressed.

And, he can go stuff his remarks about being "abusive" and the like in my case. I'm one of his peers in the industry. This calls for a bit of a Torvalds-like RANT.

Not enough QA and won't? F'ing MORON. Seriously.

From the many decades of doing coding of all sorts for all the primary platforms (this being OSX, UNIX (inc. *BSD), Linux, Windows, and Android) he's full of sh*t. If there's a bug in NVidia or AMD support, the odds are REALLY strong your code has a bug in it, not the drivers or the engine. In 80-90% of the cases the devs in question either didn't look at the API spec carefully enough and the drivers and/or OS cut them slack.

There's craploads of *BAD* practices out there in Windows that VS gleefully lets you get away with.
Not so on other platforms. The studios I've helped get games going for had serious lurker type issues in 32-bit->64-bit cleanliness and the like. LOTS of assumptions. Some of them honest mistakes. Some of them not so. Building for Linux pretty much ensures you get caught out on fails like that.

ANYONE making remarks like this aren't as much of a bigshot or major dev of anything as they're puffing themselves up to be.

Folks, you can rest assured that I will be making a Linux version of the games I'm responsible for if the funding comes through for things. It doesn't matter about QA- QA is the whole budget for all platforms. If you don't have enough QA resources, your product is crappier than you're willing to own or you're understaffed and chintzing. And...I am working on something right now. Seriously. Just can't disclose what or how now. :-D

The Humble Daedalic Bundle 2018 is a good deal for Linux gamers
6 Jun 2018 at 7:02 pm UTC

Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: Alm888As we know, "Humble IGN" [...] with its overblown prices.
Humble simply doesn't do regional pricing, which naturally means they'll be more expensive for some. For me and many others their prices are about the same as on Steam. That said, most of my Humble library came from bundles.
The plus of buying this way is that even if it's the same price as on Steam, a percentage goes to charity, one you select.

The Humble Daedalic Bundle 2018 is a good deal for Linux gamers
6 Jun 2018 at 7:01 pm UTC

They've had nicer/cooler ones, but this has enough (esp. if you've not gotten any of the Deponia stuff elsewhere) to sell it for the cool stuff mentioned.