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Latest Comments by ljrk
GOL Asks: What have you been playing recently?
16 Mar 2016 at 11:04 pm UTC

TIS-100 - nice if you like Assembly.
Civ V - just good.
Superhot - a bit short but nice
Shadow Of Morder incl. all DLCs since I shot it for 8.45€

Shadow Of mordor is definitely no bad game, but I *do* have some grudges on it.
Firstly it's story is not really in harmony with Silmarillion/LotR/Hobbit.
Secondly the story is told but it isn't well-integrated into the game. It's like to things that stand apart from each other as distinct parts of the product: Here's the game and there's a story.

Also the game feels a bit sluggish in controls due to them being bound triple times on the same key, since it's a console-port. But on PC you don't need to triple-bind 'e'!
This can lead to situations where you want to stealth-brand an orc (shift-e) but instead drop from the higher ground since you pressed e -- and are discovered.
Also climbing is far less smooth than in AC and can be daunting, sometimes.

Then there's the 'discovery', ie. whether orcs spot you or not. Sometimes they just spot you from across the map, sometimes you can walk directly up on them. It's not the least predictable (which is ofcourse not sooo unrealistic) but makes "dont get detected" missions frustrating. If you'd at least have X secs to eliminate everyone who is about to alarm... .

And we have the collectables. I've found them all (Ithildin and meories), I've done all Legend missions. But it's also not integrated into the story. If it's just an additional gimmick/eastergg there shouldn't be that much of it.
Otherwise there should've been more sense to it.

The gameplay rewards "dumb" gameplay, imho.
The easiest way is to just brand every uruk you find, even don't do any stealth-kills (do stealth-brands). The only reason for stealth-kills are possibly bonus-objectives -- artificial reasons.
I think there should be a cost to such things as this is "op". Surely, I could've played "dumb" and would've had more difficult combat, but imho a game should reward it if the player does logical things, plays intelligent.
This'd also make things less repetitive.
In the end I did all missions and did barely have half the skills possible -- not good.

All in all I wish there'd been:
- a story that goes better together with the lore
- better integration of the story and game elements
- better controls for PC port
- better thought-through gameplay elements.

BUT: There's the major reason for playing this game (for me):
It's still set in Arda. You cannot argue with it. I'm a die-hard fan so it kinda made me sad but also I just had to play it and collect everything.

I'm most ambivalent about this game.

Hearts of Iron 4 to be released on D-Day
16 Mar 2016 at 10:43 pm UTC

I've always been tempted to buy Paradox titles but massive amounts of DLC set me off. I do hope it's more sane this time

Unity game engine 5.4 beta now has a Linux build
16 Mar 2016 at 10:40 pm UTC

wow that was quick! Great to see the Linux build coming so fast.

GOL has been updated, few new bits to be aware of
10 Mar 2016 at 1:21 pm UTC

If you attempt learning git, this: Think Like a Git [External Link] has helped me a LOT to get started. It's imho the best Git "Tutorial"

I played American Truck Simulator on Linux, don't ever let me drive a real truck
8 Mar 2016 at 8:03 pm UTC

It's definitely nice and one cannot say the Linux port is all too bad, as the performance on Windows wasn't really -- atleast last time I tried ^^

And what's the problem with ogg? It's a free format! Fuck mp3 :P

I was quite sad tho when I saw that ATS would be the same engine :/

A chat with AtomicTorch Studio about their Linux sales with Dinocide & VoidExpanse
7 Mar 2016 at 10:52 pm UTC Likes: 1

Thanks for the first-hand info here!

My experiences with engines:
- SourceEngine SDK/HL2 Source Code: It's hard to get through it, on any platform. The code itself ain't that nice to read and isn't really documented. Plus, the "free" version is full of binaries and requires quite some hacks to run properly on any platform I tested. Though when comparing Windows/Linux it runs completely on par, that's to say it's imho no fun on Linux -- but on Windows neither :P
- Unity: It's the best for developing *on* Linux, that is the Unity-Engine/Editor for Linux is quite stable and useable in my experience. It's beginning to mature! Sadly due to the closed code it can be difficult to investigate bugs.
- UE4: The Editor is not really nice on Linux, imho. It has visual glitches here and there. Compiling and deploying works perfectly though. You can easily crash it, but so you can if you do "magic" on Windows :D

Aside from developing, deployment seems to be best on UE4. But part of the quality of UE4-Linux games being better than Unity games could stem from the fact that UE4 requires more deep programming knowledge -- ie. targeting programmers who are able to properly able to port and have some experience. Unity makes it possible for newbies -- which can result in bad code quality. BUT this doesn't need to be, I've seen some really HQ-Unity games too.

Still it seems to me that UE4 is still more Linux-optimized.

@ai_enabled: In case you want to use XNA, have you looked at FNA already? It's an opensource re-implementation of XNA used by a well-known Linux porter.
I hope your engine will work on C# well, I've not much experience with it.
Also C# 6.0 is so-far a letdown for me, Roslyn is still not nice to set up on non-Windows and this doesn't seem to change too soon :/

I prefer working in non-managed C and C++ anyway, that's why I soon stopped trying more advanced Unity ^^

Our Linux & SteamOS gamer survey results for January 2016
6 Mar 2016 at 4:10 pm UTC

Possibly one could add "special" questions like "Did you buy game x?" if x was released on that day and featured here. Possibly even: "If yes, did you notice or buy it because it was featured here?"

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Linux & SteamOS port has been put on hold
31 Jan 2016 at 11:14 am UTC Likes: 1

Someone asked more specific what we are allowed and there were some restrictions on it. That's why I wasn't too specific about things (and they feared more negative news than positive, I guess ;-))

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter Linux & SteamOS port has been put on hold
31 Jan 2016 at 10:39 am UTC Likes: 2

Looks like Unreal Engine 4 has ways to go to fix up their Linux support properly.
I completely disagree. I think it's *their* code that doesn't work and is badly (inportable) written.
I've been in the Linux Game Testing for The Mean Greens - and I can say: They basically just built it and threw it out -- and it worked.
Yes, some maps were darker and had some issues. The water shader didn't work.
BUT: This was fixed rather easily and it's now fully playable and quite performant.

They themselves spoke positively about how the UE4 was easing their port.