Latest Comments by ShabbyX
What are you playing on Linux this weekend and what do you think about it?
19 May 2018 at 6:34 pm UTC
19 May 2018 at 6:34 pm UTC
Rise of the Tomb Raider by day, Factorio by night. Loving both!
Dark fantasy shooter 'Apocryph' released recently with Linux support, it's messy
9 May 2018 at 12:07 pm UTC
9 May 2018 at 12:07 pm UTC
Your input issue, is it like you press something, release it and then a second after the same action is repeated for a small time? I got this in hollow knight a week or two ago (with a ps4 controller, not sure if it affected anything else), and it turned out to be something broken in steam as there was just a new beta update. Opting out of beta fixed the problem.
HTC Vive PRO HMD pre-orders open, standard Vive has price drop
27 Mar 2018 at 9:55 pm UTC
27 Mar 2018 at 9:55 pm UTC
> For Linux gamers, I'm not sure if makes much sense picking one up right now. Not only is Linux VR support still quite raw, there's not a great deal of titles available.
It may be hard to raise us above 1% in sales in general, but if many Linux-exclusive gamers buy VR headsets, it would be easy to make us say 20% of VR market. That would be good for us.
We are at a point in history when we are not affected (much) by the chicken&egg problem w.r.t to VR. Not buying headsets because there are few games will only make sure this problem will become a reality for VR as well.
I would encourage people to buy headsets if I were you, Liam.
It may be hard to raise us above 1% in sales in general, but if many Linux-exclusive gamers buy VR headsets, it would be easy to make us say 20% of VR market. That would be good for us.
We are at a point in history when we are not affected (much) by the chicken&egg problem w.r.t to VR. Not buying headsets because there are few games will only make sure this problem will become a reality for VR as well.
I would encourage people to buy headsets if I were you, Liam.
Wine 3.4 released with more Vulkan support
18 Mar 2018 at 2:00 pm UTC Likes: 1
18 Mar 2018 at 2:00 pm UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: jensFeral stopping supporting Linux is in my opinion the end of AAA games on Linux.I can't say anything due to NDAs, but rest assured that that's not true.
RAD Game Tools 'Telemetry', a performance visualization system adds Linux support
13 Mar 2018 at 9:38 pm UTC
13 Mar 2018 at 9:38 pm UTC
RAD is awesome. They have a lot of middleware people rely on, and they all support Linux.
Wine 3.0 RC2 is officially available with bug fixes for Fallout 4, Far Cry 2 & 3 and more
17 Dec 2017 at 2:52 am UTC Likes: 1
17 Dec 2017 at 2:52 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: tpauToo bad that you can't influence which functions are implemented next :)You can very well influence that, by implementing it yourself ;)
Project Hospital is a full Hospital management sim coming to Linux, some of it is developed on Linux
16 Nov 2017 at 4:01 pm UTC
16 Nov 2017 at 4:01 pm UTC
Quoting: stretch611My story to the smallest details.One of the programmers has been using Unity on Linux and said how it works just fine. Hearing that, fills me with hope about the future on Linux as a development platform as well as a gaming platform.I hate to nitpick... especially on a topic that is not quite in the theme of this site... But, linux as a development environment has been strong for quite some time. I believe that I can safely say that linux is far stronger for development needs than it is for gaming needs.
I have had all my needs as a dev platform fulfilled for the last 10+ years in linux... that is what allowed me to drop windows completely. I still needed dual booting for games after I made the switch to developing full time on linux. Back then WINE was not as good as it is now, and we certainly did not have all the native titles that we do now.
Admittedly, gaming development may not have been as strong all those years, but part of that is the fact it helps a lot when the system you are coding on can execute and test the program you are writing. It can be frustrating waiting for compiles... no one wants to add the time necessary to reboot into a different OS just to test.
EDIT: All those reboots just to play a game was a huge factor to me. It weighed heavily on my personal decision not to buy all the shiny new windows titles. Especially when getting an off-hours call and having to immediately save the game I was playing (assuming I was at a point I could save) and reboot back to linux just to solve a quick problem. (Compared to now when I generally just swap out the game and leave it running in the background.)
Back then when the Humble Indie Bundle first appeared, and the games supported linux, it was a no-brainer. I was sold, and that really became the point where I never had to dual boot again.
X-Plane user data shows Linux usage holding steady
15 Nov 2017 at 9:49 pm UTC Likes: 1
15 Nov 2017 at 9:49 pm UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: wojtek88The problem is that Valve is the only big company that can push Linux gaming forward.I cannot say anything due to NDAs and stuff, but rest assured that this is not true. In fact the future of AAA games on Linux is very bright.
Desert Child, a Hoverbike racing RPG that sounds awesome is on Kickstarter, Linux support confirmed
10 Nov 2017 at 8:01 pm UTC
10 Nov 2017 at 8:01 pm UTC
There's a few things that I have to do for Linux too, which I'd rather get done right at the end of development. I hope that's okay!Right at the end of development: Everything doesn't magically just work on Linux. Huh! I guess I'll delay the Linux version, who cares.
The developer behind Nidhogg 2 has detailed some reasons why it may not come to Linux
1 Sep 2017 at 5:50 pm UTC Likes: 2
Also, duplication of .so files has more implications than just disk space. Scenario: imagine some library X is used by 20 applications. On windows, those 20 applications each have a copy of the same version of the same .dll file:
- Security: If the library fixes some bug, 20 applications (on windows with 20 different updaters) have to update that dll. We all know (on windows) that not all of them will do it, and the buggy library will end up remaining on your pc.
- File System Cache: If the library was shared between the 20 applications, then loading one application after the other would be much faster given that the same .so files are either already in RAM or likely at least in the file system cache. Each application shipping a separate copy of its .so files mean slower application start.
- Memory: Unless the OS does a byte-to-byte comparison of the whole .so files, it cannot know that the applications are using the same .so file, which means running multiple of those applications results in the same .so files loaded multiple times in RAM, resulting in higher RAM usage, as well as worse CPU cache usage.
In short, duplicate .so files is still a terrible thing now and shows no indication of getting better.
1 Sep 2017 at 5:50 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: TheSHEEEPFirst of all, those duplicates were an issue many years ago when disk space was a problem. It simply isn't any more. This is a non-issue. Games nowadays can take any amount of space from 100MB to 60+GB. A few MB more in dependencies simply will not matter.Last year I bought an SSD. It was expensive and I got a 256GB one. On windows, I consistently see about 100GB~200GB of OS+programs storage while on Linux all my OS+programs (that is everything excluding /home) takes about 20GB. So yes, that _is_ an issue still. I'm not talking just about games.
Also, duplication of .so files has more implications than just disk space. Scenario: imagine some library X is used by 20 applications. On windows, those 20 applications each have a copy of the same version of the same .dll file:
- Security: If the library fixes some bug, 20 applications (on windows with 20 different updaters) have to update that dll. We all know (on windows) that not all of them will do it, and the buggy library will end up remaining on your pc.
- File System Cache: If the library was shared between the 20 applications, then loading one application after the other would be much faster given that the same .so files are either already in RAM or likely at least in the file system cache. Each application shipping a separate copy of its .so files mean slower application start.
- Memory: Unless the OS does a byte-to-byte comparison of the whole .so files, it cannot know that the applications are using the same .so file, which means running multiple of those applications results in the same .so files loaded multiple times in RAM, resulting in higher RAM usage, as well as worse CPU cache usage.
In short, duplicate .so files is still a terrible thing now and shows no indication of getting better.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPAlso, yes that package managing stuff is nice. But only in theory, where it actually works.I'm not saying let's do this today. Just that if from the beginning things were thought of differently, we may have been in a better situation now. The solution to your "dependencies get old" argument is actually quite simple. Imagine if Debian instead of phasing out old packages on new releases, it would accumulate on top of it. Simple as that.
In practice, games (and other software) are not constantly developed and updated with latest versions of libraries. And they shouldn't! Don't change a running system.
So at some point, version X of a dependency WILL rotate out. And then users have to find custom solutions, which is annoying as hell and will cause more people to switch to Windows for the product than it will cause them to fiddle around with their system. Fiddling around is nice for us proggers, but not for average users. This has happened SO MANY TIMES with open source libs that actually are maintained by someone - and so many times more by closed source software.
So either package maintainers have to carry ancient versions of their libs around (possibly even fixing critical bugs in them still if they appear) - and with that outlook, who still wants to maintain packages "properly"? Nobody.
Or developers are forced for a life long update-my-dependencies-game, including possible API changes and whatnot. Hooray.
No, I'm sorry. This package managing stuff may have noble goals, but in practice it is a terrible crux for developers that are actually paid for their work. And it throws more than just a few stones in the way of spreading linux.