I still consider NWN the best computer game ever made. Only reason why I am not playing it anymore is the dated looks. If they can polish them enough to look not totally out of place on a 2017 PC, I can see me playing it a lot again. I think having the editor is a must, though. The game was great because it was essentially a $50 RPG game engine people could make their own games with. The official campaign isn't' all that good, though.

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I love the alternate history scenarios. I just wish the AI would sometimes pick alternate routes for countries it is playing, too. Playing as England, and kicking Soviet butt at the side of a democratic Germany? That would be fun!

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Quoting: johndoe86xLinux needs three things to succeed as a competitive gaming platform.

It needs -something- over Windows, not necessarily any of the features you mentioned. But something. A unique selling point. And unfortunately, "freedom" won't cut it. People at large don't mind the NSA reading their email and them getting filmed by 1,000 different CCTV cameras a day. They don't care about Windows 10 being unfree and spyware, either. Sad, but true.

A better performance than Windows across the board would definitely help getting us some attention. But as long as most games are designed to run on Windows and ported to Linux as an afterthought, this will be not too easy to achieve.

Btw. Installing Windows is just as painful or easy as Linux. The point is that it doesn't matter, as nobody has to install Windows. It comes pre-installed on close to 100% of all PCs sold on Earth, after all. This is the exact reason why we need to achieve a -better-, not equal experience for gaming on Linux. Why else would a Windows user switch from something that they already have and works for them?

It's really the same with SteamOS vs Ubuntu. SteamOS doesn't offer anything tangible over Ubuntu (or any other major distro) at this point, so why would anyone switch? It's not a better gaming platform than Ubuntu by any stretch of imagination.

I don't think we necessarily need EA or Ubisoft on board, though. My personal indifference about them and their games aside, but for console users it is totally normal NOT to have access to games that are exclusives for other consoles. They accept that. We don't need to have 100% of all publishers on Linux, either. We DO need a reasonable amount of AAA games though, and we still have painfully little (although there has been some slow progress in the past two years).

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Quoting: Mountain ManMy question is, is there enough momentum in the Linux gaming market for developers to continue supporting Linux in the event that Valve gets bored and kills off their grand experiment? That's my primary concern at the moment, that we're almost entirely dependent on Valve and Steam for the majority of our games, and if Valve goes away then we're going to be right back where we were five-years ago with a niche market that only a handful of independent developers even bother to support.

I guess the critical moment was when all major engine creators added Linux support to their products that make it (comparatively) easy to publish cross-platform. There is barely any reason NOT to support Linux these days.

Let's be honest, as a game developer/publisher, Valve has been a non-factor for a while now, so if they chose to stop porting games to Linux, really, who'd notice? And Steam Machines never picked up any steam to begin with. Linux gaming has grown without them just nicely.

No, their great contribution is and was porting the Steam client to Linux in the first place, opening a mainstream publishing channel for developers on Linux for the first time ever. That deed is done and time won't get rolled back on that. The biggest help we're getting from Valve these days is them getting involved in improving Linux drivers and components for gaming. Which should hopefully drive down Linux related support costs and performance issues, which is the LAST sound reason larger studios still have not to publish on Linux.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: FredOWhile the number of Chinese users is exploding on Steam, Gabe Newell has quietly moved into the top 100 rich list in the U.S :whistle:

That's pretty amazing considering his company doesn't seem to finish off many of their projects :D

They do. Just many of us won't live long enough to see them completed.

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Quoting: stud68

Quoting: KimyrielleHas anyone tried to run ESO or Fallout 4 with the newer WINE releases?

Playing ESO now on WINE 2.19 staging.
With AMD R9 290x and works pretty flawless.

Just tried it with 2.19 staging. The launcher works just fine, but the game doesn't start up (hangs on a black screen). Did you install any other components to get it to run?

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Has anyone tried to run ESO or Fallout 4 with the newer WINE releases?

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I'd prefer new gameplay mechanics over assets that could for the most part also have been added by mods, but I am going to get the DLC anyway. This game is the best city builder ever made and I love it how they keep adding to it.

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Quoting: ColomboAnd First person view is much better.

Except when you have to throw up after 5 minutes of playing a first person game.

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If they pull off the over the shoulder cam, I might be able to play Morrowind after all.

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