Quoting: ElectricPrismIs there any mechanical advantage to Civ 6 vs 5?

It seems like 5 has advanced tuned mechanics and content whereas 6 is new and full of bugs like no cross platform multiplayer.

Its just that newer isnt always better.

Age of Empires 2 vs 3 are miles apart and 2 dominates 3 in executing play style mechanics flawlessly.

Sometimes a fork should not be a spork and a spoon should just be a soon.

As I like to describe is, Civ 5 is polished but sterile, while Civ 6 is rough but vibrant. While Civ 5 benefits from patches and expansions, I find the overall Civ 6 experience to be better. The systems are more interesting, and the decisions you make turn to turn are more engaging. Plus I love the quality-of-life improvements like limited-use workers which reduces unit clutter, and the art style is actually pretty nice once you start interacting with it, and I say that as someone who hated the early screenshots!

Yes, the AI needs some work (or so I hear), but even in its current state, I think Civ 6 is a complete and really fun game. The biggest problem with the Linux version is terrible performance. I hover around 20FPS on a busy map, which is fine for a turn-based game, and it remains generally responsive, but my system is just below the recommended specs, so I expect better performance. This is all on Aspyr who is aware of the problem, so we'll see if they do anything about it.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP...the series' biggest shortcomings - no AI diplomacy making single player almost entirely useless

Oh dear... perhaps I should remove it from my wishlist.

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I've had Neverwinter Nights installed on my system for over a decade. I remember the installation process for Linux was a bit convoluted requiring you to manually copy some files from the CD, but it always ran well. I haven't played the game in years, though. I wonder if it will still run on my current distro? Now I'm curious.

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Sounds awesome, and as usual, the patch offers a lot of meaty content.

If Paradox ever makes Crusader Kings 3, I have no idea how they're going to top CK2 plus all of its expansions.

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Quoting: silmeth...won’t pay for the DOS demakes though. ;-)

Yep. The DOS version is pretty crap compared to the original.

I wonder if there is a market for a proper remake with modern graphics?

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GOL readers who regularly play X-Plane, what keeps you coming back?

I simply find it relaxing and rewarding to navigate cross country from one airport to another and then successfully land at my destination. Not to mention that X-Plane version 11 is the most accurate and gorgeous consumer flight sim ever released.

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So what exactly do you do? Is there a story or some kind of purpose? Or is it just a random sandbox game?

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I wonder if there will be a lower-priced upgrade for people who already own the original game?

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: Kimyrielle

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 daysz

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.

There was never really a technical hurdle to supporting Linux. We've had OpenGL for years, and id Software's ports and Epic's experiment with Unreal Tournament 2004 proved a long time ago that Linux was more than capable of running AAA games. The real problem was, and still is, market share, and I'm a little concerned that if Valve ever expressed any lack of confidence in the Linux platform that a lot of developers would simply walk away.

Depends what you mean by technical hurdle. I'd agree that since forever it's been probably as easy to develop a game for Linux (alone) as for Windows (alone). But it was always much harder to develop for more than one platform than for one platform, no matter which additional platform you're talking about. And since for games, "one platform" meant Windows . . .
I agree with Kimyrielle that the big change is support for Linux on the major game engines. For a really big chunk of the game market from most of the indies up through some fairly major outfits, that lowered the cost of publishing games cross-platform so that the break-even point happens at a much smaller market share. That one factor makes releasing for Linux even at its current market share financially viable, maybe even closing on uncontroversial, if you're using one of those engines. There have been other increments as well. Vulkan may prove to be another again, as well as advances in packaging--Snaps and whatnot--and the move to Wayland. But the engines were the big one.
So if Valve walked away it would obviously not be a good thing, but the situation would be IMO very different from how things were pre-Steam. Developer assumptions are different now, and there are probably more developers with some idea how to build a game with Linux in mind, but above all it's simply a lot cheaper and easier to make games with Linux as one of the release platforms.

The other question of course is, how likely is Valve to walk away? But the question underneath that is, how likely is Microsoft to convincingly not be covetous of Valve's market? How likely is Microsoft to abandon things like introducing and gradually integrating app stores in Windows and trying to get games to be sold there rather than on Steam? I'd say fairly unlikely; that's a lot of revenue and control MS would be leaving in an outside third party's hands when they have a shot at getting it themselves. And it's even more unlikely that they'd be able to not only abandon the idea of doing that, but also convince Valve that there's no threat of them ever doing that. Companies, much less Microsoft, don't permanently abandon potential large revenue streams.
So my expectation is that, for as long as MS don't make any serious moves, Valve will play Linux-related stuff like now--quietly simmering on the back burner, ready to be brought to a boil when necessary.

Crystal balls are notoriously inaccurate, though. So I don't discount the worry--who knows what could happen? But Linux is on those game engines now. Things are a bit different.

All good points. I don't mind conceding that I'm probably being a bit paranoid.

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Quoting: Kimyrielle

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 daysz

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.

There was never really a technical hurdle to supporting Linux. We've had OpenGL for years, and id Software's ports and Epic's experiment with Unreal Tournament 2004 proved a long time ago that Linux was more than capable of running AAA games. The real problem was, and still is, market share, and I'm a little concerned that if Valve ever expressed any lack of confidence in the Linux platform that a lot of developers would simply walk away.

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