G-Sync is indeed supported but there might be quirks. You have to make sure you have flipping enabled in nvidia-settings AND that it actually works. There's a visual API indicator added in the 4xx driver and it reports if the GPU 'FLIP's or 'BLIT's. Flipping is required for V-Sync and G-Sync, if you only have blit (the back buffer is copied to the screen) you won't have them. I didn't even know I have this issue as V-Sync has been always "broken" for me. Turned out, Awesome WM and NVIDIA's proprietary driver don't get together that well and for all of this to work I need to use -no-argb flag for Awesome.

You have to make sure the game window covers the whole Xorg screen or else you'll get no flipping. If there's even one pixel that doesn't belong to the same application, flipping turns off (and any syncing with it). That means if you have more than one monitor and the desktop is spanning across them you're likely left with blit only. On Windows there's an "exclusive fullscreen mode" and from what I heard it turns off other displays while the game is running and active. On Linux maybe compositing would help as it's essentially a big window that draws the actual windows inside of it so it can be flipped. YMMV as always.

I also have a very specific bug [External Link] related to network namespaces (I doubt many people would hit it). Quite surprisingly, Arthur Huillet found me on IRC and we had a productive chat about this issue, I hope it will be fixed one day. For now I'm using that kernel hack I did.

Other than that G-Sync works great. No tearing, perfect response time, just what games should look like. The downside is its price (and of course being NVIDIA-only tech but that's not an issue for me), my monitor is about 1.75x more expensive than a freesync analog with similar specs.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: BrisseThis one surprised me a bit...

1. Performance. Vulkan on linux (driver wise) is...not very mature.

...but perhaps this explains it...

No idea. I’ll try to find to find out. I’m a total Linux novice myself.

...no offence intended.

I read it as "our engine compiled and is working but not on par with the Windows version". They still need to tweak it to work better on Linux and that might be because of the driver behaving differently (not exactly worse). I'm sad anyway every time an abstraction leaks, in this case the driver/Vulkan abstraction. If you thinkg about it, most of the bad things in our world happen due to some interface not being sufficiently abstract from the implementation.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

An unlikely but still possible outcome of this might be the Linux share on Steam rising. I don't think many players would ditch Steam in favor of Epic's store but some of them might do. The only ones who can't do that are we, Linux gamers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Yeah, try it! Btw, the game's original Russian name is "Orderlies of Dungeons" and the planet is called not Alcatraz but "Seaman's Silence [External Link]" (that's the name of a famous detention center in Moscow). Just to give a couple of translation discrepancy examples, and I'm pretty sure a lot of wordplay was also replaced with something more familiar to the western players. It's the same for me when I compare the Russian translation to the original in many games, it looks and sounds wrong, poor or funny.

Metro should be much better because it doesn't have this many culture references (primarily because not much of it left and people are focused on surviving), also it's a shooter, not an RPG and it doesn't have much humor if any at all.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: rkfgReminds me of Wasteland 2 a lot (visually) and a bit of Planet Alcatraz (an old Win-only atmospheric and very Russian game so I wouldn't recommend it to non-natives even though it worked perfectly on Wine years ago). I'm very happy to see such a successful project from my fellow compatriots, especially after the big Insomnia letdown. These guys did a proper Early Access and it helped them to iron out the bugs before the release, that's how it should be. I'm not a fan of story-driven games going through Early Access because it's like getting spoilers so I'm grateful to those who helped to test the game. A sure buy on release for me.

Confused a bit about that statement.
I recall touching Planet Alcatraz a bit back in the day.
What makes it "very Russian" ? Poor translation ?

It has a huge amount of Russian culture code in it. The poor translation of course can't carry it well. The main prison theme (that's dear to many Russians as the whole country is like a bit relaxed Gulag), the jokes, stereotypical characters and folklore references, all is probably lost in translation. The Western players could be triggered by some casual (not bigoted) racism, sexism, homophobia etc. all of which is pretty common in Russia and treated with humor.

The graphics are dated of course but the ambient music should still be nice and the gameplay isn't bad at all.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Reminds me of Wasteland 2 a lot (visually) and a bit of Planet Alcatraz (an old Win-only atmospheric and very Russian game so I wouldn't recommend it to non-natives even though it worked perfectly on Wine years ago). I'm very happy to see such a successful project from my fellow compatriots, especially after the big Insomnia letdown. These guys did a proper Early Access and it helped them to iron out the bugs before the release, that's how it should be. I'm not a fan of story-driven games going through Early Access because it's like getting spoilers so I'm grateful to those who helped to test the game. A sure buy on release for me.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I take a healthy dose of scepticism any time a developer says something like that, as it rarely ends up being true.

This. However, it's easy to verify the claim by just asking "how is your game going to compete with Cities: Skylines?" as it's arguably the best (most complex and popular) city simulator to date. There's also the perceived complexity aspect: it doesn't matter how detailed the simulation is if the player doesn't see it, can't affect it and can't use it to their advantage. I.e. if it seems random, it is random. If it looks simple, it is simple. Anyway, here's hope it'll be good!
EDIT: aaaand it's actually asked already [External Link]! Looks like the developer goes for more micromanagement. This really depends on the implementation, it might be a chore to manage or an exciting feature that "makes the game". Another hope, it's the latter.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: LionheartWhat I need to know right now, whether the game will still be full of fun, and enjoyable if you just play the base game, and my hands are itching so much to buy, and I'm afraid I'll be hugely disappointed, and I need some insight from those who played it.

I guess you'll be fine. According to this [External Link], you'll get 'two pre-made "base" decks of 54 cards each ("5 heroes, 9 items, and 40 other cards") and 10 sealed packs of cards, which each include 12 random cards, one of which is guaranteed to be "rare."'. I think it's quite a lot of cards considering the game only has about 300 so far so you'll have about 54*2+12*10 == 228 tops (actually slightly less because of inevitable duplicates).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: jardonI think this game looks sweet. I've always liked the look and feel of Dota but I hate mobas so I've never been able to enjoy it. As someone who's played magic quite a bit, I'm really looking forward to playing.

You're quoting my exact thoughts. Dota looks rad and it's fun to watch The International but it requires a lot of different skills and memory to remember all those abilities, items, spells, synergy, tactics etc. Card games usually have a lot of strategical freedom but much less tactical freedom. I.e. you can try many deck builds before playing but as you start it's pleasantly limited in what you can do at each turn. I can wrap my mind around that and enjoy the game.

As an example, instead of hundreds of items in the store I can only choose from 3 each round. Instead of 4 hero abilities I only have one (if I understood it correctly) + I can add the equipment I buy. And it's not 6 + 3 slots but just 3 and the old items are discarded when replaced. You still have a lot of options but you won't be as confused and you won't need to think and act as fast as in mobas. I think it's great. I consider Artifact a Dota for the older generation, slower pace, more strategy, still fun and rewarding.

And also, the paywall is really nice. I can afford it (in fact, I just preordered it) but this will put away those people from the Dota community. Yeah, that kind of people that Dota is famous for. I guess not many would pay $20 without any regional discounts to troll, whine and insult others. So far so good.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

They have just added the Linux and Mac support. 2 hours ago, to be precise.

View this comment - View article - View full comments