Well, they could definitely have a big, well visible section in their shop for top new linux ports. It would help us track them, it would help the porters to get awareness and it would help developers to get some budget from the management (because a linux port would not only mean 0.85-5% more sales, but also some decent marketing for all platforms).
Similar for day-1 releases. No price policies needed, just free advertising.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

While these calculations look interesting and show some kind of trend, they have even more influences of unknown factors then the ones you already discussed.
Current number of players and number of active Steam Users are probably correlated, but in no way linear.
Essentially, the conclusion that linux users are growing slower then steam itself are directly taken from the steam-survey percentage. Nothing new learned.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: cRaZy-bisCuiT

Quoting: constI really think that monitor-configuration should get part of sdl framework. Instead of selecting resolution/monitors/fs etc. in a game launcher, there should be a global tool, that can generate (priorized) config files that are used by all sdl applications.
I think of a tool similar to how arandr/xrandr work. Just super versatile.

You mean something like nVidia system settings or ATI Catalyst Control Center with their (old) proprietary drivers? Just for SDL/MESA?

Think of a tool that let's you decide the start-up settings for ALL your games that utilize SDL. Resolution, windowed/not windowed, single/multi screen, etc.. Configurations should be a prioritized list, so if your default is not supported, game will fall back to the next configuration until it finds a supported one. If it finds none, the tool is called with limiters.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I really think that monitor-configuration should get part of sdl framework. Instead of selecting resolution/monitors/fs etc. in a game launcher, there should be a global tool, that can generate (priorized) config files that are used by all sdl applications.
I think of a tool similar to how arandr/xrandr work. Just super versatile.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: adolson

Quoting: KristianIs Unity that much easier to use than all those engines(including Godot)? What is so alluring with Unity at this point?

As far as I can tell, the arguments between these two generally come down to: better/more documentation, and asset store for people who have no talent to create their own assets.

I would argue that having the source to Godot is the best documentation, but then, I've not really had any issues with the docs that are available. I think it's an excuse, rather than a reason.

For the asset store, well, Godot is getting that shortly in the 2.1 release... I hope it doesn't end up with scores of look-alike releases due to asset sharing, like I see with Unity games.

I recently tried to create a project with goddot and ran into problems here and there. Things like mouse-selection, mouse-drag etc. turned out to be just terribly complicated to do and - worse - undependable for me. Documented behaviour seemed broken.
Went on to unity, which I already knew from several older games, and recreated the code of several weeks of free-time programming with goddot in some days. In a strong typed language, which I very much prefer. Yes, knowing the engine was helpful, but overall it was all just way more straightforward and more dependable.
The asset store is not only for assets. I create all assets myself, still I search it to find useful stuff there. There are damn useful librarys, like photon networking, that you will completely miss out with goddot.
With Unity, I have to test my linux build on a regular basis, because it breaks just so easily. But that's about all I have to really care about and if it works, it works.
Don't get me wrong, I find goddot very sympathic It also holds some paradigmas that would be damn useful for my project, like it's filesystem treatment is just so much more flexible. I will come back to try it again in a year or so, but telling it was on par with unity just yet is just not true.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: wojtek88

Quoting: TheBossVulkan in Talos already beats OpenGL, so actually it would be nice to have it.

I am eager to test it. It will be great to have better performance in Talos Principle.

But wait... I have 540m gt card. I won't be able to use Vulkan before hardware update. Bummer...

NVIDIA VP urges people to show demand. Seeing how many people still run or even buy 550ti's, I'd say: make some noise.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Maelrane

Quoting: constReally, if I was a consultant for a publisher and monitored this community, I'd recommend them to never announce anything.

Actually I'd consider this a good practice for things that are not set in stone. Not exclusively for games though :)

Sure, but that's only one part of the medal.
Announcements create attention, attention creates sales.
The gaming industry works that way, games are announced as early as possible. When the Arkham linux port was announced, they probably still assumed the problems with the windows port could be solved. Complex software problems can occur and business decisions have to be revised at times. This time we are not even forced to decide with our wallet.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

We learn our lessons - a port is there when it's there. We as a community need resources to recommend existing ports of good games and warn about compatibility issues.

There's nothing good coming from flaming about it.
Really, a few years ago we would have been grateful to them for even considering a port. With all the rumble this community creates on cancelled or delayed ports, we don't leave the best impression. It's obvious a port would have been an enormous endeavour or disaster. It would probably have been the latter, so instead of poking about no port, we would have flamed about the bad performance.
Really, if I was a consultant for a publisher and monitored this community, I'd recommend them to never announce anything. Even that might not be enough, as tinkering in a steam-repo is almost considered an announcement anyway.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Just because no one named it here, yet: Brutal Legend, fantastic game.

I feel really deep sympathy for DF, they were the first bigger player to really support linux.
Without them, icculus and humble, linux gaming would have been in a much poorer state when valve started to think about a linux client and who knows if they would have taken this endevour then.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

We really have lost scope since SteamOS was announced. In the beginning, "everyone" agreed

1. We, as Linux gamers, can be glad for each game released, especially if a new genre gets attention (hack, we didn't have any decent, modern RTS or CityBuilder before. We begged developers to deliver untested builds, if they happend to use middleware we knew would run. We begged developers to consider a port at all and celebrated every studio stating minimal interest...)

2. SteamOS will be a long-term-adventure for Valve if it's supposed to go ahead. The catalogue won't be comparable to Windows for the next years, the interface not as polished as consoles. But if Valve keeps momentum and interest by developers, the system might be in an outstanding place when the next console generation joins in with a 20-50 games catalogue.

All in all, it went way better then anyone of us would have guessed two years back, didn't it?

But reading here and on reddit, it seems all expectiations have grown ridiculously. It's still way to early for all the divaism we see in the community (blaming studios for not delivering ports in time or delivering faulty updates, if even for hours. We see flamewars for similar things waaaay to regularly). And on the other side repeating the list of most desirable games again and again in diverse "what's still missing" threads. We should concentrate on developing a productive community and push the games we have and likes to our friends. *my opinion*

View this comment - View article - View full comments