I've got a stupid question: Does the Steam version of this game include a 64bit binary?

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Good to see. This will help the Unity developers get rid of some nasty boilerplate code maintenance work (directly dealing with X11 can be a huge PITA...).
Said boilerplate code has already caused issues previously (one example being the nasty window handling bugs of KSP 1.1), so having SDL take care of it will definitely be an improvement.

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Or, more mundane, money. They'll have a certain budget available, and given that in software development one has to expect unexpected issues, they might still be investigating if they have enough money (what directly translates into time) available to do a high quality port.

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There's one thing that I'd really like in case we won't see a port:
A long and detailed explanation why porting this game would not be worth the effort.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for justification by Aspyr, as (not?) making the port is their and their business partner's decision. I'm just curious if there are technical reasons, what those technical reasons are, and if the community can do something about them (think: fix certain bugs in the open source graphics drivers, work on missing GL extensions,...). Sadly though, I'm pretty certain that Aspyr will not be able to provide this information due to NDAs...

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Yep, as a game developer I can confirm that middleware can be a showstopper when it comes to portability. We use a special FX software which only supports Windows and (supposedly, but not really) Mac for our current Unity-project.
The consequence: Chances for a Linux version are nearly zero unless said middleware gets Linux support, and unless its horrendous Mac bugs are fixed, Mac support is on hold as well...

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I've been playing the testing version for some time, and maybe can clear a few things up:
Your primary resource is food, your secondary resource is animal lifespan, and your tertiary resource are genes.
For every action (gathering, fighting, moving, uncovering tiles, mating,...) that any animal takes you'll need one food unit. If you don't have enough food, the lifespan of said animal will be reduced instead, just as if the animal would have been harmed in a fight.
There are two food sources: gathering and hunting. Depending on the genes an animal has, it can be better suited for either of those tasks (or just be bad or great at both...). You'll want your best suited animals do the gathering/hunting, as they will output more food units per invested food unit. Other traits help your animals defend the herd from predators (or even hunt those fearsome carnivores).
In order to have the best chances of survival you'll want to breed animals with useful genes, but you'll have to be careful about the immune system genes, as having a small variety of those will make your herd susceptible to disease.
While talking about disease: The terrain has effects. Moving through swamp has an increased chance of your animals getting sick (reducing their lifespan).

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I like the art style. It reminds me of one of my old time favorites: Legend of Kyrandia 2: The Hand of Fate [External Link] (which, by the way, is also running nicely on Linux via ScummVM).

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@tripy:
I misunderstood you, as I thought you meant space exploration. In that case KSP is definitely not the game for you, as the KSP planets don't offer any lore, apart from a few hard to find easter eggs. They are basically what most planets in real life are: gigantic rocks, devoid of any life (except Laythee, which likely has some algae or similar, as it has free oxygen...). The only exploration you can do in KSP is find out how the dunes behind the next dune look like, and of course exploring the physics of space-flight.

@nepo:
Have you watched the video? It literally sounds like No Man's Sky - I guess the sound effects are creative commons or something...

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Quoting: tripyAaaand I pulled the trigger. Not for the close alpha tough. No time for it now, and I don't want to spoil my exploration craving with alpha right now.
I mean, I'm waiting for so long for an exploration game (space/sci-fi themed preferably) that I can run without re-installing windows, that I feel I can wait a few more months.

What about Kerbal Space Program?

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I've been playing this game a lot, mainly because I love the movie references (the NPCs in the building all are based on movie characters, the test-audience often comes up with quotes from the currently running movie, the actors you can hire are appropriately named and have matching skill sets,...).
This game has one negative (but not unrealistic) point though that hasn't been mentioned in the article: One needs to accumulate fame points in order to buy upgrades, which one needs to earn more fame points. This means, that there's a positive feedback loop. The player who first earns enough fame to upgrade their antenna network (what doesn't really take long and brings a huge boost in the number of potential viewers) has an advantage over all other players (as the channel with the highest total number of viewers will earn one fame point more than all competitors), making it extremely hard for them to catch up (or even impossible, if the second player to upgrade needs more than a few hours of ingame-time to do so). So, even though a game might run for several ingame-weeks, often it's already clear who is going to win after a few ingame-days.

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