Patreon Logo Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal Logo PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by MisterPaytwick
Lumencraft blends top-down shooting, Tower Defense and a destructible environment
14 Apr 2022 at 3:56 pm UTC

Played the demo few months back.

On the downside: laggy (tho my rig is starting to show its age), especially when big waves or massive lava leaked everywhere. The demo is too short. And the mechanics are definitely (in the demo) on the lighter side. and the weapons felt a bit weak.

Guess with my very picky habits that's a solid score nonetheless, because get me right: I bloody enjoyed my time playing that demo. With neat points like high-ground being a thing, having to print ammunition and so on. The digging was a bit slow tho. But both guns and digging being balance issues, time will tell what to do with those issues.

I remember seeing Calinou covers it on godotengine.org, IIRC it was prompted me to grab the demo. I really hope they can address some of the performances issues, I really want to play this.

Edit: Calinou linked his godotengine post

War for the Overworld gets a surprise graphics upgrade, also sees a big discount
13 Apr 2022 at 12:04 pm UTC

Back when I got it, during EA, the game performances were very bad on my rig. At least, it's a good reason to get back into that game.

Liked the game overall even back then, tho there were missing bits (not necessarily bits that DK had), but it was EA. Time to take the plunge I guess.

Meifumado is an action game set in a post-apocalyptic world inspired by Japan
4 Apr 2022 at 1:58 pm UTC

The blood spraying around like a geyser kind of remind me of After The Rain (a movie based on a Kurosawa script).

Looks gorgerous, and I'm a sucker for things giving some Chambara vibes.

I do hope that the game dig on the mechanical focus (at least partly) that FromSoftware (Dark Souls) or Ska Studio (Salt And Sanctuary, such this title tagged along FromSoftware) brought back into mainstream gaming. Tho, if they do something else, it may very interesting. Whitelisted at least, I'll keep an eye on this.

Guess such a game will make me whip out my best impression of Mifune...

Europa Universalis IV Complete Collection available on Humble Bundle
24 Mar 2022 at 2:47 pm UTC Likes: 2

13'3 may be kind of small still. EUIV is fine, but the bundle is needed to get into it now. Classic Paradox.

Tho, I'd like to kind of modulate your words here, Liam:

Paradox has a good history of Linux support too, with this being available as a native Linux port.
Sometimes. For at least 4 years (from the top of my head, I could dig into my message over the Paradox forums and all to be more accurate), EUIV was broken for any cross-play multi for Linux users (they'd desync less than a minute into the game, as the underlaying clock system was broken for that much time)

Paradox support was "meh" to put it mildly here. They do try to support Linux well, and overall it is good. But here? EUIV was broken, yet HoI4 and Stellaris were patched for that very bug at most a year after it first appeared.

Home Wind is a free minimalist, relaxing and cozy city builder
19 Mar 2022 at 2:35 pm UTC

Look neat, will keep it in sight. A chill game is really something needed oh so often. So things could change first (Caesar way of tiering buildings maybe? It doesn't look like it for now from the trailer, tho I could be wrong) to really get me into this but this is fine.

Bungie has more to say on Destiny 2 for Steam Deck and it's still a no
5 Mar 2022 at 1:55 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Dribbleondo
Quoting: ZlopezThey wouldn't have those problems if they just used anti-cheat on server side and strip it from client side.
This is a good read if you're at all interested. [External Link]
There is still the possibility to put _some_ parts of the game into the server, such as many resolutions, and there is an extra analysis to do on what we give back. To an extrem, we would have to fight back two issues tho: predictive resolution can't be trusted at all, so we have the issue of Quake 1 networking all over again. We would also have to figure out what people can figure out too from what is send back.

One of the plainest example of this issue is Dota's Pudge. Back in 2012, Pudge's ultimate on cast would play a sound that would be modulated by it's position. Well, people figured that one can use basic trigonometry to figure out the Doppler's Effect modulation.

One of the biggest thing to accept would be that many aspect would require really _not knowing_ the state of the game as it happens until required. And to cut off the "gravy" that can give away things.

Strictly speaking tho, the whole thing is a design issue first and foremost. And it's likely impossible to figure a great design that simply make the anti-cheat void. On the other hand, one ought to accept and acknowledge the truth: if such design can't be made, then one can't trust either the anti-cheat doing it's work in a reliable way (bugs and corrupted files would be the first false flags that would be raised), if one can't trust the anti-cheat, one has to accept that the whole "competitiveness for everyone" is impossible to assure, no matter how deep one can bury one's anticheat.

Because of this, and this can be simply figured out when looking at pro teams: the process to get people in some aspect of competitive scenes (from subbing to whatever basically) is vouching.

So we are still going back to human-backed interactions and reviews. Either people ought to stop bullshitting themselves that a purely technical solution exist, and if they do, they ought to voice against such bullshittery argument, or they fully embrace it and go the final miles and also ask to make the whole joining a scene thing automatic too.

Once that scene crash and burn to ashes, maybe it will call back people to reality about automatic technical solutions. From there they may even have a far better look at anti-cheats.

---------------------------------------

Quoting: ElamanOpiskelijaAnti-cheat?
Luxury, I say.
Back in the old days, we had to play against hackers all the time, and win anyway.
Let's be honest here. Back in 2000 I was managing a clan in a Quake3 full conversion. A game server and a banlist.

And what I can see is that many people don't trust the anti-cheat system (be good at a game and people will shout "cheater" anyway, don't they).

So while anti-cheat is useful, it requires human intervention anyway (beyond innocent until proven guilty, simply because automated anti-cheat still miss a lot of things).

And yet, we haven't bought back per-server, trusted users managed ban list. Don't get me wrong, there was issues with the thing back in the day, the centralization of the systems of games would allow us to actually put together a review system combined with a flagging system.

Let's take note that Counter Strike and Dota now (since a bit) leverage their communities of trusted users to actually not only accept reports but also review automated reports (noticeable in Dota as a classic, human made report will have a number of markers (point where someone got reported), while any part flagged as suspicious by the automated system will simply put oh so many markers (going from like up to 16 for human reports to 20 in a single part of the report))

Just to say, at the end of the day, it isn't even an AI backed anti-cheat system alone (ie CounterStrike has this) that is going to solve the issue __enough__, and human intervention is always going to be mandatory (catching edge cases, figuring out rage reports, etc...)

---------------------------------------

At the end, Bungie can choose what they want, but those companies so adamant about competitive integrity (or preserving their PvP and PvE) are bullshitting people, simply because such integrity can't be automised, and the system to integrate the community in the process isn't built into the game (hence it's the same as simply rejecting the community strength here). No matter how deep one can bury their anti-cheat, even in enclaves like SGX, nothing ensure _enough_ to make them much more worthy, like they dig even further into the softwares.

The whole thing simply take away user abilities for _not good enough reasons_ within the implementation. Especially since we even saw people still cheat in super high competitive games, even at pro events...

And before people call me whatever: Anti-cheats are fine until they argue them digging their claws into _your_ system is for your competitiveness, then they are bullshitting. Sadly to make such a point, accepting community review would mean accepting the tool isn't good enough. One can do it and it'll improve the quality of the anti-cheat system, or one can reject it and stick to digging deeper into people systems. What they now need to do is convince people it's legitimate, while we still don't even have a look at the sources.

And this is before acknowledging that cheating is a _business_ nowadays. We do open source security because the Kerckhoffs's principle is true. We should have a similar stance on cheating, as they are far more akin than what people seems to get.

ABRISS is a game of deliberate total destruction and it looks brill
16 Feb 2022 at 2:01 pm UTC

It remind me why I'm so pissed at that German teacher that tore off my will to learn German . But at the same time, I fear it fall into the Besiege issue for me: great fun for a bit, then it fall off the radar.

Unlike Besiege, it may be really complete even without mods, or at least I hope so. Besiege issue on that was that installing mods, at least when I tried, was simply proton or nothing. And I couldn't be assed about that then.

Quoting: riidomVisuals remind me a bit of Nihei's "Blame!". Would love to see more games with that "abandoned mega-architecture" style. Or, as said in the article, "brutalist" fits well too.
I'd still put a world in-between those. Brutalist architecture may now be has-been, but it's a very well known style. Nihei's works always felt a bit beyond that for me. In the way, it doesn't try to radiate power in and of itself. I'd love to see more (possibly Nihei) inspired mega-structures in games tho.

I'm nitpicking a bit, but I just think it's not digging really Nihei's works. Example, it lack any kind of swarm basically rebuilding as you destroy or those kind of things. Nihei has this part were the structure is almost alive, it's a hive of a kind. But man, it'd be great fun if they actually did that extra mile.

Damn, now you got me hoping for games in those mega-structures.

Space station management in IXION sure looks shiny in the first gameplay trailer
16 Feb 2022 at 1:36 pm UTC

Quoting: EldeberenLooks very much like Helium Rain [External Link] (even in the world map). I'll keep an eye on it :)
Not sold on that, I feel it may be akin to say that Baldur's Gate and Warcraft being both fantasy are the same. Tho I'm very interested.

Tho this VOHLE thing may sadly hint at being rather soft-ish on the sci-fi side, but it'd be interesting to see where it goes. But the game does look appealing nonetheless.

Eggnut decide not to bring Backbone to Linux officially
11 Feb 2022 at 10:57 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: GuestWhile it seems you're rather emotional on the subject, do you have any evidence that they didn't look up anything, didn't try anything?
Indeed I don't have evidence on it, on the other hand, they don't show or say anything pointing out that they did try.

The issue here is that until they do, what can we trust? The Prologue _did_ work, then nothing they develop with their main target in mind (absolutely fair), and seemingly out of luck, they find out it's not running on Linux. Because if at no point somebody tried to export and see how it went, either they didn't at any point tried and we can cast doubt on them giving a shit (we have to keep in mind it's in the campaign description, it's supposed to have been thought out enough and be something to deliver).

If they did, why don't they put some meat on the infos. People don't like being bullshitted, but people that are invested in something are likely to like even less to be kept in the dark if there is a reason.

Note on this, that I'm likely to be unfair, but it's yet again devs coming with "linux support" campaign, doing nothing for months on that platform and then dropping it because "it's too hard".

Well, fuck me side way if I'm supposed to be all nice and dandy when people endlessly do that and actively harm devs that really do their homework (See any point above calling out the thing because it was on Kickstart, as if it was a cardinal sin in and of itself). If they give no proof they tried, I'll have to assume they didn't. "Don't bag them with bad devs!", well, they can prove they aren't, don't they have development roadmaps, plannings and so on?

They are actively working to give enough of a bad reputation to devs. It's akin to accepting things like Fallout76-tier buggy release state, Assassin's Creed Origin-tier of DRM shitting in your meal, crunch as normal, NFTs and so on. At some point, to set yourself aside of the bad bunch, you got to show you do care about who you are and what you do.

Quoting: GuestIt is also funny how they admit that they won't port it to linux because they want to develop the next game instead.
Great move, keep up the good work.
Honestly, it's better for everybody if they just straight up acknowledge they can't over doing what they just did. And again Wine is a bandaid, not a solution for whatever the original plan was, because it's oh so brittle and supporting it is less likely and far less sane than supporting a distro or two (Debian / Ubuntu and Fedora? Good follow up on either, they work fine).

Quoting: PhlebiacMoebius
Isn't it a Zachotronic game? They have a good support of native Linux. And while I really like what they do, I won't buy one of their games until it has native support. On the other hand, they show it's possible.

Quoting: EikeUnfortunately, there's Linux gamers who are propagating the very same, like "Just press the f***ing export button!!!!1!11!eleven!"
Well part of this is also because if you stick to the tools that support cross-platform within a game engine that support cross-platform, much of the work is done by the software. It's like 90% of the reasons OSes exist as they do today (abstracting hardware), or Game Engine (abstracting OSes). Now, if you are to use the PAULA chip, forcefully talking to it directly, you won't ever talk to a Yamaha YM2149F chip that way (PAULA is the Amiga sound chip, YM2149F is the Atari ST one).

Expecting otherwise isn't just a mistake, it's dumb, or absolutely disregarding the specs.

If one can't stick to that point, one can't blame the reason that Game Engines do just that (abstracting OSes) and people see that. Of course, it's within the fact there is always platform-specific bugs within a Game Engine (because it's a piece of software, making it bug-less would such a long-term goal it's impossible), but this isn't 1990's and porting a game doesn't mean rewriting whole parts of the game for that. Or do we have to look at Doom's history to see it's still possible to do so with your own game engine through keeping the caveat in mind? This isn't easy, true, but if you intent to promise something and not be called a bullshitter, you have to look it up first to see if you are _able_ to do it.

Saying "We don't know, let us check", then going "We can't, because we lack people with the know-how or time or money, yada yada" would simply let people move on and find some other game. There people

Eggnut decide not to bring Backbone to Linux officially
10 Feb 2022 at 4:01 pm UTC Likes: 3

PR wise, best move.

Reality? Dick move still.

Promising something, under-delivering it and waving a refund as some basic move to do then? They didn't fucking look up anything, neither before, nor during the development. No literature, no anything. Then they develop on a single platform and hold and behold, it ain't fucking working cross-platform.

What kind of monkeys do it take to type out such a storyline?

No. Wine is, yet again, not a solution, it's a possible temporary fix that'll ship it's own bugs (that the devs can't really address without getting in wine, hence it's worst than native on this side), performances issues and so on.

It's a short term solution that, if it doesn't bring enough people in, may backfire by misplacing efforts when it comes to actual, long-term, healthier and simpler solutions (including for the devs, as native doesn't add in layers of complexity and issues, and organisations)

And real support for a wine port for a company will most likely include a contract with CodeWeavers. And here we go again, the whole "it's expensive, it's slow, yada yada". Funny isn't it how it may actually not be a fix... Because if you don't, you go community support only, pure wine, you may not get the fixes you need when you need them. Another impossible situation for a company.

Let's say Proton too, disregarding the fact Valve may simply take out the version from their platform -yes, and when it happen and the only version that reliably did make a game run smoothly and out of the box is terminated, then you are just screwed... Again, all over again...- And no, compiling for oneself isn't a user task, so again, not pushing the right way to make the whole thing healthier long term...

At the end of the day, the support issue here is shifted and out of control for the devs, but also bring in tons, fucking metric tons of issues that add layers to the mess, Wine isn't, can't be, and will never be a real solution. Period.

This whole "what about wine" now dead in the water as it's supposed to be for anything that promise a native port (because issues all over the place), or going long-term, can we address another issue here: this is a dick move.

I used to know a bit the dev from Song of Myrne, talked to him about the effects of being on Steam's front page and such. Put yourself into his shoes for a minute: he did solo dev a few games, all cross-platform, all 2D just fine. Day 0 Linux support and so on. But all in all, he did the job, from start to finish.

Now imagine any dev of that kind going for kickstarter, opening a project, laying down a game, fully aware of the work of supporting Linux and MacOS, and missing the few backers they need because a more visible project put in the goals a Linux version. At the end of the day, the campaign fails, a bit later, the other project simply ditch the port(s) and claims it's too hard, too expensive, too anything.

Kickstarter may be to blame *a bit* for the whole scams stories (the real fake campaigns), but that kind of dev? No, they are just terrible devs shitting in the other devs meal, and pissing on their backers because they never really cared nor tried to to begin with. Otherwise, honest devs would acknowledge it's too much work, and simply wouldn't claim there will be a Linux port.

It's not simply preordering. Preordering *could* be decent enough to avoid some core issues with those numerous projects claiming they'd support Linux and yet drop it. No, the core of the issue is settling for a refund or anything akin when the devs simply bullshitted us instead of getting mad enough to remind yourself getting bullshitted is not something you accept, disregarding the monetary issue, simply being ethical within your own job. If one deserved to be paid for one's work, it has to be because one's do it well enough without undermining his very own job (and by extension, the people working the same field).

It's hard, it's not fun, it's expensive, but claiming to do something you can't nor won't even look into it before it's too late is simply a dick move. For all parties.

EDIT: Yep, I'm often pissed at that Wine-as-a-solution part, because I did enjoy some games that just weren't supported and a patch borked it on all wine versions I could figure out (ie Synthetik now crash within 30 minutes, a shame for such a game whose run clock at 45minutes), even self-compiled and I'm not exactly a newbie, now picture this for average joes, and you should be able to understand why I see it as a deadend that'll harm the whole thing massively if it's followed as a solution, because it simply *can't* be.