The power of GOL

I find it a little amusing that Liam often writes about some game, that were promised for Linux but now are not as likely to ever reach Linux. Then some days later, the people behind or someone clarifies things and then the game seems more likely to release on Linux again after all.

Kudos to Liam. You represent us Linux gamers and the game developers seem to care what you write here on GOL. Keep up the work!

edit:
spelling mistakes

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I actually think it might be a worthwhile investment to develop every game for Linux, besides the main target platform. They should do it, not necessarily to get a huge return or even a positive return in terms of income, but as QA.
If developers also have to develop for Linux, they first of all need to make sure it runs on Linux. Alone accomplishing that will often squash several bugs (even critical ones) and may even improve performance of the game on both Windows and Linux (and every other platform) - often the code also gets cleaned up.

I think in today's world, where lots of AAA-games are released with groundbreaking issues, it would help with some more QA - and generally cross-platform coding results in a much higher product quality. Therefore, I don't think developers should look for a huge return of investment on Linux, but instead see it as a way to get a higher return of investment on Windows. Of course in long term the Linux platform may also give more substantial profits as a result of this.

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I hope it runs on my Alienware Steam Machine, because my mothership (desktop) is not working atm. Nevertheless, I will probably still buy it.

Has it been mentioned what OpenGL version is required?

edit:
It does seem like the minimum specs matches the windows minimum requirements which I think is very nice to see.

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What about adding a "since xxxx" in "Linux Gamer!", so that it becomes Linux Gamer since 2009" (in my case). We just need a way to set the year. I guess setting the year manually would be okay.

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edit:
Guess this is out of the question now.

Anyways I really like it, however, I don't think it fits very well on GOL. IMHO the current design simply doesn't match the GOL style - neither as a representation on other website. I do like the idea very much!

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I am disappointed about the performance. I bought the game and of course I had to play the Monaco Grand Prix track since it is going on right now!

Tested system:
Alienware Steam Machine i5 8 GB @ 1920x1080
My experience
I just took a time trial on the Monaco Circuit. On the first laps the framerate was stable around 40 fps. Not great for a precision racing game like Formula 1, but playable. However, after 4 laps and onwards the framerate was extremely unstable. Frame-drops all the time from the 40ish to around 20. On a graph it would look like a continuous sinus wave. Probably some sort of throttling on the Steam-machine.

Now you will probably say something like "lower the settings", however I was already on the very lowest setting for everything but resolution, which I kept at full HD.

My opinion
In my opinion this is terrible. Feral should at least spend some energy making it run flawlessly/near-flawlessly on the Alienware Steam-machine - it does not.

Looking at the benchmarks above there is certainly room for improvement. I get that they have to earn money, but it looks like the performance of their is turning into an evil spiral for feral.
The main problem for feral is that only a few people can actually run their games, since they require such good hardware. Therefore they have to release new games often, so that they can stay alive, which may be the reason why they don't have the time to really focus on performance.

Instead they should focus on upping their performance in games, so that more people can actually run the otherwise great games they make - I'd rather wait a little longer and then have a better performance.

In-game benchmark on Alienware Steam machine
Lowest setting @ 1080p
Max: 58fps
Min: 27fps
Avg: 42fps

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What about adding github? It might not be a "social" network, but I guess some of us has a github account and use it regularly. Some might even have some cool open source projects/games going on.

EDIT:
I'm not talking about adding a gamnigonlinux github, but rather make it possible to add github account on user profile.

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here's me wondering if it will have TressFX. probably not...

Nevertheless, I will still buy it for my younger brother

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