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 F.Ultra
Metro Exodus from 4A and Deep Silver has officially released for Linux
14 Apr 2021 at 10:41 pm UTC

Fantastic news. Will buy a copy myself so no need to be included in any give-away.

Klabater drops Linux and macOS support for Crossroads Inn
14 Apr 2021 at 10:35 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: Sayuri
Quoting: CatKiller
Quoting: hardpenguin
Quoting: CatKillerIt's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.
No. And saying things like this only proves you have no idea not only about game development but also project management.
Making a game multiplatform from the start lets you make your game better cheaper, faster, and easier even if you never make a single sale on another platform. When you're looking for bugs to squash you want to throw your code at everything you can find. Different compilers, different environments. Bugs in your code might be elusive (but still present) in one environment, but be able to be replicated every time in a different one, which lets you find it and fix it. Making something work on Linux gets you a whole bunch of different compilers and environments for free, which helps you debug your code that you might also be using on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, wherever. And, hey, now that your application is nicely modular and spec-compliant, with separation of tasks, and survives all sorts of changes in environment, you've got handy entry points should you want DLC, or to help with modding through Steam Workshop if you want.

But please, tell us more about how sloppy coding practices aren't a sign of sloppy coding practices.
Experience has taught me none of this is true.
25+ years experience in software development have taught me that @CatKiller is spot on. I can't even count the number of bugs that we fixed in our software for Windows when we initially ported it to Linux at a previous work place.

FMV adventure Dark Nights with Poe and Munro released for Linux
4 Apr 2021 at 4:15 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: FeistI think I'll give this one a try as well!

FMVs have a bad reputation but I have enjoyed or even loved most of those I've played: Phantasmagoria, Realms of the Haunting, Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within, Under a Killing Moon, Pandora Directive, Overseer and Tesla Effect.

So this is one special sub-genré that I'm very fond of.
Tried Contradicion? Not native (but works great in proton) and worked extremely well for a FMV.

Looks like Narita Boy from Studio Koba will now not be supported on Linux
30 Mar 2021 at 6:17 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestI just watched the trailer and noticed the Xbox, PS4 Logos and Switch Logos ... according to their Kickstarter they did not even reached that tier but now dropping Linux support!?

This is shady...
Well to be honest there is where the purchasing power is, which also makes it so strange that games have those as stretch goals.

Valheim hits 6 million sales, gets a small teaser for a big update
20 Mar 2021 at 5:14 pm UTC

Quoting: Appelsin
Quoting: GoboStatistically they have sold more than one copy for every current citizen of Denmark, one of the regions where vikings originated from. Or more than the whole population of Scandinavia 200 years ago. With one game. By five people.
~1,03 copies for every danske.
~1,11 copies for every nordmann.

(Based on population numbers from wikipedia)

Which means means that if they ever publish which contries bought the game, we'll see that half was sold in Denmark, and the other half sold in Norway. Stands to reason.
And they have sold 153 copies for every citizen living today in the city Iron Gate comes from (Skövde, Sweden) :-)

If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers - probably the best free game you will find today
13 Mar 2021 at 11:32 pm UTC Likes: 2

That this game is free is almost insulting :shock:

Windows 'not an emulator' compatibility tool Wine 6.4 out now
13 Mar 2021 at 1:44 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: PinguinoCould anyone give me a one-sentence summary on the difference between emulators and translation layers? I've done some searching and I think I got the gist of it (low-level emulators are basically trying to recreate the emulated OS instead of just wrapping individual functions), but I couldn't see much distinction between high-level emulation and a translator.
A one-sentence summary would be quite hard, but basically you have done it yourself. An emulator emulates the entire system, so WINE as an emulator would be emulating bios+cpu+kernel+windows (and a specific version of it), while WINE as a translator only translates as much of the system calls provided by the Windows kernel that applications and games needs in order to run, and the application is executed by Linux and not by any emulated Windows.

WINE the emulator would allow you to say run amd64 applications on your arm/sparc/68k machine while WINE the translator requires you to run on the exact same hardware that the Windows application thinks it runs on.

My take on low-level emulation vs high-level emulation is that low-level emulation would emulate the hardware on a chip basis while high-level emulation would be emulating the hardware on a functional level. I.e most software emulators are high-level (if they have any form of performance) while FPGA emulators (and some very very slow software emulators) are low-level emulators.

Take-Two Interactive hit the DMCA nuke on GTA III and Vice City reverse engineered effort
25 Feb 2021 at 7:04 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: MordragReally sad to see...
Out of curiosity, if now someone would write specifications based on that code, and another one would write another engine reimplementation based on that specifications, would be it legal ?
Depends on how many lawyers get involved. The thing is, clean lab reverse engineering is perfectly legal. From my understanding of it, if it wasn't the PC as it is today would not exist, as IBM's architecture was open, but their BIOS was not, and it was reverse engineered.
In this day and age though, all that needs to be done is for a company to cry foul (claim DMCA) and the project goes away.
The process that is illegal is if they had someone from tge original project working with them, then it would not be considered 'clean'.
(Not a lawyer, juat remembered it from reading things years ago when people were doing similar things with other games.)
Well it depends, AFAIK the concept of clean room reverse-engineering does not exist in the legal system. Phoenix did it the way they did when they created their version of IBM:s BIOS not to avoid the copyright of the BIOS but that of the IBM Technical Reference Manuals which is what IBM had put a license on.

Linux lands on Mars with Perseverance and Ingenuity
23 Feb 2021 at 1:43 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Arehandoro
Quoting: EikeThere's no real question Linux already is dominating the world, from the smallest to the largest, from most people's pockets to even Mars.

Except one little village called desktop.
Technically, not the world but our Solar Systtem :D

Honest question: Has there ever been any mention on what kind of OS any of the other probes* had? I assume it was some bespoke system? Or maybe a Unix system? Maybe Windows even? xD

* Not only probes but also the Rover for example.
As others have already hinted at here, NASA have used VxWorks for all of the other rovers, probes and orbiters. Before that they used NASA custom computer systems without any operating system as such.

Take-Two Interactive hit the DMCA nuke on GTA III and Vice City reverse engineered effort
23 Feb 2021 at 1:29 am UTC

Quoting: EagleDelta
Quoting: GuestSaw this one coming. I hope Github doesn't get hate for this like they did with Youtube-dl. Github are not to blame for this, they have no choice but to comply with the awful DMCA
So, that's no actually true. I'll have to dig up the appropriate video, but a particular Business Lawyer clarified the DMCA provisions relating to takedowns. There is no requirement to takedown content from a DMCA request. All that provision does is protect the platform owner from liability on both sides. Basically, it protects hosts from being "caught in the middle" of a copyright dispute and facing a lawsuit from the organization requesting the takedown and from the users affected by the takedown.

But, as can be seen with a recent copyright case between Cox Communications and Sony Music, if a company doesn't actually comply with the DMCA takedown, they lose the immunity to lawsuits.... making them liable for an infringement by their users.
Yes if Github does not comply with every single DMCA takedown they will loose their safe harbour status and will instead be liable for every single thing that their end users upload to Github. So in practice Github have no choice but to comply.