Quoting: KeyrockThey lost me at "procedurally generated".

I know what you mean. Procedurally generated content has two negative traits. One is that familiarity with the game doesn't help you as much, and the other is that procedurally generated can also be translated as 'completely uninspired.' I know the positive is supposed to be added replay value, but to me the differences generated by procedure are almost never very interesting.

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Yes, the "Humble Indie Bundle" series still has only fully cross-platform games, but those are fewer and farther between. In the meantime you get a 'Humble <whatever> Bundle' that has two or three Linux games if you're lucky.

I have the Shadowrun game already, but I may decide to get the bundle anyway, though I always hesitate to get the ones that have non-Linux content.

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In the long run, game development on Linux will be dependent on the same thing it's always been dependent on for every other platform, the size of the audience.

I remember when Commodore Amiga and Atari ST games were much better and more plentiful than IBM PC games. The fact was, even though those platforms were technically better at games than IBM PCs, DOS games started to become popular because more people bought DOS based systems to be compatible with their work computers. DOS became a bigger market and started to get the most attention by game developers.

Then DOS games were better than Windows 3.1 games, but as Windows became a bigger market, and Windows 95 hit, Windows games started to become the most prominent computer games.

The point is, when it comes to general purpose computing devices, both the graphical technology and the games that get developed are driven by existing platform popularity. Of course, if sufficient interest exists to push graphics technology and game development, then this creates a synergy and things progress faster.

The main advantage Linux has is that it can't be knocked out of development by a brilliant business move. If open source software had a theme song, it would be "Time Is on My Side."

While my brothers have Windows computers, they all have Linux computers in their households at this point as well. Linux computers have become extremely practical as second or third computers for households with multiple children, since they need less powerful hardware and require less maintenance than Windows computers, and since children adjust easily to a different platform. This type of growth of the Linux audience may seem slow, but it is beginning to have an effect. It may be part of the reason that older ports and retro games are more popular on Linux, because even older hardware runs them well, but eventually any growth of the market promotes more sophisticated technology.

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A lower barrier to entry will naturally lead to more ports (by third party publishers anyway), but it's no guarantee of any particular percentage of ports.

This is because if you are using an API that makes a port very easy, then your investment in the port is minimal, and you have a greater chance of making money on the port. If a port takes 100 man-hours to complete and will require twice as much technical support, then it is not that likely to happen for 1% more revenue. If it takes 10 man-hours to complete and one percent more technical support, then it becomes far more likely to happen. I'm sure those aren't the right numbers, but whatever the numbers, the principle is the same. A lower barrier to entry means more games will be ported.

Of course more games ported could be three or four more games a year or thirty or forty more games a year. That will be heavily influenced by other factors.

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The violation of the trademark, though with no commercial motive, is so blatantly obvious that they can't afford to ignore it (if you ignore trademark violations you risk losing rights to the trademark and it ending up in the public domain). I can't really fault Zenimax for this. There isn't really anything stopping the game/site from continuing, but all violations of the trademark would have to be removed. You could still mention that the game is inspired by Doom with a disclaimer about rights to the game Doom being owned by Zenimax.

Of course, this doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other things that I can fault Zenimax for (like sucking all the life out of Id).

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Quoting: Pompesdesky

Quoting: Mountain ManWhat? I've never had to "fiddle around" to get games working in Linux. Sure, I have to tune some of the in-game settings to get optimum performance, but you have to do that in Windows, too. Linux "just works" in my experience. If I want to play a game, I click "Install" in Steam. It installs. I click "Play". It plays. You shouldn't have do any "fiddling" beyond that unless there's something wrong on your end.

Seems not everyone is having the same experience. I've ditched Windows about a year ago and probably won't return, however I've never had to put such amount of research on the Web and fiddling to get things going on Windows.

First anytime I install Steam on a fresh Linux install it will not start, there are some libraries to wipe or some driver to switch so that it accepts to launch. Then some games won't launch either, you have to take a file from another working title and paste it in the folder of the said game. Then when the game finally launches Feral says your GPU is not supported, it will work but not flawlessly. All in all it quite runs on my Mint 17 rig but on the kids rig with Mint 18 only a few games are working correctly (like Dirt Showdown), the others won't launch lately (Euro Truck Simulator for example), when launched the desktop display changes to 640x480 and nothing else happens, I'll have to take another 2 or 3 hours to find a solution on the Internet to solve this.

Most of the issues you've mentioned up to this point are usually related to using an AMD card with open source drivers (which is what my desktop is using as well). The current versions of the Steam client assume closed source drivers and use libraries that will work with them. I imagine this will change as the open source AMD drivers become more mainstream. There is a command you can use to launch Steam which will preload the correct libraries from Mesa before launching the Steam client. This is a better way to get it to work with the AMD open drivers because it doesn't have to be done over again with every Steam update. If I don't forget, I'll get the command and update this post with it when I'm home (you can edit your Steam shortcut to use the command).

I am not looking to promote Nvidia cards with closed source drivers, but most likely most of your issues would disappear with that kind of setup because that's what Steam most fully supports at the moment, with AMD closed source drivers in second place.

Then I decided to give a try with a DRM free game to see how this would work. I bought Oddworld New'n Tasty from GOG, installed it on the kids rig (by the way there's not such thing as a double click to install the game as in Windows, you have to open a Terminal, navigate to the folder where you downloaded the game and run a .sh command, that's not something my mom can do for example) and.... no luck, it wouldn't launch. Then installed it on my PC, there it launches but so far I've been unable to configure my Xbox One controller to play the game so I've just given up and cross my fingers thinking that maybe the future Mint 18.2 will magically solve things.

I'm not sure why this wouldn't launch on your kids' PC but only yours (though I still wouldn't be surprised if an Nvidia card with closed drivers would "magically" make it work). There are ways to make a shell command work with a double click on various distributions. You have to make sure the executable bit is turned on, but some desktops still insist on not running them with a double click as a security measure making you either set up a launcher or override the default settings.

I haven't actually used an Xbox One controller, though I have a few Xbox 360 controllers. They can be a bit of a pain at times because the user space driver works better most of the time, but some games seem to only work with the kernel space driver, or the user space driver set to emulate the kernel space driver. I've wondered at times if Steam OS makes using Microsoft gamepads more transparent, but I haven't actually tried it on anything so far.

All in all I'm still happy with Linux but I must go with compromises, not only on the number of games available but also on the difficulty of getting everything running. And I don't think most of my gaming friends would accept to make such compromises just for the sake of not being spied and locked in the Microsoft environment.

The more toward Valve's idea of a "conventional" gamer's set up you have, the easier time you will have at present. Also, of course, actually using a Steam Machine will be the easiest way to get a smooth experience as long as gaming on Steam is your chief concern.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: liamdaweCorrected. I really need a feature for people to submit corrections to not fill up comments with it some time...

Err… Sorry for filling up the comments ;) but you changed the wrong "it's".

Yes, now they're both incorrect. Where there should be the contraction, there's the possessive pronoun, and where there should be the possessive pronoun, there's the contraction. Of course, if trying to fix things didn't just make them worse, we wouldn't know this was real life. :)

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The time I generally recommend Wine is as something to try if you need to run an old Windows program that won't run on your current system. Other than that, it's an alternative you can check out, but I wouldn't depend on it.

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This looks right up my alley, so I hope it really is as good as it looks.

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Quoting: GuestAlso there was much less detail in dark images than on my TN monitor.

That sounds like a calibration issue. Although it's true that some consumer aimed monitors default to very high-contrast settings for visual pop, and to blazes with light and dark grays, rather than defaulting to the most accurate settings.

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