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Latest Comments by Mr. Pinsky
2.5D puzzle platformer Seedlings has some great photography-based visuals
26 September 2023 at 7:45 pm UTC Likes: 3

I got this game just yesterday, it's neat!

And nice to have native Linux support :)

Here's some alternatives to the Unity game engine
13 September 2023 at 11:29 am UTC Likes: 2

There's also Ogre 3D https://www.ogre3d.org/
It's not a complete engine but it has been used for 3D rendering in commercial games, for example in Hob by Runic Games.

Return to Monkey Island gets a first gameplay trailer
28 June 2022 at 8:56 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: fleskWhat is the spirit of MI1 and MI2 though?

It was more realistic. The landscapes, proportions of characters (e.g. proportion of head to body) and so on looked pretty real, although in a painterly rendering. The new art style is very cartoony and I would argue it is more similar in spirit to Day of the Tentacle, which always had that super goofy cartoon style.

For illustration, compare the proportion between their head and their legs in these images:


Return to Monkey Island gets a first gameplay trailer
28 June 2022 at 6:14 pm UTC Likes: 2

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand it is exciting to get a real new Monkey Island game made by the original creators. On the other hand, sequels that come out after such a long time can be tricky and it can be hard for the team to meet the expectations.

Not a fan of the art style, either. For me, it is not about whether it is good art per se, but whether the style is true in spirit to MI1 and MI2, and for me that is clearly not the case. It is actually a radical departure and was therefore destined to be controversial. (I guess they hired the Broken Age crew?)

Still going to play this of course :)

You can now support the Flatpak package format on Open Collective
30 July 2021 at 12:36 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: superboybotI think Flatpak is fine (and to a lesser extent Snap, especially on distros that include it by default), but I don't really see the point unless it offers a package that isn't in your repo. AppImage is cool though, as a preservation method.

But other than that, what problem is it solving? It seems that some people use them for many (most?) installed packages. I find it a bit strange. For instance, why is Firefox even offered on Flathub? Are there distros that don't have Firefox in the repositories?

It is important to keep in mind that there are two separate use cases here.

1) There is the OS level. We are talking about kernels, system libraries, graphics drivers, desktop environment, file explorer etc. Traditional packaging (rpm/deb) packaging is absolutely the right way to go here. It is the tool to be used by OS developers to make sure that the system is compatible, just works, and can be updated without breaking stuff.

2) The other use case is users wanting to install "apps" from 3rd parties. The situation here is different because the developers of 3rd party apps are usually not well suited to create packages on the OS level (rpm/deb). In an ideal world, the 3rd party developers would make a release and then the OS developers would package this release and distribute it to the users of their OS immediately. But that is not feasible, as no OS developer can keep up with all the releases of apps. The reality is that 3rd party developers end up having the burden of package management, and it is obviously tedious for them if they have to provide many different packages in different formats for different (Linux) users. In addition, 3rd party developers are generally less trusted to provide security updates etc. This is where flatpak comes in: It provides a simple way for 3rd party developers to provide a package for all Linux users which is secure and (hopefully) just works. This is the best option specifically for those apps which are not already packaged by the OS developers.

Blasphemous confirmed to release for Linux on September 21
17 September 2020 at 5:28 pm UTC

The soundtrack is really good, I've been listening to it repeatedly for a few weeks.

Xen now out of Beta in Black Mesa, time to relive Half-Life plus a roadmap is up
27 December 2019 at 11:25 am UTC Likes: 3

I played through the whole game from start to finish during the last few days, it's fantastic.

It looks and feels like a whole new game, not just a remake, they expanded it so much, especially in the Xen chapters.

A look over the ProtonDB reports for June 2019, over 5.5K games reported to work with Steam Play
1 July 2019 at 7:05 pm UTC

I am still waiting for .wmv playback support. It's blocking a lot of games. Apparently, there is work ongoing on it upstream in Wine (Media Foundation implementation), but it's not yet ready.

What are you playing this weekend?
1 September 2018 at 11:27 am UTC Likes: 3

GTA V.

Yes, it runs on Steam Play/Proton :D

Needs a workaround to make it start, and it occasionally starts stuttering after a while, but overall it's a pretty smooth experience.