I'm really confused seeing Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition on there since according to its Steam page it doesn't release till November 14th. How are (that many) people playing it already? :S: Too bad if it doesn't work though, I was looking forward to it. :(

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Since a quick perusal of their site didn't answer my questions, I'll ask here: how does multiplayer work? Does it use a separate server and client system like Minecraft? Most importantly, does it require port forwarding to work?

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyA bit moot currently since I believe Mac has at least 5 times our gaming market share at the moment, so the market is larger porting to Mac anyway.

I just checked the latest Steam Hardware survey since for some reason I thought the market shares had been closing lately :S:, but yeah, the most recent results have Mac as 3.7× the Linux share.

Quoting: ShmerlPersonally as a developer I'd give macOS the least priority, due to Apple being extreme lock-in proponents, and due to macOS compatible hardware not being gaming oriented to begin with, especially for anything even remotely demanding. As @Purple Library Guy said above, Apple can be even viewed as gaming hostile, so that's another reason to simply avoid t.

Oh, indeed, I mentioned there were other considerations besides pure possible player numbers that go into such decisions, and I too get the feeling lately that Mac is more hostile to gaming than Linux is. I suppose that's our hope, given how the numbers aren't on our side at the moment. :)

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Quoting: ShmerlThey mean to say, they'll release for macOS, but not for Linux. And it's a Unity game with minimal dependencies really. Though probably, this line of thinking isn't common.

There's an interesting line of thinking there. Say you're a developer (only familiar with Windows) making a game. Looking in terms of nothing but raw numbers of potential players, you release for Windows first. Then, you have the resources to port to a second OS: MacOS or Linux? Assuming your game works for maybe half of Linux players (using Proton), then the potential market is probably larger porting to Mac.

How much larger would the Linux audience need to get than the Mac audience (or how badly would a game have to run on Proton) to make it a better choice to port to Linux? Obviously other considerations come into this choice than pure numbers, but it's an interesting thought.

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Wow, has it only been a year? It feels like I've been replaying my childhood nostalgia with Age of Empires II for longer than that already… :D

Proton's allowed me to experience some amazing games (e.g., Eastshade) over the past year that seem unlikely to get a Linux version, so I'm quite thankful for it. As long as I get to play a game, and show up as a Linux gamer to the developer to maybe encourage them to go native in the future, I'm happy. :)

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An interesting concept. Now I kinda want a similar game where you basically wield Mjölnir, tossing it away and recalling it in order to fight. :)

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I've always enjoyed figuring out knots and mazes, and this looks like a game where that might come in handy! Plus I like the art style, and the animation looks pretty polished already. I'll throw it on the wishlist and see when it comes out. :)

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Quoting: BrisseAre you sure that's necessary? I remember having to do that in Wine a few years back, but in Proton, at least the latest version, it just worked, including the launcher.

I'm sure it was necessary in the sense that those are the steps I had to take to get the game to run, and I got them from some reports on ProtonDB so I know I'm not the only one who had to do them. :) That being said, you've caused me to consider that it's possible that that's the minority experience, and for most people it really is click'n'play. I also haven't tried reverting the filenames and trying again with new versions of Proton, so I suppose I'm at the very least a bit out of date, and if it truly is working like that for most people now I'm certainly happy about it. :)

Quoting: chancho_zombie

Quoting: PhiladelphusI get that sometimes it can be difficult to figure out the exact rating for a particular game, but in this case it's easy: if you have to do anything other than "click Play" to get a game to run, it's not platinum. :) And that's not a disparagement of the game or Proton or anything, as some people seem to think it is; what we need are accurate reports, not ones made through rose-colored glasses. Windows users switching to Linux because they read all their games were literally "click'n'play" are not going to be pleased to find out that's not actually the case.

Except that is not that simple there are a lot of games that you hit play and it runs perfectly fine, but have some network issues, like the one I'm playing right now, Just Cause 4, online mode works it does login into the server but the leaderboard doesn't work. So a game could apparently run fine, even after testing a decent amount of time, but afterwards some issues appear.

Yes? I agree with that. :) I'm not quite sure what you're saying isn't so simple. What I said was that "If a game requires you to do anything more than click the Play button to start it, it shouldn't be rated platinum," not "If clicking the play button launches the game without you having to do anything else, it should be immediately rated platinum." To put it in formal logic, clicking play and having a game start is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for it to be rated platinum. A game could start fine and still have all kinds of weird bugs or performance issues when run with Proton, and of course it should be rated lower as a result with some explanation of what the problems are.

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Ooh, ouch. Not a great situation. :O Stay safe, our KDE-using friends!

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Quoting: Ehvis

Quoting: EikeSo, BTW and IMHO, having to set environment variables would be gold, not platinum.

Something not all submitters appear to honour. I see a lot of platinum reports that still mention a specific setting. So I expect the realistic number of platinums to be lower in favour of gold.

Yeah. I see Age of Empires II regularly gets a bunch of platinum ratings, despite the fact that I needed to delete a launcher file and rename the game executable to get it to run, making it a solid gold. (It's possible this has changed since I got it working several months ago, but even back then people were rating it platinum.)

I get that sometimes it can be difficult to figure out the exact rating for a particular game, but in this case it's easy: if you have to do anything other than "click Play" to get a game to run, it's not platinum. :) And that's not a disparagement of the game or Proton or anything, as some people seem to think it is; what we need are accurate reports, not ones made through rose-colored glasses. Windows users switching to Linux because they read all their games were literally "click'n'play" are not going to be pleased to find out that's not actually the case.

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