Paradox has been supporting Linux gamers since the release of Crusader Kings 2. When Europa Universalis IV came out, with Windows, Mac and Linux versions the day of release, it was a wonderful sight.

Cities in Motion 1+2 are somewhat like this, although in them, it's a transportation thing, not a city building thing. I'm looking forward!

While Paradox hasn't developed all the games they release in-house, their commitment to we Linux gamers is first-rate. Yes, their Crusader Kings/Europa Universalis "grand strategy" games are deep, deeper, and deepest in their gameplay, and are considered tops among serious strategy gamers.

Linux gaming is great and becoming greater!

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As someone whose private life has certainly interfered with the things I like to do, I completely understand Liam's decision, and hope that (perhaps) I can step up and contribute more to what has become a daily must-read webpage.

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Nordic Games did a very good port of Painkiller:H&D, and then kept working on the port until benighted AMD users could run the game (which involved tweaking the game as well as waiting for AMD to get its act together and release a working driver). These guys are serious about the Linux gaming community.

I'm happy and proud to be a Linux gamer; this is the beginning of one of the last reasons people resist going over to the best OS becoming irrelevant. And, since Microsoft Office is now available for free on the web (a la Google Docs, which M$ found breathing down its neck), there is only user inertia to keep people from Linux.

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I haven't yet installed GLXOSD, but the game runs smoothly for me; blur works well enough for me to find it attractive but annoying, and I'm still wandering around Flotsam, having closed the incense shop, gotten my silver sword, looking for monster slime. No crashes, fighting works the way it's supposed to. It all is very reminiscent of how well it ran with WINE, and I mean that as praise.

Yes, I'd rather have a native port, but this was commissioned and initiated by RedProjekt, who are elbow deep programming The Wild Hunt, and wasn't like CIV V, which was initiated by Aspyr, who then contacted a very willing Firaxis for the go ahead. The devs of the wrapper have weathered some pretty nasty criticism aimed at them, but they've been busy at it, trying to (gasp) make the customers happy.

This customer is happy.

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Well, Planetary Annihilation is in "gamma," and it's been very playable since it was available to me as a Kickstarter backer. Features are being added and added. For what that's worth.

Spellcrafter is interesting and fun to play, but there is a lot of work that the devs need to do before it's finished. Personally, I kind of like the Early Access games. It' a way for people other than obsessives to get beta access, with those automatic updates. Not that I always approve of the state that an EA game was released, but that's life, I guess!

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I'm impressed with the three devs who brought Witcher2, CIV V, and X-COM to Linux gamers in one 5 week period. While Virtual Programming certainly got slagged for using the eON wrapper (and there were also a lot of "RedPrejekt doesn't care about us at all" whines), they have taken the bugs seriously and have continued tuning their wrapper.

On my mid-level box, it runs smooth as silk. I do get the crash report every time I quit the game from the main menu, but at least it also came up when the game actually crashed. Still in Flotsam, just seeing the sights and killing assassins sent to murder a witcher(!) and trying to find some silver ore.

It should be mentioned that GOG is a division of RedProjekt itself, who commissioned Virtual Programming to create a wrapper, since it was too labor-intensive for a company deep into creating their next game to completely rewrite a four year old game. It always ran great with wine, anyway. The woeful developers of Eador, who released a game with a plain wine wrapper, with all the bugs of the game using wine, got tens of complaints, removed the wine wrapper version, and don't call it Linux-compatible any more. And the native Linux port of X-COM has its problems, which are actively being worked on by the devs. The native CIV V is, to all appearances, and from user reports, practically flawless.

The news I glean from this is that, while the dev community certainly knew that Linux users are hungry for games, they have certainly found that we want the games to work (and complain when they don't). However, we are grateful when a good port is released and effusively praise good ports (there's a "Thanks for the Linux port" thread on the CIV V Steam forum that is many pages) and are as persnickety as other platforms' users. In other words, we're gamers.

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Interesting; the draw-a-glyph-to-cast-a-spell mechanism has been used before, but not often, perhaps because it turned out to be a feature that people either loved or hated. Since it is sparingly used in games, Spellcrafter (which advertises its mechanic in its title!) appears to be well worth a look.

Thanks!

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Quoting: Guesthttp://www.depressioncomix.com/ [External Link]

On any discussion about depression, I like to point people to a web comic series. I will probably point to this "game" in the future as well. Clinical depression is not simply a mindset that can be changed, unfortunately.
A little education on what (clinical) depression is, and how we can help those who suffer from it, is something we should all have.

Thank you very much for the link; as someone who has struggled with depression and its ugly symptoms my whole life, these cartoons hit home.

The game is very good, even if you don't see a direct connection to your own life. For those who don't suffer from this disease, it may help to awaken compassion.

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Yes, Kingdom Rush is a great tower defense game. Too bad I already got in on Steam last month, when it came out and was promoted. I agree that some new Linux games don't get the push that they probably should, but I have over 200 games in my Linux Steam library, so I must have heard about some of them from Steam...

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I had an unrecoverable crash in X-COM (using nVidia 3.04), until I upgraded to 3.40.24, at which point it runs fine. Perhaps it has a lower frame rate than the Windows version, but it certainly is playable for me. I doubt that I can perceive the delta between ~45 fps and ~90 fps. If I had a 750ti instead of a 650ti, I'd get better frame rates, no doubt.

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