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Latest Comments by Salvatos
How to be a great advocate for a niche gaming platform
22 June 2018 at 6:38 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: antisol(snip)
Post of the year? Post of the year.

Quoting: GustyGhostWhy might individuals strongly aligned with software freedom be interested in the trends of proprietary game software? More food for thought.
Easy to answer as far as I'm concerned. I don't need nor want to see the internal workings of the video games I play. Those companies and creators sell experiences. I buy the experience, enjoy it and move along. I don't care how it runs and I don't need to tweak it, unlike a browser or an e-mail client or an operating system. Same as I don't care for source files for the music I listen to or the books I read, or the recipes for the food I eat in restaurants. I'm interested in the finished product, bundled up and ready to consume in a specific form.

I find it amazing that people like the 0 A.D. crowd have been making an entirely open game and are actually getting somewhere with it. But at the end of the day I'm never going to actually look at the sources and it's completely irrelevant to my enjoyment of the product.

Quoting: elmapul" Perhaps only 100 Linux sales of an indie game are enough to make that version worthwhile financially, compared to the 10 thousand or so Windows purchases needed"

i dont get this sentence
I think the reasoning is that the devs are going to make the game for Windows primarily and it will require a very large investment -- and a proportionally large number of sales to break even. Provided that they are doing this step no matter what, the extra work to port to Linux represents only a fraction of the cost, and therefore doesn't require nearly as many sales to be lucrative in itself.

Steam Summer Sale is up, free game from Humble Store & Fanatical sale too
21 June 2018 at 11:44 pm UTC

Pretty much everything on my wishlist is on sale, but I'm not playing anything lately so I guess I'll wait until next year. Thanks for the Shadowrun tip, though, I wasn't sure I wanted to buy into that franchise and now I don't have to take a gamble on it ^^

Quoting: Whitewolfe80Owlboy still to expensive for my tastes but good game none the less.
I'd say it's worth it at the current price. Very comfy game :)

How to be a great advocate for a niche gaming platform
21 June 2018 at 6:11 pm UTC

Quoting: denyasisps- I still have my original 15+ year old txt files that I would type the commands into to save them along with my notes of what they did/fixed. I still do that to this day, although more and more of them are hyperlinks to the ARCH wiki and other places.
I can relate. Not with the first part since I could always reboot on Windows or use my laptop to look things up, thankfully, but I still have a "linux instructions" file tucked away for various fixes and tweaks ranging from printer drivers to Gnome or GTK tweaks, how to get MIDI to work (I still have trouble with that one) or useful ImageMagick commands for when I have some batch processing to do. Which reminds me I should look into fixing my scrollbars again.

Feral Interactive have no plans to put their Linux ports on GOG
20 June 2018 at 7:20 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: Hamish
Quoting: jensSorry, re-reading your posting several times, I don't get the essence. Would you mind to explain?
Sure, no worries. It is just that Linux users very often tell Windows users that their choices are bad and that they need to improve, and I can't help but feel that a lot of the people upset with Shmerl would be fine seeing the exact same attitude expressed if he was arguing against Windows usage rather than using Steam.
I can confirm that as a teenager, when I saw people's forum signatures boasting about Linux and/or Firefox (to put things into context, at the time I didn't see the point of using other media players than WMP, other browsers than IE, etc. since they were already installed and seemed to do the job), it irritated me rather than made me interested in learning more about open source. "I'm so much better than you" isn't a very effective way to get people to look into the way you do things and associate with you.

As a result, though I am now firmly committed to free software, I make it a point not to be insufferable about it. I'll discuss my preferences when asked, offer open source solutions to people's problems when they consult me, and I'm not above taking jabs at Microsoft for humor, but ultimately people make their own choices and all I can do is make sure they know about the alternatives to proprietary solutions.

I'd like to think I got the balance right since my friend who knows I've been using Linux exclusively for a number of years still asked me to help her shop for a Windows laptop. And I will, because that's what makes sense for her in her situation, and it's what she wants.

Feral Interactive have no plans to put their Linux ports on GOG
20 June 2018 at 5:54 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: namikoShmerl, I say this with the kindest, most honest, and honourable intentions... you're a holier-than-thou arrogant ass who doesn't properly listen to anything people say if they contradict your own opinions. Nobody likes someone who won't listen.
I've been watching this from the sidelines, and although this isn't incorrect, I think it would also be fairly accurate to say others haven't really been engaging with Shmerl's position either. Rather, the underlying framework has been roughly "The kind of opinions Shmerl is putting out are 'fanatical', therefore Shmerl is a 'fanatic', therefore everything Shmerl says must be wrong and it's more important to hector him than to discuss because there's no point treating 'fanatics' with respect."
It's not Shmerl's opinions that are fanatical, it's the way he engages with people.

With your post above you managed to summarize the arguments of both sides with logic and respect while pointing out that some boil down to personal preference or hypotheticals. That's hardly the approach Shmerl has chosen. I won't rehash what Namiko already said, but stating that Feral is categorically pro-DRM and whatnot and rebuffing anyone who points out the nuances in the issue in question is not an argument or a conversation, it's mindless preaching. There is no productive discussion to be had with someone like that.

In fact it's so revolting that I too find myself wanting to defend DRM although I would much prefer it not to exist, just because I don't want to side with someone who has thrown logic out the window and refuses to look at an issue from all sides. But there's no point shouting at someone who is deaf.

Beep boop the Feral Interactive port radar has a UFO sighting for a new Linux port
6 June 2018 at 10:38 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: NexushiveI think that clue is song form Death Metal bend calld Atrocity, first song on album Okkult (2013) is Pandaemonium...
(snip)
Hellblade: senua's sacrifice
Impressive. I'll say this, though: if Hellblade is indeed the correct answer, but this is not a clue that Feral had envisioned, the coincidence is baffling.

Quoting: wvstolzingA match for what, though? The fact that a death metal band quoted Milton in a song?
The face paint and the headpiece.

OpenGL to be deprecated in the next macOS release, could mean interesting things for Linux gaming
4 June 2018 at 10:29 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: FireStarWDoesn't this also mean for mac users that their back catalog of opengl games will be unable to be playable on new versions of macos? What a crazy decision.
Sounds like the kind of spiteful move I would expect from Apple.

Beep boop the Feral Interactive port radar has a UFO sighting for a new Linux port
1 June 2018 at 5:02 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Xpander
Quoting: DisharmonicMy guess would be this https://store.steampowered.com/app/414340/Hellblade_Senuas_Sacrifice/

this is actually pretty good guess. I don't know much about this game, but given its popularity and huge thread asking for Linux support + its an UE4 game and has very positive reviews, it should fit right in.
Plus there's pandemonium in her mind at most times it seems, so it would be a clever double match for the hint. Seems like a plausible guess to me considering the popularity and calibre of the game relative to what Feral usually ports, the fact it's still recent and the relevance of the clues. Definitely something I'd put on my wishlist at any rate.

You can now pre-order the Linux-powered Atari VCS games console, a lot more details revealed
30 May 2018 at 5:46 pm UTC

What would those CPU and GPU look like in Intel/nvidia terms? It's all I can do to keep up with what those numbers mean.

As for covering this on GOL: it's a Linux system and it runs games, I'm in.

I hope you like Anime & Manga styled games, as GOG just added 10 with Linux support
23 May 2018 at 12:19 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: MimoI have a question, it may be a stupid one, but it's one I can't figure out: why do visual novels count as games?

I suppose it's a computer variant of game books. You can make some choices which change the story.

See http://www.abandonia.com/en/gamebooks
Well, some don't let you make any choices, or meaningful ones. And others have more gameplay elements than just dialog options. It's kind of a fluid game genre.