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Latest Comments by silmeth
'The Secret of Tremendous Corporation' is a 2015 short free point-and-click comical adventure made in 48 hours
2 Feb 2017 at 11:52 am UTC Likes: 1

The only thing that I can explicitly say I found annoying is the fact that you can't skip the dialogue by clicking the mouse;
I work with a guy who wrote the game, he’s sitting next to me right now, and he’s saying you can – but you need to use the right mouse button. ;-)

Jonathan Blow states he is open to a Linux port of The Witness with Vulkan, but never with OpenGL
27 Jan 2017 at 8:45 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: scaineWe might be small, but there's a reason that so many indies support Linux - 1% of 14M active users is still a bloody huge number. It might not make sense for the Ubisoft's and EA's of this world, but for an indie, opening the door to a market of an additional 10k+ gamers, many of whom will rate you higher because there's no EA or Ubisoft...
Also quite a few indies just use Linux as their own main OS, so they actually better support it than Windows. ’Cause, StackOverflow indicates [External Link], Linux is a primary OS for (at least) work for over ~20 % of programmers out there. And a lot of indies are just some of those programmers who, at one point, decide to start writing game. ;-)

Microsoft announces new DirectX Shader Compiler that's open source
24 Jan 2017 at 10:17 am UTC Likes: 4

I'm not entirely sure if it will be at all useful for Wine or any Linux-related projects, but it's still good to see another open source effort from Microsoft. Hopefully with more of DirectX being in the open, in future it may be even easier for ports to happen from DirectX to OpenGL/Vulkan.
I am pretty sure it will make glslang guys life much easier with their attempt at compiling HLSL [External Link], and that certainly will benefit Linux gaming – as game programmers will need to write shaders in only one language for both Vulkan and D3D.

Wine also does (for now) translation of HLSL → GLSL, and it probably will stay that way for some time, but anyway code of the compiler will probably make it easier to enhance that translation. And, perhaps, later Wine will replace it with glslang’s HLSL compilation or other way of translation directly to SPIR-V (at least for Vulkan-capable hardware). Will see.

Wine Staging 2.0-rc5 released, better support for Origin, GOG Galaxy and more
20 Jan 2017 at 7:03 pm UTC

Hmm. This staging version has broken for me controller support through x360ce in “Ori and the Blind Forest” (it still works without problems in “Mass Effect” though). Strange, the game must do some weird magic with calling into xinput API, and Wine Staging 2.0-rc5 must have changed something related to that.

Probably I should file a bug report, since this does not seem to be an issue a lot of people is going to come along.

EDIT: No need to file a bug. Apparently adding other xinput translation dlls (xinput1_4, xinput9_1_0 etc.) from x360ce solved the problem for Ori.

Prison Architect broke the Geneva Conventions for the use of a red cross
18 Jan 2017 at 10:00 am UTC

Quoting: tuubiI think any respectful use of the red cross symbol to depict health and first aid services in entertainment and media does more good than harm, by reinforcing the recognizability and power of the symbol. I just don't see what this is supposed to prevent.

Sure, you shouldn't be allowed to paint the red cross (or the red crescent) on your murdermobile, but that's very different from what happened here.
Truth is, the non-military medical personnel and first-aid kits in most countries also cannot and do not use the symbol if they are not directly related to the Red Cross organization. The preferred emblem for the first-aid kits is a white cross on a green background [External Link] (but others, like white cross on red are also used), the emergency personnel and vehicles use mainly the Star of Life (although red Maltese cross, orange cross etc. is sometimes used, also apparently they use red cross in Russia [External Link], violating the Geneva conventions). The Red Cross (and Red Crescent, and Red Crystal) are used by military medical personnel and by Red Cross itself.

So it seems the Red Cross is fighting to keep the red cross associated with the wartime medical aid, with treating injured soldiers in an area of military operations, and not with any trained (or not) emergency-medical personnel during peace. And there is no military and war in Prison Architect.

It’d be interesting if they sent similar email to some game in an actual war setting using that symbol – because that would be (IMO) a proper use of it.

Prison Architect broke the Geneva Conventions for the use of a red cross
17 Jan 2017 at 9:52 pm UTC Likes: 3

They should just use the Star of Life [External Link], which is pretty much universal ambulance marking today.

The mere existence of the Star of Life shows that the Red Cross can be pretty touchy about the sign. Also, the emergency doctors and medics I know, who also do not want to be associated with the Red Cross, and prefer the Star of Life sign.

As can be read on the Wikipedia: “the Star of Life was created after the American Red Cross complained in 1973 that the orange cross too closely resembled their logo, the red cross on a white background, its use restricted by the Geneva Conventions.”

Early Access survival game 'Rust' gains Vulkan support in a pre-release
14 Jan 2017 at 3:31 pm UTC

Quoting: tmtvlFirst reaction: yeah, I know there are Vulkan bindings for Rust.
Rust rewrite of Rust with Vulkano would be a great practical pun. ;-)

The Humble Store winter sale is on and DiRT Showdown is free
12 Jan 2017 at 10:18 pm UTC Likes: 1

The Talos Principle is 75% off. I might grab that.

Multiple statistics have shown Linux market-share doing better than ever
7 Jan 2017 at 8:40 pm UTC Likes: 25

14 % increase of Linux visits on pornhub? I didn’t see that cumming!

Editorial: The Nintendo Switch will use Vulkan, why that doesn't suddenly mean more Linux ports
20 Dec 2016 at 9:16 am UTC

Quoting: liamdaweA different platform using Vulkan will not change our situation. Windows is a much bigger platform that exists right now and supported Vulkan day-1 just like we did. So far not much has changed there.
Windows also have extremely popular D3D, so Vulkan on Windows won’t get traction all by itself. Something other than Windows must push gamedev industry into using it in DX’s stead. Until now this “it” was Android. Now Nintendo joins.

I believe if Apple platforms also had Vulkan support, there would be no problem with killing D3D12. Unfortunately, and somehow contrary to the intuition, Apple’s Metal and their whole wheel-reinventing with proprietary programming tools makes it worse for Vulkan and Linux more than for Apple platforms, which have their funding and support and it won’t change (even if programming for it means additional work).