I might take back a little of what I said, as the last two levels are lot more punishing, primarily because they are less thought puzzles as reflex tests that require a lot more luck. I also hit a bug wherein if the game was full-screen a lot of the effects and lighting would stop functioning about half-way through the level, a problem which I am currently discussing with Recoil Games support.

I am thinking of collecting up some of my thoughts and adding a small addendum to my Rochard review on Hard Times.

EDIT: Addendum added to Rochard review.

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I had suspected that Frictional would start revealing details about their next game after A Machine for Pigs was released. :)

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Quoting: Quote from SpeedsterYesterday I was talking to a gentoo comrade at work and mentioned my new desktop has a radeon, and got an enthused story about how awesome free radeon drivers are for non-gamers. He has had 6 years of trouble-free experience buying low-end (as in $20 fanless!) radeon cards for himself and family members and always having them work and continue to work through all the gentoo upgrades.

I have been doing the same thing with more higher end radeon cards for almost the same time as a gamer and have had much the same experience.

Quoting: Quote from SpeedsterAMD has major strengths and weaknesses, and thus experience varies a LOT from person to person. They are the best at discrete cards and free drivers, but lose big if you only care about the best experience with proprietary drivers.

That is probably a fair summary.

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Quoting: Quote from scaineAh, Linus. Not sure you should ever rely on him to back up your well reasoned views. He did no one a favour when he flipped Nvidia a finger. Not him, not linux, and certainly not Ubuntu or Valve when they have to ask Nvidia to support technologies like Mir. I'd love to be a fly on the wall of that negotiation.

Like it or not, Linus does not represent Ubuntu or Valve, and not even really Linux, although his comments came from the perspective of a kernel developer, and unlike AMD and Intel the people at Nvidia have shown little to no interest in working with them to further the actual Linux graphics stack.

Which, incidentally, is why Ubuntu has to try so hard to sell Mir to them, as by accepting Nvidia as it stands they have left themselves powerless, while people have been free to run Wayland with drivers actively supported by AMD and Intel for years now. That is one of the many advantage of supporting the actual in-kernel Linux graphics stack.

Quoting: Quote from scaineAs for Hamish pointing out AMD's "huge contributions", I'd have to see examples.

Since you use the blob drivers you do not really use the Linux graphics stack as such, so no, you may not have seen them. For those of us who do, the contributions are huge.

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Does this mean they might make a proper native port of LIMBO and I can actually allow myself to play it?

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Quoting: Quote from liamdaweDisrespectful to who exactly? This is an editorial so it all comes from my personal experience and personal observations, It's not disrespectful to know how bad AMD's drivers can be from experience, my rig has an APU in it remember, I tried using it before I finally got an NVIDIA card, it was god damned awful.

AMD is a large and varied company, so it can seem disrespectful to paint it all with one big brush - I would say that the likes of Marek Olšák, Tom Stellard, and John Bridgman are actually quite popular with the Linux community (in the case of Olšák one is even tempted to say amazingly popular).

And as I said, you are fully within your rights to say what you said, but AMD has been making huge contributions to the Linux community, and not just in the graphics space. And Nvidia is far from universally loved in the Linux community, as Linus Torvalds has theatrically shown on at least one occasion.

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AMD is less than amazingly popular with Linux users due to their terribly buggy and under-performing drivers

And Nvidia is less than amazingly popular due to their closed nature and unwillingness to cooperate with the community, something both AMD and Intel have been far better at doing, and doing it cooperatively as a community.

I have had great success with AMD cards, and I absolutely love my Radeon HD 4670 which has been the best card I have owned since I replaced my also awesome Radeon 9200 which started me on Linux gaming. Now, almost all of this has been powered by free software drivers (even the old R200 card since it got its DRI drivers back during the Loki boom before AMD restored ATI's support for free Linux drivers) which have been improving by leaps and bounds, and I personally feel it a little disrespectful to all of the hard work being done there to make such a large swipe against AMD, although Liam is certainly within his rights to do so.

During the occasions I have used Catalyst I did have some issues, most of which are inherent to any driver setup that relies on closed binary blobs, and which I have also seen with Nvidia cards using their blob. Not to mention they have had their own vendor specific issues such as releases that burn out cards due to poor fan control and of course the whole situation regarding Optimus support. Having used all three vendors, I definitely still favour AMD, although Intel is working rather well in my brother's laptop.

And speaking of the problems of blobs, one can really lay the blame for that on Nvidia in the first place. Back during the aforementioned Loki boom all the various vendors started releasing graphics drivers for Linux, most of which were free in-kernel drivers such as those from ATI, Matrox, and 3DFX. Only Nvidia really insisted on using a blob, something which they were criticized for, but when the cards settled (pun intended) and only ATI and Nvidia remained, everyone was forced to adopt it, hindering the growth of a truly native Linux graphics system until the rise of Intel and AMD's acquisition of ATI in 2006.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4152?page=0,1 [External Link]

Not that this really has any bearing when discussing Mantle, which I do not really have an opinion on at this point.

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Added to my Desura cart which will eventually be emptied someday. And I did do it through your website.

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Well, I have finally gotten the chance to play some of this, and I must admit to not finding it too hard. You need to know Rochard to play it, certainly, but I am making my way through alright.

Although, considering I reviewed it, my knowledge of the game may have been forced to be more extensive than it would be for some other players. :P

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Funny you should post this on International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Arrr?

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