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Latest Comments by Hamish
Humble Indie...Store?
12 January 2012 at 10:22 pm UTC

Quoting: "motorsep, post: 3101"Native client is limited to Chrome. Also, I am seeing right now that the game is downloaded, not streamed. So I really don't see where is the advantage of games running in the browsers :(



For the moment yes, but is an open standard and fully free software, so there is nothing limiting it from being implemented in other browsers.

And the advantage is that you can develop for one platform (native client), meaning you can play it like an online game from any supported system, but at the same time it can access the system libraries and hardware in a native fashion, meaning you do not have the associated problems that online games often have.

3079 now on Desura!
9 January 2012 at 8:56 pm UTC

Tried the demo for a bit last night, but could not figure it out. Guess I need to read the games documentation a bit more?

All of these people shouting Minecraft rip-off are hilarious though; just because a game uses voxels does not make it a Minecraft clone! Sure, it also uses Java, but so do a lot of games.

I like the fact that voxels have gotten more exposure, as they are interesting technically, but to have them somehow inexorably tied to Minecraft is incredibly ignorant.

Are sales bad for games?
10 January 2012 at 7:24 pm UTC

There were some legitimate points in that Google+ post, and I do not agree entirely with how Jeffery Rosen and Co have been handling it recently either. Especially the point about over saturation and the fact that the original Humble bundle traditions have slowly been eroding. I mean, the last time we got even the hint of a source code release was really with the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle (the Introversion one does not really count since they were playing with the idea before, in various forms). Plus, as I have said before, the recent pace of Bundles has been, in my opinion, unsustainable and tarnishing the brand.

I would limit it to only three or four bundles a year; that would raise the quality, which is actually quite important if you look at the money earned. The Bundles which earned the most were the ones with the most planning and work put into them, namely Bundles #1, #2, #3, and #4. The ones in between were all considerably more sluggish, and often came across somewhat crassly. Especially the Frozen Synapse one, which seemed like a massive ego trip for one game made by one developer. What ever happened to being humble? Adding bonus games on top of these only makes things come out worse; what is wrong with these games that they are considered merely a "bonus" but the one splattered on the title page is god incarnate?

I mean, no offence to the Introversion games in of themselves, but the one from the bundle I am spending most of my time with is Dungeons of Dredmor (and thank you again for giving me that KIAaze). And yes, the first HIB #3 game I am planning on playing when I get to them going is going to be Steel Storm, and it was Steel Storm that was my primary motivation to buy it in the first place (happy Alex?). The bonus system, while maybe adding more value to the buyer, adds an inconsistent tone when it comes to which developers they feel want to support, which stinks, maybe unintentionally, of conspiracy. On the same token, in other ways the HIB developers do not seem to be using their powers of discretion enough.

Now, all praise be with them in that they have unfalteringly mandated the multi-platform nature of the Bundles, and have been giving both Ryan C. Gordon and Edward Rudd a lot of good business for the past year. But, one problem with the Bundles that I had hoped Desura was going to solve, was the fact that a Linux port appears for a bundle, and then can not be purchased from anywhere else unless the individual developers cares enough to put in some other mechanism. And then we have a whole new situation of abandonware. I wish more pressure was on them to put these games out there after the fact. There is also the recent lack of interest in source releases; I mean, Rosen, do not tell me Apple's screw up has turned you against the concept completely?

Actually, in many ways the name just does not fit any more. The games, or at least the developers, are not that Humble, they are a publisher in their own right now so not really that Indie, and Bundle, well, look at Frozen Synapse. Now, with all that being said, this is not going to stop me from buying Bundles. Looking at the history of left-wing and alternative politics, there has always been the problem of too much fracturization and arguing, meaning they had trouble moving forward in a consistent direction. The Linux community could be considered the same thing in a way, the alternative group, and we must keep supporting those which can benefit us. Gordon is not incorrect to say the Bundle's might just be the best thing to happen to Linux gaming, at least for the last few years.

But I am not going to sugar-coat it just because something is useful; you can disagree with something on some respects but still support it because it is legitimately the best offer, and the Bundles still definitely qualify as that, no question. If anything, it is because I support the Bundles that I am posting this. But the fact I had to bring up a political analogy says a lot, that I have begun to have to treat it in the same way. And, like in politics, if another camp has a legitimately better claim, you should go and support them. But, for the moment, the rest all seem corrupt and greedy. So Humble Bundle it is then.

Tomes of Mephistopheles Teaser
7 January 2012 at 4:03 am UTC

The story has only been up for five hours and you are are complaining about a lack of comments already? :rolleyes:

That being said, the graphics and especially the shadowing do look quite nice.

Nemesys games needing testers
5 January 2012 at 7:04 pm UTC

Good job on this Liam, and of course good work to Nemesys as well.

Happy new year, a review of 2011
2 January 2012 at 8:10 pm UTC

Edward Rudd? I had no idea he had anything to do with Overgrwoth, I thought that was going to be Gordon again. Then again, it was not until yesterday I knew he was porting for the Bundles as well.

He did a good job with Penumbra and Amnesia though, so it is no problem.

Happy new year, a review of 2011
1 January 2012 at 7:15 pm UTC

Well, to be fair to Phoronix, they have not mentioned Steam in months now, and their gaming coverage has improved somewhat.

And with regards to Bumbadar, at the very least the Humble Bundle has been getting some more games ported. Many of the games in the past few bundles have been Ryan Gordon's ports, they did not have Linux versions before.

As to the Indie Royal Bundle, I stand by what I said when I first heard of it: a crass attempt to cash in on someone else's good idea. It does not change how I view Desura, but I am dissaptointed in the company behind them somewhat for it. Especially when I feel the HIB is overstretching it in terms of bundle amounts anyway.

But DesuraNET is doing great things with Desura, and the Linux attention has definitely been good for them. I was just working on improving their Wikipedia article, and it is hard to find media coverage of it that is not related to the Linux release anymore, so much so I had a hell of a time finding a source for the date of its original Windows launch. That bodes well for us, I think.

And Liam, I think the biggest thing to look forward to when it comes to the Doom 3 source code releases is for iodoom3 to continue progressing and see some of the Doom 3 Mods (The Dark Mod, Hexen: Edge of Chaos, etc) go stand-alone. There is not actually that much the Doom 3 source can really teach us otherwise. You brought up Xonotic, which is already on DarkPlaces, which has basically the same feature set of id Tech 4 already.

Still, I can not actually argue with the claim that 2011 was Linux Gamings best year; we have a momentum again that we have not really had since the days of Loki and the heady start-ups and derivatives it original inspired, before it all burned out. Only this time it is built on a wide network of developers and not the cash flow of one software licensing attorney and his wife, and the casual interest of others. With efforts like Humble Bundle, Gameolith, Desura, Unigine, and every single other Linux friendly developer pushing in the right direction, the future does seem bright.

Ensign 1 kickstarter goal reached!
28 December 2011 at 6:38 pm UTC

Should really play more than just the demo for Descent one of these days...

Based on that trailer, my only real comment is that while it does seem evident that you are going for the "Grey Imperial Star Wars" look, a little bit more colour would not go a miss. Of course, early development, not the final look, blah blah blah... ;)

Still, based on that comment, when will Helena be on Gameolith? :)

Getting back to normal
31 December 2011 at 8:55 pm UTC

QuoteLibraries to remove if the games don't launch

If the games don't run, you can try removing the following libraries (this may be the case for e.g. Fedora 16). Please note that all games also require the PhysX libraries (i.e. libNxCooking.so, libNxCharacter.so in the lib32 directory) - if the PhysX libraries are missing the game may start but you may experience odd physics-based behavior.

Libraries:

Trine
libvorbis.so.0
libstdc++.so.6
libGLEW.so.1
libm.so.6
libz.so.1

Shadowgrounds
libvorbis.so.0
libstdc++.so.6
libGLEW.so.1
libm.so.6
libz.so.1l
libxml2.so.2

Shadowgrounds Survivor
libvorbis.so.0
libstdc++.so.6
libGLEW.so.1
libm.so.6
libz.so.1l l
libxml2.so.2


http://frozenbyte.com/help_humble/linuxfaq.html

Getting back to normal
30 December 2011 at 1:20 am UTC

Well, it looks like I got my problems solved on my own. Here is my message to Frozenbyte:

QuoteHello,

Well, I have made progress and found out why the lever did nothing, as well as solving some other problems I was experiencing such as the jerky and overpowering winds and why certain objects were not solid (or non-existent).

Like with Shadowgrounds, I had to remove libraries to get the game to start. Unfortunately, I removed both libNxCooking.so and libNxCharacter.so from the lib32 directory, and these libraries are needed by the game to perform certain functions, even though it will start without them.

In doing so, I also isolated which libraries specifically impaired my Frozenbyte games from launching on my Fedora 16 system:

Trine:
libvorbis.so.0
libstdc++.so.6
libGLEW.so.1
libm.so.6
libz.so.1

Shadowgrounds and Survivor:
libvorbis.so.0
libstdc++.so.6
libGLEW.so.1
libm.so.6
libz.so.1
libxml2.so.2

If you could make this information public somewhere I would be pleased; it took a lot of tedious effort to isolate which particular ones caused the problem. I understand you are busy with the release of Trine 2, which looks to be doing very well I am glad to say, but if someone could add this information to the Linux FAQ or something I would be grateful.

Thank you,
Hamish Paul Wilson