Quoting: lqe5433Wine is only working with X.org, and X.org will be replaced with Wayland really soon, so I don't see the point of this. Games should use SDL2 on Linux, or Wine needs to use Wayland.

Wine cannot and will not work under Wayland. Windows programs implement menus and dropdowns as separate child windows that are positioned relatively to the parent window. Under Wayland, however, windows are not allowed to specify positions of their children ("for security", lol) so it won't work. Years ago, when Wine developers raised these concerns [External Link] in #wayland on freenode, they were told to just stick with X because there was nothing to be done.

So no, X.org won't be replaced with Wayland "really soon". Not even close.

EDIT: Michael Müller explained it better than I could:

It is very unlikely that Wine is going to support Wayland in the same way as X. I worked on a Wayland driver for Wine some time ago, but discontinued the idea because Wayland lacks many features that are expected by Windows programs.

One problem is for example that a program can not specify the location of a newly created window. This doesn't sound very problematic at first, until you notice that drop-down / popup menus are also just normal windows on Windows. The solution that Wayland provides for this is not really compatible with the Win32 API. I therefore talked with some Wayland developers and there is no chance of fixing this in the future. It is part of their concept that applications should not have control over the window position and similar settings.

IMHO, it is not a good solution to remove features just because an application could abuse them. I can understand this for security relevant features, like grabbing the keyboard and mouse input from another window, but not for things like specifying the window position. It is like removing the possibility to delete files, because the user could accidentally click on the wrong file, instead of implementing a recycle bin. Adding a way to recover from situations in which programs misbehave would be a better solution, but this is just my opinion.

The opinion from the Wayland developers is that you should stick to XWayland.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyI dunno. You make it sound like there's no such thing as actual pretentiousness, or at least that it's very rare. I don't think that's true. There's an awful lot of people out there, whether in business or academia or the media, trying to dress up little or nonexistent ideas to sound big and significant.

While I agree that using big words to cover up for weak arguments exist in the wild, I don't classify that as pretentiousness. Grandstanding might be a better fit. So yes, I do believe pretentiousness pretty much doesn't exist.

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Quoting: scaineRPS can be extremely arsey (is that a word?) with their reviews. Pretentious - that's a better word. They're trying to be intellectual critics, and often over-analyse. I don't mind that per se, but sometimes it's kind of like a film critic having a go at an action film for not having a political message. They're missing the point - play the game, enjoy it, have fun, first and foremost. They sometimes forget that.

In my experience when people say something is pretentious, they actually mean "it's too high-brow for me and that makes me feel insecure so I will attack it".

Quoting: scaineI mean, from the review: "Though the whole game is angular, the character models are in a particularly low-res, polygonal style that stands out against the crisp backgrounds. The intention here is to make you consider the uncanny valley that emerges when people become digitalised and the digital becomes humanised." Frankly, what a load of arse.

Did you play the game? Because I think that observation fits very well with the game, particularly the last ~30 minutes or so.

Quoting: scaineApparently State of Mind juggles "six or seven themes of posthumanism" and the reviewer suggests that it should simplify to just one or two?!? What does that even mean??

The author spells it out at the beginning of the review. Here, let me quote it for you:

The following is an abbreviated list of the events that are happening at the start of the game: the emergence of a Skynet-esque AI; the colonisation of Mars; robots coming to consciousness; a robot uprising; a luddite humanist revolution against tech; an evil tech firm trying to copy and paste consciousness; some kind of Matrix thingy; a plot about memory fragments that is inexplicable; and, you know, another Skynet AI coming to consciousness in China.

There are nine cyberpunk and/or posthumanist tropes mentioned there so I think it's pretty clear what he means.

Quoting: scaineNo, State of Mind isn't a masterpiece, but it's extremely enjoyable. RPS failed to see that apparently, too busy as they were, lamenting instead the lack of "great cyberpunk".

Again, did you read the review? He had a ton of praise for the game and he clearly enjoyed it. Just because he personally found the story lacking doesn't mean he hated it.

It's fascinating how people take reviews that are anything less than 100% praise as personal insults. A review is the personal opinion of the reviewer. Nothing more, nothing less. Don't get defensive because a person felt differently about a game than you did.

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Quoting: BeamboomRockPaperShotgun is a good source for reviews. Also the metascore pretty much confirms that they are onto something.

Indeed. Aside from GOL, RPS is the only gaming website I actually follow (via RSS feeds). I have never once visited metascore/metacritic/whatever, so I can't comment on that, but I'm glad that review is not an isolated opinion.

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Played this about a month ago and I largely agree with the RPS review [External Link]:

[..] contra to State of Mind’s excellent and discrete world building, and its litany of beautiful and subtle moments, the story is all kinds of batshit, and fails to focus the player on the key tropes and loops that make cyberpunk great.

It’s a real shame. If State of Mind was more minimalist in its plot, and focused on exploring and completing character arcs rather than absurd thought experiments, if it dealt with one or two of the themes of posthumanism, instead of six or seven all at once… we might have had something really special on our hands. Less, as always and never, is more. As it stands, this game is worth your while if you’re up for a lovely stroll around some dystopias whilst drinking tea.

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Considering it also follows on from the events of the previous game, they're going to need a good bit of story telling for Linux (and Mac) players so we're not completely lost on what's going on.

First of all no, they won't need any story telling because there is nothing to tell. It's a point-and-click adventure game which is very light on story. There is nothing to catch up with.

Second - and I know you have this "no tux no bux" policy Liam - even if there was a story, those who would be "completely lost on what's going on" are people who not only use Mac or Linux exclusively to the point of never-ever-ever booting into Windows, but also aware of this tiny little obscure renaissance game and are willing to pay for it despite not playing the first one. Well, I'm sure the developer can afford to disappoint all 3 of those people.

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Mass Effect: Andromeda. I've been holding off on this due to horrendous first impressions from people whose opinion I respect, but out of sheer boredom (and longing for the original trilogy) I've decided to give it a shot. 4-5 hours in, the game is... ok, I guess. It doesn't have that Mass Effect soul but it's not completely horrible either.

This is also my first experience with Lutris + DXVK and I have to admit, everything runs perfectly. 1440p resolution, everything on ultra and I get 70/130 min/max fps, with the average around ~90. Absolutely amazing!

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I love all three Supergiant games, but Transistor is still my favourite. I've replayed it 2-3 times since release and I'll probably go back to it at some point. Something about it just draws me in...

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I've made an Arch Linux package :) https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/paradox-launcher [External Link]

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I've made an Arch Linux package :) https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/basemark [External Link]

Also see the benchmark thread on the forums.

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