Quoting: DuncThe Settlers, Dune 2, Civilization, A-Train

All games I played on the Amiga :-).

For some reason, I never liked Settlers II as much as the first. I think the original required a bit more care in organizing transport of wares, while the production chains were fairly simple to keep going as long as wares were flowing. With the second part, transport stopped being the bottleneck and I never really figured out the ratio of materials required for smooth operation. It must also have lacked the split-screen multiplayer of part 1. I bought a second mouse just so that friends could come over and play against me :-).

So with my preference for the first, I'm not that interested in Widelands, unfortunately. But I absolutely appreciate the effort put into the project!

Quoting: PitCiv: Call to Power (for Linux) CD from Loki is in the bookshelf next to me, and was (IIRC) the first commercial linux game I fully played through :D

Here in Germany it was distributed by SuSE, and through some logistics mishap I ended up with 2 copies (both paid for, eventually). So it was both my first and second commercial Linux game :-D.

Sam Lantinga even made changes to SDL for me, so video and audio would run in sync with my cheap Soundblaster knockoff. Good memories!

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Quoting: Liam Dawethe games are popular sure but Wheels I think are still a niche.

Given how pricey they can be that is certainly true. Though from my own experience of playing F1 2017 with a gamepad (and having played various racing games with a wheel back when I didn't have to justify the expense), I would say a wheel makes a hell of a difference. There are some courses where I feel the gamepad is working fairly well, but even then remaining consistent is quite the challenge when the analogue sticks and triggers have such a short travel distance and you're not really in full control when cornering, accelerating or breaking. But then there are courses where there are easily 2 to 3 seconds between a good lap and a bad, and the only consistency is that most laps are bad.

Plus, I don't even want to think about turning off most of the driving aids while on a gamepad. With a wheel and pedals that was a no brainer.

Quoting: leillo1975We hope that Feral Interactive makes an announce

Me too, but I guess if there's no announcement by now, chances are slim :-(.

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Not sure if it's even mentioned in there, but I really was looking forward to In The Valley of Gods, which more or less was abandoned after the devs got absorbed by other, possibly more exciting Valve projects. I'd rather have that than any Half-Life, though :-).

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I'm with apocalyptech. I've spent a few minutes trying to figure out what the tech behind Flutter really is (because if it's some abomination like Electron I wouldn't want to touch it), and the following gem caught my eye:

QuoteFor a Material app, you can use a Scaffold widget; it provides a default banner, background color, and has API for adding drawers, snack bars, and bottom sheets. [1]

Thanks, I think I'll pass ... . We dinosaurs might die out, but at least we'll die out in style!

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Frankly, I'd be hard pressed to list 5 native Linux games of 2020 that I've played or been looking forward to, much less a top 5. But the same would be true outside of Linux, too. No big gaming hits for me this year so far.

I guess one possible contender for a top 5 entry might be Beyond a Steel Sky, though I want to play it first before judging. I'd also add LUNA The Shadow Dust as an honorable mention, because it's really gorgeous, just not a lot of game.

Another one, if I dare take the plunge, might turn out to be Crusader Kings III.

Sadly, the games I'm really looking forward to (Sable, Haven and Pendragon) won't come to Linux.

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Quoting: ShmerlGOG release is coming too?

Quite likely, but looks like it's not such a high priority. I'll be waiting patiently ...

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Played the demos of Pendragon and Haven on Steam with Proton (latter requiring a prefix with Windows Media Foundation installed, former running out of the box).

Pendragon seems a bit casual and slow at first. But the demo was brief and so far everything made by inkle was good, so I hope this will be no exception. They are probably the best when it comes to emergent narratives in video games, and I'm quite thrilled to see that paired with a bit of turn based strategy.

Haven not only looks gorgeous, it also has an interesting angle by having a couple as the two main characters. I was a bit worried since it's more of an action adventure, but even I could beat the first boss with relative ease, so I'm looking forward to this more than before. The relation between the two is a bit less harmonic than I thought, though, especially when picking the wrong dialogue choices. Just like real life, I guess ... ;-).

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Sadly, none of the game demos I'm really interested in have a Linux version. One worked with Proton, though, the other required the Media Foundation stuff in addition. At least now I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to play them at launch.

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I'm contemplating an upgrade towards the end of this or early next year. So this hopefully means ZEN 3 and RDNA 2 for me.

Though truth be told, I'll either have to opt for pricier components, or I won't see the same boost in performance as last time around, when I went from a Core 2 Duo E7200 to an i5 4460 and from a Geforce 9600GT to the GTX950. But waiting 'til 2022 doesn't sound so appealing right now. Unless Cyberpunk 2077 turns out to be a shooter ;-). In that case I might as well bide my time ...

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Good to see the Linux version getting these updates, even if it's a little later and not fully done yet. As for the new DLC, for now I'll pass.

As good as the mechanics of Civilization are, after nearly 30 years the formula does get a bit old, and minor changes introducing little more than a new leader, unit or building don't feel very rejuvenating. Maybe I'll reconsider once more of the content is available and something in there does strike my fancy.

That said, Gathering Storm being required for the Apocalypse stuff seems to make sense. If I recall correctly, that's where natural disasters were added in the first place.

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