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Latest Comments by kaiman
FOSS Ultima 7 game engine 'Exult' has a new big stable update after 16 years
21 April 2020 at 5:00 pm UTC Likes: 2

Nice to see an official release, though at least on Linux, compiling from source wasn't that hard.

As for Ultima VII, that's still one of my favorite RPGs of all times. There are games with better graphics, games with better combat (definitely!), probably games with better anything. But there's hardly a game that beats the package as a whole.

So I'm immensely grateful to the Exult team for all the work they did so far to keep that gem alive on modern hardware!

City-building strategy 'Kingdoms and Castles' adds Steam Workshop support ahead of AI kingdoms update
6 April 2020 at 8:43 pm UTC

Quoting: ChronariusSure, will be lot of fun if you have bought it on GOG!
My thought exactly.

Wine 5.5 development release out with new features and fixes
28 March 2020 at 12:39 pm UTC Likes: 4

The ongoing MediaFoundation work is the current highlight for me. Apparently, a lot of modern Unity-based games without native support rely on that for video playback. I have set up a prefix with native (Windows 7) mf dll overrides, which plays these games just fine, but getting it to work was nontrivial and required grabbing the dlls from an actual Windows 7 installation. So I am looking forward to this work being complete.

Mostly though, I'll hope that developers using Unity will export their games for Linux as well :-).

Ara Fell: Enhanced Edition is out dumping RPG Maker for Unity, adds in Linux support
27 March 2020 at 4:17 pm UTC

Quoting: Alm888Wishlisted for now. :)
Me too. I'm currently playing Divinity: Original Sin 2, and if I'm in the mood for more RPG afterwards that might be a good candidate. Watched a bit of gameplay, and it looks quite lovely indeed!

Lair of the Clockwork God, Darklands and NAM arrive on GOG with Linux builds
23 March 2020 at 12:14 pm UTC

I already wondered why Darklands showed up as new, because if I'm not totally mistaken it has been on GOG for quite some time. Being a DOS game, running it on Linux shouldn't have been an issue either, but nice to see explicit support.

That said, for a brief moment I was tempted once more to buy it, because boy was I looking forward to this game in 1992! Unfortunately, the Amiga version was cancelled, and I never got the chance to play when it was fresh. Nowadays, just looking at those low-fidelity graphics and barely legible font, I am not sure if it would live up to my expectation. Though I don't think any of the games published by MicroProse ever disappointed.

But no, unless someone convinces me otherwise, Darklands will always remain one of those great games I've never played.

What have you been playing recently and what are your thoughts?
9 March 2020 at 7:23 pm UTC

Aside from the ongoing F1 2017 season, I've picked up and completed Yes, Your Grace. A narrative game with a very casual management component tacked on, that would be quite unremarkable were it not for the lovely pixel aesthetics and the beautiful soundtrack. The story is standard fantasy fare, but it's redeemed by the small cast of likable family members whose well-being lies mostly in the hand of the player.

Since the setting draws from Eastern European mythology, it did have a bit of a Witcher feeling to it, with some not so subtle references on top. And as with most of today's fantasy, there were a few grimdark elements throughout the plot, but for the biggest part it was fairly lighthearted and enjoyable (or maybe I've just grown indifferent to the overabundance of cruelty and violence in the genre).

What have you been playing recently and what do you think about it?
23 February 2020 at 8:55 pm UTC Likes: 1

Been playing F1 2017 a lot lately, with mixed feelings. Hadn't played a Formula One game since Geoff Crammond stopped making them, but last year I suddenly felt the urge. So I got the latest one running natively, drove some laps and then all but forgot about it. When staying home with a cold in January, I decided to finally start my championship career. At first I was a bit dismayed at all the fluff that surrounds the actual race, but by now I think it's the most enjoyable part of the game. I kinda wish for a steering wheel and pedals (my old set has long since been trashed), but it seems an excessive investment for just one game, so a gamepad must make do. It's bearable, given the more arcade-like driving model, but not optimal.

The one area where I am disappointed is stability. The game doesn't have any issues while on track, but it likes to crash once a session is complete. So far it did do its autosave in time, so it was only a minor nuisance, but today of all days I lost half an hour of excellent racing :-(. (I redid it and came out even one position higher, but it just wasn't the same). Not sure if the game is to blame, though; might also be the graphics driver, as it's always a Vulkan error that comes up.

Anyway, now that I am hooked, I'd absolutely buy a newer release, if Feral ever decided to make another port. Maybe F1 2020 ... ? :).

NVIDIA talk up bringing DirectX Ray Tracing to Vulkan
23 February 2020 at 10:58 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: ShmerlIt is a gimmick. More of a marketing tool than a really useful feature. To achieve good quality real time ray tracing, you need really powerful hardware.
I remember viewing an impressive demonstration by SGI at CeBIT, ca. 20 years ago: the rotating earth viewed from space, and then it zoomed in down to street level. Back then it was inconceivable that consumer grade hardware would deliver that in the foreseeable future, if ever. Nowadays, every smartphone could do it, likely in better quality, too. So yeah, real time ray tracing might be a gimmick now, but give it some time and it will be ubiquitous.

Though I'll concede one thing: better graphics (and graphic effects) don't automatically make better games. I'd rather have great gameplay with mediocre visuals than great visuals with mediocre gameplay. So I am skeptical about the usefulness of ray tracing as it is implemented by NVIDIA today, as it's just a bit of extra eye candy. It certainly wouldn't be a decisive feature when shopping for a new GPU; on the contrary, I'd rather not have it if it makes the package cheaper.

NVIDIA have a new Vulkan Beta driver out for Linux fixing some regressions
16 February 2020 at 10:06 pm UTC

Quoting: LeopardWith 440.59 those games works fine. This regression belongs to previous vlk beta driver , not to stable driver.
The popup that appeared last time it crashed specifically stated a swap chain recreation failure. But I guess it could be pure coincidence and totally unrelated. Meaning one more reason to stay off the beta driver :-).

NVIDIA have a new Vulkan Beta driver out for Linux fixing some regressions
16 February 2020 at 7:23 pm UTC

Experiencing the swapchain recreation crash with F1 2017 firsthand, but given that the game didn't work at all with the previous beta driver, I'm in no hurry to upgrade. But seems I can stop spamming Feral whenever it does crash :-). (Which, so far, has always been _after_ it saved its state, so it's bearable, if not ideal)