I like the pet. I like pixels. I like RPGs. I like Linux. Backed.

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Still spearheaded by Ingo, I see :-).

While I'm not into Jump'n Runs, I'm pretty happy to see such older open source games receiving some love (and attention). After all, time isn't forgiving to old code. While old binaries might continue to run on modern systems, trying to compile old code can by quite tricky at times.

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Quoting: Mountain ManInteresting strategy on Micorsoft's part. Since they realize that Valve's commitment to Linux is a threat to their ability to control the market on the distribution side, they appear to be cutting Linux off at the knees by taking control of the development side.

Can't imagine that this is aimed at Linux primarily. I'd bet it's meant to be a push for the Windows store, and Linux just happens to be in the line of fire.

The gamer in me really wonders what Obsidian or even inXile could achieve with a bigger budget (assuming Microsoft throws some cash their way), but as a Linux user I guess I will not be able to experience that for myself. I wasn't totally hooked on any of their games, and especially inXile has wasted some potential with T:ToN and BT IV, but PoE was fun and I eventually have to revisit PoE II (stopped playing after the first island).

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The graphics look like they are straight from Randal's Monday. Wonder if it's the same artist. (Different studios, but both from Spain, so quite likely)

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Quoting: liamdaweEdit: No it's not, updated :)

My own project uses SDL too, so I'll keep an eye on their repository to see what's upcoming, and I hadn't seen the batching stuff being merged so far. Given how many games depend on SDL these days, there's little room for errors, so I would have been very much surprised if Sam or Ryan pulled a stunt like that :-).

But I'll gladly try it out as soon as it lands. I'm pretty sure it'll be quite beneficial in my case.

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Quoting: ThormackIs/was it a scam?

I wouldn't call it a scam. But definitely overambitious and underfunded.

That said, their selling of virtual trinkets for lots of real money did put me off, but is not exactly uncommon practice in today's gaming industry.

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"SDL render batching, which Ryan Gordon wrote about in this Patreon post" is not in 2.0.9. As Ryan writes in the very same post:

"This was a lot of work, and I'm thrilled with the end result. This project is sitting in the "SDL-ryan-batching-renderer" branch in revision control; we're about to ship SDL 2.0.9 and it's way too late to drop a change this huge into it, but it will merge thereafter."

Other than that, yay! SDL is likely my second most favourite open source project.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeUltima IX was delayed and the engine redone like 3 or 4 times, it has almost as bad a development history as Duke Nuke'em Forever.

Yeah, I remember that the first screenshots I saw seemed fully 3d, but still had the classic top-down perspective. The final product looked nothing like that.

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt was though one of the early 3D accelerated titles (so early it originally only worked with software rendering or 3Dfx, and Direct3D was added in a later patch.) I thought the game was amazing, but yeah there were parts where the story was just missing the things they wanted to do, but ran out of time.

Proud owner of a Voodoo2 card back then; though I think I already had it before UIX came out.

Quoting: slaapliedjeHa, I recently watched a video about UO.

By Garriott himself, no less :-). I really liked how that man pushed boundaries back then, and I did have some hopes that perhaps the nth iteration of Shroud of the Avatar would again reach the level of Ultima 7. Alas, I don't think that's coming to pass any more.

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I've been tempted twice to buy this. The first time when it was on Kickstarter and the second time a few weeks ago when they sold off excess physical copies at a "discount". They still were like $115 (with shipping across the pond included), but given the digital version was $40 at that time and did neither contain access to episode 2 (whatever that entails), nor -- more importantly -- a highly collectible cloth map, it sounded like an okay deal. A quick visit to their forum, however, convinced me otherwise: offline single player, the only mode I would have any interest of playing, still looked more like an afterthought and didn't seem overly compelling. And the writing was already on the wall, with rumours of Richard Garriott jumping ship, low player numbers of the online game, etc. . My gut feeling then and now is that SotA doesn't have a future.

Which is sort of sad. I have the highest respect for Richard Garriott, not in the least because Ultima 7 is still my most favourite computer game of all time (which in turn makes Exult [External Link] my most favourite open source project of all time). But what he and his team proposed for SotA from the beginning simply seemed too good to be true. I've backed a few Kickstarters against better judgement, and got bitten, but this trap I managed to avoid.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeI actually quite liked IX, but you could tell where the story fell flat.

I think both VIII and IX were rushed out the door way before they were ready for release. So definitely EA to blame. As a result, VIII feels like they cut most of the content, just to get it done, while IX was decent enough, but with a terrible story.

Quoting: slaapliedjeDidn't Richard Garriott leave after 7 though?

From what I remember, Origin Systems was acquired by EA after the release of Ultima 7. Garriott didn't leave until they shut down Origin. Sometime after Ultima IX. I'm pretty sure he was involved with all the Ultimas.

Quoting: slaapliedjeUltima Online 2 being cancelled was the biggest EA travesty and I kind haven't really bought many games from them since then. Somehow UO is still going strong, but I recently tried it in Linux with Wine and it failed hard.

I'm not into online games, so can't really comment on anything going on with UO. But I'm glad I didn't put any money into Shroud of the Avatar when it was on Kickstarter. Though at least that one runs natively on Linux.

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