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Latest Comments by TheSHEEEP
Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York announced with Linux support
6 Jun 2019 at 11:12 am UTC

What a weird announcement. Omitting all infos about gameplay.
I mean, if they say 5th edition, then at least it will be an RPG in some form I guess?

Remember the SMACH Z handheld? It's apparently going to be at E3 this year
5 Jun 2019 at 3:25 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: ArehandoroIdea: For a long time PC users have wanted to play like console users.
In which universe, please? And what is "like console users" :D ?

People who want to play on a console, they have a console.
People who want to plan on a PC, they have a PC.
People who want both, well, those with money have both, and the others are obviously not the target audience ;)

Remember the SMACH Z handheld? It's apparently going to be at E3 this year
5 Jun 2019 at 8:26 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot to downplay the device, but a feature like that should simply become available via tablet/smartphone (+ controller attached, of course). I don't really see the need for an extra piece of hardware here, to be honest.
I don't personally expect it to be a success. But consider trying to play games on a tablet/smartphone while holding a controller--you can't also hold the tablet/smartphone, so you will need to put it somewhere and that somewhere will have to allow it to be propped up in a stable way where you can see it properly while gaming and the controller itself won't block your view of the screen. Even with one of those little prop-up-a-tablet thingies, that lets out planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention buses and many coffee tables (too low). With this you would presumably be able to play on the go, with real PC games, plausibly even continuing the same game you were playing on the PC at home.
So there's at least one use case. Dunno if that's going to be enough, though. If nothing else, to sell something like this in big numbers what you need is a big advertising/marketing budget to prompt people to think they should buy it because it is a new shiny electronic thing. I don't think they have that budget.
There are controllers (and/or frames) that attach the controller firmly to the smartphone/tablet, so you do not have to hold two devices. Stuff like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Bluetooth-Android-Controller%EF%BC%8CBRHE-Controller/dp/B0772SXD12 [External Link]

Maybe that one isn't optimal, but what I'm saying is that a more optimally designed controller-for-smartphones/tablets sounds like a better idea to me than extra display hardware when all you really do is stream image/audio to and input from the device. Two things smartphones are already capable of.
Hang on, I thought it was supposed to run the games itself, not stream them.
You might be onto something, there. I think I misunderstood the entire project. Oops :D

So it's basically a handheld gaming device, like a DS, just with desktop games running on it.
That does seem a bit more usable, though I still don't think many would choose this over just doing their "gaming on the run" via smartphone.
I can't really look at screens for a longer time while in a bus, train, etc. as it makes me dizzy so it's not for me anyway.

Remember the SMACH Z handheld? It's apparently going to be at E3 this year
5 Jun 2019 at 6:21 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot to downplay the device, but a feature like that should simply become available via tablet/smartphone (+ controller attached, of course). I don't really see the need for an extra piece of hardware here, to be honest.
I don't personally expect it to be a success. But consider trying to play games on a tablet/smartphone while holding a controller--you can't also hold the tablet/smartphone, so you will need to put it somewhere and that somewhere will have to allow it to be propped up in a stable way where you can see it properly while gaming and the controller itself won't block your view of the screen. Even with one of those little prop-up-a-tablet thingies, that lets out planes, trains, and automobiles, not to mention buses and many coffee tables (too low). With this you would presumably be able to play on the go, with real PC games, plausibly even continuing the same game you were playing on the PC at home.
So there's at least one use case. Dunno if that's going to be enough, though. If nothing else, to sell something like this in big numbers what you need is a big advertising/marketing budget to prompt people to think they should buy it because it is a new shiny electronic thing. I don't think they have that budget.
There are controllers (and/or frames) that attach the controller firmly to the smartphone/tablet, so you do not have to hold two devices. Stuff like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Bluetooth-Android-Controller%EF%BC%8CBRHE-Controller/dp/B0772SXD12 [External Link]

Maybe that one isn't optimal, but what I'm saying is that a more optimally designed controller-for-smartphones/tablets sounds like a better idea to me than extra display hardware when all you really do is stream image/audio to and input from the device. Two things smartphones are already capable of.

Quoting: MaathRegarding the alternative via phone, does this really work well? I tried Steam Link maybe over a year ago. My Linux PC is directly wired to my 5Ghz Wi-Fi router, and my phone was about five feet from it, and it's simply unusable. It was like VNC at its worst. If this has changed and now I can even play over LTE then WOW, times have changed and I need to catch up.
The main point here is that the technology for this is software. What you need here is good video and audio compression to send and receive the data as quick and small as possible. This only relies on hardware insofar that the receiving device has to be able to decompress the data fast enough to present it in a quick manner. If you had problems with this before, then that problem was either a too-slow smartphone or an insufficient compression.

Any modern smartphones of the higher end should be more than capable of that, so that really leaves software as the only problem. And that leads to the question of why you'd need extra hardware that goes beyond that of a controller(-frame)?
It's not like you can use the thing as a smartphone, you'd instead be carrying both. And it looks way more bulky than a DS.

Remember the SMACH Z handheld? It's apparently going to be at E3 this year
4 Jun 2019 at 7:41 pm UTC Likes: 2

Not to downplay the device, but a feature like that should simply become available via tablet/smartphone (+ controller attached, of course). I don't really see the need for an extra piece of hardware here, to be honest.

Settlement building game The Colonists has officially released for Linux
31 May 2019 at 12:14 pm UTC Likes: 7

Has sheep.
Obviously a great game.

The Swords of Ditto is a much better and more interesting game with Mormo's Curse
29 May 2019 at 3:50 pm UTC

Completely unplayable for me natively. As soon as a controller is plugged in, neither kb&m nor the controller works reliably. Just weird, never experienced anything like that.

Second Earth, the prototype base-building game from the developer of Broforce has a big new build up
27 May 2019 at 1:34 pm UTC

They Are Billions has really kicked something off, didn't it?

First Conan, and now this in a similar style.
But hey, I'm not complaining, it's totally my kind of game.

What a grape day, Wine 4.9 is officially out
25 May 2019 at 3:38 pm UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: gradyvuckovic
Quoting: iwantlinuxgames
Initial support for installing Plug and Play drivers.
anyone who can explain what this means?
Likewise would love to know what this implies.
I'm no expert, but I'm old so I remember the term. So, back in the day, if you had peripherals for your computer you'd have to have a driver for it; peripherals often came with CDs that had a driver for you to install. The internet was barely a thing and didn't have that kind of useful stuff on it--or a little later, it did, somewhere, but actually finding it would be a massive pain. I believe plug-and-play was Windows' marketing term for their first attempt to have pre-built drivers for various stuff already in the OS so you could plug in a thing and have it supposedly Just Work. Something like that. This was back in the Windows 95/98/like that era.
If we assume that, I guess they might be talking about some very odd/specific peripherals that still to this day require a driver installation of some kind.

What a grape day, Wine 4.9 is officially out
25 May 2019 at 7:32 am UTC Likes: 3

You should file a bug report on the wine tracker, asking for less frequent releases or releasing puns along with new versions to alleviate the pun pressure on news outlets.