Quoting: liamdaweYou think a gaming site, writing about what a games store did isn't on topic? I don't agree, I think people were right to highlight it no matter what. It's not promoting outrage, it's highlighting something they did. It was a very poor decision by the person running the GOG account.

You can still support GOG, I do. I don't let a single person at a company who made a dumb decision affect everything I do. As long as they learn from it and stick to what they're good at.

But why highlighting it publicly by people that are very biased against GOG is a good thing? They already apologized. Nothing more needs to be said. The only purpose this articles serves is to create division, and that is not gaming-related. The gaming theme is a false backdrop.

I don't let a single person's dumb decision affect everything I do. My opinion on GOG will just be kept private. That is what I mean. I just don't wade into any opinion-like talk online anymore. The reason is simple. It's the reason why GOG is apologizing trying to get out of the political fight. Once you are marked by activists, you will forever be haunted by their presence. I don't make any money in the open source community. I only loose time and money by supporting people in the community. I do it because I enjoy it, and because I can. I don't have the resource to fight activists, and my work on open source will end if I have to.

When someone gets marked, and I've seen this happen to people lately, even ones that keep their opinion completely private, don't share at work or on online, but get doxxed privately. They are incessantly targeted to be deplatformed in any way possible. Their character will be destroyed. Lies will be said. They will not stop until the person that is marked is removed. GOG will continue to be attacked until the targetted people are replaced by avowed activists that support the accepted political agenda. It won't matter any apology. It's a power grab by these people to use media to promote the attacks and gain control in more sectors to keep pushing for their agenda. That is why I am very against any speculation on my part. Stick to the facts. Be more gracious to people that make mistakes. Keep attack pieces out of the community.

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Quoting: liamdaweWhat's amusing to one person, is highly offensive to another. Such is the way of life and the internet especially on such a toxic topic for a lot of people.

Despite my own personal feelings on it, which I won't bring up, I think it was very dumb for a games store to post. They are a business after all, not a joke personal account for someone. There is an expectation to have a certain level of professionalism and sensitivity to issues.

Why does a gaming publication, the one you link to, push a non-gaming controversy instead of just writing about games? Seems like a coordinated attack to me. There is an expectation to have a certain level of professionalism and sensitivity to issues. Instead they *promote* outrage. Calling someone "Gat0r-trash" and ensuring that whole tweet is featured, saving deleted tweets and sharing so you make sure everyone sees it anyway to outrage people, dissertating a whole history for further negativity.

Why can't people just handle others gracefully and just let bygones be bygones?

No reason, however, has been given by either party on why this is happening, so I have reached out to Hinterland to see if they can let us know why and I will update this article if they reply. I don't want to speculate on it too much, but perhaps it's as a result of GOG's recent dumb tweet.

Now thanks to this speculation, I no longer want to comment whether to support GOG or Hinterland, because it wades into appearing to take sides in a stupid political fight.

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Quoting: GuestMost people who pretend that "Everything is fine", are casuals who only use vanilla versions of Ubuntu/SteamOS, possibly even outdated versions... But Ubuntu will inevitably have to be upgraded at some point and you will lose access to those games then.

At least with WINE/Proton you know that if a game works 100% fine, it will probably work fine FOREVER, no matter how much sdl2 or other libs change, no matter the distro. Even if a regression happens in WINE, it will be a matter of time before fixing it again. This won't happen with poor "native" ports, those will be abandoned.

Wait, what part of Wine will make it a "will work forever?" And SDL does not?

It's pretty clear you haven't seen how Wine has changed over the years. Yes, as an extended life platform it's probably does do a better job than it's sister platform Win10 does now. But what it does well with Windows executables does not make everything else now unable to compete in support, even if Valve supports Wine.

Also, I can count with just my fingers how many "native" games I've come across no longer work on Linux. Exactly zero. Regressions, nada.

As far as distros go, I can count as many that have broke games due to upgrades, out of those that really worth putting any time into. Yes the debian world, how they handle libraries, packages, and updates, I find very user unfriendly and prone to the troubles that people talk about. But there are better distros out there that don't have these issues.

You also got one more thing to really consider. Most games do end up "abandoned" even those still sold. Platforms have nothing to do with it.

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Quoting: GuestI am very glad this is happening. The game is not a AAA game, it can play on a toaster, so any performance penalty from Steamplay won't affect us much.

I take it you've never worked on a non-AAA game in Wine or have ported a non-AAA game to linux.

Performance *always* matters, if you want to build a customer base.

And i would rather have a proper proton-based release that will be supported forever, than a half-assed native port that will be abandoned and will never play in the future...

Products are abandoned by their developers on their original platforms all the time too.

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Finally AMD showing up again at system 76. Hopefully it will also occur in their laptop refresh.

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Quoting: ArdjeThe problem with going full native on both Windows and Linux is that ABI's and API's change. And in the end you can better install the old Windows version through wine/Proton on Linux, instead of the old Windows version on Windows, or the old Linux version on Linux.
As a matter of fact, I had less problems installing GTA-SA or GTA-IV using Proton, than on Windows 10 that was pre-installed on my Win2.

Just to be clear, the fact that ABI's and API's change is not really ever an issue, none of which actually makes Proton more viable that running natively. Windows has amazing backwards compatibility because they already install on the system for you a thing actually called "Windows on Windows". So you don't need to install an "old" windows because you already have it.

You can accomplish the same thing on Linux as a "Linux on Linux" but most distros don't do it. There aren't any technical limitations on Linux preventing it. The oldest Linux games still work just fine many times. (and using open source libs is preferred for longevity in my opinion)

Now on the other hand, Windows 10 is a different matter.

To Cestarian about just using DXVK to solve the shader limitation. If DXVK supports the shaders, then that means Vulkan supports them anyway? They just need to be told how to do it. That said, this is just pure speculation-- I don't know their code or why they have an issue. I agree with Liam -- if this project has full porting 90% solved, and the game works fine, then they should just take the native port all the way while they are in development.

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Quoting: razing32Would it be legal to create new assets but keep the naming conventions ?
Just curios if you could use some open assets but keep the unit names the same , or if that would be illegal ?

In any case , really amazing what you have done with the project and thanks for answering my question in such detail :)

You'd not be able to play the game even with applying open assets. All the unit stats, attack stats, names, and more are in the game resource files which would need to be recreated from scratch. Then you would also not be able to call the game Seven Kingdoms 2, since it is not officially sanctioned, and wouldn't be the same game anyway. Then you wouldn't be able to play multiplayer with the official version of the game either.

If you purchased 7K2 on gog in the last ten years, I think you will have a free upgrade to the HD version. If you purchased the original CD back in the day, you don't have that option, but don't take my word on that officially. I think the best route is to buy the 7K2:HD version and get the game assets. Then voice your support for a linux port of the HD version on our fan site. Perhaps use the steam option to state you are looking for a linux port if you are on steam. As it has been said, there is no plans for other operating systems in HD, but with strong support showing, maybe something could get done.

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The game developer wanted to do a full-commercial re-release of 7K2 in HD. The original 7K2 game engine had made available in open source before then, and had some work in porting, but the game assets remain commercial. With the developer decision, I do not wish to diverge the two code bases by working on our code separately, so I am not working on it. As you might understand, if there is a future project on 7K2, it would be best to keep the community united, and spending the little time I have on the area of the most impact, which would be on 7K1. Bringing 7K2 up to date should be easy once I finalize what I want with 7K since they are based on the same code. There are not any current plans for 7K2 in open source, but I hope what we get done on 7K can serve us in 7K2 in the future.

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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.

That's the desktop-gaming oriented popular media opinion. I see linux usage in many companies, and there is no way Wayland will replace Xorg anytime soon. Xorg will continue to be the defacto standard for many years because that is where the real money is. Valve will likely continue to support the largest platform for market share as well.

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Long-time linux user here. Prior contributor to Wine. I've used Wine from getting games/software up when I needed in the early days, and sometimes still use it since I'm a full-time linux user. I've used Wine for winelib as well. I've also fully ported games to linux. I know pretty well what the hurdles are.

I've found this article curious on the question on what's keeping these devs from supporting linux when the cost is already low. I've got books on multiplatform programming and porting sitting on my shelf. The details are all already documented on what to do and what not to do. And it's already been done, evidence of the long-time successful SDL, but even higher level engines exist that are very popular that also do it. I'm personally thinking that it is due to IDEs and SDKs that only work on Windows for the best experience (i.e. dependence on Visual Studio, etc), and the devs being based on Windows don't care about anything else. I mean, after all, I've read enough to know several admitted they don't even test their game on linux. Which leads me to think about the very next point; they end up using unportable Windows-centric code since they don't know the difference. You can see it when this is mentioned in the article.

Even if the engine supports easy export to Linux, but then your game has Linux-specific bugs, you may incur significant support costs that may outweigh the Linux sales.

I can understand that if you've already architected a game, that you might have limited resources to add a port to it. But if you are starting out today (well it has been true for a number of years now), the differences between platforms never really was a big issue, since they are all PC-compatible, and they all have well defined compatibility layers. Selecting a cross-platform selection is easy -- I don't care what it is exactly -- but I would recommend a native execution environment. The only reasons why I see they are having a hard time, is their development environment is Windows-centric, or lack of knowledge. I mean to summarize their linux experience is fighting linux bugs to me seems like they don't really know. If there is an issue with your game on linux that doesn't exist on Windows, (remember, I said that being multiplatform is largely a solved issue, which most devs use engines/APIs that support it), then it is a bug with their engine of choice. It is not a linux bug. Or it's their own fault if they stepped outside of the engine and wrote something that is unportable. Bugs happen. We all have to deal with them. Portability issues should be rather small portion of your bugs, unless you've made a major mistake or tried to go at it completely on your own -- very unlikely.

*Note I do realize there has been much talk about graphics driver issues. But there has been major vendor support on linux for years, and with advancements lately, and Vulkan, this is also a largely solved issue.

If I'd start a game today, I'd pick a tested multiplatform solution for the widest audience. There is no reason to shut anyone out, and as we discuss, even linux, since the barriers that used to exist have been long since past.

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