Tricky Towers is my favourite 3rd-party spin on the Tetris concept... the goal is piling up the blocks instead of destroying filled up rows, and 2D-physics is applied so the tower of blocks tends to get unstable, the blocks can fall irregularly, etc

This one looks so different too! It definitely made me want to play it :)

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arguably the first "solid-state active cooling" solution ever sold is peltier, but it's very W intensive and doesn't get rid of the air renewal issue around heatsinks which this targets

there is also a very cool air-movement by ionization and electric attraction/repulsion method (corona effect) that was technically solid-state... it has proven a bit problematic, especially near eletronic components
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03447-w [External Link]

where do they explain the working principle for their thing?
edit: the datasheet pdfs have more info in how it works... pretty clever

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I'm so glad I finally found >1 people who know and played Stars!

It's obviously a niche game, but pretty awesome for its age

IMHO it actually even aged well when considering game mechanics and ease of interaction... but yeah, the UI was ugly even back then (a bit better in the newer versions, which it had many)

It's a pity New Stars really isn't an improved Stars!, because I'd definitely like a refreshed version of it.

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Gaming is in dire need of FOSS platform-agnostic vendor-agnostic SDKs for multiplayer, achievements, save sync, etc, somewhat like libretro did for emulation.

Maybe something modular that has a general implementation which the game interfaces with and a module that turns that into stuff each vendor-specific server-side of their SDKs can understand, plus a vendor-neutral module with a corresponding server-side implementation anyone can deploy (like NextCloud does)

And by the way libretro does do a couple of those things aleady so...

On the other end there could be modules for games that expect a vendor-specific SDK, to translate their needs into the general implementation, which could work as a compatibility layer, like Goldberg Emulator does as a replacement for Steam API

Put both together and you could use a game that has implemented Steam API over a private server or maybe even be able to make it easier for a game dev to implement a single API and not have to recode parts of the game to get it published on Steam and GOG using each platform's services.

Anyway I imagine a good chunk of the work for something like this to exist is probably doable by working atop Comet and Legendary, maybe it's possible to integrate into libretro and then apps like Mini Galaxy and etc would also have an easier time keeping several distribuition platforms in good shape in their projects, pooling efforts together as much as possible.

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There's current windows versions of GoG games which are likely to be able to use it, and hopefully new linux builds might be able to leverage this despite not being official?

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that's very cool! thanks for making it clear

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big question:

does it actually (aim to) allow a game to have achievents tracked and sent to GoG's cloud when played under linux?

or does/will it serve only to show what's stored there from play sessions under windows (or WINE) with GoG Galaxy itself?

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disclaimer: this is a general impressiin from a user, not a real dev... and I'm gladly open to rebutal

linux kernel does not break userspace but breaks internal ABIs so it gets badmouthed by nvidia and the likes of it

however linux distros do have a few dire cases of ongoing userspace API breakage (eg: X.org to Wayland)

also for games and closed-source apps the fact that libs are centraly provided in a distro/user-controlled version by default rather than bundled with each app in a frozen version bothers windows-mindset devs

ps: i rather see an app break and a shim need to be constructed for some API breakage than have the app bundle a version of OpenSSL with heartbleed into it years after the lib provided by the OS was fixed

also linux did have a larger issue with non-kernel and in-kernel API breakage but Valve and a bunch of talented devs reversed this trend beautifully through the past decade, so much so that several opensource compatibility layers born from and for linux needs are ending up being used to improve software compatibility in windows (eg: DXVK can be deployed as a .dll on windows to help games that aren't working properly on DirectX 9 through 11 on windows run over Vulkan, circumventing issues that arose from windows, drivers and APIs behaving differently over time and breaking games... or even adding game-specific patches in the extra layer when microsoft and hardware driver devs don't do it)

linux also exports better API compatibility to iOS and OSX now, with stuff like Zink over MoltenVK working to keep OpenGL apps alive despite Apple's uncerimonious deprecation of OpenGL APIs years ago... it's comical how Apple is hardly ever mentioned as a bigger nuissance for API breakage than Linux, or Android SDKs for that matter... both are a nightmare to keep up with (even non-dev users can see it from their POV due to UX breakages the SDK changes intriduce at every major version, several times without so much as a warning shot), but devs seem to be quite stoic regarding those platforms

edit:
I should also mention just how much windows API stability across OS version worsened lately, which some devs and expectators don't seem to notice... IMHO it's something that started around the time of UWP, which is when the money to be made was strongly in the realm of making it harder for traditional apps to keep working and forcing the bulk of them into Microsoft Store via rewritten UWP versions...

it didn't work nearly as well as Microsoft hoped for, and Valve stepped up their Linux efforts due to this (because it was an existential threat to any other games/apps store on windows, obviously)

and now we have windows 10 and 11 with a much stronger focus on breaking old stuff if necessary to ensure new stuff is as good as it can be, as a general decision driving force and as a public discourse for choices they made in many aspects of the new OS versions

and this leaves entire machines out of the loop, hardware parts driverless, older apps working better on WINE than on Windows itself, DXVK as a necessary workaround on windows, etc

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eventually supporting OpenGL... using Zink atop the current vulkan stack maybe?

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[quote=Eike]

Quoting: MarlockStrange enough, the means (provided by Microsoft) against the roadblocks for updates are different ones than those for the installation. So you might end up with an installation that you cannot update one day - when not being able to update made you change from 10 to 11 in the first place...

As stated by the linked article:

This procedure is NOT SUPPORTED by Microsoft. While company blog posts suggest the company is aware of users taking these drastic steps, they have not yet taken counter steps to block them, and they don’t currently have plans to do so—but that doesn’t mean that they won’t.

Also there are bare minimal requirements (even with the workarounds) that may already preclude usage of a significant fleet of old machines:

It is important to note that successful Windows 11 installations will still require TPM 1.2 or better and UEFI boot capability. This will also only work for the 64-bit versions of both operating systems. Those requirements are immutable.

Win11 is just not possible where any of the above is missing, and that would include perfectly fine gaming machines like my AMD Phenom II x4 (recently broken, donated to a friend electrician and put back to use by him, gaming included). It's a nice 4 core cpu @ 3,4ghz but no UEFI.

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