I also would like a key, please?
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
Come Play This New Linux-Native Game With Us!
Collapse
X
-
Those that have requested keys today, check your forum inbox.Michael Larabel
https://www.michaellarabel.com/
Comment
-
Hi,
Having absolutely no idea what this game is about other than being told I really need to try it, I would like a key.
As the blog post I read to come here mentioned a desire for thoughts regarding Linux gaming, and I'm not a selfish bastard, here's what I think:
There are a few very large problems that remain before Linux is a viable contender in the gaming market.
First and foremost is sound. There are, to my knowledge, no fewer than six major sound systems for Linux (OSSv3, ALSA, OSSv4, PulseAudio, JACK, ESound). With all the incompatible efforts to make them compatible, the end result is that nothing works. I'm expecting that sound will not work for me in Heroes, because I haven't spent hours configuring PulseAudio to mix ALSA and OSS streams correctly for my device. I recently spent six hours setting up a laptop to run Skype correctly. Nothing else. This is mainly the fault of the hardware maker, whose card had some odd quirks. This is the biggest issue I see with hardware support on Linux: mixed audio of a decent quality, with easy (or no) configuration.
Second is the usual complaint of graphics. Here, it's primarily the fault of the hardware vendors, but this has been improving lately. I have a desktop machine that occasionally simply goes black. It's a bug in the video driver, but it's better than the bug it replaces. If developers had even a clear picture of the device behavior, better drivers could be made. Windows excels in this area simply because of its huge market share. If a vendor's product has bugs under Windows, they lose 80% of their market.
Third, and the issue that I find the most disagreement with, is Wine. I find some aspects of Wine to be very discouraging to gamers. First is its hidden nature. No major distributions (to my knowledge) include Wine by default. After installing, it's still nontrivial to run a Windows installer from a disk, and due to missing functionality, the installers don't add entries into the main menu. This makes it very discouraging to new Linux users, who, in my experience, just want things to work seamlessly.
For all of these issues, the easiest solution is a large push by Linux users. Even if the "official" numbers only show Linux as having 3 or 4 percent of total computer users, we make up a larger portion of the gaming market. We need to use our strength to make the appropriate changes.
First, pressure vendors with money. The variety of new sound hardware is coming down to a much smaller selection than in the past, so with prudent purchasing and vocal reviews, hardware should improve. As hardware support gets better, we need to forget old disputes. Abandon the obsolete OSSv3 and the overly-complicated ALSA. It's my understanding that OSSv4 has modern features (mixing, quality, etc), so using it as a base with PulseAudio's server system should be quite nice overall. We also need to abandon our pride, and start removing duplicate features. Do we really need mixing at the hardware, driver, server, and application levels? Finally, with a simplified audio system, we will have hassle-free sound for our listen pleasure.
Second, we need to unite in pressuring vendors to release more open specifications, or better yet, drivers. Great progress has been made in this area, mostly by relaxing requirements on having a 100%-open-source system. Ubuntu makes the use of proprietary drivers easy, but they still aren't perfect. The only solution I see is to apply more pressure.
Third, Wine needs a big boost. It hit the magical 1.0 mark, but it's lost so much of its original glory that nobody cared. Do we really need perfect emulation of Windows' context menus? I'd prefer to see better support for the functions that make major changes, like adding items to the system menu. It also needs less Windows-centric developers to make frontends that easily and smoothly integrate into major distros. Ubuntu focuses so much on appearance and usability, but I have to open a terminal to do anything with Wine. CodeWeavers has done well with their Crossover frontend, but it's not open-source, and doesn't seem to support configuration adequately for gaming.
Those are my thoughts, and solutions. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
Comment
-
JACK is a professional modular audio system. Common users don't use this unless you work with sound or music in an editing way needing special patch bay support. Otherwise if you use either ALSA or OSS there is no problem unless you have annoying hardware. But that's NOT the problem of Linux but but the problem of vendors refusing to share specifications. That's the real problem in this area as otherwise all of the sound systems could work splendid.
Comment
Comment