Tomb Raider for Linux

[WizardStan]

That's why I am confused - first you create and delve into this scenario and later on you cut the discussion off, because the scenario you created is impossible ? Why create it in the first place ?

One of the chief complaints against DRM is that it can shut down at any time, locking you out of your legally purchased goods forever. The reason I argue Valve is "good DRM" (if such a thing can be said) is because this complaint is easy to mitigate since Valve has an easy backout plan in the event they have to shut down their servers, where most other systems do not or simply cannot.
If, however, you believe that the situation is actually impossible, or at least highly improbably, then it still works out better than anything else because it means there's no fear of the servers shutting down and the original complaint is meaningless. Moot discussion: either we have a backup plan or we don't need it.
That backup plan still hinges on Valve actually doing that though, somehow leaking their private key, but if there's going to be DRM I'd bank more on Valve "doing the right thing" than any other company.

 

[Klumpen]

relevant:
http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2...ship-respect-and-principles-in-the-steam-era/

 

[Grench]

I tried Steam once (as I had some codes) on Windows, it automatically put itself into Autostart and showed me annoying notifications regularly.

Steam under Linux is a bit better behaved. No autostart. Many games can be opened without first opening Steam. Opening Steam can result in some pop up advertising for additional games - usually the ones that are on sale at the time. Steam has a 'social' setup too - that can be turned off through a series of sub-menus (good).

Many of the Linux game installs come with a copy of DosBox. Many of those use DosBox to run on Windows too. But - this is how many of your customers are getting the binary files needed to play commercial games on the Pandora.

Overall, I think it's a very good setup. More of a fenced garden than walled. When run in Linux, many of the offending and annoying bits are at least muted.

 

[rygD]

More of a fenced garden than walled.

Isn't a fence just a less sturdy wall that you can sometimes see through?

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

 

[Grench]

Isn't a fence just a less sturdy wall that you can sometimes see through?

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.

Fence stops the dog, but the cat walks right through.

 

[rygD]

Fence stops the dog, but the cat walks right through.

I have seen too many dogs jump or climb (even electric fences). Luckily most dogs don't try our we would have lots of packs of dogs roaming the streets, then going home and pretending like they were being good all day. Just like ki...hey, do kids still roam the streets where you live? I used to, and sometimes I would get into trouble, but now I don't see kids outside except to catch the bus.

 

[Grench]

I have seen too many dogs jump or climb (even electric fences). Luckily most dogs don't try our we would have lots of packs of dogs roaming the streets, then going home and pretending like they were being good all day. Just like ki...hey, do kids still roam the streets where you live? I used to, and sometimes I would get into trouble, but now I don't see kids outside except to catch the bus.

There was a pack of about a dozen of us who roamed about a 4 block area when I was young. All of the retired neighbors knew us by name and our parents phone numbers. Our latitude for trouble was narrow, but we had a lot of freedom and fun. in the summer, we would leave home in the morning, eat lunch as a mob at the back porch of whomever's mother was willing us and continued to play until dusk.

Now kids don't 'go play', they have 'play dates' of organized and supervised socialization with the 'right ones'. If it weren't for waiting for the bus, they might not even know that there were other kids in their neighborhood.

It is saddening.

 

[rygD]

I still "go play" sometimes. It would be more fun if I had interesting areas to explore near me, and people didn't look at me like there is something wrong with me when I look for cool looking rocks or whatever. It isn't like I trespass or do "bad" things anymore (or much ).

As a kid there was a golf course behind my house, so I used that as a way to get around (and I sometimes sold golf balls that ended up in my yard).

Another place I lived was close to some train tracks, so I used to put things on the tracks and wait for trains to come by. We also used to hop trains to get around town (this was back when I played arcade games a lot).

My favorite places were always rural, whether fields, forests, or whatever. That is what I want again, and then I can "go play" some more. Nothing beats walking around and looking at semi-nature.

 

[WizardStan]

Here you go
Convenience without principle violation.

 

[Klumpen]

You understand that Steam DRM is not mandatory, correct? It must be enabled by the developer. Granted, they make it incredibly easy to do so...

That's the whole point. Steam got big by offering cheap centralized DRM without having to go back to StarForce and the like.
Of course it's the devs decision, that's why I advise to not buy stuff with Steamworks or similar online authentifications on it and also against games that need a client to install and have no proper offline installer (MMORPGs being kind of the exception).

 

[TrashyMG]

Well, I'm enjoying the game on Linux.

 

[fusion_power]

Any Performance comparisons between Win/Linux Version ready somewhere?

 

[ptitSeb]

Any Performance comparisons between Win/Linux Version ready somewhere?

http://boilingsteam.com/tomb-raider-2013-out-now/

 

[TrashyMG]

Any Performance comparisons between Win/Linux Version ready somewhere?

It's really playable and that is what I care about. Benchmarks have historically always favored Windows, I haven't seen any Window to Linux benchmarks yet. just saw one in the prior post...

 

[WizardStan]

Twice as many frames in Windows as in Linux sets off a lot of alarms in my head, considering that every other Windows vs Linux benchmark is basically neck and neck: sometimes Windows wins by a little, sometimes Linux wins by a little, but never by more than 10% either way.
A 50% difference makes me highly suspicious of this being a "native" port vs doing some fancy (edit: read "quick and dirty") wrapping. The reason this bothers me is, while even an inefficient wrapper is better than nothing, if companies keep doing this there'll be a lot of backlash about how Linux "isn't good for games" when it's actually the developers who aren't doing it right. If they were upfront about how they achieved this it'd probably work out just fine, but the claim seems to be that it was a full port.

 

[TrashyMG]

Yeah it being 50% off is a bit odd, I also like to see another benchmark to confirm this. Alien: Isolation also done by Feral Interactive didn't seem to have this much of a performance difference.

 

[fusion_power]

I prefer always the faster system for gaming so it would be abut time that Linux gains some speeds here compared to Windows. Considering it's OpenGL, there shouldn't be much issues with Linux and performance, other Games perform pretty good there. I'm sure Valve will push this even more in the future, they seem to be really into Linux.
And when Vulkan finaly becomes a thing it also could be really interesting.

 

[Klumpen]

Looks like there's some wrapping involved like in the Witcher 2 port which many people complained about already since it's not really native either from what I gathered.
Linux ports are always faster on my system, but that's probably due to me using proprietary NVidia drivers, only having 4GB of RAM in my system and only having 32bit available in WinXP while having a 64bit Linux.

 

[rygD]

but that's probably due to me using proprietary NVidia drivers

Oooh, you are evil!

 

[thatgui]

One of the chief complaints against DRM is that it can shut down at any time, locking you out of your legally purchased goods forever. The reason I argue Valve is "good DRM" (if such a thing can be said) is because this complaint is easy to mitigate since Valve has an easy backout plan in the event they have to shut down their servers, where most other systems do not or simply cannot.
If, however, you believe that the situation is actually impossible, or at least highly improbably, then it still works out better than anything else because it means there's no fear of the servers shutting down and the original complaint is meaningless. Moot discussion: either we have a backup plan or we don't need it.
That backup plan still hinges on Valve actually doing that though, somehow leaking their private key, but if there's going to be DRM I'd bank more on Valve "doing the right thing" than any other company.

Still this is confusing: bringing something up, then shutting it down again, in the middle of the discussion - can't wrap my head around why such behavior can be beneficial for a discussion. Anyways that's still a long stretch your counting on here, with (at least to my knowledge, but please give me some hints) nothing you can base this hope on, other then "I have a feeling". Afaik there are also titles that employ (additionally ?) their own DRM , what about these titles ? Is Valve just a facilitator in these cases or are you still making a valid contract with Valve, which should go down the drain too if Valve is gone ?

Here you go
Convenience without principle violation.

I am pretty sure, that the games on these lists aren't really responsible for Steams success: no "heavyweight" title in it, and a whole lot of them are available without DRM elsewhere (so the developer/ publisher already had no interest in hoping through that extra loop).
I have no problem, if someone argues that he is fine with the tradeoffs he has to make for enjoying all the benefits Steam has to offer. But someone feeling the urge to bring this list as a pro argument feels rather depressing to me.