Liberal-Socialist-Tree Hugging Bundle of the Week

[Burzmali]

While I'm not sure if I've noticed if anyone else around here Hippie-Grannola past time of computer gaming, I'd thought that I'd mention the Liberal-Socialist-Tree Hugging deal known as the Humble Indie Bundle. As part of this bundle you get 5 games from communist-likely athetist developers valued at $85 for whether price you want to pay! Socialism for the win baby! The proceeds are split between said developers and the proliberal agenda-anticapitalist Child's Play and EFF, along with a small tip to the heathen-probably homosexual organizers.*

*This post is in no way intended to fuel partisan fury into causing numerous Windows and hopefully Mac users that frequent this forum into making one penny donations as part of a plot to drive down the average donation of each of those operating systems and making Linux look even more awesome than it already does.

Seriously though, if you do game, give these guys a chance. The last one, in May, raised 1.25 million to provide pies and ale to starving independent developers as well as entertainment for thousands of sick kids and the legal right to jailbreak my phone (well, if I had a smart phone that is). I'd never heard of the games last time and even though I paid far more than the average donation (even higher than my beloved Linux's average ) I feel that I got my money's worth.

[Demosthenes]

I bought and played the Somorost and Machinarium games when they came out. They're charming.

[Burzmali]

Linux has what share of the market and can run how many games?

Don't get me wrong, Linux is a snap to use, but if I cannot play/run the following games on it, then f*ck it:

Hoyle Card gGames, Hoyle Board Games, Hoyle Word Games, Scrabble (Win 3.1 version), Monopoly (Win 3.1 version), Risk (Win 3.1 version), SimCity, SimEarth, Flight Commander, and a whole bunch of other old school strategy games.

Linux is between 1 and 5% of the desktop market depending on who you ask, though I tend to believe around 1-2% (though ChromeOS will change that some). On the server side, Linux is around 50%-75% once again depending on who you ask.

As for games, it depends. If the game runs on DOS, DosBox can run it. If it runs on Win95+, Wine probably can run it. If it runs on Win3.1, Wine might run it or, if you have a copy of Win3.1 lying around, Win 3.1 inside of DosBox can run it.

Technically, Win95, 98, and ME can be installed in DosBox to run games too stubborn to run in Wine, so you have an outside chance with that trick. I've been on Linux (Ubuntu in particular) for 3 years now and there hasn't been much I haven't been able to get running.

[Burzmali]

You do realize that the vast majority of people (like 99%) do not want to have to d*ck around installing extra sh*t, hoping it is compatible with whatever flavor of Linux they have, in the hopes their old games will run - which sounds like anything made after 2007 you are all but screwed in trying to use them on a Linux system. Apple's fix was BootCamp and such, to run Windows - and in the early days that was a real ordeal.

It really depends on what you consider a "real ordeal". For 90% of games, installing wine (either from the handy selection menu that comes preinstalled or the command line, if you roll that way) is plenty, and after that the game runs like normal, no fuss no muss. DosBox is more complicated, but no more complicated than it is on Windows XP and up. Installing Wine is about a 2 minute process that is as complicated as clicking a link so YMMV.

Can you run WoW, or MoO, or CoH on your Linux system? If so, could you do so right out of the gate, or did you have to fart around with other programs to get the good games to run?

WoW will probably be working perfectly again in a week or so, the Wine Devs are hard at work on it, though it works okay for now. MoO? Master of Orion is a DOS game and works as well on Linux under DosBox as Windows. MoH is gold rated for Wine, so it isn't perfect out of the box. CoH? CoD is platnium rated in Wine and works perfectly out of the box. Starcraft 2 is platnium, Fallout 3 is gold due to the need for a NOCD patch, Left 4 Dead is platnium. The Devs work the hardest on new games. With Wine installed, most Windows application run seemlessly.

[Burzmali]

Wine's main weakness is DRM, it just can't handle the more complicated forms of copy protection that drills deep into the OS to plant it's hooks. Triple A titles like StarCraft 2 get the most attention and tend to fail into one of three categories:

Platinum because they work perfectly,

Gold because they work perfectly with a NOCD patch and,

Garbage to Silver because they have online DRM that can't be easily bypassed by a NOCD patch.

Games made for DirectX 9 and up tend to the best supported and support gets weaker the further back in DX you get. OpenGL tends to supported regardless of age. The biggest problems tend to show up in non 3D accelerated games that are still graphically intensive and in games where the original developers smokes a brick of cannabis before coding the game and it only works in windows due to the use of some random flaw in windows.

[Imalawman]

I play two games starcraft and civ. Right now, I'm on SC II and Civ V. Both great games. That's the extent of my gaming. I have a very limited amount of time, so I need something that's rather easy to run.

[wserra]

I play Crackloos. Accounts for all my free time.

[webhick]

Avernum and Geneforge (full versions on 1-3 of each, demos on the rest.)

[Burzmali]

I play two games starcraft and civ. Right now, I'm on SC II and Civ V. Both great games. That's the extent of my gaming. I have a very limited amount of time, so I need something that's rather easy to run.

None of the games in this Humble Indie Bundle are too demanding. Of those I've tried so far Braid is a Platform/Puzzle game, Osmos is a Physics/Puzzle game and Machinarium Point and Click Adventure game. I haven't tried Cortex Command or Revenge of the Titans yet (probably will tonight) but from what I've seen, they are a variant Tower Defense and an RTS respectfully.

As a side note, SC2 is platnium in Wine and Civ V is gold due to a winetricks requirement that will probably be corrected within a month

[webhick]

I play Crackloos. Accounts for all my free time.

I hear that's cross-platform.

[Demosthenes]

My new Xbox with Kinect is arriving today by UPS, and I just bought my first three games. Kinectimals looks totally dorky and I bet I waste a god-awful amount of time playing it.

In my family, we have one holiday rule. Everyone just buys themselves one nice gift for Christmas and then we pool the rest of what we would have spent on gifts and make a nice charity donation to a homeless shelter or food program.

[Burzmali]

I bought and played the Somorost and Machinarium games when they came out. They're charming.

I just finished up Machinarium, great game, though I'm still wondering why the character insisted on tazing a mechanical cat instead of stealing that soldering iron or cable like I wanted.

[Burzmali]

I bought and played the Somorost and Machinarium games when they came out. They're charming.

I just finished up Machinarium, great game, though I'm still wondering why the character insisted on tazing a mechanical cat instead of stealing that soldering iron or cable like I wanted.

Because it is more fun?

That depends, I had big plans for that soldering iron.

[Green Lantern]

The son wants Call of Duty: Black Cops having grown tired of killing his international friends playing Halo: Reach. Amazon had it for $47.00, plus the savings on state sales tax. I picked up the last book in the Pendragon series having read the previous nine installments together----perhaps I can get him to read?