If you're like me and dig a good RTS game but run Linux as your primary desktop, today is your lucky day:
Exactly one year to the day after writing Company of Heroes 2 might be coming to Linux, today marks the planned release of the Linux port of CoH 2.
Company of Heroes 2 for Linux isn't up on Steam at the moment, but it's expected to appear there within the next few hours. As mentioned last week with regards to the system requirements, this Linux/OSX game port by Feral Interactive Games lists Intel or NVIDIA graphics as the requirement. "Requires an Intel Iris Pro graphics card or an NVIDIA 600 series graphics card or better with driver version 352.21 or later." But a GeForce GTX 760 or better is what Feral recommends for the game on Linux. There's no mention at all of AMD Catalyst or RadeonSI support, so we'll just have to see what goes wrong with it later today...
No, this isn't a soyvertisement. I just dig when good games and Linux meet.
[Ed. additions] Also noted on twitter:
Feral Interactive on Twitter: "Mac Linux ready their armies: Company of Heroes 2 will arrive Aug 27 on Steam and soon after on MAS. Minisite: http://t.co/VUysnoVnR6"
Also, it appears that it will have per-platform multiplayer.
Nice GamingonLinux article/review of the release.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:49PM
I'm not a gamer. Only occasionally do I play games at all. But - this sounds interesting. Question is, do I want to open a Steam account just to see whether I like it?
Maybe it's just curiosity. My graphics card exceeds all of my needs, by quite a long shot. Maybe I should test it, just to see what it's capable of.
$ inxi -G
Graphics: Card-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] ES1000
Card-2: NVIDIA GK208 [GeForce GT 630 Rev. 2]
Display Server: X.Org 1.17.2 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1024x768@60.00hz, 1280x1024@60.02hz
GLX Renderer: GeForce GT 630/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.30
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:19PM
Honestly, I found it disappointing compared to the first one. A 630 could probably drive it though on low-medium graphics settings. I have a 550 and it ran nicely IIRC.
Of course, my experiences were in Windows when the game first came out, what, a year or two ago.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:55PM
My advice: reconsider.
Long story: about 5 years ago, I tried Steam (from a Windows machine). Spent some change, got bored of the game quality (or maybe got too old for gamin'), left my account there.
Yesterday, I received an email from Steam telling me some Russian IP tried to login, so I should change the password.
Boy, I got there with a browser and learned the hard way they pushed DRM to new heights: not only that you need their client to start playing any game (bye-bye launching the game without the ... whatever they are calling it now, "steam powered" or client or whatever the hell they want to), but also:
I guess they are trying to enforce the "a single copy running at any time" policy and conveniently suffer from chronic aphantasia when it comes to imagining someone would need to interact with them without any intention of playing games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gman003 on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:29PM
They have always required use of the Steam Client to actually launch games. They have a URL protocol such that a browser link can call the Steam Client to launch a game, but it still goes through the Steam Client, and it always has.
The "check which computer is being used to access your account" thing is DRM to protect your account, not to protect the games. Because many users' libraries are high-value targets, there's a lot of scammers and hackers. They have computer validation (on by default) and two-factor authentication (opt-in IIRC, but I use it) specifically to protect your games not from you, but from those who would take them from you.
You can trivially bypass the single-running-copy-of-a-game limit by using Offline Mode, and the computer verification doesn't do anything to stop multiple machines being used at once. Running multiple instances of Steam on a single account is actually necessary for some features, like in-home streaming.
The social media is sometimes annoying, I'll admit, but they have at least avoided every possible pitfall with it. They don't require real names, they don't restrict name changes, they don't force you to use any third-party social media (linking with Facebook is optional and actually kind of hard to find, it's not in-your-face in the slightest), and you can make your profile private (nobody can see it) or friends-only (only users you've added as friends can see it). I only rarely use any of it - mostly friend chat - but when I do, it's quite useful, and since the only real downside is that it exists and takes up space in the UI (which, yes, is not the greatest), I'm fine with that tradeoff. Granted, I use the actual Steam Client almost all the time, since that's what you use to launch the actual games (which I use more than the community stuff).
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday August 27 2015, @10:56PM
Maybe I'd be able to make the point (supported by evidence) of "Steam - may be milder but it's still DRM. Look, I can't redownload and run those games which I paid" - but... it simply doesn't worth my bother.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday August 27 2015, @11:24PM
Out of curiosity, what games did you have that are no longer available? I can think of only a few that were removed, and I've been on Steam for a decade. One was a free promo for Half-Life 2 - withdrawn because the company that made it went out of business, their domain was bought by a porn site, and nobody had the source code to change the hardcoded URL in the credits. Another one was Arkham Knight, which was withdrawn from sale until they can patch it enough to be playable. The last I can think of was an indie game that turned out to be literally unfinished, and was suspended as a probable scam. In the latter two cases, if you own the game you can still download it, but no new sales are permitted.
And while Steam is, indeed, a form of DRM, I don't think "can't download games you bought" is necessarily related to that. GoG, for example, is a DRM-free marketplace, but I doubt they'd let you download games if they somehow lost the license to sell those particular games. Consider the analogy to a physical copy. (If you're paranoid about this, Steam itself has a "back up games" utility).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Friday August 28 2015, @12:31AM
Out of curiosity, what games did you have that are no longer available? I can think of only a few that were removed, and I've been on Steam for a decade
Fable 3 is one example that I own. It got removed from the store after the gfwl stuff died off, to be replaced by the publisher with a different version or something, but it's still available for download, install, and play for anyone that bought it before removal. (There were also a bunch of Marvel-license games that vanished after a disagreement or license expiration, but I didn't own any of them.)
So, games do vanish sometimes, but Valve doesn't retroactively remove it from your library, unlike Amazon did years ago to Kindle owners.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Friday August 28 2015, @02:59AM
Actually there are quite a few games where the original version has been removed and now there is only the director's cut or some such. An example is Deus Ex: HR, all you can get is the directors edition now, not the original which I have. IIRC there was also a handful yanked by one particular publisher as they were being sued by a couple of dev houses saying they did not have the right to sell the games on a digital service, sorry that I can't remember the games but it was in a genre i didn't care about.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @04:09PM
It depends on the game. For instance, I just launched Starbound without going through Steam, even though it was downloaded and installed through the service.
May I also recommend Humble Bundle. The games are usually DRM-Free and you often get a Steam key if you want to use it.
Gog.com is also very nice. And DRM-Free.
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:19PM
Given that PC, Linux, and Mac all use basically the same CPU architecture, I'm trying to imagine what's left that would have made the simulation engine vary across operating systems... Bugs like race conditions, memory layout sensitive operations, etc..? Admittedly, I'm not experienced with writing networking code for games, but it seems like if your simulation depends on the OS, you're doing it wrong. (Numerical issues coming from architecture differences and the like -- that's another very ugly story.)
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gravis on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:39PM
I'm trying to imagine what's left that would have made the simulation engine vary across operating systems...
you know... you could have just clicked the link.
Company of Heroes 2 uses a deterministic engine, and relies on clients to generate the same outcome for all gameplay-relevant calculations, like pathfinding, unit positions, spawns and combat.
Any differences in the maths, even at the nth decimal place of precision, will accumulate to a tangible divergence in behaviour and ultimately a disconnect. When dealing with multiple architectures, operating systems and optimising compilers, tracking down all possible differences is a long and complex task.
the basic issue seems to be that they didn't use standardized types or even the same compiler and as such, float, double and long double means whatever the compiler thinks they are. they should have used the types defined in stdint.h/cstdint with gcc or llvm.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by kaganar on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:01PM
Actually, I did -- and it was a little short on details. Although I did miss this gem:
And yeah, that'll do it to you every time. ;-)
Yes and no -- unless you're using FPU emulation libraries, the hardware FPU determines a good bit how floats behave. Mind you, the compiler still decides things like the distribute law are considered true and how to handle floating point exceptions.
I don't see either of those in the "per-platform multiplayer" link. Is it on one of the phoronix links? Those won't load for me.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:14PM
Requiring all participants in a multiplayer game to perform identical calculations in sync is simply a terrible design, and it's not surprising that they failed to make it portable.
I suspect that even when everyone runs the same build in similar environments, they will occasionally desync, although I have no experience with this game.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @04:23AM
Terrible designs are everywhere. I remember hearing about how people could cheat like crazy in GTA5 servers. Their proposed 'solution' to this was to ban the uses of mods online instead of actually fixing their broken security which apparently trusted clients absolutely, as far as I remember. I saw some people applaud this as sensible, but I can start up a server for some Doom source port and load any mods I wish and it won't have nearly this many problems, yet these AAA developers are so incompetent that they can't design proper servers?
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Friday August 28 2015, @01:05PM
I don't see either of those in the "per-platform multiplayer" link. Is it on one of the phoronix links? Those won't load for me.
of course not because it's my analysis as a programmer who understands compilers.
(Score: 2) by CoolHand on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:26PM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1) by unzombied on Thursday August 27 2015, @07:41PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GlennC on Thursday August 27 2015, @08:25PM
I think "Soyvertisment" has a better ring to it.
As an aside, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a Soylentil letting the rest of us know of a new product that may be of interest.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 28 2015, @12:44AM
Soyvertisement, because then you can shorten it to Soyvert.
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