Plegyvap

It is true, look it up. If I recall correctly, AB should have continued from evil ending of M&M7, represented as the Forge town. Some forge concept art got out and people didn't like it so they changed it, making good ending canon. Since then, there have been some attempts at modding the faction back. And it's not just Xeen, all M&M games except last (I think) have sci-fi elements. In M&M you find a guy in a control room. Not to mention aliens. Second ends with your party beaming down to planet Terra. There you take off in a spaceship. World of Xeen of course has the final showdown between the two androids. Then there are the Kreegans invading from space, alien devil race (Inferno in Heroes) and you fighting them off with laser guns. M&M 7 is similar to 6. M&M 8 is the purest one, only sci-fi element is the main antagonist. Heroes might not have been as blunt with it but it did hint at events in the RPG series.

After looking through steam, gog and metacritic scores I came up with these Deus Ex Invisible War - I liked it despite its flaws. Penumbra Requiem - People didn't like that it's a pure puzzle game, I didn't mind. Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil - I liked it more than the base game. Dragon Age - Specificaly the fade portion of mage tower, people seem to not like it, for me it was a welcome change of pace. Heroes 4 - I think people didn't like it much back then, I like how different it is. Heroes 3 Armageddon Blade (original version) - Backlash forced devs to scrap Forge faction and replace it with Conflux, apparently Heroes fans do not overlap much with M&M fans because they complained about high tech faction in fantasy world although M&M always had a mix of little sci-fi. Orion Dino Horde (now Orion Prelude) - It has low score on metacritic but I had a lot of fun with it. Red Faction Armageddon Path to War - Yeah it was short but i didn't mind, I liked armageddon too much so I still enjoyed it. Spellforce Faith in Destiny - My introduction to Spellforce, it was fun, moreso because it's short. Spore - I liked it depsite its simplicity, although the space age kinda drags. Ufo Afterlight - I like it more then X-Com, the mars setting is nice and you can have bots and aliens in your team. Yoda Stories - A misunderstood game, it serves similar purpose as windows minesweeper or solitaire, I like it.

Some more tips for linux users: - If you can see the taskbar displayed over game in fullscreen then try setting screen resolution the same as game uses. - (might be outdated) If game freezes/stutters (especially when moving camera) it helped me to turn off CSMT in Wine configuration. - When game crashes, skips or hangs on black screen after launch you might just be missing codec for the intro video. Which one depends on format in which game stores them. - Setting different Windows versions in Wine can have significant impact, e.g. setting old Windows version will report your RAM as lower than it actually is, avoiding the not enough memory errors. - Some games are originally released on console and then ported to PC. If you can't be bothered to tinker with it in Wine you can just get the console version and use emulator. Those are usually very easy to set up and Lutris supports many of these as well. - Some games work better in 32 bit Wine. 16 bit games will run only in 32 bit (64 bit supports only 32). - When everything else fails you can always try running the actual OS as a virtual machine. Microsoft allows you to download Windows XP Mode from which you can extract Windows XP virtual hard disk file (VirtualXPVHD) and use that in VirtualBox. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8002 That being said, a little deviation from the topic. Running the game is actually the third and arguably least important step of game preservation. I would say there are three steps: Knowing the game exists. Most important. We can't save it if we don't know about it. I would say https://www.mobygames.com/ is the right place for it, considering their reasonable rules and big database. Keeping a copy of the game. Also very important and unfortunately often outside the law. I don't know of any obvious to-go site for abandonware or even just freeware. There are many sites with overlapping collections. Easy to lose something when a site goes down. Running the game in the right environment. Thats the topic of this thread. Honestly the least important part by far. Once 1 and 2 are accomplished we can take as much time as we want developing any emulation or even reverse engineering the game. Still, it is good to sometimes remember that we want to play those games as well.

It does. And it's not how it works in WH40k. The empire of man relies mostly on ranged weaponry as you would expect, guardsmen all have laser rifles with bayonets and space marines mostly use bolters, plasma guns etc. Melee is either a backup or a specialty, e.g. space marine assault squads use bolt pistols and chainswords (and bombs), they close in using jetpacks and disrupt enemy lines. Of course Orks just love getting into melee, so there it is more prevalent. Rule of cool did have a big say in Warhammer but they managed to come up with decent in-universe explanation for most things. Anyway, Hellgate is tedious but I did finish it with that drone class. You just need upgraded napalm launcher and a lot of patience.

I like the idea in principle since it makes digitally purchased games behave more like real property but I think it would be more effective to spend the energy on keeping games from being removed from store. One could also argue that it could become common for people to exchange single player games once they are finished with them. You could make a dedicated forum or something and temporarily befriend people to trade. That would drop sales of games, mainly the older ones (mostly single player and many people already own them), that leads to less earnings which are probably already low thanks to generous sales and thus there could be less incentive to rerelease old games with compatibility for new systems. You could regulate that by limiting exchanges to once per week or month but that would lessen the impact of this new benefit. Also both developers/publishers and store owners don't receive anything from this so it will be hard to convince them.

Good idea. Personally, I would like to see a comprehensive guide for running troublesome games in Wine. I would try to make one myself but I lack the neccessary knowledge. So I'll just throw in some useful links for fellow linux users. 1. If your game is on Steam, try running it through Proton (a bit special version of Wine built in Steam). It's very simple, just enable it in Steam settings under Steam Play. You can check how well a game runs (and what tweaks you should do in game parameters) here https://www.protondb.com/ You can also get a modified Proton version here https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom (On the right panel you will see "Releases" link, you will find downloads there. Also, scroll down for installation instructions.) 2. Otherwise you will need to either deal with Wine directly or, in my opinion the easier way, set up Lutris (it has login system but is usable without it too). First check that you got your 32 bit binaries and drivers https://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/InstallingDrivers.md then you need to install Wine dependencies https://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/WineDependencies.md and Wine itself (staging recomended over stable) https://wiki.winehq.org/Download then you can install Lutris https://lutris.net/downloads/ You should probably get DirectX to Vulkan working too, I think Lutris already includes it, but in case it does not work, look here https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk You will find more useful information on wiki https://github.com/lutris/lutris/wiki and Lutris forums. Finally, you can consider using gamemode (for Ubuntu - sudo add-apt-repository ppa:samoilov-lex/gamemode, then get update and install, you know the drill), not sure about desktop PC but it does make significant difference on my laptop. You can activate it with gamemoderun <insert-game-exe-command-here> and check that it works with gamemoded -s. In Proton it just works or it doesn't, not much you can easily do apart from adding some launch parameters. In Lutris, when a game won't run after installing it, you can right click the game in Lutris launcher and play with various options like changing windows version in wine configuration or installing libraries through wine tricks (e.g. dinput8 helps sometimes with mouse problems). It is best to try searching web for "winehq name of the game", winehq has compatibility/performance reports for various games which often say what needs to be done to make it run.

Didn't read other posts, just reacting to OP. Difficulty is not the only thing that matters in whether or not player has fun. Some players just don't like certain games even when the difficulty is just right. It all boils down to why player plays the game. For most people it is to have fun. If they don't have fun and are not willing to give it another chance then it's perfectly fine to just move on. I think it is very rare for someone to suddenly love a game after they hated it for first few hours in. Even then, there is a ton of games now, every one of us is missing out on many great ones without even realizing it, potentially missing out on one more is not worth spending hours in misery and boredom. Anyway, you should continue to point out games you like to others but don't expect them to like them too. Personally, I would say an hour is good enough. If after an hour you have to push yourself to continue, just stop. On difficulty itself, very hard to get it right, too big of a difference between players. Thats why both easy and hard modes are needed. Being able to change it on the fly is useful. Also, I don't like too detailed options in difficulty, new player won't know what to pick.

In general, it looks to me like you look for games which are very heavy in secrets. Such games would usually be platformers or topdown adventure/puzzle games so I would look there. I didn't play many of these but I have some suggestions jazz jackrabbit 2 - Lot of items hidden behind foreground objects, on hard to reach places (sometimes requiring specific character). might & magic 1 - Very old RPG, it absolutely loves secret passable walls, you can also teleport over walls, sequels up to M&M 5 could also be worth a look in this regard. spelunky - There is an ending, and then there is another ending which requires to obtain certain items and going through extra levels, also has some alternate levels to which you need to discover the entrance. treasure adventure game/world - I remember there being lot of backtracking and new areas accessible thanks to items. In case this was actually more about finding different ways how to traverse a level, then mirror's edge could work. Some levels there require you take not so obvious route to achieve better time.

It does now. So Linux will actually become dominant desktop OS, sort of. It will be like what happened with Android on mobile devices. Hopefully it will lead to easier crossplatform development which could mean more applications being available to both Windows and Linux.

This makes me wonder why is Valve bothering with Proton and Microsoft with Ubuntu terminal if Linux desktop has no future? (In case of the terminal, I guess it could ease up working with linux servers but I don't know much about that.) What you said about file manager having the feature built in applies to shell as well. Shell can't search through the files, grep can. Shell is just a way of running applications and transfering data between them. The same thing in desktop environment looks like dragging file into application, saving output somewhere and dragging it into another application. File manager could then be compared to collection of file managing commands like ls, cd, mkdir etc. So, the equivalent to GUI are command line parameters, not shell. As I see it, the difference between shell and desktop environment is that you can write sequence of x application calls on one line and I didn't see desktop which could do something like that. It seems possible though, allow selecting multiple applications in transparent manner and drag a file into it, assuming the applications can drop their output straight into next application. Application which has GUI is often usable from shell too and I agree that shell will always be here thanks to developers for who it is easier to write a script solving their immediate problem than developing a reusable application. Which is fine but writing scripts is outside of average user capabilities.

Looks ok to me. Site itself just have some tracking (google) and could potentially deny access (if cloudflare doesn't like you). In general I don't expect malware in abandonware, not worth the hassle for the few people who will download an obscure/old game. I still do scan them but I didn't find any yet.

From the stuff i got bookmarked and was not mentioned I think I could recommend these: ChaosD1, UberDanger, The Act Man, Tehsnaker, Matthewmatosis, Skill Up, Insp. Magnum, Gggmanlives (reviews) Pixelmusement (dos games) DWTerminator (a bit opinionated but its good to hear very different viewpoint sometimes) Super Bunnyhop, Strat-Edgy, Brownbear (reviews and more general talk about games) Mr Btongue, Spoony Experiment (pretty much dead but have worthwhile stuff) Whoisthisgit, Larry Bundy Jr (lists) Lorerunner (thoughts on various games and shows) Adam Millard (game concepts analysis) Zaric Zhakaron (if you are into Elder Scrolls) Not so sure but I'll mention just in case (I must have take a note of them for a reason): Dr. Jay, Matt Barton, RennsReviews, Overlord Gaming When it comes to movies etc. I still visit: Anime Abandon, Channel Awsome, The Mysterious Mr Enter, Lost in Adaptation, Cinemassacre, Cinema Snob, Phelan Porteous, Bobsheaux, ralphthemoviemaker. Hopefuly some of these will catch your interest.

Well, the important thing is to not lose access to it. It does not matter than nobody can't see the game's code for the next two centuries. What matters is that copy of the code is in hands of some institution which has obligation to keep it around.

I'm going to take the liberty of sharing my own experience with Linux which I'm using for two years now. I made the jump from Windows because of Windows 7 running out of support soon and since I had no experience with Linux I picked what looked like the simplest distribution to use - Linux Mint (18.3 at the time, now I'm on 19.3). The learning experience was not actually bad at all. Most stuff worked out of the box, the few things that were not to my liking I managed to fix through available GUIs and searching through the net. I asked for help once on Mint forums which resulted in me upgrading my kernel through update manager GUI and it solved my problem. I got to a point where I was running Windows games while still not understanding much about the OS itself, like how is the file system organized or what is upstream. I compiled one or two applications just following some instructions, never heard of makefile before, even though I work as a developer it seems alien when you are used to just open Visual Studio and hit build. Now I am after complete system reinstall which I did when upgrading to Mint 19.3, mainly so that I have clean system to work with now that I am more experienced. Again it went very smooth and in a few days I was back in business, running World of Warcraft Classic through Wine and Vulkan. And I still don't know much about Linux itself though I am learning about it here and there. In my opinion, most people would be fine using Linux Mint or similar distribution. If you take a basic computer user, who just wants to browse the web, check email, maybe write and print a little document and play some games, there is practically no difference between Mint and Windows for them. It's just icons you click and stuff happens. No need to touch the Terminal. And most of advanced users will open it only occasionally, like I do. So, GUI vs CLI. I understand the pain of writing GUI (I have to deal with Microsoft's WPF) but for anything more complex or with a lot of data to display I prefer GUI. I use Terminal just for basic stuff like sha256sum where I just add first few letters of the file, autocomplete with tab, hit enter and have the result. Or for copy-pasting commands from web. Or when there is just no GUI available. And finally a little more detail about gaming on Linux. I would divide it into 3 layers. Native: Just install Steam. It will run native Linux games and supported Windows games using Proton. Or download and execute GOG installer. It will drop an icon on your desktop and you are ready to go. Mainstream non-native: Install Lutris and Wine following instructions on Lutris wiki. It's basically a manager for games and engines/emulators they run on. It makes handling Wine easier and supports plenty of console emulators. You just need to search for a install script on their website, feed it your installation files and it will do the rest. Usually it works fine. You can also change Steam settings to allow running any game in Proton, a lot of them run quite well even though they are not officialy supported. Obscure non-native: When there is no one click solution or when it does not work perfectly (or at all). At this point you need to manually tweak setting in Lutris, maybe add in few Windows dlls using winetricks or, when common solutions don't work, look hard at the error output and ask around at WineHQ forums. Most (roughly over 90 %) of the games I tried running in Lutris I managed to get to work, for the rest I didn't spend much time on finding a solution and I have a backup plan of Windows XP virtual machine. Overall I would say if you don't like where Windows is headed, give Linux a try. However, if you rely on some modern Windows only applications, like MS Office, or you like playing freshly released games on max settings, you are better off with Windows. My friend had problems making Linux run on his computer simply because his hardware was not supported yet. On the other hand, if you rely on old windows software, you might have more luck running it in Wine. The backwards compatibility of Windows is getting worse, some stuff you could run on Windows 7 can't be run so easily on Windows 10. I actually have more confidence in being able to run my games in Wine after 10 years than I have in running closed source native Linux games on future Linux distributions. Backwards compatibility does not seem to have much focus on Linux and while open source apps can be modified to run on new systems, no such luck with games which are mostly closed source. Thats why when I archive my GOG installation files, I take the Windows ones over the Linux ones.

Personally, I don't expect open source games to become common any time soon. Here's why. Making your code open source is feasible when: You don't write it to get paid. Your software is tied to hardware (which you either sell (automated tools) or own (servers)). Your software is something which is expected to be continuously developed (so people pay you to keep improving it). Games have been and still mostly are a piece of software which is developed until it is done and then sold as it is. Releasing the code would mean that anyone, who is a bit computer savvy or can at least follow a guide, can compile the game and play it for free. There would be no reason to buy the game except to support the developers, which would mean that instead of salary they are fed by donations. And I can't imagine that majority of game developers would decide to rely on donations. In case of multiplayer games with servers, developers can compensate this by running the servers, which costs money and would allow for a subscribtion system even when anyone can get the game for free. Of course if your game is already free to play, there is no reason not to have it open source except that the code uses software with restrictive licenses. Theoretically you could give out only the part you wrote and leave it to users to obtain license for engine etc. on which the game runs so they can build it, but that only moves the problem. Although for software used by many games, like engines, it is less probable that they would get lost. Lastly, if I'm not missing something, all you need to preserve a game is a working compiled copy and access to environment in which it will run. The source code is still there, the computer can read the instructions and developers should be able to reconstruct source code based on it. It would be a crazy amount of work but it should be possible. Having the source code accessible would of course be the ideal situation. At best I could see some law which would make game companies hand over code to an archiving institution which could then make it accessible after X years goes by.