Are You Afraid...? You Will Be...

This Penumbra, for $5, not a bad deal at all.

Even if I end up not liking it, at least I didn't have to shell out $45 to find out!

This is how musicians could make money without the RIAA.

Contrary to popular belief it IS actually possible to develop games that can compile on multiple platforms without much per-system tweaking. This is assuming you use a game engine that already takes care of all the cross platform quirks.

This is why it would be nice to have a mainstream big name console running on a FOSS platform with a native game engine that's also entirely FOSS. Then these companies have no excuse not to release their software with multiple binaries. The whole "packaging is such a pain" excuse is also lame. Too many lame excuses all-round really.

Yeah, I'm gonna grab it just to show my support. Though it's not really the genre I typically play.

While I think most of us would agree that ideally everything would be FOSS, I think most of us would also agree that currently the commercial gaming issue is a deterrent to many could-be-FOSS users. As I've mentioned before I have a Windows install on my laptop that I boot up specifically for some games.

If we could get more commercial game companies to support Linux, that helps take away the "there are no games for Linux" argument (which is invalid anyway, but we all know they really mean "the most popular current games don't run on Linux").

If the big game companies start supporting Linux, that could put pressure on the hardware manufacturers (video cards, sound cards, etc.) to support Linux driver development more.

Which in turn could help increase FOSS adoption even more.

"Dude! I can build this sweet new gaming rig and buy even better parts because I can install Linux on it to run all my games instead of spending $300 on Windows for it! And it won't crash all the time or get infected!"

So theoretically: Game companies sell more games, Hardware companies sell more higher end stuff, Gamers are thrilled that they have a better system (hardware and software wise) to play their games on, Linux support for current-generation hardware increases (thus decreasing the other argument about Linux not working with anything new).

Everybody wins! (well, except Microsoft, but that's OK)

> Yeah, I'm gonna grab it just to show my support.

That makes two of us. 935MB, that's one heck of an install shell!

935899676 2009-07-17 09:12 PenumbraCollection-1.0.sh

I got it as well. I have never been interested in this type of game, but who knows maybe it will be fun.

What the heck ever happened to the rumoured Steam+games porting effort?

Alright, I've bought a copy - no idea whether I'll like it, but for 5 bucks you can't go wrong.

Bought it. I'm downloading as I'm writing this.

@Bob. 935MB doesn't scare me. But a 935MB shell script does!

I hope my file is okay, it is only 892.5MB.

The 1000 decimal vs 1024 binary mathematics shortcuts strike again.

@boomboom: That's correct. It's 935 MB or 892 MiB.

Edit: The really nasty thing is that it's *just* too big for a CD. I wish they had used a slightly more aggressive compression method so it would come in under 800 MiB.

Thanks Helios... I bought it, if for no other reason than to support Linux game development.

To be honest, for £3.76, even if I don't manage to install and play the damn thing (what with having a real life) it's worth it just to support someone producing games for Linux.

Thanks Sander. It installed fine on my desktop, my laptop lacks 3d acceleration, though compiz doesn't like games, so I'll have to disable it and try to play.

I pretty sure it won't run on my intergrated Radeon, but what the heck ;)

Unfortunately for them, Ken's review was too good. With that good a description of the game, I know for certain I'd never play it. :(

I considered simply buying it anyway to support the company, but I've decided against it.