I'm more than happy to just download the installers, and only manually update. That's how I use to do it when I was using Windows. But the installers don't run natively on linux, I'm just not sure how best to use them. My first attempt was to use bottles to run an installer, then again to run the game after it installed. That worked - but after doing it once I decided that it would be easier to just install Galaxy instead so that I don't have to setting things up over and over.
I'm curious about how Steam responds to you adding a non-steam game like that. Are you using innoextract to unpack the files from the installer into some personal directory, and then telling Steam to run the game from there? Or do you tell steam directly to run the installer? .. And when you add a non-steam game to steam is that an entirely local thing? (I don't really want to be reporting to Valve about what GOG games I'm playing.)
I see one advantage of using Steam is that if I already have Steam, then it saves me installing another tool. But some disadvantages is that it presumably won't do save syncing, or Galaxy achievement tracking - and the installation process for each game might be a bit fiddly by the sounds of it.
I'm half-way through the survey right now; and rather than continuing, just stalling because I don't want to rank another set of three options that I don't care about. Some of the choices already given were like "well, I guess I'll pick the feature that I've at least thought about using once..." but now it's just a list of 3 things that I don't want whatsoever. I'm trying to give useful feedback, but I feel like I'm really just giving noise.
I liked the idea for awhile as well. But for me, learning about the "proof of work" underpinning is what changed my mind. That - and the fact that cryptocurrency does not actually have any of the strengths that it claims to have. It's definitely and interesting idea... but in practice it's all just scams and incentivised waste.
Widelands is a great strategy / building game. The gameplay and UI style is a niche - but that's one of the things I like about it. It's doing something different to most games.
(The gameplay is similar to Settlers 2; before that franchise changed direction.)
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But the open-source game I've spent the most time playing would be OpenXcom-extended, with xpiratez. That game is truly huge.
In many ways, the silky-smooth convenience offered by modern computer software makes everything much harder to learn about and understand. For anyone that used zip files before this Windows feature, the problem is obvious - but for younger people it's not obvious at all. Heck, a lot of people can't even tell whether or not a file is locally on their computer - let alone whether it is compressed in some other file.
I hope that Ladybirdy gets something good happening. I simply having a another browser in this space would give Mozilla a good sanity check for their direction and values. Otherwise they're just kind of fumbling around.
I'm starting to worry about Mozilla. Firefox is still the best browser, and I've used it for many years... but there are more and more anti-features popping up that require a few settings to be changed. No one thing is a big deal, but I'm starting to feel the same way about Firefox as I did about Windows before I stopped using it: like it's just trying to trick me into doing something I don't want to do rather than aiming to be a good product.
I'm thinking specifically about the address bar getting 'search suggestions' from Google by default; and the special 'ad effectiveness tracking' that is turned on by default to help Facebook. Privacy should always be the default setting. We shouldn't have to keep up-to-date with the latest features and settings just so that we know what to disable!
Charging for updates isn't intrinsically bad. A good expansion pack at a fair price can be a good deal for both the players and the devs. But there is a modern trend of games trying to squeeze players for every dollar they can get; and when content is deliberately held back in the hopes of selling it for a bit more money later, it starts to become a bit perverse. The game itself can become an advertisement for selling more bits of the game in the future - and it just devalues the experience.
In the specific case of Stardew Valley, the game is a major hit - and it continues to sell well. So even though existing players are getting the new content for free, the developer is still going to get paid. Obviously he could get a lot more if he charged for it, but he has decided he doesn't need that. He'd rather just make the game as good as he can make it.
Here's a personal story of mine, about a different game:
Several years ago I was selected to be a beta tester for a major game franchise. I was a very well known member of that community, know for making custom balance patches and bugfixes - and so they wanted me to test their new release. I was pretty excited to be a part of that. But when I got my first beta copy, I didn't really play it much because the game barely worked. It crashed very frequently, and so my feedback was basically just "it crashes when I do this". I figured it wasn't worth trying to give balance ideas when the game was in that state. Anyway... time went on, and things didn't improve much. There were some graphics changes and a bit of UI work... but it was still super unstable. The release date was getting pretty close. But before it was even possible to do a full playthrough without constant reloads to dodge game-ending bugs, there was detailed plans posted on the beta forums talking about the first 4 DLC packs that would be released after the game launched.
I stopped taking AAA games seriously after that. I was totally disillusioned. They were launching their AAA game in non-functional state, with the hope of fixing the worst bugs in a day 1 patch. Very little useful playtesting was done, and so the features of the game were a bit slap-dash, but yet somehow they were dividing up content for as many DLCs packs as possible. They didn't even have a functional game and yet they were talking about how to sell more stuff. It was a real eye-opening experience for me; and it really colours the way I see other games that launch in a buggy state, where pretty much the only thing that works is the in-game store.
So yeah, I can appreciate the view that maybe charging for updates is a slippy slope that Concerned Ape doesn't want to step onto; even if he does have very solid footing for if he wanted to tread that ground a bit.
You don't really have to do anything special to make the most of life. Different people like different things; and whatever you choose to do is likely to be valuable to you. Just be mindful that that you don't sleep-walk through it all. Make the most of it by being conscious of it.
In this thread we're talking about the recent problem with CrowdStrike on Windows that brought down various services around the world. So I don't know who's bubble you think you're bursting by talking about something else.
When writing my previous post I had started writing a list of suggested strategies; but I changed my mind about posting that. I'm not a member of Mozilla. I don't know what particular challenges they face, and my expertise are not in not-for-profit fundraising. So although I do have ideas, I don't really want to get into a trap of trying to defend my half-arse ideas against people picking them apart. It's beside the point. The point is just that it is achievable, as evidenced by other organisations achieving it.
I will say though that they could at least just mention on the Firefox 'successful update' page that Firefox is supported by donations, and give a link. A lot of people really like Firefox; and I think that if Firefox asked for donations, they would get more donations.
Yeah, plastering parking lots over prime agricultural land was definitely a mistake. And it's hard to wind that back. We just need to make sure new infrastructure and planning reduces car dependency rather than further entrenching it.
I'm more than happy to just download the installers, and only manually update. That's how I use to do it when I was using Windows. But the installers don't run natively on linux, I'm just not sure how best to use them. My first attempt was to use bottles to run an installer, then again to run the game after it installed. That worked - but after doing it once I decided that it would be easier to just install Galaxy instead so that I don't have to setting things up over and over.
I'm curious about how Steam responds to you adding a non-steam game like that. Are you using innoextract to unpack the files from the installer into some personal directory, and then telling Steam to run the game from there? Or do you tell steam directly to run the installer? .. And when you add a non-steam game to steam is that an entirely local thing? (I don't really want to be reporting to Valve about what GOG games I'm playing.)
I see one advantage of using Steam is that if I already have Steam, then it saves me installing another tool. But some disadvantages is that it presumably won't do save syncing, or Galaxy achievement tracking - and the installation process for each game might be a bit fiddly by the sounds of it.