Pillars of Eternity: March 26th Release Date - Linux, Mac and Windows simultaneous release

Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity is due to be released on 26th March 2015 on Linux, Mac and Windows, distributed via +GOG.com - DRM-Free Games and +Steam.

Main features:

• Play as any one of six races: Human, Aumaua, Dwarf, Elf, Godlike and Orlan.
• Utilize five core skills to overcome any situation: Stealth, Athletics, Lore, Mechanics and Survival.
• Deep character customization: Build a character as one of eleven classes such as Barbarian, Chanter, Cipher, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Ranger, Rogue and Wizard.
• Sculpt your own story: Side with various factions using a reputation system, where your actions and choices have far reaching consequences.
• Explore a rich and diverse world: Beautiful pre-rendered environments laced with an engaging story and characters bring the world to life.

The game is inspired by the likes of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment, and was funded through crowd funding (it raised $3,986,929 and became the highest funded crowd sourced video game on Kickstarter at the time). This model has allowed the developers at Obsidian to make the game the way they wanted, rather than be restricted by publisher demands, as +Joshua Sawyer explains in a Reddit AMA with with Obsidian, here.

Whilst unashamedly based upon the aforementioned classic games, such as a pausable real-time system and fixed isometric gameplay with 2d pre-rendered backgrounds, it will not be based on D&D rules and will have an original plot and setting, all thanks to the freedom that Obsidian had as a result of the crowd funding model.

I think this game could do really well in terms of Linux sales alone, and I'm pleased to see it has a simultaneous release on all three major PC platforms.

Will you be buying it on release day?

Kodi and UK Freeview TV

OK - so after a few months of not attempting to fix/get around some roadblocks in terms of streaming live TV to XBMC frontends, and no sound on HD channels, I decided to revisit my nearly complete HTPC for one last stab.

And, hey presto, I've made good progress and I'm really pleased with the setup as it stands - still some tweaks I intend to make, but I have a funny feeling I'll never be satisfied with the status quo.

So, I'm using Ubuntu 14.04.1, Kodi (formerly known as XBMC), MythTV as a primary backend server, UK Freeview DVB-T2 being tuned by TBS6285.

The rest of the kit can be seen in my previous posts.

I managed to resolve the HD audio issue simply by going into Cmyth-PVR addonn settings in Kodi, and under advanced, deselecting the de-mux option. I'm sure I tried this several months ago, to no avail, but it seems to have done the trick this time. So, now I can hear TV audio on all digital channels.

I'm able to stream to another PC in the house running Kodi as a frontend, simply by adding the CMyth-PVR addon. I couldn't achieve this using a Rasperry Pi with Openelec - for some reason that version of Cmyth just wouldn't allow primary backend and Rapsberry Pi to talk to each other.

All in all, I am really impressed. Live TV channel changing in Kodi seems to be quicker than when I last tried with XBMC in summer, and whilst not what I would called instant, it is acceptable - probably 2 - 3 seconds for the new channel to buffer and then play.

The picture quality is excellent, in HD. I did have to play around with a few variations of settings in Kodi's hardware acceleration settings section and in the onscreen display video settings section. I finally settled on auto interlacing, auto interlacing method, and auto video scaling. The quality and frame rate is excellent.

I also spent some time re-ordering channels on the mythbackend. I did this by opening a terminal and typing mythtv-setup. In the options menu that appears, select Channel Editor, and then work through the channels amending as you see fit. I've removed all the shopping channels, dating channels and all SD channels that have an HD alternative, and moved them into my preferred order. After this, mythbackend needs to be restarted, then open Kodi LiveTV settings and ensure "Always use the channel order from the backend/s".

I'm using a Logitech K400 wireless keyboard to control the HTPC and somtimes theYatse android app to control Kodi, This sounds complex, but it works really well. e.g. keyboard is on other side of living room, no problem - you can still control Kodi without the massive effort of rising from your chair and walking 3 steps across a lounge!

TBS6285 Part 2

Following on from my previous post http://ubuntulinuxhtpc.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/tbs6285.html I've received the quad-tuner and installed it, having overcome a few hurdles. I've described the process I followed, below. If you can't get this card to work, feel free to get in touch, and I should be able to help you get up and running.

The first hurdle to overcome was installation of the linux drivers for the TBS6285. These can be downloaded from http://www.tbsdtv.com/download/. After help from Constantine, developer at Turbosight (TBS), it turned out that my motherboard (MSI 990FXA-GD65) is one of many faulty ones floating around (there is a buggy ASM1083 chip soldered between PCIe and PCI bus) which cannot handle IRQ from the card and causes an interrupt storm from the card. To overcome that I did the following (from http://www.tbsdtv.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=7631#p24903):

1. Create a .conf file 

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/tbs.conf

2. Edit contents of .conf file by inserting the following two lines and saving file

options saa716x_tbs-dvb int_type=1

options saa716x_tbs-dvb enable_ir=0 

The first line activates MSI (Message Signal Interrupts) instead of the older IRQ. The second disables remote control receiver on the card to make sure the interrupt storm is not coming from there).

3. Reboot to load the driver with MSI loaded.

Then, following intructions from http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work and http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6284 with a few amendments for TBS6285 and some permissions problems, I managed to get the card working. These are the commands I used:

1. Extract the ZIP file tbs-linux-drivers_v[VERSION NUMBER].zip. As of 25 April 2014, the latest version is 140425.

unp -u tbs-linux-drivers_v140425.zip

2. Extract linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2 archive

cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425 

unp linux-tbs-drivers.tar.bz2

3. Change ownership and permissions of extracted files

sudo chown -R <yourusername> tbs-linux-drivers_v140425

sudo chmod -R 777 tbs-linux-drivers_v140425 

4. Change to driver package directory

cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425

cd linux-tbs-drivers

4.1 (If on fresh install on CentOS or similar)     

yum install kernel-devel-`uname -r`

cd linux-tbs-drivers

make clean

make distclean

 (move to Step 5)

  
5. Select platform architecture
(for any x86_64 kernel only)

enter into a terminal: 

./v4l/tbs-dvbc-x86_64.sh

and then:

./v4l/tbs-x86_64.sh

6. Build the driver. Recompiles v4l for a wide range of cards, around 500, will take many minutes.

make

        (I modify this to make -j7  to use all 6 cores of my CPU)

7. Install driver

sudo make install

8. Reboot, then
(Ubuntu-based distros only. See http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/TBS6285#Making_it_Work for other distros)

sudo rm -Rf /lib/modules/<your kernel version>/kernel/drivers/media

9. Reinstall drivers

cd tbs-linux-drivers_v140425 

cd linux-tbs-drivers 

sudo make install

10. Load newly installed driver

sudo modprobe -v tbs62x0fe

insmod /lib/modules/3.(your kernel version)-generic/kernel/drivers/media/dvb/frontends/tbs62x0fe.ko

11. Check it loaded correctly

Reboot:

sudo shutdown -r now

After rebooting and logging back in, check to see if dvb adaptor nodes now exist:

ls -al /dev/dvb

You should see something similar to the following displayed in your terminal:

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter0

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter1

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter2

drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  120 Jul  9 21:12 adapter3

This should give you a correctly installed TBS6285 on Ubuntu 14.04 (after trials and tribulations, it did for me!)

The plan..

I've become unimpressed with the quality of pay TV, and find myself watching mainly free-to-air channels such as BBC, Channel 4 and Film 4. As a result I've decided to have broadband only and recycle an old desktop case I have lying around to build a media centre/HTPC for the living room, serving live and recorded TV and other media to 3 bedrooms.

The main goal is to try and keep the build cost of the living room backend server close to £700 (similar to the the annual cost of my current cable TV package and set top boxes), whilst striking a balance between power (for gaming), low noise and power efficiency as machine will be on 24/7. The bedroom PCs are to be less than £100 each, so probably Raspberry Pis running XMBC.

I'm looking forward to more geeking out on the research, build, and setting up of such a system.

So far, I have the following hardware connected to my living room TV:

• Case: ATX tower case, £0 (recycled)

• Storage: An old Western Digital SATA1 160 GB HDD, £0 (recycled)

• Motherboard: MSI 990FXA-GD65, £57.98

• CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz Socket AM3+, £80.99

• RAM: 8GB Kingston low-profile (so Scythe heatsink fits) RAM, £60

• PSU: Corsair CX600M, £52.96

• Graphics: MSI GeForce GTX 650 N650-1GD5/OCV1, £51.98

• CPU Cooling: Scythe Mugen IV, £37.11

This is a working system, but not the final build. I am outstanding a TV tuner to be able to receive Freeview broadcasts, SSD on which to install the OS (Ubuntu) and Steam files to ensure system is spritely, larger HDD to store media (music, films, TV), and some peripherals such as a wireless keyboard.

• TV Tuner: TBS 6285 T2 PCIe card, £125.00

• SSD: Crucial M550 250GB, £107.94

• HDD: WD Caviar Green 2TB, £65.00

• Wireless Keyboard: Logitech K400, £29

Total price should be not far off £668.00

In it's current form (i.e. without SSD) Ubuntu and Steam are rapid, even with the motherboard set to ECO mode.

The Scythe Mugen IV was money well spent, as it is virtually silent - the noise that the stock AMD cooler made was really loud!

The machine now emits just a low hum, which is imperceptible when sat more than a few feet away from the case.

I should be in receipt of my TBS 6285 tuner card very soon; once I have I will post a progress update on setting up MythTV as a backend and XBMC as a frontend.