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I think it's pretty sad how vsync has become a lost pinnacle of technology that current developers struggle to once again reach and achieve. Remember 10 years ago when our graphics draws sync'd with the monitor refresh? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

This is an extraordinarily simple feature that doesn't instill confidence in the current driver team.

It's like someone studying for a PHD who forgot all potty training and started shitting themselves during class.

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Quoting: Luke_NukemBecause of Ubuntu being outdated most of the time, I kind of wish devs would target fedora stable releases as well / in replacement of.

What we users benefit most of is developers working on/supporting older/conservative distributions. Almost all libraries on Linux follow the rule of changing the soname when they change their ABI in an incompatible way. This of course does not mean that the libraries cannot get additional functionality with newer releases, as long as they don't break the old ABI by this. So, if one develops an application relying on newer functionality of a new version of a library, it will not run with older versions of the same lib. The other way around, developing the application with an older library version, and running it with a newer one (of the same soname), should always work, though. Problems only arise if applications ship their own libraries and do not read the documentation of said libraries (for instance Steam devs never read the libstdc++ ABI doc, otherwise they would not ship a copy of said lib together with Steam, causing breakage whenever the system-installed libstdc++ is newer than the useless Steam-supplied copy...), or if applications use an old, no longer supported ABI version of a library (for instance the old GTK 1, which is not shipped by distributions any more).

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Very good driver! I have much improved fps in War Thunder.

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Thanks for the kind words guys really appreciate it and the patronage :)

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Ok I guess I'm not following. I have Plasma 5.9.1 and I see the option "Allow Applications to Block Compositing", shouldn't this be CHECKED in order to increase performance for games? Also, will games in Steam block compositing in Plasma?

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Quoting: edowhat if one of those games is an exciting continuation of the portal story, but 99% of the gamers cant play it since they does not own a VR device?

Portal?

Half Life 3 VR :D

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Quoting: g000hHi, Subnautica and Super Meat Boy are 'gone', but Nuclear Throne and the rest are still there. Super Meat Boy is often on sale, so you can pick that up cheaper some other time. Grab the bundle now ;)

Well, to be fair, I already had this one (and a great deal of others).

But yeah, as @Eike said,

Quoting: EikeIt seems both games are back in action!

Thanks a lot! <3

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[quote=ShabbyX]

Quoting: riusma

Quoting: SolitaryHard lock of the system with black screen, ctrl + alt + f1 was not responding... so hard reboot (which isn't a good idea, I've read that there is a more secure way to reboot the system... should note that somewhere for my next adventure in Vulkan's lands ^^)

Remember Alt + SysRq + REISUB (http://askubuntu.com/a/36717/31099)

To remember REISUB, you can either:

- Remember that it's BUSIER backwards
- Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken

This has been quite useful for me, especially when coding real-time kernel modules (and inevitably a bug freezing the whole system). It has also been useful when I was affected by a bug related to swap which made turning off super slow (minutes), so I could just turn off the computer safely and quickly.

Pay extra attention to the S (sync) and U (remount read-only) commands, as they are what really make the reboot safe.

Isn't it Ctrl+Alt+SysRq?

I personally used to remember it with "Raising Elephants Is Simply, Utterly, Boring"
Note that some SysRq must be activated before they work. And the kernel might be compiled without, IIRC.

I also like Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+ F

That calls the OOM killer, which will kill the process with the largest amount of memory. That's useful when a program makes the system unresponsive because of swapping.

Otherwise, I think a Ctrl+Alt+SysRq+R might give you back the ability to switch to a VT (that is, if your graphics card didn't completely lock-up).

Back on the topic, it's really nice to hear continued improvement on Vulkan games and drivers. I can't wait to have a Vulkan-capable graphics card \o/ (Vega, I'm waiting for you).

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Quoting: M@yeulCWoops, I screwed hard on this one. I wanted to get back home and use my Linux PC to redeem the keys (Linux purchase and such), then realized that games that I wanted were gone from the bundle (No time to explain and nuclear throne -- maybe subnautica if I have a vive in the future and it get ported to Linux. Strike that. Every game I missed. I'm up for a trade with someone else on these (against key from other bundles I might not have redeemed)).
But what's heartbreaking is that, as I rushed to press purchase (greedy reflexes), I forgot to customize my split :/

Don't do the same mistake as me, but be aware that their steam keys seem to be in limited supplies. I don't know what it means for the game that "may" come soon.

It seems both games are back in action!

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Okay thanks! :)

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Quoting: Rolz73I just want to say, I am having a fantastic time on the server. The multipliers work for me the way they stand right now as compared to stock(I think the V-Day multiplier is adding to that...). No other players have come over and jumped all over my stuff as I try to build. No bullshit, "you can't do this or that, but you can die because here we tromp all over you for no reason, haha don't be salty, git gud".

I actually like ARK now.

Even despite a few rage quits I have admittedly done as I over-extended my skill level and had to partially rebuild.

If my stuff gets stepped on now, I really COULD accept that. At least I was given some time to complete some objectives.


This, and the live streams (I like playing RL on that sometimes), and all the other Linux Gaming news you provide.

Liam, you just got my first patreon.

Thank you

Ya this server is alot of fun! I am having a geat time as well. If you need an help just ask.

It was this server that also made Liam my first Patreon.

Thanks again for a great server!

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Quoting: wolfyrion

Quoting: Mountain ManMy experience with KDE suggests that leaving the compositor on kills your performance

The only reliable way to eliminate tearing with Nvidia is to enable the "force full composition pipeline" option in "xorg.conf". See the following article:

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/how-to-an-update-on-fixing-screen-tearing-on-linux-with-an-nvidia-gpu.8892

I dont have time to do the tests now with the new drivers but as far as I remember force full composition pipeline was giving me horrible frame rates and looked like the game was staling/laging

It may be one of those "individual mileage will vary" things, but if you enable "force full composition pipeline" then make sure you turn vsync off in your software settings or it will impact performance. I get great performance across the board with no tearing.

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I just want to say, I am having a fantastic time on the server. The multipliers work for me the way they stand right now as compared to stock(I think the V-Day multiplier is adding to that...). No other players have come over and jumped all over my stuff as I try to build. No bullshit, "you can't do this or that, but you can die because here we tromp all over you for no reason, haha don't be salty, git gud".

I actually like ARK now.

Even despite a few rage quits I have admittedly done as I over-extended my skill level and had to partially rebuild.

If my stuff gets stepped on now, I really COULD accept that. At least I was given some time to complete some objectives.


This, and the live streams (I like playing RL on that sometimes), and all the other Linux Gaming news you provide.

Liam, you just got my first patreon.

Thank you

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what if one of those games is an exciting continuation of the portal story, but 99% of the gamers cant play it since they does not own a VR device?

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SOLDAT! Nice! Back to college days....

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Quoting: liamdaweOkay, it really will be day-1, see the top of the article.

Thanks a lot liam for following this down to the end. It seems I will play it on 27th then.

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Wait, so when Xinerama is on, opengl threaded optimizations are off.

Does that mean both nVidia twinview and X's xinerama? (Separate X screens). I'd have to use single monitor?

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Right after I said I hadn't been burned by the NVIDIA drivers -- this one got me. (My luck 100%!)

Had to chroot/roll back to 375.26 on Arch 4.9.9 (GTX 1070). I was happy to see what the Pascal features were, but we'll see.. going to try one more time with resetting a few pieces; wanted to warn others that there could be issues with non-boot/stuck at GDM (for me, idk about SDDM or others).

EDIT: All is well. For anyone else to has this problem, here is what I did to resolve it:
- Revert to 375.26 (Or whatever you came from)
- Comment out any mods that are 'exported' into the environment. Search with env | grep '__' (content face?!)
- Remove any .nvidia-settings-rc file you have.
- rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf (backup if you want to reuse it or reference it after reinstall.
- Reinstall 378.13 driver
- Reboot
- Revert any changes you made and want to keep
- Good luck/ cheers -

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Unfortunately, incremental conversion are not always possible and even if it still has changes are not to be underestimated since assets often depend in others. E.g. having any asset change in a level it might be important to completely re-process the exported level. At the very least incremental conversion are much more error prone which is why not a single studio I worked for does it, at least not fully. And a lot of time consuming processes are actually platform specific like converting textures into GPU supported compressed formats. E.g. when using Unity3D a platform switch (or clean import which is necessary since without we had random wrong assets in game otherwise every now and then) can take 1h for project which has Gigabytes of assets. A platform build for such a sized projected around ~30min (for Android it can be 5x as long).

Of course builds are typically nightly jobs. But again let's say one platform fails. That means one day of update delay, or one day with a broken live version (games without an online mode might get away with keeping the old version ofc). So lets say one of the game designers has scheduled a dedicated play session for the changes in that build, which means all his work & planning gets out of sync because one platform failed. This is just one example of many.

Also a dedicated full month of "porting" towards the release can be more efficient / cheaper. Let's say I'm in the middle of coding feature X but then one platform build breaks. That means I have switch context, find the issue and fix it and get my head back into the others problems to solve. It's another extra cost.

I agree with most of the bullet points though but still I think you underestimate the cost by assuming 'ideal' conditions which never are the case in my experience.

That said with our current project 'Albion Online' we have a Linux version continually since the first public release and I'm very proud of that. So it definitely is possible but I also understand if studios have different priorities.

I actually backed The Wild 8 myself and got excited when I received the Steam key recently only to find out I had to wait a little while longer. ;-)

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Wow, what a surprise. The developer's are lie again, so no Bucks from me. I will boycott the developer's and the lie Studio again.

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Quoting: michaYou know a game doesn't only costs 100-200k just because that's what the kickstarter raised. It's more likely 10x as much as people think. So is another platform during EA.

Muahahahhahaha

This last part is entertained me so much

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Quoting: M@yeulCWoops, I screwed hard on this one. I wanted to get back home and use my Linux PC to redeem the keys (Linux purchase and such), then realized that games that I wanted were gone from the bundle (No time to explain and nuclear throne -- maybe subnautica if I have a vive in the future and it get ported to Linux. Strike that. Every game I missed. I'm up for a trade with someone else on these (against key from other bundles I might not have redeemed)).
But what's heartbreaking is that, as I rushed to press purchase (greedy reflexes), I forgot to customize my split :/

Don't do the same mistake as me, but be aware that their steam keys seem to be in limited supplies. I don't know what it means for the game that "may" come soon.

Hi, Subnautica and Super Meat Boy are 'gone', but Nuclear Throne and the rest are still there. Super Meat Boy is often on sale, so you can pick that up cheaper some other time. Grab the bundle now ;)

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Quoting: throghHey Liam: GOG has also a release of this game. Do you know if there is a version planned?

I don't make a habit of auto-linking to GOG, as they often see a delay. No word on it, this is all I have atm.

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Reminds me of Aquanox, and I saw it was released on GOG. Good to know, that Linux version is possible.

What does "main Linux branches" mean by the way? May be they wanted to say, they'll support common distros?

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Hey Liam: GOG has also a release of this game. Do you know if there is a version planned?

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[quote=riusma]

Quoting: SolitaryHard lock of the system with black screen, ctrl + alt + f1 was not responding... so hard reboot (which isn't a good idea, I've read that there is a more secure way to reboot the system... should note that somewhere for my next adventure in Vulkan's lands ^^)

Remember Alt + SysRq + REISUB (http://askubuntu.com/a/36717/31099)

To remember REISUB, you can either:

- Remember that it's BUSIER backwards
- Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken

This has been quite useful for me, especially when coding real-time kernel modules (and inevitably a bug freezing the whole system). It has also been useful when I was affected by a bug related to swap which made turning off super slow (minutes), so I could just turn off the computer safely and quickly.

Pay extra attention to the S (sync) and U (remount read-only) commands, as they are what really make the reboot safe.

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Crashes here too, sometimes to desktop and sometimes freezes hard enough to need ssh help, logs are full of

00:31:32 INF:  Trying to allocate device optimal memory pool of X MB for Y KB object... failed! (0 MB of VRAM already allocated)
00:31:32 ERR:  Vulkan: Out of memory! (CreateSurface, allocate memory)

leading to the crash. There's graphics corruption too.

It seems to work with GPU memory setting set to lowest, but it's not exactly a pleasant experience with that - autodetect selects the memory setting as "High" for the card (Geforce 960, 2GB) and OpenGL renderer works fine with that.

(The old version was exactly same so I don't have any regressions in this regard, but alas no improvement either)

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Now I got 30+ more FPS in average according to the built-in benchmark compared to earlier results. Neat. :D

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Quoting: GuestI find this kind of excuse highly suspicious personally. It's really not difficult to have a build server these days, triggered by any code commit, and that can target build for multiple platforms. Or just do it manually, depending on the code size, team size, etc. Either way, they should have a build setup in place - literally press a button / run a command to say "build".

So, pushing out a fix shouldn't be difficult to do across all platforms simultaneously.

Of course, I've left out other things - maybe there's truly some platform specific code and some level of QA they want to do that means the game needs to be played to some extent. Even that should be able to be automated to a degree (it's called a benchmark). So a basic level of sanity is still available with that.

Of course, I would assume that platform-specific code is minimal as well. They should have had file naming, screen handling, input handling, etc, all sorted. If they actually want to do cross-platform at all, that should have been sorted by now - otherwise, they'd have to redo a lot of things later, waste a lot of time later, and then probably end up blaming everyone else but themselves.

tldr; the "excuse" doesn't pass the smell test. If that was truly blocking them, it's not a good impression of their capabilities on _any_ platform, let alone anything cross-platform.

Believe me it's not nearly as simple as that.

* Build times can be something like 8h after you press that button even if you have parallel build nodes for each target platform (that's not compiling code, that's fast. I mean converting models and other data, automated tests, ..). so to be clear, detecting a bug on a single platform during QA can worst case result in an delay of 8h which is at the very least a single work day.

* Even if QA runs only smoke test it's at least 2h if QA per platform before a small update. And you definitely don't want to only do that for most. Since going through user bug reports, reproducing them and formatting them so programmers can fix them quickly is even less efficient then a little longer in house testing.

* Usually DEVs try to ensure file naming, screen/input handling and other things (e.g. different render APIs) to work independently across the platforms. In reality however there's always something you miss initially if not tested for it. Even if engines like Unity3D deal with most of it.

Running EA or any alpha/beta each non primary platform costs actually a lot. It can be worth it but let's be honest. In most cases it's not.

Again promising something and not delivering always sucks. But having a Linux version during EA wich is either broken half of the time, or has other bugs won't give the game a good reputation either. Actually it might even hurt sales on the primary platform if word of mouth is really bad. And again making sure that it is not the case comes a price which shouldn't be underestimated. You know a game doesn't only costs 100-200k just because that's what the kickstarter raised. It's more likely 10x as much as people think. So is another platform during EA.

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Okay, it really will be day-1, see the top of the article.

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