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Latest Comments by Grogan
10 years ago Steam released for Linux
14 Feb 2023 at 9:23 pm UTC Likes: 2

I shunned it at first. I think it was 2016 when I first installed Steam on Linux. I didn't have much available (a few games in my library that had Linux ports). I bought some more of Valve's stuff (e.g. Left4Dead 2 and more of the half life 2 episodes) just to have more games.

Then I shunned Proton at first in 2018. Bollocks, thought I, Wine is an abomination. Native Linux or GFY :-)

(Of course things are different now... I don't even have a Windows install anymore except for a Windows 7 qemu VM)

Happy Birthday, Steam.

Lutris 0.5.13 Beta adds Proton support, itch.io integration, Battle.net integration
13 Feb 2023 at 9:14 pm UTC Likes: 1

It actually used to work, to just use the wine build that came with Proton. Back before it was being built to run in containers with the Steam runtime. For a short time after that, it still continued to work that way if you had all the dependencies (+lib32) but it wasn't long before the disparity between the steam environment and the distro environment was greater than the aging libraries in the steam runtimes. Also some distros don't even provide all the 32 bit libraries needed anymore.

So Lutris stopped displaying the Proton versions in the wine runner list, but for a time you could still do it by making symlinks.

The difference now is that Lutris finds your Steam runtime, finds your Proton versions, tries both paths, new and old for different versions of Proton (dist/bin/wine and files/bin/wine) etc. to make it work. They even symlink your username to steamuser (in c:\users I mean) when using Proton now.

Surprisingly BioShock Infinite got an update to fix it launching on Linux
13 Feb 2023 at 6:14 pm UTC Likes: 1

Hah... no kidding. I had to switch to the Windows version (I rebought it on GoG with all the bioshock games after 2K tried to shove that broken launcher up my ass... those are some of my old favourites, I replay them every year or so on average)

I guess I'll give the Steam native version a try again then. It'll give me an excuse to enable mesa_glthread for something (I find that detrimental to most opengl games, only a few benefit, so I have it disabled globally, toggled off at build time, and only use it per-instance)

I'm quite glad to hear that got some needed love.

Lutris 0.5.13 Beta adds Proton support, itch.io integration, Battle.net integration
13 Feb 2023 at 6:01 pm UTC Likes: 2

I tested the reworked Proton support last night. I usually roll up a new Lutris fron git about once a week or so, my last one didn't have this yet. So "0.5.13.beta1.r7.gebddf4b3"

First thing I noticed from my last checkout was that they cleaned up the "Advanced" settings UI to make it more parsable, by separating groups of settings. I can now scroll faster as I look at them :-)

In Runner Options, sure enough, in the Wine runner drop list showed a long list of proton versions... but it doesn't read compatibilitytools.d which is where my proton builds are kept. I keep one proton-tkg valve experimental bleeding edge, and one proton-tkg generated with latest wine sources (current 8.1). So it listed all those old Proton versions going back 5 years but not mine lol

You can't just symlink them from ~/.local/share/lutris/runners/wine. Lutris doesn't parse that anymore.

HOWEVER, symlinks in steam/steamapps/common pointing to my proton builds in compatibilitytools.d works and then my protons show up in the drop list. Steam seems to just ignore these symlinks, so that's good.

In my proton-tkg valve bleeding edge builds, the valve mediaconverter actually works correctly for Unreal Engine mediafoundation dll bollocks on my system. Nowhere else does that thing work for me. That's why I'm adamant to use mine.

I got this to work for a game that's very, very finicky on these mediafoundation dlls. "Martha Is Dead" which I previously had to run through Steam as a non-steam game (it's a standalone GoG game).

So yay, and stuff.

Going to live my dream of Fifth Element flying cars in MiLE HiGH TAXi
6 Feb 2023 at 4:12 am UTC

I'll be watching for that one, it sounds like something I'd like. I'm not sure if I'm in to racing (beat the clock type stuff), I don't need that stress, but even if I don't finish something like that, there is still just flying around and goofing off.

I enjoyed some aspects of Cloudpunk, I actually finished it. Despite the choice of graphics (let's just not lol), it had pleasing lighting, colours and motion. It also developed into a bit of a story that I wanted to see solved. I petered out during the DLC though, it got a bit too silly.

Let's hope for a good Linux port.

Proton 7.0-6 out now fixing EA App, Ubisoft Connect and games on Steam Deck / Linux
4 Feb 2023 at 7:25 pm UTC

It feels kind of anticlimactic now when Valve releases a new Proton. We've all had to use Experimental, Experimental Bleeding, Hotfix or third party compatibility tools like TKG and GE's, but yay... Proton 7.0-6 :-)

Ubisoft just broke their games on Linux desktop and Steam Deck
3 Feb 2023 at 4:29 pm UTC Likes: 4

Quoting: legluondunetSomeone can explain technically what cause this error after Ubisoft Connect update?
I saw different causes on internet, all very differents (change MTU, font problem...).
I just tested again, I can reproduce the bug with Proton GE 7.48 on Lutris.
But if I set to Lutris Wine 7.2-2 (Lutris default wine version) it works.
I looked into it a little. Basically, the problem is with Angle. A lot of these game clients are really dumb assed Chrome browsers at the back end. What these browsers (Firefox similarly) do is use OpenGL ES but translate them to DirectX calls on the Windows platform. Angle is the layer that does this.

It doesn't really translate that well, so what Valve does is use some directives inherent in the Chrome back end.

Really, this Ubisoft update broke a previous workaround for their horseshit.

Since Valve customizes Wine, they can add specific overrides to the Wine "kernel" such that when "UplayWebCore.exe" is run, it will be fed parameters to override Angle.

Previously, Valve was passing --use-gl=swiftshader. This stopped working after the Ubisoft update.

So they changed it to --use-angle=gl which I presume makes it use regular desktop opengl and not translate it (passthrough sort of thing)

The reason I think this works with the lutris 7.2-2 runner is because of "D3D Extras" (enabled by default, symlinked into the prefix etc... you know how Lutris works)

Ubisoft just broke their games on Linux desktop and Steam Deck
2 Feb 2023 at 2:12 am UTC Likes: 4

I only just recently got Far Cry 4 working after years of wanting to. I had pretty much given up on Ubisoft games (except for old bollocks free ones, from back when they were one of my favourite game companies)

A while back I bought Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I had been watching my nephew playing it and I was all psyched for it. It just kept asking me for a non existent license key. In a Ubisoft FAQ, they were basically saying it wasn't their problem and that there are no license keys for the Steam purchased copies. The Uplay client was opening, and I could even see other tied games I owned in there, but the new one would just not activate. That kind of put me off, so I didn't even try to solve it. I just sent it back for refund, disappointed.

They are so afraid that someone is going to play their game without paying for it, that they cause all that aggravation and get people to stop buying. Also, as said in this very discussion, the people that pirate it will have a better experience. As usual, the harder you squeeze, the more that will slip through your fingers :-)

It's not just Linux users that have trouble with their DRM mechanisms either, it has caused unnecessary problems for people on Windows too.

AMD GPU driver on Linux and Steam Deck to get big improvement on stuttering problems
31 Jan 2023 at 7:38 pm UTC

vkd3d-proton uses its own shader pipeline cache library mechanism (I think it was introduced in v2.6 I've been seeing messages on console related to it). It caches some DXIL/SPIRV primitives to reduce the work when the pipeline has to be compiled.

-rwxr-xr-x 1 grogan grogan 116238904 Dec 18 02:13 Borderlands3.exe
-rw-r--r-- 1 grogan grogan 1123144 Jan 30 20:21 vkd3d-proton.cache
-rw-r--r-- 1 grogan grogan 4572840 Jan 31 02:43 vkd3d-proton.cache.write

If that is disabled the pipeline library reverts to storing full info (if I'm understanding it correctly)

I think the best thing for DirectX 12 games is to NOT have RADV_PERFTEST=gpl set. This is from personal experience, but also inline with what I've (now) read.

Slavic fantasy-adventure The End of the Sun gets a demo
30 Jan 2023 at 8:32 pm UTC

I almost don't need to look... when I see "Linux native" support I know it's Unity.

It's possible to make some pretty damned good (and decent looking) games with Unity. Rare, but possible :-)

In this case, I hope so, this sounds good and I like that style of game. Going to try the demo tonight.