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Latest Comments by Kithop
Counter-Strike 2 is out now with Linux support
27 Sep 2023 at 10:03 pm UTC Likes: 5

...really, the sound issue is because it's trying to hit ALSA natively? PulseAudio is... *checks notes*... 19 years old at this point. (GitHub issue link [External Link] )

Though at least later on it sounds like it's from people using the Flatpak version instead of native - and yeah, that's the first thing I'd say for almost anyone: don't use Flatpaks for this. Use your distro's native Steam package as your first choice, and then move down the line to like, getting it direct from Valve or whatnot if they don't have one. Running Steam in Flatpak or Snap just sounds like a Bad Time. But hey, at least there's validation that the sandbox is, uh, sandboxing things!

...like your own app from a decent audio API... ;p

Here's how Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 runs on Steam Deck and desktop Linux
25 Sep 2023 at 2:51 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: habernirhow do i install this FPS toolbar at the top?

thanks nir
On Steam Deck this is built in as the performance overlay ('...' button on the right), upstream it's just MangoHud [External Link]

Microsoft's buyout of Activision gets closer with the UK CMA consulting further
22 Sep 2023 at 3:00 pm UTC

Honestly, as weird as this is to say it - I honestly won't mind if this ends up going through. I know it's kind of blasphemy to root for Microsoft, of all companies, but the Xbox division at least has *sort of* shifted. First party games still ending up on Steam and in most cases running fine on Proton (even Starfield!), semi-official guides on getting xCloud Streaming working on Steam Deck, the work they put into WSL2... their accessibility efforts like that special pad w/ 3.5mm jacks for all the buttons...

Sure, you can argue it's for lock-in purposes, and there'll always be that to some degree, but heck - have we forgotten about the abuse & toxic work environment at Blizzard from a few years back? At least MS could rein them in and try to fix it.

It's not the ideal outcome, sure, but I can't bring myself to hate it either, I guess. I fully understand I'm in the minority on that one.

VKD3D-Proton v2.10 brings various game fixes, DirectStorage additions and lots more
11 Sep 2023 at 7:18 pm UTC

A bit unclear here - do we know if these are also (at least as they pertain to games like Starfield) in
GE-Proton8-14 [External Link]? It says they updated to the latest VKD3D-git and of course GitHub just says 'last week' without an actual timestamp (really?).

Presumably the features have been in Git for a while before they tagged this release, and the performance seems... okay, so I'm going to assume 'yes', but I'm wondering if this might be a good reason to flip back to Proton Experimental for Starfield.

Here's how Starfield runs on Steam Deck and desktop Linux
6 Sep 2023 at 7:15 pm UTC

Quoting: grigiOk, feedback on running it on Mesa git.
Yes, it's definitely more performant.

BUT

I'm having glitches all over the place, so I'm downgrading to mesa 23.2rc2 again.
Yeah, I ran into this with `mesa-tkg-git` on Arch Artix, ended up building Mesa 23.2-rc3 myself just now. 23.1.6 is I think missing that important Vulkan extension (sub-20fps), while 23.3.0/-git has all sorts of flickering artifacts and eventually a hard lockup.

So far a good 45-70fps at 1080p Low on my laptop in New Atlantis, so totally playable. Just got to play a bit more to validate the stability. ;p

No Man's Sky - Echoes Update is out adding a secret society of robotic aliens
24 Aug 2023 at 11:02 pm UTC Likes: 3

I want to love this game so much more, and it's not the fault of the developers by any stretch. I've played a *lot* of Elite: Dangerous and the space flight and combat in this feels *super* 'Arcade-y' by comparison. I get it, it's a console thing and that's ostensibly not really been the point of this game.

But I *love* me some infrastructure building simulators like Factorio and Satisfactory, or games that at least have it as a big component like Raft and Subnautica (and Astroneer and 7 Days to Die and..). No Man's Sky also really scratches *that* itch for me in a lot of ways, but weirdly not as great of a co-op experience I'd have liked.

I feel like my ideal game would involve something with robust base building, 'proper' Elite / Wing Commander-style flight controls and mechanics (and yes, that's even already Arcade-ified a bit, I know), and a great co-op loop where you can have a team of people working together on a series of ever-bigger projects.

No Man's Sky feels to me like it scratches the surface of so many itches (hooray: we can build underwater bases and have little submarines to go exploring in! We can acquire a big trading fleet of ships that your friends can visit!), while rarely ever getting deep enough to really satisfy me fully (boo: underwater bases seem kind of pointless when the 'ocean' feels like it's barely ankle-deep. That big fleet of trading ships really boils down to a menu screen you interact with to send them off to farm resources.)

I can see what they're going for and I love it - I want more of it - but it forever feels like I'm just kind of sampling something that could be so much bigger. And I don't even know if that kind of game is feasible.

7 Days to Die gets another huge overhaul in Alpha 21
27 Jul 2023 at 4:29 pm UTC

Yeah - other people are reporting you need to use the native version for EAC support now: https://www.protondb.com/app/251570#ef6II47171 [External Link]

For what it's worth, at least on AMD, we're both easily pushing 60-120 fps at 1080p on her Radeon 7600 and 1440p on my 6800M using Vulkan on Medium-ish settings.

Turning down/off Shadows helps *immensely* as those burn CPU time; again, would recommend running with MangoHud and eyeing your GPU load vs CPU load, RAM and VRAM usage, etc. and using that to inform you where to tweak settings until you break through whatever bottleneck(s) you have.

The game *is* a big open world dynamic voxel thing, remember, so it'll never reach the same kind of performance as something with statically baked maps, so temper expectations accordingly. Dips to the mid-20s FPS on blood moons in multiplayer are normal regardless of how beefy of a rig you're on - even on Windows. The MP server's CPU & network make a big impact there too.

7 Days to Die gets another huge overhaul in Alpha 21
27 Jul 2023 at 4:18 pm UTC

Quoting: CraigHSo, question here: Are any of you playing multiplayer?

Since a21 came out I cannot use proton at all (for this game) or I'll get kicked for an EAC violation for a file that seems to get updated periodically in the proton path. I can do opengl, it's a bit crap framerate on a 1080 + 3700x / 32GB. Last couple times I tried Vulkan directly, crashes were pretty random from 5-30 min never more -in multiplayer. Solo was better, but hardly crashproof

I should say it was fine under a20, with proton.
It has a native build, and I vaguely remember reading somewhere that EAC is supported only in that native build; honestly I'd just try running that without Proton and see if that works for you.

Side note - I host my own private multiplayer server for my friends and I have EAC just disabled on it entirely. Works (mostly) fine, aside from the odd Mono threading related Unity crashes for some clients, but again - my wife and I run the Linux native builds with Vulkan and have AMD GPUs, so I'm not sure if there might be an nVidia-related regression or not.

7 Days to Die gets another huge overhaul in Alpha 21
21 Jul 2023 at 8:19 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: foobrew
Quoting: g000hStrange that you're getting those results. Your PC isn't too different to mine, and I'm getting over 100 fps.
Wow, that's quite a difference. I'm also running a Ryzen 5 (2600) and only 16GB RAM but I have plenty available when the game starts (~10GB). Also running at 2560x1440. I'm just trying to run the standard Navazgane map also so nothing special there. No mods either.

I think I might try forcing it to use Proton instead of the native client just to see if it makes any difference. Not sure what else to try.
Having recently done some upgrades to my wife's desktop (RX 580 -> Radeon 7600), a couple ideas to try:

* First, run the game with something like MangoHud with all the options on, and keep an eye on what's being loaded. Is your CPU constantly maxing out a thread, or is your GPU running at 100% load?
* Double check how much VRAM your card has vs how much MangoHud reports it using. If it's within ~1GB of max, try knocking your texture quality setting down one tick (if this makes a huge difference, your GPU was 'swapping' with much slower system RAM)
* If your CPU seems to be the limiting factor, the biggest performance impact I've found here is with the Shadow detail. I actually turned them completely off on my wife's desktop and it made a *massive* performance difference, as those are super CPU intensive.
* Of course, triple check your kernel & drivers are as up to date as possible, maybe check some other games or benchmarks to make sure something else there hasn't regressed recently.

Best of luck!

7 Days to Die gets another huge overhaul in Alpha 21
4 Jul 2023 at 7:22 pm UTC Likes: 1

For what it's worth, Vulkan has been working fine for a while on newer AMD GPUs - I've been running it on my laptop with a Radeon 6800M dGPU just fine. Performance is always a little shaky, of course, but that's the same for my friends playing on Windows too.

It's not too hard to set up a dedicated server, either, thankfully, also on Linux of course.