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Latest Comments by emphy
The Force Engine for classic Star Wars: Dark Forces now on Flathub
23 February 2024 at 2:27 am UTC Likes: 1

QuoteNo more needing to manually compile it from source like we're back in the dark ages,

On the other hand: it is an excellent entry-point to get started on home-compiling.

Completely unrelated: I recommend reading "The feeling of power", a short story by Asimov.

Heroic Games Launcher v2.13 brings GOG support improvements
13 February 2024 at 9:18 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual
Quoting: Nocifer
QuoteWe also started a partnership with GOG and now every game you buy from the GOG store inside Heroic will give us a commission, so it is another way of supporting the project. :)

It's not just about being able to log into GOG and buy games via the embedded browser, it's about GOG forming a partnership with Heroic and giving them money for every game we buy through the client.
I'm curious as to whether this is a normal affiliate link like GOL has, or something more.

Edit: Ah, based on the comments above about the tracking domains (adtraction), it's a normal affiliate link.

I seem to recall seeing on heroic's mastodon that it is indeed a conventional affiliate link.

To be honest, I dislike the integration of a store page in any launcher quite a bit, and the affiliate link does set it up for potential conflicts of interest that may not have been fully considered.

They have got to keep the website up, I guess. I'll just make sure to include them in my open source donation rounds (gamingonlinux already gets my gog affiliate link) and cut the shopping link from the application (hurray for open source ^_^).

Bazzite Linux adds support for the Lenovo Legion Go handheld
13 February 2024 at 3:24 am UTC

QuoteBazzite also recently gained a rather fancy looking website dedicated to it.

I'd say it is over-fancy.

My laptop's fan speed has been tweaked to remain inaudible on the youtube website. Bazzite's manages to get it to spin up to audible levels, with javascript blocked!

I hope do they a better job on respecting power usage with their os.

MONSTER HUNTER RISE adds new DRM that breaks it on Steam Deck (UPDATED)
22 January 2024 at 12:33 pm UTC Likes: 3

This also highlights my biggest problem with the current classification of deck/proton compatibility: support from the dev remains unofficial (if present at all) in most cases.

Meaning that publishers get to claim plausible deniability, valve gets to blame the publisher for breaking compatibility, and linux based players lose access to the game on their os of choice with no clear line of responsibility to get support for the game they likely would not have obtained had it not gotten classified.

Cross-distribution support improvements coming for Canonical's Snap packages
11 January 2024 at 2:20 am UTC Likes: 1

[quote=Purple Library Guy]
Quoting: damarrin...
What I wonder about Flatpaks, and Snaps outside of Ubuntu, is where are you on maintenance? A Flatpak might be totally up to date the day I install it from Flathub, but my other software updates semi-automatically along with the OS. If I have to remember to update the Flatpak stuff manually, well, either it's gonna get long in the tooth after a while or I'm gonna rip out the Flatpak because it's too much hassle and go back to native packaging.

Can't speak for other distros, but linux mint's software updater includes updates from flathub.

AMD announces Radeon RX 7600 XT, Ryzen 8000G series and new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs
9 January 2024 at 1:52 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Soulprayer
Quoting: Tuxee
Quoting: SoulprayerHm, was pondering some days ago to buy new CPU, but the 7000 series is getting so hot, I'm always thinking about that gif where this dogs is sitting in fire and says "Its' fine"... I'd say that as well, when my PC is nearly at boiling point of water.
What do you mean? My 7900 with a 65W TDP hardly ever surpasses 60° with a one minute all-core stress test. Perhaps you should add a cpu cooler?
Well, the news is over a year old, maybe the latest models don't have this problem
https://www.hardwaretimes.com/amd-ryzen-7000-cpus-are-built-to-run-at-95c-24x7-without-affecting-lifespan-or-reliability/

One can either run'em fast&hot, which would be how the x versions arrive, or not-quite-so-fast and lots cooler, which is the out-of-the-box experience with the non-x versions.

Note that, despite how they are pre-tweaked, the x version can run just as cool with eco mode, and the non-x version just as fast&hot as the x edition via pbo.

GOG has a Classic Winter Sale live to build up your retro library
7 January 2024 at 2:40 am UTC Likes: 2

Since Dungeon Keeper is this month's dosgameclub game, here's a gentle reminder that keeperfx works great with gog's dungeon keeper via wine/proton. Unfortunately, no native support (yet), so installation is still somewhat convoluted.

My preferred method of installing would be to use the innoextract utility to extract the data files to a temporary directory, run the keeperfx launcher a first time to get those files converted and moved to keeperfx's directory, copy over the .ogg files (in the temporary folder) to keeperfx's music directory.

Alternatively, one can install in heroic, run the keeperfx launcher once (via dk's settings in heroic) to get them data files, copy the .ogg music files, and change the default .exe for dk in heroic to keeperfx's executable.

Either way: note that some settings, like language and resolution, are only accessible through the launcher executable.

God-sim city-builder The Universim releases 1.0 on January 22, 2024
19 December 2023 at 7:20 am UTC

Gog seems to not have the native version according to universim's gog page.

Claim a free copy of Lost Ruins during the GOG Winter Sale
19 December 2023 at 3:22 am UTC Likes: 5

As always with gog giveaways, be aware that it not only subscribes you to the ads-letter but also enables advertisements (hence data sharing) through third parties such as facebook and google ads.

These can be disabled again in the subscriptions settings.

Heroic Games Launcher 2.11 released with custom library categories
3 December 2023 at 5:12 am UTC

Apart from the brute force method of disconnecting the pc from the internet, is there any option to disable library refresh on startup or offline mode?

I prefer my software to not unnecessarily connect to a store's servers. Furthermore, the refresh is a fairly annoying half a minute wait (around 270 games in gog library), since it is not being refreshed in the background.