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Latest Comments by slaapliedje
Saber Interactive splits off from Embracer Group taking various studios with them
16 March 2024 at 3:59 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: ElamanOpiskelijaI just wanted to play games... why are you guys forcing me to think?
What's forcing me to think is the blatant conflict between your avatar image and the distro icon next to your name.

(Just kidding. I'm pretty sure liking more than one distro is allowed.)
Ha, I use multiple distributions, generally I base it on 'what purpose do I want this computer for or which one supports the hardware best.' Ultimately that answer usually is 'Debian'. Occasionally, it's 'I want a specific thing that is maintained as a package in the distribution' so will choose Arch over Debian if it has it, or it's a more current version for a while.

Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection launched on Steam (and other classics)
11 March 2024 at 12:07 am UTC

Quoting: boltronicsI purchased all of the games, and just finished performing limited testing via Proton. They all seem to work perfectly out of the box, with just these exceptions:

* Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun and Firestorm - some in-game options menus are rendered black or missing
* Command & Conquer Renegade - the mouse cursor doesn't move, although the menus can mostly be navigated with the keyboard
* Commnad & Conquer Red Alert 2 - the screen goes entirely black after the intro video finishes playing

It's quite impressive how far Proton has came. According to one reporter on protondb, https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/cnc-ddraw can be used to fix Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2. I've tried it and it does indeed make the game playable... but it's not a great experience. It includes a "cnc-ddraw config.exe" utility and a custom ddraw.dll file that you can use by setting the game launch options in Steam to this:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="ddraw.dll=n,b" %command%

With these changes, the missing menus will now appear, but they'll be rendered at the top-left hand side of the screen in their native 800x600 resolution (which is quite tiny on my 4k panel). No amount of tinkering I've done so far has been able to solve this.

Furthermore, the actual gameplay is stretched to fullscreen (when it's clearly meant for a 4:3 monitor) and I was unable to find a work-around. The game speed also had to be turned down somewhat or it was completely unplayable. I'm on a 7950X3D, it's possible that YMMV.

Tested on Arch with a RX 7900 XTX with the free software driver stack, and graphics details maxed out for all games (and a resolution of 1600x1200 for games meant for 4:3).

We got a remaster for the original C&C, so hopefully we can get one for Tiberian Sun and Firestorm next.

Edit: To clarify, all the non-C&C EA classics seem to work fine as well without any tinkering — aside from telling some games to use Proton 9.0 (Beta) although I can't remember if that was ever necessary. Populous: The Beginning looks like it doesn't remember the selected resolution when set from the main menu, but it looks like actual gameplay does use higher resolutions so I think that it's just a quirk of the game and is actually running as intended.
I had to use Proton Experimental for Dungeon Keeper 2 to not run at like 4 frames per second.

Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection launched on Steam (and other classics)
11 March 2024 at 12:06 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou know, back when these were a thing the first time around, I wasn't playing computer games. Never thought I'd get the chance to play them. Kind of pleased to be able to snag them now.
I have to say, Dungeon Keeper 1&2 is one of those that there just hasn't been any proper replacements for. War of the Overworld is probably the closest, but they just didn't have the talent behind it like Bullfrog did.

Ha, weirdly, DK2 has a 3dfx trademark on it, but I can't figure out how to get it to run on my real PC (with Win98 and a Voodoo 3 1000).

Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection launched on Steam (and other classics)
8 March 2024 at 10:56 pm UTC

Well, I only needed 5.18 to buy the ones I didn't already have... but now I need to figure out how to buy them for my brother...

EmuDeck removes Yuzu And Citra emulator support
7 March 2024 at 4:41 pm UTC Likes: 3

My general stance these days... if a company does things that are anti-consumer, then the consumers should be anti-company against them. I bought a macbook and an ipad for some specific reasons, but oh boy is Apple anti-consumer, and I'll not be purchasing anything else from them. To be fair to that, I mostly bought the macbook to run Linux, and the iPad to hack emulators onto...

EmuDeck removes Yuzu And Citra emulator support
6 March 2024 at 12:58 am UTC

Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: EhvisThe interesting thing will be what they do next. The code to both has been preserved and deleting all mirrors is something even Nintendo money can accomplish. So it's only a matter of time until builds will pop up somewhere (possibly under a different name). Will Emudeck pull those in?
I think the EmuDeck developers would be pretty stupid if they did pull in some fork, they would be opening themselves up to lawsuits for facilitating what has already been basically declared illegal.
Didn't they settle out of court? All that generally means is that Yuzu admitted guilt to something and decided just to pay instead of go to court.

So it hasn't exactly been declared illegal, just 'don't go up against the big, bad Nintendo unless you've got the cash to put up a fight.' Emulation itself is not inherently illegal anyhow, it mostly falls under the 'reverse engineering' laws. But I think Yuzu and Citra were basically describing how to get keys and crack encryption, no? That's the illegal bits.

Note: I don't have any skin in this fight. I bought a switch, thinking it was a neat device, but it collects dust. I didn't even bother buying the new Zelda game. The first one, I thought was 'meh'.

Steam had a bit of a scam problem with fakes of Helldivers 2 and Palworld
1 March 2024 at 5:21 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: akselmoI had someone post a game I made (it's free on itch.io) to steam. This happens probably way more often for us small name hobbyists and indies, so make sure to double check especially if you see a small game that it's uploaded by right person.
This is what I was trying to bring up about the Urquan Masters being made available on Steam. I'm sure it's happened in the past, and will happen in the future, that people just take other people's games, or open source engines, etc, and sell them on Steam. It's also kind of the equivalent of people selling the hard drives or SD cards filled with roms and retroarch on ebay...

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition gets performance improvements, HDR-bloom, bug fixes
24 February 2024 at 7:10 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: mattaraxiaIt's been kind of a big ask, paying $5 a month every month for the last two decades for Neverwinter+, but the value we've gotten out of it is pretty insane.

I know a lot of people bemoan subscriptions for everything, but obviously it would be impossible to get this kind of support any other way.
Is that for the MMORPG Neverwinter, vs Neverwinter Nights, which is an entirely different game?

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition gets performance improvements, HDR-bloom, bug fixes
22 February 2024 at 6:24 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: redneckdrow
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: suchThe fact that NWN2 is listed on GOG, but no one bothered to fix it for Steam if it was causing some issues there (as I think I've heard ages ago) is... odd. Especially since it seems that it does function. Surely, it's better for a game to earn something than nothing at all?

...right?
NWN2 was removed from Steam ages ago, so that is likely why. There is a thread requesting it be returned, but there of course is always some dick that has to say 'why bother, it sucked' I still think Obsidian sucked for not making a native Linux version back when it was released.

It was a lot better than NWN1, as far as I'm concerned. The artwork doesn't look phoned in, for one thing. For another, 3.5E fixed almost every gripe I ever had with 3E.
Ha, the closest I have gotten to play either of those were Neverwinter Nights 1 and a little bit of 2. Then I played one session of actual D&D 3e (where my friend's brother in law pissed me off by 'grabbing and picking up' my character... even though he was a dwarf with a 9 dex and I was a halfling with 19 dex...

Then I have played a decently long game of Pathfinder 1st edition, which I've been told is more like a D&D 3.7 or so edition... They fixed the things that 3.5 didn't fix, or something. Still haven't had the patience to keep playing Wrath of the Righteous or Kingmaker, as I'm wanting a game to use PF2e... :P
Ah, D&D! Played lots of 1st edition back in the day, and a bit more during Covid for nostalgia. And played a bit of 5th, which surprised me with how similar it really was. And I had some fun doing that, don't get me wrong. But . . .

GURPS is better.
"Even HeroQuest has a 'roll for defense'! Stupid D&D is so boring for combat!" - Me during one of our HeroQuest sessions.

Edit: Ha, speaking of GURPS, I realized when I was looking at stuff that I've now bought a total of 6 DFRPG box sets... two of which I've given away, and 3 of which are still in the shrink wrap since I haven't had a chance to play it beyond one cool session I ran with some uncool people. Once I'm done with the Abomination Vaults, I plan on going back to DFRPG, and if need be, convert over some of the Pathfinder / D&D modules that I have. Need to build up the characters for the module I'm writing...

Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters (open source Star Control 2) now available on Steam
22 February 2024 at 6:03 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: scaineBTW, I tried this on Debian Sid and it doesn't work - you need to add "non-free" into your source. Just edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list and add "non-free" to the end.
Yes. Debian splits out their packages based on their licensing. Anything that requires commercial data blobs, like omw (open morrowind) and uqm (the subject of this post), will be in non-free. It's that nice place for things that are technically open source, but are useless without non-free data.

It's pretty much the first thing I do when installing Debian on a new system I use for desktop, add non-free and contrib to the sources.list.