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Latest Comments by soulsource
Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters (open source Star Control 2) now available on Steam
20 Feb 2024 at 2:21 pm UTC Likes: 8

If one doesn't care about Steam additional features (like Steam Input, Remote Play Together), it's probably more convenient to just get it via the distribution's package manager. I only checked Debian and Gentoo, but they both have it in their official repositories, the package name is "uqm".

Humble Bundle IGN Fan Fest 24 has some good stuff like Loop Hero and Tinykin
20 Feb 2024 at 1:45 pm UTC Likes: 1

I don't have time.
I really don't have time.

Also, I already spent more money on games this month than I should have.

Buuuuut:
Wobbledogs is a 3D pet simulation where you raise your own personal hive of rapidly mutating dogs, physically simulated all the way down to their guts!

Palworld is getting external anti-cheat but it will be mostly optional
19 Feb 2024 at 3:43 pm UTC Likes: 1

There are so many amazing games out there to play; you don't need to feel guilty about hopping from game to game.
From a (non-Ubisoft, non-EA) game developer's perspective that's actually pretty beneficial. If people play a lot of different games, they pay for a lot of different games after all.

Cultist Simulator gets much improved Steam Deck support
15 Feb 2024 at 9:13 am UTC

It's really cool if old games still see support.

I hope this also fixes the keyboard scrolling issue, which is really annoying on the Deck. That issue has already been fixed in Book of Hours, so backporting the fix to CS would imho make sense.

Dwarf Fortress Adventure Mode to be more approachable for new players
30 Jan 2024 at 1:37 pm UTC Likes: 3

If I could have one wish for Dwarf Fortress, it would be the current version of the game, feature-wise, but with the controls and UI from before the Steam release. I'm not talking about the ASCII art, I know that's an option in the game, but about the keybindings and especially the building menu functionality.

I know that this would be no easy task, with all the changes to the game other than controls, but I found the old ones more powerful. Especially when it comes to building, where the new controls are just overly convoluted (or even buggy). Building stairs is a chore now, because you can't place individual stair pieces. So you have to designate more than you need, and then cancel designations again... Or, worse, some combinations that were easy to do in 0.47 just can't be done due to broken input, like building up-stairs from already dug-out areas into not-dug-out areas.

Palworld is Steam Deck Playable and runs on Desktop Linux with Proton
20 Jan 2024 at 4:31 pm UTC Likes: 2

Whoa, I'm honestly impressed by the discussion my snarky (and not at all serious) comment started.
I've learned something here. Thanks!

Palworld is Steam Deck Playable and runs on Desktop Linux with Proton
19 Jan 2024 at 4:43 pm UTC Likes: 2

I'm a bit torn on this one. On the one hand it looks really interesting. On the other hand it's €20 that will be spent on nothing once it gets pulled from Steam because of (rightful) copyright claims by The Pokémon Company...

Vulkan API update brings Video Extensions for Accelerated H.264 and H.265 Encode
20 Dec 2023 at 3:33 pm UTC Likes: 1

Oh, and I just realized I answered my own question. If you don't use those API calls, you don't make the codecs available to the end user, and should therefore be fine (I guess, ianal).

Vulkan API update brings Video Extensions for Accelerated H.264 and H.265 Encode
20 Dec 2023 at 3:32 pm UTC

Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: soulsourceI just saw this toot [External Link], and now I'm wondering if one really needs to worry about licensing if one uses those APIs...
Or, worse, if one needs to worry about MPEG licenses if one uses unrelated parts of Vulkan...
Kind of an overly alarmist take. The API being able to do it, doesn't mean you have to use it. You're not subject to patents you don't use - if they even cover this.
exactly and one cannot patent a function call. In any case nVIDIA, Intel and AMD have all licensed the MPEG patents to be able to implement the hardware decoder (since the patent covers the algorithm) so this is all covered.
Iirc the hardware and drivers don't need a license, only the software that makes the codecs available to end users. At some point Fedora even removed some Mesa features related to those video codecs because of that: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/thread/PYUYUCM3RGTTN4Q3QZIB4VUQFI77GE5X/ [External Link]