Patreon Logo Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal Logo PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by F.Ultra
Amnesia: The Bunker is stressful horror done the right way
9 Jun 2023 at 2:14 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: ArdjeAnd you can't just go and ask the market for Linux developers as they are 10x more expensive.
I just have to ask about this one because that doesn't match my own experience (and we only employ Linux developers), perhaps this is a regional difference, but AFAIK the Windows devs tend to be more expensive since they all usually come with tons and tons of various certifications while the Linux devs are mostly self taught and mostly happy that they are allowed to work for a Linux company instead of slaving away at some Windows shop.

I tried to google around a bit and got very different values but for e.g the US the top Windows devs have an average salary of $166k while it was $150k for the Linux devs. And for the average Windows dev it was $130k vs $123k for the average Linux dev (all of which to me is fantasy numbers but then devs tend to earn a lot more in the US for some reason, or their numbers are before some taxes are drawn like they are here in Europe).

Amnesia: The Bunker is stressful horror done the right way
9 Jun 2023 at 2:04 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Cyril
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: CyrilWith this behavior some have "don't care about native, just want to play games", I'm really surprised some people don't say the same thing about other software (non-gaming) too, or won't be surprised if that happen one day actually. Why making a big difference between software and games? Surely I don't want this...
Games by their very nature are closed source proprietary pieces of bad code that should have no interaction with the rest of the system so that is among the reasons why e.g I see games as being differently. Aka I would never ever use a closed source application on any of my systems, but for games that battle was over before it started.
About the close vs open source apps installed on your system I surely agree, but that was not the subject of what I said.
I was thinking about native apps vs just run all Windows apps through Wine for example.

Plus, no, I don't think games are closed source by nature, it's mostly an economic issue, it could be different.
Well it wasn't the subject as such but for me it kinda is. Let me explain. While you might not agree that games are closed source by their very nature they sure are to 99.9999% when it comes to the ones on Steam, so in order to be able to play games at all I already have to back down from my normal "open source only" mentality that I usually adhere to. And since open vs closed is way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way way more important to me than Windows vs Linux I now no longer really care if the game is Linux native or a Windows binary running under WINE/Proton (aka the bigger battle is lost here).

When it comes to applications though I simply refuse for many reasons (security being one, me also being able to fix/contribute which I do for hundreds of projects is another one) to even run closed source applications on my system, so there even the thought of running a Windows application is (to me) a foreign concept, aka WINE/Proton for Linux applications is not even on my radar.

Amnesia: The Bunker is stressful horror done the right way
8 Jun 2023 at 6:45 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: CyrilWith this behavior some have "don't care about native, just want to play games", I'm really surprised some people don't say the same thing about other software (non-gaming) too, or won't be surprised if that happen one day actually. Why making a big difference between software and games? Surely I don't want this...
Games by their very nature are closed source proprietary pieces of bad code that should have no interaction with the rest of the system so that is among the reasons why e.g I see games as being differently. Aka I would never ever use a closed source application on any of my systems, but for games that battle was over before it started.

Amnesia: The Bunker is stressful horror done the right way
8 Jun 2023 at 6:41 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: F.UltraSo until that changes (aka when we get enough market share) I'll rather take a well working game in Proton over a half-hearted native port that quickly gets abandonware.
I'm not sure if we have any actual statistics about that, so my anecdotes would be as good as anyone's. I would like to note that nearly all my Steam games are native and work fine. And I've only tried a few games with Proton or Wine, and have usually had trouble getting them to work, or just failed. Maybe there's something about my setup that doesn't work well with Proton, I dunno.
Mind you, it's true that my old Loki Alpha Centauri doesn't work, while I did recently get a Windows version that does run on Wine, although I have to do something weird every time.
Mad Max, no longer works, it just segfaults.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm, no longer works on a modern version of glibc but I have managed to manually patch it myself to get it to work.

AR-K: The Great Escape, I never managed to get the native version to work.

Borderlands 2, never got support for the new textures and multiplayer stopped working.

Conarium, the non-missable achievements never worked.

Dying Light for many years had lots of problems refusing to launch and at least for me have a game breaking bug in The Following DLC that makes progress impossible.

Steel Storm: Burning Retribution, no longer launches.

Lots of the Feral ports that had multiplayer never worked with players from other platforms.

Probably lots of more examples for people who have more games, this was what I found with a quick look at my inventory in Steam.

Overkill drops Linux support for PAYDAY 2
8 Jun 2023 at 6:24 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Lofty
Quoting: JowseyAt least it still works well with Proton, so nothing significant lost!
On the flip side we could look at it and say something is gained. Now that the steam deck is here and pretty much people are exclusively using proton to game on modern titles, the motivation to make their next game work on proton may be higher as it is not seen as a 'moving target' like Linux is often portrayed as by developers and it must be easier to test if their build works on proton.
Of course there is the issue with anti-cheat, but again given the success and popularity of the steam deck, hopefully they are now aware of this and make the adjustments necessary.
Quoting: DrMcCoy
but the ultimate reason is pretty much the same as always — Linux and Steam Deck together hold a less than 2% user share on Steam
Sorry, but no, that's wrong. The reason is this:

due to the Linux version being on an older version of the PAYDAY 2 engine
I.e. a terrible development environment, the developers being bad at their job.

That quote right there, that tells me that they kept the Linux codebase in a separate fork. That's bad praxis, that's objectively incompetent.

Forking the codebase to put in support for another platform is fundamentally wrong, and we see, time and time again, that this leads to the codebases growing apart with the developers not being able to keep up keeping them in sync, and then abandoning the other platform. 90% of the time were we had Linux support being wiped away was because of this very reason. Why aren't people learning? You don't do that.

Instead, you need to make portability a feature of your code outright, you need to make the same single codebase run on all the individual platforms. No forks, just one portable repository that can run everywhere. That's not new knowledge either, we've known that for decades!
While that is a terrible way to perform development it unfortunately is quite the norm. The studios do this with basically every single port, be it for the switch or ps5, which ultimately leads to them having several different versions of the same game instead of a single codebase where fixes for one platform means fixes for all. The reason of course is that it is initially much easier to do it this way, aka write your game for PS2 first then when it becomes popular send off the entire codebase to another company to port it to the Gamecube and once Gamecube is no longer a viable platform management can happily terminate that contract and the code is thrown in the can.

Amnesia: The Bunker is stressful horror done the right way
7 Jun 2023 at 8:21 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Liam DaweI don't see how a port existing actually changes anything for Linux as a platform
The way I see it, a benefit of developing natively (note I am not saying port) would be beneficial to finding and addressing pain points in general - with graphics, audio layers, engines and tooling, etc. Shortcomings there are often cited as reasons not to provide said support and squeaky wheels get the grease. A possible guard against Valve changing directions or MS pulling something to put a big damper on things (UWP?).

I'm sorry you find people noticing and commenting on a long time dev stopping support annoying; it's kinda relevant to the game at hand for this community. You are definitely not wrong that most people just want to hit play and have fun. Here and in general, most people don't care about inner workings. Still, plenty do and as far as I see, we're just discussing a topic at hand. It doesn't mean the game is bad, people are wrong for buying it and playing it and liking it.

As I said so many times already, for me my big issue was their radio silence all these months. I still think it looks great, it's still on my wishlist.
While it is disheartening to see a long time supporter like Frictional drop support (to be honest though we don't know 100% yet if they have, and if they have we also don't know the reason yet) I find it hard not to agree with Liam here.

The native Linux ports have always been a second class citizen (and sometimes third) that stops being updated, often falling behind the Windows version in features, often being incompatible in multiplayer with Windows or macOS players and so on and on.

And in the time before proton, wine was so bad that none or few of us saw it as being a potential way forward in the future so our only hope back then was to get these native half-hearted ports. But then Proton came and everything changed, and the need for a native version is slim to non existent anymore.

Yes a game being built from the ground up with cross platform support where every single effort have been made to optimize it for every single platform would be amazing and such a game would fly in Linux like nothing on any other platform but we have to realize that we are not there market size wise where any game developer will go that route.

So until that changes (aka when we get enough market share) I'll rather take a well working game in Proton over a half-hearted native port that quickly gets abandonware.

Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
30 May 2023 at 3:04 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: ssj17vegetaAs a non-american, just asking : can Nintendo be sued for this ? Is there such a thing in US law as a "counter-DMCA" or "abusive use of copyright laws" ?
No, a copyright holder filing a DMCA cannot be punished in any way shape or form unless they filed the DMCA for something that they didn't hold copyright on AND if you can prove that they new that they didn't hold that copyright.

That said there is a counter-thing built into DMCA where the Dolphin devs in this case can tell Valve "we think the DMCA was filed in error so please add our software back", once that have happened the next step for Nintendo is to either drop the case entirely with "oops my bad" or to sue the Dolphin devs in court for copyright infringement. Since the devs know that they have published the encryption key and that this key is protected under the DMCA they most likely do not want to risk being sued so they will not try to file a counter DMCA.

Nintendo blocked Dolphin emulator release on Steam
27 May 2023 at 10:20 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Mountain Man
Quoting: robvvApparently, Valve initiated the conversation [External Link]... :grin:
That certainly puts a different spin on the story.
sounds like a troll to me, Valve cannot legally claim a DMCA if there where no DMCA.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is absolute boomer shooter joy
26 May 2023 at 7:26 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: MaathShould I not be offended by the term "boomer shooter?" "Boomer" has become a derogatory term since the "OK Boomer" meme to signify older people whose opinions, knowledge, and experience we no longer care to hear. I assume it is being used at least partly in that way here, since the games in question hearken back to the mid-90s, which would have been Gen-X era (maybe millennials, though I suspect they were mostly too young). Likely most baby boomers don't even play video games.

Or maybe I'm over thinking it and it just rhymes better than Gen-Xer FPSer.
That and you get the added bonus connotation of "things go boom".
Not to mention that the term is completely wrong as well. Every one who was around at the time knows that the proper term for these types of games are Doom Clones.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 announced for $269 with 8GB VRAM
25 May 2023 at 11:48 am UTC

Quoting: Phlebiac
Even with all the talk about 8GB VRAM simply not being enough now
This just seems obscene to me...

Besides the (always useful) phoronix benchmarks, I also find this helpful in finding good value:
https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_value.html [External Link]

It doesn't have data for the latest models just yet, but you can see that the RX 6650 XT is a great value; I considered one a few months back, but got a good deal on a 3060Ti.
As absurd as it might sound, 8GB is really holding the nVidia cards back: 16GB vs. 8GB VRAM: Radeon RX 6800 vs. GeForce RTX 3070, 2023 Revisit [External Link]