Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: GuestThat "simple BIOS upgrade" is going to be not so simple for newcomers to AMD unless the motherboards allow for a BIOS upgrade without CPU.

I think Asrock motherboards do. See also: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-100 [External Link]

AMD offers special processor loan kit for some of such cases when motherboard doesn't have USB update feature.

The Gigabyte ones I've been checking out (Aorus X570 Pro/Ultra/Master/Extreme) also come with that feature as does the ASUS ROG X570 Crosshair VIII.

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And for those not in the loop (like myself), "Zombie Panic! Source" is:

Quoting: the game's Steam pagea cooperative, survival-horror first-person-shooter

Hopefully saved you a click :)

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Not sure how much new information I'll be adding here, but I received my Valve Index 2 days ago, so here's my experience so far.

Day 1
The first day was almost useless. The setup process was painless using SteamVR beta (following the suggestions here), but SteamVR Home would behave weirdly, wouldn't let me launch anything other that Beat Saber and had some stuttering while looking around. Beat Saber itself was absolutely flawless though, so I wasn't too dismayed. SteamVR itself would also often end up in a state where I had to physically reconnect the headset for it to work again. Not the best start.

Day 2
I figured I'd try the stable branch of SteamVR and also disable SteamVR Home since I didn't really see the point when I had to launch from the desktop Steam client anyway. Well, well, well, that was the missing piece! Suddenly I could access a Steam Overlay by pressing the Home button on the controller, actually change settings and launch games from inside VR! So this is how it's supposed to work! Now I could try out AirCar [External Link], The Lab [External Link] (what a lovely robot doggo) and even watch a bit of Predator 3D [External Link] in Whirligig [External Link]!

Day 3
So I'm now at a place where things are mostly working. I'm still figuring out which games require which version of Proton (4.9 seems to be a safer bet than latest version 5) and SteamVR gets into a funky state when a game fails to launch (still haven't figured out to get Fushimi Inari VR [External Link] from itch.io to launch in SteamVR), so it still feels a bit like a public beta, but it generally works well enough :)

I'm also happy to say that performance has been fine (at 90hz) on my almost decade old Intel i7-3930K and two generations old NVIDIA 1080 Ti (ASUS ROG Strix version); there's a bit of reprojection jutter every once in a while, but not enough to make me nauseous or enough to even notice in Beat Saber.

I'd still like the Proton fiddling to be easier and I wish it was easier to see if I need to use the Valve Index controllers or a normal controller in a game without having to go to the store page, but in general things are working better than I thought they would and the fact that Proton can run so much in VR is frankly amazing to me.

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Quoting: CyrilNot a single game DRM-Free even 10 of them are available at least on GOG... :neutral:

I don't know the numbers, but I'd be very surprised if all of them require SteamWorks to run - my guess is that most of them are in fact DRM-free.

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It took me a moment or two to realise that the Child's Play charity they're talking about is this one [External Link], and not some sort of fundraiser for the Chucky series from Don Mancini [External Link]. We are talking about New Blood, Running With Scissors and the resurrected 3D Realms here after all, so it didn't seem that unlikely!

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Quoting: razing32

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: CybolicIt's honestly baffling to me how both the games and the audience seem perfectly fine with fantasy cock/dog fights; am I missing something?

I really hope so, because my faith in human kind is alerady at minimum levels.
I've ethical problems with factorio too which seems a great game from the demo.
DAMN!

I was going to hold off on saying something because i was concerned how the conversation would go but ...
Let me play devil's advocate for a bit.
It's a game.
It's not real.
GTA has you play a gangster that can run over civilians and police officers by the hundreds. Nobody who plays that game wants to do that in real life.
I recently played Underrail where one mission for a proto-fascist faction asked me to gas some rebels. That doesn't mean I'm ok with crimes against humanity.
I don't mean to seem disrispectful but it really does sound the same as the argument that playing D&D puts you in league with the devil.

I get your point but I don't usually enjoy games that portray realistic violence as "fun" either unless the setting or presentation puts it firmly in make-believe territory. As for D&D, I still wouldn't enjoy a campaign where the focus was to enslave and abuse non-humanoid creatures, just like I imagine most people wouldn't (reactions to animals getting hurt in film or animation is a good example) - I'm just surprised that it seems that the thin veneer of "no no, these animals enjoy mauling each other" is enough for most people to not have that same gut reaction.

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Quoting: GuestEven if it is just a game, the idea that you make animals fight each other for your business disturbs me too much.
My child will never play this or any other pokemon related game.

Same here. No matter how cute any game of this type may look, the initial concept is much too disturbing for me. I haven't even seen any of these games try to hide the concept behind something more innocent, like having the creatures pillowfight or who-gives-the-best-compliments battles (which I have seen in other game types).
It's honestly baffling to me how both the games and the audience seem perfectly fine with fantasy cock/dog fights; am I missing something?

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Quoting: PatolaThanks for the responses. To be far, I have Distance and I like it a lot, but only because I use it with a Logitech G29 wheel. I find it to be close to unplayable with mouse+keyboard, DS4 or the Steam Controller (even though I have not trying using the gyroscope). I wonder if I'll feel the same if/when I acquire BallisticNG.

For me, the Steam Controller gyro works great for Distance but is way too slow/imprecise for BallisticNG - it really needs fast and precise input to control, especially on the side breakers. I do recommend that you pick it up though; it feels a lot like WipEout, with the training wheels taken off :P

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Quoting: PatolaFor people who have this game, how does it compare to Distance [External Link] [Linux native] and Redout [External Link] [proton]?

I haven't tried Redout, but compared to Distance, BallisticNG feels much more like using your reflexes to control your momentum and direction where Distance has a more arcade-like feel to the car. A bit like Distance's flying mode in high speed.

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Quoting: einherjar

Quoting: Cybolic

Quoting: Akitake[...]
Pushing for DRM-free games is understandable, but, in my opinion, it's also unreasonable in this day and age when looking to make a living out of a product, especially as an indie-developper team of three.

I don't really see the logic in that. DRM hasn't been proven to curb piracy and often just the challenge of breaking the DRM is enough for something to get pirated. I think "more stores = more sale opportunities" makes a lot more sense, especially when we're talking indie games and itch.

More stores will also mean more work and more bound ressources. And small indies often have a hole lot of work and I fully understand, when the just go to steam, where the most potential customers are. (BTW Steam does not automatically mean DRM)
So if that is a reason for some people to not buy a game only because of that - sorry but I don not understand that.

Sure, but none of those things is what was talked about; we were talking about DRM :)
Regardless, it seems the move to Steam wasn't due to resources either, but due to frameworks (I couldn't find a quote to confirm this though as the game has been removed from itch and their blog doesn't go that far back). From what I hear though, pushing updates to itch is supposedly as easy as doing a git commit, so I don't think the store work load would have had any effect in any case.

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