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Latest Comments by MayeulC
Steam Spring Sale is live, Steam Deck gets a discount and startup movie customization
16 Mar 2023 at 8:33 pm UTC Likes: 4

Still haven't opened mine 🥲
I use it as a big carrot for finishing my PhD manuscript :/

Edit: for more context, I received it about one year ago.

X-Plane 12 now uses the open source Zink driver to help Plugins
1 Mar 2023 at 8:38 am UTC

Quoting: facelessZink allowed me to use opengl on the force engine on an overclocked rpi 400 with the following command:
MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=zink MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.3 MESA_GLSL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=330 ./theforceengine

I think most linux users have no idea that zink is part of mesa now and is an option, but the impact on performance is huge, at least in mesa 20.3.5. I read somewhere that performance is expected to be much better in latter versions of mesa
My, isn't that version three years out of date now? Mesa is also shipped with the flatpak runtimes if you don't want to upgrade your version.

And yeah, terrific perf improvements, thanks to Mike and others, though I thought OpenGL was pretty good on the Pi?

Edit: just realized there was a pasta machine on the zink screenshot from the x-plane blog. Brilliant! Maybe they should rename Zink. Or make a new kind of pasta named Zink :)

Valve tricks Dota 2 cheaters and then bans 40,000 of them
23 Feb 2023 at 1:08 pm UTC Likes: 7

I agree with hash punishment, but... I cheated once in TF2 as a teen more than 10 years ago, and I still am banned.

Bans shouldn't be permanent, I can't imagine a 5-year ban being less deterrent than a permaban. I think a warning (1 month or couple weeks ban) would be better all around, actually, as you don't use the atomic option right away and leave some room for escalation, so that the cheater knows they have to behave, but I understand that cheats are hard to detect... And some cheaters are not like the others: clueless people, serial cheaters, and cheat developers. The last two categories are the more dangerous, and both will just move on to a new account if one gets banned. VAC bans are not instant to make it harder for the last category.

I wonder if some "serial" cheaters do it in order to level up accounts to sell them, or to sell dropped items on a secondary market?

Ubuntu flavours to drop Flatpak by default and stick to Snaps
23 Feb 2023 at 12:58 pm UTC

Quoting: BeamboomBut is it snap or flat that can't update an app while it's running
Flatpak can do that. No idea for snaps.

Building a Retro Linux Gaming Computer - Part 26: Coming to You Live
23 Feb 2023 at 12:57 pm UTC

Still have a few copies of this one... It took me so long to download (7-10 kbps from a source that couldn't resume) that I made many copies :)

My first interaction with Linux, I have fond memories of it!

Shader cache downloads being a nuisance? Valve may have solved it
16 Feb 2023 at 8:40 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: F.UltraAny one knows how this all works with games like Callisto Protocol where Steam downloads shader caches only for the game to then upon launch to rebuild the shaders anyway, sounds like the two systems are fighting each other and that perhaps the steam shader cache should be disabled for games like this, or does it still help in some way that I don't understand?
I haven't played that specific game, but lots of things can happen.

Firstly, having a cache should accelerate your launch times, then, because cached shaders are not recompiled.

Secondly, drivers tend to not compile shaders until they are actually used, which cause stutter, but reduce compilation time a lot (a whole lot of shaders are apparently unused, usually). That one is debatable, but this is where the steam shader cache usually helps. There are ways to force it, so it could be what the game is doing here.

Indeed, if the game recompiles everything, you should just expect a very minor speed improvement on launch (assuming background processing of shaders is disabled, for a "fair" comparison: otherwise, launch speed should increase a lot).

Shader cache downloads being a nuisance? Valve may have solved it
15 Feb 2023 at 9:54 pm UTC Likes: 3

That's a welcome improvement, hopefully not needing to download (and compile) multiple gigabytes of shaders every time.

I also second a per-game option. There are only a few games I care about at any given time, though I leave them on my HDD for faster access. I think my shader cache now uses north of 100GB... I'm not even sure if that's still useful, since Mesa also has a size limit?

I also wonder if old shaders are evicted from servers?

Steam Deck and Desktop Steam Beta improves Steam Input for Nintendo Controllers
24 Jan 2023 at 10:45 pm UTC

Quoting: ArehandoroMy only gripe with the Switch Pro Controller are the reversed X, Y and A, B buttons. Each time -with a new game- they need to be mapped. Alternatively, I wished games adapted the icons based on the controller too.
Isn't that what the "nintendo button layout" checkbox does? You may need to remap stuff if you want the physical button to match the label and the position it's supposed to be in though, depending on the game (and its support for steam input).

Google to release a tool to enable Bluetooth on the Stadia Controller
21 Jan 2023 at 10:11 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: KohlyKohl
Quoting: MayeulC
Quoting: BotonoskiI was very certain they weren't going to do this, so many companies just flippantly make e-waste without so much as a second thought. I am glad they are taking this step, but worried the motives behind doing such a thing are... Lackluster, likely PR motivated rather than an actual intention to reduce waste.
Probably one or a few very dedicated developers spending some of their 20% time [External Link] on this.
Google doesn't have 20% time anymore (Stated in your link).
It's a bit more nuanced than that, from what I read. You got the idea, though :)

As I'm curious (and don't have that many contollers), I'm buying one second-hand to try it for myself :)

Plasma 5.27 Beta live with Flatpak settings, multi-monitor upgrade, SteamOS updater
20 Jan 2023 at 12:26 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Izaic
Quoting: NerdNoiseRadioOne question: didn't I hear that Plasma 5.26 added support for animated wallpapers? That's a feature that I will definitely plan to start using once I know I have access to it! :-)
Yes, but only for Wayland as it was disabled in Xorg due to a memory leak in an underlying library that was used to achieve it. It supports both avif and heif formats for the animated wallpapers, and all you have to do is add them to your wallpapers folder and select them as if they are any other wallpaper.
Hmm, why not allow a wayland client to draw on the background plane? Probably with wlr-layer-shell or something similar.