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 MayeulC
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.

Hogwarts Legacy to be Steam Deck Verified at launch
14 Jan 2023 at 9:43 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library Guy
Quoting: MayeulC
Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: KlaasI only like the first four books. The rest is rather ridiculous since she thinks that randomly executing characters and a racist teacher employing physical torture on a child equals mature story.
Huh, I've never read the books. Recently bought the movie pack in 4k... and got about 2.5 movies into it and then paused for a while. Not that they aren't watchable (pretty sure I've seen up to 5 at one point), I just have more things to do that I'd rather spend my time on... Eventually I'll get to all of them.
I really liked the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality [External Link] fanfic. Not sure I can enjoy vanilla HP (such as this) after reading that.
I started reading that. Ehhhhh . . . I wasn't as impressed with it as it was with itself.
To each their own :) Yes, HP can come across as a bit full of himself in that story sometimes, but that's part of the story... which is great, full of surprises without Ex Machina (as in, the reader is given enough understanding of the world to anticipate possible actions, which is generally not the case with vanilla HP). I like that some things are explained, others have clearly defined mechanisms, and the character asks himself the same questions (and more) that I do when coming across something new.

To quote the author:

This fic is widely considered to have really hit its stride starting at around Chapter 5. If you still don't like it after Chapter 10, give up.

Google to release a tool to enable Bluetooth on the Stadia Controller
14 Jan 2023 at 9:24 am UTC Likes: 1

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.

Hogwarts Legacy to be Steam Deck Verified at launch
12 Jan 2023 at 11:06 pm UTC

Quoting: slaapliedje
Quoting: KlaasI only like the first four books. The rest is rather ridiculous since she thinks that randomly executing characters and a racist teacher employing physical torture on a child equals mature story.
Huh, I've never read the books. Recently bought the movie pack in 4k... and got about 2.5 movies into it and then paused for a while. Not that they aren't watchable (pretty sure I've seen up to 5 at one point), I just have more things to do that I'd rather spend my time on... Eventually I'll get to all of them.
I really liked the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality [External Link] fanfic. Not sure I can enjoy vanilla HP (such as this) after reading that.

343 working on Halo: The Master Chief Collection anti-cheat for Steam Deck / Linux
11 Jan 2023 at 9:58 pm UTC

Quoting: m2mg2
Quoting: MayeulC
Quoting: m2mg2What is this hack to get achievements working? There was a time I had it working but it broke long ago.

Quoting: MayeulCStill no splitscreen :P

More seriously, nothing changed. There's still a hack to get achievements and campaign progression without EAC, but no online play with EAC enabled.

There are a few references on https://areweanticheatyet.com/ [External Link], but it has less info than this post. Here's their latest update [External Link].
https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=11818 [External Link]

There is a replacement dll for eac. That also allows the game to load with EAC on, though you'll get kicked from online matches after a few seconds (I tried once, without realizing I still had it). I'd avoid online as I don't want a ban.
Does not appear to work any longer. I get a message about anti cheat hash not found when I start the game and no achievements appear to come through
You still have to start with EAC off, mind you.

I unlocked another achievement just a couple hours ago.

Valve adding a Steam feature for game transfers between PCs and Steam Decks
10 Jan 2023 at 11:46 am UTC Likes: 1

Nice! I wish I had this available while in boarding school 10 years ago (10-40 MBps for 150 people). It will also make distributing content much smoother for LANs (though you could always deploy a local content server). It would be great if that could be applied to updates too.

I used to use pacredir for the same use-case with Arch/Manjaro updates.

Torrents would be very well suited to the task (peers on the same LAN would statistically request different chunks, then exchange those), though the tech can be improved upon.

By the way, they should probably distribute game files as immutable images mounted with an overlayfs, and distributed using something like casync.

In my case, I'm probably going to play around with storing game files on a local NFS server.