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
The Linux-powered Atari VCS has gone through some design changes
2 Apr 2019 at 10:06 am UTC Likes: 6

Mmm, this could actually make a decent home server/game console/htpc combo, I guess?

I doubt there will be enough expansion (pcie) or sata ports to make it a highly useful server, though, but I might justify buying one with this argument. On the other hand, I never used any Atari console, so it's not like I have some nostalgia drive. I'll just wait and see.

Edit: why not make the front light RGB, though? It would be better to convey more messages, prettier (the user can customize it), and hopefully able to be turned off (not everyone like a white light in the face, esp. in a dark room in front of a screen, so red or off could be better options here).

Woops - Valve accidentally put up the Valve Index, Base Station and Controllers unfinished store pages
1 Apr 2019 at 8:43 pm UTC Likes: 4

As strange as it might sound, it seems that Valve has leak issues.

Well, at least there wasn't too much content on those pages.

A quick look over ProtonDB reports for Steam Play in March 2019
1 Apr 2019 at 7:41 pm UTC Likes: 1

I'll plead guilty to one of these platinum reports, as I've had a blast with Risk of Rain 2. I played it for 20 hours this week-end, and even though it's still in early access, it's playing great already.

I bit the bullet and bought two windows-only games for once, this one and No Man's Sky. ROR2 worked out of the box for me, and online multiplayer with a friend on windows worked great (we used to play ROR together with local co-op). You'll definitely want to invite some friends over, Liam ! (Although it's still quite fun in singleplayer).

I hope they'll see the Linux numbers, but the game seems to have had a warm reception on Windows as well :)

Valve have put out a new Steam Client Beta, it's small but good for Steam Play users
30 Mar 2019 at 5:27 pm UTC

Looks like the last beta update fixed the remaining issues for me, from ~10min ago.

Valve have now officially teased their own VR headset with Valve Index
30 Mar 2019 at 11:13 am UTC Likes: 2

Arstechnica has an interesting image with enhanced contrast: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/03/valve-index-is-the-game-makers-brand-new-vr-headset-slated-for-may-2019/ [External Link]

A couple dots are barely visible on it, but it hints at it being compatible with the lighthouse tracking system :)
Of course, there's no telling whether it also includes inside-out tracking... But those lenses might be able to provide great AR experiences :)

Valve have put out a new Steam Client Beta, it's small but good for Steam Play users
29 Mar 2019 at 10:11 am UTC Likes: 2

when you bring up the Steam Overlay, there's no cursor. However, if I alt+tab and come back to the game it is now there.
I'm pretty sure I noticed this behaviour in the past as well.

Now, if pressing the guide button on the steam controller would open the big picture overlay when launched in desktop mode, that'd be great (or just show an option to remap controller, I often need this, and have to restart the game in big picture...).

It looks like the steam overlay could use some love... Even the steam controller configuration page seems buggy as hell, not always displaying all the options (I had trouble making activators work, and also some other configs, like outer ring radius, etc.). Oh, and mouse detection for activating action sets seems to be buggy at times. Is it related, or just because I'm using wayland?

Valve announces new networking APIs for developers and Steam Link Anywhere
27 Mar 2019 at 11:04 am UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: edenist
Quoting: ShmerlIt's also a clear example how the lack of IPv6 is causing harm
Sigh, I wish more people understood more about networking and why this statement is so very very true. I keep hearing lots of apathy about IPv4 exhaustion with comments like "why bother, NAT just works and has fixed things. The internet isn't broken".
What I read from this is "I [believe I] understand networking with IPv4 and IPv6 is scary... ooooo so many characters to memorise!".

NAT absolutely IS breaking the fundamental structure of the internet, and is contributing to consolidation of power in more ways than one. Vote with your wallets, either select ISPs and providers which support native IPv6, or get in touch with your ISPs and tell them it's a feature you want! We're over a decade past the point where we should still be worrying about NAT-traversal issues.

It's something the gaming industry is really falling behind in. The only popular[ish] game I know of which supports IPv6 is Elite Dangerous, and even then it was added to help out some people in Germany who have ISPs giving their customers NAT IPv4 over their IPv6 network [seriously WTF]. I've got native dual-stack on my network from my ISP, I'd love to be able to use it for games. I think it's something one of the console companies could help. It's disapointing that PS4 doesn't have IPv6 enabled when it's built on a network stack which supports it, and instead I have to add port forwards and UPnP whitelist entries to let it punch a hole into my network. [Oh yeah, so IPv4 NAT supporters, how many of you just leave UPnP set to open for any 'ol device or service to help themselves to?]

Sorry, triggered, haha..... So, ummm, yeah... we need more IPv6 already!
No, you're right, that's what I do as well. Unfortunately commercials often have no idea. I ask nevertheless, so they usually go around asking questions, which somewhat gives feedback to the ISP that there is demand for ipv6, and makes commercials more aware of it.

However, a couple points: you'd still need to open ports in your firewall with ipv6 if you have one, as firewalls act as symmetrical NATs. Most people do have firewalls (since most use windows, anyway). I believe ipv6 firewalls can be punched trough upnp?

Now, NAT64 is a nice technology for transitioning to an ipv6-only world, and I've been considering to implement this at home for some time. Basically, you take a chunk of the ipv6 address space to represent the ipv4 address space, and use your own DNS server to answer correctly-mapped addresses when a website is ipv4-only. You effectively get a ipv6-only network, with carrier-grade NAT happening at some point (and forwards the addresses to the right destinations). I see it as a Good Thing (tm), though it might break a few services (the ones that hardcode ipv4 IPs). This breakage would have happened in an ipv6-only world anyway, and forces service providers to adopt good practices.

This message was sent from my ipv4-only network at work *sigh* Unfortunately, workplaces are even slower to make the switch.

Quoting: Klaus
Quoting: F.Ultra
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: F.UltraI assume here that it's part of the 30% cut so if they would open this to any one then a dev who only publishes on GOG or the Epic store would utilize these nodes for free. Not that this would be a bad thing but I understand if Valve is not interested in it.
I'd rather guess, if they open it to everyone, developers will pay them some fee for it, to be able to use however they want. Like it's with any cloud service like OpenShift, GCP, AWS and what not.
Of course, but now Valve have decided many moons ago that they cover all such things with their 30% cut. Then again, any one could in theory create a version of these Steam Networking API:s that added the NAT traversal bits and charge a small fee for it. I don't honestly think that it would be a viable business model, but it's feasible.
Main issue is probably, that Valve have no reason to provide such a service. Their source of income is their store, so they build services, that make using the store attractive to developers. Why would they invest into a service, that effectively strengthens competitors?

Such a service would need to come from a third party. But then the developers would have to pay for it -- and keep paying for it indefinitely. In the end it would be GameSpy all over again. The Steam-tied solution has the advantage, that the services are likely to remain available just as long, as access to (downloading) the game remains available, as Valve either (a) has no relevant costs, because barely anybody is playing anymore or (b) they still get revenue from occasional sales, by keeping the online services up.

Idealism aside, given limited developer resources, I can't imagine a better outcome.
Diversification is key to securing income, growth, and cometitiveness. Amazon does that with everything they do (see AWS, for instance): open a service designed for internal use to the competition. If it dies out, then it's a clear sign it's inferior to the public offering, so you might as well use that. Improve it until it's better, or let it die :)

That's not a conventional approach, but an interesting one for sure, and it could work.

Valve just released a big Steam Play update with Proton now based on Wine 4.2 & more
27 Mar 2019 at 10:45 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: TuxeeSomewhat OT:

I did play Doom 2016 for several hours but with one of the recent Proton Updates it stopped working. "Stopped" means it says "Preparing to launch" and within a second it's back to syncing. A steam steam://rungameid/379720 doesn't produce any error messages, neither does changing the Proton version result in a more successful outcome.
Be aware that this will never produce any output if steam is already running, you need to launch Steam from this terminal :)

You can now filter out specific article tags from the GamingOnLinux homepage
27 Mar 2019 at 10:42 am UTC Likes: 1

Nice feature!
For discoverability and practicality's sake, it would be nice to be able to add a tag to the ignore filter after clicking on it (an option on the top of the /category/<tag> page, maybe along with a link to the custom RSS when it's implemented) :)

No Man's Sky runs very nicely on Linux with Steam Play, huge online feature update and VR support coming
26 Mar 2019 at 3:59 pm UTC

Quoting: jardon
Quoting: LinasI understand the importance of Steam Play and Proton, but is this really Linux gaming newsworthy? I personally don't think so, but I'd like to hear other options.
I think many people will be interested in playing this after the new update on Linux. So I'm inclined to believe that it is worth reporting on.

Personally I wanna pick this up but I dont think a game thats so old and has had such a poor launch is worth $30. I'd be more ok with 10-20 honestly. I know theyve put tons of work in it since but thats cause they had to to try to keep it from being a total flop. All this work since should have been in launch.
I'm a bit torn on this one as well; it's quite pricey. Even more so if you consider that it reached €22 some time ago, and it is now €28: https://steamdb.info/app/275850/ [External Link]

That said, I might just bit the bullet this time. I had been waiting for a price drop, but it doesn't seem to come, and the game is probably worth it anyway.