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Quoting: dannielloAnd in the near future - Steam Pocket. The first true Linux phone with decent performance! (of course advertised as only for gaming, so Google should be OK with it... In the same sense like Steam Machine is just Linux PC so Sony and Microsoft also should be OK with it;)

Yes, google, there is absolutely no need to worry about steam running on ARM and inviting APKs to Steam, no need at all. ;-)

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Instant wishlist + follow + please give it to me

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My brother got the Lenovo Legion Go 2, and while it is absolutely overpriced, it is a very capable system. I had to increase the VRAM in the BIOS and choose a quieter fan preset because, even when completely idle, that thing is obnoxiously loud.

Did he run all BIOS updates? Mine gets quite loud on the maximum TDP preset (30W) as you'd expect, but all other TDP modes are pretty reasonable when it comes to noise levels. I have mine on Bazzite, for what it's worth.

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Ooh, neat! RimWorld has had the ability for mods to support different versions of the game for quite a while now and it's pretty handy, so it's good to see that capability expand. (It doesn't have the ability to mark a mod as simple enough that it'll likely keep working with any version, so that'll be a nice feature to have.)

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And in the near future - Steam Pocket. The first true Linux phone with decent performance! (of course advertised as only for gaming, so Google should be OK with it... In the same sense like Steam Machine is just Linux PC so Sony and Microsoft also should be OK with it;)

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Although I'm not especially bothered by this month's Humble Choice, I think I'll be getting this - Both Ultrakill and Backpack Hero are in my wishlist.

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I really wish they would have done better with the names here. I am literally their number 1 target audience, and I can never remember which is the "frame" and which is the "machine" the names are so utterly generic and meaningless. I suppose its just because they're all coming out at the same time .. The "deck" you could say is also generic but it was the only thing they were releasing at the time.

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whoa that looks awesome! Looks super retro and modern at the same time. Love the art style. Let's wait and see how the gameplay holds up, but if its decent they could have something really great here.

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I honestly can't wait for the Steam Frame to come out, been wanting to get into VR for a long time but couldn't decide on a headset, and this one feels like my dreams come true.
My inner nerd especially appreciates the amount of work Valve put in to improve Linux on ARM – I already tried out FEX on a device of mine running postmarketOS, and it worked surprisingly well – especially for Jackbox games!

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The market is starting to be saturated with this type of games, but it also looks fun haha.

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Quoting: DrakkerTime to switch to an exponential trend line!

I'd be happy with one that mirrored Firefox usage vs IE

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Succesfull driver development is always impressive.

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Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: SeegrasYeahyeah, it also says you need Microsoft Windows to play this; nobody needs Microsoft Windows to play games anymore in 2026. 😆

Windows is the minimum; Linux with Proton is the upgrade. 😄

minimum: windows
recomended: linux

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[quote=CaptRobau]

Quoting: rustynail

Quoting: JarmerApparently some developers are mostly using ray tracing not to improve the visuals but as a crutch that allows them to not bother implementing lighting at all as they normally should, like iirc the latest Doom game doesn't work without ray tracing at all, although when you set it to low the performance is not as horrible as you may expect from ray tracing (but still pretty horrible)

This is a pretty unfair take IMO. Lighting the old way is one of the most time consuming things in game development right now. Ray tracing or path tracing would make lighting a game much much less time consuming.

The problem is that over the past decades devs have managed to get pretty close to replicating large parts of the look of raytraced lighting in traditional lighting models.

So now that raytraced lighting is here it only looks marginally better than what traditional lighting has offered. The only difference is that it's much less time consuming to implement. Which is not a crutch but a handy tool to keep dev times down while still making things look good.

I mean, you've just repeated the same thing I said but made it sound positive. Of course it's cool that they don't have to spend time on it, and I guess since I could play Doom Dark Ages at almost 60 fps on my low-mid tier rx6600 after all and it's in theory should only get better in the future, it's probably worth it

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Quoting: Shiz nit

Quoting: pageroundI, for one, thank the Devs for eliminating a game from the to-buy list. I think I'll limit myself to 'steamdeck compatible' titles (or equivalent) going forward as I am not confident I could replace that super-computer level of hardware if the PC dies and not break the bank. I can play Witcher 3, BG 3, New Vegas, etc ... Should last me a while.
Thanks Liam, spot on reporting.

The Am4 5800x, a 5 year old chip, i bought 12 months ago in the run up to xmas 2024 for 130 pounds. That chip is right now selling on amazon for 200 pounds.

I dotn think i could affored to replace my hardware either as even the last platform Am4 stuff is rising to crazy levels considering it is now old and dead.

It's a perfect storm. I was considering upgrading to the cheaper, but still good enough AM4 and sit out AM5 altogether, but then AMD stopped manufacturing the 5800x3D to push AM5 adoption... and it worked. My entire plan collapsed when the AM4 costs basically rose to meet a vastly superior AM5 build that would last me longer. I was still planning to buy everything slowly, but then the RAM crisis started, the SSDs began increasing and the time to buy a GPU shifted to Now Or Not For A While.

I'm not getting rid of my 2015 build, that's for sure. You're prying that DDR3 from my cold, dead hands.

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But, a bigger vendor like Lenovo seemed a bit more trustworthy if I ever encountered hardware problems.

I thought the same... yet, I got disappointed by Lenovo.
As you know now, the detachable controllers have spring loaded copper pins. On my left controller, one of them fell out. I was able to plug it in and it worked again, for months no issues. Then it happened again, and I thought, hey I still have like more than half a year warranty, so why not get it fixed by Lenovo.
Nope, they claim I caused this and refused to replace or fix it for free. No matter what I told them, they stance is, this is a user caused error.
I could send it in for min. 35€ to have it checked, than I can decide if I want to get it repaired for at least 40€.
A new controller is about 70€.

Thanks Lenovo 😡

I bought a replacement controller when it was on sale, yet I'm disappointed by this service. I was one of the first to buy one, even from their store directly. Now I'm hesitant to detach the controller...

Yet, with the controllers attached and bazzite on it, it works really well, and I do enjoy using it from time to time.
I'm even thinking about getting an egpu for it. But from my experiences with bazzite on the ROG Ally where I have an egpu with their proprietary connector, I still had to use Windows to enable it and I wasn't able to get VR running on bazzite. That's why I have Cachy OS on the ROG Ally.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: LoudTechieThis is, because the reason behind the whitelist is complicated and thus unsuited for marketing.
At the time of establishment this whitelist contained only CPU's without known side channel attacks.
They really, really wanted to get rid of old side channel attacks for some reason.

After what I gathered from the side channel attack history (which is not too much), I expect every current processor to have some side channel weakness too, though.

I'll be more clear and accurate.
I oversimplified some things.
The moment that whitelist was released.
For all of the processors that weren't on it, there was at that very moment a paper that explained how to extract or change the things even the OS and BIOS don't have access to or it was some obscure processor Win11 was truly incompatible with(non amd64 or ARM), with physical access.
Most of the time these were side channel attacks, because those are conceptional the simplest.

On your expectation. Oh, totally. Many of the processors on the list have been already broken.

Now on why Microsoft might still want to still rid themselves of old attacks.
In the processor secrets: things like somewhat functional DRM, anti-cheat, secure boot and other attempts at limiting software freedom tend to be based on these secrets(Also bitlocker keys, but those were just an excuse).
These things are in basically all their current implementation all backed by security through obscurity. That's also generally vulnerable, but they don't care, since it still slows attacks and is super profitable.
This could be an attempt to placate their government and media backers.

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I'm very curious as to if that will make it into mesa 26 when that releases.

I'm not sure when they're doing the freeze on new things.

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Quoting: LoudTechieThis is, because the reason behind the whitelist is complicated and thus unsuited for marketing.
At the time of establishment this whitelist contained only CPU's without known side channel attacks.
They really, really wanted to get rid of old side channel attacks for some reason.

After what I gathered from the side channel attack history (which is not too much), I expect every current processor to have some side channel weakness too, though.

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Quoting: CajunMosesIt's a very nice trend. But there are too many variables to predict what will happen. It helps that Linux seems to be getting more positive press lately. And lot's of disenfranchised desktops/laptop should have been freed up by the TPM 2.0 debacle; so, hopefully some of that will continue to come back online with Linux. But it won't last forever.

This isn't your fault, but I'm going to complain about a mistake you make that's intentionally very common.
It's not the fault of the TPM2.0 basically every machine, since 2008 has one that can be manually activated.
Microsoft has a processor whitelist for Win11 and that one is at fault for this debacle.
I've done Win11 migrations for many customers and none of them had no TPM2.0.
Most of them had non-whitelisted CPUs.
Microsoft does say it in it's marketing though.

This is, because the reason behind the whitelist is complicated and thus unsuited for marketing.
At the time of establishment this whitelist contained only CPU's without known side channel attacks.
They really, really wanted to get rid of old side channel attacks for some reason.

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Quoting: mattaraxia

Quoting: mr-victoryI feel that the GabeCube *ahem* Steam Machine will be DOA due to anti cheat, I hope to be proven wrong but Windows on ARM laptops being frequently returned item on Amazon doesn't give me confidence, those laptops' game compatibility issues are not that different from ours... the advantage Deck had was being a handheld so who cares if an fps doesn't work.

If the Deck wasn't DOA because of anti-cheat, why would the cube be?

That just makes no sense. Will it be a bit limited? Sure. Will there still be tons of people who don't care about games like Battlefield? Clearly the answer is yes.

It's not expected to sell 50 million units, even 5 is a . . . huge success.

The Gabe cube is a fully fledged pc with low RAM requirements in a RAM crisis.
I think its function will be very different from what we're expecting.

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Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: LoudTechieApple finally started nearly caring for gaming(Game porting toolkit). Also Valve has been sponsoring Apple gaming, since around the same moment they started sponsoring Linux gaming(MoltenVK), modifying open source is just easier.

Good points, I had forgotten about GPTK and MoltenVK. Both lackluster compared to what we get on Linux, but certainly positive steps. Seems like MoltenVK is on the way to being deprecated in favor of KosmicKrisp that is part of Mesa.

Apple isn't used to having to do an effort to achieve market share.
Their current market share was handed to them out of anti-trust concerns and thanks to their vendor lock in they can expand to whatever they like, usually.
Even their development they tend to leave to the bsd community. Valve wins by doing nothing, Apple thrives by doing nothing.

On the lacklusterness. Lets not forget that Mac is a very different platform than the Linux desktop.
It's not a path to freedom, it's a path to chains and protection.
Apple losing the EA lawsuits was also a boost for Apple gaming, since this slashed the prices.
For small companies that mostly make money through initial sales, Apple gaming is still too expensive, but AAA players now can make some pretty sweet money.
These AAA players also much more trust Mac for anti-cheat than Linux.

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[quote=rustynail]

Quoting: JarmerApparently some developers are mostly using ray tracing not to improve the visuals but as a crutch that allows them to not bother implementing lighting at all as they normally should, like iirc the latest Doom game doesn't work without ray tracing at all, although when you set it to low the performance is not as horrible as you may expect from ray tracing (but still pretty horrible)

This is a pretty unfair take IMO. Lighting the old way is one of the most time consuming things in game development right now. Ray tracing or path tracing would make lighting a game much much less time consuming.

The problem is that over the past decades devs have managed to get pretty close to replicating large parts of the look of raytraced lighting in traditional lighting models.

So now that raytraced lighting is here it only looks marginally better than what traditional lighting has offered. The only difference is that it's much less time consuming to implement. Which is not a crutch but a handy tool to keep dev times down while still making things look good.

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Preset L for 4K, Preset M for everything else unless you're on a 20-30 series in which case the performance hit isn't worth it.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1716740/discussions/0/691997670669257880/

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Quoting: ShabbyXI have this idea of making a game about fighting computer viruses

Sounds like XBill to me!

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Quoting: SeegrasYeahyeah, it also says you need Microsoft Windows to play this; nobody needs Microsoft Windows to play games anymore in 2026. 😆

Windows is the minimum; Linux with Proton is the upgrade. 😄

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"There's a reason we don't see many modern arena shooters - because they're just not really popular now. The industry clearly moved onto other genres a long time ago."

That is really the biggest mystery to me.
This particular genre did not have any big successes in... decades, at this point?

All games that tried to enter had rather small launch peaks and then kind of fizzled to low hundreds (if that much).

Online games without any kind of progression that are pure PvP arenas just don't do well anymore.
And those that bungle their own launches and sit at about 60% or so obviously don't stand much of a chance, relaunch or not.

Sure, it sucks for the devs, and maybe the game is even great now, who knows.
But in a market with way too many games, in a genre that hasn't been popular in a long while, you really only get one shot.

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Quoting: LoudTechieApple finally started nearly caring for gaming(Game porting toolkit). Also Valve has been sponsoring Apple gaming, since around the same moment they started sponsoring Linux gaming(MoltenVK), modifying open source is just easier.

Good points, I had forgotten about GPTK and MoltenVK. Both lackluster compared to what we get on Linux, but certainly positive steps. Seems like MoltenVK is on the way to being deprecated in favor of KosmicKrisp that is part of Mesa.

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I got the beta key for speed runner 2 some time ago and tried it, it was a blank copy of the first one tho.
If you say this is from the original author I wonder what happened behind the scenes.
I would love to see if they are able to improve on the first game with this one. I already decided that I wouldn't buy the second one with what they had to offer.

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: fenglengshunWill the full podcast be uploaded to YouTube as well? I only watch/listen to YouTube podcasts.

As noted in the article yes, the full episode should be on YouTube next week.

Thanks! I didn't saw it since I was scanning around for a link to the full YouTube release, haha.

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