Latest 30 Comments

Overwatch might be trash but I have to give it up to Blizzard for being one of the few devs on earth to do anti-cheat right (server-side).

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tried wine, wine-staging-tkg, proton experimental, proton-ge, proton-tkg, reinstalled battle.net multiple times on different prefixes even cleared appdata and programdata but still nothing. gave VPN and tethering mobile network a shot as well. the result was always the same:
"Battle.net Update Agent went to sleep. Attempting to wake it up... BLZBNTBNA00000005".

same thing with lutris using different versions of wine runners. even tried starting up the agent before and after launching battle.net to no avail:
WINEFSYNC=1 WINEPREFIX="$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2240255771/pfx/" "$HOME/.steam/steam/compatibilitytools.d/Proton-Tkg-2634/files/bin/wine" "$HOME/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/2240255771/pfx/drive_c/ProgramData/Battle.net/Agent/Agent.exe"

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AMD/Intel RT performance being quite far behind NVIDIA, and probably still behind.

At least when looking at very heavy RT based games like many running UE5, or CP77.
I think the only reason AMD/Intel look ok in these games atm is because NVIDIA has that COLOSSAL 40-50% performance hit in MANY DX12 RT games. (probably still 3mnths until we see fixes be fully integrated)

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I had to get used to the new UI for about 20 minutes, but it's a pretty solid new look. Still running perfectly on Arch for me, but I guess the MP4 export (hardware accelerated) of highlights still won't work.

However, I randomly noticed an extremely nice feature. Since I'm playing this game in HDR with Proton Wayland mode, the Steam overlay (that is still X11) does not work. Meaning, I couldn't take proper screenshots, because all the general desktop screenshot apps (like Spectacle) annoyingly don't support HDR in any way, causing an overtly bright, blown-out image. Steam gets it right by converting to SDR, but the (non-working) overlay is required ... or so I thought! Turns out, if you use the internal overwatch screenshot shortcut, the game directly triggers the screenshot feature via the Steam API, showing the familiar Steam notification even in Proton Wayland without the overlay! This image automatically gets the HDR to SDR tone mapping treatment of Steam and I get my uncompressed file in ~/Bilder/Steam like usual. Fantastic feature, maybe this helps some Linux users.

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I think when I used WiVRn with HLAlyx last time (3mths back or so) I had a issue where the controller would not respond to turning right/left correctly (would cut out) or something. Was real weird as ALVR didn't have said problem.

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Another way to look at this situation:
Discord is living up to their chosen brand name and perhaps their corporate culture.

From Merriam-Webster Dictionary
Word: discord - noun
1 a: lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas).
b: active quarreling or conflict resulting from discord among persons or factions.
2 a: music
(1): a combination of musical sounds that strikes the ear harshly.

I have had a personal Mumble server for almost ten years. At various times I am forced to use Discord when I play games with the younger members of my family. They dislike Mumble because of it's lack of video/screen casting/screen sharing. I can't convince them that to all you need for gaming and communication is the ability to talk and send text messages (URLs). Kid's these days! :)

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Quoting: Cloversheen

Quoting: SalvatosBehavioural analysis to estimate user age without looking at message content… I’m struggling to imagine how that would be effective.

Gonna require making some insane assumptions. I wonder what my "interesting" sleep schedule gets recorded as...

300yo vampire?

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Quoting: SalvatosBehavioural analysis to estimate user age without looking at message content… I’m struggling to imagine how that would be effective.

Gonna require making some insane assumptions. I wonder what my "interesting" sleep schedule gets recorded as...

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That's not a very fair screen cap by the developer he is doing different things... A much more fair one would be:

 $ protontricks APPID winetricks winhttp 

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When all the Unreal devs and..etc stop using Discord as their main source of priority support I can move away, until then... doesn't matter what alternatives there are when the only way to get support is a Discord link and I need to get something fixed.

It's kind of like 100% avoiding facebook. I don't have a facebook account—but I'm still on the site a few times a year because half of all local events are just facebook page links or QR codes.

Which is also the issue with youtube... Trying to block youtube means all the drawing lectures on patreon by all the artists I pay to watch stop working... Now beyond those three—at least for me—I'm not forced on any other social media networks—but I'm also sure there are people who are because other bubbles force them to be. X/TickTock/Bluesky...etc. Are not my thing nor in my circles I didn't use X when it was Twitter and it's even less interesting now. People say news happens there, but any time I look around it's just random scraps of news in a storm of junk... Any good news there hits discord, real news sites, and blogs so that makes me think that news writers are probably forced to live in that world... Which make me as a game dev living in Discord not feel so bad, at least we're only hounded to pay for junk features not forced to pay to send people DMs...

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There is a replacement that is open source called Roomy.
https://a.roomy.space

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It is live and ready to explore

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Quoting: Liam Daweit's open again

Huh, I had no idea.

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Some people have had nightmares because of these games, but it's nice to see them being available on modern systems. There's never enough retro stuff.

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Quoting: syylk

we offer multiple privacy-forward options through trusted partners.

The point is you trust those partners, but we don't - especially considering the past data breaches.

Yeah, notice how whenever they say this they never say who the partners are.

Quoting: GrishnakhIt's the same compelling argument for using protection in a personal encounter. You may trust your casual partner, but do you also trust the partners who were there before you?

Always a hard subject to broach.😅

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Quoting: dpanterNot to trash Matrix but uh, it's not even remotely a realistic alternative. My personal opinion of course.

Perhaps alternative is relative then. Of course it does not reach feature for feature parity, expecting that to be a complete alternative is unrealistic.

Linux was not a full 'alternative' to windows in the beginning, many people still used it and it was good enough for them and to use as alternative OS for core functions. These days it can be said it is but it doesn't support anti-cheat or things such as the adobe suite of software so you can also say its not a realistic alternative in that case.

it's relative to how you use discord. For Multi-account, encrypted Rooms based chatting + video / audio calls and file sharing it is a kind of alternative.. just not like for like. Eventually we might see a fully featured platform with the EXACT same features but in the mean time for those motivated enough it will do the job.

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It's so cool that also with each update a new expedition is coming. Is this new one already live (haven't logged in yet)?
Maybe a good idea to test the new WiVRn update to play NMS in VR :)

Really, this game has managed to bring me back again and again, and if it's only for the new expeditions and their rewards.

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Quoting: Jarmergame devs / communities go back to using forums hosted on their own sites.

The issue with forums, is they may not be social media, but they're still in scope of things like the UK Online Safety Act. Everyone has to be a lot more careful now. We have various safeguards on ours now it's open again, but it's not entirely clear what's expected due to the laws being ridiculously wordy.

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Quoting: syylk

we offer multiple privacy-forward options through trusted partners.

The point is you trust those partners, but we don't - especially considering the past data breaches.

It's the same compelling argument for using protection in a personal encounter. You may trust your casual partner, but do you also trust the partners who were there before you?

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I remember using [TeamSpeak](https://www.teamspeak.com/en/) roughly 15 years ago for online gaming clans. Never pictured I would be switching back to it due to the enshittification of an objectively better service.

Oh well, I guess I will save $120/yr by cancelling nitro and put that towards my (underutilized) home server's electric bill. That will now self-host a TeamSpeak server for my friends. 🫡

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For a moment I thought the headline was about how Retro Macintosh Games was/were returning to a dark castle, and I had so many questions.

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There should be a game about submarines and/or scuba diving combat, called Underwatch.

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Quoting: williamjcmI hope it'll get released as a Flatpak, because I don't like installing stuff through the AUR or pip.

I much prefer terminal because I can see what's going on, flatpak only when no other options are available. But I already know I'm not mainstream, just glad there are the different options for everyone.

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Fixed regression causing achievement images to not show.

Sometimes regressions are head-scratchers. What was touched that had the side effect of zapping, of all things, achievement images? I'm not interested enough to dig through Github to find an answer but boy howdy. Code is crazy yo.

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Overwatch Overwatch 2 Overwatch 3 Overwatch surely is one of the games of all time. 🍌

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My fantasy wish as the outcome of all of this:

1) game devs / communities go back to using forums hosted on their own sites.
2) for real time chat we all go back to using irc (also because I absolutely adore the Halloy app)

I know that's not realistic but I can dream!

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Clarification, right on cue. Truly I think they had this and possibly some future PR written before the announcement even happened.

But so what if I’m auto verified? Why should I help make your walled garden more appealing to those who aren’t via the network effect? Verified or no, I’m ready to jump ship.

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Since I saw on my son's Quest 3S that Steam Link VR was working, I decided to get a Quest 3, as back then I wasn't sure when Valve would release the Steam Frame and wireless VR is pretty cool. Yet Steam VR wired or wireless... the open source variants can give a much better experience. Same with Steam Link VR. So I tried WiVRn and it's awesome. As I had already some experience with Monando and building with Envision, the step to get WiVRn through that wasn't much of an issue.

Yet again, with Envision you get the hottest and latest Version (except you specify the git commit), imho it works best as you don't have to fiddle around much with Steam launch options which are needed when running WiVRn as standalone.

If you use envision, also select XRizer instead of OpenComposite (or have a 2nd profile with it in Envision), as with XRizer you can play After the Fall (the Left 4 Dead VR kinda game from Vertigo Games).

Another hint if you are on Ubuntu: to build XRizer you need a newer version of Rust and Vulkan. Rust can be updated via rustup, Vulkan can be updated via packages from https://vulkan.lunarg.com/sdk/home#linux. When installing the Vulkan SDK I had to get rid of package manually though... glslang or so? (you'll see when installing 😆)

In combination with WayVR (previously name wlx-overlay-s) and WayVR dashboard this give a great experience in VR. Since one of the last updates WayVR dashboard is even working with starting applications in VR on nVidia for me, so you can have some kind of spacial computing with all the applications up and showing theirs windows in VR. You can group then, create a profile and let the apps autostart. Really cool!

Another benefit of using wireless VR: async reprojection. As mentioned in a previous comment, nVidia has issues with asnyc reprojection after driver 550 (and still happening with up to 590). This is not an issue when using WiVRn as async reprojection happens in the HMD.

And seeing this already all working so well... I'm thrilled to see what happens when Steam Frame becomes availabe for everybody.

Btw: You can run WayVR in Steam VR too, haven't tested it recently, before I had to disable its autostart as it caused games to render black in the HMD. Maybe it's fixed by now.

VR is so cool! And we got quite some nice games in the last two years, some I got:
- Bulletstorm VR (they fixed the performance)
- Arizona Sunshine Remake
- Metro: Awakening
- Alien: Rogue Incursion VR (yes, it has now a non VR version too)
- Arken Age
- iAi (a VR coop game)
- Wanderer: The Fragments of Fate (more than just a remake)
- Of Lies And Rain (has some Half Life: Alyx vibes)

And the classics like Beat Saber, Synth Riders, Pistol Whip etc. of course!

If VR gets easier to be used wireless with this WiVRn update, so more (Linux) users get into VR, that's awesome! A Quest 3S is a really good entry point, I'm using my Meta account (which I just created for this) just to download the WiVRn app... 😅

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: elmapul

Quoting: apocalyptech

Quoting: JarmerOMG I love this so much because it will destroy discord. YESSSSSS I ragehate discord so much so anything that takes measures to destroy it is the best thing ever.

Heh, while I don't hate Discord with the same fervor as you, I am certainly not a fan. Perhaps this'll end up encouraging more people to start adopting open platforms for online discussion, over corporate-controlled walled gardens! Though through the cynical eye of historical observation, I think it's more likely that the majority will just grumble about it and acquiesce anyway. Alas!

if we can make the best platform for once instead of demanding people to use an inferior product...

im not saying that open source is aways worse, but we tend to enter the party when its already in the middle or over, we need to find an way to fund cool projects and make then more competitive with closed solutions before its too late for then to compete...

As far as I can tell, open source development also tends to be more kind of steady, a long gradual push, punctuated by bursts of activity when some talented energetic person joins and suddenly adds some stuff.

Closed source development tends to be more front-loaded . . . there's a big push at the beginning, lots of money and hustle to get the product out the door, then nothing much, bugfixes if you're lucky, until it's time for the next version, when there will be a big push to find some new features to bolt on. Eventually the product reaches maturity, and will start to get worse as they either add bells and whistles because, or if it's dominant in its field they will start to enshittify it.

So at the beginning, closed products tend to be better. A couple of versions in, open source software starts overtaking, and then after a while is likely to end up better than the closed product just by virtue of not being a product. But it takes time, quite often too long to get any adoption.

Yes, I've seen this time and time again! Commercial software goes from good to great to almost perfect, and then...what's left? In the best case scenario, they work on extra features that few people will use. Tweaks here and there, and prices stay reasonable. In the worst case scenario (and most common one it seems like), they change their business practices to earn more money from the same or worsening product. "Numbers must go up!"

And in the meantime, open source projects slowly creep towards the "almost perfect" that the commercial software once was. Blender, KiCAD, Krita, OBS, JellyFin, HandBrake: already did this. FreeCAD, LibreOffice, Audacity (4.0), Nextcloud: all on their way there while the alternatives get worse. It's looking good for the future, just requires patience (and more of these companies to F up to inspire devs to work on the open source alternatives).

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Quoting: dpanterStill bullshit, Discord people. B & S.

Not to trash Matrix but uh, it's not even remotely a realistic alternative. My personal opinion of course.

Matrix is definitely not a 1to1 alternative to Discord, but for some it may work.

Anyway, we should not discourage people from exploring alternatives. Use whatever open platform, be it Matrix, IRC, XMPP, Stoat... As long as its not a dystopian silo like Discord.

The fighting among open chat protocols is embarrassing and should stop. We need to encourage to test things out for people to find as their new chatrooms.

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