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Latest Comments by CatKiller
A year later Stadia has messaging, user profiles and possibly new countries coming
18 November 2020 at 11:52 am UTC

I'm quietly hopeful that Embr will be a game that goes from Stadia to desktop Linux. Guns Of Icarus was Linux-native, and worked well, but they didn't bother to release their subsequent game for Linux. Now that they've likely been paid already (apparently Capcom got $10 million to put RE7 & 8 on Stadia) to make the Linux version of Embr work, and it's done in Unity, and they've released Linux-native games before, the fact that they've already done the work might be enough to clear the hurdles. It won't happen till it happens, though, of course.

Valve contractor working to add Direct3D 12 support to APITrace for VKD3D-Proton
18 November 2020 at 11:33 am UTC Likes: 12

For those that aren't aware, it was also Joshua Ashton that did the work to move Quake 2 RTX to the vendor-neutral Vulkan ray tracing extension, for when Khronos gets round to finalising it. Busy, busy, busy.

War Thunder gets a huge upgrade along with Vulkan by default on Linux (updated)
18 November 2020 at 11:28 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: Lord_PhoenixI watched an interview with the producer (I think) and they said they are not really investing into linux, because while it works somewhat it's fine, but no major investment/improvement planned because linux is such a mess.

For clarification, if that's their position, they're saying that Linux is not supported, which means that no one should give them money in exchange for their Linux support.

Like a Proton title, that lack of support from the developer means that the product just isn't worth as much as if it were supported.

A year later Stadia has messaging, user profiles and possibly new countries coming
17 November 2020 at 8:52 pm UTC

Quoting: ShmerlIs there a list of games that came out for desktop Linux because Staida effort made it easier?

The list so far of games that have come to desktop Linux from Stadia is:

A year later Stadia has messaging, user profiles and possibly new countries coming
17 November 2020 at 11:15 am UTC Likes: 8

Quoting: GuestThose videos show that there is a long term plan for Stadia. Kinda kills the "hur hur Google will just kill it soon" crap
I'd imagine that they had big plans for Google Plus, too.

The classic Driver 2 has a new reverse engineered open source game engine
16 November 2020 at 1:49 pm UTC

Quoting: elmapuli wonder why its easier to reverse enginering an game than making an free open source alternative to it...
it shouldnt be

Traditionally for game makers, about half the budget goes to marketing. Asset creation is almost all of the rest. Making the game engine, while both critical and often difficult, is only a small part of the whole. Content is also difficult to do incrementally: you need your story to happen in the right order, and you want all of your artwork to look good before people see it.

Valve dev clarifies what some of their upcoming and recent Linux work is actually for
15 November 2020 at 6:23 pm UTC Likes: 7

Quoting: GuestI'm pretty against tailoring Linux (kernel) towards DRM (digital rights management) because that seems to me against the entire ideal of it.

This isn't really that, though. This is changing the kernel to help Wine. Sure, anti-tamper in Windows applications is a likely source for Windows syscalls being issued directly rather than going through Windows/Wine libraries, but equally some devs just suck. These changes stop those Windows applications messing up your system with their suckiness, by bouncing it back to Wine.

Kernel changes to allow DRM already happened: HDCP support, secure enclaves, and the like.

Steam Play Proton 5.13-2 compatibility layer is out now with improved Direct3D 12 support
15 November 2020 at 4:17 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: robredzquestion is what will the drivers be like with ray tracing as it becomes more common, given Nvidia and AMD will have different approaches?

Nvidia and AMD (and Intel) will have the same approach: vendor-neutral DX12 or vendor-neutral Vulkan (when Khronos and the Khronos stakeholders get round to finalising it).

The Nvidia-specific Vulkan extension was a proof-of-concept and a base to work from. Windows and Linux games that use it will continue to work on Nvidia hardware. I believe that's currently two.

Games that use DX12 for ray tracing won't work on Linux at least until the vendor-neutral Vulkan extension is finalised. The VKD3D people have already said that they have no interest in translating to the Nvidia-specific one, plus they've got other things that take up their time. There may well be a delay between the extension being finalised and them getting round to doing the translation.

They've also said that they don't have any interest (and it's likely behind an NDA even if they wanted to) in implementing DLSS, which helps performance. Maybe if there's an open standard for AI-assisted upscaling that becomes popular with game devs they'll implement that. Nvidia could contribute DLSS in the open if they wanted to. Or at least contribute enough so that they can use the (proprietary) library that comes with their drivers.

System76 bring back the Galago Pro with Intel Xe and NVIDIA GPU options
11 November 2020 at 12:57 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: slaapliedjeThe issue with most wifi adapters is that while the open source stuff, works, the performance is kind of crappy without the firmware blob. It's much like geforce or radeon cards in that regard. What would be nice if there were a project to reverse engineer these blobs (as there are some NICs and other random pieces of hardware that use them) so that we no longer have to use closed source crap at all.

Part of the problem with WiFi devices is that they're radios. There are strict compliance requirements - such as power output - insisted on by regulators around the world. For example, by the FCC in the US. Without being able to show that they restrict the power output of these software-defined radios, they aren't allowed to be sold. If someone can tweak a value and recompile, they can't show that, and the devices are prohibited. So you either have to have some parts that can't be open source, or you have to have different product lines for different regulators.

OpenRazer 2.9.0 is out, adding plenty of new Razer device support on Linux
9 November 2020 at 3:48 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: Avehicle7887Back in my Windows days, my biggest gripe with razer was in their software which requires online access, which I never believed it should be a requirement for basic peripherals such as mouse and keyboard. Maybe in time thanks to these wonderful projects, I'll buy a razer product should the need arises.

I wouldn't. Things like requiring software (with Internet access, no less!) to be running all the time, and needing to be reverse-engineered to function on Linux, are not the things that mean they should get your money. Give these devs some money, sure, but Razer don't deserve it. Maybe if they start officially supporting Linux, and contribute to projects like OpenRazer, then it's worth signalling that you're happy with their approach by funding them.