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Latest Comments by CatKiller
Game over for Roblox on Linux / Steam Deck as it's now blocked
1 March 2024 at 6:43 pm UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: Purple Library GuyWell, these days they could just say "For anticheat reasons, we allow only the Steam Runtime Environment--any Linux that doesn't use that is out."
Oh yes, they definitely could do it if they really wanted. We have all sorts of containerisation solutions that are used for srs bsns that would probably be a good starting point. But... we have 2% of, like, 20% of the gaming market, and the srs bsns containers are predominately geared up to put iron-grip control in the hands of the system administrator rather than some third-party game publisher.

They could also implement actual anti-cheat where they control the playing field and players are only able to take actions in accordance with the rules. It doesn't matter at all what state the client is in then. But every decision made server-side introduces latency, and they would have to pay for running everything rather than offloading a lot of it onto their players. They don't like either of those things, either.

Here's the most played Steam Deck games for February 2024
1 March 2024 at 5:49 pm UTC Likes: 4

Since I got my OLED, I've completed Mirror's Edge and Ico, played a bit more Art of Rally, started Ori and the Blind Forest, and restarted Horizon Zero Dawn.

Game over for Roblox on Linux / Steam Deck as it's now blocked
1 March 2024 at 5:27 pm UTC Likes: 7

Quoting: EhvisWhy would that be? I'm not a mac person, but I highly doubt that Apple would make it easy for software to run something at elevated permissions. So maybe the mac built is running with the same restricted "anti-cheat" as they did to support wine. If that is the case, some of these cheaters may just move over to try their luck on a mac. Maybe not as many since that would require a fairly significant investment.

The thing to remember is that "anti-cheat" isn't really anti-cheat at all; it's anti-tamper. They want to know that the software and environment that it's running in hasn't been modified to do anything unexpected. On Windows, you've got a fairly standardised environment, but the broad range of hardware means that you need the ability to load, for example, hardware drivers... so people can load a "driver" that's actually modifying the running environment of user software. So the software developers put their anti-tamper software at the kernel level to be able to check on all the drivers as well as the user software. Macs have a hugely reduced breadth of hardware, so drivers can just come from Apple, and there's a built-in attestation mechanism to say that software hasn't been tampered with. They just use that. On Linux, every OS install is a special snowflake, so you don't even have a baseline standard environment to look for deviations from.

The HDMI Forum rejected AMD's open source HDMI 2.1 implementation
29 February 2024 at 1:01 pm UTC Likes: 15

It's a shame because HDMI-CEC (when it works) is a really neat feature that AFAIK DisplayPort doesn't have. Proprietary standards are such a trainwreck.

Remote Play broken on Steam Deck with the February stable update
28 February 2024 at 10:09 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: denyasisIt makes no sense to send a desktop experience (complete with glyphs, resolution and interface) to a deck client.

Those are all entirely down to the game. If the game uses Steam Input, though, it does get appropriate controller glyphs automagically.

It does seem like In-Home Streaming is a really low priority for Valve, which is surprising when they've released their high-profile hardware where it's such a good fit. But then, you'd think that letting people give Valve money would also be high on the "do not break this" list, and yet the Deck launched without being able to buy things from the Store, and browsing one's wishlist to pick things to buy is still really janky.

Remote Play broken on Steam Deck with the February stable update
28 February 2024 at 9:18 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: LordDaveTheKindI rarely used it. Can it work as well as Sunshine does (i.e. with hardware encoding too)?

For a period it was really great.

For some time after the Deck was released, streaming was broken. As you played, audio would get distorted and then die completely.

Then the fix for that got released, and streaming was really good. Play with the performance of your desktop with the convenience of the Deck.

Then the OLED got released, and the update after that (which brought colour management in) made streaming super dark, so it was broken again.

And then this update has made it so streaming doesn't even really start.

Valve release big stable Steam Client update for Steam / Steam Deck
28 February 2024 at 12:39 am UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: WorMzyStill would prefer a move to Qt5/6. It'd be more inline with the Plasma desktop use for the Steam Deck. Hopefully they're not planning a move from Plasma to Gnome any time soon.

Valve recommend that other developers use Qt in the "bullshit launchers are bullshit" section of their Deck documentation.

QuoteOur recommendation is to use standalone technologies like Qt for launchers instead of OS-dependent frameworks like .NET / WPF. For best results, skip separate launchers altogether and integrate their functionality into the game client UI instead, where controller support is likely better.

Valve release big stable Steam Client update for Steam / Steam Deck
27 February 2024 at 11:37 pm UTC Likes: 1

Haven't checked (and I might not for a while because my desktop GPU is now weaker than the Deck's APU) but the thing I'm most interested in is whether streaming to the Deck is still far too dark unless you disable hardware decoding. That came in with the last big Deck update. Don't know if it's a Steam client bug or a SteamOS bug, though.

Nintendo goes after Switch emulator yuzu in new lawsuit
27 February 2024 at 11:34 pm UTC Likes: 9

Quoting: sonic2kkMy understanding was that a user should dump these from their Switch console, and that this is, at the very least, not illegal.

If someone has put a "technical measure" (no matter how flimsy) in place to prevent copying, the DMCA makes it a crime for Americans to circumvent that technical measure even if the making and using the copy would be otherwise legal - unless it's for one of the very short list of activities that are given a three-year exemption.

Steam Dinos vs. Robots Fest is live with more demos and discounts
27 February 2024 at 12:39 pm UTC Likes: 3

Quoting: Liam Dawe
Quoting: CatKillerPlatform icons are broken again, like they were in the last sale. All the titles in the list just have Windows icons even if the game's available for other platforms.
I have the opposite, if it has a Linux version it only shows the SteamOS icon lol.
Websites; gotta love 'em.

Actually, yeah, seeing the same thing in the app. Mobile website just shows windows, mobile app shows only one of Windows or Linux; neither manage to fit the price in.