Latest Comments by CatKiller
Third in the To The Moon series, time-loop adventure Impostor Factory is out
30 September 2021 at 8:25 pm UTC Likes: 7

QuoteI still don't quite get if it's a sequel, a prequel or what.
That's time travel for you.

Valve's Steam Deck dev kit got the early benchmark treatment
30 September 2021 at 6:34 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: MohandevirForgot about that piece of tech. Looking forward to see it in action. Didn't know it could be used for "FSR Scaling". Awesome!
Well, it can't yet, as far as we know, but they said that they're interested.

https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope/issues/215#issuecomment-885932306
QuoteYes, FSR is potentially something we'd be interested in.

Valve's Steam Deck dev kit got the early benchmark treatment
30 September 2021 at 6:19 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: MohandevirIt might be something easier to implement with an officially supported build, optimized for the Steam Deck? Something like variable resolution, depending on the screen's output resolution (native or external)?
Gamescope already sits between the game surface and the display surface, and can happily lie to either of them as it sees fit (hence being able to easily cap the framerate at 30 fps if you want to, to save battery). It should be pretty straightforward to slot FSR in there as an automatic scaling method. There are already a couple to choose from.

Valve's Steam Deck dev kit got the early benchmark treatment
30 September 2021 at 5:52 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: MohandevirOne doesn't prevent the other. I mean, for edge cases like CP2077, FSR could help raise the fps counter for a smoother overall experience, on the native screen.

Sure, and once you've got the framework in place you could use it either way, but if you've got less than 1280×800 pixels available, that's not a lot of information to work with to make the image look good; you'd probably rather turn something else down other than the resolution to get better performance. Whereas having the same performance docked as not, and having an image that doesn't look too terrible, would be universally pretty useful.

Valve's Steam Deck dev kit got the early benchmark treatment
30 September 2021 at 4:40 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: kokoko3kOT:
Is there a way to inject FSR in games that do not support it natively, maybe through vkBasalt?
Yes. One of the custom Protons (I think GE?) has it automatically for the part that scales the window size to the display size (FSHack), and gamescope does the same conversion: they've already said that they're interested in having FSR available as a scaling method there. Vulkan-only, I think, and it doesn't work if the game has its own scaling, and it makes the UI blurry if you do it outside of the game.

Valve's Steam Deck dev kit got the early benchmark treatment
30 September 2021 at 4:02 pm UTC Likes: 9

Quoting: MohandevirI wonder if they'll add AMD FRS support to Proton and do some upscale to 800p... Did that with Witcher 3 and F1 2021 (900p upscaled to 1080p). It lowered my GPU temps by 10°-15° (probably not going to happen on an APU) while giving me a performance boost with no noticeable visual impacts. In fact, imo, the contrasts looked better and it solved my fan noise issues.
A more likely use case for FSR than games running on the internal display is to scale up the image when the device is docked and avoid a performance hit.

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 developer responds on Easy Anti-Cheat for Linux with Proton
29 September 2021 at 2:11 pm UTC Likes: 6

Quoting: Liam DaweYou might be but the majority won't. Think for a moment on who the main target really is, it's not us, it's the Steam Deck. We already know it's got a lot of reservations in, do you really think potentially hundreds of thousands* of people not being supported is going to go down well? I don't think so.

I would expect more developers to take it seriously once the Deck is actually out.

*An initial bug let us get a glimpse of reservation numbers before it was fixed, and it was well over 100K.
I don't think it will be the Deck itself that makes the difference for developers, but the shadow of the Deck.

The Deck looks like it's going to be a great success, but it's not going to sell 10 million units a year because every indication is that Valve can't make 10 million units a year. It's not going to cause a massive boost in the number of copies of games that are sold on Steam (buyers generally have a finite budget, and the number of new buyers will be small relative to the size of the existing user base), but it could easily change the types of games that are bought.

If you have, or are considering, a Deck then you may well pick the game that will work on the Deck over the similar game that won't for where your money goes. The store interface is likely to reinforce this. The winners and losers may change. And there may be the perception that The Algorithm may start favouring games that will work on the Deck over games that won't (note that Valve don't need to actually do anything here, just the idea that it's a possibility is sufficient).

That fear that a developer's game will be buried under all those other games that do have controller support, and do have a native version or run well through Proton, that work well on a small screen, is what will drive any change in developer behaviour, I think.

Help make the next Ubuntu version awesome with the final Ubuntu 21.10 Beta released
26 September 2021 at 11:11 am UTC

Quoting: Phlebiac
Quoting: Guesteven though this is driven by Mozilla

Mozilla says it's Canonical building the snap packages: "Canonical is now building the official Firefox snap"
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/93.0beta/releasenotes/

From the linked article:
QuoteWait, why the change?

Good question! When Mozilla approached Canonical, they had some clear benefits in mind. Those included:

Cross-platform support: The snap will run on all distributions that run snapd - now and in the future
Authenticity: You’re getting Firefox, unadulterated, straight from the source
Effortless updates: Get security updates from Mozilla, fast
Less time on maintenance, more time for features: Community developers can focus on innovation, instead of being mired in support

The Firefox snap is listed on snapcraft as being from Mozilla.

Trouble is brewing over on GOG due to the HITMAN release needing online for some features
26 September 2021 at 10:30 am UTC Likes: 5

Quoting: WorMzyI find the whole 'review bombing is not allowed' thing rediculous. If you've bought the game and are displeased with it, then leaving a negative review is entirely acceptable. If hundreds/thousands of people all do the same, then so be it. Game devs/publishers shouldn't be able to bury their heads in the sand and cry foul just because gamers aren't happy with them.
This isn't review bombing in my book. This is just lots of people leaving negative reviews because an advertised feature of the game (being DRM-free) isn't there.

Review bombing, as far as I'm concerned, would be a brigade leaving negative reviews because of something other than the game (the CEO wore pink socks! 👎), which does suck.

BattlEye confirms Linux support for Steam Deck, will be opt-in like Easy Anti-Cheat
25 September 2021 at 12:52 am UTC Likes: 4

So now all Valve need to do is keep this device highly desirable, and sell enough units that it represents a significant number of users rather than a potentially significant number of potential users.

EZ.

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