You know how some people backup the header of encrypted disks:
 
sudo cryptsetup luksHeaderBackup /dev/<your-disk-luks> --header-backup-file luks2-header-backup-$(date -I)

If somebody wants a project make a interface equivalent to Etcher that optionally backs up the MBR + Linux / Windows boot partitions.

Then next time Windows fucks this up. ( Which they have been for decades and we haven't done anything about it. ) A person can load a Live USB, create a new backup in the broken state and run the Restore tool to revert the changes to before Microsoft screwed the pooch.

Who knows maybe what I'm imagining already exists, there's a lot of fine people out there who do amazing work all the time on our apps.

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The year is 2034.

I'm playing Counter Strike 3 with my friends online. Valve has just announced players using cybernetic prosthetics are utilizing a unfair advantage to time their keystrokes and will be penalized. Oh well, at least I can still use my neural implant for now and my subscription to Mountain Dew Retro Millennium Beverage is still active. If I earn enough credits and hypercoin from the championship maybe I will be able to leave 17 and go to a new sector north. Running low on nutritional supplement 25. Lulu, sweet thing. Maybe things will be better for us both there.

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Quoting: hm11I mean, a lot of these big devs that do console exclusivity at some point will have to maximize their profits... Not even surprised if it has DRM; what can we expect?

They make their choice. We make our choice. And for me when there's one of those obnoxious DRM that's designed to make the game not work under all these conditions they can expect me to skip the whole thing and buy and play something else like Factorio.



What's worse than a game that everyone wants to pirate so you need to add DRM?

A game that nobody wants to pirate and then you cannibalize your own sales by putting off your customers with obnoxious DRM.

The days of being beggars are over, there are so many things to play, I bet each of us has massive backlogs.

I totally get the occasional gamer caving to DRM and being like "Well.. okay.. this time..."

I'm just saying for me personally DRM and obnoxious launchers kills the boner like 60-80% of the time.

--

You know it's kind of funny too, I recently heard Ubisoft is going out of business -- can you imagine all those games with the launcher bundled suddenly not working? Businesses and people are going to learn the hard way with the coming going out of business wave that being generally shitty to customers, not respecting your customers and making your business hostile to people of other political views or beliefs, is going to have consequences.

RIP Bed Bath & Beyond in the USA.
RIP Ubisoft.

It's really not hard to fuck up multi-million dollar machines, a few missteps and ** poof ** -- all gone.

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Looks pretty sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-kVscNOiEk

Field of view seems like such a big deal in this kind of game. I can't stand being too zoomed in when I play Halo MCC -- I'm glad this is a current thing to let players chooser FOV.

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From searching the net

QuoteIGN - 2022, Nov 7 The highly anticipated Final Fantasy XVI has seemingly been confirmed to be an exclusive PlayStation 5 game for at least six months.

Sooooo this __was__ a PS5 Console Exclusive that is now coming to Steam/PC 2024, Sep 17?

Previously I would be put off by Square Enix with their EGS exclusive missteps. (Still haven't bought most of those games years after coming to Steam __late__)

Next check is DRM. Which on checking the Steam page I see it has { Denuvo Anti-tamper } -- that was enough to stop me from buying Resident Evil 4 despite having a 97% 91k score.

That video thumbnail is terrible advertising.

We'll see how this shapes up, my hype-o-meter is around 50% at "Yeah maybe" like that moving you know you have to go to the cinema to see and you're hopes are meh -__-

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Quoting: tfkJust read some post on the Steam forums. They got drivers now but are still complaining.

It's a small difference in attitude I'm observing here.

We get native Linux support for something, we say thanks and start to give feedback on any issues we encounter.

They get Windows support for something, they're like "About time!". And when there are issues they're like "It won't work! You suck! I'm selling my device!".

I can see why Valve had this on low priority.

Right, FOSS typically has tangible constructive criticism even if albeit sometimes short, krass & kurt, or even the occasional wall of text analysis -- again honest feedback intended for a constructive purpose.

I think we've all seen ape tism win child chest thumping in win world at least once. Adult Childing Peter Pan style.

Nobody wants to appease such entitled bratting.

Also, a good lesson that the worst evangelical offenders in a community set the image of the community to outsiders. I'm not saying we need to be on each-other more. I'm just saying being balanced and closer to the middle ground, reasonable, fair, with good faith and intentions is actually a great thing.

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Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: ElectricPrismAlso, I know with the rise of WarCraft 3 and DOTA 1 and DOTA 2 the focus on "Heroes" is now a thing, I just wish it wasn't. RTS was just fine when heroes we're 300% the size of units with obnoxious roles and mega powers. It's fine when done with taste but I haven't really seen it cooked right. SC2 was okayish.

Yeah "heroes" in strategy games really rub me the wrong way. It is an RPG-ization of the genre, moving away from "you control an army" to "you control this main character, plus some minions". It is particularly common in fantasy-themed games, precisely because they get thematic inspiration by the D&D-style fantasy where "party of heroes goes adventuring" is a powerful trope. If I'm to have leaders to the army, I'd rather have a general that isn't a powerful warrior but gives command bonuses.

There are some benefits to hero units in game design, dipping into the strengths of other genres: it is convenient for making narratives more personal, leveling up is a good progression mechanic, it creates a lot more unit distinction (with a built-in diegetic explanation), powerful unique units give a sense of power and accomplishment, it helps keep the scale in check to make the game easier to control, and the mechanics are part of basic game literacy. But the thematic connection makes it clear that a large part is "make it more like an RPG, RPGs are good!". With Warcraft 3, it was very obviously meant to mix the genres, with the Rexxar campaign standing out. Blizzard always felt like they just didn't want to make RTS games, it was more like an obligation, and they constantly tried to turn their RTS franchises into something else (Lord of the Clans, SC Ghost, and finally succeeded with WoW and never looked back).

Anyway, tangential rant finished, but yeah I'm tired of hero units.

Lots of insights there -- great observation with SC Ghost attempting to depart the StarCraft franchise and from the RTS roots. It felt like they were chasing the current thing at the time which was the Space-Tech FPS Genre -- Halo (Memory is fuzzy but I thought I even recalled some kind of "warthog" like vehicle or gun turrets but don't quote me on that). The soundtrack for Ghost did eventually come out or leak and the sound design was more true to StarCraft and BroodWar than SC2 was -- which took more liberties and made Terran out to sound like redneck hicks that like country music -- which was offputting. And HoTS took even more liberties especially in the cinematic departed completely changing Kerrigan and minimizing her into a lesser character in an even bigger more "Grande" vision by whatever new hotshot writers "vision" for the universe. I always liken this to the new writers always trying to destroy the old writers legacy and vision instead of "extending it" and "enhancing it". Suddenly you got zeroing in on 1 thing "Xel`Naga" and throw in a bunch of space lasers and new stuff and the mystery that made the story interesting is now gone. [[ See Star Wars 4, 5 & 6 ]] vs [[ 1, 2, and 3 ]] -- (Eg: Oh the force, this invisible magic that binds the universe together -- that sounds cool -- 4, 5, 6 -- and then boom StarWars 1 is like "Oh It's just the number of medichlorian in your blood, so we can harvest anyone's blood and make a super jedi /facepalm)

I can definitely see the D&D "Hero" influences in RPG RTS crossover. BroodWar felt right. Heroe units were still humanoid sized maybe with a slight recolor or fancy decal -- Raynor was a Vultr that looked like every other Vultr, what made them unique was their unique capabilities. In newer games Heros seemed 200-300% the size of regular units -- and it's Ackward having a bunch of marines and then one giant one -- it's comical, and takes you out of the cinematic universe, and is an insult to the players intelligence to be able to distinguish the special unit from the regular units.

I know why they do it though -- suddenly you can sell action figures and make extra income (See Warhammer $50-$200 at a glance).

I'm very surprised we haven't seen a straight rippoff of BroodWar as Open Source by now. Yeah I know we have Wargus/Stargus which doesn't have a lot of activity, but considering the technological advancements of things like GoDot, Rust and Linux making it so far, for such a Legendary game and series to not have a successor is like Harvest Moon before Stardew Valley tapped that market.

And to see a game enter the market like this and then then sell Heroes, Campaign Levels, and bundle with Easy Anti-Cheat is just all kinds of Red-Flags.

A modern RTS should be DRM-Free, 8-16 players, a mode where two or more players can control 1 race to get all the functions done, complex enough base building (there is a optimal number of units just like chess has sufficient complexity but not endless scope), resource collection, competitive online play, custom maps, and rediculous hacks like "Lights On" "Lights Off" in SCBW and WarCraft 3 ((IIUC) where you could stack turrets, cannons, and do other "Fun" stuff -- because hey -- devs seem to forget that the entire point of games should be to maximize "Fun" and not take everything so seriously.

I can't even tell you how many times I've had to spin up a WINE bottle with StarCraft Remastered only to have the whole thing crash. The new graphics are nice but 90% of the time it doesn't work without manual intervention that takes 30m - 1h.

And unfortunately BroodWar isn't scaling on Sway in Wayland even with a manual virtual desktop resolution set.

It's a real shame that this classic which was the first games running in WINE isn't up to the task on Wayland presently. I hope to see that change soon.

/rant, thanks for the great conversion, lol

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It felt like with SteamOS v1 and v2 that manufacturers made hardware that was expensive and then had a lot of hardware problems (similar to Xbox 360 red ring of death -- looking @ you Alienware.)

Seeing SteamOS make it to Asus ROG Ally would make the device actually interesting for me (currently I am 0% interested without Linux/SteamOS).

I would prefer a device with removable wings (using those 4 metal dots that are actually for USB keebs connecting to tablets) -- similar to the Lenovo's design -- however due to their history (superfish 2015), their hq, and manipulating criticisms on the Internet I refuse all devices from them.

I am curious what parts of the market are untapped -- a higher spec'd handheld? The problem I see is that the lower cost to entry device really does a lot at building trust. Having bought the Deck, now I know what baseline in quality I can expect in future Valve Decks -- and so I am not as apprehensive about spending larger amounts of money on such a device.

Ally isn't like that -- It's Gen 1 or (Maybe Gen 2 by now with the X?) -- all I know about it is that it shipped with a garbage Windows interface, meh drivers, and a obnoxiously small interface not designed to sell the device at all. I won't even hold the drivers thing against ASUS, I had seen Windows screw up the unscrewupable. Windows isn't fun. This is a very welcome story -- I look forward to having greater interest in their SteamOS stuff. That shit just works and the content available is already beyond vast.

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So they added me to the Deadlock beta. And out of respect for Valve I'm not going reveal anything, other than no it's not Half-Life 3 Episode 1 like we all joked earlier, and the game is totally awesome, gonna be a LAN room win -- I'm pretty sure Valve has a home-run and is going to make a lot of money which is typical for Valve always being awesome.

I guess you can suggest inviting other players too so maybe they'll expand the beta. It's definitely original.

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The textures really need more filth and grit. Reviews are currently @ 60%. Easy Anti-Cheat DRM grosses me out.

The formatting and basic construction have enough charm, the battle particle and laser effects are a bit muddy making it harder to focus on the strategy of well... a RTS.

I'll have to play the game to judge the sound design too -- they could win a lot of points back if they had a kind of analog grit and otherworldly sound from the 90s -- but I don't really anticipate they did more than off the shelf current gen mobile slop.

The reviews and community discussion area are vicious, looks like they really made their kick-starters and community mad for charging them for the extra content.

Also, I know with the rise of WarCraft 3 and DOTA 1 and DOTA 2 the focus on "Heroes" is now a thing, I just wish it wasn't. RTS was just fine when heroes we're 300% the size of units with obnoxious roles and mega powers. It's fine when done with taste but I haven't really seen it cooked right. SC2 was okayish.

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