They’ll streamline better over time. These open source WINE frontends/orchestrators may as well have 2 eras, before and after Proton. Before Proton they had little developer interest so development was slow. After Proton, influx of users and more developers interest in working on open source Linux gaming tools and Lutris rapidly got better and Heroic popped up. PlayOnLinux got left to historic obscurity in the history of Linux gaming
So I’m not concerned about Steam reliance. Everything outside of Steam is so much easier because of Valves open source contribution and the growth of the community. Pretty much because of Valve, Lutris/Heroic/etc became better at a faster pace and will continue getting because of what Steam did for Linux gaming in the past decade
Has anyone had any luck replicating their Proton setup outside of Steam? Or simply just running a Proton game outside of Steam after getting it set up using Steam?
I have run many Windows games outside of Steam.
I prefer to set up each one manually: Create a Wine prefix, install the game (or copy it from an existing installation), install a few key libraries like DXVK and a Visual C++ runtime, make a launch script with game-specific environment settings or launch options. Tools like Lutris and Bottles can automate much of this, in case you need a little help or just find a GUI more convenient.
This is my usual approach to non-Steam games (especially GOG), but even Steam games can be convinced to work offline with the help of a Steam emulator. It wouldn’t work with a game encumbered by DRM (e.g. Denuvo) unless a cracked version could be located, but in my experience, that’s a minority of Steam games that I categorically avoid in the first place.
So, I’m not worried about my game library vanishing if I ever lose access to Steam for whatever reason. Most (if not all) of it could be recovered with a bit of effort.
I’m so excited to see you get to one year of gaming. I was just starting to get into Lemmy when you started and your posts have been a comfort one these dark times
It makes me glad to see it helping people being comforted by these like I have. It’s embarrassing to admit but there’s been some days where my sole motivation for getting out of bed is because there’s a certain game I want to screenshot
I have one of these, and it’s my least favorite controller I’ve ever owned. The touch sticks feel like the touch controls in my car… They leave me wanting real, tactile controls.
Was the first controller that allowed me to completely drop aim assist for good and not feel slow against PC players and offer keyboard like functionality for input swapping.
I disagree about the batteries. Give me replaceable AA cells any day over a built-in Li-ion. Rechargeable AAs are readily available and quickly swappable if you keep hot spares. Much better option for long term serviceability.
I think the availability of AA batteries is higher, 18650 is much less standard than AA in most people’s homes. I would rather have options, so saying AA but having a swappable battery tray is how I would go, but I like kludgey stuff anyway.
That said, I just did a battery replacement for a lithium pouch on some TWS headphones and it was a fairly simple process. Making it a port rather than soldered wires would make it much easier and would make battery replacement a quick and routine task. Hopefully more companies will more towards ports for batteries and maybe even a standard port that is the same for a given voltage/amperage combination so swapping out can be done with confidence.
Microsoft did something like this with xbox controllers. There are additional contact points inside the battery chamber for a li-ion pack, so you could use a pair of AAs or their rechargeable pack that just fits into the same space.
Going to bat for xbox or Microsoft right now is a death sentence on the internet so by internet law I have to downvote you. Sorry, it’s just the way things go…
That said, I agree. Being able to buy a $30 plug and play pack with rechargeable battery packs or being able to buy rechargeable AAs or just normal AA batteries is the best of all the current first party options.
I use Heroic more than I use Steam. It comes with a wine manager built in for Proton-GE, and if you have Steam Proton installed it can access that too. I use Proton Plus to get GE-Proton on Steam but I don’t even have to do that for Heroic.
I use Steam only for games purchased from Steam and Heroic for Epic, GOG, etc…
Heroic makes it much easier to manage games. Custom prefixes for each game with winetricks, mangohud checkbox, environment variables and so on. If the interface was better/modern with some sort of tabbed layout, I would use it for my Steam games as well.
I’ve run Proton without Steam for a few games. You’ve pretty much got the same code that Steam uses and most of their changes make it upstream eventually, so they’re not holding you hostage with being able to run your games. It just might get less convenient. There are other Linux game launchers that have good compatibility.
Steam and the company behind it have done wonders for Linux. They’ve given publishers a reason to care, they are providing strength and resources to fix bugs and libraries they care about, and generally have done very well in sharing their contributions with the community.
I do think this is a valid concern that we need to keep in mind, but I don’t think that we are at risk just yet. Valve is a business but as businesses go, they’re pretty cool.
I played for a lil while, trying to get into it to play with my friends. The only MMO i’ve gotten DEEP into was the original Guild Wars, and that is obviously a bit different from other MMOs, so I wasn’t sure if it would be my cup of tea. I ended up falling off before finishing the base Realm Reborn MSQ. I found the same problem I always have with MMOs - the initial loop is really fun and addicting and I’m enjoying learning the world, but then I hit a point where doing the quests just feels like a slog to endgame. I did some dungeons with my friends once that was possible, and it mostly just felt like I was struggling to keep up with something that everyone else had done 50 times over already. It stunk that I had to do story quests solo, and could only really party up for dungeons. Much preferred the GW experience of playing the MSQ together.
Idk, I’m not trying to trash on the game, I can tell it’s really well made and I’m happy for all y’all. It just didn’t resonate for me.
That’s a major pain point for a lot of new players. You have to invest at least a couple hundred hours into doing the MSQ to get to current endgame content. I know it’s more about the journey, rather than the destination, but it sucks when you have friends doing endgame stuff, and you’re still stuck behind who knows how many more quests in order to join them. I quit the game twice during the stretch of post-ARR quests. They cut the number of quests down since I went through them, but it’s still a slog.
This was also my complaint. I felt like it was missing the cooperative aspect of an MMO that I wanted. I think FFXI is closer to what I want, but it’s understandably older and less accessible for a lot of people. I’m still debating when/if i wana take the plunge and just play that for a while.
I’ve spent about 60 hours replaying the intro quests in XIV trying to get into it lol
Yes. But there is nothing we can do about it more than party that whenever it turns to shit their open source contributions are able to stand on their own
Yeah thats kind of the point. It doesnt have 2 joysticks so I just buy an Xbox one instead. So it cant compete with the gold standard of crontrollers.
And you can say it has pursose in non controller games but its still worse than a traditional keyboard and mouse in that repect as well as a keyboard with an integrated trackpack.
So theres maybe a small niche of playing non controller games in situations where you dont have a desk and you dont want to use an integrated keyboard, where it does a bit better than the competition. Any other situation you have better options. Which IMO if its worse in most use cases and only a bit better than the competetion in designed niche, then its not really a good product.
Not everyone’s a big kb/mouse fan. My sister refuses to use one on the HTPC.
Hence I think that was its non-insignificant niche; couch usage. Portable keyboards are really awkward and clunky on laps, and the steam controller is way better and more ergonomic than an integrated trackpad.
Personally I think it was a smart business decision, because of this:
It doesnt have 2 joysticks so I just buy an Xbox one instead.
No one’s going to buy a steam-branded Xbox controller, but making it different does. And I think what killed it is that it wasn’t plug-and-play enough, eg it didn’t work out of the box with many games.
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Aktywne