I’ve used RT in various games, and for some, it makes a positive difference in the experience (gameplay only, not fps) and for others, the difference is unnoticeable or even negative.
Nvidia is still the RT king, but it’s not like classic lighting techniques are bad, either. I’d give up my RTX 3060ti for a 6700XT in a heartbeat to have better Linux compatibility.
I get where you are coming from, but as someone who has been interested in ray tracing since the early 2000s, ever since I saw the amazing ray tracing demo heaven seven rendered in real-time (although not at a particularly high frame rate) by my trusty 1.3 GHz Athlon T-Bird, there has been no denying that this is the future of 3D graphics, just as much as the more recent invention of upscaling technology. It enables not just the biggest generational leap in visuals seen in decades, but also makes it far easier for developers to light their games, removing many of the clunky and labor-intensive workflows that are required to make conventional rasterized graphics look good.
If the above paragraph didn’t bore you to death, try Quake II RTX. It’s fully path-traced, but because it’s essentially a shiny coat of paint on a game from the 1990s, hardware requirements are surprisingly modest (it even ran on my old GTX 1080, albeit it at a very low upscaled resolution). Despite the simple geometric detail and ancient animations, it looks absolutely stunning thanks to realistic lighting and new surfaces. Screenshots are not doing it justice - it almost feels real when you play it, particularly outside sections in direct sunlight.
If you don’t own Quake II on Steam, you get the three levels from the old shareware version, which are more than enough to get an idea of the true potential of this technology. If you do, you can play the entire game with ray tracing. Note that this is not the same as the recent extensive remaster of the game by Nightdive Studios, which uses a conventional renderer, but makes far more substantial modifications to assets and level design (and includes lots of bonus features). Both remasters are awesome in their own different ways.
Your card can also handle some newer games with ray tracing. Control is an obvious candidate. It’s old enough to have reasonable hardware requirements even with RT on, but it was also designed from the ground up as a showcase for this technology. Medium RT at 1080p should get you close to 60 fps in this game. The other game you might want to try is Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, which is both visually stunning and incredibly well-optimized. You should get a locked 60fps at 1080p in this game - and even 1440p is possible. It’s night and day compared to the regular version of the game.
I think the spirit of what I was trying to get at comes down to the idea that RT is important for some and not for others. I’ve seen and played some games that look bad with raytracing, though I’d say on the whole it’s been positive.
Like other techniques, it comes down to intentional design choices. Where to place light sources, how strong they should be, what kind of surface radiance looks good aesthetically versus how well it functions to light the scene are all factors to consider.
I think until it becomes a requirement, there’s space for everyone’s tastes.
I really hope it’s going to be closer to the original than Below Zero.
I liked Below Zero but it wasn’t able to instill the same feeling of dread and anxiety that Subnautica could. Below Zero felt a lot more “child-friendly”.
And for the love of god: Get that Sea Truck out of my sights. I want my Cyclops back!
Below Zero had far less open ocean, and far less just inky blackness. Plus I think if you played the original, you have an idea of what to expect. Nothing compares to dread of seeing a Leviathan come up from total darkness in the first one.
I didn’t see it until its tentacles had already engulfed my little submersible. I screamed like a little girl and didn’t touch the game again for weeks. No other game has ever managed to scare me like this.
That would be the big question. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of any other vehicles.
The scary part I’d say, that the Sea Truck was supposed to replace both Seamoth and Cyclops. So there being a SeaTruck in the promo material makes me a bit anxious.
Addendum: It’s called “The Tadpole” and is likely a modular device akin to the seatruck and is theorized to be able to switch between different modules and basically lock into being a Prawn Suit, Seatruck or Cockpit in a bigger Submarine.
Just speculation of couse. But it would seem a likely route as Unknown Worlds was already testing out the modular concept in BZ.
It’s the same experience, imo. On mobile, you can drag and drop the cards into a buy/sell/use section; on the steam deck, there are Xbox control indicators to buy/sell/use/select. I haven’t noticed any other differences. Google play keeps a save file in the cloud, like steam.
Edit: my bad, on Mobile, seeing the tags at the bottom of the Select Blind window is a PAIN because, to see its description, you have to press and holto read it, then slide your finger away to be sure you don’t select it. The tag icon is small. If you release your finger while over the tag icon, the tag is selected.
A Tag is a bonus you can get if you choose to skip a Blind (which is a term for one round of playing your cards). It’s usually more profitable to play the Blind than pick the tag.
I have it on both and they’re pretty much identical. Having buttons available can be sorta nice for specific actions, but on the other hand a phone is easier to carry around. Both are great with minor pros and cons.
Like the others have said, it’s pretty much identical. What makes it perfect on mobile (imo) is dragging the cards feels more natural (especially being a board gamer).
I prefer to play it on mobile (pirated it to try it out) but I bought it on Steam. As much as I like the mobile version I really don’t want to kill my battery.
sounds about right from my personal experience. 40% of devs actually go out of their way to carefully design the lighting around it, and tweak lighting resolutions to get acceptable frame rates. the other 60% throw it in for marketing.
Edit: alright i have watched this video more and have more detailed thoughts. Many are pointing out that HUB used somewhat cherry-picked samples in this case, and they have a history of presenting RT in an unfavorable light (no pun intended). Now that I am thinking about it, I can see that a few of their samples are cases where the RT lighting produces softer, more realistic shadows or reflections, but Steve says the non-RT image looks better because the shadows or reflections look “sharper”. Idk, they weren’t that egregious, but it does give a weird vibe.
Regardless, I hope people don’t look at this and go “wow I guess RT is pointless then!”. The title of the vid suggests that we’ve had 6 years of RT with little to show for it, but I think I disagree. Part of the problem is that AAA game dev times are LOOOOONG, and devs are using engines from before the RT renaissance that they are comfortable with using. Accordingly, they stick with lighting techniques that they are familiar with, rather than trying to learn a new workflow. Combine that with the fact that the majority of gamers are still using last-gen consoles or 1080ti’s, and so devs have to use the old method of lighting to ensure that they can reach a viable audience. In that case, RT is a bonus feature that requires extra work on top of building the pre-baked lighting model.
We’re starting to see more UE5 games with “software” RT from Lumen, and these look great and can run smoothly on current-gen consoles. But even if the difference can be hard to see, the point is that RT lighting lets devs automate lighting in a lot of cases where previously they had to hand-place every lighting source. So moving to an RT future will mean that dev costs will go down, and smaller teams will be able to produce more visually-stunning games. It’s just that we’re in this weird limbo right now, where devs don’t want to go to only RT because a majority of gamers won’t be able to play the game, but gamers don’t want to get next-gen consoles because to their eyes, the graphics look basically the same. And of course they do, because devs are destroying themselves to make the pre-baked lighting look almost as good as RT.
Good remakes are good, they must bring not only graphics, but game mechanics and balance, up to date. They must be better than the original in all aspects, or they lose out to nostalgia
Bad remakes are bad, and most remakes in this era are bad
As long as the .modern AAA game development scene is still incapable of making GOOD new games that at least match their old beloved titles, I’ll take the remakes of the old games instead.
As long as the .modern AAA game development scene is still incapable of making GOOD new games that at least match their old beloved titles, I’ll take the remakes of the old games instead.
What makes you think. They can do good remakes, if they can’t make good new games?
Remakes are valid if it’s been long enough since the initial release. The only thing that’s cringe is complaining about it online. If it doesn’t interest you buy something new? No one’s forcing you to buy this.
I wish he wouldn’t repeat the idea that Proton is acceptable to game devs and Linux users shouldn’t demand native games. I’m much closer to Nick’s (from Linux Experiment) idea: That these games work as long as a company like Valve pays for Proton. The day Valve stops is the day these Proton games start to rot. For archival, for our own history, and for actual games on Linux, we should want Linux native games.
The thing is, the “no tux no bucks” crowd doesn’t advocate for other people to say the same. The proton crowd is actively telling the “no tux no bucks” people to shut up, and it’s not very nice. We need a multitude of views to succeed in the long term as a community.
I maintain that Proton could be a gateway to open the Linux market and create a sufficient share of revenue that, if and when it is shutdown, it’s lucrative enough to make natively compatible games.
It’s a bit of a deadlock issue: Most Devs will only develop for Linux if they see there’s money to be made there and they can estimate it will be worth the effort. But we need games on Linux for that to happen.
Proton is a stop-gap solution to provide the latter and lower the barrier on both ends: I can play games on Linux and devs have an easier time shipping their games to a Linux audience. I hope long term, the major frameworks will feature defaults that allow devs to easily do so without relying on Steam, but until then, Proton is better than nothing.
This is fine. I don’t mind a diversity of opinion here. I agree that Proton is a stop-gap solution, and that most older games are going to need it, and newer AAA games are not going to support Linux all of a sudden.
However, I do think that we should continue to encourage developers to create native builds when they can. Indie devs tend to do this and it’s a pretty great experience. Not only that, it often enables playing on unusual devices such as SBCs. For example, UFO 50 was made in Gamemaker, which offers native Linux builds, and it’s already on Portmaster. You basically can’t do that with Proton.
My problem is calling people who want Linux native games misguided or wrong. I really don’t think that’s helpful.
I do think that we should continue to encourage developers to create native builds when they can
Yes
My problem is calling people who want Linux native games misguided or wrong. I really don’t think that’s helpful.
I’d prefer games to be compatible natively too, so I definitely count myself among them. I think it’s an issue of visibility, the usual “loud and visible minority”. A thousand calm “I would prefer games were natively compatible” just don’t stick out as much as one aggressive “Fuck every company that doesn’t make their games natively compatible, and fuck you for supporting them by buying their game”.
I just don’t think Proton is the worst thing to happen to Linux Gaming because it allows developers to target alternative platforms without having to actually support them. This is where my personal impression of “misguided” (again, probably a loud minority) native game advocates comes from: Platform Inertia works because people stick with the platforms holding things they like, and the things on those platforms stay there because their prime audience is there. If the extra effort (=cost) of supporting Linux doesn’t match a sufficient uptake (=revenue), profit-controlled companies won’t do it (as they can’t justify it to their shareholders).
This isn’t just an issue with the evil corpos, but with the whole system itself. Screaming at consumers to change their habits won’t make much of a dent either there. Compelling people to change rarely has lasting results, if any. Better to invite them over and make the switch attractive enough to break that inertia. Only then can we meaningfully challenge the status quo.
It comes down to strategy accounting for ideological passion, an understanding of social and economic dynamics and patience. By and large, I think many understand this. Proton may not be what we want, but it’s an ally in achieving our goal. When we get to the point where it’s no longer “Underdog Linux against the near monopoly of Windows”, we can push harder (and honestly, I don’t think Valve would be terribly upset if Proton became obsolete and saved them resources).
We shouldn’t stop asking for native builds, so long as we do it mindfully and respectfully.
youtu.be
Aktywne