CalcProgrammer1

CalcProgrammer1, 3 miesiące temu

I can understand a box with DisplayPort, USB, and power inputs as very few desktop PCs actually have a video- and power delivery-capable USB C port. I cannot understand the lack of controller features and HDR.

CalcProgrammer1, 4 miesiące temu

The main issue with new Macs is that they use ARM processors and most games, even for Mac, were made for x86 processors. Minecraft works fine as it is CPU-independent Java code, but you aren’t going to have access to a wide library like you do with Linux. I think there have been efforts to game on Wine with Mac but it will likely require x86 CPU emulation through Rosetta 2, possibly slowing things down. I remember I got Skyrim to run on my Mac Mini M1 somehow but it wasn’t a good experience.

CalcProgrammer1, 4 miesiące temu

Ooh, this looks pretty nice. I’ll have to give Whisky a try just to see how games can run on my M1 Mac Mini. I have it set up as a TV PC and I usually just connect a Linux PC or Steam Deck to game on the TV. If I could run Windows games on it that’d be great.

CalcProgrammer1, 4 miesiące temu

Watched this the other day, great documentary! I played Oregon Trail 2 in school in the 90’s and we ended up getting it for our home PC. Nice to learn the history behind the game in such detail.

CalcProgrammer1, 6 miesięcy temu

Cloud gaming is a plague. More fuel for the “you will own nothing and be happy” camp. Let it die. GeForce Now was at least one of the better options since you just use their servers to play games from your owned library, but the whole concept is a plague nonetheless. Let streaming nonsense die. Streaming from your own PC is the only streaming solution that doesn’t exist to weaken consumer ownership of their gaming experience.

CalcProgrammer1, 7 miesięcy temu

I started using gyro on the Steam Deck recently. It is pretty good for fine tuning your aim. I have been playing Overwatch with it and while nowhere near keyboard and mouse, it’s noticeably better than gamepad alone. I can still only play a select few characters with it though.

CalcProgrammer1, 10 miesięcy temu

First person shooter or third person game where aim is important, has to be keyboard and mouse. Pretty much anything involvong driving a vehicle, gamepad is better. In games like GTA I often use both, switching as necessary. Mostly I play FPS games though so KB+M is my most used input method. Some console-focused FPS games such as Halo I’ll play on controller if it’s all that is available, such as with the Steam Deck.

CalcProgrammer1, 11 miesięcy temu

Sucks for the low level employees losing their jobs, but I can’t possibly feel bad about Epic losing money. Garbage company that needs to lose their grip on the industry after the shit they pulled with Epic Game Store and buying up games/studios just to delist their games from Steam, axe the Linux support, and make them exclusives on the worst platform in gaming.

CalcProgrammer1, 11 miesięcy temu

Intel A770 with stable mesa drivers, can get around 100-130fps mid settings at 4K in CS2, but got 200+ solid and just ran vsync on at 144Hz 4K very high settings in CSGO. Maybe it’s just the Linux build (which notably received zero public beta testing) but my friend said the Windows version was lower frames on his AMD 580 than CSGO too.

CalcProgrammer1, 11 miesięcy temu

Some of the other maps got significant layout changes. Dust 2 remains the same because dust 2. If they changed the layout on that map I’m sure they would get a lot of angry competitive players.

CalcProgrammer1, 11 miesięcy temu

It’s the same listing, CS:GO just updated to CS2. Reusing the listing meant the game auto updated.

CalcProgrammer1, 11 miesięcy temu

Pretty well overall. Performance is pretty solid on most games I play now, VRR is fixed finally, and I don’t get graphical glitches. I bought it a month or so after it came out and it was rough in the beginning, lots of crashes and glitches.

CalcProgrammer1, 11 miesięcy temu

More like Disney releasing Mickey Mouse fan art without crediting the artist.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

Of course, it was a bait tactic to get subscriber count up. Subscription services are cancer, they use cheap tactics to grow rapidly and then cut them off once enough people are hooked. This was an inevitability.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

Now they need to just not sell out to a soulless greed factory to beat BioWare at their own game. If EA comes knocking the only correct answer is to tell them to fuck off.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

If they do this, they better realize that they’re siding with corporate greed and betraying those who supported them and bought their games up to that point. Selling out to a greed factory is betrayal, plain and simple. Trading your integrity for greed.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

They already refuse to fix their EAC so that the game can run on Linux so I can’t not play their game any more than I already do. I played Paladins briefly when Overwatch was having its China drama and enjoyed it, but I’m done booting Windows to play games.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

Paladins doesn’t, the anti-cheat kicks you out if you play anything other than the tutorial.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I have a ROG Ally and a Steam Deck. The Steam Deck experience is miles ahead. Windows is such a limitation on these handheld devices (and dare I say PC gaming in general). SteamOS is the real MVP behind the Steam Deck, it makes everything feel seamless.

The Ally feels like a crappy ASUS launcher stapled on top of an unoptimized Windows desktop, since that’s exactly what it is.

Also, the ASUS ROG Ally controls are nowhere near as nice as the Deck’s. The Deck sticks feel better. The touchpads allow for mouse control.

Get the Deck.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

Hopefully Microsoft fades into irrelevance. I’m glad the Steam Deck is doing something about Microsoft’s control over the PC gaming market. I’m also glad Microsoft is losing in the handheld gaming PC experience. Let Windows die already, it’s long overdue (especially given the continued and intensifying enshittification of the OS every release cycle).

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

Hopefully this “you will own nothing and be happy” BS also fades into irrelevance. I hate how everything has to be a subscription these days. No. Just NO.

I refuse to move to subscription based platforms. It’s anti-consumer lock-in. Unfortunately, right now, gamepass is cheap because they’re still in the growth phase and need a compelling product to get people to switch from buying their games to subscribing. However, believe me, in time the enshittification will come. What subscription-based platform hasn’t once it captured the market?

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

That’s exactly the point though. Until they corner the market and start “deprecating” actual game sales entirely, they have to keep gamepass appealing. If they get to the point where enough people have adopted gamepass that they can stop selling games outright, then they’re free to raise the prices all they want. What are you going to do about it, buy the games instead? Not an option anymore. Buy the games, keep your rights as a consumer.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

Fuck no, moving to a console is the opposite of consumer freedom lol. Steam seems to be the levelest of heads in the gaming space, making an open platform OS and “console” and not tying people into nasty subscriptions to be able to play their games. Plus, regular sales with usually quite good discounts. While they still offer DRM and allow it on their store, they have plenty of DRM-free offerings and don’t discourage you from running third party games/launchers on their machine.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I really bought the ROG Ally to experiment with Linux on it. I think it is getting there. I have Arch Linux with chimera kernel on mine as well as gamescope-session which allows it to function very similarly to the Steam Deck, but at the moment it seems TDP control isn’t working so games don’t run as well as they should. I also can’t get the ROG button to work as a Steam button even though that should be working according to ChimeraOS. I wanted Arch because it allows for dual booting vs. Chimera which does not, as well as for development purposes. I think the hardware of the Ally is solid, though I still hold that the Deck’s controls are much better. Once the Ally is better supported on Linux I think it would be a better option, as I refuse to use Windows anymore except for testing/reverse engineering purposes.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

The Steam Deck really blurs the lines between PC and console. Modern consoles use AMD64/Radeon hardware and at least the Xbox consoles use a modified Windows OS. The Steam Deck uses AMD64/Radeon hardware and a modified Linux OS. Both feature a controller-focused user interface centered around gaming.

If you exclude the Steam Deck from the definition of “console” then a console is defined by its restrictive nature and limited selection of games.

If you include the Steam Deck in the definition of “console” then a console is defined by its controller-friendly and gaming-first design (as opposed to a general purpose PC).

I feel both definitions have merit.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I played it all weekend on my Steam Deck with no issues. I played it handheld for a while and docked on my TV for a while.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I feel like this is a modernized definition of “console”. The earliest consoles distinguished themselves from the computers of the time by being gaming-first, not by being restrictive and closed off. Things that defined a console were not coming with a keyboard or mouse, connecting primarily to a television rather than a monitor, and using a joystick or gamepad for input.

There were a lot of instances of third party published games for consoles in the past, whether officially licensed or unofficial, approved or unapproved. The online service definition ignores half of the console generations in video gaming history. There were a lot of unlicensed/3rd party games published for the 8-bit and 16-bit era consoles (and yes, some of those had to bypass security chips, but I don’t think all of them did).

I think in some ways the Steam Deck is a return to form of these earlier machines, but in a modern way (and handheld). Valve’s openness isn’t a good reason to not consider the Steam Deck a console. I fully agree that it is a PC, but I feel like it fits both definitions in the best way possible.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I wasn’t referring to piracy, I was referring to unofficial releases. Think Wisdom Tree and their line of Bible Games for the NES/SNES (these are pretty well covered by YouTube creators which is why I mention them as an example). Also, some of the early consoles did have non-gaming uses. I believe there was a version of BASIC for the Atari 2600. There were several planned online communication systems for various early consoles. There was the “Work Boy” accessory for the Game Boy that turned it into a digital assistant/organizer. There were officially licensed cooking “games” for the Nintendo DS that were more of recipe collections than actual games. And you touched on media, which was another thing consoles did outside of gaming since CD drives became used on consoles. Wii Fit was more of a fitness accessory than it was a game.

Pretty much the only thing that separates PC from console in your definition is whether you can run your own code on it. I don’t disagree that being able to run your own code on a machine is a huge benefit, but do you consider the iPhone a console? What about the Amazon Echo Show? Smart fridge? These have the locked down ecosystems of consoles but aren’t gaming-first. I would say no, they are not consoles and I’m sure you would agree.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

If you have to panic because a competitor makes a good game maybe you should reconsider why you’re a game developer in the first place. If it’s not to make the best games you can make, you shouldn’t be a game developer. I’m guessing the developers panicking aren’t the ones who pour their heart and soul into every game they make.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

The ultimate enshittification speedrun

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I’d like to ask…why are publishers even required anymore? Games don’t need physical releases anymore. You don’t need a publisher to host a zip file on a web server. Storefronts let indie developers self-publish so why do the big names still fall for the publishers who exist only to enshittify gaming anymore? They bring negative value to the industry.

CalcProgrammer1, rok temu

I tried to play on Vulkan with my Arc A770 (Arch Linux) and it just black screened. With DX11 it played at around 60fps with VRR (dips down to the 50s) at 1440p.