sudotstar

I think their original intent back when Proton originally launched was to just show generic Linux compatibility on any titles if it worked with Proton and was approved by Valve. I’m not sure why they stopped doing that.

My hope, though I’m keeping my expectations low, is that since these supposed live-service games will be supposedly releasing alongside remakes of the original games the IP is based on, that if the remakes sell significantly better than the live service games it might hopefully inform better decision-making around them.

While they haven’t been controversy-free in terms of their monetization practices, Sega has released a slew of back-to-back AAA games: Persona 3 Reload, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, and Sonic Frontiers, that have generally been complete, single-purchase packages (with a few questionable omissions from base game moved to DLC that I’d consider “regular bad”, but not anywhere near the level of egregious monetization seen in most live-service games).

I think that’s the rub, in my theoretical scenario, Apple is not blocking the distribution or sale of iOS applications through third-party means, they’d enforce their existing restrictions on and power over building iOS applications in the first place. Developers would absolutely still be able to distribute unsigned applications - end user iOS devices would just be unable to install them.

It sounds ridiculous to me, and as I wrote earlier, it would be a clear violation of the spirit of the DMA, but I don’t see any reason why this scenario would not be technically possible for Apple to pull off.

I’m not too sure that these actions violate the letter of the law here, even though I agree that they’re 100% in violation of the spirit of the law.

It’s been some years since I’ve put the mobile development world behind me, in no small part because of Apple’s shenanigans, but the way I understand how this might work - Apple may be required to allow “iOS software” to be installed from third party stores, but software that runs on iOS must either be signed using a certificate that only allows installation in a developer or enterprise context (which require explicit and obvious user consent to that specific use case, and come with other restrictions such as the installation only lasting for a limited period of time), or through an “appstore” certificate that allows installation on any device, but the actual application package will need to go through Apple’s pipeline (where I believe it gets re-signed before final distribution on the App Store). All certificates, not just the appstore ones, are centrally managed by Apple and they do have the power to revoke, or refuse to renew, any of those certificates at-will.

If my understanding is correct (I’d appreciate if any up-to-date iOS devs could fact-check me), then Apple could introduce or maintain any restrictions they please on handling this final signing step, even if at the end of the day the resulting software is being handed back to developers to self-distribute, they can just refuse to sign the package at all, preventing installation on most consumer iOS devices, and to refuse to re-issue certificates to specific Apple developer accounts they deem in violation of their expected behavior. I haven’t read the implementation of the DMA in detail, nor am I a lawyer, so I’m not sure if there are provisions in place that would block either of these actions from Apple, but I do expect that there will be a long game of cat and mouse here as Apple and the EU continue to try and one-up the other’s actions.

My Deck and Linux desktop regularly have shader cache updates every few days, but they’re generally tiny and finish near-instantly. I’ve never seen the behavior here of needing to download multiple gigabytes of shaders daily (and I’m thankful for it, with the frustrating data cap I have from my ISP).

I can see the use case for someone who wants a single OS install on the Steam Deck that does gaming just about as well as SteamOS does, but has a more fleshed out desktop experience (or even just a different one). The linked article goes into detail on various desktop-focused developments within Bazzite that wouldn’t really make sense for Valve to prioritize in SteamOS itself.

I expect this is simply a case of “Valve Time” on that effort. Perhaps there’s a long-term path towards more “official” SteamOS on these devices, but if there’s any area where HoloISO diverges technically from SteamOS in a way that’s not reconcilable, that’ll be problematic for offering users a “seamless upgrade”.

Long-term, I think it would be slightly more harmful to Valve’s efforts if more manufacturers started standardizing around HoloISO, so I expect that this might be a motivating factor to speed up their efforts to bring official SteamOS to third-party devices.

I am very interested in the success of this device. I have, use, and love my Steam Deck, but my biggest hopes for this form factor in the future is it using generational CPU improvements to create a more diverse set of devices, rather than just chasing higher performance.

I don’t actually play many games on my Deck that toe the line on its performance limits, I prefer to play 2D and lighter 3D games on it, while leaving the “spectacle” games for a more powerful system outputting to a much larger display at a higher resolution. I would love long-term to have a more smaller, lightweight device for portable PC gaming, and I hope that increased diversity in the market, running Linux-based systems (even if it’s all just SteamOS) will help drive towards that. I think that the pipedreams of running x86 games on Linux on ARM on a really power-efficient device, even as unrealistic as they are, are far more likely to occur if there’s a healthy market of Linux based systems, than they would on Windows handhelds given the state of Windows on ARM, and on these devices in general.

If Valve is working with Ayaneo to get SteamOS shipped on these devices, then I imagine Valve would have some level of involvement on at least the software support side, even for things specific to the device. If Ayaneo is just like shipping by using one of the existing 3rd party SteamOS installers and not working with Valve at all, then yeah I expect things to be not as smooth sailing as the Deck.

This change is interesting. The process of creating parameterized blueprints looks a little tedious, but I’m pretty sure that’s just inherent to the idea in general and there isn’t much room to make it better, and I imagine the ease of using such blueprints that are e.g. downloaded from the internet is perfectly fine.

I play a lot of Factorio in multiplayer, with a group where not everyone has the same desire to make blueprints, and we in-general resist just downloading designs off the internet and try to do everything in-house. This leads to a lot of asymmetric gameplay, where e.g. I may design a blueprint and others will use them. I think this kind of change will work well overall for that (complex train systems are now a reality) but might come with the cost of the blueprint producer spending more time faffing around with the blueprint UI.

I love the DualShock 4 and DualSense controllers’ support on Linux, but I’m not a huge fan of the controllers themselves despite exclusively using the DS4 as my PC controller. I’m perfectly okay with the layout since I grew up on the PlayStation, and in fact prefer it to the mainstream Xbox/Nintendo options due to being the only controller to have a touchpad, and both gyro and analog triggers, but the abysmal battery life on the controllers has been a frustration for my couch PC gaming setup, my fairly old DS4 controllers barely last for more than 30 minutes on battery now. The biggest thing holding me back from buying a new DualSense to replace those controllers is the fact that it, too, has terrible battery life.

I’m hopeful that Valve’s desire to make a Steam Controller 2 pans out, as I expect that such a device will also provide stellar Linux support (or perhaps already does if it ends up reusing as much of the Steam Deck’s input setup as it can), and would hopefully offer much better battery life than Sony’s attempts.

I think this is a good change overall, especially for high DPI screens running at non-integer scaling. I think I personally prefer the older icons as I always run at 100% scaling on my displays and I prefer the “crisp” look of the 1px lines, but I think this is a necessary change to align Plasma with modern display trends.

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Only thing I can think of is that it hides from your friends if you’ve played the game an extreme amount of time immediately after purchasing it, though if you exit the 10 day period with close to 240 hours in the game that’s gonna show that off anyways.

I was aesthetically a fan of the Fossil watches, and was using a Fossil Sport (1st gen) for quite a while. Unfortunately the layers of proprietary-Fossil required software/watchfaces on top of the layers of proprietary-Google WearOS hampered the software experience a tiny bit, and the frankly poor hardware quality marred the experience significantly. My charging band coil in the watch completely dislodged itself (it appeared to be held in with glue), rendering the watch unusable.

Fossil’s customer support was excellent, replacing the device fully when this happened, though that was when that model was still on store shelves. I recently inquired about getting a replacement battery and was told I can just trade it in for 50% off a current-gen model, which while being far more generous an offer than I expected, still leaves me hesitant to upgrade to another device that suffers from the same problems and is in danger of being outright discontinued.

At this point I don’t really need/want a WearOS device specifically, and would actually prefer something that’s less tied to Google’s whims, the hardware OEM’s whims, and whatever the interplay is between those two companies. I’ve been eyeing more hobby-oriented projects like bangle.js or the PineTime smartwatch, but the fact that I’m even looking in that space shows that it’s become a device I would get for tinkering, not one I strictly “need”.

I’m a big fan of the series and would consider it to be my favorite JRPG series, not just for the story but because I enjoy the gameplay it offers as well.

It’s a fairly “cheap” series to try out and see if you’re into it. The entire series is a singular, continuous story, so the recommended place to start is Trails in the Sky First Chapter, which can be picked up fairly cheaply on Steam, especially during Steam sales. It’s not as long as future games in the series, and is fairly representative of the pacing and storytelling format that later games will follow (though it is considered one of the slowest-paced games in the series). Basically if you’re not a fan of Sky FC, you’re not likely to be a fan of the future games in the series either (especially given that the substantial improvements to gameplay over the series’ 20 year history likely won’t have much appeal to you).

There are also demos available for some of the newer games in the series (e.g. Trails of Cold Steel III), and while I would not recommend actually playing through those games out-of-order, they may serve as a quick/cheap way to see if the format of the games is right for you.

I will say that while the combat of the games is rarely very difficult, and the game provides difficulty modifiers to make it even easier if you’d like, that the combat system is still fairly fleshed out and quite good casually IMO, but if you’re really not into doing it even at easy difficulties, one option (PC exclusive) may be to download completed game saves and play through the games on New Game+ and completely trivialize the combat.

Thank you for your review, I think this is enough information for me to hold off on this game, potentially until a non-Switch release or some other updates.

I am a huge fan of the original DQM series. DQM2 (released as Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 in the West on GBC) is a game that I put in a lot of time into as a kid, and is a game I still regard today as one of the best experiences I have ever had in a monster catching game, or even most JRPGs in general. The balance between the game’s minimal-but-still-present story, the immense amount of post-game content (seemingly infinite randomly-generated worlds to explore and find new monsters in), as well as the incredibly in-depth monster breeding trees is, for me, the exact perfect balance I want out of a game and few others have really scratched that itch as well as DQM2 (mainline Dragon Quest IX is probably the closest I’ve gotten). While a lot of those mechanics, particularly the “randomly generated content” as well as the “deep” monster breeding trees, don’t really hold up to modern scrutiny and are put to shame by what hardware more powerful than the Game Boy is capable of, I haven’t yet found a more modern game that provides a better version of that specific experience.

The newer Dragon Quest Monsters games (I’ve played through Joker 1, and tried the definitive versions of Joker 2 and 3) haven’t really done it for me, and a big reason is just how “clunky” the games felt to play compared to the original. I was hoping this game going back to the “mainline” branding would also signify a return to DQM2’s seemingly infinite content, but that does not appear to be the case, and the atrocious performance of the game on Switch would probably just leave me reaching back for my GBC and DQM2 again.

On my Thinkpad 2in1, the behavior your desire is what I get. I’m on Fedora KDE (Kinoite) which pre-installs Maliit by default though, I’m not sure if it comes with some additional configuration.

In this case it’s referring to the fact that the OS is built upon the same containerization technology used on cloud platforms such as Kubernetes. As a marketing tool it’s a bit buzzwordy, but it’s not about running the core OS components outside of the physical machine here.

I’m curious to hear about yours and others’ experiences with containerizing Java applications in such environments. I used to work in a place that traditionally had such restrictions on JDK versions, but after the internal IT environment moved towards running applications within containers, either on Kubernetes or on public cloud platforms’ container runtimes, that restriction became unnecessary since the application would be shipped to production alongside its compatible JDK.

While there were still restrictions on exactly what JDK you could run for other reasons, such as security/stability, common developer experience, etc, it at least allowed teams to immediately adopt the newest LTS release (17 at the time I left) with little restriction.