cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/24694356

This video is how I gutted my already modified old Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS joystick of my ViperPit and made it work again with the help of an Arduino Pro Micro. This flight stick (and also the other peripherals) do belong in a museum but where’s the fun in that? I modified it and now it’s a generic USB joystick that works on any recent system. I focus mostly on the 5x5 button matrix since this is the hardest part to understand. In the end are a few minutes of playing X4 Foundations with it to give it a good test run. Now it just needs some oil for the creaking 😅

https://makertube.net/w/qrqqZLr2QvJFjCwyNzzAmp / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYiPFDpHwmc

Hello there, gamers!

Ever since the handheld boom since 2022, I wanted to use one because of the concept; play any game anywhere and without the annoyances of a PC. I bought a Steam Deck OLED earlier this year, but because of personal reasons I am now using an ROG Ally (Got it at a huge discount) . This is my experience of using the device for over 3 weeks now.

Disclaimer: I am a Linux user (Left Windows in 2016) and I don't play games which require anti-cheats, so this post might seem biased. However, I'll try to be as much factual as possible. I'll list the pros and cons of both the OSs as per my personal experience.

The Windows experience

There is nothing new to say, everyone knows the first bootup process. Enter your mandatory Microsoft account to access the device. I know there are workarounds for a local account but I didn't want to jinx it. You get greeted with Armory Crate which shows how to manage your device.

Positives with Windows on the ROG Ally

• Launch any game with no restrictions. It's just a Windows PC.
• Nearly everything works out of the box (Not everything though)
• Asus's Armory Crate (AC) is decent at what it does
• Asus's BIOS is very well made
• AMD's software center offers lots of options regarding graphical fidelity

Annoyances with Windows on the ROG Ally

• [major] The OS is not controller-centric at all, this is probably my main gripe about the device.
  • A user buys a handheld and expects it to behave like a handheld.
  • Steam's big picture mode helps but it's severely restricted in terms of capabilities.
• [major] Certain games (usually older) do not install smoothly on the device.
  • You have to manually tinker to get it working.
  • Tinkering on a touch-screen device is not a fun experience.
• [major] Game launchers other than Steam do not support a controller OOTB.
  • GOG Galaxy/Amazon Games does not support
  • I did not try Epic, but the last I heard it also does not support a controller.
• [major] No central hub to control all system/graphical settings.
  • You have to switch between multiple applications. You need to update Windows/AC drivers/MyAsus separately.
• [major] The Windows onscreen keyboard interferes with the Steam onscreen keyboard.
  • This happens most of the time.
  • I can't configure the Windows keyboard
  • We have AI baked into Windows and it can't even detect if there is an existing onscreen keyboard.
• [minor] There is no cohesive design among the different components of the system.
  • I remember hearing about Microsoft's Fluent design framework several years back but it seems like app developers have not adhered to it.
  • It's quite jarring to switch from the Windows interface to AC, MyAsus center, AMD Software Center
  • Other than AC, none of the core system components support controllers.
• [minor] Because of how application windows and AC appear on top of each other, the game window or AC sometimes lose focus and it feels like the interface has frozen.
  • When this keeps on occurring multiple times it becomes quite annoying.
  • You need to manually tap on the window to get the focus back on the window you want.
• [minor] People recommend using Playnite to manage games from different launchers.
  • The idea seems good in theory, until you find out it requires you to install all the launchers anyway.
  • The only serious advantage is that you can launch the game using a controller.
• [very minor] You can't turn off the RGB permanently which is persistent across a reboot.
  • Note: It's possible that I'm dumb and did not fiddle with the settings enough.
  • I fixed it (hacky fix) by setting the RGB color to black.

Overall, the ROG Ally with Windows is not a pickup-and-play device. I felt like I just bought a Windows PC with a touch-screen instead of a handheld. Let me iterate; I'm not 'anti-touch screen' but it should not be a core requirement of the UX. Using the touch-screen once a while is fine. If you are forcing the user to use the touchscreen for non-gaming/non-essential reasons, you have failed. Some of the annoyances vanish if I'm using a keyboard/mouse, but then it just becomes a PC (PSA: This is supposed to be a handheld, not a PC. If I wanted a portable gaming PC, I would have got a laptop).

If you notice carefully, I didn't even talk about Windows telemetry, Copilot, Recall, mandatory Microsoft account, ads baked into Windows, nagging by Edge, and other issues because an average gamer doesn't care about it. I just wanted to focus upon how Windows performs as an OS for handheld gaming.

Moving over to Bazzite

I used Windows for a week but I grew tired of it. I don't want to sound dramatic but gaming sessions had me go like "here we go tinkering again". I do testing and tinkering at work already, I don't want to do it at home again. So I decided to just format everything and install Bazzite on it. I saw that Bazzite has a growing community and Valve has no update on when they will release SteamOS for the ROG Ally. Bazzite it not perfect, but it does a way better job compared to Windows.

Annoyances with Bazzite

• [major] Some SteamOS features not yet available OOTB (Finer TDP/fan controls)
• [major] Big picture mode does not support remote viewing/streaming (It was crashing for me)
• [minor] Loss of focus between webpage and the game, but this happens very rarely.
• [minor] Bazzite offers Xbox, Steam and PS5 controller. However, it's not clear (in Handheld daemon) which controller should one use for the best experience. I understood that PS5 needs to be used in order to use gyro.
• [minor] No support for AMD's fluid motion frames.
• [minor] No support for the fingerprint sensor
• [minor] The installation process requires a physical keyboard to be connected to the Ally if secure boot is enabled. Either it was not mentioned in the installation guide or I'm too dumb to understand instructions.
• [very minor] The installation wizard requires interaction with a touch screen and the buttons are very tiny.
• [very minor] Slight interface lag when using the quick access shortcuts (75 ms instead of 25 ms)
• [very minor] Bootup process is slightly slower compared to SteamOS
• [very minor] Buying games through Heroic still needs touchscreen (Launching does not require the touchscreen)
• [very minor] There is no mention of how to view the Bazzite shortcuts (It can be viewed but requires minor tinkering).
• [very minor] Bazzite does not support the screenshot shortcut OOTB. I had to adjust some settings to get it working (No, I did not use the terminal). The only time I had to use the terminal was for installing SimpleDeckyTDP which was just a single command.

However, most of the cons mentioned above are explicitly stated by the Bazzite team in the FAQ. It's because of a device limitation or a functionality tied to the firmware which is not yet available on Linux, so I can't really blame them. On the other hand, all the major annoyances that I had with Windows are fixed in Bazzite.

Major positives of Bazzite

• Right after the installation, it offers a simple welcome screen which recommends some helpful applications.
• Bazzite recommends using the Heroic launcher. I'm using Epic/GOG/Amazon games through Heroic and never once did I see any of those launchers during gameplay. This is a core requirement for a handheld device. I don't want to tap at unnecessary screens to start the game.
• Decky Loader plugin manager => manage your system and increase the functionality of your system using the controller. I believe Decky Loader is missing on Windows
• Proton => All the tinkering required to get a game working is done in the background by Valve. The user doesn't have to tinker. I am a bit shocked that I have to tinker less in Linux compared to Windows to get games working. Old-school Linux users know this was not the case a decade back.

By the way, Bazzite has a fully fledged desktop interface but it needs to be switched on manually. This separation is essential in making the user feel like they are now exiting gaming mode. On Windows, you are always in desktop-mode. I have to admit, I was spoiled by SteamOS because of which the above mentioned points affect me so much compared to an average Windows gamer. Also, the SteamOS experience is even more polished than Bazzite.

Conclusion

Listen, I am not trying to say "Window bad". I want the Windows folks to know what they are missing from a gaming UX perspective. You should really put the pressure on Microsoft to fix these issues. Windows users should try the SteamOS/Bazzite interface (Not Steam Big Picture mode. It's not the same) once to understand what a modern day gaming interface should look and feel like.

Image source: TechDweeb

Edit: Improved formatting.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/18077287

Artist Links

• Linktree

Invidious, an alternative YouTube client in the browser without using YouTube directly (more private): https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=h9Z4oGN89MU

I recommend watching or listen this video at x1.4 playback speed. If you can't set the speed to this value, then at least watch at x1.25.

Description:

Graphics Cards can run some of the most incredible video games, but how many calculations do they perform every single second? Well, some of the most advanced graphics perform 36 Trillion calculations or more every single second. But how can a single device manage these tens of trillions of calculations? In this video, we explore the architecture inside the 3090 graphics card and the GA102 GPU chip architecture.

Note: We chose to feature the 30 series of GPUs because, to create accurate 3D models, we had to tear down a 3090 GPU rather destructively. We typically select a slightly older model because we're able to find broken components on eBay. If you're wondering, the 4090 can perform 82.58 trillion calculations a second, and then we're sure the 5090 will be even more.

Table of Contents:

00:00 - How many calculations do Graphics Cards Perform?
02:15 - The Difference between GPUs and CPUs?
04:56 - GPU GA102 Architecture
06:59 - GPU GA102 Manufacturing
08:48 - CUDA Core Design
11:09 - Graphics Cards Components
12:04 - Graphics Memory GDDR6X GDDR7
15:11 - All about Micron
16:51 - Single Instruction Multiple Data Architecture
17:49 - Why GPUs run Video Game Graphics, Object Transformations
20:53 - Thread Architecture
23:31 - Help Branch Education Out!
24:29 - Bitcoin Mining
26:50 - Tensor Cores
27:58 - Outro

Game: https://store.steampowered.com/app/346010/Besiege/

An amazing update for a game from 2020 (which was years in Early Access before). It's sort of puzzle game with building mechanics and a physics engine. Now they add a level editor for free! Plus ton of new content and bug fixes off course.

Hello Everyone!

Today we’ve released another major update, focussed around Besiege’s level editor, coupled with some quality of life features/changes. The update adds 120+ new objects (including complex objects for the first time, like the Galleon ship), a new camera mode for better machine tracking in tight spaces, improvements to multiplayer and other improvements & fixes!

Level Editor

The core focus of this update was adding additional objects to the level editor and bringing some of the more complex, heavily requested items to it as well! During this process we felt the object categories could benefit from some reorganisation and we also spent time improving thumbnails to make objects easier to find & understand.

... (lot of stuff) ...

Additional Features

To start with, we’ve got a new option for Besiege’s camera that prevents it from passing through large objects and terrain. This means you can now more easily control your machine near large terrain features, in tight spaces, or even in structures created in the level editor.

... (lot of stuff) ...

I've recently seen a lot of videos from Hearthstone creators about the game The Bazaar created by an ex-hearthstone creator. They are selling closed beta access for around $30 for the basic pack, which gives you and a friend access to the game, as well as enough premium currency to unlock the three currently available heroes.

The value proposition isn't terrible in the gaming industry right now. Open beta is supposed to start in December (and totally check the game out. It looks pretty fun!) I'm just so tired of competent QA people being replaced with pay for early access to a "free" game.

The monetization of the game is very odd, but let's discuss how the monetization of a game affects what the developers are incentivised to put effort into. A free to play game is often monetized, similar to League of Legends, mostly through cosmetic overrides for in-game models. This is why most LoL patch notes are new champions that come out with a few skins, new skins for Lux and Ezreal, I mean existing champions. The incentive for the developers is to only make new skins, and on top of that, only new skins for very popular champions.

The Bazaar has a casual mode where if you get ten wins (like Hearthstone Arena), you get a ticket to play a game of ranked mode. You also get one free ranked ticket every day that is use-it-or-lose-it. And if you get enough wins in a ranked run, you are rewarded with treasure chests, which will contain a cosmetic.

The plan is for these cosmetic items to be tradable to other players. For a free to play game, this sounds like a paradise for botting. But also having a "ranked" mode just be the normal mode, but with the possibility of rewards is very silly to me in general. But having a ranked queue that costs money seems terrible. The incentive is for the developers to funnel as many people into paying for ranked runs as possible, but the rewards will decrease in value the more people receive them.

I don't have access to the game due to not wanting to spend on beta testing the game so close to Brighter Shores coming out and Oldschool Runescape Leagues later this month. But I'm not sure I would continue to play this game, considering I don't expect the game to succeed.

What other free to play games have monetization models that incentivise the devs to create the best possible gaming experience for the users? Or is that not sustainable in our current market?

Alternative Invidious client (in browser), to watch this YouTube video without using YouTube directly: https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=t9xv0g5VfwU

Video description:

It feels like every game has currencies, battlepasses, seasons, rotating shops, or loot boxes. All of them manipulating you to play more, and to pay more. So how do we fix it?

I've been playing a tonnnn more UFO 50. Beat Vainger, started Mini and Max (absolutely amazing). Also did the whole meta game secret thing to the end which was super fun!

Looks like owner of Ryujinx changed and now is developed by someone else? The top contributor for this is gdkchan, the previous owner and main developer. So this is not simply a fork, but changing ownership of the original repository. Is that right? It makes sense, because what happened previously is that gdkchan got a message (or visit) from Nintendo to stop working on the emulator. That's all. There was no cease and desist to the entire project, or anything like that (unlike with Yuzu).

Edit: Another hint that this is the original repository is, that a message is displayed that I have blocked a certain user who contributed to this repository. This message does not popup on any of the forks.

Edit 2.0: I may have been wrong: https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/transferring-a-repository

If the transferred repository has any forks, then those forks will remain associated with the repository after the transfer is complete.

And looking in the list of forks, the oldest one seem to be 1 month old or so.

Consider watching this video with FreeTube, a nifty open-source program that lets you watch YouTube videos without Google spying on your viewing habits!

Combined with Libredirect, which automatically opens youtube links in Freetube, it becomes really slick and effortless to use.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/10712866

Artist's Website

There's no magazine on any instance that I see of such a community on the topic matter. To anyone not familiar, a patient gamer is someone who is immune to FOMO, doesn't get caught up or tied up with current modern gaming. Someone who doesn't care that they've beaten a game from 1996 and here it is 2024. Someone who doesn't care that they're still playing games 40, 20 or even 5 years ago on the present day.

I would personally say that I am. I don't have a level of disposable income where I'm throwing down on buying games. I've spent 10 years between 2011 and 2021 wheeling and dealing on game sales. So much that I've piled on over 1,000+ games combined between GOG, Steam, Battle.net and Epic Games.

I do more often than not, play games from so long ago than I do modern games. I'm at a stage in my life where I am noticeably slowing down on gaming in general, I am also finding myself more comforted in what I play and I again can't simply just keep buying newer games. I also don't really care about buying newer games, the time of the present is rich with game sales all day, everyday.

There will always be a time later to buy a game that is ripened for a good sale. So I don't have to worry at all.

A brand new trailer for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2! World of Darkness says that it will release in the first half of 2025. No specific date yet.

Consider watching this video with FreeTube, a nifty open-source program that lets you watch YouTube videos without Google spying on your viewing habits!

Combined with Libredirect, which automatically opens youtube links in Freetube, it becomes really slick and effortless to use.

Previous video comparing visual differences (with a screenshot of the summary table and a very good comment on the whole topic by coyotino):

https://beehaw.org/post/16695979

Radeon 7900 XTX performance cost of good RT configurations at 4K:

https://i.imgur.com/x1qpE92.png

Geforce 4090 performance cost of good RT configurations at 4K:

https://i.imgur.com/kVhNWiY.png

Comparison:

https://i.imgur.com/gOJbFYM.png

Full text:

It's called Champions Tactics and it sure looks like...something.

Three years ago, Ubisoft promised it would start making its own blockchain games. Now it appears to have done it, having stealth-launched a full-blown web3 game last week called Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles on PC.

Champions Tactics is billed as a "PVP tactical RPG game on PC", and is both developed and published by Ubisoft. It involves collectible figurines of various warriors from the in-game fantasy world of Grimoria, which players assemble into squads of three and then battle in turn-based combat that looks oddly reminscent of Darkest Dungeon, of all things. It's not evident from the trailer that this is a web3 game at all, but a quick glance at the game's website or even its official X/Twitter page reveals this immediately.

The web3 comes into play as a method of collecting figurines to battle with. When you first start the game, you're given some temporary figurines to play with, but you'll eventually need to either purchase actual figurines, aka NFTs, from other players using either in-game gold or cryptocurrency, or craft your own using the "Forge" system which also requires either in-game currency or crypto. At the time of this piece, five days after launch, the in-game marketplace has figurines for sale ranging from around $7 to a whopping $63k for something called a "Swift Zealot". That said, just because a figurine is listed for that much doesn't mean people are paying that much. The next-highest listed champion currently runs around $25k, and while a handful more cost thousands the high-end stuff mostly appears to be capping around $335.

Champions Tactics is free to download, though you have to have a Ubisoft account and a supported blockchain wallet to actually play it. While it appears you can technically play the game entirely for free without ever engaging with NFTs using in-game currency, the viability of this strategy is likely going to be dependent on how the prices for actually powerful characters fluctuates over the game's lifespan. It's a PvP game, with no campaign and no PvE beyond a "Training" mode, so free-to-play players will inevitably be at the mercy of people willing to engage with the NFT marketplace and spend real money to buy or forge the absolute best champions — a real pay-to-win dilemma.

One other limiting factor in playing Champions Tactics is its age rating. Ubisoft lists the game as Adults Only, and restricts players who have not confirmed they are 18 or older from playing. Oddly, while Ubisoft is using the ESRB's rating category, Champions Tactics doesn't appear in the ESRB's online database listing all games with ratings and why those ratings were issued. IGN has reached out to the ESRB for comment and clarity on what's happening here.

Despite the fact that Ubisoft is doing basically exactly what it said it was going to do, it seems odd that the company is going all-in on web3 like this now. Whatever gamer enthusiasm for NFTs and blockchain there was in 2021 has died down significantly, with companies like Mojang and Valve outright rejecting them, EA backpedaling on an initial enthusiasm, Sega determining it's boring, and GameStop's own efforts outright failing. Even Ubisoft's own past efforts with NFTs have largely failed to resonate and subsequently gone quiet.

All of which maybe explains why Ubisoft has been, not necessarily secretive, but not exactly loud about this game in front of what most would consider mainstream gaming audiences. Champions Tactics was announced back in June of 2023 and various news items have floated out over the last year about its progress, largely reported at outlets focused on web3 and NFT news. But it wasn't exactly headlining with this game at Ubisoft Forward or anything.

Our shared goal is to explore new ways to play alongside bringing more value to players based on empowerment and ownership

Even the companies who are still pushing the technology have yet to answer ongoing concerns about its frequent use in and as scams, its potentially massive environmental impact, and perhaps most critically for gaming, how blockchain technology is good or useful for video games in the first place. Ubisoft, to its credit, has expressed concerns before about the environmental impact of NFTs, and the blockchain that Champions Tactics uses (Oasys) claims to be "environmentally friendly". But fundamentally, Ubisoft's perspective on the tech seems surprisingly bullish; the vice president of its Strategic Innovation Lab seems to think gamers just "don't get it." Whether or not they can be made to "get it" via games like Champions Tactics remains to be seen.

We reached out to Ubisoft for comment on the game ahead of this piece's publication. We asked them for any information on the Adults Only rating and its absence from the ESRB website, as well as for general comment on why Ubisoft is continuing to pursue a web3 strategy and if it intends to continue to do so in the future. Francois Bodson, studio director at Ubisoft Paris, responded as follows:

The team inside the Ubisoft Paris studio developing Champions Tactics: Grimoria Chronicles partnered with Ubisoft’s Strategic Innovation Lab and Oasys to ensure that our use of blockchain was done in service of delivering new and innovative gaming experiences for our players. Our shared goal is to explore new ways to play alongside bringing more value to players based on empowerment and ownership. Champions Tactics offers deep strategic gameplay featuring unique in-game assets and several exciting innovations. These include millions of procedurally generated figurines, each with distinct stats, assets shaped directly by players' choices, and an open marketplace letting players compose their teams on a peer-to-peer basis —much like a physical trading card game. For months, we have collaborated closely with our community through events and beta phases to build and refine Champions Tactics. We’re excited to keep expanding and enhancing the experience together.

Ubisoft as a whole has been having a rough several years, weathering a steady cadence of game delays, three rounds of layoffs in the last year, a series of AAA releases failing to meet expectations, and general investor frustration. The company recently announced it was disbanding the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, shifting the team to work on Beyond Good and Evil 2 (a game announced in 2008), and exploring a new Rayman game that would involve series creator Michel Ancel, who departed Ubisoft amid reports (which he denied) he contributed to a toxic workplace at the company. Ubisoft will report its quarterly earnings this Wednesday.