An Interview with Ben Romer, Ubuntu Developer
Turns out one of my followers on Mastodon is a developer for Ubuntu/Canonical. I had the pleasure of interviewing what he does for Ubuntu – he’s one of the kernel developers (Livepatch – he’ll explain what that is). It’s a pretty interesting interview, as he explains the controversy behind Snaps, why Ubuntu moved on from Unity to GNOME a few years ago, what’s going on with the Mir display server, and what we can look forward to in regards to the gaming aspect on Ubuntu.
Play Sonic Adventure 2 in HD - Modding Guide
Sonic Adventure 2 – the cult classic. Fans have gotten together to make the game moddable. From an extended Chao World, to the ability to play as Super Sonic or Super Shadow, to revamped cutscenes, it’s amazing to see what the modding community has been able to accomplish to make a great game even greater.
But for today’s guide, we’ll be focusing on giving the game a modern HD look. Not only are the character models replaced with more modern-looking ones, but the mod also contains a sound redesign.
Steam Deck Client Beta Adds Search Tab for Controller Layout, Fixes Library Not Showing Up when Family View is Enabled (Plus Stable and Preview SteamOS Updates)
When browsing controller profiles on the Deck, you can now search for them with today’s (or yesterday’s?) Deck client update (on beta and preview branches). Your library should now properly load if you have Family View enabled. More buttons have been added to the list of inputs “that skip the BPM/Deck start up animations.” A regression was fixed regarding Yaw and Roll combined sliders. Negative contribution from either one is now respected.
NVIDIA to Retire GameStream in February 2023
A bit of sad news. NVIDIA is apparently shutting down its GameStream service sometime in February next year. Despite all the crap I give to NVIDIA, their GameStream service is excellent. It arguably has the best streaming quality with the least amount of latency, and even though the company essentially locks the service behind GeForce Experience, the community has come up with open-source alternatives – such as Sunshine – to get the host to run outside of Windows and NVIDIA GPUs.
JSAUX Announces ModCase – The Project Killswitch Killer
So JSAUX had been concocting an idea after another company stole their idea of having an RGB dock. Well, today they’ve unveiled what exactly they’ve been working on – the ModCase.
It’s a modular case that seems to be similar to what the Project Killswitch and the DeckMate were offering – the ability to customize what you want to accessorize on your Steam Deck.
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GE-Proton7-43 Fixes Garbled Audio with Immortals: Fenyx Rising, Allows Hairworks on The Witcher 3
Immortals: Fenyx Rising came to Steam a few days ago. However, it has evidently faced quite a few issues for both Steam Desk and Linux desktop users. Namely, the occasional pop-up of the Ubisoft Connect overlay, the keyboard and mouse configuration being applied by default when using a gamepad, garbled audio, and black line flickering on the grass rendering.
Fortunately, GE-Proton is here to once again save the day. Well, at least, partly.
Weekly News Recap (Steam in Tesla, The Verge Interview with Valve, Slippi Ranked)
Steam Deck The Verge did an interesting interview with Pierre-Loup Griffais and Lawrence Yang regarding Steam Deck 2, Steam Controller 2, and their thoughts on the 6800U Crisis Core remake works great Tuesday’s client update (beta) fixes OSK on game exit and adds support for the Armor-X Pro attachment Wednesday’s client update (beta) adds better UI scaling at higher resolutions and adds Xbox Elite/Switch Pro layout preview pages Thursday’s client update (beta) fixes gamepad focus issue on the Steam store, adds minor fixes to login UI layout SteamOS 3.
Valve Doesn’t Consider the AMD Ryzen 7 6800U As a Competitor to the Steam Deck (Plus Steam Controller 2 and Steam Deck 2 Plans)
The Verge recently conducted an interview with Valve’s Lawrence Yang and Pierre-Loup Griffais – arguably the two most vocal employees about the company’s handheld device that is the Steam Deck. I wanted to mention it because there was an interesting tidbit regarding AMD’s Ryzen 7 6800U APU, which is currently shipping in devices like the AOKZOE and the OneXPlayer Mini handhelds.
As I had alluded to in my Aya Neo 2 post, the 6800U is using Zen 3, RDNA 2 680M graphics, eight cores, and can clock up to 4.
Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune - An Excellent Metroidvania
Aside from the corny artwork, Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune is a great example of how a Metroidvania should get done right. It combines the 2D side-scrolling of both the Metroid series and the Castlevania series, and incorporates a lot of fighting elements as well. Furthermore, there’s some RPG at play here, as your character’s stats will increase after gaining enough experience from defeating monsters.
Frontier Hunter is the successor to Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial.
Steam Deck Client Beta Fixes Gamepad Focus Issue in Steam Store, Minor Layout Fixes to Login UI (Plus SteamOS Preview Update for OSK Graphics Driver Crash)
More, upon more, upon more fixes for the Steam Deck. This time around, the Steam store should no longer have any gamepad focus issues, and footer buttons should properly be displayed. In Desktop Mode, the login interface got some minor layout fixes. It shouldn’t stretch past the bottom of the window. Context menus should now work after closing the Update news dialog. Subbed workshop items should properly display now when “there were thousands of them.