Siri

2 hours ago, Gabe said:

Ooh, there's another Next Fest coming up? That's genuinely exciting!

Yep, on the 6th. Not long!

Zelda, probably still Demonschool and Snuffkin.

I'm slightly interested in Diablo IV, but the enjoyment of that game remains a gamble for a die-hard Path of Exile fan.

I'll probably be excited for the games I play during Next Fest starting next week. Demos are incredibly valuable!

I do want to give Project Zomboid a go, but I'm excessively time starved at the moment. Same with Kenshi (an equally massive survival RPG but it's samurai sword-swinging in a post-apocalyptic environment).

I'm still just plodding along with Supraland from the last Humble Choice, just in time to get dumpstered by this month's Humble Choice 

11 hours ago, deerokus said:

Pizza Tower probably deserves its own thread, it's like a lost classic SNES game. Amazing music. Looks like ren and stimpy mind.

Yeah, I played a bit more of the Sage 2019 demo last night. I think it's great, but I'm absolute shit at it and the bit where you have to escape is absolutely panic inducing even though you get plenty of time even when cack handed  

I'm hoping it's more the levels are slightly more advanced than what's in the actual game early on, bit like Neon White's Next Fest Demo (which gave you the first chapter, and then three or four single levels several chapters in where the crazy game stuff happens).

The actual play is playing something that's silly amounts of TDP for an hour or so, and then charge it while playing a 3w game.

Like New Vegas at 30fps.

Actually, fuck it, I'll just play New Vegas

2 minutes ago, T Pot said:

Depends what you’re playing. I’ve been hitting 6-8 hours in some games recently (best case obviously)

Yep, 2D and older 3D stuff that's native to PC (not really post-Dreamcast emulation) definitely chugs along for 6+ hours. I think it was showing 8 hours for PSO Blue Burst

And while games can run down the battery in an hour and a half, it's games you couldn't fathom on other portables. Hell, even most cheapy laptops.

Although I think my personal best was about 50 minutes of Generation Zero. That was, however, running at double the FPS of the Series S version. I'm impressed it didn't blow up in my hands 

Yeah, I didn't use KBM to set up XCloud either. I found it easy enough, outside of fluffing the spacing somewhere and all I needed to do was copy the thing exactly as it was presented instead of being clever.

In other news, I found out today that a Steam Next Fest is going to happen next week! Very exciting, I love downloading a bunch of brand new games to demo. Scratches that 90s demo disk itch.

Alright, after talking about buying Pizza Tower without actually playing it, I found the demo for Pizza Tower and played Pizza Tower.

https://pizzatowerguy.itch.io/pizza-tower-demo

Again, I have no experience in Wario Land games. Apparently it's a homage instead of a straight clone, but I wouldn't know.

What I do know after playing it is that it's pretty great. The rough Cartoon Network visuals look fantastic in motion, and it's so fucking fast for a precision platformer.

Apparently, there's a pricing error on the full game because the regional discount thing messed up and they can't change it for a month, but I'm going to blast through the whole demo this evening and just chuck money at the developers anyway.

Regarding the multiple PSP thing, My guess without seeing what's actually happening is that either the scraper is seeing two file formats at the same time which are in the same folder (like, idk, FFT.eboot and FFT.pbp I guess), and as a result making two entries - or you have two scrapers on for different emulators.

Have a look at what Steam ROM Manager is doing for PSP games. If there's more than one file extension, remove them in the field to the one file extension you know works when you press play on it. If there's multiple scrapers (I doubt this, as PPSSPP is really the only emulator worth a shit for PSP), turn it off.

And play Pizza Tower.

I know I'm not one to talk about things being complex because of my posts in this thread, but if you've got a spare half an hour to follow a guide it's fairly easy to get XCloud working and it's a decent experience on home wifi.

And, well, it's free to try. If you think it's crap, you can buy the game and you get the benefit of playing it without an internet connection. If you like it, it's a few bob saved.

That you can spend on Pizza Tower.

Even better - more free DLC is coming, and the theme is... Final Fantasy 7.

https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-7-dlc-coming-to-powerwash-simulator.

Cloud's Motorbike, Seventh Heaven and the Guard Scorpion.

35 minutes ago, Gotters said:

so you did, will take a read, ta

 

10m later - looks a ball ache

Some sacrifices have to be made for free Tales From Off-Peak City.

Did I mention the original Off-Peak is wild, rad, and totally free to play? And there's three other games from that creator that are equally weird and great, including one of my favourite games of last year, Betrayal at Club Low?

Yes? Well, I'm saying it again. There's a demo, too. Not for Off-Peak, though. Because it's free.

FREEEEEEEEEE

1 minute ago, Gotters said:

has anybody tried to get the Humble Choice library working on this ?

 

just realised as long as I'm subbed they got a library of stuff you can try out

Yes, I've done it. I'll find the guide when I'm home, but it's probably somewhere in this thread already because of Signals.

1 hour ago, Lorfarius said:

I don't bother with any of that, just click Play Euro Sim 2 and it works.

Looking into it, it reads like DX11 is the default for it, so maybe the other options are for when the game shits the bed.

But regardless, you'd have to be playing it in some odd way to notice a difference. DXVK 2 w/ the driver update will be more of a benefit to new and non-steam games.

Not that neither new or non-steam games are needed with ETS2, but it helps someone I guess!

8 hours ago, Lorfarius said:

But will it make Euro Truck Simulator 2 run better?

If you're using the DX11 version when it asks on launch, and haven't connected to the internet at all for some reason or bought the game from another digital store, yes.

I'm guessing this question didn't really need an answer. But this sort of update to the graphics driver and DXVK helps more for DX11 games on release day, when nobody has the shader cache to share (including Valve themselves via Fossilize). And, as mentioned, any DX11 game that's outside of Steam's ecosystem that allows sharing of shader cache between users.

I believe DX12 (and Vulkan, alongside the compatibility layer D3D12) does shaders in a similar fashion already - on the other hand, there's only ~300 games that use DX12 according to PCGW, compared to about 3,000 of DX11 games on the market. That, and most DX12 games have their own issues with the Deck (mainly being relatively beefy boys that don't run on the fucking thing that good).

Sounds like Mesa is getting there in terms of implementing the Vulkan graphics pipeline library, hopefully by the next major release in early Feb: https://www.phoronix.com/news/RADV-GPL-Getting-Good

I know what you're thinking: Siri, what the fuck is this, and why should I care?

In short: Shader caching/stutter, or to the point, the attempt to eliminate it, for good.

Back in August or so, DXVK 2.0 came out, and added a feature to use this library to compile shaders during load times rather than when it draws the thing (you know, while you're playing something and then stutters the entire thing). Async still draws on demand, but does it in a way that is unobtrusive (but can generate pop-in elements).

Nvidia's added that pipeline to their drivers, but the RADV/Mesa drivers don't have it yet - it's being worked on between various companies, but this particular work on RADV has been led by Valve's Linux engineers.

As mentioned in the lead engineer's blog, the test example on DOTA 2 garners about a 50,000% improvement in shader caching, with a general aim for a compile time of 0.02ms. in other words, no shader compilation, and no stutter.

Or, for comparison:

So, with any luck: No more stutter, no more shader cache downloading, and no performance difference between Steam games and non-steam games.

I mean, hopefully. It's probably going to be shit /mukker

I've just followed this guide to get a proper YouTube front end on the deck - up to 4K display, console UI with controller support and has adblock as standard.

There's a couple of small nuances with the UI that could be better (2x speed playback is missing, and the scan functions could be more granular instead of every 10 seconds), but the main thing is idle YouTube browsing with ad/sponsor blocking while the deck is docked, and it's rad.

Obligatory: https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/proud-raspberry-pi-owner-has-played-five-minutes-of-every-video-game/

Kinda want to play Pizza Tower, but I'm intimidated by the art style and the fact that I've never played a Wario Land game. I think there's a demo on itch that I'll have to look at first.

Played through a route of We Know The Devil, but I found it extremely abstract to the point it felt like it aggressively doesn't want to make a lick of sense. I'm hoping Heaven Will Be Mine will be a lot less abrasive.

I did boot up Kyle Is Famous, though, after owning it for years and never playing it, likely from a humble bundle - it's really good! It's snappy, funny, and it's really digestible due to the limited amount of things you can do in a cycle.

Railbound is also very good, btw. Very lovely puzzle game, you should be able to push the Steam Fest demo to your deck from here if it's not searchable.

Now I want to have a look for the best way to get into the A-Train series after chugging through Murdered: Soul Suspect.

On 25/01/2023 at 11:44, Popo said:

 

If you get this working can you let me know how you got on?  I tried, only once, admittedly, and while it paired with the M30, the buttons didn't work.

 

Happy birthday. 

Going back to this - the M30 definitely works, at least in xinput mode. Hold down Start + X on the pad so the two left LEDs are flashing, then hold the pairing button on the top of the controller down so it'll start in that mode - it should come up in the Bluetooth menu.

So, the dock. I'm still not convinced it's a great idea - from my limited experience, the unit doesn't wake from any old controller that's paired via Bluetooth, so I'm still throwing myself across the room to play games and that's kind of guff compared to just picking the thing up.

The image quality is also a little soft when playing at native settings on a large 1080p telly, but that's also a thing my switch does and ultimately more fucking around corrects that, so it's not really a problem.

Buuuuut, there are things I like! The UI works really well even with an external controller, and I genuinely appreciate having the same level of integrated generic shortcuts on a controller as the Deck itself. Having the Deck's tiny fan at a distance means it blends in with the rest of the room's acoustics so it's anywhere from silent to extremely quiet. Also, the screen automatically turning off when docked means I can just download stuff while it's hardwired to the network, and not worry about lowering the brightness of the screen or moving over to desktop out of paranoia of IPS screen retention.

So, I'd say it's a nice-to-have thing. I couldn't see myself ponying up for the official dock mind, even with VRR being on the table with the Displayport signal.

XBox emulation is getting to an okay place, but the long and short of it is that if there's a PS2 or GameCube equivalent, it's going to run miles better.

That's across anything, btw, not just on the Deck.

4 minutes ago, Popo said:

 

If you get this working can you let me know how you got on?  I tried, only once, admittedly, and while it paired with the M30, the buttons didn't work.

 

Happy birthday. 

Sure! I'll play around with the input modes - that always caught me with the SN30+ on the big computer.

2 hours ago, jonamok said:

Steam was a bit borked for many people last night for a little while.

Doesn't Steam go down for maintenance every Tuesday? I normally don't notice it because it's usually 'merica time.

Anyway, it's my birthday tomorrow, so I've decided to push the boat out like a mad cunt and.. buy a dock. Just a cheapy JSAUX with the gigabit port, but something I can plonk the deck on so I can use a Saturn controller (or the Bluetooth 8bitdo m30).

I'm still expecting the docked experience to be dogshit, but there's plenty of games out there that are low rent to run and just plug and play. It'll help for downloads too while I'm not around to keep an eye on the machine as it gently balances on the side of the case it came in.

I'm no parent, but I've played the following in bursts during half hour lunch breaks on the deck:

- Tetris. 150 Line Marathon can be done in about 10-12 mins. Can either be Tetris Effect or Puyo Puyo Tetris.

- BallisticNG. Campaign's broken up into single races.

- Abzu. Lovely game, every area fitted in a lunch break over the week.

- Murder By Numbers. Picross breaks my brainlet, but I'd do a puzzle and some interrogation every time.

- Subsurface Circular. Lovely investigation game.

- Later Alligator. same thing.

- Outrun 2006. Couple of arcade runs or Coast 2 Coast mode missions.

- Tekken 7. Just play endless Treasure Battle.

- Virtua Fighter 5 FS. endless.. whatever the ghost battle is called.

- Tiny Rogues. My current favourite for a spare 10 minutes. Twin Stick roguelike shooter with loot and perk builds. Banging game.

52 minutes ago, earlymodernsteve said:

Can you move Outrun to an sd card? I think once installed games can be transferred between drives fairly simply through Steam.

If it was done by following the instructions on the forum, it's likely installed as a non-steam game, so it's not as simple, unfortunately.

It can still be moved to an SD card, it'll involve finding the folder that had the game in it (you'd have to have done it as part of adding the game to Steam), and moving that entire folder to the SD card (as it should have both the game files and the save files - but I can check my own install to verify that).

EDIT: yeah, checked my own files - Outrun 2006 puts its own save files in the same folder as all the game data.

So - check where you installed it via desktop mode (if you want a reminder, you can check the properties of the game in Steam), find it, and move the entire thing to the SD card. When you get the replacement Deck, you can either move it back on the internal memory or just keep it on the SD card, and add the game back to Steam as per the tutorial by pointing it at the game and telling it to run via Proton. Done!