Linux 2024 Challenge: No gaming on Windows

[BanjoDudeAhoy]

Ubisoft games are a nightmare to get working due to their god awful UPlay and Connect services that everyone hates.

Amen.
The only game I’ve ever refunded was a Ubisoft one - AC Origins. Bought during a sale on Epic Games Store because I’d forgotten about UPlay and… the game never even launched properly. The process was there but it just consumed more and more memory and never showed anything.

Made a mental note to only get Ubisoft games on console (if that) and refunded it.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Amen.
The only game I’ve ever refunded was a Ubisoft one - AC Origins. Bought during a sale on Epic Games Store because I’d forgotten about UPlay and… the game never even launched properly. The process was there but it just consumed more and more memory and never showed anything.

Made a mental note to only get Ubisoft games on console (if that) and refunded it.

That reminds me

Day 6:

I got Splinter Cell Conviction to run on my Steam Deck. In my tinkering I learned that Ubisoft for whatever reason has a .dll file designed solely to detect if the game was running on a non-Windows OS, and to then BLOCK said game from launching on non-Windows OSs

I...I don't...WHYYYYYY?! WHY WOULD YOU MAKE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!

Dealing with that was easy as I just needed to set launch options to "WINEDLLOVERRIDES=systemdetection=d PULSE_MSEC_LATENCY=60 WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY="4:0,1,2,3" %command%". But now I have a new issue, the game runs poorly due to Ubisoft's old spaghetti code. There's a fix for that too but it'll require me to write a script in desktop mode so I'll have to do that later

Right now my goal is to still beat Dead Space.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 7:

And with that I have officially completed week 1 of the No Windows Gaming Challenge, completing the week by having finished the Dead Space Remake beginning to end. Starting with Dead Space was a great decision since it ran with zero issues. One thing I noticed from the remake was how uncomfortable I was looking at the Red Marker. They did some screen effects when in close proximity to it or looking directly at it. Maybe it was because I was high on edibles last night, but I just couldn't help...but stare...̸̢̢͎͙̫̩̯̦̬̖̤͚̤̺̦̰a̸̜̺̰ņ̴̞̝̫̪̜̪̹̭͈͉̹̙̣̫͔͎̦d̵̙̯̱̖ ̴̢̟̭̻̩̠̳̦͕͎̭̠̱͉̮̼̥̬̻͕̣̤̰̰ͅļ̷̢̨̭͖̻̭͔̼̠͎̲͉̱͉͔͎̭͜ͅͅi̵͔̖̺̣̺͓̤͍̙̭̳͕̦̻̟͈̟͈̫͈̲͕͚s̵͓t̷̨̡̨͓͔̱͙͙͓̲͎͍̱̩̮̱̟̟̝͜ȩ̶͔͎̺͚̗͇̱͔̻͈͈̬͉̜͖̠̖̤̠̫̟͇̞ņ̸̞̻̗̹̠.̴̖̖̠͚̰̤͔̲͚͓̪̭.̷̨̡̧̗̯̠̹͖̫̹̝̱̣̰̙̘̫̭ͅ.̶͚̻̺̖̳͍͈̪̣̬̘̫̱I̴͕̙̪̻͓͓̭͉̪͓̺͚ͅ.̵̨̰̙͔͎̜͉͍͕͙̻͍̟̭͉̺͜͜ͅ.̸̧̧̧̨̻͕̟͔̟̺͉̹̤̺̪̥͉͖.̸͚̺͎͍̪͖̤͈̭w̸̧̨̨̬̭̪̬̥̘͈͈̼̝̭̫̗͕̹̙̙̤ͅḩ̸̝̭̤̞̻͈̬̖̞̻͍͔̪͎̣̳ą̷̡͍̠̭̪̠̭̯͓̭͈̳̟̤̤̣̜̺t̵̨͕̠͍͇̩̗̞͚͇̲͎̳͙̲.̴̭̟͔̲̮̰͎͇̻̤͖̜.̴̢̤͕̫̪͓̣.̸͇͎ͅ

​

Oooookay that got a little weird. Anywho, with week one complete I look back and ponder where we're at. So far I've had desktop issues I had to fix, and currently I'm having technical difficulties with two games in particular. But so far, things are going great. In fact, just the other day I found a broken function in Nobara and reported it to GloriousEggroll. He made a script that automounts drives to make storage a lot easier since mounting drives and editing fstab files is a point on contention with using Linux, so he made the script to remove the need to do that. Only problem was, he broke it. But I caught it due to one of my partitions being unwritable, and together we got it fixed. He's marked me as a regular on his server now as they know about my challenge there too, as well as assisting a bunch of new Linux users who decided to try it out as a New Years Resolution. It's a good thing none of us on the server are Arch Elitists, otherwise the newcomers would've gotten driven away by being told to "just read the wiki!"

This thread is essentially becoming a diary of my challenge as I reflect on this journey, as in this one week I've learned so much about UNIX and GNU/Linux, as well as inner workings of games. Which means I can go deeper. If anyone has any games they want me to play, or any tasks to attempt to do on Linux to spice things up, I'm all ears.

 

[MRMSFC]

Stalker games are platinum/gold on Protondb, so they probably work with no trouble.

For as crash prone as people say the X-Ray engine is, Shadow of Chernobyl never crashed on me back when I played it in WINE on my old Mac.

I haven’t played it on Windows, but going by what people say, it may be less buggy on WINE/Proton.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 8:

Alright campers I hope we all had fun completing Dead Space with zero issues, because now it's time for pain, because I haven't suffered enough

Tried to run Splinter Cell Conviction on my Deck after running those launch options to ignore systemdetection.dll which again Ubisoft why the hell did you make that file? I get ingame...and the performance is really awful. Like, really bad. I look this up and find out...yeah this PC port sucked really bad. It's always been a bad port, made back during the PC gaming dark age where all we got were really bad ports during the Xbox 360. So what's happening? Well the game isn't fully utilizing the CPU. So that's not a problem I just got to tell it to run all the cores.

h o w

I have no idea how to do that on Linux. On Windows it's easy just open Task Manager. On Linux...I dunno what the hell to do. The game is already considered a lost cause as it's marked as Silver in ProtonDB.

So much for that. But this makes me wonder, would it have mattered if I was on Windows? The game is scuffed in general. I should probably just find something else to play. Maybe there's another game from the backlog that would run. Or I could finally try Ready or Not since my new keyboard and mouse is arriving.

 

[salamanderjuice]

Day 8:

Alright campers I hope we all had fun completing Dead Space with zero issues, because now it's time for pain, because I haven't suffered enough

Tried to run Splinter Cell Conviction on my Deck after running those launch options to ignore systemdetection.dll which again Ubisoft why the hell did you make that file? I get ingame...and the performance is really awful. Like, really bad. I look this up and find out...yeah this PC port sucked really bad. It's always been a bad port, made back during the PC gaming dark age where all we got were really bad ports during the Xbox 360. So what's happening? Well the game isn't fully utilizing the CPU. So that's not a problem I just got to tell it to run all the cores.

h o w

I have no idea how to do that on Linux. On Windows it's easy just open Task Manager. On Linux...I dunno what the hell to do. The game is already considered a lost cause as it's marked as Silver in ProtonDB.

So much for that. But this makes me wonder, would it have mattered if I was on Windows? The game is scuffed in general. I should probably just find something else to play. Maybe there's another game from the backlog that would run. Or I could finally try Ready or Not since my new keyboard and mouse is arriving.

You might be able to that with the Powertools Steam Deck plugin. I'd be curious if the PS3/360 version runs better via emulation...

 

[Irishman]

That reminds me

Day 6:

I got Splinter Cell Conviction to run on my Steam Deck. In my tinkering I learned that Ubisoft for whatever reason has a .dll file designed solely to detect if the game was running on a non-Windows OS, and to then BLOCK said game from launching on non-Windows OSs

I...I don't...WHYYYYYY?! WHY WOULD YOU MAKE SOMETHING LIKE THAT?!

Dealing with that was easy as I just needed to set launch options to "WINEDLLOVERRIDES=systemdetection=d PULSE_MSEC_LATENCY=60 WINE_CPU_TOPOLOGY="4:0,1,2,3" %command%". But now I have a new issue, the game runs poorly due to Ubisoft's old spaghetti code. There's a fix for that too but it'll require me to write a script in desktop mode so I'll have to do that later

Right now my goal is to still beat Dead Space.

It's the moment when you realize that you've given all your money to the evil empire, all the while having believed that you've been supporting the plucky upstart...

It's one way to learn that nothing on the Steam Deck runs natively. It's all emulated, including RT in Returnal.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

It's the moment when you realize that you've given all your money to the evil empire, all the while having believed that you've been supporting the plucky upstart...

It's one way to learn that nothing on the Steam Deck runs natively. It's all emulated, including RT in Returnal.

...the hell you talking about?

You missed the other bit about the fact Splinter Cell Conviction was a bad port to begin with? Even on Windows it runs horribly even on modern systems.

 

[Irishman]

...the hell you talking about?

You missed the other bit about the fact Splinter Cell Conviction was a bad port to begin with? Even on Windows it runs horribly even on modern systems.

I'm talking about how nothing runs natively game-wise on the Steam Deck. It's a money making experiment for Valve. It doesn't matter if you're willing to be victimized by a solution that will never be as performant as native games can be on ANY OS: Mac, Windows, or Linux.

 

[salamanderjuice]

I'm talking about how nothing runs natively game-wise on the Steam Deck. It's a money making experiment for Valve. It doesn't matter if you're willing to be victimized by a solution that will never be as performant as native games can be on ANY OS: Mac, Windows, or Linux.

Except for all the native Linux games on Steam that run fine on Steam Deck...

Steam Deck runs Linux. SteamOS is just Linux. It runs Linux programs natively.

The performance losses from Proton, if any, aren't as big as you think. Sometimes the "emulated" (it's not emulated) version will run better than the PC version on Windows. Elden Ring was a stuttery mess on PC at launch but since Proton uses DXVK Valve could compile all the shaders on their end and then push it out to Steam Deck users. No shader compilation stutter and no waiting for shaders to compile.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 9

So new problem. The secondary hard drive does not want to launch any games at all due to being formatted for NTFS. It's to the point I'm just gonna backup the data on it and reformat it to ext4 so the nightmare is finally over. So while I waited for the transfer to finish, I browsed the Steam Store to learn that there's currently a sale going on: The Steam Capitalism and Economy Fest. This is exactly what we needed, economics and spreadsheets!

Steam Store News - Capitalism and Economy Fest Starts Monday! - Steam News

Capitalism and Economy Fest Starts Monday! Get ready for a full week of discounts and demos in Steam’s Capitalism and Economy Fest, starting January 8th at 10 am PT. Join us here when the Fest begins:

store.steampowered.com

So I picked up some new games I had my sights on for a while. First is Startup Company, a smol simulator available on Mac and Linux where you, well, manage a startup. I also picked up a Game development simulator (though I might refund it as I'm not enjoying it.) Airport CEO an airport management game, and last but not least today's highlight: Jurassic World Evolution 2

Jurassic World Evolution 2 is a business management game where you create and run dinosaur wildlife preservations and amusement parks. It's set after Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom. You can even participate in the preservation work yourself taking direct control of park rangers, shooting tranquilizers on the dinosaurs yourself. The developers are pretty cool and even updated the game to be Deck Verified, and it runs fantastically.

But that's not all that happened. My new mouse and keyboard I ordered off Amazon finally arrived.



I got a 60% mechanical keyboard from MageGee with Cherry MX Reds. Now I won't need to plug my Magic Keyboard in anymore if I need to type anything, and it's always good to have spare keyboards. Playing though I'll probably still use my Redragon K585 unless there's a game that needs more keys. Speaking of Redragon, that's where i got my new mouse to replace my dying Logitech G602, and wow I love this thing. The mouse goes to sleep to conserve power and won't wake back up unless you click a button, which is also great for avoiding accidently waking the PC up from sleep. Redragon is quickly becoming my favorite accessory maker.

Now then, I wanna make up a list of games to play, as well as tasks and challenges for the...well...challenge. I am open to suggestions of things you'd like to see me do. Here's what I got so far

• Beat GTA5 modded. I have over 1000 hours in GTA5, but all those hours are in GTA Online. I've barely touched the story mode at all. So I should fix that, but to spice things up, I'm gonna heavily mod it. Most of the mods will be adding the content that was added in Online, but if I find some smaller more fun stuff I'll probably use them. One mod in particular I love is the Watch Dogs mod which adds the hacking powers from Ubisoft's Watch Dogs into the game. There's also the Just Cause grapple hook mod, or the Iron Man mod.
• Play Witcher 3. I have...no idea...why I haven't done this yet. I need to do this, and beat the game
• Play Nier Automata. I've had this masterpiece sitting in my library for years and I learned on ProtonDB it's marked as Platinum (no pun intended) so I really should play it and prepare for MAXMIUM CRYING
• Play Brutal Legend. Another from the backlog I barely touched despite me loving metal
• Play Deus Ex Mankind Divided
• Play Hellblade since the sequel is coming this year
• Play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
• Learn Mahvel
• Get to Platinum in Street Fighter 6 with Manon
• Play Sea of Thieves. I really wanna play those Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island crossover expansions now that the game has a single player mode
• Play Cyberpunk now that the game is done
• Play Spec Ops The Line
• And lastly beat The Wonderful 101

Though this list might be delayed soon, because February 2nd isn't just the release date of the Apple Vision Pro...but also Persona 3 Reload, and you know how much I love me some Persona and how long Persona games are

Oh god I'm gonna cry hard...

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I'm talking about how nothing runs natively game-wise on the Steam Deck. It's a money making experiment for Valve. It doesn't matter if you're willing to be victimized by a solution that will never be as performant as native games can be on ANY OS: Mac, Windows, or Linux.

Funny you say this, because literally today handheld gaming PC manufacturer Ayaneo just announced a new handheld, and it's preloaded with SteamOS 3 instead of Windows

Ayaneo's Next portable gaming PC runs SteamOS out of the box

The Next Lite is the first handheld gaming PC we've seen willing to step up to the Steam Deck on its own software turf.

www.pcworld.com

It begins

 

[Nugat Trailers]

Oh goodie. Something else you can crap up Mac gaming threads with.

 

[Queen6]

Oh goodie. Something else you can crap up Mac gaming threads with.

Like the Mac gaming threads are really active, at least @Spaceboi Scaphandre is talking about gaming and actively doing something...

Q-6

 

[salamanderjuice]

Oh goodie. Something else you can crap up Mac gaming threads with.

Mac and PC games.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 10

Alright tenth day milestone into the challenge! 🥳

Now only 356 more days to go

On the bright side here's a day without pain that went really smoothly. I got the secondary HDD reformated from NTFS to ext4, so now it talks perfectly on Linux and games load no problem on it now. So all the secondary storage drive issues I had before should be gone and it'll be smooth sailing from here...maybe...don't quote me on that because I know damn well all I gotta do is sneeze before the Nvidia driver craps out again.

With the HDD reformatted comes the real pain: waiting for all my games to redownload...two terabytes worth...

So while I waited I brought out the handy dandy Steam Deck and started two games I haven't touched before on it

The first is Battle Chef Brigade (which is available on Mac btw.) This is a brawler and puzzle game made by Trinket Studios and published by Adult Swim Games. (As a side rant, Adult Swim please publish games again. Your games were really damn good. Just look at Duck Game.) Battle Chef Brigade is an interesting game to say the least, set in a fantasy world where you are an aspiring chef competing to join the Battle Chef Brigade in a series of cooking tournaments with other aspiring chefs. The world is full of monsters and you cook whatever you kill. You go out to hunt monsters and gather their ingredients back to your cooking station, then add the ingredients and match them in tiles to fuse them into bigger ingredients, refining your dish more. Each challenge has a key ingredient like real cooking competitions and a general theme, and you get bonus points for making a dish based on the judge's personal tastes. Definitely give it a try it's really good.

The other is not a game, but a mod for Half Life 2. This is Entropy: Zero 2. Entropy: Zero 2 is a really special Half Life 2 mod. In this mod, you play as a member of the Combine. Set after the events of Half Life 2 Episode 1 and 2 you are the Bad Cop, a man with a really troubled past tasked with hunting down and capturing Dr. Mossman. I don't really want to spoil much because it's better to go in blind but all I will say is the mod makes it clear from the start you are the bad guy, and you'll be doing stuff out of the norm for a Half Life game. The mod is really good and adds a lot of new stuff to the table, to the point many are treating it as an unofficial Half Life 2 Episode 3.

Go play it, like right now. (Sidenote, Pyrocynical actually paid a £13,000 licensing fee to use Midge Ure's cover of The Man Who Sold The World in this SFM animation so it could stay monetizable, because the song just fit too well for the tone of the mod.)

 

[Queen6]

Day 10

Alright tenth day milestone into the challenge! 🥳

Now only 356 more days to go

On the bright side here's a day without pain that went really smoothly. I got the secondary HDD reformated from NTFS to ext4, so now it talks perfectly on Linux and games load no problem on it now. So all the secondary storage drive issues I had before should be gone and it'll be smooth sailing from here...maybe...don't quote me on that because I know damn well all I gotta do is sneeze before the Nvidia driver craps out again.

With the HDD reformatted comes the real pain: waiting for all my games to redownload...two terabytes worth...

So while I waited I brought out the handy dandy Steam Deck and started two games I haven't touched before on it

The first is Battle Chef Brigade (which is available on Mac btw.) This is a brawler and puzzle game made by Trinket Studios and published by Adult Swim Games. (As a side rant, Adult Swim please publish games again. Your games were really damn good. Just look at Duck Game.) Battle Chef Brigade is an interesting game to say the least, set in a fantasy world where you are an aspiring chef competing to join the Battle Chef Brigade in a series of cooking tournaments with other aspiring chefs. The world is full of monsters and you cook whatever you kill. You go out to hunt monsters and gather their ingredients back to your cooking station, then add the ingredients and match them in tiles to fuse them into bigger ingredients, refining your dish more. Each challenge has a key ingredient like real cooking competitions and a general theme, and you get bonus points for making a dish based on the judge's personal tastes. Definitely give it a try it's really good.

The other is not a game, but a mod for Half Life 2. This is Entropy: Zero 2. Entropy: Zero 2 is a really special Half Life 2 mod. In this mod, you play as a member of the Combine. Set after the events of Half Life 2 Episode 1 and 2 you are the Bad Cop, a man with a really troubled past tasked with hunting down and capturing Dr. Mossman. I don't really want to spoil much because it's better to go in blind but all I will say is the mod makes it clear from the start you are the bad guy, and you'll be doing stuff out of the norm for a Half Life game. The mod is really good and adds a lot of new stuff to the table, to the point many are treating it as an unofficial Half Life 2 Episode 3.

Go play it, like right now. (Sidenote, Pyrocynical actually paid a £13,000 licensing fee to use Midge Ure's cover of The Man Who Sold The World in this SFM animation so it could stay monetizable, because the song just fit too well for the tone of the mod.)

If into mod games have you played Total Chaos? Game will mess with you on so many levels, not for the kiddies so be warned...

If you haven't, you must play it's a thing and then some....

Played the game out, what a trip. Gonna come back to Total Chaos as has multiple endings and an insane hard mode that is so perfectly executed being it's integrated in to the game.

n.b. current version is a full free standalone game, so have at it L&G

Q-6

 

[LeeW]

Having glanced over the last 3 pages, I am just happy all I have to do is hit the power button on my Windows PC and just play whatever I want without issue.

 

[Queen6]

Having glanced over the last 3 pages, I am just happy all I have to do is hit the power button on my Windows PC and just play whatever I want without issue.

Way simpler that way and Windows can be easily tamed by third party solutions.

Q-6

 

[dmr727]

Way simpler that way and Windows can be easily tamed by third party solutions.

Q-6

I don't disagree, but I also see value (and fun!) in the challenge of making alternatives work. I have a 4070, otherwise I'd likely be giving it a try myself.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

I don't disagree, but I also see value (and fun!) in the challenge of making alternatives work. I have a 4070, otherwise I'd likely be giving it a try myself.

Not to mention I'm learning so much about operating systems and the deeper middleware that makes our favorite games work by going through this. A lot of my problems though just stem from the fact I have an Nvidia GPU. If I had an AMD card this would be a lot easier.

 

[diamond.g]

Not to mention I'm learning so much about operating systems and the deeper middleware that makes our favorite games work by going through this. A lot of my problems though just stem from the fact I have an Nvidia GPU. If I had an AMD card this would be a lot easier.

Why don’t you swap your 3060 for a 7600xt?

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Why don’t you swap your 3060 for a 7600xt?

I'm not buying a new graphics card for a one year long challenge lol

 

[diamond.g]

I'm not buying a new graphics card for a one year long challenge lol

I'm trying to not let my PCMR get the better of me. A 7900XTX was my initial thought as a good step up from a 3060. And Linux support if better. But if you plan on going back to Windows then maybe a 4080 Super could work...

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Day 11

Nothing much happened today as I caught a cold and was just out of it. I mainly just laid in bed and played Battle Chef Brigade on my Deck since my stomach was questioning if it existed or not. But there is one game to highlight today I did start on the main Nobara machine:

Ready or Not​

Ready or Not is a spiritual successor to the SWAT series by Sierra, however Ready or Not goes even deeper than SWAT 4 ever did. I'm sure you've already heard about this game not just for it's deep mechanics, but also it's touchy subject matters. Aside from being a police SWAT team simulator, Ready or Not does not hold back any punches. You will be going into missions that may make you feel very uncomfortable. Lemme explain how with just a taste of what I played last night:

The first mission was a gas station rest stop barricaded with armed suspects, a group of meth addicts needing cash for their next fix. The rest stop consisted of a small convenience store and a Denny's like diner. In the brief we got reports the rest stop manager's daughter was inside, so we needed to make sure she was okay, neutralize the suspects, and get any hostages out safe. We moved out from the gas station to the employee entrance of the diner, ordered the squad to pick the lock. Ready or not, we breached and found one of the suspects holding a guy by gunpoint, but thankfully he panicked and surrendered without incident. His friend though did not, and began opening fire as we took position. They all held themselves up in the diner, and after a brief engagement the suspects were subdued. The squad went for leg shots and the lower abdomen to keep em alive. Searching the diner for any stragglers, when I stepped out into the diner I was horrified at what I saw. Several hostages were killed, one of which was a retired veteran and his dog who was just having dinner before he went back out to protest a policy presumably making cuts to veteran benefits as there was a picket sign on the table. We searched the employee section of the rest stop and found the manager dead. The daughter was safe thankfully, held up in the janitor closet, but god...she was asking where her dad was...

And that was just the first mission, which is just one of many randomized outcomes when going in. There's a reason the game is called "Ready or Not." You're not there to save the day. You're there to stop an already horrible situation from getting worse. After having witnessed all that I had to take a break and play something else because seeing that diner and all those people...it really got to me. And that's just the first mission, I haven't even gotten to any of the others yet, like the one that touches on SWATing, or the controversial one where you stop an active shooter on a college campus, or...the house...