Games Archive
Two years ago, Twitch streamer albrot discovered a bug in the code for crossing rivers. One of the options is to “wait to see if conditions improve”; waiting a day will consume food but not recalculate any health conditions, granting your party immortality. From this conceit the Oregon Trail Time Machine was born; a multiday livestream of the game as the party waits for conditions to improve at the final Snake River crossing until the year 10000, to see if the withered travellers can make it to the ruins of ancient Oregon. The first attempt ended in tragedy; no matter what albrot tried, the party would succumb to disease and die almost immediately. A couple of days before New Years Eve 2025, albrot reached out and asked if I knew anything about Apple II hacking. ↫ Scott Percival It may have required some reverse engineering and hackery, but yes, you can reach the ruins of Oregon in the year 16120.
NESFab is a new programming language for creating NES games. Designed with 8-bit limitations in mind, the language is more ergonomic to use than C, while also producing faster assembly code. It’s easy to get started with, and has a useful set of libraries for making your first — or hundredth — NES game. ↫ NESFab website NESFab has some smart features developers of NES games will certainly appreciate, most notably automatic bank switching. Instead of doing this manually, but NESFab will automatically carve your code and data up into banks to be switched in and out of memory when needed. There’s also an optional map editor, which makes it very easy to create additional levels for your game. All in all, a very cool project I hadn’t heard of, which also claims to perform better than other compilers. If you’ve ever considered making an NES game, NESFab might be a tool to consider.
The more than two decades since Half-Life 2‘s release have been filled with plenty of rumors and hints about Half-Life 3, ranging from the official–ish to the thin to the downright misleading. As we head into 2025, though, we’re approaching something close to a critical mass of rumors and leaks suggesting that Half-Life 3 is really in the works this time, and could be officially announced in the coming months. ↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica We should all be skeptical of anything related to Half-Life 3, but there’s no denying something’s buzzing. The one reason why I personally think a Half-Life 3 might be happening is the imminent launch of SteamOS for generic PCs, possibly accompanied by prebuilt SteamOS PCs and consoles and third-party Steam Decks. It makes perfect sense for Valve to have such a launch accompanied by the release of Half-Life 3, similar to how Half-Life 2 was accompanied by the launch of Steam. We’ll have to wait and see. It will be hard to fulfill all the crazy expectations, though.
I’ve never been to a LAN party, not even back in the ’90s and early 2000s when they were quite the common occurance. Both my family and various friends did have multiple computers in the house, so I do have fond memories of hooking up computers through null modem cables to play Rise of the Triad, later superseded by direct Ethernet connections to play newer games. LAN parties have left lasting impressions on those that regularly attended them, but since most took place before the era of ever-present digital camera and smartphones, photos of such events are rarer than they should be. Luckily, Australian software engineer Issung did a lot of digging and eventually struck gold: a massive collection of photos and a few videos from LAN parties that took place from 1996 and 2010 in Australia. After trying a few other timestamps and a few more web searches I sadly couldn’t find anything. As a last ditch effort I made a few posts on various forums, including the long dormant Dark-Media Steam group, then I forgot about it all, until 2 months ago! Someone reached out and was able to get me into a small private Facebook group, once in I could see I had gotten more than I bargained for! I was just looking for Dark-Media photos, but found another regular LAN I had forgotten about, and photos from even more LANs from the late 90s. I was able to scrape all the photos and now upload them to archive.org where they can hopefully live forever. ↫ Issung I love browsing through these, as they bring back so many memories of the computers and dubious fashion choices of my teenage years – I used to combine different colours zip-off pants, and even had mohawks, spikes, and god knows what else before I started losing all my hair in my very early 20s. Anyway, the biggest change is the arrival of flat displays signalling the end of the widespread use of CRTs, and the slow dissappearence of beige in favour of black. Such a joy to see the trends change in these photos. If anyone else is sitting on treasure troves like these, be sure to share them with the world before it’s too late.
COBOL, your mother’s and grandmother’s programming language, is still in relatively wide use today, and with the initial batches of COBOL programmers retiring and, well, going away, there’s a market out there for younger people to learn COBOL and gain some serious job security in stable, but perhaps boring market segments. One of the things you would not associate with COBOL, however, is gaming – but it turns out it can be used for that, too. CobolCraft is a Minecraft server written in, you guessed it, COBOL. It was developed using GnuCOBOL, and only works on Linux – Windows and macOS are not supported, but it can be run using Electron for developers, otherwise known as Docker. It’s only compatible with the latest release of Minecraft at the time of CobolCraft’s development, version 1.21.4, and a few more complex blocks with states are not yet supported because of how difficult it is to program those using COBOL. CobolCraft’s creator, Fabian Meyer, explains why he started this project: Well, there are quite a lot of rumors and stigma surrounding COBOL. This intrigued me to find out more about this language, which is best done with some sort of project, in my opinion. You heard right – I had no prior COBOL experience going into this. Writing a Minecraft server was perhaps not the best idea for a first COBOL project, since COBOL is intended for business applications, not low-level data manipulation (bits and bytes) which the Minecraft protocol needs lots of. However, quitting before having a working prototype was not on the table! A lot of this functionality had to be implemented completely from scratch, but with some clever programming, data encoding and decoding is not just fully working, but also quite performant. ↫ Fabian Meyer I don’t know much about programming, but I do grasp that this is a pretty crazy thing to do, and quite the achievement to get working this well, too. Do note that this isn’t a complete implementation of the Minecraft server, with certain more complex blocks not working, and things like a lighting engine not being made yet either. This doesn’t detract from the achievement, but it does mean you won’t be playing regular Minecraft with this for a while yet – if ever, if this remains a fun hobby project for its creator.
EXiGY rolls up the all of the above experiences into a single package: make games the way they were made in the mid-90s, by dragging and dropping objects into a window, programming some behaviour into those objects, and clicking the Run button. It’s like ZZT with tile graphics instead of ASCII. Want to send your little game to some friends? Click the Gift button to package all of the files up, and send your friend the .XGY file. EXiGY is about making it fun to create games again. ↫ Chris on the Exigy website I fell in love with this the second I saw it come by on Mastodon. Chris – I don’t know the author’s full name so I’ll stick with Chris – has been working on this for the past year, and it’s not out quite yet. Still, the feature list is packed, and on the linked website, they intend to post development updates so we can keep up with the goings-on. This seems like an incredibly cool project and I’d love to play around with it when Chris deems it ready for release.
A three-year fight to help support game preservation has come to a sad end today. The US copyright office has denied a request for a DMCA exemption that would allow libraries to remotely share digital access to preserved video games. ↫ Dustin Bailey at GamesRadar This was always going to end in favour of the massive gaming industry with effectively bottomless bank accounts and more lawyers than god. The gist is that Section 1201 of the DMCA prevents libraries from circumventing the copy protection to make games available remotely. Much like books, libraries loan out books not just for research purposes, but also for entertainment purposes, and that’s where the issue lies, according to the Copyright Office, who wrote “there would be a significant risk that preserved video games would be used for recreational purposes”. The games industry doesn’t care about old titles nobody wants to buy anymore and no consumer is interested in. There’s a long tail of games that have no monetary value whatsoever, and there’s a relatively small number of very popular older games that the industry wants to keep repackaging and reselling forever – I mean, we can’t have a new Nintendo console without the opportunity to buy Mario Bros. for the 67th time. That’d be ludicrous. In order to protect the continued free profits from those few popular retro titles, the endless list of other games only a few nerds are interested in are sacrificed.
Valve has been holding on to a special surprise for Half-Life 2 fans to celebrate the game crossing its 20th birthday. Today, the company shipped the 20th Anniversary Update for the iconic Gordon Freeman adventure from 2004, combining the base experience and all episodes into one, bringing developer commentary, Steam Workshop support, and much more. Adding to all that, the game is completely free to claim on Steam right now too. ↫ Pulasthi Ariyasinghe at NeoWin Valve even made a nice web page with fun animated characters for it (they’re just video loops). Definitely a nice surprise for those of us who’ve already played the game a million times, and for those of us who haven’t yet for some reason and can now claim the game for free. This update also fixes some more bugs, adds a ton of new graphics settings, allows you to choose between different styles for certain visual effects, aim assist for controller users has been massively updated, and so much more. For a 20 year old game, such a free update is not something that happens very often, so good on Valve for doing this. I can barely believe it’s been 20 years, and that we still have no conclusion or even continuation to the story that so abruptly ended with Episode Two. I honestly doubt we’ll ever going to see a Half-Life 3 or even an Episode Three, simply because at this point the expectations would be so bonkers high there’s no way Valve could meet them. On top of that, why waste time, money, and possibly reputation and goodwill on Half-Life 3, when you can just sit on the couch and watch the Steam gravy train roll into the station? Because that’s a hell of a lot of gravy.
Steam has finally stopped working on several older Windows operating systems, following a warning from Valve that it planned to drop support earlier this year. With little fanfare, Windows 7 and Windows 8 gaming on Steam is no longer possible following the most recent Steam client update on November 5. ↫ Ben Stockton at PCGamesN It’s honestly wild that Valve supported Windows 7 and 8 for this long for Steam in the first place. They’ve been out of support for a long time, and at this point in time, less than 0.3% of Steam users were using Windows 7 or 8. Investing any resources in continuing to support them would be financially irresponsible, while also aiding a tiny bit in allowing people to use such unsupported, insecure systems to this day. I’m sure at least one of you is still rocking Windows 7 or 8 as your daily driver operating system, so I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear this, but it’s really, really time to move on. Buying a Windows 10 or 11 license on eBay or whatever costs a few euros at most – if you’re not eligible for one the free upgrade programs Microsoft ran – and especially Windows 10 should run just fine on pretty much anything Windows 7 or 8 runs on. Do note that with Windows 10, though, you’ll be back in the same boat next year.
Is your Windows PC not performing well when gaming? Understand how to optimize the main Windows settings you will never touch again, such as Game Mode, Power Options, and Driver Updates, step-by-step for a smoother gaming experience. Maximize Your PC Performance Gaming on computers is a popular choice for players across genres, whether playing video poker, exploring large RPG worlds, or engaging in fierce MOBA matches. The performance of these games is often determined by how well your system is optimized. Minor changes to Windows settings can significantly improve gameplay by ensuring that your computer allocates resources efficiently. Game Mode, featured in Windows 10 and later, prioritizes gaming operations for improved performance and frame rates. These adjustments, combined with regular updates, revised power settings, and eliminating unneeded background operations, ensure that your PC is ready for uninterrupted, high-performance gaming sessions in any genre. Enable Game Mode Game Mode is a feature built into Windows 10 and 11 that optimizes your computer’s gaming resources by reducing the impact of other apps. To enable Game Mode, start in ‘Settings’. Then, select the ‘Gaming’ button from the menu options. Finally, head to the game mode settings, where you can enable it. The functionality works by reducing background tasks and stopping updates while you play a game. Game Mode is a feature that works wonders when it comes to improving your gaming experience. This is especially useful when playing resource-intensive current games since it helps maintain an optimal performance level that could contribute to reaching at least 60 frames per second (FPS), which adds smoothness to game motion. Game Mode makes tasks like managing system resources much easier, leading to increased frame rates and reduced latency, which are important perks when playing online. Be it speedy engagements with opponent shooters or long trips through large open-world settings, Game Mode gives gamers the competitive edge for a deeper dive into their virtual worlds. Adjust Power Settings for Maximum Performance Optimizing display settings and power configurations is key to increasing PC gaming performance, especially on gaming laptops. It is possible to prioritize system performance. A high-performance power plan allocates most power to the system instead of a longer battery life. It’s easy to enable. Go to Settings > System > Power & Sleep, open Additional Power Settings, and choose High Performance. A suitable method of avoiding power reduction is getting power from an external power supply. If the option isn’t there, check under Show Additional Plans or create your plan. Changing these settings means that your setup can execute resource-demanding programs, resulting in a smoother and more fascinating experience. Optimize Graphics Settings in Nvidia Control Panel Modifying some settings on the Nvidia Control Panel may maximize gaming performance. Select ‘Prefer maximum performance’ from the power management settings menu to ensure that your graphics card always runs at total capacity and can even kick in during unexpected moments. Getting the other settings, such as texture filtering and monitor refresh rates, right helps to improve the visual quality and smoother the gameplay. The preferred one is the highest available. Reducing stutters consequently allows us to have the smooth experience we have been waiting for. Moreover, Nvidia also announced that G-SYNC would reduce stuttering and screen tearing problems and thus increase the overall gaming experience. Turning off VSync may result in better frames per second but may cause screen tearing. Selecting Single Display Performance Mode if you typically game on one display is another adjustment to improve gaming performance. Keeping these settings tuned and installing GPU drivers regularly is critical to ensuring that your graphics card performs at its best across all games. Disable Unnecessary Background Processes Extraneous background tasks can degrade gaming performance as they draw necessary system resources. To improve your gaming experience, remove non-essential software and free up resources for smoother gameplay. The Task Manager window shows you how many applications are running when you right-click the taskbar, select Task Manager, and go to the Processes tab. If you right-click on one of the redundant processes within the list and click on ‘End Task’, you will claim back your system resource. The Startup tab in Task Manager allows users to disable unnecessary programs during startup, which can increase startup times and spare resources for the whole system. Update Graphics Card Drivers You need to ensure that your video drivers are updated to get the highest performance out of your graphics card. If the user ignores this fact, there may be glitches, drops in frame rates, or even system crashes during play. Graphics card updates that increase responsiveness, speed, and the general quality of functioning of a system will thus provide a great core for gaming. Use software utilities such as GeForce Experience for Nvidia cards or Radeon Software for AMD cards to conveniently handle graphics card driver upgrades. These programs will detect your GPU model and download recent driver releases. Consistent updates can increase frames per second by up to 23%, significantly improving gameplay quality. Make a habit of regularly checking for the latest driver updates to avoid common gaming problems and guarantee the smooth running of the system. This proactive move not only leads to a high-quality gaming experience but also helps in keeping the game up and running without any disruptions. Configure Display Settings Optimizing display settings is vital for achieving the best gaming performance. Make sure your monitor’s refresh rate is at its highest to enhance visual smoothness while playing games. Enabling hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling can lower latency and improve graphics output. To activate this feature, navigate through Settings > System > Display > Graphics settings and switch on the hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling option. You can reduce the resolution of the monitor you are using to relieve the GPU and simultaneously make the games smoother. It is advisable to set the monitor to the recommended resolution in order to make the display sharper and improve gaming performance and overall efficiency. Disable Windows Notifications and Game Bar The Xbox Game Bar and Windows notifications
The processor in the Game Boy Advance, the ARM7TDMI, has a weird characteristic where the carry flag is set to a “meaningless value” after a multiplication operation. What this means is that software cannot and should not rely on the value of the carry flag after multiplication executes. It can be set to anything. Any value. 0, 1, a horse, whatever. This has been a source of memes in the emulator development community for a few years – people would frequently joke about how the implementation of the carry flag may as well be cpu.flags.c = rand() & 1;. And they had a point – the carry flag seemed to defy all patterns; nobody understood why it behaves the way it does. But the one thing we did know, was that the carry flag seemed to be deterministic. That is, under the same set of inputs to a multiply instruction, the flag would be set to the same value. This was big news, because it meant that understanding the carry flag could give us key insight into how this CPU performs multiplication. And just to get this out of the way, the carry flag’s behavior after multiplication isn’t an important detail to emulate at all. Software doesn’t rely on it. And if software did rely on it, then screw the developers who wrote that software. But the carry flag is a meme, and it’s a really tough puzzle, and that was motivation enough for me to give it a go. Little did I know it’d take 3 years of on and off work. ↫ bean machine Please don’t make me understand any of this.
Esports competitions are the pinnacle of competitive gaming, bringing together the top players and teams worldwide to participate in thrilling events. These events, frequently staged in enormous venues and broadcast to millions of people online, include many popular titles such as League of Legends, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike.Aside from the spectacular events, esports tournaments are well-known for the ardent fanbases that bet on who will win. Frequently updated about Dota 2 and LoL odds, these enthusiasts propel the tournaments forward, attracting larger audiences, higher stakes, and increased media coverage. These events will be greater than ever in 2024, providing unforgettable moments that will impact the future of gaming. League of Legends World ChampionshipThe 2024 League of Legends World Championship will make history as the first to be held in London, in the O2 Arena, in front of 15,000 fans. This November, twenty elite teams will compete for the coveted Summoner’s Cup and a sizable prize pool, which last year totaled $2.25 million. The competition begins with the Play-In Stage, where teams such as the MAD Lions and PSG Talon compete for a berth in the main event. The double-elimination system leaves no room for error, paving the way for thrilling comebacks and high-stakes matchups. Following the Play-In Stage, the Swiss Stage takes over, with 16 elite teams from various areas competing in a competitive five-round format. This phase guarantees exciting matchups and second opportunities, as only the most adaptable teams progress to the final rounds. The Swiss format stresses perseverance, giving fans unexpected victories and strategic games. The Worlds Anthem, performed this year by Linkin Park, is a trademark of the competition “Heavy Is The Crown.” The song reflects the tournament’s attitude of triumph over adversity, which resonates with contestants and supporters. The anthem’s dramatic music video captures the togetherness and passion that define the League of Legends community, raising Worlds to more than just a tournament. Dota 2: The InternationalThe International is synonymous with Dota 2 and continues to be one of the world’s most anticipated esports competitions. It is well-known for its large prize pools and record-breaking viewership, and it defines competitive gaming. This year, Valve is upgrading the experience with up to ten LAN events, giving fans additional options to participate in the competition at all stages. Beyond the significant rewards, The International represents strong competition and the pinnacle of Dota 2, with suspenseful and dramatic encounters. The tournament’s heritage is founded on passionate rivalries and amazing moments, making it a must-see for fans year after year. The first prize pool for 2024, financed by Valve, begins at $1.6 million and is expected to expand to more than $2.6 million through community contributions. Historically, the winning team wins more than 40% of the overall prize money, with significant benefits for other players, adding to the event’s appeal. This year’s leading contenders include Team Spirit, which is looking to make history by winning its third championship, and the Gaimin Gladiators, which finished second last year and is looking for its first TI victory. Teams such as Team Liquid, Xtreme Gaming, and newcomers The Falcons heighten the competition excitement, promising an exciting tournament full of legacy-defining moments. Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) The Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) has established itself as the leading esports championship, attracting top talent and enthusiasts worldwide. The VCT Masters will be held in Shanghai in 2024, reflecting the city’s booming esports culture. The event builds on the success of Valorant Champions 2023, which attracted a peak audience of 1.29 million. Riot Games has implemented new player trade and loan mechanisms, which adds strategic depth to this year’s event. The competition starts with regional qualifiers, in which teams from various places compete for a berth in the main event, assuring a diversified participation. The knockout stage employs a double-elimination structure, which provides second opportunities and heightens the suspense. Fans can expect intense matches and spectacular moments as teams compete for the ultimate championship. Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) The Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) is a highlight of the esports season, known for its big prize pools and high viewership. FNCS 2024 anticipates tough competition, building on last year’s success of 6 million hours watched. When it begins in early 2024, the tournament, which has a $4 million prize pool, will draw top-tier participants from all over the world. The event includes several crucial tournaments and qualifying rounds to determine the top-performing teams. Each tournament highlights regional diversity, bringing distinct strategies and growing gameplay to light. These events also emphasize Fortnite’s dynamic meta, which requires teams to adapt and excel.Renowned organizations such as FaZe Clan and TSM are anticipated to lead the tournament, while Dignitas and Team Falcons will also want to make their impact. The FNCS 2024 not only provides entertaining confrontations but also influences worldwide rankings, making each match crucial for future qualifying. Fans can expect an electrifying event as elite players compete for supremacy in one of the most prominent esports events. Apex Legends Global Series The Apex Legends Global Series is becoming increasingly popular, capturing a diverse and enthusiastic audience. The series features a huge prize pool, with $2 million committed to the World Championship finals alone. Each section of the series allows competitors to win from a $500,000 prize pool, ensuring that competition stays high at all levels. In 2023, viewership for the Apex Legends Global Series increased by 13%, totaling 47.9 million hours watched. This spike can be attributed largely to playoffs, which attract a lot of attention since they feature elite teams from diverse locations fighting in high-energy clashes that represent the game’s intense essence. This gaming event exemplifies Apex Legends’ long-term appeal to players and deeply ingrained competitive spirit. Counter-Strike 2 Major Championships The PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 promises to be a watershed moment in the Counter-Strike 2 series, with 16 elite teams vying for a $1.25 million prize pool. It will take place at Denmark’s Royal Arena from March 21 to March 31. It will showcase some of the
Nintendo, together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. on September 18, 2024. This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights. ↫ Nintendo press release Since the release of Palworld, which bears a striking resemblance to the Pokémon franchise, everybody’s been kind of expecting a reaction from both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, and here it is. What’s odd is that it’s not a trademark, trade dress, or copyright lawsuit, but a patent one, which is not what you’d expect when looking at how similar the Palworld creatures look to Pokémon, to the point where some people even suggest the 3D models were simply lifted wholesale from the latest Nintendo Switch Pokémon games. There’s no mention of which patents Pocketpair supposedly infringes upon, and in a statement, the company claims it, too, has no idea which patents are supposedly in play. I have to admit I never even stopped to think game patents were a thing at all, but now that I spent more than 2 seconds pondering this concept, of course they exist. This lawsuit will be quite interesting to follow, because the games industry is one of the few technology sectors out there where copying each others ideas, concepts, mechanics, and styles is not only normal, it’s entirely expected and encouraged. New ideas spread through the games industry like wildfires, and if some new mechanic is a hit with players, it’ll be integrated into other games within a few months, and games coming out a year later are expected to have the hit new mechanics from last year. It’s a great example of how beneficial it is to have ideas freely spread, and how awesome it is to see great games take existing mechanics and apply interesting twists, or use them in entirely different genres than where they originated from. Demon’s Souls and the Dark Souls series are a great example of a series of games that not only established a whole new genre other games quickly capitalised on, but also introduced the gaming world to a whole slew of new and unique mechanics that are now being applied in all kinds of new and interesting ways. Lawsuits like this one definitely pose a threat to this, so I hope that either this fails spectacularly in court, or that the patents in question are so weirdly specific as to be utterly without merit in going after any other game.
The Epoch Cassette Vision is often reported as the first Japanese cartridge-based game console. But reality is always a bit more complicated. In 1978, years before the Cassette Vision, two Japanese companies put together cartridge-based game consoles that were unique to Japan, but relied on technology and chips licensed from American firms. And hey, despite my whirlwind tour of Pong consoles, I never looked at GI chips. Behold, the *breathes in* Bandai Video Mate All Color TV Jack Addon 5000. (longest console name in the history of the blog?) This 1978 console was the follow-on to Bandai’s earlier Video Mate TV Jack consoles, which were more or less the same as everyone else’s Pong-on-a-chip consoles. (The TV Jack 2500 appears rather intriguing, but we’re not looking at that one today) ↫ Nicole Express As usual, Nicole’s deep dives into weird consoles you’ve never heard of are a great read, and this one is no exception. There are many things that make the Jack Addon 5000 unique and interesting, but the one thing that’s really cool is that while the game lives on the cartridge, the colour lives inside the console itself. Inside the cartridge you’ll only find the monochrome game chip; the colour is added by another chip that’s fitted inside the console. Only four cartridges were ever released for the system, so it’s not particularly more versatile than contemporary Pong clones that had multiple built-in games or game modes. Still, it’s an interesting footnote, and I’m so happy we got such a detailed look at this console.
The Box64 project, which allows you to run Linux x86-64 binaries on non-x86 architectures like ARM and RISC-V, has achieved a major milestone with its RISC-V backend. It’s been over a year since our last update on the state of the RISC-V backend, and we recently successfully ran The Witcher 3 on an RISC-V PC, which I believe is the first AAA game ever to run on an RISC-V machine. So I thought this would be a perfect time to write an update, and here it comes. ↫ Box86/Box64 blog Calling this a monumental achievement would be underselling it. Just in case you understand how complex running The Witcher 3 on RISC-V really is: they’re running a Windows x86 game on Linux on RISC-V using Box64, Wine, and DXVK. This was only made possible relatively recently due to more and more x86 instructions making their way into RISC-V, as well as newer RISC-V machines that can accept modern graphics cards. The Witcher 3 can runs at about 15 frame per second in-game, using the 64-core RISC-V processor in the Milk-V Pioneer combined with an AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT GPU. That may not sound like much, but considering the complexity underpinning even running this game at all in this environment it’s actually kind of amazing. It seems Box64 could become as important to gaming on ARM and RISC-V Linux as Wine and Proton were for gaming x86 Linux. There’s still a lot more work to be done, and the linked article details a number of x86 instructions that are particularly important for x86 emulation, but are not available on RISC-V. The end result is that RISC-V has to run multiple instructions to emulate a single x86 instruction (“a whole of 10 instructions for a simple byte add”), which obviously affects performance.
Way back, Valve had the intention of making gaming on Linux a reality by allowing anyone to make PCs running SteamOS, with the goal of making Steam less dependent on the whims of Windows. This effort failed and fizzled out, but the idea clearly never died inside Valve, because ten years later the Steam Deck would take the market by storm, spawning a whole slew of copycats running unoptimised, difficult to use Windows installations. There have been hints Valve was toying with the idea of releasing official SteamOS builds for devices other than the Steam Deck, and the company has not confirmed these rumours. The company’s long said it plans to let other companies use SteamOS, too — and that means explicitly supporting the rival Asus ROG Ally gaming handheld, Valve designer Lawrence Yang now confirms to The Verge. ↫ Sean Hollister at The Verge This is great news for the market, as some of these Steam Deck competitors are interesting from a specifications perspective – although pricing sure goes up with that – but running Windows on a small handheld gaming device is a chore, and relying on OEMs to make “gaming overlays” to make Windows at least somewhat usable is not exactly something you want to have to rely on. SteamOS is clearly lightyears ahead of Windows in this department, so having non-Steam Deck handheld gaming PCs officially supported by Valve is great news. We’re still a long way off, though, says Valve, and the same applies to Valve’s plans to release a generic SteamOS build for any old random PC. That effort, too, is making steady progress, but isn’t anywhere near ready. Of course, there’s a variety of unofficial SteamOS variants available, so you’re not entirely out of luck right now. On top of that, there’s things like Bazzite, which offer a SteamOS-like experience, but using the Atomic variants of Fedora.
Straight from the arcade world, the Neo Geo was, without a doubt, the most expensive hardware of the 4th generation. This begs the question: how capable was it and how did it compare with the rest? In this entry, we’ll take a look at the result of one company (SNK) setting budget restrictions aside and shipping a product meant to please both arcade owners and rich households. ↫ Rodrigo Copetti Rich households, indeed. Back in the ’90s, when Nintendo was the only game in town – few people in my area cared one bit about Sega – Neo Geo was a name we only knew of vaguely. It was supposed to be a massively powerful console that was so expensive nobody bought one, and some of us even doubted it was real in the first place. Ah, the pre-internet playground days were wild.
The complete source code for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) version of Doom has been released on archive.org. Although some of the code was partially released a few years ago, this is the first time the full source code has been made publicly available. ↫ Shaun James at GBAtemp The code was very close to being lost forever, down to a corrupted disk that had to be fixed. It’s crazy how much valuable, historically relevant code we’re just letting rot away for no reason.
About a week ago, there has been a little addition to the 3dbrew wiki page about 3DS cartridges (carts) that outlines the technical details of how the 3DS cartridge controller and a 3DS cartridge talk to each other. I would like to take this opportunity to also include the 3DS itself in the conversation to illuminate which part of which device performs which step. I will then proceed to outline where I think the corresponding design decisions originate. Finally, I will conclude with some concrete ideas for improvement. ↫ Forbidden Tempura Everything you ever wanted to know about 3DS cartridges and how they interact with the 3DS.
It turns out that digital rights management and its consequences extend even beyond your passing when it comes to Steam. Valve has made it clear that no, you cannot will your Steam account or games to someone else when you die. The issue of digital game inheritability gained renewed attention this week as a ResetEra poster quoted a Steam support response asking about transferring Steam account ownership via a last will and testament. “Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable” the response reads. “Steam Support can’t provide someone else with access to the account or merge its contents with another account. I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.” ↫ Kyle Orland at Ars Technica My wife and I make sure we know each other’s passwords and login credentials to the most important accounts and services in our lives, since an accident can happen at any time, and we’d like to be somewhat prepared – as much as you can be, under the circumstances – for if something happens. I never even considered merging Steam accounts, but at least granting access to the person named in your will or your legal heir seems like something a service like Steam should be legally obliged to do. I don’t think Steam’s position here – which is probably par for the course – is tenable in the long-term. Over the coming years and decades, we’re going to see more and more people who grew up almost entirely online pass away, leaving behind various accounts, digital purchases, and related matters, and loved ones and heirs will want access to those. At some point over the coming decades, there’s going to be a few high-profile cases in the media about something like this, and it’s going to spur lawmakers into drafting up legislation to make account and digital goods transfers to heirs and loved ones not a courtesy, but a requirement. In the meantime, if you have a designated heir, like your children, a spouse, or whatever, make sure they can somehow gain access to your accounts and digital goods, by writing stuff down on paper and putting it somewhere safe or something similar. Again – you never know when you might… Expire.
