The Mind Of OverlordTomala
Gaming

From canines to cat women

If Metal Gear and Ghost In The Shell collided I would be the aftermath.

This week my interests have been between both Windows and Linux. On the Linux side I tested out Saints Row 3 and 4 with with nice results. There was also a bit of Sega Megadrive/Genesis Classics with only a minor graphical bug.

Under Windows this week I got lost in Okami, adventured in No Man’s Sky, then of course today I wandered around Fallout 4 aka Skyrim with guns. I even completed a quest and got people to join The Minutemen! One of these days I plan to escape the clutches of Preston Gravy. I think my next goal is to mod Dogmeat into something else. I’ll have to check out the Fallout 4 Nexus next time for some much needed inspiration.

What would REALLY be cool would be a mod that replaces Codsworth with Octodad, then I could get Bong to voice his lines to complete the illusion. Of course by getting Bong to voice Codsworth I mean have Bong speak into his microphone for hours with HIS ideas of what Codsworth would say… actually this is starting to sound like a bad idea. :v:

All in an Overlord's day

I hate doctors

I wasn’t going to blog about this, but I needed to vent this out while it’s still warm. I had a medical procedure done a couple weeks ago, and was then referred to another doctor for further care. This place is three hours away from me, but I managed to get there… only to be told it was a consultation when I was specifically told I would be undergoing an operation today, they even had me on a bed waiting for the doctor to come in and do his work… The entire round trip was about 6 hours, a fucking waste of my time.I don’t get it. They had my medical history faxed to them, they have my referral information… why did I have to be consulted when I was already consulted and referred?

The only bright side was stopping at a restaurant for Fish n Chips despite the restaurant being Norwegian themed. I had to take a picture of the menu too:

Soooo apparently in Norway they don’t go by flavors, but colors?

Gaming

TF2 doesn’t like Open Source Drivers

I ran into a bit of a problem running TF2 under Linux; I’ll be in the middle of a game and it’ll spit this engine error:

Out of memory or address space. Texture quality setting may be too high.

Doing a little research gave me an answer, but not one I like. Apparently this bug has been around since an update last year and seems to mostly be noticeable under Mac and Linux, especially if you’re running Open Source drivers (or if you’re trying to run the game on a potato). One “temp” solution is to delete the sound.cache file before launching the game. I say “temp” in quotes because it’s 2018 and this still seems to be an issue.

So it looks like my options are delete sound.cache every time I want to play, or play under Windows… which I planned to go both ways on anyway, but now it seems the Windows version will take precedence. I know I could play it via Wine if I wanted to, but considering I have this setup as a dualboot that seems rather pointless if I already have a native client…

Well, it is my weekend. I had plans to head back to Windows anyway at some point. I haven’t been there since Monday. 😛

Technology

SHINY BUTTONS!!!

One of the things on my personal streaming wishlist has been an Elgato Streamdeck; a device with programmable LCD buttons that allows you to execute whatever you want with the press of a button AND giving it an icon of its own which can be helpful if you forget what your binds are. One of the nice things about these is the abillity to use it with your favorite software, you can use it with Elgato’s own capture software (assuming you own one of their capture devices) or you can use them with XSplit, OBS, etc.

They recently released a miniature version of their regular stream deck, with the difference being that it only comes with six buttons and it’ll cost only $100… or you could spend about another $40 to obtain all of the other buttons. Of course if you don’t want ALL OF THE BUTTONS and are living on the cheap I could see this as a tantalizing option.

Of course, I keep telling myself that I need to stream more before investing in such a device. :v:

Gaming

Testing both Tomb Raider Reboots under Mint 18.3

I took the liberty of installing Tomb Raider and Rise Of The Tomb Raider under Mint to see how well they perform (if at all) on my hardware. The good news is that the programs actually run AND offer a nice framerate even with eyecandy turned up.

This is my overall score on ROTT with Ultra settings:

Now for the previous game:

There’s this weird glitch that won’t let me use TressFX even though it’s selected, but other than that I seem to be getting good performance on both games thus far. I’ll be trying other games too, but wanted to start with some of the most graphically demanding.I do say I also like the option of choosing which display that I want to play the game on before launching, that and the introduction of Vulkan as an optional mode to run ROTT in (what I used for the benchmark).

Getting these to run in Big Picture mode with the Steam Controller was also a therapeutic experience. It felt no different than when I played these titles in Windows while chilling in bed with my favorite controller.

Gaming under Linux still has some catching up to do, but every time I look into gaming under it the quality improves all the time. My library is definitely much larger than it used to be; I still remember when I only had a handful of Gold Source games and not much else, when TF2 introduced Tux, the first screenshots of Left 4 Dead 2 on a Linux desktop, and other companies like Croteam, 2K and others releasing their ports as well. It’s good to see more and more companies and indie developers look into different OS’s and bring some competition into the fray, and it’s amazing to see Open Source drivers arrive at a point where they are performing better than the proprietary ones thanks to AMD. Ever since reinstalling I’ve only gone over to Windows to play something that won’t run natively (usually of the Metal Gear or Platinum persuasion), but other than that my business has been conducted under Linux mostly during the week days.

Technology

How to fix your Steam Controller under Linux (Mint 18.3)

Upon plugging in a Steam Controller into my system under Linux the other day I found that it didn’t recognize it no matter what way I plugged it in (different USB ports, Bluetooth, wired or wireless), then I did some research and found out that you have to add your own ruleset. Not something difficult to do, but if anyone is still looking for a guide you can read this:

First you’ll need to figure out where your udev folder is, under Mint and most Ubuntu based distro’s the path should be /lib/udev/ and on other distros it can also be /usr/lib/udev

Once you figure that out type:

sudo gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/99-steamcontroller.rules

Or on other distro’s type su and your root password, then type:

gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/99-steamcontroller.rule

You can replace gedit with whatever text editing program you want to use, it can be terminal based or GUI. Running this command will open up a text file called 99-steamcontroller.rule (or create one if it doesn’t exist), edit it to look like this:

# This rule is needed for basic functionality of the controller in Steam and keyboard/mouse emulation SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="28de", MODE="0666"

# This rule is necessary for gamepad emulation; make sure you replace 'pgriffais' with a group that the user that runs Steam belongs to KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0660", GROUP="REPLACEWITHYOURNAMEORGROUP", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput"

# Valve HID devices over USB hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="28de", MODE="0666"

# Valve HID devices over bluetooth hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*28DE:*", MODE="0666"

# DualShock 4 over USB hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05c4", MODE="0666"

# DualShock 4 wireless adapter over USB hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0ba0", MODE="0666"

# DualShock 4 Slim over USB hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="09cc", MODE="0666"

# DualShock 4 over bluetooth hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*054C:05C4*", MODE="0666"

# DualShock 4 Slim over bluetooth hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*054C:09CC*", MODE="0666"

# Nintendo Switch Pro Controller over USB hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2009", MODE="0666"

# Nintendo Switch Pro Controller over bluetooth hidraw KERNEL=="hidraw*", KERNELS=="*057E:2009*", MODE="0666"

Save your file and close, then restart Linux and launch Steam. Your controller should now be in working order as long as you have Steam open. If you close Steam it will stop functioning, you can get it to work outside of Steam if you install the Open Source Steam Controller Drivers.

Are you fucking serious? / Entertainment

Nat Geo hires Jeff Goldblum to be himself

No, seriously they have.

The aforementioned Jeff Goldblum show—working title: The Curiosity Of Jeff Goldblum—which has just been green-lit at Nat Geo. Given that Goldblum already appears to exist in a permanent state of “Hmm, yes, fascinating,” we have to assume this new series (which will see him investigate the joys of common day phenomena like baseball and making toilet paper) falls securely under the “get paid to do what you love” rubric for human happiness.

I don’t normally post this kind of celebrity related junk but felt this merited a mention… what a world we live in.