Sunday Linux Gaming Sessions: Japanese Game Appreciation Edition

Today was a definate decompression day. I made myself a Chinese brunch, washed my bedding, and played Japanese games under Linux for the fun therapeutic fun of it. Some Metal Gear, and Yakuza 0. I finally got the game to not crash! The only problem I really have with it is with saving, it doesn’t always want to. In Yakuza Kiwami this issue exists too, but if you spam the save button it eventually does save. Apart from that I’m at least glad it doesn’t die when I press the Y button anymore.

Back at it!

Tonight I rightfully returned to Source Filmmaker under my Manjaro install, with my primary focus being how well does the program run on my new swank GPU. After a few good hours I can say that the results are in, and the answer is awesome! My Vega64 ran SFM alright for the most part, but if you imported too many models or particles into the world it would lag when dragging your cameras, even when splitting clips into smaller ones. So far I haven’t experienced that with the 6800XT, even with the same stage setups I’ve created! If this continues to perform as such I’ll only really need to go into Windows to do the export (and possibly for After Effects work if I can’t get it to work under Wine/Proton), and even then I don’t always have to depending on the scene (lighting sometimes looks better under Windows or vice versa depending on the map and the materials being used).

I mostly spent the entire session doing mouth movements and some animation tweaking. I am shrinking the audio as I go; removing any long gaps in between.I’ll continue on it some more tomorrow after I get off work and do my usual stuff. Who knows, if I get far enough along that I can post something different I might provide an update tomorrow! 😛

Praise The Penguin!

I got Linux back up and running on the desktop! This time I’m up and running on the KDE spin of Manjaro, and so far everything seems to be running fine on a newer kernel and set of Open Source drivers. All of my programs are reinstalled and ready to go! I can finally move my projects back to Linux, and even see how my new graphics card performs on the Linux side of things! I launched AMID EVIL just to see if the drivers were working properly, and it ran with flying colours of blood!

I think that earns me a good passing out! I’ll need more energy before I continue further tweaking. I’ve also done more tweaking to my Manjaro on my Surface Pro; added Shotcut, Audacity, and I already had Krita installed for drawing and photo editing. I’m thinking these programs might come in handy if we go traveling this year; it would be nice to be able to do some small video editing or photo tweaking while traveling in motion, especially during long drives. It would be nice to have a video or photo of something ready to deploy as soon as I’m in range of some semi-decent internetz. My next plan for the tablet is to install some light duty games, and maybe a couple of emulators. It won’t be nearly as good as my gaming systems, but during travel it can help kill a little time. 😛

Blogging From Bed

Just wanted to see how it feels to blog from my Linux Surface, and I have to admit I really like the keyboard for typing. It’s a comfortable size and tucks away nicely when I’m done. It’s kind of weird using a touchscreen to make my selections for tags and stuff, but I think I could get used to it with a bit of practice, might even come in handy on the go! Well, moresso…

My Linux Surface Pro Arrived!

My Surface Pro 6 arrived today! It only took me a couple hours but I have a KDE Plasma spin of Manjaro running on it, with the custom surface kernel even! I did run into a couple of peripheral issues, as the touch screen doesn’t work until you install the surface kernel provided here. Fortunately I still have my old gaming keyboard, and I used my Steam Controller as a mouse. 😛 After getting the custom kernel installed I focused on installing my usual programs and tweaked the overall aesthetics. I’ve been wanting to do something like this for years, and it’s nice to have finally achieved it painlessly.

My next goal will be to take my Kindle HD8 and see if can sideload a different OS on it. I’ve read that it can be done, but if you’re not careful you can do some serious damage to the system. Having a better tablet makes me less fearful of nuking it, that and the HD8 was only a dollar. 😛

My 6800XT Is Making Linux Suicidal

My plans to reinstall Manjaro have hit a brick wall… Updating to Manjaro 21 didn’t fix anything, in fact it wouldn’t even let me into the operating system and produced the same result as yesterday when I tried to login. I tried installing ArchLinux, but the installer decided to throw auditing errors just as it seems to want to do under Manjaro. I also decided to give Solus a whirl, but that just ended up freezing the fucking installer. I finally got Mint to install, but now I’m having issues installing drivers via PPA.

I forgot to factor in the GPU shortage makes it difficult for Linux developers to code for them. This is going to require more research; I’ll have to rely on Windoze until I can find time to get it sorted. But I’ll get it working at some point… I always do.

I’ve Been Busy!

After a long delay in transit I finally, FINALLY got my 6800XT today! I’ve spent a better part of the evening benchmarking it for performance… what a beast! Unfortunately Manjaro won’t boot in properly with the new GPU in place, but I was planning on already doing a reinstall when the card arrived anyway. Manjaro has been giving me issues on every other boot, and I’m hoping Manjaro 21 might fix the issue, and hopefully not create new ones… Manjaro is already pretty easy to setup, so I might even be able to get back to work on my video project tomorrow! or at the very least be ready to tear back into it on Friday. I would have done it tonight, but I wanted to verify that the card worked properly PLUS I have an early work day tomorrow and need as much rest as I can get. I should be sleeping now actually, but I need my tea hydration fix.

I’m sure about one thing; this weekend is going to be awesome!

My Chariot Awaits

Today was a “Fuck it I’m not feeling well” kind of day. So, instead of working on my current video project I installed this little beauty.

This is a model(s) replacement for D-Horse. Why ride around on a normal looking horse when you can let these guys cart you around?

Huey really is a horse’s ass.

Well, that’s enough for one weekend I guess. I’m just glad to have played this without any issues, and even with mods!

MGSV Modded & Ret 2 Go

Happy Easter! I’ve been playing more with MGSV:TPP and modding; it’s actually just as easy under Linux as it is under Windows! I ran SnakeBite Mod Manager under Wine and added my mods back in; including some new ones. I rescued Miller, captured enough victims on my own base to develop a cardboard box, kidnapped hired a translator. etc. I was actually going to add another game to test under Linux, but the call to play this was far too strong to ignore.  I’m really happy with the results!

OMG Metal Gear Works Under Proton!

Last week I had a fun time playing Yakuza Kiwami under Proton, and for this weekend I decided to revisit the idea of running Metal Gear Solid V: TPP under Proton. My last attempts took place when Proton was a shiny new toy to be played with,  and MGSV:TPP didn’t really agree with it. You could load the game, but only the HUD was visible. This time around cutscenes played properly, it remained stable the entire session, and there was only one graphical glitch at the start of the game.

I’m currently running the game vanilla, but have plans to see if I can get modding to work properly. Overall I’m quite impressed!