exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Steve wrote: 16 Jun 2023 11:11 @exxos I use Proton support in my Steam linux and it's great for me, even on modern games. It's one of my favorite features because I can still play my games while using a good OS like Linux :)

I'm copying over a game from my PC to Mint in hope Steam will "see it" and not try downloading it because it incredibly slow on my laptop. There is a lot of versions of protons are not exactly sure which will work best. Though it is the same problem as above, it is screwing around with stuff again which is taking up time :roll:

Why is Steam such a PITA! Copied my game files over, nope, hellbent on downloading them all anyway. So copied all the files to the download folder, nope, its going to download them all again anyway. :pullhair: :headbang:

Well first attempt at that failed miserably then. The screen just went black and it it is constantly playing a whooshing sound sample nothing is happening. :roll:

Is this gas guzzlers? according to ProtonDB it should work: https://www.protondb.com/app/243800

One guy at the top was using a custom steam launch option for the game: RADV_PERFTEST=gpl %command%

People report what version of Proton they're running on the right hand side. If you go to Steam advanced settings there's a drop-down menu where you can select the Proton version.

This is a very interesting topic.

As someone who is developing a Windows game, I'm very interested to hear all the different perspectives/views.

Personally, I agree with @exxos.

I want to release a game on physical media and with compatibility as far back as possible.

I've done the 'due diligence' from my end, keeping system requirements as low as possible for the type of game I'm making. However, it's a battle with Windows. My game was originally conceived on Windows XP/DX7. As later versions of Direct X appear and MS deprecate the earlier versions, I therefore have to patch/install DX7 call hooks into the code to stop the game from borking. :mad:

Going back to your dilemma though, I circumvent the worst of it by having a fairly current laptop (which I'm writing on now) with W10. I call it the 'exposure' machine: it deals with internet and is security patched.

I have another machine, which I have had running XP offline for the last 10+ years. No patches, no updates, nothing gets changed and all my dev tools work without being tampered with by online updates. Any input/output is by USB stick.This may work for you if most of your software is legacy.

rubber_jonnie wrote: 16 Jun 2023 10:07 To quote Agent Smith form 'The Matrix' - "You Hear That Mr. Anderson? That Is The Sound Of Inevitability!"

lol. We need to have a 'relevant Matrix quotes' thread Jon. :lol:

@mrbombermillzy i gave up with programming in windows. I spent 95% of my time debugging windows. That wininet.dll had that many versions it was unreal. They all were buggy in one respect or another. It's why internet explorer never used to load pages because of that dll. The ones in 2000/ME predated the ones in windows 98!! It was all a total mess.

I had to ship the DLLs which worked with the installer but if the user got a version conflict they could have click on the ones which were shipped with the installer or the ones on their system which could be worse despite a higher version number.

One of the printer manufactures kept running into USB issues. Think they ended up writing thier own usb system from the ground up and shipping that with the drivers!

I agree. Hence my prodding around with shifter experiments to try to realise some sort of conversion onto the 68k platform machines. (In fact, going off topic, thats a subject I was going to PM you about at some point in the future. Stay tuned.)

I've pretty much become fed up with the state of things these days. The mobile phone OS' are the worst. Literally you buy the flagship model and within 5 years it's engineered obsolete, either by electronic failure, or OS bloat updates. Windows too is just turning into a big advert with an OS tacked on. :lol:

Hence the suggested 'keeper' system, which doesn't touch the internet and I can run whatever I like. Maybe stash some IDE CD-ROM drives, so you never have to download the perilous vapourware (or is it steam? :lol: ) any longer.

Interesting points. Especially from RJ. I deal with defense and Government at work and security is OTT. So I get it. But, ask yourself when you upgrade an OS what are you getting out of it? Can you browser better or faster, type letters any quicker? I'd wager 99% of the time the answer will be no. Possibly even slower. I recall a article where an Apple IIe was pit against a Winbox to see who could knock out a letter faster. The IIe won. And that included boot time.

I agree on games, consoles smash the begezus out of PC hardware. I haven't played PC games in years. As long as there is physical media for the XB1s my Star Wars game fetish will remain intact. Mind you, my console collection is pretty big. :lol:

On one hand good they found and presume fixed 3052 security issues in windows 10. But doesn't that also mean everyone was running their pc with thousands of flaws for years as well...

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3223 ... ndor_id=26

mrbombermillzy wrote: 16 Jun 2023 21:31
I've pretty much become fed up with the state of things these days. The mobile phone OS' are the worst. Literally you buy the flagship model and within 5 years it's engineered obsolete, either by electronic failure, or OS bloat updates. Windows too is just turning into a big advert with an OS tacked on. :lol:

Hence the suggested 'keeper' system, which doesn't touch the internet and I can run whatever I like. Maybe stash some IDE CD-ROM drives, so you never have to download the perilous vapourware (or is it steam? :lol: ) any longer.

It's funny you mention mobile phones, as I was thinking the same thing this morning. As a long term Android user, stuff I bought when I first had an Android phone won't work on my current device. Over the years I came to accept it as if you want the new shiny stuff it's just part of the upgrade cycle. If the developers are unwilling or unable to upgrade, then I have to move on and find an alternative.

Personally I have DOS, Win 3.11, Win 2000, Vista, XP, Win 7 and Win 10 machines and a Windows Server 2016 box, so I have the capabilities to do things that require older systems if I need to. I have a library of software I can use on CD and floppy disk, not to mention all of the stuff I downloaded and wrote to CD over the years. So I have those non internet 'keeper' systems too. I don't have any Win95 or 98 machines, but I do have the media if it becomes necessary.

You have to consider that XP is 22 years old and Win 7 is 14 years old, so it was always going to be the case that support would stop at some point.

Is that fair? Nope, not by a long shot, but when it ultimately comes down to profits, they will look closely at where the money comes from. I'm pretty sure at 1.6% of OSes used by Steam, Windows 7 is pretty low on their list of things they want to support.

Win 10 is nearly 64% and Win 11 is 30%. That's where the money is, that's the target, and enough people are there for them to have the 1.6% vote with their feet and leave, because they will soon pick that up through new Win10 & Win 11 users.

The bottom line is where it's at, and if you use Win7, and have bought games, they already took your money. It's sh1tty for sure but not a lot you can do if you're such a small group.

If they dropped Win 10 support, I'm pretty sure they'd have to revert back in a heartbeat because of the massive outcry.

As for Win 8, if you use that, you deserve everything you get ;)