Refurb Steam Decks Sell-Out and Open-Source Quake 2 Bethmastered

Valve runs out of refurbished Steam Decks! Rewriting Wipeout from leaked code, id Software open-sources Quake 2 Bethmastered, and playing Overwatch 2 on Linux with Proton.

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:49 Testing pro capture cards
05:53 The impossible cable
07:20 Benchmarking audio interfaces at home
10:23 Pedro writes a script
12:00 Replying to business emails
STEAM NEWS
13:36 Refurbished Steam Decks sell out
16:25 Unclean Steam Decks
17:31 SteamOS in a Docker image because reasons
20:06 RIP Cortana
20:42 Proton Experimental fixes Baldur’s Gate 3 launcher
21:50 The dangers of Proton Experimental bleeding edge
23:16 Source 2 resource decompiler and exporter
24:19 WHAR Source 2 SDK?
24:53 What ever happened to Artifact?
NEW GAMES
27:06 1 million dollar Steam game
29:32 Abusing Steam refunds
30:27 Extreme Tag
31:13 Stumble Guys hard sell
32:18 Overwatch 2 launches on Steam
GAME UPDATES
36:24 Broforce Forever
37:50 RIP Dale Gribble
38:59 Quake 2 Bethmastered
39:35 Better accessibility options
NEWS
42:34 Intel graphics drivers collecting telemetry
44:49 Opt-in is useless
46:52 Quake 2 2023 source release
48:51 Compiling Linux in Windows on Linux
50:08 1995 was how long ago?
51:28 Thanks Nintendo
52:27 Rewriting Wipeout from leaked source code
58:25 You could NEVER add online multiplayer to Wipeout
HATE MAIL
01:01:21 First time Linux in 2023
01:05:40 Loving the Arch
01:07:15 Good knowledge base is important
01:08:29 Hate Mail assignments
01:09:12 Top 10 Linux distributions
01:10:55 A taste of Pedro
01:12:34 Debian is the best Ubuntu spin
01:15:55 A gifted sub
01:19:31 Credits

Colour key – Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

This old Deck

$80 off the 64GB.
What if I want one that only underwent 73 tests?
They are going for $320/50 on eBay.
Does the hardware id ownership get wiped on steam for these units?
- You’d think so with VALVe themselves certifying the refurbishment.
- Right. We should start a countdown timer.
The cheap ones are now out of stock, duh!
The 256GB refurbished is £20 more than a 64GB brand new, it’s still a damn good deal.
Conglaturations to the lucky few folks who managed to snag one of the cheaper ones. All that’s left are the 512s
I was curious to see if Valve was the only one doing this but apparently you can buy refurb xboxes from microsoft,

Portable SteamOS

If you really need to play steam games on your work laptop
No NVIDIA 4 u. AMD or Intel only as it requires you binding /dev/dri to the container
Uses VNC? Really?
I guess this is mostly just for game streaming?
Gotta log in every time you restart the container
Steam does run from ~/.local/share/Steam
I guess if you have a big hoking server with a massive Radeon Pro might as well use it.

SeaExperimental

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Changelog/_compare/960103bf619e85e0d7dcc717ca43d369d00401eb…1ce7586f922b47646c40b0609597beea02dfb46c?diff=unified

Oh nice they fixed that annoying error pop up in BG 3. It was mildly inconveniencing
UE4 games crash less on intel GPUs
Controller hotplug fixes.
Ubisoft Connect and Ratchet & Clank on Nvidia should work now
Fixing mod support re4_tweak for the OG Resident Evil 4.

ValveResourceFormat 5.0

Version Kaioken X10
OpenGL 4.6 or Bust
This is a neat tool for poking around in maps.
Valve’s Source 2 resource file format parser, decompiler, and exporter.
Reversed engineered since Valve does not have a Source 2 SDK.

Steam: New Games

1 million dollar game

It’s down to $250 CAD now
£167.99 for the most unity/unreal ghetto looking game I’ve seen in a few years.
Don’t have a good game? Try and drum up some publicity some other way

Extreme Tag!

Speed lines, so you know it’s going to be good.
“Download today! is it!”

Overbotched 2

Not really my jam but it’s platinum on the Steam Deck.
And I know at least one of you out there is hooked on it.
35GB DL and launched using Proton 8.
Really good performance.
Granted, it’s got a handful (78K) negative reviews on Steam.
Then again, 75K players in the last 2 days.
Real question.
Why did the hate parade show up for this one?

Steam: Game Updates

Broforce Forever (Rtheren)

Free update if you already own Broferce
Supposedly the final update to end all updates
- I look forward to the hotfix
Game was also down to 20% its original price for the 8th.
Missed opportunity if you didn’t get it then and still didn’t have it from some bundle.
We got the list of characters beforehand, but now you can actually play them
Indiana Brones gets some new levels to unlock flexes
Now I wanna do some bench press

Quake II Bethmastered

Another fan-made Quake remake.
You can still play the original.
At least MP is simplified.
I made it crash on the secret level where you get the super shotgun early.
Looks good!
Developed by Nightdive and Machine Games, the same ones who did the remaster of the 1st Quack
I’d never seen the intro cutscene in such good quality.
Looks pretty good and unlike the NVidia-mastered version, I can play it at 144 FerPS until it crashes.

News:

Intel is watching

Surprised they were not doing this from day 1.
It’s opt in and the article is amended to say that at least right now there is a very clear warning on new installations.
This is their driver control center thing that isn’t on linux AFAIK
Big fat warning is possibly the best way to do it.
Take note, Fedora!
Fucking Intel is doing it right.

Quake 2 release code

Huh.
The original Q2 source release was the first time a lot of us tried to tango with C.
It claims to be tested with clang.
Why did they release code for this one?
This is only the game code and not the engine source code.
Daikatana remastered confirmed, maybe.
It would certainly save John Romero and Co. a lot of work.
- It won’t make it any better though
What they did provide is licensed under GPL 2.0, as was the original source code drop

OG Wipeout

https://github.com/jordond/romtool

It builds.
It does not contain the assets.
First time using bchunk in what, a decade?
Also, shoutout to romtool.
Crashes when I press enter but okay.
Dude threatening Sony at the end.
What is there works really well.
Vsync’ed by default and no control customization.
I look forward to the 2097 reimplementation.
Say the thing!
This is a pretty substantial rewrite and fix up
Based on an old port for ATI
The game’s physics were tied to the framerate and locked at 30fps. This rewrite does away with this, and the developer’s sanity
Browser version runs pretty good. No controller support though