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Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#441
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have massive doubts about the "They also seems to also be able to download the compilation cache from Steam if someone already have done the process on the same GPU + driver version." This would imply that if I already calculated the shaders for the current game state than i could reuse them and not have to go through the whole compilation step (if no changes happen inbetween). Matter of fact, i have to recompile t…

What are your doubts exactly? Shader precompilation is a standard thing to do now - consoles mostly ship precompiled shaders for their GPU + driver combo, Steam Deck will also download precompiled shader for its Linux + AMD + driver version combo. The infrastructure for that Steam side is there and is in active use.

Well my doubts are that the feature is actually working. Im not saying that precompiling shader doesnt exist neither it cant be done. But based on my comment, i doubt it working the way as described. Else i would not have to recompile those shaders every time for every game in my library.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#442
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have massive doubts about the "They also seems to also be able to download the compilation cache from Steam if someone already have done the process on the same GPU + driver version." This would imply that if I already calculated the shaders for the current game state than i could reuse them and not have to go through the whole compilation step (if no changes happen inbetween). Matter of fact, i have to recompile t…

It's documented here https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/35534?l= I don't think I ever found more documents on this feature. I assume it might need lots of users with matching result to ensure that bad actor can't upload malicious shader.

Thank you for linking, and it makes sure to say you have to have a certain set of proofs to make sure no malicious code is injected as a precompiled shader sounds like a great place for exploitation.

Tho i would expect (naive me) that the shaders at least might be cached locally - which is not the case since as i mentioned in my comment have to recompile them for every game every time i start.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#443
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have massive doubts about the "They also seems to also be able to download the compilation cache from Steam if someone already have done the process on the same GPU + driver version." This would imply that if I already calculated the shaders for the current game state than i could reuse them and not have to go through the whole compilation step (if no changes happen inbetween). Matter of fact, i have to recompile t…

That depends on game actually passing exactly the same parameters to shader compiler and your GPU driver actually building and using the cache. What fossilize does is it generates data of all the parameters passed to shader compilation, and then can trigger "offline" compilation before you run the game.

Thanks for the response, and ye i get that. But what my point is : i have to recompile the shaders for every game every time i start it. And as i mentioned even without updates or if i start the game multiple times in a row.

This just , from a technical stance, doesnt make sense to me.

As another commenter to my statement wrote, it might be to make sure enaugh people have the same result on my HW setup in order to make sure its not abused for maleware. That makes sense to me tho i still dont get why there is not at least some local steam client caching.

And while as mentioned this might not work with every game - well it works with none. Im talking about a quite big set of games. So maybe im just VERY unlucky and ALL games i play have dynamic params which as you mention would result in recompilations every time - will have to look if i can approve this somehow.

Alternativly, which is why i mentioned using debian, its a linux issue of some sort (just a guess).

Thanks for explaination tho

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#444
post #316
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that all of mid/late 2010s online politics was colored by one reviewer giving a favourable game review to a game that some people disliked.

> all of mid/late 2010s online politics was colored by one reviewer giving a favourable game review to a game that some people disliked That's kind of a twisted interpretation of events. It was coloured by one incel who though he owned the developer of a game and a whole lot of incels who sympathized because they too were owed a vagina by the ones who controlled them. Now it's spread to broader issues and higher leve…

No you are the one twisting it. It was about conflict of interest regardless how hard you try to throw around ad-hominems and rewrite history.

A game reviewer should not be in sexual relationships with people selling games that get reviewed. I think anybody not ideologically captured would agree.

I also find it tasteless to use the same rhetoric here as it was used back then to slander someone into suicide.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that I think that UE5 is good for low end hardware, it's not. One of the reasons that a lot of studios struggle with bad performance on UE5, is because a lot of studios, fired their most experienced devs and hired bunch of cheaper new programmers, because they bought into the whole make game with blueprints idea. I have several friends (I know just one datapoint ), that were in games industry from 6 to 12 ye…

It’s not terrible at low-end hardware. Fortnite has been able to run on phones for a long time now. It’s not as lightweight as Unity or Godot by any means and they still remain the optimal choice for low-end platforms. What you can’t do is hit compile out of the box and expect it to work well on those low-end platforms, because it will try to use all the high-end features if it thinks it’s allowed to. I don’t think i…

Exactly, but a lot of studios thought they could get away without that, so now they are paying the price.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there is world between "extremely high minimum requirements" and a 6 years old laptop, considering laptop of even the current year are never considered super high end rigs.

If you had s/minimum/recommended I would agree. But no, we are talking about minimum requirements. I submit that a game should be playable even on 10-year old hardware. Of course, the devs can blow the ceiling in their highest settings. Do they need three RTX-7000 series in parallell cooled with liquid nitrogen and eating 3000W of electricity in order to run at the highest/ultra settings? Yeah, be my guest, more powe…

I get where you're coming from, and I do think game devs should put more effort into supporting lower-end hardware.

That said, bg3 does run on 10-year old hardware. The minimum requirements lists a gtx 970, released 2014. Which, despite its age, is still 6x faster than your integrated graphics.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shader recompilation causes stuttering not general performance problems. Shader complexity will though, which is a function of render quality. But I’m confused about why you think fill rate isn’t an issue? If you are now upgrading from 1080p to 4K your GPU needs at the very least 4x the pixel pushing power and even then that’s only to maintain the same detail; you bought a 4K screen for more detail.

> But I’m confused about why you think fill rate isn’t an issue? Because this is can be easily dealt with via upscaling or buying a more expensive GPU, but fixing shader recompilation in the hot path requires a complete engine redesign.

There aren’t faster GPUs affordable to most consumers, that’s the point. Yes, DLSS is used as a crutch because it’s easier to do AI upscaling than render at a higher resolution.

You don’t need a full engine redesign. UE5 provides tools for PSO bundling and also pre-caching, but you need to use them.

Also good material design and structure helps reduce the number of PSOs needed but again, you need knowledge of how the engine’s materials system works.

If you are interested, this video explains some of the solutions. https://youtube.com/watch?v=i35yf-wh3Bs

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except valve runs these games in well defined container runtimes to avoid these issues: https://gitlab.steamos.cloud/steamrt/steam-runtime-tools/-/b...

Somehow it's still an issue. Was a while ago now but somehow an update to dbus(?) broke Worms WMD and the publisher just never fixed it. The solution was to just run the Windows version in Proton which works fine.

I'm not certain, but WORMs WMD is a pretty old 2016 title that might predate a lot of these container runtimes being available to games other than Valve's own first party titles like Dota 2 and CSGO/CS2.

Also, Valve has recently insituted changes about how native titles work forcing existing native titles onto the scout 1.0 runtime and giving developers the ability to pick newer stable targets.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/collection/steam/?emclan...

> Native titles will execute in 'Steam for Linux runtime 1.0 (scout)' by default, instead of the legacy runtime environment. This behavior is consistent with Steam Deck and promotes better compatibility across all Linux desktop distributions. Note that this new feature can be turned off globally with "-compat-force-slr off" on the Steam client command line.

Its also the case that the original version of this that was bouncing around in the 2010s was more of a gaint shell script hack and it was possible for games to depend upon the host system in way which could break over time. Today it is utilising stuff in the flatpak ecosystem:

https://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/FOSDEM/video/2020/UD2.208/conta...

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, is that why steam still depends on trashy 32bit-libs? Last week, after updating my Debian, steam broke because of that s**, and now I have to think about using a separate windows-machine just for this, until steam removes the 32bit-dependencies (which seems to be planned for 2026).

On my Debian system I use the flatpack version of Steam, it comes with the 32bit stuff inside the container, so you don't need any 32bit packages in the OS.

The flatpak-client starts here, but has permissions-problems with installing games. Probably because I have to use a different ssd from the one where the flatpak is installed at.

Re: Baldur's Gate 3 Steam Deck – Native Version

#450
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I'm aware of. I thought that was weird at first as well, but I assume it might be in a way to protect the engineer. Unfortunately, singling out any individual developer, even for praise, can attract unwanted negative attention online. By acknowledging the passion and the work without naming the person, Swen gives them full credit internally while shielding them from becoming a public target. This doesn't eve…

This is an interesting perspective... I'd be at a loss to think of an example of an engineer who's been publicly pilloried (having been highly regarded for great work) for the failings of their company. Perhaps you could cite and example? Seems enormously more likely to be the all to familiar story in the games industry of not providing credit to individual devs. Something that goes back to the earliest days of Atari…

I've worked enough with customers to know they're mostly fine, until you get that one weirdo that finds out where you work and follows you home. You get a few every year. Knowing that, who would want their name associated with something in a space that produces as many incredibly motivated folks as the videogame industry?
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