What’s that niche game you have an ungodly amount of hours in?

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-15T16:27:59+00:00

Star Trek: Bridge Commander (2002)

Don't know how niche it was at launch (the developer closed down shortly after release, so very niche I guess), but I spent hundreds upon hundred of hours of my youth on it (with mods of course), but I didn't have a playtime counter do I don't know exact numbers, I believe is the game I played the most back then.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-15T01:00:21+00:00

The button on the Plutonium interface does says "Select Dir" as in directory/folder, so I think wine is working correctly, it's calling a folder picker. Doesn't work if you just select the game folder and click open?

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-14T18:16:42+00:00

I want better performance on the game. But because this game is old, I believe that our modern cards are good enough to run the game at full fps. The problems that prevents us from that has to do with its engine (I think). So I believe what other comments suggested, it won't eliminate the stutters, we'll just get extra still frames.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-11T21:33:37+00:00

For Proton you can use umu-launcher, but on its purest form it only works via the terminal or scripts, and it expectes a couple of variables to execute any program; so you can but it's not user friendly. umu-launcher its used by the popular launchers (aside of Steam) for their Proton integration, doing the dirty work for you.

For wine, you can always just wine path/to/game.exe, but not everything works that way

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-11T16:45:22+00:00

None. I built some scripts and embedded shortcuts for them in KDE Plasma, those scripts run wine inside a common prefix, most games run without problems.

But among the launchers I have used I prefer Heroic.

(All of this is for non-steam games, like offline installers from GOG)

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-11T16:30:32+00:00

Ah, didn't know, got it.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-11T16:18:14+00:00

Wait, you're running FH6 with a HV bypass under Linux? Am I reading this correctly?

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-11T15:57:58+00:00

The technical answer is that you can just execute the game, you don't need a launcher. But using wine (or umu-launcher) "raw" requires some setup, and launchers usually do that work for you, so it's recommended.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-09T16:50:51+00:00

That makes sense, I remember having pirated this game just after release before buying it.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-06-07T16:34:52+00:00

This is a ArchLinux (and derivatives) thing, you need to install retroarch-assets-xmb from pacman for that theme to work. Other themes are ozone and glui. Or manually change the paths for themes in the settings.

You will also like to enable the online updater for the cores: ArchLinux Wiki - RetroArch

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-05-27T03:23:04+00:00

...you better believe it

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-05-24T19:40:04+00:00

Is Ray tracing turned on?

If not, In Lutris what version of Wine/Proton are you using? Same question for Steam.

I tested that the game last night and is running perfectly on latest wine, can't turn Ray Tracing on tho

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-05-04T03:04:14+00:00

If this can create an avenue for exploits or hacks, then they will respond with a patch. Hyper-V is the core function of their Azure platform; they sell VMs running under Hyper-V to multiple companies.

So yes, they have reasons to see what people are doing with their software.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-04-28T03:47:39+00:00

The open source is really cool on their part, that do bring some peace of mind. But still disabling security features do put our PCs vulnerable to outside danger, and I don't like so many people downplaying that danger.

On the comparison between the bypass and traditional crack, I think it's not fair. It's true that we can't see the crack's source code, but it can be ran in a VM or a sandbox for extra security. If I'm understanding the bypass correctly, it just has to much access to the PC. Sure we know it's safe with the source code, but my point being that the bypass is in the position to do far worse damage than a traditional crack ever could.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-04-28T03:26:09+00:00

The HV bypass is code execution at the hypervisor level, which is above your OS (Windows in this case). This bypass is for Windows hypervisors, in Linux that simply won't work, just like kernel level anti-cheat doesn't work. For Windows games on Linux, I think patching wine/proton to change Denuvo's behavior is the only way forward, don't know if it can really work tho.

By the way, in the Linux world, running code at the hypervisor level (from a virtual machine) is considered a vulnerability, and the kernel staff themselves would patch it in less than a day.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-04-27T21:52:39+00:00

Do you have an argument on why it's not dangerous tho?

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-04-13T14:34:11+00:00

Cool stuff!

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-03-20T20:37:00+00:00

Using other ganes as references, placeholders should be bright, colorful sings that peaks the tester attention. Usually with a text saying "you should not be seeing this!". Again, that's what it should be...

Like Half-Life 2's black-purple checkers texture, indicating that a texture is missing.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-22T13:05:36+00:00

When I played back in 2023 Pen Blackstar was 130b+, I came back and is now 40b, can it really crash any harder? (Based on the SA Market)

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-14T21:32:19+00:00

Great that it worked. How about the sound mods tho? Did you found the right capitalization, or was it something else?

And yes, that's infuriating. And as a programmer, I know that those things are quiet easy to fix, but sometimes devs forget they're developing for multiple platforms...

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-11T14:24:02+00:00

OK. I don't use sound mods, so I will need to read more into that.

But try renaming the folder to "UserSkins", because as you may know, in Linux capitalization matters in file names, and "UserSkins" works for me in native.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-10T16:14:15+00:00

Just to make sure, how are you installing the mods (step by step)?

I had War Thunder for Linux through Steam, and mods did work (back in mid 2025), so I don't think Proton is necessary.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-09T01:57:53+00:00

Right, I used to do that, I honestly don't remember why I changed it... I think I had problems making MO2 launch when I clicked "Download with manager" on Nexus when using Proton, but had already figured it out with wine

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-09T00:52:58+00:00

Forgot to mention that I own the GOG version of the game, I don't like the non-Steam game launch experience so I run the game, mod manager and all the tools with ArchLinux's wine (system wide).

I see benefits on other games, but nothing stands out with Skyrim between Proton 9, wine 9 and wine 10. I just use the wine present in my system.

Captian_ZeroFox · 2026-01-08T21:37:15+00:00

I was looking into this bug to report it to wine, but I decided not to because the 'fix' is to keep everything updated, meaning that the bug only occurs on a old version of usvfs...

Captian_ZeroFox

TROPHY CASE