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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • if you are having weird bugs when playing via Proton, report the issue on the Proton GitHub page. If it’s a graphical glitch you can also report it to proton-vkd3d or DXVK depending on which one is being used by the game. If unsure just report it only to Proton.

    The Proton developers and the developers of associated projects (DXVK, vkd3d, etc) will often add workarounds into the various parts of the Proton platform to get a game to work correctly, even if the problem you are seeing is a game bug or driver bug.


  • Compatibility with old games on linux is great, much better than it is for newer games. Those 2010 and earlier (all the way back to windows 95 or so) games that have trouble on Windows 10 generally work better on Linux than on Windows 10.

    For dos games you’d use dosbox on both Windows and Linux so the experience is mostly identical.

    You also get quality of life stuff such as: if a game starts at 640x480 on your 4k monitor, it doesn’t change your desktop resolution to 640x480, it just gets scaled up to the full screen.

    Specifically check out the Lutris software: it has integrations to install and run your old games from GOG or the original discs onto Linux.


  • Check out distrobox. It’s a way to have a Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro) container and allows you to install Ubuntu packages, even desktop applications.

    It works great for when you need to install a random .deb file or follow a very Ubuntu specific step by step procedure. I use it exactly for this kind of stuff.

    No rebooting needed, integrates fully with the host system, no virtual machine either.



  • Yes, this game is like that. This game also has more in depth simulation and mechanics, but it’s way less accessible.

    One major difference is that RimWorld has a narrator AI that will make up events for your colony to experience, while dwarf fortress tries to simulate a world and the events are most of the time the result of the world simulation.

    This makes RimWorld more gamey, meaning dwarf fortress can kind of get stuck in weird or bad situations, and men in black won’t magically show up to save your colony. But for many players that’s part of the charm!


  • That’s true, but some system level changes by default can’t be done because most system folders are read only. It’s trivial to turn this off, however a steam os update would overwrite any changes made.

    For installing new apps this is not an issue because Steam os is designed with flatpak support, so if an app is shipped as flatpak (or appimage which is just a single file you can execute) then it can be used without making the system folders writeable

    However in this case, it’s about the nix package manager which needs access to specific system folders to not just install packages (which can be apps or system stuff) but also to apply changes to the system configuration

    It’s really nice that a valve developer is taking the extra steps to make sure nix can be used out of the box. I don’t really understand why they are doing this, I think it’s just because they think it’s cool and some users are going to appreciate it.



  • Haha! I don’t think I can moderate and run such a community. Also my instance here for Lemmy is something I spun up for personal use given I like to self host stuff as a hobby, and I don’t think it would work well as a home for a community.

    However I saw someone made a new tool to explore the “lemmyverse” at https://lemmyverse.net and using it I found there is an existing community for dwarf fortress that seems a lot more seriously set up than mine would be: https://lemmy.ml/c/dwarffortress

    I subscribed! Last time I searched there wasn’t one but maybe I just had to use a tool like this lemmyverse site that collects data about all communities across instances.



  • Sure. Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy world simulator and fantasy story generator

    It has 3 game modes: fortress, adventure and legends.

    You begin all 3 by creating a world. The game will simulate the geology, tectonic plaques, erosion that eventually lead to a world that is habitable

    Then the game puts elves, dwarves and humans on it and simulates a couple hundred years of history.

    Civilizations rise and fall, go to war. People marry, have children and die.

    Then you start your game. In fortress mode, you lead a group of dwarves to establish a new settlement. It plays like a city builder, colony sim and a little like the Sims

    Every npc is simulated very in depth with thoughts, memories, relatives, moods, needs. This means there is stuff like trauma and npcs deal with it in different ways and eventually process into into a change in their personality and stats. The personality affects their social relationships.

    You guide the dwarves to dig and build rooms, workshops, taverns. You organize the military and trade.

    Eventually you might get attacked by globins or something. Each goblin will come from a specific village, they will have a family, thoughts and moods and memories.

    You can see how the game is unique. No other game will go to this extent in simulating the world and its people.

    Adventure mode is how you play with just one character and explore the world. It’s not good to play yet because most of the development at the moment is for fortress mode.

    Legends is like Wikipedia for a world you generated, you can browse all events, people, places.

    What makes the game amazing is the stories. One time, a beast from the caves arrived. It was a monster in the shape of a slug, made of lava, with wings.

    It flew up my well and was about to kill everyone. But some beekeeper dwarf was lowering a bucket. The bucker hit the Beast so hard it fell into the water reservoir and died (it was made of lava).

    Some water evaporated and the hot steam hit a few dwarves sending them to the hospital.

    Another story is a mayor I had that was so good at consoling people he became legendary at it. He suffered trauma because a drunk angry citizen punched him. Also he lost his cat. He reflected on this and “found peace”, it’s kinda funny but that’s how the game rolls. After that his stats changed or something and he was never bothered by anything. Managing stress in the game is important so this guy being so zen kept me on the edge of my seat when he was in danger due to how valuable he was as an unstoppable beast in consoling everyone all day every day and preventing fist fights or worse as we were dealing with a war with elves.

    Bottom line is, the game is extremely deep to a fault even, but I love it so much. I love how the stories are so unique and how things can go in such weird ways, I love seeing characters develop so organically with no scripted events at all.