CIRCLE WITH A DOT

So there was a Steam Deck Prototype that just sold for $3,000 and the differences are CRAZY! Plus, we're taking a look at the new Croc: Legend of the Gobos remaster on GOG, Fanatical's Oddworld deal, and the new Nexus Mods update! Links & Resources Steam Deck Prototype sold on Ebay: https://steamdeckhq.com/news/an-early-prototype-of-the-steam-deck-was-sold/ Valve’s official Steam Deck prototype lineup: https://steamdeckhq.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/SteamDeckEarlyPrototypesBoxedForEbay.webp Croc: Legend of the Gobos comes to GOG: https://adtr.co/2ucwm8 Croc trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHeMqKoO4pA Fanatical’s Oddworld Complete Collection: https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/oddworld-complete-collection?ref=nmq0ztz Proton Hotfix fixed Monster Hunter Wilds: https://bsky.app/profile/plagman.bsky.social/post/3lmdhsb57h22v Nexus Mods update: https://github.com/Nexus-Mods/NexusMods.App/releases/tag/v0.9.1 Steam Deck beta client: https://steamcommunity.com/games/1675200/announcements/detail/529842974219043241 My Game ❯ Get the source code: https://github.com/heavyelementinc/dudelings-foss ❯ Dudelings on Humble: https://humblebundleinc.sjv.io/9LWQeW ❯ Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/41202/Dudelings_Arcade_Sportsball_Deluxe_Edition/?utm_source=yt-every-video ❯ Dudelings on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.heavyelement.dudelings&pcampaignid=yt-every-video ❯ Dudelings on Itch.io: https://heavy-element.itch.io/dudelings Affiliate links Services I Recommend: ❯ Proton Drive: https://go.getproton.me/aff_c?offer_id=43&aff_id=10074 ❯ Proton Pass: https://go.getproton.me/aff_c?offer_id=38&aff_id=10074 ❯ Proton VPN: https://go.getproton.me/aff_c?offer_id=26&aff_id=10074 ❯ Proton Mail: https://go.getproton.me/aff_c?offer_id=7&aff_id=10074 Best Steam Deck Accessories: ❯ SanDisk 1 TB card: https://amzn.to/3z8mMfH ❯ Steam Deck Dock: https://amzn.to/3PDjgkt ❯ Steam Deck accessories: https://amzn.to/4c2XKkM ❯ DualSense: https://amzn.to/3WR1u1R ❯ Gulikit KK3 Max controller https://amzn.to/4dqRaoC ❯ DualSense Edge: https://amzn.to/4cuzIyd ❯ 8Bitdo Pro 2: https://amzn.to/46R7hcz ❯ Amazon Suggested Products: https://amzn.to/4fAha2h Elsewhere on the Web ❯ ️ My podcast: https://podcast.subscribeto.me ❯ Merchandise: https://shop.heavyelement.com ❯ My Blog: https://blog.gardinerbryant.com/ ❯ ️ Email Newsletter: https://heavyelement.com/newsletter ❯ Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@gardiner_bryant ❯ ️ Peertube: https://subscribeto.me/ ❯ Revolt: https://rvlt.gg/gk6w4G3P ❯ Heavy Element: https://heavyelement.com Support the Show ❯ Patreon: https://patreon.com/thelinuxgamer/ ❯ Merch: https://gardinerbryant.com ❯ Humble: https://humblebundleinc.sjv.io/4GmJdL ❯ Become a Channel Member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1Kcz-CuGM6mxzL3B1_Eiw/join ❯ Amazon affiliate: https://amzn.to/3iYb4gd About Gardiner Bryant: A native Maine resident, Gardiner (yes, that's his first name) is an enthusiastic Linux evangelist, a believer in the efficacy and superiority of the Free and Open Source way, and President of Heavy Element. Heavy Element offers web design, media production, and YouTube consulting services to individuals and companies in Maine and beyond. https://heavyelement.com Gardiner Bryant is a privacy advocate and public speaker on the topic. Learn more about his speaking series and schedule an engagement at your institution at https://gardinerbryant.com -- Chapters -- 00:00 It's Linux Gaming News Time 00:22 Steam Deck Engineering Prototype sells for $3,000 07:01 Croc: Legend of the Gobos Remastered 09:09 Deals of the Week 10:53 Proton Hotfix for Monster Hunter Wilds 11:42 Nexus Mods App 0.9.1 13:00 Small Steam Deck Beta Client update Deep diving that Steam Deck prototype from Ebay... (and other Linux Gaming news)

The 3DS, one of my favorite handheld gaming systems. From the standard fare of Mario and Zelda titles to third party games and beyond. But let’s be honest, this thing is aging. The hinge is weak and won’t stay open at a comfortable angle. The screen leaves much to be desired. And there’s always the chance of a capacitor going bad or a battery that won’t charge depriving us of access to our favorite games. So what’s the solution? Emulation. Emulation is the only way we can guarantee that we’ll be able to play our favorite games going forward. Besides, I’m already carrying my Steam Deck with me everywhere I go. So why would I lug my aging 3DS everywhere, too? And look, there are few devices out there that are more qualified to emulate the 3DS than the Deck. It’s got an amazing screen that can be configured to accommodate the two screens of the 3DS. Plus, it’s got ample input to get you playing your favorite games. But the journey to getting here, it wasn’t easy. The first step was acquiring ROMs of my games. The obstacles are numerous if you want to do so ethically. It’s not as simple as going online and finding website that hosts copies of the games I already own. No. Why would I do that when I’ve got a perfectly good 3DS cart reader right here? The first step on my journey to ethically acquiring ROMs was to hack my 3DS. This is done in the name of game preservation so it is, in my opinion (and, mind you, I’m not a lawyer) it’s totally okay. Hacking my 3DS was non-trivial and I’m not going to cover the whole process here. But it requires a flash cart and some perseverance. Once it was hacked, I just needed to install cartridge dumping software, and run my cartridges through it. Then, I copied them to my Deck. I won’t be covering how to do that in this video since, despite it being morally okay and the 3DS being antiquated , it’s not something the big red N likes people talking about on the Internet. Suffice it to say that, once you’re at this point, it’s not a difficult process at all, and this is the best way to get ROMs to emulate on the Deck. So yeah! We’ve got ROMs! But ROMs are only one component of emulation. Now, we need an emulator. There’s an easy way to set up 3DS emulation on the Steam Deck: EmuDECK. This is a simple and straightforward way to get all your emulators running on Deck. It handles everything you might need from loading your ROMs into the Steam Deck, configuring your button mapping, and more… And don’t get me wrong… I swear by EmuDECK but… for me… for some reason, despite its stated support for Lime3DS, nothing seemed to work right. In theory, you can just head to emudeck.com, download the file and then run it. Select Lime3DS from the options and you should be good to go. However… I’m not sure why, but EmuDECK failed to install Lime3DS for me. What’s worse… after I manually installed it, EmuDECK failed to detect that it was ready to be used. I tried various fixes but nothing seemed to work. So that’s why, in this video, we’ll set things up from scratch without EmuDECK. It’s not that much work and after about 15 minutes you’ll be ready to play! Step 1 - Install Lime3DS The first step is to drop into Desktop mode by hitting the Steam button, selecting Power and then select “Switch to Desktop.” Once you’re in desktop mode, open up the Discovery app center. Search for Lime3DS and install it. First step completed! Step 2 - Copy Our ROMs How you do this will be contingent on your setup. For me, I have a retronas instance on my homelab. So I copied the ROMs off of the SD card and into RetroNAS. Then, I logged into that from my Deck and copied the ROMs to my SD card’s Emulation/roms/3ds directory. This is a directory that was created for me by EmuDECK. You can create any directory you’d like for your ROMs. It can be on your SD card or in your Home directory. From there it was a simple copy→paste job. Step 3 - Add to Steam Now, let’s add Lime3DS to our Steam Library so you can access it from Game Mode. Before we head back to Game Mode, though, let’s open Steam while in desktop mode, find Lime3DS in your library, and launch it. To use the mouse, you can hold the Steam button and use the trackpad. You can click by pressing in on the trackpad, too. Step 4 - Configure Lime3DS Next, we need to configure Lime3DS. If EmuDECK worked for you, you probably won’t need to do much of this stuff. But I’m including it here for educational purposes. Keep watching, though, since there are some options that you might find handy! 4.1 - Set your ROM directory First, let’s open up Lime3DS. Go ahead and click the “Double-click to add a new folder to the game list” message here and then use this modal window to select the path to your ROMs. 4.2 - Configure the Graphics Click on Emulation→Configure and select System. You can optionally set your 3DS Username, Birthday, and Play Coin count. But the real meat and potatoes of the configuration will be under the Graphics tab. Here, you can confidently set the Internal Resolution to x3 Native (1200x720). On the Layout tab, I personally prefer the “Large Screen” layout, with the Small Screen position set to Upper Right. Finally, under “Advanced,” I’ve selected “Vulkan” as the Graphics API and I’ve checked the “Enable Async Shader Compilation” which helps to resolve the compiler stutter at the cost of a few graphical glitches that resolve themselves the longer you’ve played the game. For audio, I haven’t changed anything. 4.3 - Set up the controls Finally, under the Controls tab, I’ve gone through and mapped each control to the appropriate button on my Steam Deck. To do this, make sure you’ve launched Lime3DS from your Steam Library. Keep in mind that on the 3DS, the A and B buttons and the X and Y buttons are swapped with each other. If you want to use the Deck’s gyro/accelerometer with Lime3DS, you’ll need to install SteamDeckGyroDSU. EmuDECK can install this for you, but if you want to do it yourself, just head over to the GitHub repo below, navigate to the release page, then select download the update-sdgyrodsu.desktop file. Now, just open up your downloads folder, mark the file as executable and run it. Now that that’s working, let’s go back into our controller config menu and select the Motion / Touch button. Under Motion Provder, select CemuhookUDP. Under the CemuhookUDP Config, make sure your settings match mine. Then click the Test button. You should see “Successfully recieved data from the server.” Step 5 - Game Mode Setup We’re pretty much set up, but there’s just a few more things I recommend doing. Let’s drop back into game mode. You can do this by going to the “Start Menu” for lack of a better term and logging out. Once you’re back in game mode, navigate to your library, and then the Non-Steam games section. Find Lime3DS and start it up. Now, hit the Steam button and go to controller. We want to configure some extra functionality here. I’ve set my right trackpad to control the mouse cursor and a press on the pad to be a left click. This lets me interact with the 3DS’s emulated “touchscreen” with a mouse cursor. Then I’ve also set R4 to be the F9 key which will swap the screens so that the touchscreen becomes the larger screen and the upper screen becomes smaller. This is handy if you ever need to do something like focus on the smaller screen for a while or interact with a small button. Finally, I have L4 mapped to F11 which toggles the emulator into fullscreen and window mode. This is useful if you want to show or hide the menus at the top of the screen. So here we are. We’ve got our own games running on our Steam Deck, we learned a lot along the way. And now we can have fun playing some classics!. There’s a compatibility list of 3DS titles on their website and more than half of the games that have been tested are rated as either “great” or “perfect.” Check it out with the link in the description! Well, that’s the video. Hopefully you found it useful. If you did, consider subscribing to the channel. You can also become a Patron if you’d like to support the work I’m doing here. That’s going to do it for now. Thanks for watching! I’ll see you next time. 00:00 3DS on the Steam Deck 00:58 ROM acquisition 01:58 EmuDECK 03:01 Non-EmuDECK Setup 04:16 Add Lime3DS to Steam Library 04:33 Launch Lime3DS from Steam Library 04:54 Configure Lime3DS 06:13 Configure Controls 07:23 Return to Game Mode 08:33 Conclusion

This week, we've seen new updates to Proton and to the Steam Deck's stable channel. We'll dive into both! Plus, Nintendo's holy war continues against Yuzu. Will it ever stop? We investigate. And new updates on PlaytronOS have me even more skeptical. We'll talk about it. All this and more right now!! Let's get right into the news. Nintendo's DMCA This week, Nintendo continued their unhinged IP crusade by hitting GitHub with 8,535 DMCA requests. Nintendo said that these Yuzu forks, quote, "illegally circumvents Nintendo's technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Nintendo Switch games." Consequently, GitHub said: Because the reported network that contained the allegedly infringing content was larger than one hundred (100) repositories, and the submitter alleged that all or most of the forks were infringing to the same extent as the parent repository, GitHub processed the takedown notice against the entire network of 8,535 repositories, inclusive of the parent repository. Details and speculation has emerged from the Yuzu case, saying that one or more of the emulator's developers had access to a Switch devkit and therefore the emulator wasn't a "clean room implementation." Thus giving Nintendo all the legal ammo they need to take it down. If that's true, then the source code for Yuzu is proverbially radioactive and it seems a firm legal footing for Nintendo to continue their holy war. But, why then, did they claim that Yuzu "illegally circumvents Nintendo's technological protection measures?" Only time will tell. This is sure to be up your alley The Create, Automate, and Manage Humble Bundle is out now and it's got a whole bunch of excellent games. This new bundle features 8 games for only $15. They are: The Colonists (native), Astro Colony (Playable), Cardboard Town (Native), Mob Factory (Playable), Factory Town (Verified), Buggos (Playable), and Recipe for Disaster (Playable). I'm looking forward to playing The Colonists and Astro Colony. Both of these games are right up my alley! PlaytronOS Do you remember PlaytronOS? It's this weird commercial Linux gaming distro that supposedly will have a whole bunch of upcoming devices shipping with it. It was announced back in March and it gives me the jibbilies. Yeah, well, we have got a bunch of information about PlaytronOS now. Sadly, it's only through their Discord. So I'm going to quote GamingOnLinux's article on the matter. It is written somewhat like a Q&A. So let's see what we can learn, here. Why should I install PlaytronOS? Playtron is an optimized Linux-based gaming OS that allows you to play all of your favorite Epic Games Store, Good Old Games, Steam games, and more.\nImproved game compatibility compared to other devices on the market. When will the pre-alpha launch of PlaytronOS come out? Summer 2024. What operating system is PlaytronOS based on? We are based on the Fedora Silverblue family of Atomic Desktop distros. PlaytronOS is not affiliated with the Fedora Project. Does Playtron run Linux games? Currently, PlaytronOS only runs Windows games using Wine. Native Linux games will be supported in the future. Is PlaytronOS open source? At first, only the operating system code will be open source. We have plans to open source more and release API documentation to allow developers in the community to contribute and build their solutions using Playtron. What does Playtron have to do with Crypto? Playtron is backed by a handful of crypto companies. If game developers believe blockchain features can improve their games, we are all for it. The use of these technologies from a user perspective will be optional. There is more to this and you can use the links below to read the full FAQ. In all honesty, it's that last bit that has me sketched out. I believe that cryptocurrency is a scam and the fact that it's involved here means Playtron is going to have to work extra hard to prove everything is on the up and up. Don't get me wrong, I'm interested to see where this goes… but I'm also not invested in it as all. Let me know your thoughts (and feed the engagement monster) by sounding off in the comments. You can also smash that like button to tell YouTube you want to see more videos just like this. Microsoft closes studios So, in an attempt to lose all market relevance, Microsoft has closed Tango Gameworks, Arkane Austin, Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Games. This is some EA-level studio murder. Studioicide? I'm coining that term right now. Studioicide. Look, I was on the Nerd Nest podcast this week and it was a blast. This was one of the stories we didn't end up getting to. But I have a lot to say on this topic. First, let's talk about how Xbox is a joke. I know two people who have Xbox Series consoles. And in the previous generation, I only knew ONE person who had an Xbox One. Everyone else has PlayStations or PCs. Microsoft is divesting from the Xbox market. Instead, they're bringing their IPs to PC. But what IP does Microsoft actually have? I'm not talking about the stuff they've bought recently. I'm talking about Halo, Forza, and Gears. Those are their first party IPs. And that's it. Worse yet, is that their acquisitions of major publishers like Bethesda and Activision are destined to end in the same studiocide we're seeing now. For god's sakes, Microsoft hasn't done anything interesting or innovative with their own IP since Halo ODST. So yeah. This is just obscene. The fact that regulators allowed Microsoft to acquire major publishers is a crime in-and-of itself. It's clear that bizzaro corporate Ted Nugent over here has no idea what he's doing and is making the industry worse for his incompetence. </rant> Sponsored by my game And speaking of game studios… how about mine? I'll make this quick. My game, Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball, released on Monday of this week and I'm so proud of it. it's basically Pong meets foosball. Up to two players square off in a no-holds-barred brawl for points. You control one dudeling at a time on the bottom of the screen. You can make him jump, dash, punch, and more! And the objective is to get the ball into your opponent's goal. It's an excellent party game, it's really fun, and it's well-reviewed on Steam. Check it out with the links below. New Proton Experimental So first off, let's talk about the new Proton Experimental. This is a heck of a change as it makes a ton of games playable. Newly supported in this release Tekken 8, Black Desert Online, Hero's Land, Onimusha: Warlords, Warlords Battlecry III, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, Iragon, FreestyleFootball R. Maybe it's already time for a revisit of my video from a few weeks ago where I installed CD and DVD-based games on my Steam Deck, eh? I mean, SimCity 3000 Unlimited didn't work at all… maybe now it will? Proton Experimental also has fixes for the re-release of the C&C games. There are a ton of fixes for other titles including Cities: Skylines, Age of Empires II Definitive Edition, Beat Saber, Halo Infinite and more. This is an exciting release and there will be a link to the changelog in the description. Make sure you check it out and see if your favorite game has a fix. Steam Deck Stable Client So this week we saw the biggest stable Steam Deck client so far in 2024. It included 43 features and fixes for Steam, many of which we've talked about when they were added to the Beta channel. But I wanted to review some of the most important updates here. And there are a few. Fixed Steam client menus opening in separate windows from main window after sleep/account change. Fixed crash when playing back certain media in Steam music player Reduced network traffic at startup and reconnect If a game failed to update, show why on the details page as well as the downloads page. Made taking screenshots more responsive Modified CSS classnames to reduce package size and reduce feature leaks Changed the default scale from 200% to 150% on a 4K monitor Steam Input New Configurator feature "Swap Left with Right": While editing a Controller Configuration, you can Swap the behavior of the Left Stick and the Right Stick, or Left Trackpad and Right Trackpad etc. This should be handy for "South Paws". There were many more fixes added to this stable release, but that's what I found to be the most interesting. Leave me a comment if I missed your favorite. I think that's everything I wanted to talk about this week. Thanks so much for being here with me in these weekly Deck news videos. I appreciate it. If you enjoyed this video, you might want to check out this one. Or perhaps watch the trailer for my game! Don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date with all the fun stuff we're doing here, and I'll catch you next time! -- Chapters -- 00:00 Introduction 00:23 Nintendo's IP Holy War 01:47 Humble's Create, Automate & Manage Bundle 02:28 New details on PlaytronOS 04:59 Xbox continues their losing streak 07:01 Dudelings: Arcade Sportsball 07:45 Proton Experimental 08:56 Biggest Steam Deck Update of 2024