Compulsion Games and striking art might as well be synonyms in dictionaries. South of Midnight’s visual identity is unmistakable, but it does not stop there. The game is more than just artsy graphics.
But before I briefly share my opinion on the game, let me talk about the technical side of things, which is central to this blog post. The primary focus is how South of Midnight performs on Linux and Windows, how difficult it was to get working, and things I noticed while playing on both platforms.
The Nerdy Bits
I purchased the game on Steam, and as one has come to expect, it just worked. I did not force any Proton version and let Steam do its thing instead. Throughout my playtime, I did not have any issues whatsoever. South of Midnight felt like it belonged.
Star Wars Outlaws is Ubisoft’s take on a Star Wars game working within the framework of their established Open-World formula. Although Massive Entertainment worked to avoid the checklist-like map design full of question marks, it still ended up being a checklist, just not on the map. And underneath all that busywork is a heist story along the lines of Ocean’s 11. With a twist.
But before I briefly share my opinions on the game itself, let me talk about the technical side of things, which is at the center of this blog post. The main focus is how Star Wars Outlaws performs on Linux and Windows, how difficult it was to get working, and things I noticed while playing on both platforms.
The Nerdy Bits
Let me start with the installation. I purchased the game on Ubisoft’s platform instead of Steam, so I had to resort to Lutris for the first step. After I installed the Ubisoft Connect launcher via this handy script, the procedure was the same as on Windows: select the game to install, the install location, and start the download.
In Lutris’ settings, I chose Proton-GE as the runtime, but I also tried Wine and Proton Experimental. Since I noticed no differences, I stuck with what I tested last, which was Proton-GE.
Benchmarking Preamble
I tested on my AMD Ryzen 7600 with 32 GB of DDR5 6000 Mt/s memory and an AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT. Windows 11 was on version 24H2 as of the end of March. My Linux installation was a regular Fedora 41 Workstation with Gnome Shell on Wayland running kernel version 6.13.8. Since I play at 1440p, that was the only resolution I tested. For graphics settings, I limited myself to Ultra and High, each at native resolution and upscaling with FSR Ultra Quality.
I ran every benchmark pass three times in one go instead of performing three separate runs and averaging the numbers. I am lazy, and I also assume that the result would be the same.
A Plague Tale: Innocence is a stark contrast to Asobo Studio’s prior work, which includes titles based on family-friendly movies such as WALL-E, Toy Story, or Garfield. Even contemporary games could not be more different. Today, Asobo Studio is best known for the A Plague Tale games and Microsoft Flight Simulator. What sets A Plague Tale: Innocence apart from the rest of the lineup is its extremely dark and gritty medieval fantasy setting. The game does not hold back on heartbreaking moments and gory visuals. But it is not a horror game at heart. A Plague Tale: Innocence is a linear, story-driven adventure with a focus on stealth and occasional combat. It borrows elements from survival horror titles, such as exploring the world for supplies to aid in your journey. The major difference is that resources are plenty enough to get you through all situations. If a puzzle requires a certain amount of crafting materials, you can generally find them near its location. This design choice makes the game very approachable, and the primary reward for exploration is a healthy surplus of resources for lavish use and upgrading the main character’s gear.
A Plague Tale: Innocence’s game design is a puzzle at its core. But it does not present itself as a puzzler. Your journey through the 17 chapters confronts you with carefully crafted areas populated with enemies of varying types. Depending on the enemy and the gear you have unlocked, you can take out your foe or, most of the time, distract them to sneak past. After all, the main protagonist is a fifteen-year-old girl usually accompanied by even younger children, her five-year-old brother in particular. One hit instantly spells game over. A slow and methodical approach is typically the key. When you combine the dark story and atmosphere, the game creates a suspense-packed gameplay experience.
For the most part, A Plague Tale: Innocence is not very difficult. Because of its linear structure and limited size, the solution to crossing an area is usually not difficult to deduce. Only in the later chapters does the number of enemies in a particular location provide a challenge. Until then, A Plague Tale: Innocence is more about engrossing you in its story, world, and characters. The successor, A Plague Tale: Requiem changes that and unleashes you into larger, much more challenging places. But that does not mean that A Plague Tale: Innocence is a walking simulator. There is enough gameplay here to make it a proper and exciting game. Asobo Studio created a very focused adventure without unnecessary fluff and monetization crap.
(Stay away from the Coats of Arms DLC, though. From what I saw, this is a pack of “outfits” that merely change the color of the base outfit, which you’ll never see again after the second or third chapter.)
Almost four years ago, I explained how I automated taking screenshots of video games on Windows. I integrated this code into a GUI two years later to simplify starting and stopping the capture. It was not a pretty application, but it did the job. Since I resurrected my Linux experiment a while ago, gaming on Linux and even the general day-to-day use of Linux have caught up to the point where it is a serious contender for daily driving. Therefore, I was looking for a way to automate taking a screenshot while I am gaming on Linux. My previous approach would not work since it relied on Windows’ infamous WinAPI, and Wine wasn’t something I wanted to dabble with for something so small.
My initial idea was to use a Wayland API to do something low-level. It seems like this is impossible by design in the name of security. I want to substantiate this with links to official statements or documentation. However, I could only find user messages in various forums and SO-like services saying precisely what I just did, but without providing a source.
The most viable solution I found was using DBus and calling into the XDG Desktop Portal to capture the screen. From my understanding, the desktop environment’s compositor implements this specification and serves the request, e.g., Gnome’s Mutter.
The solution I present here is based on this StackOverflow response. All of the credit goes to that user. I added a bit of context and explanation in this blog post. Note that this is not a DBus tutorial, although I implicitly tackle some core concepts when explaining the code. I would direct you to the Freedesktop tutorial on DBus for a high-level overview. I am not a DBus specialist, and some aspects still elude me.
The complete example code is in my GitHub repository. I only show the bare minimum here for the explanations.
2024 was just like all the other years regarding my game selection. Barely any of the titles I played were released in 2024. Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the only new game, and Horizon Forbidden West on PC was just a re-release on a different platform. I was debating whether to continue this series, especially since the end of the year was not the best time health-wise. Motivation to play or write was nonexistent.
Before trying to squeeze any more semi-interesting words out of my fingers and waste everybody’s time, let me summarize the games I played.
Xbox has changed its strategy and started releasing games on other platforms previously exclusive to the Xbox. These moves have caused some unrest among Xbox fans, who have voiced their dissatisfaction on social media. This has been especially true since the announcement of the Indiana Jones game, which is a major upcoming title for Xbox. My exposure to all of this is all hearsay through podcasts and reports in YouTube videos. In these discussions, very few people can (or want to?) find a convincing reason that answers why you should still buy an Xbox. I have a few ideas.
But before I share them, I would like to briefly rant about the notion of being disappointed and now questioning the point of owning an Xbox. So, please stay a while and listen.
(Or rudely skip ahead to the “Pro Xbox” section.)
PlayStation Envy
I am baffled by any outrage because of this. Shouldn’t we gamers be happy for each other? Now, more players can also enjoy the great games that have only existed on an Xbox (not all, of course). The idea of being a fan of a brand, a.k.a. a giant corporation accountable to shareholders, is beyond me. How can it be so simple to shake this loyalty? Is it a form of schadenfreude that turns people into Xbox fans because they know that PlayStation owners do not get access to certain games, like Halo, Gears of War, and other exclusives? Is it jealousy, as the other platforms will soon have more games available to them?
What made people choose an Xbox over a PlayStation in the first place? Was it only the games? The pull of the Xbox exclusives must have been stronger than Sony’s portfolio. If so, it’s not like releasing more titles on Sony PlayStation and Nintendo Switch removes them from the Xbox platform. And if games weren’t the reason, the other arguments favoring an Xbox would not change. Right?
The hype around this game may have subsided, but I thought it would still be fascinating to test Black Myth: Wukong on Linux and Windows and see how both operating systems fare. Games Science’s handy benchmark utility was a perfect tool for the task. I was not interested in realistic gameplay benchmarks, so a built-in canned benchmark was perfect. What started as a simple run of the benchmark with different settings turned into a discovery of some unexpected behaviors that piqued my curiosity.
In a work project that heavily focused on asymmetric crypto, certificates, and digital signatures, we had to switch from PEM-formatted keys and certificates to DER-encoded data. Many of the examples I found on the internet always focused on reading PEM data with Bouncy Castle. I wanted to determine how much you can do without an additional library.
Spoiler: Not everything. But, let’s say, the stuff you likely care about.
A Story About OpenSSL & Formats
The starting point of this is a key pair, and you are likely to create one with OpenSSL. Its default output is PEM, so we start from there. You can also instruct OpenSSL to write DER when you generate the key by passing the command line argument -outform DER (or lowercase, it does not matter). This option is also used to convert from PEM to DER.
RSA
Let us start with RSA keys, which are still the most prevalent. Afterward, I will show you how to handle Elliptic Curve keys.
You can also use the following command. However, according to a comment on StackExchange, genpkey is the recommended way to go.
openssl genrsa -out genrsa_private_key.pem 2048
Depending on your OpenSSL version, there may be differences though. I could not narrow down the exact version, so you must look at the generated PEM. I am using OpenSSL 3.2.1. If the PEM starts with -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----, you are golden. If it is -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----, a conversion is necessary. That is because key information can be encoded in different ways. Java requires PKCS8, which is represented by the first one. From what I understood, the second one is PKCS1.
The gamer thought he knew what to expect. After all, he had watched a playthrough of the Xbox 360 version so many years ago. In truth, he had no idea.
Alan Wake had been a successful game. It sold over three million copies. Critics loved it. Players loved it. There was a huge fanbase around it. Still, the remastered version was slightly less well-received. It was a technological overhaul, more suitable for modern systems, while the gameplay was still the same old same old.
As the gamer fought his first battles, a realization set in. The controls were clunky, even odd at times. He had to retrain his brain to make things work. Dodging and sprinting were activated by the same key. „Why would the game do such a thing?“, the gamer wondered. The way he controlled Alan was unlike anything he had ever played. Alan was a writer, not a superhero. He was less athletic than a boulder chasing a famous fictional adventurer through narrow caves. Running was a futile endeavor. Any such attempt was quickly responded with heavy panting by the protagonist, Alan Wake.
The game did not want to be fast-paced, did not want to be a shooter. It was a supernatural mystery thriller with action elements. The beam of Alan’s flashlight was the game’s version of a reticle. The gamer thought this was a clever idea. He also didn’t like it as it made him feel vulnerable, not always in control. That’s what the game wanted him to feel.
Not in control.
Helpless.
The game’s story evoked similar feelings on an intellectual level. It was deliberately convoluted. It contained a meta narrative that foretold the story while the gamer experienced it on screen. He was dreading the moments of instense combat the game foretold. But how much of it was real? Was any of it real? This was unlike anything the gamer has seen before. He was wondering how the pieces fit together, how it all made sense. Would there be a happy ending?
Among the many valuable command line utilities on a Linux system is base64, which encodes to and decodes from the Base64 encoding scheme. As much as I like PowerShell…
(Yes, you read that correctly)
…it sorely lacks a base64-equivalent utility, or cmdlet as they are called in PowerShell land. The only solution was to create one myself. Cmdlets are usually written in C#, but you can also employ the concept of advanced functions, which is what I have done.
Here’s the code for converting strings to Base64. The function supports receiving data from a pipeline, or you can call it directly and pass the value as a parameter. More on the usage later.
Function ConvertFrom-Base64
{
[CmdletBinding()]
param (
[Parameter(ValueFromPipeline = $true)]
[string] $Base64
)
Process
{
if ($null -ne $Base64)
{
$Bytes = [Convert]::FromBase64String($Base64)
Write-Output [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetString($Bytes)
}
else
{
Write-Error "No base64-encoded data provided."
}
}
}
Horizon Forbidden West was one of the most visually impressive titles on the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Two years later, the same sentiment repeats on the PC. Despite no fancy raytracing features, Guerrila’s Decima Engine still produces a stunning game world and character rendering. I gushed enough about the visuals when I wrote my PS4 Pro and Burning Shores expansion reviews. Therefore, I will not elaborate further on this topic here. Instead, I will focus on the performance aspects. If you are interested in seeing a lot of screenshots, please read my reviews. The PC version is essentially the PS5 version, with a slightly higher level of detail in the distance and some PC-specific improvements, as Digital Foundry had discovered.
The most significant benefit of this PC version is the “unlimited” performance that is unshackled from console hardware and the free choice of input peripherals. I played with a keyboard and a mouse because of RSI issues in my thumbs that operating a controller’s thumbsticks worsened. A mouse was also more accurate when aiming with the bow, but I would still have preferred a controller during traversal and combat. The proximity of all buttons to the fingers would have made coordinating the various skills and movement patterns much more effortless. Apart from that, PC’s stalwart input methods worked very well and did not hold me back much. I made up for what I lost in convenience with comfort and precision.
Unlike other modern releases that ate hardware for more or less good reasons, Horizon Forbidden West performed admirably. The YouTube channel eTeknix did enormous work testing 40 GPUs in three different resolutions. Nixxes did an excellent job making the game scalable, and Guerrilla’s initial work optimizing for the weaker consoles also paid off immensely. Even my former 3060 would have been enough to enjoy the Forbidden West with some help from DLSS upscaling.
In my review of The Nathan Drake Collection, I hinted at wanting to play the Legacy of Thieves Collection at some point. That day has come, or rather has passed, and I have some thoughts about Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and The Lost Legacy.
Both titles were unmistakably Uncharted games and improved on many aspects of the previous trilogy. The biggest one pertained to the controls, which were more accurate in the fourth entry of the series and its spinoff. This eliminated all the unintentionally hilarious deaths I frequently endured in the first three titles. Combat also benefitted greatly from these improvements and was more precise this time around. Thanks to the PlayStation 5 overhaul, stable high framerates and the inclusion of Dual Sense controller features made for a more fluid and immersive gameplay. The PC version reached even higher framerates elevating the feel of gunplay further.
Despite all the mechanical grievances being eliminated, Uncharted 4 still contained moments of downtime. Naughty Dog’s trademark storytelling and character moments were stretched to their limits on a couple of occasions. These moments no doubt accurately captured the mood of the situation. This is undeniable. I only wished the writers would have opted for a more concise presentation to make it more delightful. Long-winded traversal and climbing sections slowed down progress and put a damper on the enjoyment more than necessary. This sentiment does not apply to the Lost Legacy, however. Its pacing was without complaint while still managing to deliver strong character moments that portrayed the human side of Chloe and Nadine and their relationship.
On the other side of that ancient coin were these high-quality character interactions emanating from this design and gameplay decision, something we have come to expect from contemporary Naughty Dog games. The tenuous relationship between Nathan and Elena, the love and admiration between the two brothers, and the friendship of the group and Sully; all were exceptionally well written. That even extended to Nadine, one of the two antagonists. In typical Uncharted fashion, the primary adversary was just a bad dude. Arrogant and spoiled. A rich douchebag. Someone to dislike.
I regularly watch a YouTube channel named SkillUp and listen to several IGN podcasts for weekly video game and gaming-industry-related news and updates. Almost every week since 2024 started, the weekly shows have contained reports about layoffs throughout the gaming industry. Many were due to bad management or lackluster sales of mediocre and unsuccessful titles. Around 7000 people have already lost their jobs in the first two months of this year alone, following up the more than ten thousand last year. This is compounded by the fact that game development is becoming an ever-growing financial undertaking. From recent leaks and the legal battle between Sony and Microsoft, we know that PlayStation’s last AAA first-party masterpieces have broken through the 200 and 300-million-dollar production cost barrier.
The more I think about it, the more I ask myself whether I should be looking for deals rather than paying full price. Relying solely on discounts is incredibly hypocritical of me as I am predominantly a PC gamer. A PC gamer with a very costly gaming computer, I am sad to admit. And despite having the cash for all that fancy hardware, I constantly look for discounts rather than accepting the full price for a video game. How does that make sense? Isn’t that salt in the wounds of all those talented developers and artists who lost their livelihoods? Am I part of the problem and equally despicable like the handsomely paid CEOs who gamble with the lives of their employees in their relentless chase for a slice of that shiny live-service money? I shudder to think what will happen to Rocksteady after the unfortunate release of Suicide Squad.
I will rethink my approach to game purchases, but I alone will not even make a dent. It’s a conscience thing more than anything. It requires more people to do the same and also changes in the industry. Are development cycles that now span the typical lifetime of a console generation sustainable in the long run? Who, other than full-time game reviewers or streamers, maybe, is supposed to have the time to repeatedly spend 100 hours on every single game because the new norm for AAA releases is to be a gigantic time sink? Why do we need countless hours of filler content? Aren’t shorter, more focused games of 40 hours not more affordable and more uncomplicated to produce? I often feel bad for skipping so much side content because the main story is so engaging or because the side content is not entertaining enough. Sometimes, I want to finish a game because I have already spent so much time in its world that I am ready to move on. That means I skip on content somebody put their sweat and tears into to produce. It feels wrong, yet I want to experience more of the many great titles released yearly, not more of a single one. Maybe it is an attention span issue of mine. I do not know. All I see is budgets skyrocketing and people losing their jobs.
As a passionate gamer and a software developer, I can only hope the gaming industry reaches an equilibrium soon. These massive waves of workforce reductions and studio closures must stop. The industry needs a sustainable approach to high-quality, high-profile cinematic experiences so we can continue playing these incredible stories and even more of them. Studios also need a way to try something new, to take a risk without fear of the loss of everything. I immensely enjoyed Immortals of Aveum, but Ascendant Studios did not ascend far with their first game. If this industry only knows the two extremes of blinding success or heartbreaking disaster, it will become harder and harder for creative minds to take the plunge and dare raise funds to create something new.
Now, these thoughts mainly apply to high-profile releases. However, the concept of paying full price is even more applicable to double-A or indie productions. Smaller studios need all the money they can get without a giant publisher backing the development.
This is a complex topic with many more points I could discuss if I invested more time. Despite that, I said what I thought was necessary, and I will end this post on that note.
I apologize for the downer. These thoughts did not let me go.
Thank you for reading this sad gamer’s tale.
PS
The header image was created by Microsoft’s Copilot with a minor edit job from me using the following input:
“create an image of a video game store with a bargain bin full of discounted video games next to a stand of triple-a full price titles”
Microsoft’s Azure Key Vault supports uploading certificates in the PEM format. However, it is a bit picky, and the format must be exact. The documentation contains all the information, but the PEM format has a few nuances that the documentation does not address.
The following is a valid certificate as generated by a PKI.
However, Key Vault will not accept it. Instead, it throws the dreaded error: “The specified PEM X.509 certificate content is in an unexpected format. Please check if certificate is in valid PEM format.”
As you can see in the documentation, the PEM file must not have metadata about the certificate and issuing authorities. You can remove this information, and the PEM will look like the following.
You are not done yet, though, as the key must be in the PCKS#8 format. The following OpenSSL command will do the trick if you store your key in a file.
openssl pkcs8 -topk8 -nocrypt -in private-key.pem
This works for RSA keys, as shown above, and Elliptic Curve keys.
Microsoft desperately needed a win after all the negative press surrounding its Xbox gaming brand in 2023 and the year before. 2022, in particular, needed major first-party releases as many titles were pushed further into the future. When one of those much-anticipated games finally arrived, it was a stake in the heart of a vampire. Redfall’s release in May was a disaster, and all eyes were now on Starfield, Bethesda Game Studio’s space opera and first new IP in ages. “Skyrim in space “was the most succinct description that was even given by the game’s director.
I like Skyrim, and I enjoy science fiction in space. The more Bethesda revealed about the game, especially in its Starfield Direct presentation, the more my interest was piqued. It went so far that I took advantage of AMD’s sponsorship deal that bundled a Radeon graphics card with the game’s Premium edition. It was actually the only way for any of the current-gen GPUs to be a sensible purchase. Based on early benchmarks, it also was a necessary upgrade from the RTX 3060 to get an enjoyable performance in this game. Although the performance at launch was still imperfect, it ran well most of the time outside major cities.
The game itself was, in many aspects, a typical Bethesda title, offering more of the gameplay loop that we all have come to enjoy. But Bethesda’s ambitions have been grand, vast as the depths of space, so they have added 1000 planets for players to explore. Could we be talking about illusions of grandeur instead?
Regarding scope, Bethesda’s games have always offered the player an enormous amount of content worth several hundreds of hours if you wanted to. Starfield’s 1000 planets certainly have that potential, although I doubt it would be exhilarating. Worlds only contained a low, curated (maybe randomized) number of locations of interest, and traveling between them was… a perfect opportunity to listen to space podcasts. And even those locations existed primarily for looting purposes. If you love the gameplay loop, all the power to you. If I remember correctly, I have only visited and explored planets during the events of a quest. Therefore, take my words with a grain of salt.
The big story questlines were where Starfield shined, not the number of planets or auxiliary game systems. Combined with the addictive Bethesda storytelling, looting, fantastic art design, and entertaining combat, I had a delightful time. However, it is essential to know what to expect from Starfield. It could have been a better space exploration game. But it was a terrific story-based first-person shooter with RPG elements Bethesda-style.
Performance was a mixed bag, and it still depends on the hardware. Starfield prefers AMD graphics cards and Intel processors. Big cities like New Atlantis or Akila will murder low-end CPUs, and performance dips must be expected. Indoor areas ran well, whereas outdoor regions varied based on the location (dense forest vs. barren planet surface). However, not all graphics options must be cranked to eleven to enjoy the artwork.
The Codeslinger 