Gabe Newell of Valve Software (Steam) recently spoke to 1 NEWS in New Zealand about everything that has been going on and teased a few fun details. For those who didn't know, Newell has been staying in New Zealand since early 2020 and decided to stay after a holiday when COVID-19 got much worse.

Newell continues to talk very highly of New Zealand, even somewhat jokingly mentioning that some Valve staffers appear to strongly want to move their work over there now too. Newell mentioned why there's no reason other game companies couldn't move to New Zealand, and joked how they're a producer of "not-stupidium" seemingly referring to how well New Zealand has dealt with COVID-19.

The real juicy details though come when, as expected, questions were asked about upcoming games. Newell said very clearly "We definitely have games in development that we're going to be announcing — it's fun to ship games," and that "Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that.".

When asked about Half-Life 3 and the other usuals, joking about Valve being afraid of the number 3, Newell said directly "I've successfully not spoken about those things for a long time and I hope to continue to not talk about them until they are moot questions. Then we'll move on to a new set of questions," and that the "nice thing is, by not answering those questions, I avoid the community coming up with new, equally-difficult-to-answer questions.".

It's good to know that the game development fire has been lit under Valve once again. Nice to see they continue to keep Linux in their sights for games too with all their recent games (Artifact, Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx) all having Linux builds, although Alyx is not directly mentioned on the store page for Linux it is available .

What are you hoping their next game announcement will be?

English version below

C3Subtitles?!

Hat dich im Lockdown die Langeweile und die Sehnsucht nach Chaos Events gepackt? Sitzt du daheim und schaust sehnsüchtig die Talks vom rC3 und vergangenen Chaos Veranstaltungen?
Bring ein bisschen Congress zu dir nach Hause, wie beim rC3, und bringe dich ein, die Qualität und Barrierefreiheit der CCC-Aufzeichnungen zu verbessern! Du kannst jederzeit von Zuhause aus an Untertiteln für die Recordings arbeiten. So lange oder kurz du möchtest!

Wie geht das?
Die Transkripte sind software-autogeneriert und werden von Dir in einem Etherpad verbessert. Aufgrund von Akzenten der Speaker und Fachvokabular ist das dringend notwendig.
Danach folgt wieder ein automatisierter Schritt: Das Timing der Subtitles. Auch dieses Ergebnis wird von Dir geprüft. Danach sind die Untertitel fertig!

Genauere Beschreibungen und Anleitungen findest Du im C3Subtitles Wiki . Den aktuellen Status der Untertitel findest du auf c3subtitles.de .

Bei Fragen wende dich an die unten genannten Kontaktwege.

Du brauchst Untertitel? Lass uns wissen, welche Talks dich interessieren!

Was ist mit Untertiteln für andere Bühnen?

Du gehörst zu einer Organisation / Erfa / Hackerspace (Chaos-West, WikiPaka, ChaosTrawler, Chaoszone, Sendezentrum, Bitwäscherei Zürich, c-base, hacc München, OIO, Chaosstudio Hamburg – und alle anderen) die auf Events (rc3 und andere) Videos recorded und veröffentlich hat?
Du möchtest, dass diese barrierefreier zugänglich sind und ihr sie mit Untertiteln versehen könnt? Dann melde dich bei uns!
Schreib uns an, am besten via Rocket-Chat in #subtitles oder auf einem anderen Weg, siehe unten.
Was du dafür brauchst:

• Eine Kontaktperson für uns
• Eine Fahrplandatei (wenn die nicht exisitert finden wir trotzdem einen Weg)
• Öffentlich zugängliche Video-Dateien
• Motivation, um Barrierefreiheit selbst in die Hand zu nehmen

(Spoiler: Wer schnell ist, bekommt für die Talks noch gute Trint-Transkripte! Noch haben wir Credits!)

Übrigens: Untertitel haben auch den Vorteil, dass man damit Videos maschinendurchsuchbar macht! Such mal nach “war das perfekte Argument dabei..” ! Media kann das bereits: schau ab Minute 14 in media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11583-rc3_eroffnung .

Kontakt:

• #subtitles im Rocket Chat
• #subtitles im IRC
• E-Mail: subtitles -!-at-!- die-orga.org
• @c3subtitles auf Twitter

English Version:

C3Subtitles?!

Have you been hit by lockdown, you’re bored and you are craving for more chaos event feeling? Are you sitting at home and watching recorded Talks from rC3 and past Chaos events?
Bring a little bit of rC3 to your home and help with improving quality and accessibility of the CCC recordings! You can work on the subtitles from the comfort of your home, as long or as short as you like to!

How does this work?
The transcripts are generated automatically by speech recognition software and improved and corrected by you. Since talks contain lots of domain-specific terms and may have speakers with heavy accents, this is very much necessary. The next step is again automated: aligning the subtitles to the audio. Again, the result of this process is verified by you. Afterwards, the subtitles are finished!

For a more in-depth description and how-tos, take a look at c3subtitles Wiki. You can find the current status of any talk in our database on c3subtitles.de .

If you have any questions, contact us via any of the channels below!

You need subtitles? Let us know which talks you are interested in!

What if I want subtitles for a different stage?

You are part of an organisation / Erfa / Hackerspace (Chaos-West, WikiPaka, ChaosTrawler, Chaoszone, Sendezentrum, Bitwäscherei Zürich, c-base, hacc München, OIO, Chaosstudio – and all the others) which recorded and published videos during rC3?
And you would like to improve accessability of your talks via subtitles.
Send us a message via Rocket-Chat in #subtitles or another way, see below:
What do you need:

• A contact person for us,
• A file containing a Fahrplan-File,
• Publicly available videos, and
• Motivation to take accessability into your own hands

(Spoiler: the faster you are, the higher the chance for automatically generated transcripts by Trint – we still have credits!)

By the way: With subtitles you can make the video content machines searchable! Search for this query on media: “war das perfekte Argument dabei..” ! Media can already do that: Check 14 minutes in on media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11583-rc3_eroffnung .

Contact:

• #subtitles in Rocket Chat
• #subtitles in IRC
• E-Mail: subtitles -!-at-!- die-orga.org
• @c3subtitles on Twitter

Proton Experimental is the new testing area where Valve and their partner CodeWeavers continue rolling out extra fixes and improvements to the Proton translation layer for Steam Play .

This work follows on from what was done to get Cyberpunk 2077 working and in a better state on Linux, and they're clearly not done yet. In the latest updates to Proton Experimental they added "better support for Red Dead Online, Kingdoms Reborn, and Anno 1404 - History Edition" and also newly improved video support with "infrastructure work for supporting video playback from Media Foundation".

Here's a quick look at Red Dead Online running on Linux with Proton Experimental:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Video - Red Dead Online running on EndeavourOS with an Intel i7 5960x and NVIDIA 1080.

I should note that I've seen some issues with it. Valve do note "better" support and so don't expect a perfect experience just yet, especially with it being an online only game it could easily break on the next update - but progress is clear and it works. Still, I've seen some crashes and black screens but when it works it seems to run quite well overall.

As always you can find Proton info on GitHub and on our dedicated page .

Read 2 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Liquidation - Echoes of the Past is an upcoming tactical fantasy/sci-fi singleplayer and multiplayer real-time strategy game with rpg elements. It's looking and sounding impressive with a curious mix of themes from the likes of Starcraft and Dawn of War and it's coming along with Linux support eventually.

"The game takes place in the dying plane of Veá, which has been repeatedly ravaged and drained of its very life essence over the course of a massive war that has been going on for centuries. Now, with the doomed world drawing its last breath, you arise as a lesser deity tasked with restoring the balance in Veá and ending this war before it’s too late."

Check out the fun new trailer:

Watch video on YouTube.com

Some of what they have planned includes:

• Campaign:
  Learn more about the world of Liquidation and its characters through the campaign mode which you can either play solo or coop.
• Master four unique Factions:
  Command the the remaining forces of the maniacal kingdom of the "Twilight Crusade", the insidious dwellers of the hollow earth of the "Scourge Alliance", the demonic "Nether Legion" or the all consuming "Ancient Corruption" each with their own distinct abilities, weapons, units and commanders.
• Each Unit matters:
  Equip your units with different types of weapons or equipment, use the environment as cover and lead them to victory.
• Skirmish against AI:
  Battle on a variety of themed maps against the AI. Solo or with friends, you choose the difficulty!
• Ranked & Custom Online Multiplayer:
  Climb the online leaderboard or have a Skirmish with your friends in different game modes with custom settings!
• Be a God:
  Customize your own Deity Avatar and send yourself into the heat of the battle!

Currently they're planning to run a Kickstarter campaign which you can follow along here, and you can also wishlist it on Steam too . Once the campaign goes live, we will let you know.

Want more? The developer previously provided us with an exclusive early work in progress demo, go check that out here .

You've heard a lot about various packaging systems on Linux from deb to rpm and the next generation with Snap and Flatpak, but what about how games get built and packaged up?

Well, that's what Linux game porter Ethan Lee wanted to talk about and show off during the Linux App Summit 2020. Interestingly, it sounds like Ethan Lee put in their talk plan after seeing us announce the event. For those who aren't familiar with Ethan Lee you can check out their port portfolio here which shows just how many games they've shipped including the likes of: Streets of Rage 4 which just recently released, VVVVVV, Owlboy, FEZ, TowerFall Ascension, Dust: An Elysian Tail and a vast many more. Ethan Lee also created and maintains FNA , which is a reimplementation of the Microsoft XNA Game Studio 4.0 Refresh libraries.

The full video can be seen below at timestamp 2:20:20

Watch video on YouTube.com

Much like on Windows, there's different ways of building games and what's shown here is just one way but it's a nice peek behind the development curtain that you don't often get to see when it comes to games.

If you wish to support the work that Ethan Lee does for Linux ports and FNA head over to the GitHub Sponsors page .

Interested in all the work the open source consulting firm Collabora are doing with Valve to help improve Linux gaming? We've got you covered.

We've already been over a few bits of what they're doing together, like their Linux Kernel work that will hopefully be live with Linux 5.11 and also their work on the Steam Linux Runtime Container system . Collabora have been doing a lot of other work in the open source space too that we've been following, like the Monado runtime for VR and AR (XR) and their work on the Panfrost driver for Mali .

During the Linux App Summit 2020, Collabora developer Vivek Das Mohapatra did a presentation giving a whistle-stop tour of their work to give an overview of all the bits and pieces. It's about 28 minutes, so it won't take you long to go through if you want a nice way to catch up.

You can see the full video below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

What really captured my interest was the mention about their work with "Atomic Updates & A/B Booting", which Vivek Das Mohapatra mentioned can help with a "game console like piece of kit". While no direct reason was mentioned for working on it, Vivek Das Mohapatra said it has been a "big chunk" of the work they've been doing and that the hope is we will see it "real soon".

It's interesting as such a system should allow both seamless and fool-proof system updates that something like SteamOS would benefit from. This is a similar sounding system to what the SteamOS-like distribution GamerOS currently uses too and we know that Valve at least had plans in the past to go back to SteamOS at some point .

Read 5 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Confirmed to be launching with Linux support, and it will be free to play in some form, Projekt Z from 314 Arts impressed us in the first dev video and they're back to show off more progress.

What exactly is it? A co-op Zombie survival FPS set during the end of World War 2, which takes place on a secret German island that you and your team crashed on. They're trying to combine a mixture of casual and hardcore elements together, somewhat inspired by parts of Left 4 Dead with different characters.

Check out their second development log video below:

Watch video on YouTube.com

The more realistic- ish take on it compared with the likes of Left 4 Dead, along with the survival elements make Projekt Z sound overall quite exciting. Having a special hub area to build up in between missions sounds great, and their attention to all the little details is pretty impressive for a small team. Dead players body turning into an AI zombie is quite a nice touch too.

You can follow it on the official site .