Why is the cutscene/FMV problem in Linux gaming so difficult to fix? (lemmy.fmhy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by HoukaiAmplifier99@lemmy.fmhy.ml to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.ml

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I see it a lot in visual novels, older PC games and PC ports of older non-PC games. It sounds so trivial on paper, like... just play the video? But I know it's not. Why though? Can we ever expect the problem to be fully solved? Right now it kinda seems like an uphill struggle, like by fixing cutscene playback in one game doesn't really seem to automatically fix it for other games, so it's not a situation where a convenient one size fits all solution works.

And I don't really get it, because if it's related to video codecs, there are only so many codecs out there, right? And then you also expect that there's probably just a few popular ones out there that'll be used for 99% of all cases, with a few odd outliers here and there perhaps.

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[-] rhys@mastodon.rhys.wtf 3 points 1 year ago

@HoukaiAmplifier99 I might have made this up, but I think I recall reading that Valve routinely licences old and weird codecs so that they can build support in Proton for some of these fringe cases.

The only time I can remember seeing it recently was in an old game off GOG called Conquest: Frontier Wars. Like others, it just showed a coloured pattern, but with that game it couldn't recover from not being able to play and would crash after.

[-] HoukaiAmplifier99@lemmy.fmhy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Interesting, I take it you don't remember the source? I might want to look into that.

[-] rhys@mastodon.rhys.wtf 3 points 1 year ago

@HoukaiAmplifier99 I don't remember my source, and I can't find anything searching around. I either made it up or it was an unsubstantiated reddit comment that stuck in my brain :)

For real instances of this problem though, look at Glorious Eggroll if you haven't already. Contains a number of additional video codecs Valve can't yet support directly.

[-] HoukaiAmplifier99@lemmy.fmhy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Oh yeah Proton-GE is definitely my go-to usually, has fixed some stuff before, but there are still cases where it doesn't help. Idk what it does under the hood though.

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this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023

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