Tag: Gaming Articles - James A. Chambers

Radxa Rock 5B Steam Installation Guide for Armbian

Published: April 3, 2023 / Last Modified: April 18, 2023 / 7 Comments / Gaming, Hardware, Linux, Radxa SBCs

I recently went through the trouble of figuring out how to install Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and it worked really well. Now that I’ve already gone through the pain of figuring out how to do this I figured I might as well write one of these guides for the Radxa Rock 5B as well.

The new RK3588/RK3588S boards have much more power than we’ve typically had available to us in the past on ARM boards. With a whopping 8 CPU cores and a Mali 610 GPU the Orange Pi 5 is capable of running Steam using Box64/Box86. It’s even able to play basic games pretty well (with some tinkering usually).

In this guide I’ll show you how to set up Steam on the Radxa Rock 5B and run Stardew Valley on it. You should keep your expectations in line though because there is no native ARM client for Steam. We are using emulation and instruction translation. You will also likely be missing libraries for most games you try which will require some fiddling.

This guide is only for Armbian running the Ubuntu Jammy variant with the Gnome desktop installed (rolling support status). The official Radxa distributions will not have 3D support and I don’t care about whatever other flavor of Linux you are running either. I’m not going to install your preferred flavor of Linux and try to figure out how to do this on there nor am I interested in troubleshooting it. Please don’t ask.

With all of that being said let’s get started!

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Installing Steam on the Orange Pi 5 with Armbian

Published: March 31, 2023 / Last Modified: April 18, 2023 / 52 Comments / Gaming, Hardware, Linux, Orange Pi

Orange Pi 5 running Steam and Stardew Valley

In this guide I’ll show you how to set up Steam on the Orange Pi 5 and run Stardew Valley on it. You should keep your expectations in line though because there is no native ARM client for Steam. We are using emulation and instruction translation. You will also likely be missing libraries for most games you try which will require some fiddling.

This guide is only for Armbian running the Ubuntu Jammy variant with the Gnome desktop installed only (platinum support status). The Orange Pi official distributions will not have 3D support and I don’t care about whatever other flavor of Linux you are running either. I’m not going to install your preferred flavor of Linux and try to figure out how to do this on there nor am I interested in troubleshooting it. Please don’t ask.

With all of that being said let’s get started!

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Converting Minecraft Bedrock / Java Worlds with Chunker

Published: January 27, 2023 / Last Modified: January 27, 2023 / Leave a Comment / Gaming, Minecraft: Bedrock, Minecraft: Java

Convert Minecraft Bedrock and Java Worlds Using Chunker

People have been asking me for years how they can convert a Minecraft Bedrock world to Java edition (or vice versa). The answer in the past was that you needed to use one of the tools that could read both formats and convert between them such as Amulet. It wasn’t a very fun process though and not many had succeeded over the years.

Recently I was asked this question again though and when I went to look up what the current map editors supporting both formats were I found a surprise: Chunker! If you look at the text in the bottom of the screenshot above you’ll see “Proudly made by Hive Games under exclusive license to Minecraft”. This is actually an officially sanctioned tool with official Microsoft documentation.

In this guide I’ll show you the current capabilities of Chunker and how to use it to convert a Minecraft world between editions. Let’s get started!

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Using Corsair Mice / Keyboards on Linux without iCUE

Published: December 27, 2022 / Last Modified: March 15, 2023 / Leave a Comment / Gaming, Hardware, Linux

Using Corsair Mice / Keyboards in Linux without iCUE - ckb-next

When I replaced my old keyboard I decided to get a keyboard with Cherry MX Quiet switches as I love mechanical keyboards but wanted to cut down on the noise. It’s still fairly loud but it’s definitely much quieter than my non-quiet models I’ve used before.

I had used Corsair keyboards before in the past on Windows but not since I had switched my main desktop to Linux. Unfortunately when I connected the keyboard the RGB was stuck on a solid red with no way to change it.

Fortunately there is an amazing replacement in Linux called ckb-next that is available in most major Linux distribution’s repositories. In this guide we’ll cover how to get the utility and what it can do.

Let’s begin!

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Hardkernel ODROID N2+ SBC Review

Published: November 10, 2022 / Last Modified: March 15, 2023 / Leave a Comment / Gaming, Hardware, ODROID, Reviews

The ODROID N2+ is a single board computer available in 2GB and 4GB options. It has the Petitboot loader which easily supports booting from flash drives, SSDs, and other types of storage. It’s a very popular choice for emulation due to it’s powerful CPU and GPU. It also has overclocking capabilities!

Today I’m going to review the ODROID N2+ and examine the available image choices, benchmark the performance of the board, take a look at the capabilities and give some general recommendations about who would best benefit from using a board like this. Let’s get started!

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Docker Minecraft Purpur Geyser Server

Published: September 2, 2022 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 113 Comments / Gaming, Minecraft: Bedrock, Minecraft: Java

Minecraft Geyser + Floodgate Paper Minecraft Server

This is a new Docker container to automatically set up and run a Minecraft server that both Java and Bedrock players can connect to! This allows everyone to play on your server no matter which edition of Minecraft you are using. This is the Purpur version. It uses the Geyser and Floodgate plugins to accomplish this.

Since it uses the Purpur Minecraft server it also supports any additional plugins that are compatible with Purpur / Paper / Spigot. This gives you the ability to do many things that are currently impossible to do in Bedrock if you are hosting the official Bedrock dedicated server.

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ODROID Go Super Getting Started Guide

Published: August 29, 2022 / Last Modified: March 15, 2023 / 2 Comments / Gaming, Hardware, ODROID

The ODROID Go Super is the latest model of the popular handheld retro gaming consoles made by ODROID. It was recommended by a regular reader that I should check these out and I’m really enjoying it so far.

Today I’ll show you how to get started with the ODROID Go Super including getting a network connection, loading more games onto the device and more. Let’s begin!

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Using Cheap 2.5″ SSDs with PS4/Xbox to Improve Performance

Published: August 10, 2022 / Last Modified: March 15, 2023 / 5 Comments / Gaming, Storage

Last-Gen Console SSD Upgrade using StarTech

When my wife and I were trying to play Cyberpunk 2077 on our last-gen console it was extremely painful and not just because of the bugs. It was painful because every time I died it would take 2-3 minutes to reload the game.

Eventually I decided to grab one of my spare SSDs and use a USB to 2.5″ SATA adapter and hook it up to our last generation consoles and try installing all of the Cyberpunk files to the SSD. It made a gigantic difference getting my load times down to something closer to 20-30 seconds (much better than 3 minutes).

This is also an incredibly cheap thing to do. Even if you buy a new SSD and a 2.5″ SATA adapter you will spend under $30 or so if you get a minimal capacity SSD. If you already have an older spare SSD even better.

Today I’ll cover how to set this up. Let’s get started!

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Minecraft Java + Bedrock Server Together – Geyser + Floodgate

Published: August 6, 2022 / Last Modified: April 7, 2023 / 458 Comments / Gaming, Minecraft: Bedrock, Minecraft: Java

This is a new Docker container to automatically set up and run a Minecraft server that both Java and Bedrock players can connect to! This allows everyone to play on your server no matter which edition of Minecraft you are using. It uses the Geyser and Floodgate plugins to accomplish this.

Since it uses the Paper Minecraft server it also supports any additional plugins that are compatible with Paper / Spigot. This gives you the ability to do many things that are currently impossible to do in Bedrock if you are hosting the official Bedrock dedicated server.

It is fully compatible with my Paper Minecraft Java Server Container and you can swap between these two containers without changing any configuration.

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Legendary Paper Minecraft Java Container

Published: May 10, 2022 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 50 Comments / Gaming, Minecraft: Java

This is a containerized version of my Paper Minecraft Java server. The image works great on all Docker platforms including Raspberry Pi!

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Legendary Minecraft Bedrock Container

Published: May 10, 2022 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 158 Comments / Gaming, Minecraft: Bedrock

I’ve been getting asked to put this together for years including in official GitHub issues. I always knew it would be a great idea but it turned out even better than I expected. This image works great on all platforms including Raspberry Pi!

This is based off my Minecraft Bedrock Linux Dedicated Server scripts for Linux project. I’m going to release a version for the Java Minecraft edition as well so stay tuned for that.

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2022 – The Year of the Linux Desktop

Published: March 23, 2022 / Last Modified: October 9, 2022 / 2 Comments / Gaming, Linux

It has been a long-running meme in the Linux community that each new year would be the “Year of the Linux Desktop” for decades now. This never happened. Why? A big reason is compatibility with gaming. Some titles worked on Linux but not very many of them.

ibility options they developed for the Steam Deck called “Steam Play”. Virtually every title I own in Steam plays flawlessly on Linux now as these options are available for all Steam Linux users and do not require owning a Steam deck to take advantage of.

Today let’s explore the things that have changed that up until this point had been preventing the year of the Linux desktop!

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Minecraft 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Paper Server Update Available

Published: June 19, 2021 / Last Modified: March 16, 2022 / 46 Comments / Gaming, Minecraft: Java, Raspberry Pi

Minecraft 1.17 - Caves and Cliffs Update

The 1.17 Caves and Cliffs Part 1 version of Minecraft came out for vanilla very recently but until now the Paper Minecraft server was not available for it. This means that my Raspberry Pi Minecraft script was unable to run this version until now.

Today I checked the Paper Minecraft API server available versions and sure enough 1.17 was finally in the version list so I updated the Raspberry Pi Minecraft server scripts and they are now available! Raspberry Pi not required, the script will work on most versions of Linux that have apt available.

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Revisiting Fixing Valheim Lag – Modifying Send/Receive Limits

Published: June 15, 2021 / Last Modified: December 3, 2023 / 252 Comments / Gaming

I’ve previously covered fixing Valheim’s dedicated server lag by modifying the dedicated server’s send receive limits. Since I wrote that article not long after launch though the game has been updated that the old method no longer applies. I had theorized in the comments of that article how to address this and today Sam R. confirmed that this method did indeed alleviate most congestion on the server in the places that the send/receive limits are known to bottleneck.

This updated guide will show some updated methods you can use to help reduce lag on your Valheim dedicated server!

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Backing Up Valheim Local Worlds and Characters Guide

Published: March 9, 2021 / Last Modified: March 2, 2023 / 2 Comments / Gaming

Valheim is still in early access which means there are definitely still bugs that can cause big headaches. One of these is called the “world eater” bug where your world will be reset to pristine condition (as if you’d never built anything). This can happen both locally and on dedicated servers.

It’s very easy to take a backup of your worlds and characters. This guide will show you how to do that so you can protect yourself from having to repeat previous progress (or all progress) due to bugs!

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