this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
58 points (96.8% liked)

Linux Gaming

15304 readers
16 users here now

Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.

This page can be subscribed to via RSS.

Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.

Resources

WWW:

Discord:

IRC:

Matrix:

Telegram:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
monolalia@lemmy.world
58
Friday Facts #408 - Statistics improvements, Linux adventures | Factorio (factorio.com)
submitted 6 months ago by Voytrekk@lemmy.world to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
2 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] jokro@feddit.de 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The "non blocking saving" i.e. forking and saving in the child process, works flawlessly for years for me.

It's the only game i in know that utilizes this classic UNIX functionality.

[–] Psyhackological@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It is still hidden, but one of the reasons why the native Linux version is better than Proton.

https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-408

Asynchronous saving

Many of you might not be aware that Factorio has support for saving your game in the background, without freezing while it does so. This feature is tucked away in the hidden settings and only works on macOS and Linux. This is one great example of taking advantage of a platform's features to benefit the game, which would not be available to us if we simply went through Proton.

Asynchronous saving works by using the fork syscall to essentially duplicate the game. The primary instance - the one you interact with - continues playing, but the newly forked child runs the saving process then exits on completion. I have used it for many years and have never had issues, but the setting remains hidden because there are a few unsolved problems with it and it requires a significant amount of RAM to work.

I would love to promote this feature away from its hidden status in 2.0. If you are playing on Linux or macOS, please enable asynchronous saving (ctrl+alt+click Settings -> "The rest" -> non-blocking-saving) and report any issues you find. I am particularly interested in reproducing a seemingly random freeze that occurs at the end of the process. Thank you in advance!