After the game stream, a quiz show, and an edit session, I got to work yesterday on defiling my computer with Windows in order to (maybe!) run Monster Prom. Fortunately I’d done most of the legwork on installing Windows weeks earlier, back when I thought I didn’t have hardware-accelerated video encoding with the Linux version of OBS. Installing OBS and all the other support software was non-trivial, though, let alone configuring it. For a while there OBS would kill the output to my bluetooth headphones, until I remembered all such headphones can operate in two modes and Windows would be “flexible” enough to allow you to switch between them easily and yet block all audio playback if the sampling settings mismatched. As of late last night, I had a duplicate of my streaming set up the Windows side that mostly worked.

Then, this morning, this happened:

MY BRAIN: Did you try running Monster Prom with Proton?
ME: Why on Earth would Steam allow you to run the Windows version of a game via a compatibility layer, when the game natively supports Linux?
MY BRAIN: How long have you been a programmer for?
ME: … Yeah OK, it’s easier to roll out the same feature for all games than set up some sort of master compatibility list. And since Steam is already multi-platform, it’d be trivial to grab the version for an arbitrary OS. Still seems like a long-shot.
MY BRAIN: Won’t know it until you take that shot! And if it works, it’ll integrate pretty smoothly into the Linux streaming setup.

Didn’t I say I was pulling all the stops out for this fundraiser? Fortunately, you’ve done the same; as of this morning, you’ve donated $2,377.45 towards FtB. There was some debate whether we’d even hit two grand, so you’ve exceeded our expectations. Take a bow, y’all! Then fire up my Twitch channel in twenty minutes for a little monster smooching, or check out some of the other events we put on for your benefit, or maybe even top up our or Skepticon’s legal fund.

I, in the meantime, have a Twitch stream to set up.