Web3 & Gaming
Two subjects that look unrelated and are not. Running a node and running a private game server are the same instinct: own the infrastructure rather than rent access to it. What follows is the practical side of both — what I run, what broke, and what I learned fixing it.
Self-Hosted Game Servers
Modern online gaming is a subscription to someone else's uptime. When the publisher shuts the servers down, the game is gone — not unplayable, gone. Emulated and self-hosted servers are the counterargument. They are also, incidentally, one of the better ways to learn systems administration, because the workload is genuinely demanding and the failure modes are interesting.
AzerothCore
World of Warcraft 3.3.5a server core, running fully offline and single-player. Server and database built via Docker, with the explicit goal of a portable stack — one I can move to another machine without rebuilding from source.
Darkan
A 2012-era RuneScape emulator with a genuinely different stack from the C++ cores: JVM-based, MongoDB-backed. Worth running alongside AzerothCore precisely because the architectural choices diverge so sharply for what is, from the player's side, a similar problem.
2009scape
Open-source preservation of a specific moment in RuneScape's history, server and client both, self-hosted on Debian. Projects like this are as much archaeology as engineering — reconstructing behavior from an artifact nobody documented.
Running Windows Games Without Windows
Most of the friction in Linux gaming is not the games themselves — it is the graphics translation layer. Here is a specific failure from my own setup, since concrete cases are more useful than general advice.
Problem: The 3.3.5a client crashed repeatedly with GPU device-lost errors on Intel Iris Xe graphics, running under DXVK against the Direct3D 9 renderer.
Fix: Switch the client to its native OpenGL renderer and launch it standalone through the GE-Proton11-1 Wine binary, with no Steam wrapper involved. DXVK is the right default on modern hardware, but on integrated Intel graphics running an old D3D9 title, the OpenGL path sidesteps the translation layer entirely.
Takeaway: When a game predates the API that DXVK translates well, going around DXVK often beats configuring it. The general principle — prefer the path with fewer translation layers — applies well beyond this one case.
Distros & Environments
Different workloads, different bases. This is not distro-hopping for novelty; each of these earns its slot by suiting a particular job.
EndeavourOS
Arch base, current packages, deliberate monthly update cadence rather than rolling blindly.
Garuda Dragonized
Arch with the gaming stack preassembled — useful for comparison against a hand-built setup.
AlmaLinux Alpine Linux Debian
Stability over currency. Alpine where the container needs to stay small.
Linux Mint Cinnamon Deepin OS
For testing how software behaves outside an Arch environment.
GE-Proton Wine DXVK VirtualBox
Engines, Mods, and the 2006–2011 Window
My interest concentrates on PC titles from roughly 2006 to 2011 — after the hardware matured enough for ambitious design, before the industry settled into live-service economics. Open-source engine reimplementations are what keep that era playable: they take the original game's data files and run them on a modern, maintainable, moddable engine, which means the game outlives both the hardware and the publisher.
- OpenMW Morrowind reimplementation. Removes the original engine's structural limits, and its scripting layer substantially exceeds what the 2002 engine allowed.
- OpenRA Command & Conquer rebuilt with modern RTS conventions. A case study in modernizing an old design without betraying it.
- Daggerfall Unity Daggerfall rebuilt in Unity, with an unusually strong mod ecosystem grown up around it.
- OpenRCT2 RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, reimplemented and actively developed. Worth reading as source if you want to understand how these projects are structured internally.
- GOG Where most of these games are legitimately purchasable, DRM-free. The DRM-free part is what makes engine reimplementation viable at all.
Web3 Infrastructure
The overlap with everything above is the whole point. Node operation is self-hosting with financial consequences bolted on: the same discipline around uptime, monitoring, key management, and backups, but with a much lower tolerance for error.
Running Your Own Node
Querying a public RPC endpoint means trusting someone else's view of the chain. Running your own is the only way to verify rather than trust — and it is the most useful thing to learn in this space, regardless of what you think of the asset prices.
Key Management
The connection to bounty work is direct. Almost no losses in this space are cryptographic failures. They are operational ones: exposed keys, phishing pages, and signing transactions nobody read.
Scope note: This section covers infrastructure and security, not investment. No price commentary, no token recommendations, nothing here is financial advice.
Posts in This Track
Server builds, compatibility fixes, and node notes. Tagged
#gaming, #selfhosted, and #web3.