LinuxGameCast Weekly EP162 – Bad Vives

Alien Isolation is confirmed! SOMA gets a day one release, HTC perks up, and we show you a handy tool for getting instabanned on Steam. Then Assault Android Cactus faces our CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Steam

News

Review

Hate Mail


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

Bad Vives
https://np.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/3lbbkb/what_does_that_mean/cv4sreb

  • Good on him.
  • Super sketchy of HTC to try and pull this, but are we really surprised?
    • Surprised it was reported.
  • This is so widespread HTC didn’t bother being sly about it.
  • Make us MODs, let us control content, and we’ll give you free shite.
  • Seriously, only one MOD reported it.
    • At that point it kind of says more about that subreddit’s choice in mods.
  • That being said, we should totally make Radeon_Roy a mod on Shatrealm Static.   He offered us like six R9 Nanos.   Each!

 

Vulkan is dead BRA!
http://wccftech.com/vulkan-reason-create-dx12-backend-valves-ginsburg/

  • Pssst! Nintendo joined the Khronos Group
  • It’s almost as if a universal standard designed with input from multiple IHVs, studios and developers is preferable to a single vendor solution
  • Dem comments tho
  • I kinda wish this article had “sponsored my Microsoft” at the end of it.
  • That way I could call Mr. Palumbo a shill instead of a clueless MS DX12 fanboy.
  • Popular indie titles like Rocket League, SOMA, ard Axiom Verge are PS4 exclusives because of that wacky cross-platform library called OpenGL.
  • It works on mobile, tablets, Linux, PS4 and Windows.
  • Vulcan (this is a bad analogy but I wanna keep it simple) is OpenGL on FK mothering Heisenberg-grade crystal blue.
  • Like it or not, tis the future.
  • Yes, I concede DX12 will finally bring gaming to Windows phon… pffft! I’m just fkn /w ya.
  • Those phones sold about as well as the XBOX 1.
  • “right now the only game officially coming to Vulkan is Dota 2 Reborn while there are many more DirectX 12 games already scheduled.”
    • Vulkan actually has a game out already, DX12 doesn’t. What’s your point again?

 

What be this T.V.?
http://www.dailydot.com/esports/turner-brodcasting-counter-strike/

  • I don’t think people who watch TBS have the cable.
  • Unless you stream this gratas online this has zero chance of working.
  • Needs more commercials every 3 minutes
    • That’s what I don’t see working.
    • Typical sportsball has breaks.
  • “Rich history of the game” this is Counter Strike!
  • There’s the terrorists and the other guys. They shoot at each other, done!

 

Feral Isolation
http://www.feralinteractive.com/en/mac-games/alienisolation/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUX25d0pZy8
http://store.steampowered.com/app/214490/

  • “Minimum system requirements for Linux call for a 2.6Ghz Dual-Core CPU with at least 4GB RAM, 1GB or better graphics card, and Ubuntu 14.04 (64bit) or SteamOS. The game requires an NVIDIA 600 series graphics card or better running Driver version 355.11 or better. Intel AMD and GPUs are not supported.”
  • Will be priced at US$49.99, CDN$54.99, £31.99,  and €49.99
  • Coming September 29th
  • Recommended: Intel i7 64-bit 3.0 GHz
    • Oh bother.
    • I hope this runs Shadow of Hordor bad vs. Company of Heroes 2 bad.
    • IMA be a little miffed if it does not since the Windows recommended CPU is a AMD: Phenom II X4 955
    • Considering when they bought all that AMD hardware, I wouldn’t be surprised if it runs passably on it.
  • You know what needs to come to linux?   Alien Vs Predator.   That was a fun game.

 

SOMA is LIVE
http://store.steampowered.com/app/282140

    • I’m hella conflicted on this one.
    • Kudos on day 1 Linux support but I don’t know if I want to play the same game for the seventh time.
      • You could make the same argument about  any game that uses this style of survival horror
        • Or Madden Games
        • Or FPSes
        • If it was DOOM/Quake 7, yes.
        • Big difference is, since Konami started becoming FucKonami, none of the old Survival horror makers are still around.
        • Except Frictional.
    • I love me some Frictional horror. Penumbra Overture is, to this day, my second favorite horror game.
    • If this improves on Amnesia, I say bring it!
    • I’m probably going to like it but the hype train needs to die down a bit.
    • I’ve strayed from reading reviews, on purpose, but I hear good things about this one.
    • I usually find this style of survival horror engaging from a theoretical perspective, but boring in practise
    • The idea of emphasizing your helplessness through mechanics is a good thing, but I’m of the school of thought that it’s better to show, don’t tell.   Let us attack the monsters and see for ourselves how fruitless it is.    Alien isolation does this fairly well.
  • “Running at 720p will perform bettrer with higher settings, compared to running in 1080p with lower settings.“
    • Just …wow.
    • FYI this game was built to run @ 1080/30 on the PS4.

 

VDPAU Principle
http://steamcommunity.com/app/257510/discussions/0/523897023726455685/
http://i.imgur.com/gKpGcjXh.jpg

  • Alright, I’ll take the Pepsi challenge.
  • Enable /w ogl_bEnableVDPAU=true and give it a gfxRestart()
  • See the rainbow …of nope.
  • Yes, I was using 355.11
  • Croteam replied /w something along the lines of “Oh, you actually tried it? Did it work?”
  • Good on them for trying to sort out some of the graphical bugs.
  • However, they seem to have produced a $60 sailboat.

 

I was banished from the Planet Zeist 500 years ago… and I cannot die.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/397910/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_1

  • A very steampunky looking highlander there.
  • More free Victor Vran stuff.    Still not gonna complain

 

About that Steam demo
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/09/25/mighty-no-9-gets-new-release-date?watch

  • Last week they buried the demo delay on their website.
  • Wait, they were only giving backers a one month demo?
  • At least they removed the time limit and made it DRM-free.
  • Now working /w Humble Bundle who will probably deliver Steam keys.

 

Expand
http://store.steampowered.com/app/399780

  • It’s like Super Hexagon without the epileptic seizure-inducing speed.
  • Still rockin’ the claustrophobia, though.
  • It’s pretty hypnotic to watch
  • What’s that?   Kill Ronald Reagan?   Yes master…
  • Can you make it blink really fast?
  • Ya know, for thinning out the herd science!

News:

As a member of the Film Actors Guild
http://comicbook.com/2015/09/22/video-game-voice-actors-voting-on-a-strike-with-performancematte/

  • Basically, we want the option for back end bonuses Quagmire.jpg.
  • That’s when you do the initial jerb for cheap but get a % of the sales.
  • We only want that to kick in if sales reach 2mil +
  • That will protect indie devels but let us get a little taste a title goes gangbusters
  • Now all we need is for that same sort of thinking to apply to developers, artists and musicians of games
    • Motherfarkers need to start a union.
  • All that said REVSHARE IS YOUR FRIEND!
  • Most indie studios are unable to match my minimum rate.
  • If I really like the project I will do it for $200 plus 7% sales.
  • Get that shite in writing, son.
  • If they offer you an “opportunity” to work on their game for free RUN!

 

TIL Edgers no longer hosting binary NVIDIA drivers
https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa
https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

  • Just a heads-up for those of you wondering where the lazy person’s NVIDIA driver resides.
  • Welp, guess you have a reason to use it now!
  • IIRC this was due to Ubuntu wanting to be the one to provide drivers, was it not?
    • Yeah, must have missed the part where Edgers was going to nope theirs.

 

Online local multiplayer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGFpRLjWpS4

  • Requires the GeForce experience software, which no existy on linux.
    • This seems like something that could be implemented on the Linux.
  • Game devels will pitch a bloody FKN fit about this. LOST SALES!111!!
  • Yes, I know that makes FK ALL sense …but they will.
  • Perhaps this will make it into steam streaming though. That would be kind of neat.
  • Could also really help with the number of games with local-only multiplayer
    • I’m looking at you Megabyte Punch
  • With all those VDPAU improvements NVidia has been building into their drivers, you’d think maybe we could have some ShadowPlay on the Linuxes.

 

Zen
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9643/jim-keller-leaves-amd

  • Good: He completed the ZEN chips and decided to move on to other projects.
  • Bad: AMD might be betting the bank on ZEN and have no future chipsets planned.
    • x86 chipsets at least
      • Assuming they’ll ever make consumer grade versions of those.
      • I know Intel did it with their Xeon line but I honestly don’t believe AMD has the chops to pull it off.
    • They’re still trying to corner that ARM market they haven’t put a  dent into in 3 years…
  • I miss the days when AMD put out cool shit, instead of playing catch up with intel
    • Miss? How old were you in 2000?

 

Wanna see my pecker VAC BAN?
https://github.com/ugtrain/ugtrain

  • Alright you Primitive Screwheads, listen up: This is not a toy and should only be used on FLOSS games.
  • Finds code addresses of dynamic memory allocations from a heap memory address provided by scanmem.
  • It uses LD_PRELOAD to load libraries hooking malloc(), free(), etc. into the game process which send the spied information to ugtrain via a FIFO.
  • Comes with “objdump -D”-based auto-disassembly, auto-adaption, example configs, ASLR/PIC/PIE bypassing and universal checks.
  • Can be also used for debugging purposes by just watching variables in dynamic memory.

 

WHAR Vassal?
http://www.vassalengine.org/

  • I’ve made mention of this project before.   Sort of like a more java-y tabletop simulator with a big ol’ community maintained repository of various board games
  • There are some legal snafus with some of the rulesets.
    • Are you claiming Hasbro, Wizards of the Coast and other such companies are kinda anal over which medium gets to use their IP? Say it ain’t so!
    • Well, that’s the thing.   You can copyright the presentation of the rules, specific identifying terminology,but not the rules themselves.  That’s where the trickiness lays
      • So you’re saying you can copyright the implementation of rules…
    • Plus big companies can just threaten to sue in order to get people to comply to their wishes.   WOTC and Games Workshop are super guilty of this.

 

Serious sam had plot?
http://www.croteam.com/big-sam-4-news-screenwriters-confirmed/

  • More of an excuse to shoot stuff really
  • It’s the writer of the Talos Principle.   You know, that heady game about the nature of consicousness
  • Perhaps the cigar-smoking T-wrex monsters will have polite discourse with you
  • Or maybe it will just be more brown

 

Open RA 20150919
http://www.openra.net/news/release-20150919/

  • They’re making some progress on their own Tiberian sun mod
  • Lots of AI fixes, added the ability to install assets from one of those “all these games on one disc” sets
  • They added a MAN page!

 

Rally
http://stuntrally.tuxfamily.org/wiki/doku.php?id=changelog
http://stuntrally.tuxfamily.org/gallery

  • YU still on Sourceforge?
  • Getting a solid 20FERPS using the “impossible” graphic setting.  
    • That’s Ogre3D for ya!
  • VDrift Physics: Based on MOON technology that has nothing to do with actual driving.
  • I was surprised the fully compiled thing over 1GB.
  • Too bad, like Venn said, the physics in this game seem to be based on some parallel dimension where you pick up speed if you hit a wall.
    • Pretty sure the walls are magnetic too, cuz if you run into one you ain’t gettin’ away from it any time soon.

 

Da greater good
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2015/09/25/kickstarter-becomes-a-public-benefit-corporation-so-what/

    • Oh man!   Tax fight!
  • Yeah, super skeptical about this.    Plus they’re not actually doing anything to stop predatory campaigns either.

CHAIRQUISITION:

CHAIR – Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Assault Android Cactus (September 23rd)

Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/250110/
Devel: Witch Beam
Engine: Unity 5
Price: € 13.99 / US$ 14.99 / CDN$ 16.99

Wazzat: Assault Android Cactus is an intense arcade style twin stick shooter – pick from one of nine unique synthetic heroines and blast your way through overwhelming robots hordes to save the ship from its own workforce. Supports single player and local co-op game modes.

Mandatory US Disclosure: The devs sent us keys back in 2013.


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I wanna give it an extra chair because it launches at your current Desktop resolution.
  • This is helpful when doing 1080/2160 comparisons.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Holds a steady 45FERPS @ 2160 /w everything on 11.
  • 150 @1080 on 11
  • Chibi-style androids, right. IMA give you a free pass on that one.
  • I’m a bit disappointed that FXAA is the best you got.
  • Even /w things on 11 I can still see the jaggies on my 28’ display SINCE I’M SITTING RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT BECAUSE… well, we’ll get into that in the controls section.
  • It’s colourful and the characters / levels reflect that.  
  • Animation rigging is a bit meh but cutscenes are few and far between.
  • Sounds are your standard arcade pew pew pew. Nothing to write home about.
  • I know they released OST DLC but for the life of me I’m unable to recall the background music.
  • I’m not saying it wasn’t good, just, I was more focused on not getting murdered to death.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • The FMV video bits are fairly well done
  • Voice acting in any linux game is a plus
  • Needs more of it though.   Acting is expensive
  • Runs fairly well at 4K

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • The voice acting, when present, is great!
  • For such a small team and limited budget, these lot made the absolute best that they could.
  • I found myself muting the BGM and loading up my Hardstyle Techno playlist. Much better!
  • At 1080p with everything on 11 and enforcing 2x MSAA through the NVidia settings the game ran at some constant 100-110 FerPS and looks amazing.
  • The art style, sound design and atmosphere fit together to create an awesome audio-visual experience.
  • Not having any other forms of AA built-in, outside of FXAA, and the lack of voice acting in some places are really the only things I can fault it for.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • D-did you release a twin-stick bullet-hell shooter without the ability to adjust sensitivity?
  • Yes you did, yes you did!
  • The right stick is beyond hella twitchy making precise targeting FK all impossible.
    • Yes I’m pretending “precise” and “controller” can be used in the same sentence.
  • Not something I would expect from a game that proudly touts “Steam Box Ready” on their store page.
  • The only way I was able to play Victor Vran /w the Xclone was the ability to adjust sensitivity.
  • Keyboard and gerbil saves it from receiving one chair.
  • I was wondering WTH they chose Space for weapon swap vs right click.
  • Then I right clicked.
  • …then shite got real.
  • At the end of the day this is PC, not PS4.
  • Lack of rebindable controls =’s – two chairs.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Auto detects my PS4 Controller, so that’s nice
  • Aiming seemed natural enough on the PS4 Controller
  • Little bit of weirdness when  you need to re-orient yourself,  but other wise I had no issue

P-CHAIRCHAIR


Total-CHAIRCHAIR


FUN?

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I like the attempts at humour… but they fall a bit flat.
  • Granted the dead inside android is rather amusing #pineapple  
  • The constant battery drain mechanic vs lifes is interesting, but you best not miss a single FKN drop.  
  • Finding the right character best suited for boss fights is… interesting.
  • I’m unable to beat the first boss-organ. I suck, but I’m still trying.
  • FK you all! Kicked it’s arse!
  • After twelve tries and figuring out right click would also change weapons.  
  • Locking the FPS and AI assist modes (among other things) behind a point wall is a dick move.
  • That is usually reserved for pay-to-win mobile games.
  • If your game is fun IMA just going to play it.
  • Don’t artificially inflate playtime requirements #CastlevaniaII #nighttime
  • The levels are easy-sauce but they ill prepare you for the Boss fights.
  • I want to call it rage-quit light because it will summon teh Alt+F4 but, the entire time you will be thinking “alright, I’ll sort you next time”.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • This game has an awesome learning curve
  • Everything progresses in difficulty naturally and builds on what you’ve been doing
  • Goddamn that first boss though.   That took a few tries
  • Normally, I’m not that big a fan of Shmups, but this is a very well done one
  • I remember it being so much worse when we reviewed the early access one all those moons ago
  • Congrats on  your revised score

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • This game has made leaps and bounds since we first got the keys back in 2013.
  • Textures look proper and the shading effects actually work
    • Although, that may be because I’m not stuck on a 2009 Toshiba Calculator with an AMD graphics chip anymore.
  • The partial voice acting is, I feel, a point in its disfavor.
  • Like I mentioned earlier, voice acting is great. It feels right given the setting, design choice and overall silliness of the game. It’s just too bad they couldn’t have it all fully voice-acted.
  • Combat also feels much better now. Each shot, especially with Coral (the shotgun android), has some real punch to it and it feels stupidly satisfying to nope 5 or 6 enemies in a single shot.
  • Dat leaderboard at the end of each level showing you the score (and giving special emphasis to your Steam friends) is both amazing and completely freakin’ evil.
  • When I saw that Venn and SleepBeef had beat my scores, I immediately went back and corrected that.
  • If I had to criticize this game in any way, is that the androids are not balanced.
  • Holly and Cactus are considerably better than Coral or Starch.
  • Also, Local Multiplayer only!

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Hate Mail:

DRM
http://slexy.org/view/s20lA6vKzI

  • Some people like owning their games.
  • Some people are filthy pirates.
  • What happens if Steam goes away?
  • DRM is bad.   Period.   It is anti consumer and at worst punishes legitimate users for the actions of a relatively small population who’ll bypass it anyways
  • Steam’s particular flavour of DRM is the lesser of multiple evils and comes with a few added perks (Save syncing, etc)
  • As it stands though, Valve could make some questionable changes, and all of a sudden I lose the thousands of dollars I pumped into steam.   Hopefully that won’t happen, but DRM free hedges our bets.
  • Playing a little bit of the zealot’s advocate here:
    • The problem is, GOG is not a competitor to Steam (not Windows and definitely not on Linux). There is no other store/client like Steam at this point.
    • There was Desura but that was where the Greenlight rejects went to die. And that’s now just a bloated corpse adrift the sea of the www.
    • Itch.io picked up the aforementioned rejects, but they also have nothing else.
    • Humble has a store and it’s shaping up pretty nicely, but it doesn’t really have a client.
    • At this point, you get either convenience and some DRM-free games or you get just DRM free games and no centralized client.

 

New game in development
http://slexy.org/view/s2leArtfxZ

  • I think a little role-play is in order.

 

Save The Penguin
http://slexy.org/view/s2rJ7bEpfq

  • This came from the guy behind https://www.thinkpenguin.com/
  • Seeing as how he was referred to us, I’d like to extend my kudos to either Steve McLaughlin or Cody Cooper.
  • Or maybe it was one of the Everyday Linux guys?
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