LinuxGameCast Weekly EP36 — Left 4 Dead 2 On My Linux?

This week we’re screaming about L4D2, legacy AMD drivers, a $30 Mine Craft clone, and Brutal Legends. Then we throw the review chairs at Cubemen 2. All this; plus your hate mail.

Subscribe:

Notes

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Links

PSA

Steam

News

Review

http://cubemen2.com/

Feedback

PSA:

How to install AMD legacy drivers for Ubuntu 13.04.

http://minus-code.blogspot.com/2013/04/how-to-install-amd-legacy-drivers-for.html

This will probably come in handy sometime this year when AMD drops support for my 5650HD.

Jedi on your Linux?

http://linuxgamecast.com/2013/04/l-g-c-how-to-star-wars-jedi-knight-ii-jedi-outcast-native/

Steam News :

New Steam Update
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/1621570796404448244

Rate-limiting Steam game downloads is now possible, via Settings -> Downloads;
The handling of http_proxy environment variable http:// prefix has been corrected;
The overlay enable hotkey now handles more shifted keys;
Friends who are using Steam for iOS or Android will show as “Online” instead of “Online on Mobile Device”.

THAR L4D2
http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=10451

Yay! ‘Bout time too!

Brutal Legend on my Linux?
http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/18/4240594/brutal-legend-pc-mac-linux-steam-database

If there are two things we love at LGC its Linux Games and Heavy metal
The humor in this game sets it apart from your average game. Good times ahead!

Anomaly 2 multiplayer beta gets Linux support
http://steamcommunity.com/app/209890/discussions/5/828937261977097540/

Well, it “works” but FK all if I can get into multiplayer.
- Same here.
Needs a windowed mode
Tries to use both my monitors but fails miserably.
- The only downside to this is the flickering during the loading screens.

Kinetic Void Gets Linux Support
http://steamcommunity.com/games/227160/announcements/detail/1837743666931911174

Mac and Linux builds are now live
More resolution options have been added.
The game will now launch in fullscreen.
Added a couple failsafes to catch errors in the resolution changes.
I’m the sandbox fan in this crew but I’m just not feelin’ it here.
€20 to get early access to what seems like Alpha 1? WHUT?
I too dig space exploration games, but I am le poor at the moment

News:

Relics of Annorath Alpha 4: Multilingual Support, New UI, And Enhanced Controls
http://linuxgamecast.com/2013/04/relics-of-annorath-alpha-4-multilingual-support-new-ui-and-enhanced-controls/

They changed the deps!
- Needs: nettle, openssl, bzip2-libs.
- Had to relink a few libs:
  - sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1 /usr/lib/libbz2.so.1.0
  - sudo ln -s /lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0j /lib/libcrypto.so.1.0.0
  - sudo ln -s /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0j /usr/lib/libssl.so.1.0.0

Noomix Alpha – WHAR promised Linux support?
https://noomix.at/topics/14
https://twitter.com/noomix_game/status/326053994407542785

WINE version runs, can’t connect to any servers.
Click Export -> test -> fix problems -> done

~~Minecraft~~ Build a World Alpha
http://www.buildaworld.net/

Oh for the love of-… Another one?!
€25 for a mineshaft clone? Oh wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder. Bwahahahaha ahahahaha ..nope.
2009 Called. They want their ideas back

Thirty Flights of Loving/Gravity Bone ported (unofficially and probably badly) to Linux

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/1cqhp1/thirty_flights_of_lovinggravity_bone_ported/

“I haven’t even tested this on Ubuntu, let alone <your esoteric distro here>.”
- Someone’s on a high horse!
Didn’t run or compile on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS #doingitwrong

Indonesian Horror Game “DreadOut” Launches Indiegogo Campaign Includes Linux Demo
http://linuxgamecast.com/2013/04/indonesian-horror-game-dreadout-launches-indiegogo-campaign-includes-linux-demo/

Moar ‘.deb’s!
It’s trying a bit too hard to be Silent Hill, unfortunately it’s trying to be Shattered Memories.
- The atmosphere works until you “die” and get a good look at the death scenes… Slender-leg-humpingitis.
  - Ok, indonesian Sadako doesn’t hump your leg, she just stares at you.
  - Case and point: http://dreadout.com/images/ss05.jpg
  - Death By the Villain of Scream
Damn, at the rate this chick is going, her phone battery will be dead in no time
I like how they pace the jump scares. Actually gives them some effect.
Still need friends booze and/or drugs to give this game more that the 10 minutes I gave it.
You know what, $15 during their IndieGoGo and you get the full digital version of the game. Don’t take my jaded opinion for what its worth. Check them out!

AMD Catalyst™ 13.4 Proprietary Linux Graphics Driver Release Notes
http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/amdcatalyst13-4linreleasenotes.aspx

RHEL 6.4 Production Support
OpenCL Console Mode Support
Kernel 3.7 and 3.8 Support
They fixed the corruption issues with Serious Sae m 3 and some TF2 issues
More importantly they fixed the Unity3D v4 bug that caused games to crash after the loading screen
There are still some issues with VSync and AA under specific games.
Apparently installing from .debs causes DE corruption (UnityDE)

Review

Scale:
– Nooope

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Cubemen 2

Website: http://cubemen2.com/

Devel: Three Sprockets

Engine: Custom

Price: 7.99 (25% off) We can mention this on the live show. Will not make sense if someone is watching two months from now.

Makes with the working

V-

Works OOTB

J-

Download, installs, runs fine.

P-

Out of ze box!

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

It looks nice for what it is. I’m really glad voxel all the things never took off. Dinging it for the sound. Repetitive and annoying.

J-

How shiny can cubes be?

P-

Granted the cubes may not appeal to everyone, but combined with the background music and the sound effects it deserves the 3rd chair.

Total-

Control / fun

V-

Control are tight but camera movement is unintuitive at best. It’s a fun tower defense game but brings nothing new to the table.

J-

Fuck tower defense. Seriously. Not my bag, not fun. herpdy derp

P-

The difficulty ramps up a little too fast after the first few levels and that will probably cause some people to lose interest. Like Venn mentioned, it doesn’t really bring anything new to the table and it looks more like an expansion pack over the first game than an actual sequel.

Total-

Final –

Feedback:

Unity3D Crashes with FGLRX
http://slexy.org/view/s2188nSEYR

~~So… The Open Source drivers are effectively providing a better experience at this point? (since I can play all Unity games on them with the only problem being lack of decent 3D acceleration)~~
~~AMD needs a serious wake up call.~~
They fixed it!

Linux installers
http://slexy.org/view/s21ihjxXqT
http://reallyslick.com/

Ah, the age old question of packaging. Whulp *hikes up suspenders*
When it comes to RPM vs Deb, really the only way to win is to do both. This way you capture all of the big “Easy to use” distros. I can’t speak for .dpkg files, but RPM can be a bit tricky if you’re unfamiliar with it, but it boils down to writing shell scripts with some predefined macros
- Basically what DEBS and RPMs boil down to is archive files with metatada to control the pre and post install environment, as well as to sort out dependencies. It’s remarkably easy to get an RPM to run on a Debian system and a .Deb to run on a Red had based system. All it takes is knowing how to identify the depenencies and figuring post install stuff

I would honestly say for a generic package, tar.gz is the best. Just make sure that you can run the game from any directory
If the issue is packaging a game for all distros, Nix Installer, Mojo or a simple tar.gz are probably the best choices.
Taking into account Linux gaming now caters to Windows refugees, some of them won’t be able to wrap their shrivelled brains around the fact you don’t need an installer (since there is no registry), Mojo and Nix will probably be the best choices.
- Not just that but they’ll also register the install with either aptitude or yum, means you can use your distro’s package manager to uninstall them.

Why only 3 chairs? BECAUSEFU*KYOUTHATSWHY!
http://slexy.org/view/s20rvK4vhq

Essentially, the system is designed so that only games that all three of us find enjoyable will stand a chance. One chair is not representative of a failing grade per se, and we will provide caveats. This is really from a jaded linux gamer perspective
Linux is an ecosystem and one must take that into account when reviewing games on Linux
- As long as we keep treating Linux as a separate thing, no one will ever take us seriously as a gaming platform.

Granted we’re not exactly reviewing games, there are plenty of websites out there playing those games for you. We’re here to test the games on 3 different distros, 3 different sets of hardware and giving up to 3 chairs on 3 categories. This all comes from 3 very different people.