LinuxGameCast Weekly EP135 – Bioflop Infinite

VALVe slaps a price on the Areolia Controlla! Bioshock Infinite comes to Linux, Carmageddon Reincarnation gets a release date, and XNA is dead! Then Outland faces our CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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News

Review

http://store.steampowered.com/app/305050

Hate Mail

Steam News:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Nipples!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/353370/

Check out the reasonable price on Brad.
- Seriously. Roommate bought a second PS4 controller for DBXV and it set him back sixty five bucks!
IMA have my Grifter by then so it will be a hard sell.
Probably will pick up one or two just so that I have them for testing purposes
I would have been happy /w SD haptics but GabeN went and sprung some serious gourmet HD haptics on us.

Full Di$clo$ure
http://www.pcgamer.com/all-steam-users-must-now-disclose-paid-recommendations/

Aaaaand this will be enforced HOW exactly?
Alright, if you get wet stinky and or free keys you must tell your audience-organ.
Seems VAVLe is doing some preemptive arse covering in case Steam Broadcasting takes the FK off.
Makes sense really. Valve wants to make sure they keep getting their cut and that people are accountable for sidestepping it

No, Steam’s refund policy hasn’t changed in the EU
http://www.vg247.com/2015/03/18/steam-eu-refund-policy-explained/

Loophole, bitches!
Closed loophole, bitch. If you accept the waiver and ask for a refund 13 days later VALVe can tell you EABOD

Eye Spy
https://steamdb.info/app/50300/history/

I recall Yahtzee calling this THE best shooter of 2012, so my interest is piqued.
That’s one more game out of the 2Kgames/Take Two back catalogue
I wonder about the port though, given the next story
I’m just going to sit back and let it hit.
Assuming it’ll hit, because without any official confirmation this is about as non-newsy as it gets.
“designed to challenge players’ morality” Oh, good luck with THAT.
- Also, I’m hella pissed at 2K right now.

Virtual Bluhgramming
http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/8870/

By accident, I clicked on the GOL article for Bioshock and I saw this terrifying comment:
- “If they perfect their wrapper I think they might soon be the leading company to port games to Linux. If it is a lazy and quick solution that does the job, even big companies would happy with it.”
Here’s the thing: you can say that you “don’t care how its ported as long as it runs well”, but what you’re missing is that this harms linux and linux gaming
This line of thinking allows developers to continue to treat linux and steamos as second class citizens. No longer will people develop for our platform, they’ll keep on developing exclusively for windows and then allow some wrapper to do the rest of the work for them and pocket the cash
This does not bring the change we wanted. Linux will still remain a sideline OS that only indie devels target and larger companies will simply resort to these workarounds. All the progress we made in the last 2.5 years will be for naught.
Shame on you 2K. You had such a good thing going and then you dun fucked it up.
But the saddest thing of all is, this cry will fall on deaf ears. The public seems to have spoken, and they’re fine with hand-me-down garbage on linux as long as it means they get their games.
So it was ported by the lowest bidder. Keep that in mind when it start fkn up.
- Do we have a source for that? I mean, Aspyr did the Mac Port, so it makes fuck all sense that they went with VP considering probably 40% of the work was already done.
  - If they charge the same as ass-pyre and the Cat I… I refuse 2K is that stupid.
- Although it is impossible to get those unreal engine 3 games ported over to linux without some moon technology. Yessir
“MESA drivers and Intel Graphics are not currently supported.”At least Ass-Pyre sorted the newer Intel cards on the MAC.
- And Feral, when they ported XCom:EU (also an Unreal Engine 3 game) it also supported Mesa drivers for both Intel and Radeon cards!
It’s not as busted as Witcher II but reading the forums it’s black-screen / random freeze city.

Outland
http://store.steampowered.com/app/305050/

It looks pretty, but no online co-op
Did flibijibibibo port this?
It’s rumbling like crazy.
I’m running 3.13.0 OS myself.
- Apparently you can even run it on CentOS 6

Tales of Maj’Eyal
http://te4.org/blogs/darkgod/2015/03/news/tales-majeyal-130-aka-dust-dust-released
http://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/

Kudos to Mr. Erik Johnson for sending us a key out of the blue
The new stuff in this update is the kind most other developers and publishers would charge $20 for and say it’s DLC.
“Tales of Maj’Eyal is a roguelike RPG, featuring tactical turn-bas” aaaaaand I’m out.

News:

XNA is no more
http://darkgenesis.zenithmoon.com/xna-is-no-more-as-the-phoenix-rises-from-the-ashes/

*Cough*FNA*cough*
- Sorry about that, was too busy choking on Ethan Lee’s dick
  - But you don’t need even that for Monogame ..now.
Prior to 3.3 you needed a Windows host somewhere to compile your content.
Completely removes the need for XNA
- And despite that, Unity will still probably never release a linux editor
100% open sauce.

It’s OUT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Fpho8G1SQ

There is even FPS slowdown in the trailer
Seriously, everyone is having performance issues.
Honestly …it looks a bit shite.
None of the Carmaggedon games were ever the peak of audio-visual acuity, even for their time.
- But this one manages to look even more like arse than TDR2000 did in its time.

Humble (PC&Android) Bundle 12
https://www.humblebundle.com/

It’s a fairly small bundle this time around. with the $10 bonus game being one that most people already own
I’d wait to see if they add some more interesting stuff later on, as they usually do

Keyboarding Master v0.4
https://kbmaster.atlassian.net/wiki/display/KBM/Version+0.4.0+Release+Notes

Created by Michael Speth and it lets you do custom mappings to your YOLO Swag gamer keyboards, without having to use the proprietary bloatware they usually require.

Naev 0.6.0
http://blog.naev.org/2015/03/naev-0-6-0-release/

What is it: Naev is a 2D space trading and combat game, taking inspiration from the Escape Velocity series, among others.
“Greatly improved SDL2 support (now default)”
- Brings a smile to my face
Improved keyboard-and-mouse gameplay, with an optional WASD layout???
How did they manage to pull that off?
Why don’t they package the entire game together as opposed to having you download the executable and the game data separately and stick them in the same folder. It’s a wee dumb
Holy static background images batman

Wings of Saint Nazaire (yoinked from Freejack in Shat)
http://www.wingsofstnazaire.com/

We mentioned this BOYAITFP but it’s nice to see it being updated.
Well what do you know, they tar’d the game up. They’re learning!
It’s a wee crashy and controller support is a bit wonky
The art style is really jarring though. Going for those old dos-style graphics with modern response times hurts my brainmeats

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Outland (Generic platform game that tries to be artsy)

Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/305050

Devel: Housemarque and published by Ubisoft!

Engine: “Housemarque’s own proprietary engine”

Price: $/€ 9.99

Wazzat: Outland is a fast-paced, dynamic platformer where the player uses powers of light and dark in an epic journey to save the world from forces of chaos.

Makes with the working

V-

Everything worked OOTB ..except for one thing. VSYNC
I could never seem to disable it.
I was forced to sit there screaming WHY AM I BEING FORCED TO PLAY THIS NICE LOOKING GAME IN 4K AT A CONSTANT 60 FERPS WITH MINIMAL TEARING?? OH THE HUGE MANATEE!

J-

~~Outright does not launch on the Fedora 21, 670 Superclocked system~~
- ~~No output from the CLI either.~~
Runs after a rebort. Still dinging it a chair for not telling me what the fuck was wrong
Runs very well on the steambox with the a10-5800K, but working on 50% of systems gets you 50% of a score

P-

It’s a platformer and it claimed full controller support.
So I played it on the Steam Box and was not disappointed by any of those claims.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

I was not thrilled about playing another platformer this week but one of the first things out of my mouth-organ was “well, at least it’s pretty”
The faux mo-cap on your character is done quite well. Really gives you a sense of motion.
Oh look! Directional sound in a 2D platformer. That’s, um, neat? ..I guess.
That’s said nothing about the sounds is immersive. Not even in the slightest.

J-

I can dig the art style
The music is a bit of alright too. Fits the visual aesthetic they were going for
The narrator certainly does his best to give the story some gravitas

P-

The game starts with a black and yellow character travelling through a yellow and black backdrop.
- I lost sight of what I was doing more than once.
After you’ve progressed far enough, that is no longer an issue.
- Until you hit a level with a black and blue backdrop and you have to switch alignments on the go, a la Guacamelee, the same thing happens again.
I did like the narration and the way the combat animations are done.
- Those freeze-frames really do make it seem as you’re actually accomplishing something, instead of just waving a feather duster around.

Total-

Control

V-

Everything worked OOTB /w the XClone.
Buttons matched correctly.
Rumbles like FK ALL
Controls are tight.

J-

Works fine on the 360 controller
Seems like your standard metroidvania fare
Dinging it a chair because sliding when you land in a bullet hell game will get you killed to death a whole lot

P-

It claims full controller support and it does seem to provide it.
Didn’t try the NVidia controller, but I doubt NVidia has fixed the firmware to the point where it’s usable in Linux yet.
I’mma have to ding it a chair because it doesn’t allow you to rebind the buttons on the controller and only has 2 schemes to choose from.
- Neither of which sit particularly well with me.

Total-

Fun?

V-

Ladies and gents I give you Dustamelee!
Here’s the thing, Brad. I’m 54 minutes in and nothing had really happened.
You should have heard the groan when I first noticed a place where you could slide but lacked the ability.
That kids is a time honoured tradition of extending your games playtime without really adding anything.
At the end of the day it’s a competent metroplatformer that reminded me of Dust and Guacamelee, but don’t think it borrows from them …It came first.
If you’re a fan of backtracking pick it up. If not, wait for a sale.

J-

It’s a competent metrodivania style game, but nothing really special
But just by going through the map, even early on in the game I can tell there is a metric fuckton of backtracking
This game seems to take a page out of the castlevania book of fuck you enemy placement
Bullet hell + committing to a jump just seems like artificially adding difficulty
I don’t mind the ikagura mechanic that much, but it’s a bit inconsistent with the enemies

P-

It’s a competent Metroidvania platformer.
It would be a proper platformer weren’t it for the fact that I keep losing track of where my character is.
Boss fights are boring and uninspired.
And I stand by what I’ve said in the Wooden Sen’Sey review.
- I don’t like platformers unless they have something to distinguish them.
- Not only doesn’t it do anything new, all the mechanics have been done much better in much better games like Guacamelee, Dust: An Elysian Tale or even much worse ones like Isbarah. What with all the bullet hell scenarios and shit!

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

WINE
http://slexy.org/view/s2zFkHQplV

Play your games. You paid for them, don’t let us stop you.
I still use WINE to play Fallout 2 & 3, Skyrim and Need for Speed World.

Stop shittin’ on VP!!
http://slexy.org/view/s236vSdyr6

Slexy doesn’t like UTF-16 characters, it seems.
Dude’s name is Κωνσταντίνος Φερέτος (Constantínos Ferétos [Greek])
Well, after the events of this week, I intend to double down on my shitting-on of VP. Fuck those guys. Trying to turn linux gaming back into some kind of shit show
In a perfect world, things like Wine or EON wouldn’t have to exist. They should be considered band-aid measures at best, to be replaced with a proper solution

Non-Hateful Mail
http://slexy.org/view/s20WxHAqZD