LinuxGameCast Weekly EP172 – Art Arsesets

Psychonauts 2 makes with the penguin! Feral brings the GRID, SOMA gets kittens, and 3D Pokeman on my Linux? Then Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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http://store.steampowered.com/app/386280/

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Steam News:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro Empty

Hide your shame!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/3vcndh/valve_add_the_option_to_permanently_remove_games/

Why would you do this?
- Giving account to someone else?
- Don’t want SO to see 600+ hours of Hunnie Pop?
  - She’s just jealous of the true connection between me and Akio
I’m never giving up my copy of Earth: 2066.
Refund or bust!

Out of stock
http://www.sybergaming.com/products/steam-machine.aspx

More like “we liquidated existing stock and don’t plan on making more” ?
Gotta wonder how much of a loss they were taking on that sale of theirs a few weeks back
- I’m guessing they sold them at cost.
Looks like they’re back
- Yeah, set to ship by christmas eve.
- Means you’ll probably get it around New Year’s, if you’re lucky.
But if they’re not on sale… WHY?!?

Webhallen S15-01
http://store.steampowered.com/app/353520/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_1

We’re really not seeing much in the way of sub $600 steam machines. One would think that an enterprising young hardware company would be scrambling to fill that gap.
- And you know…ACTUALLY COMPETE WITH CONSOLES IN THEIR GODDAMN PRICE RANGE!
8GB of high performance RAM
- That durn ram performance is always slowing down my box consarn it!
I wouldn’t call an SSHD a brand component regardless of it’s actual brand.
- SSHDs are a perfect fit for consoles and games in general
- 8GB SSD for caching levels and models and stuff that gets reloaded a lot

GRID (email should arrive soon)
https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/mac-games/gridautosport/

Set to release December 10th.
I don’t like the Intel/NVidia only mentions in the Linux requirements.
- Hey, they mention “Or equivalent” which means you could totally use the long sought after 64 bit cyrix SMP processor to run it
Finally listing SteamOS versions in the req sections.
It better support the ol’ G-27 or else… threatening things

DOTA FPS
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=427014798

Third person shooter mod for DotA 2.
They took the one specific version of the Source engine that wasn’t meant for a shooter and turned it into a shooter… Why?!
- It’s a neat experiment, and a community project. We should be encouraging this kind of tinkering.
  - Especially with cross platform dev tools

Wooooo!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/243930/

Been wanting to play this one for a long time… and now I have.
And it’ll probably be sucking A LOT of my free time from now on.
That came out of nowhere.
100% native sauce and manages a solid 45/60 FERPS on 11.
This thing might as well be on rails.
- You’ll have quite a bit of fun if Darkstalkers ever comes out
Playable, albeit a bit weird with the steam controller
Ah, the ever elusive press Z to move forward layout.
I love games that don’t have Mac verisons

Wuss mode
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=560988617

To be fair, the monsters aren’t that bad. Otherwise, where does the tension go?
- The “monsters” are a nuisance if anything.
WHAR pink Christina Aguilera monster MOD1?11?
According to the devs, it mostly removes the threat of death and turns survival horror into a walking simulator “to enjoy the story”
Chase scenes still happen to advance the plot

Grimrock on a budget
http://store.steampowered.com/app/366510/

Considering how the Grimrock assholes just up and flipped Linux the bird, I’m glad someone else is taking over the genre.
And to be fair, Grimrock was just Eye of the Beholder with a budget

News:

It’s coming
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2015-November/101810.html

I am significantly less excited about this now that I have a 750TI in my steambox. Still, gotta report this for our radeon using brethren who want to use a 4.x kernel

Bendgate
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/skylake-cpus-damaged-by-coolers,30690.html

Protip: Apply common sense.
When installing a new HSF continue turning the screws until you hear something that resembles cracking.
This is the sound thermal paste makes while bonding to the CPU/HSF
Intel’s spec of 50lbs pressure seems like quite a bit… I wonder does anyone actually test?
Ruh oh. *crash*

Psychonauts 2
https://www.fig.co/campaigns/psychonauts-2

Posting this on Thursday evening and betting it gets funded by showtime.
Remember when Notch wanted to fund it?
Delivered in two parts over 3 years after going 1.5mil over budget
- Only 1.5mil over? Such faith…
None of it matters, Double Fine treats Linux as a first class citizen and they get the benefit of the doubt from me.
This funding platform is… interesting?
- Indie studio heavyweights at the helm: Schaffer (Double Fine), Urquart (Obsidian), Fargo (inXile), Dude McGuyerton (Harmonix)
- Invest and maybe make some scratch?
- Curated and games only

Did they make it?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/indivisible-rpg-from-the-creators-of-skullgirls#/

4 days and about ~$200K left at the time of this writing
- Hit their goal with 3 Days to go. Congrats on securing that external funding.
They just added Red from Transistor as a playable character.
- Or I could just go play transistor. And you should too! That’s a good fuckin’ game.
Well, guess the “volunteer” can get payed this time around.
Meh, probably buy it when it comes out.

They’ve had their little vacation
https://openmw.org/2015/openmw-0-37-released/

It’s now working in OSG.
So many fixes
They had to remove a couple of things from the old version, because they would take too long to implement in the new engine and they hadn’t pushed a version out in a while.
I’m going to hold off on giving it a go until they’ve reached feature parity with the old Ogre3D version. Then I’ll be able to provide an educated comparison of the two, at least on my end.

Oink 2.0
https://www.warsow.gg/forum/thread/t/230624

All the art assets are now CCSA 4.0
Everything has also been ported to SDL2, which has this wonderful consequence:
- + ALT+Tab works now.
- + Keyboard input doesn’t steal the whole system focus.
  - Take note Raven’s Cry Devs
Played around with it a little.
The tutorial is actually functional now. I was able to get through it on the first try.

Freebasing
http://www.spacebasehub.net/

Curious how double fine will react to this
- They open-sourced it, so they’re probably okay as long as no one pirates the resources
They’ve admitted to abandoning the game, so it might do them some good to leave these guys alone. Maybe it’ll generate a few more sales of spacebase
- They’re totally hoping that’s what will happen, why else w/ the open source?
  - The full game isn’t open source though. Just it’s lua code

Vegeta
http://pokemon-mmo-3d.com/

Cease and decist from Nintendo in 3…2…1…
Ooh! Unity screen of nope!
Doesn’t let me connect to a server, doesn’t let me start one. I feel like a pokemon master already

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry Maybe
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/386280/
Devel: Octane Games / Reality Pump
Engine: GRACE 2
Price: $-€ 49.99 / CDN$ 59.99

Wazzat: Vendetta: Curse of Raven’s Cry is a third person, open world action-RPG that combines fast-paced swordplay with thrilling naval battles and exploration. Assume the role of dread pirate Christopher Raven and take your revenge on Captain Neville Scranton and the men who killed your family.

Mandatory US Disclosure: They sent us keys.

Makes with the working

V-

This “update” is an admission that they were knowingly selling a busted product.
Oooooh, spite crash.
Step 1. Manually upgrade libstdc++ via PPA because FK Steam runtime.
If you have a multi-monitor setup /w Steam overlay enabled and press Shift+Tab to check another screen prepare to Ctrl+Alt+F1 since the game will lock input.
Here’s the dice, this critter plays about as well as Skyrim did under WINE in 2010.
30/40 in closed areas and 4/20 (YOLOSWAG) in towns @1080
12/14 @2160
Now, one of the devels said he was getting 35FERPS constant @ 4K /w a 780.
Normally saying something like this to a reviewer is a safe bet since who has a 60Hz 4K display /w a video card that was last produced in early 2013.
Mr. T, that’s who.
And in what can only be described as a serious misapplication of judgement they took the Pepsi challenge and sent us a fourth key.
Now if you’re watching the produced version of the show you will see the game struggling to hit 20FERPS.
If, IF you claim it runs better the burden of proof is on you.
Press F12 and send in a screenshot since nobody (even Windows users) who says the game runs great will provide us with that little bit of evidence.

J-

Fucks with my desktop resolution settings at fullscreen. Every damn time -1 Chair
Alt-tab issue for days! -1 Chair

P-

This game also has a memory leak.
As if what Venn and Jordan described wasn’t bad enough, it hard noped the AMiGA after 3-4 hours continuous play.
I can’t give it one chair because it technically launches, stumbles and fumbles its way into a semi playable mess.

E-

Installing a testing ppa to make a game run on an LTS platform had left me feeling dirty
Why does the build target 15.10 but remain 32-bit?
14.04 is an offically supported platform, and Steam Runtime must be hard?
If it requires Venn-magic to run on LTS, just don’t even bother since SteamOS is right out and that should be the target
Locked up requiring a “sudo killall VCRLinuxSteam” from an ssh since Ctrl-Alt-F1 wouldn’t work first time I went to the map screen
Crazy colors mode

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

It’s quite the cinematic experience.
The Linux build lacks the vaseline filter used for the screenshots on the Steam page.
That’s said, it’s genuinely a nice looking game albeit a bit dark.
Y U blind me /w science white screen of mighty pain everytime I enter/exit a building?
This would not be an issue if the overall colour scheme was based on something other than dark.
Lip-sync is nonexistent.
Speaking of audio the first guy you meet in the pub sounds like he is on a headset.
Other voices suffer room noise during the recording.
Then there was this one point when Raven gets hella angry at one of the FKRS who noped his mum and starts screaming.
- That was either recorded by a different person or recorded using a mobile phone.

J-

I’ve had smoother transitions to outdoors on acid trips
The dark colour palette hides many of the highlighted areas you’re supposed to interact with
Lip sync is all “mwap mwap mwap”. Otherwise the cinematics are fine
I honestly thought the guy voicing the protagonist was Kevin Conroy. I’m glad he actually went nowhere near this game.

P-

Everything’s a bit too grey.
I did notice the transition between time of day and it was about as getting hit with a 2×4 on the side of the head.
No complains about the background music, it actually fits the setting they were going for.
But I will complain about the annoying quips and grunts Christopher Raven keeps spewing out of his mouth hole.
Speaking of which, there’s plenty of echoey voice acting going on with several of the NPCs.
As unbelievable as it may seem, LGC has better sound production than this game.
Also, what the hell is going on with people’s faces in this game?

E-

Intro video contains 3D prerendered and 2D prerendered footage, along with what looks like recording from in-engine… it sets the tone for how uneven things will be
If you look a screen shot, it might pull 3 chairs. Once you see it in herky jerky motion, not so much
The raven looks awful for a game that is named after it
Main character looks good, other than awkward arm position when standing still
Dialog contains lots of awkward timing, pauses, people speaking over each other
Frame rates were… inconsistent.
4K was especially bad. The first scene in the captain’s cabin, was 30fps, but the moment you step on deck, 15 max.
1080p things stayed closer to a cinematic 24 ferps indoors, outside 15 fps
Anywhere there are NPCs, framerates are bad, resolution be damned
Bridgetown – 15fps @ 1080p, 15fps @ 4K – ¼ the pixels, same fps? You engine has issues, Brad.

Total-

Control

V-

You have to unplug your controlla in order to use the keyboard/gerbil.
Why is this a problem?
Well, out of the 345 games I own this is the only one that will LOCKOUT THE FKN KEYBOARD if the controlla is plugged in.
Yeah, NOBODY is accustomed to unplugging a peripheral to play a game.
The only solution is dropping to TTY and hope you can nuke the process.
This is not a “bug” according to the devels.
That said, the Xclone controlla is almost properly mapped.
- FK all if you can enter stealth mode /w it.
When you switch (and by switch I mean unplug your controlla and restart the game) you will have to discover the keybord/gerbil controls on your own since the only thing shown in the menu is basic movement.

J-

Advanced technology lets me now pick a direction to sail my boat in, and then locks me on that course
- And then removes my ability to control the game. Brilliant!
Also, if your workaround for avoiding keyboard lockout is to remove the controller, you clearly know nothing about input handling.
Keyboard mappings are all over the place
Doesn’t seem to want to work with a controller despite the fact that this game seems better suited to it
Combat is pretty much a crapshoot. Sometimes you’ll hit, sometimes you wont. Nothing to really indicate when which will happen
This doesn’t feel like swordfighting at all
Also, the Gun control is set to a console style mapping, which doesn’t really work on keyboard/mouse
And lo and behold, the piratey parts are playable with an xbox controller. Ship, not so much
If you plug in a controller, magically more prompts are available to you in the menu

P-

At least it lets you rebind controls.
I often complain about how mouse sensitivity is way too damn high in games.
This time, I’m complaining on how slow it is even with the sensitivity pushed up to 10.
The combat in this game is bad! Really, really bad.
Melee feels like you’re waving a feather duster at the enemies until they fall over.
Half the time, you get no feedback that you’re getting hit and more often than not you’ll die without even realizing it.
Parrying is almost impossible because the combat animations are so limited, you can’t really tell if the enemy is attacking or just stepping closer. Both look exactly the same.
And since Mr. Fancy pants protagonist doesn’t know how to hold the block, timing it incorrectly is going to get a chunk of his HP dinged… repeatedly.

E-

steam controller does not control
xbox 360 controller works through the steam link
on-screen control prompts are just broken on keyboard
game was built for the controller, so that’s the “best” way to play

Total-

FUN

V-

Lads, we have proper bad games on Liunx.
In fact, we’ve even had a few from camp completely busted.
This however, is our first big budget trainwreck.
You see it’s not often
Going Indiana Jones on everyone… BLAM!
Seriously, the AI is rock stupid.
I’m not joking, jump up on a rock/crate and pick the FKRS off with your gun-organs.
Right now I have two genuinely busted side quests.
- Make the THREE, FKRS!
Oh, one of the Chapter quests tried to nope but I have learned to saveallthedamntime so I was able to unglitch it.
11hrs in and I’m FKN out, son.
Stuck on an island and everytime I try to leave I get jumped by TWO Galleons and a schooner.
I have a maxed out lvl2 schooner but FK and ALL if I can take on that lot.
If this is the game’s way of forcing me to buy that busted Galleon in Bridgeport it can EABOD.

J-

There could be a good game buried beneath all the crap that was actually shipped, but we’ll never know
AC4: Black flag does a much better job of being a pirate game, and half of it isn’t even about piracy
So much save scumming is required because of the busted controls. And I really love repeating the same segment over and over and over again.
Goals in this game aren’t clearly marked as well, so you spend a lot of time dicking around trying to figure out what you need to do.

P-

We all went into this game knowing full well what to expect.
But the more I played it, the angrier and more disappointed I became when I started to realise the insane amount of content I would never be able to experience because this game is completely, fundamentally broken.
It’s a bit of a faux pas, in the world of game reviews, to rail on a game for its technical issues.
But this game… this campy, cheesy, corny and completely stereotypical pirate story of a game would have at least been a mediocre title. Weren’t it for all the game breaking bugs, shitty sound production, horrible combat, atrocious performance and the goddamn memory leak.

E-

I wandered off in the first big open area because it seemed like there was some exploring to do. 10 minutes later I determined there was nothing but rocks and trees. Such wasted potential, so very not Skyrim.
Ship combat is maybe a little fun, swordplay is not. Parry, quick attack, quick attack, quick attack. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The gun mechanic is good. Single shot each pistol and needs reloading during which you are vulnerable.
Needs so much more polish not to be frustrating, maybe they’ll have it by the next time they add a word to the title and re-release for $50.
Played on the TV over the Steam Link with the X360 controller, I could almost convince myself I was having fun until some tech glitch or poor design decision ruined it.

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

Java
http://slexy.org/view/s21tfUpiTm