LinuxGameCast Weekly EP182 – Peswaydo Science

Amazon Cryes! Rocket League gets delayed, P.T. comes to Linux, and Steam accepts magic internet money? Then XCOM® 2 faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Links

Steam

News

Review

Hate Mail


Special thanks to our patreons

  • Mneuro (shuffled some stuff around)

Steam News:

NVENC
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/907842849554681945?

  • The controller configuration for a game can now be edited from its desktop library context menu
    • About fucking time
    • And it fires up BPM, resizes it to a tiny window and brings you to the controller configuration screen
  • The NVENC thing intrigues me.   Sure it’ll improve performance on the streaming source’s end, but what about on your steam link/box?
    • Well, they could finally enable online streaming for your boxen.
    • Yeah, Steam Broadcast will probably be their endgame with this. Hopefully!
  • NVENC seems preferable to either pure NVFBC or NVIFR.

Magic internet money
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44sgnm/bitcoins_in_steam_coming_soon/

  • Not the worst idea in the world. Especially considering their region locking and the lack of currency availability.
    • I wonder if they will region-price
      • They’d probably just tie it to the regional currency.
  • WHAR DOGECOIN
    • Coinye or GTFO
      • Why Venn, I had no idea you liked Fish sticks
  • Another way for VALVe to line their pockets with sketchy conversion rates and pointless regional pricing…

They see me rollin
http://steamspy.com/app/270880

  • Playtime total: 10:28 (average) 06:45 (median)
  • The sales look good, but because of that playtime, I want to see this graph in two weeks time.   Will we see a downward slope?
    • Survey says…probably
  • They did get around to replying to my e-mail… With a single key.
  • Might do a Stool Tribunal (name suggested by Jordan).

Lost in translation
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44yl24/how_a_whole_language_of_the_steam_translation/

  • Using a token system?
  • That’s a fantastic way to kill quality in favour of quantity.
  • I was part of the Portuguese STS for almost a year until the Portuguese head moderator went awol and my account was eventually suspended “due to inactivity”, while I had spent all my tokens submitting translations and was waiting on approval.
  • Can’t say I’ve ever bothered to go back, maybe for the better.

Didn’t you lot say Steam was making /w the port?
https://www.reddit.com/r/RocketLeague/comments/44ziya/rocket_league

  • Y’alls FKRS need to pull a Summer.
  • You lot have never developed a game that printed money.
  • This one did; go hire someone and get this shite done.
  • UE3 games don’t exactly take moon-tech to get running on the Linux.
  • I mean, it’s not surprising.   A lot of games have dumped linux/mac support in lieu of the more lucrative console port.    The Grand Nagus would be proud
  • He ain’t here though.   We are though and we’re pissed.
  • If this thing ever gets released, I’d really like to see a post mortem to understand what in the fuck actually went wrong
    • They developed it for Windows only. That’s what went wrong.
      • That goes without saying.   I want the specific linuxy bits though
  • Seeing as the game released in July 2015, and having been in Early access for a few months before then, it’s probably safe to assume development started at the end of 2013.
  • By that time, Steam for Linux was already a thing. Still, they chose to develop it solely for Windows.
  • The issues the porting teams ran into were probably the result of dirty hacks and shitty programming shortcuts that were required to make UE3 behave.

Speaking of UE3
https://steamcommunity.com/app/200510/discussions/0/846960628563773260


News:

361.28
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/98373/en-us

  • GLVND libraries are disabled by default due to potential weirdness. There’s a command line switch in the drivery-do enable it if you’re feeling adventurous
    • Funnily enough, the weirdness has to do with devs doing sketchy shit that the nvidia driver supports, but that isn’t really supported in openGL proper
    • Every Source game is outright broken with the GLVN Driver.
    • The only way to get them to work if you installed with those is to pass:
    • __GLVND_DISALLOW_PATCHING=1 %command%
    • to each game’s specific launch options.
  • Also, you can’t use the __GL_THREADED_OPTIMZATIONS=1 variable or games will outright crash as well. (Unless you use the disallow patching variable as well.)
    • This is a problem since a few select games on Steam use this variable to try and get better performance.

Because goggles
http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/EVGA-Releases-GeForce-GTX-980-Ti-VR-Edition

  • Comes with a neat little 5 ¼ Bay with an HDMI and 2 USB 3.0
    • RIP boxen with chassis that have doors covering the front
    • At least, it’s a way to make use of those bays in the age of non-physical media.
  • Also a wee more expensive than the 980TI Proper
  • I remember reading the Oculus requirements and, at minimum, you’ll need 3 USB 3.0 ports. So they’re 1 short.
    • Bzzt! Only requires 2X.
      • Right, you only need 4 if you have both the hand-thingies and the external trackers

Lumberjack
http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/

  • “Lumberyard currently supports PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. Mobile support for iOS and Android devices is coming soon, along with additional support for Mac and Linux.”
  • Also
    • Man, I wish the iTunes user agreement had a similar clause.   How else am I supposed to construct my ipod-based anti-zombie weapon
  • I look forward to an upcoming blog post, titled “How my small Indie game cost me $20k in AWS fees”
  • This is apparently based off of bits and pieces of cryengine that Amazon acquired or licensed
    • This is Cryengine /w AWS and Twitch packaged with.
      • Will it hard lock your desktop whilst streaming?   Tune in to find out!
      • Actually, what does “AWS integration” even mean?   Content caching through s3?   Dynamic game servers through EC2 and Elastic scaling? Some crazy remote processing stuff for lower end systems?
        • That last one would make sense if you take into account that android game console Amazon was developing a while back.
  • One big thing for developers is the free twitch integration that comes with the engine.

Z$NE$
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/45i65b/the_dev_behind_zsnes_will_soon_be_charging_money/

  • First thought “ZSNES is still being developed?”
  • The second one was something along the lines of “Bwahahahahaha!11!” and “good luck /w that”
  • “The Dev behind zsnes will soon be irrelevant in the emulator scene” – There, ftfy.
  • I always used snes9x.

PuniTy
https://jedlondo.itch.io/punity

  • Ah PT, the only Guillermo Del Toro/Hideo Kojima Silent Hill game we’ll ever get.  Oh the mammaries’
  • It’s a neat little student project.
  • This is a remake of the one they pulled from PS4, right?
    • Yup

RIP
http://www.geek.com/games/gametrailers-closes-up-shop-after-13-years-1646817/

  • AdBlock haters, like Total Biscuit, claim that it was people using adblock that cut their revenue down so much they had to go out of business.
  • Personally, I think most people didn’t really care for Game Trailers.
  • They had like 2 shows that I didn’t hate, Final Bosman and Baddest Games. The latter died off long ago, I can only hope the Bosman goes to Patreon and continues his work.
  • As far I’m concerned, it was a good time to cut their losses and nuke it. Let it go with dignity, internet… just let it go!
  • The employees found out when the parent company told the public #brutal
    • #birdculture

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR
– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: XCOM 2
Webzone:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/268500/
Devel: Firaxis Games/Feral Interactive
Engine: Unreal Engine 3.5
Price: €49.99 / USD$59.99 / CDN$79.99

Wazzat: XCOM 2 is the sequel to the award-winning strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown. Twenty years have passed since humanity lost the war against the alien invaders and a new world order now exists on Earth. After years of lurking in the shadows, XCOM forces must rise and eliminate the alien occupation.

Mandatory US Disclosure: They sent us keys


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Technically… it “runs”
  • Hangs on turns to the point of wondering if it froze.
  • Speaking of
  • The lag in multiplayer makes single player hangs look like the FK mothering Flash.
  • Load times… wow, really?
  • Camera will sometimes focus on an empty area of the map while the aliens make /w the moving.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • FMV scenes are super choppy.
  • Game is pretty terrible at UHD
  • It’s pretty buggy brad
  • You can skip the loading after completing a mission by hitting caps lock.   The fuck?
  • Multiplayer is buuuuuuuuuuuuusted

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • I suppose the only thing I can really add to this is that at least it didn’t crash a single time for me
  • Like Venn I did find myself wondering if it had Hard-Noped at several points, but it always eventually came back.
  • One thing I noticed is that out of the 8 cores in the FX 8370E, it pegged 1 at 100%, 6 somewhere between 20-40%, and there’s always one core not being utilized.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Granted, it looks better than XCOM:EU but not that much better.
  • That’s not necessarily a bad thing since the XCOM:EU looked a bit alright.
  • The first thing you might notice it Daylight! In my XCOM! YAY!
  • Maps are still hella detailed and that goes double for the playable soldiers.
  • Speaking of, they have put the uncanny-valley-o-tron 9000 on 11.
  • Jordan is going to cry about the overall look but considering Aliens curb-checked old Mother JASOOM… it fits.
  • It’s XCOM baby, so audio is top notch along with the voice talent.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • This is personal preference, but I like the art style of XCOM over this one.   Everything seems kind of grimy in this.

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Framerate issues aside, this is a very good looking game.
  • It’s also a very good sounding game. The voice is great, as usual, and (albeit limited) the choice of voice sets for your soldiers is also pretty damn well done.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Everything worked ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • ….minus the Nintendo Power Pad.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Keyboard is identical to the first game, so it loses no points for that
  • Steam controller on the other hand, with the official config from firaxis…
    • Nope.  Nope. Nooooooooooooooooope
      • Spock's not here man.
  • If you’re going to encourage using the damn steam controller, you best make sure that your configuration works

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • More than once did I click to move a character to a given location the game indicated it would only take 1 turn to get there, and the moment the character started moving they’d say: “Double time!” or “Running” and my turn would be over.
  • If I had never played XCOM EU or EW before, I’d just blame that on my noobish-ness
  • That’s not the case, though.
  • Something is very wrong with the input feedback on this game.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIRCHAIRAsteoid? Asterisk? Clara?

  • It’s XCOM….2. So if you enjoyed the first one you’ll find this a bit of alright as well.
  • It introduces a neat stealth mechanic that (when it works) allows you to set up some straight up traps of nope! It’s glorious…. when it works.
  • New tech, MECH suites, drones, and BRAIN HACKING!
  • What’s not to love? Well, a couple things.
  • Aliens still get free movement when discovered.
  • That’s bullshit, has always been bullshit, and will continue to be just that, bullshit.
  • Now, on the topic of bullshit.
  • Most of my soldiers Eulogies read something along the line of: Grabbed by a snake, Killed by a bug.
  • Seriously, Vipers can straight up grab your arse through walls when they’re not busy DRAGGING YOU UNDER THE MAP.
  • But at least you can defend yourself, right?
  • Well, that’s trickier than you might think since all available soldiers consist of rejects who flunked out of the Empires accuracy proficiency training programme.
  • Even if you manage to nope your target don’t get too excited because…
  • This game loves surprise skull-fuckings.
    • Not your standard run of the milFinal – l difficulty enhancement shite.
    • Oh, heavens no.
    • Straight-up one move away from the target when two random baddies show up and one shot two soldiers.
  • Busted as it is, i’ve still managed to pump 9+ hours into it.
  • Fuckery aside It’s still a proper bit of fun.
  • Well, if you don’t mind paying $59 wet-stinky-cashes for what is essentially an early access title.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Definitely has the same time sink factor that Enemy Unknown/Within has
  • Run from all the UFOS!
  • I definitely had fun playing it.   The added depth from Xcom is a nice addition
    • I was grinding my teeth at work yesterday because I had to stay late and couldn’t play more of it.
  • The surprise skullfuckings aren’t fun, but that’s what autosave is for.
  • Whoof those UFO missions

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • There’s an awesome game in here, somewhere
  • It’s just a shame that it’s buried in layers and layers of shitty performance and non-optimization.
  • In a way, this kind of bullshit sort of makes me wish parallel computing had become a thing, instead of the single core worship we have goin’ on.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIRAsteoid? Asterisk? Clara?


Hate Mail:

Show
http://slexy.org/view/s20ykebJ4J

  • I think if Venn’s favourite band came to town, we’d have a bigger problem.   Zombie Pete Steele don’t fuck around

Alva
http://slexy.org/view/s2KNE4Kw0i

  • I can’t download it. All I get is a 0 byte file
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