LinuxGameCast Weekly EP184 – This Week In “F*ck Linux”

Humble Bundle 16 is here! VALVe “leaks” some things, Feral sorts XCOM 2, and Nekro gets Neknoped. Then NeonXSZ faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail!

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Steam News:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

VIVES
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/htc-vive-pricing-revealed,31242.html

  • So it’ll be 800 bucks, but it includes the controllers vs the occulus which costs  600 and just includes the headset.
    • It also includes two base stations.
  • The big issue /w the Occulus price was that everyone was told it would be in the tree fiddy range.
  • Accessible VR gaming at it’s finest.  I still maintain that if you’re going to dive into this, wait for Gen 2 of the hardware.  It’ll either be a marked improvement, or it’ll just cause the gen1 stuff to drop in price.

 

WHAR Linux?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/323910

  • Is VALVe pulling an Oculus?
    • I don’t think so, Brad.
    • Nor do I.   The sad reality is that if they’re going to compete with occulus, they will need to have as good an offering on the majority platform as the competition.
  • That said, Steam Broadcasting doesn’t support Linux either.
  • At this point I really do have to start questioning the whole “Linux is the future of gaming” thing.
    • Hopefully Valve learned their lesson from the first wave of steam machines
    • Also,  hopefully now that Vulkan is a real boy, we’re going to start seeing a shift in new games coming out later this year being more cross platform
      • Until EON creates a DX12 to Vulkan wrapper.   Then we’re fucked.
        • Fuck you Jordan.

 

CONFIRMED!11!
https://steamdb.info/blog/mining-the-aperture-robot-repair-vr-demo/

  • This at least confirms that Valve can indeed count to 3.
  • Of course there are going to be some HL3 assets embedded in any source 2 games.   Still, some of the models are interesting.   And the procedural snippets lend some credence to the claims of that anonymous poster from last month
    • Quests in my HL3?
    • Also, VALVe does not “leak” anything.
      • I see what you did there

 

Speaking of
http://www.runthinkshootlive.com/posts/episode-3-the-closure/

  • Supposedly 30 hours of teh content.
  • Anyone want to take the Pepsi challenge?
  • Good ol’ Fannon.
  • How much do you want to bet that everything this game establishes is invalidated by HL3 within the first hour

 

Hotfix
http://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/412448158150022524/

  • Bunch of NVidia related fixes
    • Are ye surprised?   It says right on the tin that they’re really only supporting Nvidia
  • No Mac specific fixes? Alright…
  • Improvements to framerate and in-level hitching.
    • You didn’t really start with a high-standard there, Feral!
  • They’re also having some issues with the GLNVD drivers, based on some of the comments.   361 is currently not supported.
    • That explains why my 970 with the 361.28 GLVND drivers is apparently not supported.
    • I get a big bad pop-up reminding of that whenever I start the game.
  • Fixed crash on launch when VPN or other virtual networks are enabled.
    • Learning from your Grid Autosport mistakes, eh?
  • Sweet! Six more of these and I might consider reinstalling it.
    • All things considered, the performance is a hell of a lot better now.
  • According to Truggleswick, the performance is much better now but it’s more spite-crashy

NekNoped?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/246400

  • (as of now) you can no longer buy the game on the Steams.
  • BOO-URNS!
  • This was one of the few well performing unity games.  Plus it had a neat concept and fun gameplay.   Sad to see it fizzle out.
  • Well, it’s been almost a full year since the last update.

 

UnReal World
http://store.steampowered.com/app/351700

  • It’s been in development since 1992.
  • It certainly looks like an ultima game from about that time
    • It was still using 256 color mode until 07.
      • No comment
  • “realism, atmosphere and immersion”.
    • I’m not sure what you think these words mean but for me, what looks like a slightly higher resolution of Ski-Free with crafting elements, it’s anything but that.
  • Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but anything outside of Fallout 2 for me looks horrible nowadays.
  • Can we stop with the Nostalgia plague that’s been afflicting the games industry for the past decade?
  • I get it, the 21st century is scary. But come on!

Plop
http://store.steampowered.com/app/423610/

  • Requires the elusive intel i3 32bits  cpu
  • Mr Hanky approves

The First
http://store.steampowered.com/app/427820

  • As in the first Squeenix games on Linux
  • This is as much of a Hitman game as Arma Tactics was an Arma game.
  • Lends credence to the whole Tomb Raider (2013) coming to Linux.
    • Doesn’t do a damn thing to alleviate my eON concerns.
  • Ah mobile shovelware.   The best indicator for first party support from Squeenix

Shadwen (demo)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/425210

  • Zoya, the Game!
  • Ah, same mechanic as SUPERHOT.
    • Yeah.  I guess it makes sense given the stealth nature of the game, plus the braid mechanic
  • Ironically, you can control the pop-up thingy with the controller, but not the game.
    • Not without using the mouse and keyboard to change to the controller after you’re in-game. Sorta defeats the purpose if you’re trying to play it on a custom SteamBox like I did.
    • Why don’t you give people an option to pick controller directly from the pop-up thingy, Frozenbyte?
  • Much like trine 3, it cannot figure out how to fullscreen 1080P properly and takes up an itty bitty corner of the monitor
    • Essentially makes the game unplayable as you can’t maneuver the camera properly
  • Also, stop with the frozenbyte screen of nope.   Seriously.  It’s old hat and it’s 2016

SUPERHOTPRICED
http://store.steampowered.com/app/322500

  • Ah yes, Twitch bait.
  • Interesting mechanic but apparently I’m the only one not going full-metal ZOMG!
  • That does not look like $20 worth of fun.
  • Good on them for the day-1 release.

News:

355.00.28
https://developer.nvidia.com/vulkan-driver

  • Early reports say Vulkan on Talos works better with this version than it does with .27.
  • I want Jordan to give them a full run on his Skylake since it seems hella convenient that my 2013 8150 is kneecapping everyone else.
  • Results are within 3FPS between Vulkan and OpenGL with this boy, with Vulkan coming out on top
  • Super weird how Venns’ 8150 is pulling better ferps
    • My suspicion is that Vulkan loves lots of physical cores more than fewer hyperthreaded ones. If this is the case, Zen might very well be a step backwards.
      • Not if it’s rocking 16 physical cores.
      • On my end it only had a 7 FerPS improvement over OpenGL.
        • Something something 970.
  • Also, Steam overlay kicks Vulkan in the nuts in terms of performance.

PPA because lazy
https://launchpad.net/~canonical-x/+archive/ubuntu/vulkan

  • They’re pushing 355.00.26, so this won’t work with talos
    • Yeah, this is just something to bookmark when they pull a Summer.

WINE
https://www.winehq.org/announce/1.9.4

  • Support for more formats in Direct3D 11.
    • That’s all I’m looking for really.   Keep at it boys.
    • DiveKick apparently works with 1.9.4 Staging
      • My prediction is by years end, we should have passable D3D11 support for most games in wine.
      • What would kick all sorts of ass is if the mesa dudes came up with a d3d11 state tracker as well.
  • Good!

This week in “Fuck Linux”
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stainlessgames/carmageddon-reincarnation/posts/1498402

  • That’s right! This is a new game and we never mentioned Lin/MAC support \:D/
  • “We haven’t given up on linux – we just need to make the PC game what it needs to be first.”
    • Translation: We’re abandoning Reincarnation and seeing how it’s not “finished” we no longer have to make good on the Linux port #loopholebitches
  • I’m feigning surprise
  • Rocket League, Street Fighter V and Tomb Raider will be out for Linux before whatever arbitrary date Stainless give out for the Linux version.
    • That’s assuming they will even do that, because they probably won’t.

Mumble Grumble 16
https://www.humblebundle.com/humble-indie-bundle-16

  • Holy shit!   Some stuff I haven’t seen before
  • We’ve already tossed chairs at two of these
    • And you can save yourself the agony of playing through Trine 3 by watching us go through the agony  of doing so
  • The two games I want / don’t own are in the ‘pay what you want’ tier.
  • Best I could do was $10. It’s just, meh… but I want to play the fox thingy.
  • 4 games I didn’t already have, out of 7?
    • That’s over half… Good on you Humble.
  • Sidenote: They also have a pathfinder bundle that’s a pretty good deal for 15 bucks, if TTRPGs/Pathfinder are your thing.

Godot Engine 2.0
http://www.godotengine.org/article/godot-engine-reaches-2-0-stable

  • The UI almost looks …sane.
  • Two scenes one Godot.
  • Live editing looks hella neat.
  • It’s a wee difficult to recommend this considering UE4 is free, but these guys do good work.   Plus it’s “truly open source”
    • 10 GOTO: Hate Mail
  • While we’re on the Godot being awesome-train, eMpTy was apparently bored Friday:

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR
– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: NeonXSZ (pronounced Neon Excesses)
Webzone:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/296010/
Devel: Intravenous Software
Engine: Unity
Price: 19.99 / CDN 21.99

Wazzat: Prepare to destroy, loot, pilot, and upgrade endless gunships in a huge sandbox cyberworld where every opponent has unique intelligence and skill.


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It does that thing of staying at 2160 when I switch to 1080horrible.
  • Struggles to maintain 40FERPS @ 1080 /w everything on YOLO.
  • In some areas it manages 60 but don’t hold your breath-organ.
  • But at least it has cross-platform shite performance.
  • Yes, a Windows user complained about slow down with his/her 980.
  • Also, no cloud save.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Had to bust out PULSE_MSEC_LATENCY=60.  – 1 Chair
  • Like Trine 3 and shawden, can’t fullscreen properly either.

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It maintains 60 at 1080 for me if I disable all the blur effects and the Bloom.
  • Neon Excursus’ visuals don’t really suffer for it, I’ll expound on that in the next segment, but there definitely a performance gain to be had.
    • Just like disabling the Steam overlay to bench The Talos Principle with Vulkan.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • It looks “cyberspace” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
  • So many jaggies in the cockpit.
  • Whatever AA you got going on in those screenshots didn’t make it to the Linux.
  • Now let’s talk about the noise.
  • I have a fairly nice set of cans and for the life of me I’m unable to make out what robo-lady (Betty) is saying.
  • Both the guns and magic missiles sound hella muted.
  • I had to relaunch the game to confirm that their is, in fact, background music.
  • …not exactly captivating.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Soundtrack got muted pretty quickly
  • The colours!   They’re meh!
  • All the models move really quickly, so it’s kind of difficult to appreciate the quality

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The music and robot voice over started grating on my ears 5 minutes in.
  • Suffice it to say they got muted.
  • The graphics have a 90’s “Cybernetic” theme to them, as in nothing is textured and the cell shading is barely visible by default because of all the Bloom lighting.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Standard WASD layout.
  • The Xclone worked OOTB and was rebindable.
  • This thing controls like a Viper Mark II
  • Think about that, controlling a Viper in a closed area.
  • Any civilization advanced enough to build a massive station wouldn’t put 6DOF ships in it for that exact rasin.
  • Yeah, controls “work” but they are “rubbish”

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Controller support would have been nice.   Especially joystick support.
    • Descent Underground got that right by the way
  • Yeah, these speeds  + enclosed area = no good
  • The HUD layout isn’t great either.   It’s not integrated where the action is, so you gotta split your attention.  Doesn’t work for me

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • If I had the SHIELD controller plugged in, the only way I could move was by constantly turning left. I’m not kidding.
  • To be fair, some games will start and the selection indicator will be going apeshit sometimes but if I fondle one of the analog sticks, it’ll usually stop.
  • Not this game. I had to quit out of it and unplug the SHIELD controller in order for it to behave.
  • I played a lot of Wing Commander 2 back in the olden times. I was expecting your ship to take the turning and movement commands as more a suggestion.
  • Not in Neon Excrescence. If you so much as hit one of the movement keys, the ship will lunge in that direction like it had just received a swift kick in the bum.
  • Can’t fault the game for not being responsive to keyboard inputs, but I can fault it for not properly supporting a controller or even a joystick.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIR

  • WTH am I supposed to be doing?
  • The tutorial shows you some basic moves and fks off.
  • Ah, It’s all clear now.
    • “I’m a great believer that storylines in game’s rarely feel real and often break immersion”
  • I have to come up /w a story? Alright! I’ll have a go.I am Lt commander Turbo Weasel piloting the S.S. Busted Anti-aliasing.
    • My one hour mission is to fly about aimlessly, shoot at red ships, and get killed to death.
    • So, how is this game classified?
  • Popular user-defined tags for this product:
    • Action Indie RPG 6DOF
      • You named all 3!
  • HAR!
  • If I want a 6DOF game (that has multiplayer) I’ll go play Descent: Underground.
  • If I want a shooter I’ll play play some Quake.
  • If I want an action RPG I will fire up Middle Earf: Shadow of Hordor
  • BUT If I ever want all those things mixed together in a slushy mess… take me the FK out, because I’ve went mental’er.
  • In closing
  • Don’t really know what I’m doing, and the damming bit is I don’t really care.
  • I got an hour into it and managed to complete a few fetch/delivery quests.
  • Apparently if I keep on I can repeat that experience for over 100 hours!
  • Yeah, I know it’s a solo dev (who genuinely seems like a nice lad) but I’ve seen far, far better from other one man projects.

J-CHAIR

  • I sort of get it.   You wander around, kill shit, and upgrade
  • Unfortunately, the game has a lot working against it
  • Soundtrack is annoying, the controls suck and dogfights amount to flailing about shooting until one of you die
  • It’s also super easy to get lost and turned around
  • When described, it’s a neat concept that fails in execution.
  • The biggest problem of all though?  No multiplayer.   Games like this scream the need for it

P-CHAIR

  • This is one of those games that, on the surface, look a lot like American Truck Sim or Euro Truck Sim.
  • You meander around from place to place delivering stuff while randomly crashing into other vehicles because you can’t for the Life of Brian get any accurate sense of how big you really are.
  • But both ETS and ATS have a lot more to them then that.
  • In Neon Excavators it’s just kill stuff to get loot you can sell and buy better crap for your ship. Rinse, repeat.
  • I honestly couldn’t tell you what the “end-game” is or if there’s even an endgame to Neon Excuses.
  • I made the comparison to ATS but Neon Excrements seems to be more along the lines of Vangers.
  • Thing is, Vangers came out in 1998 originally so I feel like it can be excused.
    • And yes, I’m aware of the hypocrisy considering what I said in the Steam segment.
  • But Vangers hooked me!
  • It had a great soundtrack and a lot of depth to the lore, if you were willing to sort through lines and lines of literal gibberish.
  • Neon Excogitations on the other hand is bland at best and painstakingly boring at worst.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIRYou named all 3!


Hate Mail:

Sauce
http://slexy.org/view/s20akHempR

  • Yeah, just stating (in general terms) that the source is available and it’s progress.
  • Not trying to stir up a BSD/MIT vs. GPL/LGPL license holy war. I’ll leave that to Stallman.
  • #GNULinuxGameCast
  • Well, if we want to get pedantic, there is a difference between open source and what is considered “Free software”.   Often the two get confused with one another.
  • Don’t you just love it when people bring politics into software development?
  • Some people enjoy participating with the rest of society instead of just bitching about every ideological difference.
    • It’s gnu/society you capitalist pigdog!
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