LinuxGameCast Weekly EP194 – Next Generation Idiot

DOOM gets a Vulkan button! NVIDIA launches the 1080, Humble updates their plan, and Steam wants your digits. Then Darkest Dungeon faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail!

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News

Review

http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/

Hate Mail

Special thanks to our Patreons:

Nathan V.

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

Stable Vulkan
http://store.steampowered.com/news/21717/

It’s latest “stable” build of Steam which includes all of the betas since the last one.
Which came right in the nick of time, since I can now use the Steam Controller The Mistress on the SteamBox without having to opt-in to any of the betas.
- This has been the case for several months now. Welcome to the future Pedro
  - It asked me to opt-in to the beta when I first plugged it in and when I restarted because of this update, it didn’t ask anymore.
It also brings the new and improved performance when running Vulkan games with the Overlay enabled.

Reviewsibility
http://store.steampowered.com/news/21695/

This we be useful for Early Access titles.
I’m concerned that this could be used to reviewbomb certain games.
It’s good and makes better use of the horizontal space.
- Which, considering this is Steam we’re talking about, is still a horrible use of those 1920 horizontal pixels most people seem to have.

Rang rang
http://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/2016/04/14198/

An interesting move. VAC bans now ban all accounts that share the same phone number
Do young children still use land lines? Because someone’s account might get gimped because their kid is a cheating little fuck.
- S’why you hit your kids!
To get into the beta testing ‘prime’ matchmaking you do have to enter your digits.
That’ll nuke the hackers using multiple accounts to get more rewards and sell them on the Market.
- Shrewd, Valve!

Hax
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3302894
https://archive.is/DS8As
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/4i7k8d/hacker_admits_to_bypassing_steam_security_oddly/

People are already calling BS on the Reddits.
Running theory is it’s the moron who got his account banned.
Lots of “I did this thing that I’m not going to disclose” as well.

“Lavrentiev” (2180)
http://steamcommunity.com/games/360950/announcements/detail/833541219398383100

Linux appears to not be detecting joysticks in many cases.
- This is a bit disappointing
UNREAL ENGINE 4.11.2- Improved DX12 support, SteamVR 0.9.12, Metal rendering on Mac OS El Capitan, Instanced Stereo Rendering to improve VR performance overall.
- They could sidestep a lot of this by supporting Vulkan. Just sayin’
At least we have the FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUSIOOOOOOON CA-nnon

Zoya, The Game
https://steamcommunity.com/games/425210/announcements/detail/826785788718227952

But does it have UHD support? Or can it full screen on a UHD monitor?
May 17th, they promise Linux support day one.
- Considering how long Trine 3 took to get to Linux, I will curb my expectations appropriately.
- This is using the Trine 3 engine so it should launch day1.
The demo works really well.
And unlike trine 3 it’s an over the head third person view instead of that crappy fixed perspective with 3D gameplay.
The superhot style gameplay has good synergy with a stealth game. The only thing I really don’t care for is the constant babysitting

Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge
http://store.steampowered.com/app/288140/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_1

It just requires an ubuntu CD
What’s up with the price?
- Probably a bid to recover from all that DLC they’re not selling

Making the first Guild Wars look good by comparison
http://store.steampowered.com/app/373720/

Certainly gives KOTOR II a run for it’s money in the looks department
No gameplay videos on the steam page, but a quick youtube search reveals the game looks like old WoW, even ripping off a few fonts
- This was the game that was pay-to-play, completely free, and now “free” to cock about in a sandbox unless you pay.
It’s certainly priced to sell though, and we don’t have a lot of MMOs on linux, so if that’s your bag, take a look. And it’s open source
It wont let me create an account.
Turns out, I had an account for this game already.
I just tried to login with the usual online game credentials I use and there it was.

News:

No Zen
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-A10-7860K-and-A8-7670K-Review-Godavari-Refresh

These boys are terrific for low power/budget systems, but that’s really about it. Especially under linux
We have some hate mail this week about using new AMD cards under linux that’s slightly relevant to this article
3.6GHz base to 3.9GHz turbo on both the A8 and the A10.
And you still don’t have Vulkan support on those under Linux.
- Just in case Monster Cameron tries to play white knight for AMD again: https://www.khronos.org/conformance/adopters/conformant-products
They perform basically on par with the Kaveri APUs, they just have less compute units and thus a lower TDP.
While the 7870K is a 95W part, the 7860K is 65W. And the performance is about on par.
Still, the pricing puts it up there with the Skylake i3’s.
And at that point, you’re better off with said i3 and a dedicated GPU.
- Unless you’re strapped for that $150.
  - Then you get an Athlon 860/870K instead and a GTX 750 or a refurb 750ti.
    - Still cheaper to go with the APU. At least in Canadaland. Plus then you can save up some additional money for your next suggestion
  - Or you wait for Pascal to come out and hopefully kick down the prices.
  - Speakin’ of which…

NVIDIA Shite
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/10series/geforce-gtx-1080

Only one 8-pin powa connector.
Gives one hope for a low profile 950Ti that will only be slightly faster than a Titan X
- They would have to be REALLY dumb to not have some sort of stupid powerful low power card.
1070 is impressive for a sub $400 even if it has only 6.5GB VRAM
This is the point where I wish I had money to spend to on a $599 video card.
So It can run an 8K monitor@60, eh? I could use a couple extra 4Ks on this NO BAD JORDAN STOP PUT THE CREDIT CARD DOWN
2560 Cuda cores
1607Mhz base GPU clock
- 1733 boost
- For comparison my 970 Strix has 1113MHz base and 1455MHz boost.
8G GDDR5X memory at 320GB/s180W TDP
$600 wet stinkies

For reals this time
http://www.mightyno9.com/en/20160502

ETA is June 24th
Third times is a charm, right?
My interest for this game has pretty much disappeared by this point.

Clever girl
http://arcengames.com/raptor-dev-diary-3-more-audio-and-video/

I’m surprised these guys actually got the rights to do an Archer video game
- It’s like meowschvitz in that company, nowadays.
Still, it’s good to see that even after they had to fire everyone, the core is still hammering away at making games.

Options
https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDealsMeta/comments/4hz70h/looks_like_humble_is_planning_to_add_more_plans/

Subscribe for an entire year and receive 10% off!
Brilliant. How about ya make with some linux games that we don’t ALREADY OWN

Doom w/ Vulkan renderer
https://linuxgamecast.com/shatpocalypse/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7370

Considering the id Tech 6 engine is full-metal OpenGL this only comes as a minor shock.
Porting it to Linux would be FSM damned trivial but yeah, not going to happen.
Because fuck linux. Fuck it so hard in it’s stupid monkey face
Maybe if Valve ever wants to try another steam machine push again and pays Bethesda a lot of money

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Darkest Dungeon
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/
Devel: Red Hook Studios – Ported by Knockout Games (aka Aaron Melcher)
Engine: “Homebrewed and lightweight, developed by Kelvin McDowell”
Price: €22.99 / US$24.99 / CDN$27.99
Wazzat: Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes against unimaginable horrors, stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark.

Mandated Disclosure: The devs sent us keys.

Makes with the working

V-

Map bug.
Multithreaded like a mofo.

J-

P-

They still haven’t fixed the map bug.

Total-

Shiny and Sounds

V-

If you don’t dig the hand-drawn art style then you madam (or sir) have a malfunction.
It’s gorgeous and delightfully quirky.
Soundtrack is spot on and the voicework is passable, albeit a touch repetitive.

J-

I like the art style. It does a good job of remaining cartoony while still capturing the medieval horror setting
The sound design is your standard ominous waterbell stuff. It’s appropriate
What little voice acting there is is competently done.

P-

The heavily stylized graphics make characters look like cardboard cutouts but, and this is a nice round butt, the animation and the rest of the visual aesthetic fit this design choice perfectly.
Coherence is often overlooked in indie games nowadays but Darkest Dungeon’s graphics deliver, in spades!
The audio is really well done, too.
The ambient audio and subtle background music will smack you on the earhole with an amazing dose of atmosphere.
And the narrator, wow! There should be a rule that if you’re going to have a narrator in your game, it should at least be as competent as Bastion’s.
The narrator in Darkest Dungeon takes Bastion’s influence and replaces the humor with morbidity and cryptic compliments.
Congratulations to Red Hook Studios.

Total-

Controls

V-

J-

If I had one gripe about the UI, it’s that the inventory and Map are in the same location. Sometimes I want to assess the next room while farting around in there

P-

You click on things and things react like they were clicked on.
The UI seems to have been designed for tablets in the way everything is large and accommodating for fat fingers smacking on a screen.
Still, even if it’s a little too cramped, it works for what it is.
Also fun to mention that the devs actually have an official Steam Controller layout for this game.
- On my end I just had to remap the mouse movement to the left areola.

Total-

FUN

V-

Is getting skull fkd by the game part of the fun?
- Yes. Welcome to playing AD&D/CoC
Hell, I grew up in the days of Nintendhard
But Darkest Dungeon is not hard, nay, it’s random.
- Random In a smitey dick sort of way.
Basically Darkest Dungeon tells you to pay attention, learn new strategies, and mix and match your team for each dungeon…
Then it spite nopes you and expects you to thank it for the challenge.
Again, not hard, just random.
And random does not reward skill.
And Venn Stone does not reward such bullshittery.

J-

This game scratches a lot of itches for me.
Dungeon Crawling? Check. Lovecraftian Horror? Check. Gygaxian Difficulty? Check
You gotta love the type of emergent narrative that arises from games like these. Name all your after your friends and have fun going on adventures. Just like FTL and Xcom
The system is fairly simple yet deep. They don’t do a fantastic job describing all the rules, but it’s all there. You just have to look for it.
The game rewards trying multiple combinations of your party members
I’d love to have something like this on my android tablet, but I don’t think I’d ever leave the bathroom if that were to come to pass
And remember: Always bring a healer
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go roll a bunch of DCC characters

P-

As is tradition, here’s my schpiel about mechanics:
- Darkest Dungeon feels to me like the natural evolution of the roguelike.
- It’s turn based, has randomly generated dungeons, has randomly generated characters with randomly assigned combat skills.
- But then it also takes elements from XCOM.
- Party of characters, character and skill progression, unlockables and a limited equipment distribution.
Darkest Dungeon is heavily reliant on its mechanics and both the aesthetics and narrative accommodate those mechanics perfectly.
This should, by any stretch of the imagination be a four chair game for me.
But it isn’t.
This is the kind of game that tries very hard to give you the all important sense of immersion.
- From the dark theme and aesthetics, to the healthy and heavy dose of atmosphere those convey.
- Bonus points for the Lovecraftian themes, as well.
And it succeeds. Until that nasty map bug that literally stops you from progressing happens.
The only way to work around it is to stop playing and return to the main menu or, sometimes, having to actually quit the game and come back in.
That kills any and all immersion you may have had at that point.
Whenever that bug hit me, I didn’t feel like going back in the game at all.
Why would I bother? Just to have to do it again when I started the next dungeon? Nop!

Total-

Final-

Hate Mail:

“mesa open source crap”
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?VUlRSCi

Consider this from a developer standpoint: I can support FGLRX, which is busted to high hell, or I can support Mesa, whose performance sucks but can at least make w/ the openGL kernels newer than 2.2.24

Challenge
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?CkRZfAv