LinuxGameCast Weekly EP196 – Jesus Robot Part Deux

DOTA 2 gets a Vulkan button! Stellaris visits Earth C-137, AMD opens the sauce to TresFX, and CSMT returns to WINE. Then The Mims Beginning faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

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Special thanks to our Patreons

  • Lclhstr (producer level)
  • Tim A
  • Rene K
  • Jordan L
  • MIR upped
  • Monster C (upped)

Steam News:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Vulkan Button?
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta#announcements/detail/876326520726609817

  • Apparently steam overlay was still eating Vulkan performance on AMD based systems
  • TIL there are enough AMD Vulkan users to warrant the bugfix
  • “Vulkan applications”
    • All one of them?
      • Two if we account the one coming in the next story.
      • #VALVeTime

Vulkan button
https://np.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/4jzsir/dota_2_update_main_client_may_18_2016/d3ayzck

  • I’ve been wondering when they’d be getting around to releasing Vulkan support for DOTA2 considering they were talking a lot of good shit about having it done months ago
  • Doubtful that they’re going to rewrite the source engine renderer, but it would be nice to have some Vulkan love for Portal 2
    • Well they used ToGL to get DOTA2 on the Linux.
    • I don’t really see how they could create a similar tool for Vulkan.
  • BTW it will be on the Linux.
  • However, don’t expect a massive performance boost since DOTA 2 is threaded like a MOFO.
  • The big takeaway here is that the most popular game on Steam is giving the middle finger-organ to DX12.
  • Can we get Vulkan in CS:GO as well, please?
    • Would that fill you with joy eternal?

Dicks
https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/4k1x4a/exactly_1_year_ago_we_released_the_witcher_3_wild/

  • The copy that came with my 980 is still collecting dust in my GOG account.
    • At least you can still dream. I got Batman.
      • That’s cute, I got The Crew with my 970.
      • The servers for that game will be dead long before WINE ever supports DX11.
  • I’m guessing they learned their lesson about using VP from W2.

Shadwen
http://store.steampowered.com/app/425210/

  • WHAR 2160!?11!
  • It runs like Trine so expect anywhere between 45/70
  • Tell me again, why you didn’t build Trine 3 like this?
  • It totally is Zoya, the Game.
  • Sure, you don’t have a bow but you still get the magical grappling hook
  • Big thanks to Frozenbyte for sending us the keys.
  • Eeeh.   The persistent escort quest still doesn’t sit right with me.  
    • That and little miss homegirl needs to update her pathfinding.  
  • I guess I’ll have to get over that if we’re going to be throwing chairs at it.

On Rusty Trails
http://store.steampowered.com/app/277700/

  • From the fine fine folks at Black Pants Studios.
  • Nightmare platformer that is not overly FK you hard.
  • Should be out in a month or so.
  • They were either the first or second dev team to send us keys for games after I joined LGC.
  • Grandpa’s Leftovers is one of those games I still have to go back and finish.
  • Looks like more VVVVVVV style mechanics.
  • Still, the art style looks good, and Tiny and Big was pretty alright.  I’d give it a shot

Morty
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=685893177&searchtext=

  • Someone made a massive R&M Council of Rick Mod for Stellaris.
  • Stellaris =’s procedurally generated EVE on a budget.
  • 140 new leader specific portraits
  • Earth C-137 Race group
  • This is just plain Rickdiculous
  • The EVE comparison isn’t that accurate.  It’s more of a strategy game a-la sins of a solar empire

Celsius
http://steamcommunity.com/games/312840/announcements/detail/806520434091703618

  • In what would have been exciting news… last year.
  • I wonder if they’ll be as “YOLO SWAG doritos” as the achievements they added to KOTOR 2 based on community input.
  • It’s a cute way to get your community involved with the game
  • You still need to convince people to play it though.   Good luck with that.

Jesus robot 2
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/05/20/the-talos-principle-2-announced/

  • Good!
  • If nothing else than just to have another Vulkan game for the Linuxes.
    • Well, that’s probably going to be SS4
  • I’m being a little unfair.
  • Still have to finish the Talos Principle, too.

Unreal VALENS
http://steamcommunity.com/games/441640/announcements/detail/597103343831280720
http://store.steampowered.com/app/441640

  • Considering how incompetent they were at utilizing the Unity engine… I don’t hold out much hope.
  • It would have been great to have some WipeOut type game for Linux.
  • But my experience with it was spawn in, get blown up, respawn, wrestle with the controls, get blown up again, rinse, repeat!
  • It’s always interesting when a project decides to switch engines mid-swing
  • Generally it means they’ve been fed up with their current tools and can’t make them do what they want
  • Whether this means they’ll accomplish that with the new tools….eeh.   I’m doubtful.

Pew pew pew
http://store.steampowered.com/app/468800/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_1

  • Finally! An online bow FPS!
  • First person Towerfall with online multiplayer.
  • Archery tag for people who don’t want to leave their house!

This is memes
http://store.steampowered.com/app/448310/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_1

  • Shovelware!

News:

367.18
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/102879/en-us

  • I’m a little shocked they didn’t add 1080 support.
    • This is a Beta, 1080 support will probably come with the new short-lived stable branch.
  • On my end, this specific beta version causes Texture Flickering in Unishark Heaven.
  • I tried reverting to 364.19 and it didn’t happen and the moment I came back to this, it did it again.
  • If you wanna play the home game, try running the Heaven benchmark and pay attention to scene 10. That’s the most egregious one.

$885
http://eu.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-6180-KR

  • €789 for the Founders edition (reference card) is not wicked expensive.
  • Hold out for the 1070, kids.
    • NVIDIA is not being quiet about performance because it’s slow.
  • I’m curious how much kidneys and livers go for in Portugal

 

But if you think that’s bad
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2016/05/the-first-australian-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-price-is-a-lot/

  • Bwahahahahaha.  Poor Kloinka

Intel 4.20 Yoloswag
https://mesamatrix.net/

  • The fine folks at intel have finally cleared off the two remaining extensions to give the i965 driver OpenGL 4.2 Support
  • They’re now 1 extension off from full OpenGL 4.3 support, which would bring it up to RadeonSI’s level
  • Won’t help with Mesa or the Intel IGP’s garbage performance, but at least you can play some modern games reliably on low
  • Only for Gen8+ (Skylake) for now.

Tress
http://gpuopen.com/tressfx-3-1/

  • My usual request, like what I did with NVidia’s HairFX or whatever it’s called:
    • You have the sauce, make it work properly on the Linuxes.
    • Because AMD, very clearly, couldn’t be assed!
      • Juuuuust like Nvidia
  • It looks pretty decent via indirectX.   Maybe some day in the far future, we’ll see this on some new games.

CSMT
http://www.wine-staging.com/news/2016-05-18-release-1.9.10.html

  • WTH was it removed again?
    • The official WINE team started implementing CSMT differently than the way Stefan Dösinger did.
    • So they removed Stefan’s patches from Staging until he reimplemented it the “official” way.
      • Good on them!
      • The last thing we need is a buggy version of WINE.

QA
http://blogs.unity3d.com/2016/05/18/the-unity-engine-qa-process/

  • Click export…and we’re done!
  • Alpha>Beta>RC>Shipped
    • I guess none of us are remotely interested in this because we already know how software release works.
    • Might be interesting to ze kids
  • This will be an ongoing series.
  • Seems a bit quaint when compared to UE4 development.

Open Unity
http://sanguinelabs.co.uk/mutiny/

  • The engine has already been used for the development of both a cross platform commercial game (Defile of Eden 2) and an entry during a 24 hour games competition (Baastud).
  • The more the merrier… I guess?
  • Maybe he’ll finally fix the click export functionality.

OpenRW
https://github.com/danhedron/openrw

  • Open sauce reimplementation of the RenderWare engine which powered GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas.
  • It… starts.
  • http://i.imgur.com/13vj5jx.png
  • But after the intro cinematic is over, it just stops.
    • There are no shaders to be had in the current version, so all of the explosions and post-processing effects are missing.
  • It’s, most definitely, a start!
  • Yay!   More crazy people!
  • I played the shit out of VIce City and GTA3 back in late grade school/early high school, so I’m looking forward to when this bares fruit
    • I think I played GTA3 in WINE at some point.
  • WHAR Open Skyrim!11!

Le controversy
https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/4jrccr/french_kickstarter_game_lynn_and_the_spirits_of/

  • Not really a Linux game but a proper lesson.
  • I thought it was hella illegal to have non-paid interns in Space France.
  • Welp, the project got noped.
  • Oh, look! It’s another kickstarter game surrounded in controversy.
  • Business as usual, then.
  • See, the problem with interns is that you don’t own them, so they can talk.   

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: The Mims Beginning
Webzone:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/337820/
Devel: Squatting Penguins
Engine: Unity 4.6
Price: € 16.99 / US$ 19.99 / CDN$ 21.99

Wazzat: Experience the mysterious and mystical by taking on a journey with Mims in this strategic god-like game. Create structures, plant vegetation, breed animals, take care of your minions, use divine PSI powers, triumph in face of natural disasters, fight monsters, predict the future, and so much more.

Filthy US Mandatory Disclosure: They sent us keys


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Does not pass the 1080 to 2160 resolution test of change.
  • Really struggles to hit 60 @1080 sometimes dropping down in the 20’s.
  • No save system.
  • And when asked the devels whipped out the “small indie team” card.
  • “Maybe in AAA games mid savegame is standard this is why people are accustomed to this option.”

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I didn’t have any real issues getting the game running
  • I don’t think the lack of a save system should result in a chair being dinged for makes with the working.   No, that chair gets ripped out elsewhere

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • I can tell this is a Unity 4.0 series game because it attempted to fullscreen in 1920×1200 into both my monitors.
  • When I corrected it, it also refused to obey the primary monitor setting and decided to spawn on the right screen, instead of the left one.
  • Oh and the buffer underruns are real.
  • I thought setting the latency in the pulseaudio daemon.conf file, like I do with every fresh install, would be enough.
  • Not for this game!
  • I dare you to try and listen to a Youtube video while playing this!

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • If you look at the screenshots on their Steam page you might be slightly impressed.
  • Don’t! Jaggies, jaggies everywhere!
  • While the antialiasing technically “works” you need to be face-first into a 28 inch monitor to tell the difference between naught and 8X.
  • And that’s only made worse by graphics straight out of 2003… I’m being generous.   
  • There is no voice work to speak of and the floaty background music will nope you to sleep quicker than a Rohypnol smoothie.
    • Chatrealm, don’t even think about it.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The visual offerings here are pretty meh
  • I’m usually the one getting all of the buffer underruns, so it’s weird that I don’t get it
  • Still, the sounds aren’t anything memorable
  • In fact, I literally can’t describe them.

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • There are definitely sounds there.
  • But most of what I heard was the static-y garbled mess from the Alsa plugin causing buffer underruns with pulseaudio.
  • The graphics… It’s Unity 4.
  • Even the Anti-Aliasing doesn’t work.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Whoever decided Right-click + Scroll-click =’s rotate should be spanked with a shaved weasel.
  • Good thing you can rebind the contro…. Oh, wait.
  • Welcome to 2016, bitch-es!
  • Hell most controllas are rebindable in 2016 but you couldn’t be bothered to sort the gerbil/keyboard?

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The keyboard controls are all over the place
  • Screen rotation should not work this way!   Q goes counterclockwise, e goes clockwise.   Everyone else figured it out
  • Beyond that, everything else is point and click, and click and point
  • Seriously though.  -2 Chairs for thinking you can fix screen rotation

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • You use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out
  • You use your arrow keys/WASD to move the camera
  • You’d expect clicking either the wheel or the right click and dragging the mouse, would rotate the camera.
  • Ahahahahahahahah! No.
  • Venn wasn’t kidding when he said you need to hold down both the wheel and the right click to spin the camera.
  • What kind of game development background do you have to be brought up in, for that to make sense.
  • And no, you can’t rebind controls either.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIR

  • I’m not a fan of hand holding but FFS give me the slightest idea.
  • The game thinks it’s being “hard” by saying it will not provide additional hints (after never providing hints) but that just translates to “we never made a proper tutorial”
  • If I’m heading over to the Tubes to figure out step FK mothering 1, ya done goofed.
  • And to add insult to injury it only saves after each mission (avg 1hr)
  • You can’t make this shite up, people!
  • Anywho, I ran out of gems and you see, that’s an issue.
  • Since I was using them to purchace fks given.

J-CHAIR

  • The tutorial definitely shows you what you need to build
  • Does a pretty rubbish job of explaining why you need to build it, but it’s not that complicated
  • And really, this game isn’t all that complicated.   What it is is boring.
  • I’ve never been that big a fan of god games.   I played a little bit of black and white back in the day, and it didn’t tickle anything
  • This game won’t change your mind about the genre in the least
  • Yeah, the gem shortage will really screw  you over.   Sometimes you need to do a specific build just to have enough to squeak by with the objective.

P-CHAIR

  • This game adheres to the “Tell, don’t show” school of design.
  • It tells you, in a screen-filling opaque wall of text, that space chicken you grew was taken to the spaceport and somehow that helps.
  • It tells you the Mims now consider you their deity, even though all you see is a bunch of semi-transparent buildings while your fingers hover over the ALT and F4 keys.
  • But I’m getting ahead of myself.
  • Before I tear into The Mims any further, I would like to say: I don’t like god-games.
  • They take real-time strategy, which I also don’t like, and introduce a degree of stupid.
  • You’re not a commander with soldiers obeying your every order.
  • You’re a deity, literally giving out suggestions to beings of limited intelligence.
    • And if they they don’t adhere to said suggestions, you get to go fullmetal Old Testament on their ass!
  • It’s basically slavery of the mentally sub-normal.
  • I guess that’s why most god games don’t often portray the lot you’re looking after as human.
  • I just noticed something! This game is so not my bag I’d rather waffle than actually talk about it, specifically.
  • And the exact same thing happened while I was trying to play it.
  • At one point I got up and decided to vacuum the apartment instead of playing The Mims.
  • Because if I’m going to be doing menial tasks, I’ll do them where they matter.
  • That and I don’t get people who play video games to recreate that feeling of watching an ant farm.
  • Because that is exactly the degree of agency you have in this game.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIR


Hate Mail:

MOBAS
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?5M8oWSs

  • But Overwatch isn’t available on Linux
  • Yeah, I wouldn’t mind some Overwatch on the Linuxes.
  • But it’s a Blizzard game, therefore it will never happen.
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