LinuxGameCast Weekly EP200 – Xspock 200

It’s our 200th episode! Twitch nopes view-bots, DELL updates their Steam machines, and Mount & Blade 2 opens the source. Then On Rusty Trails faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail!

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Steam News:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Back to Betas
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta#announcements/detail/886462256232446121

They finally updated the runtime, which I assume is to bring it up to 16.04 compliance.
And they also introduced a bunch of new stuff for The Mistress.
- The activators seem like a really cool idea. Stuff like long presses, double taps and so on add a lot more to the configurability of the areola controlla.
- I’m interested to see how the community makes use of it for various game profiles

Sale
http://imgur.com/ameAgTR

Bwahaha. I like how this boils down to “Prepare you anus wallet”
I don’t know, right now. Unless some major titles drop for the Linuxes there really isn’t much going for this sale.
Unless some of the major titles that dropped previously get a nice discount, it’s kinda meh. At least for me.

You’re still stuck with a Dell
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3083172/after-a-slow-start-dell-turns-up-the-dial-on-steam-machines.html

Still selling the Alienware Alpha.
- TIL
Also, graphics amplifier? Really?
One thing that bugs me about their Vulkan bit is that they seem to imply that Vulkan doesn’t exist on windows and is overshadowed by DX12. Which is horseshit.
- Vulkan doesn’t have the Microsoft marketing budget behind it.
  - No, just every GPU hardware manufacturer and about every other development studio. Oh and Google
    - And none of them can be assed to market it properly!
“Vulkan will speed up transition for SteamOS to AAA content,”
- And those titles will start showing up in the next 8-14 months.

GG Croteam
http://uploadvr.com/oculus-denies-seeking-exclusivity-serious-sam-croteam-responds/

It’s not as shady as people thought from the outset
In short, Oculus is paying for timed exclusivity
If we want to play the speculation game, I think oculus has come to realize that their platform just isn’t up to snuff with the Vive and wants to pull a microsoft in order to have themselves in a better position on the software side
Still, it looks bad when Facebuts is trying to bring exclusives to PC.
All that bitching about Linux being fragmented and they’re trying to fragment the VR gaming space before it even takes off.
That’s the kind of sensible decision making you can expect from Facebook as they branch out.

GG VALVe
http://www.pcgamesn.com/valve-vr-funding

Hot on the heels of our previous story…
Valve, for all the shit they (deservedly) get, are one of the very few publishers/store owners who realize just how bad exclusives are for developers and consumers.

Dead but not deprecated
http://steamcommunity.com/games/nucleardawn/announcements/detail/893217559222763443

More power to these guys but, dude:
- http://steamcharts.com/search/?q=Nuclear+Dawn

Element 120
http://store.steampowered.com/app/365300/?snr=1_620_4_1402_45

We talked about this one all the way back when Herr Hartley was on
Looks like it has an official steam page now, so you don’t have to manually install the mod

chmod +x *.exe
http://store.steampowered.com/app/471640/?snr=1_7_7_230_150_1

Mascot is a penguin #ironic

Exploring Male Sexuality
http://store.steampowered.com/app/385370/

We actually talked about this game a while ago. Now it’s free on steam
If we ever throw chairs at it, we’ll need to get someone like T-Brown to sit in on the chairquisition
- With the BS in Orlando let’s not call out.
Q: Will playing this game turn me gay?
- A: Yes.
  - SOLD!

News:

1070 Driver
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/104284

This is the non beta version of the driver we covered a few weeks ago. Support for the 10 series cards are now mainlined
This also marks the start of a new short-lived branch.

OHNOES
http://videocardz.com/61121/asus-and-msi-accused-of-sending-modified-cards-to-the-press

Vendors do the same thing /w AMD cards.
And in 15 years, you too can get your $2.00 from the class action suit
In other shocking news, sky reportedly still blue.
Still, it is surprising to see Gigabyte is not doing that. Huh…
What about EVGA, Zotac, PNY and the rest of them?

Yes please
http://www.fudzilla.com/news/processors/40888-amd-naples-zen-has-32-cores

Instead of sharing L2, they now share L3.
128 lanes of PCIe 3, for those quad Crossfire configurations… HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
- Same goes for 10XX series NVIDIA.
8 memory channels, welcome to 2010 AMD.
Maybe SMT will give AMD some manner of competing chance with Intel’s Hyper-Threading.
But right now it’s still wait and see.
Who the fuck edited this article? Shurely someone isn’t doing their job
- Don’t call me Shirley!
  - Whatever you say Margaret

Bots
https://blog.twitch.tv/on-artificial-viewers-followers-and-chat-activity-317906f1c7ea#.5q9ddghty

Guess the advertisers finally learned about view botting.
“An order requiring Defendants to provide Twitch with an accounting of any and all sales of services that violate Twitch’s rights as described herein, including information sufficient to identify purchasers of such services.”
If Twitch Wins, they will have all the sales, names etc from all the users who bought bots.

Mount
http://www.pcgamesn.com/mount-blade-ii-bannerlord/mount-and-blade-2-mods

We have made our own engine and will release our entire engine to the modders, along with the source code of the game.
- Well, considering the already active MaB community, this is probably the best move they could possibly make.

Spockcraft
https://github.com/DethRaid/nova-renderer

Dude originally wanted to make /w the Vulkan render.
Updating it to openGL 4.5 may be for naught, because I’m betting microsoft
Vulkan would actually help with the CPU boundedness inherent to Minecraft.

2016, the year of the engine reimplementation
https://github.com/jdmclark/gorc

It definitely gives strider something to do
I like seeing all these old star wars games showing up under linux in some form or another. But I really just want a linux version of Battlefront 2
- In fact, I might literally suck your dick in exchange for it.

Superfux cart
http://supertuxkart.blogspot.de/2016/06/supertuxkart-092-rc1-released.html

So they are actually working on network multiplayer, but the progress is slow moving
- It’s been over a year since they started work and FK all progress has been made.
Multiplayer is your most popular requested feature, Brad.
In the meanwhile you’ll have to settle for racing against your own ghost. Which you could do before
They’ve also added 3 new tracks and a TTF based font rendering system

But what does it smell like?
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/4ofsgp/antraxx_isometric_mech_shooter_multiplayer_alpha/

Use Chrome to play it

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: On Rusty Trails
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/277700
Devel: Black Pants Studio
Engine: Scape Engine
Price: €/$ 12.99 | CDN$ 13.99

Wazzat: You are Elvis! Your home is gone! Blast through this fast-paced platformer and instantly shift from rusty red to hairy blue. Don’t stick to one side or it will turn on you…

Makes with the working

V-

These lot have been making Linux games before Steam on Linux was a thing.
The performance shows.
You nerfed my save.

J-

P-

They noped errybody’s saves.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

No mistaking that this is from the creators of Tiny & Big.

Wicked strange artstyle, and that’s a good thing.
Little Elvis, why U so small?
Eat some fried peanut butter and banana sammiches!
Elvis gets lost in the background sometimes.
- Beautiful, detailed, (albeit slightly dark) backgrounds.
It has sounds but that’s not how I platform.

J-

The character design is pretty good.
I love the visual storytelling in this game
The soundtrack was kind of forgettable. Every once in a while, I’d start to notice it and wonder where the noise was coming from. THen in dawned on me and the sound faded away

P-

I actually very much enjoyed the sound design.
From the background music to the always satisfying “twang” when you make a leap of faith and hit one of the metal platforms at high speed.
I guess that’s a good thing because, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know I have little love left for platformers.
Venn brought up an interesting point.
Your character tends to get lost in the middle of all the crap that’s going on in the level.
Especially in those crap-heavy sections of levels, where the camera zooms out and your tiny little red pyramid gets lost in the lasers, showers, and red platforms.
But it’s not just your character!
In fact, more than once I made a leap of faith because I couldn’t for the life of me see where the next set of platforms were.
The blue platforms (when they recoil) are basically the exact dark shade of brown as the rest of the sky box.
I have these Asus VX239H-W IPS 80M:1 contrast ratio monitors with said contrast jacked all the way up.
And I still can only see those if I stop and take stock of what’s what.
In a game which is very clearly aiming for a faster pace and outright grades you on your speed, that’s bad!
But more on that in the Fun.

Total-

Control

V-

Tight controls are tight.
We’re talking Super Meat [cis] Gendered Male tight.
And they have to be, since Elvis is in the business of taking care of the business… and business is good.
Keyboard controls function but I was unable to summon the self-hate required to test them further.

J-

Games like these basically require tight controls
If it were any other way, it’d get one chair

P-

No complaints from me here.
You push a button and there’s no noticeable delay.
If you cock up and miss a jump, it’s your own damn fault!

Total-

FUN

V-

Short levels and minimum ragequit.
Mechanics: Colour, bombs, wind, jump pads
WAR, good god.

J-

I don’t normally like games like this, but On Rusty Trails is actually pretty fun
The character designs are fun to look at, and what little story it has unfolds in a matter reasonably paced with the game play
All the puzzles are tough but fair. At some point I had to walk away, but then you start going over how you done fucked up.
I’d recommend picking it up.

P-

Remember that world switching mechanic from Guacamelee?
Remember how they only really start fucking with you and the precise timing of said mechanic when you were 2 or 3 hours in?
This game will expect you to have mastered it in less than 3 minutes after acquiring it.
And they grade you at the end of the level.
That’s… That’s just rubbing it in!
“What’s that? you picked up the little currency thing but used it on a checkpoint? Bitch!”
“Oh! You finished the level in like 10 seconds, that’s cute! 57th place.”
Well then, fuck you too game! I’m gonna go play something that isn’t a freakin’ 2D platformer.
I don’t suck at platformers. I don’t even inherently hate them. I’m just tired of the genre.
I spent the entirety of the 90’s decade playing platformers day in and day out. (With some Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake and Fallout in between)
On Rusty Trails is a good platformer. Hell, it’s an awesome Rage Platformer which manages not to be completely cynical.
- You know the type! The ones those screechy “let’s players” often feature.
But I’m just so goddamn burnt out on the genre.