LinuxGameCast Weekly 226 – Lily Pootin

DOOM drinks the WINE! SDL comes to Unity, NVIDIA sorts some drivers, and we discuss the future of Steam Machines. Then Quern faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Steam News:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Stable update
http://store.steampowered.com/news/26185/

  • For real now. Update those udev rules
  • You can now install on ZFS volumes… if you hate yourself.
  • I’m glad this came to the stable branch since the beta update last month broke the ability to download and the one from this month borked my entire install.

Because valve
http://www.zdnet.com/article/alienware-exec-changes-to-windows-blunted-appeal-steam-machines/

  • This is 100% on VALVe.
  • They set a release date when their OS was in beta, they never advertised it outside of steam/word of mouth, what did you expect would happen
  • Having a few more big developers on board would have definitely helped as well. Perhaps holding those who promised ports way back when to their word financially
  • Really, this should be a learning experience on valve’s part
    • They learned they could shake Microsoft and some might argue that was the point.
  • What really ticks me off is I can’t blame DELL for cutting their losses.
  • VALVe needs to start acting like the multi million dollar company they are instead of a bunch of flippant high schoolers with unlimited money.

Post-beta Rocket
http://steamcommunity.com/games/252950/announcements/detail/510427455857870668

  • Spent some time with Foxy and Frenchy and no spite crashes
    • Let’s try to prove that wrong in the aftershowzen.

Yooka Pre-purchase
http://store.steampowered.com/app/360830?snr=1_41_4__42

  • qmx7mh
  • Stop giving developers money before they deliver the goods.
  • This is true not just for pre-orders, but also Kickstarter.
  • The cult-mentality that has sprung up around these practices is nothing short of an abusive relationship between players and developers/publishers.
  • With all that out of the way, I was a big fan of Banjo back in the N64 days. Most of the brains from that team are working on this, so it at least bodes well
  • Plus we could use a GOOD 3d platformer on linux

Ballistic
https://steamcommunity.com/app/473770/discussions/5/208684375414314219/

  • Hangs at the loading screen.
  • I played the tutorial and it seemed to run alright.

4Team
http://store.steampowered.com/app/534320/

  • Hipster pixel awesomenauts deathmatch
  • Cross platform multiplayer.

News:

Open all the GLX gears you want
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/112992/en-us

  • They also fixed that one issue with the 32 bit libraries that tries to overwrite a symlink it already made and fails
  • I managed to open enough glxgears instances to fill both of my monitors and even though they all came down to about 100FPS I didn’t have any issues with some not rendering at all.
  • Now available in the Ubuntu graphic drivers team PPA.

Risen
https://liliputing.com/2016/12/amd-unveils-ryzen-its-next-gen-octa-core-cpu.html

  • Matching the Blender/Handbrake performance of the 6900K (an $1100 CPU) is definitely being competitive.
  • But they didn’t really show any game comparisons or any actual game benchmark scores, so that’s something to keep in mind.
  • They also “forgot” to mention the MSRP… >.>
  • $3.50 says the 8-core part will launch around the $500 mark.

TWITCH
https://blog.twitch.tv/announcing-irl-mobile-broadcasting-and-updated-community-guidelines-6833dcac8012#.edp3ffh10

  • They’ve gone full Justin.tv.
  • Also of note, Gaming Talk Show is now just Talk Show.

Direct3D 11 development
https://www.winehq.org/wwn/404#Direct3D%2011%20development

  • On MacOS you are most likely out of luck.
    • Ha ha haha
  • Work is continuing and it looks like overwatch might work for the most part
  • Still, not coming for wine 2.0.

WINE-O DOOM
http://steamcommunity.com/app/379720/discussions/0/152391995402132325/

  • Not even going to waste a Heretic purchase on it.
  • I’m genuinely curious about what vulkan performance on wine is like

SDL Unity
https://twitter.com/natosha_bard/status/808704490010529796

  • Now /w SDL and Vulkan goodness.
  • Now that it’s finally done, you shouldn’t need to worry about using wayland for newer games
    • Mind you, this is just the beta. Don’t start expecting Anima to start up just yet
    • Or the editor spite crashing for FK and all reason.
  • What would be nice is if they transfer all their windowing and input to SDL so that it’s all unified and automagical

Lutris bi-weekly update
https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/107661366128884529485/+LutrisNet/posts/HCx994Y3m2K

  • Environment variable editor
  • A few fixes
  • More importantly, anyone with a valid account can edit any installer on the website (still work in progress but the system works)
  • Ugh, this is only an incremental update.
  • Did strider ever make DRI_PRIME selectable in the UI?

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Quern – Undying Thoughts
Webzone:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/512790
Devel: Zadbox Entertainment
Engine: Unity
Price: €22.99 / $24.99 / CDN$27.99

Wazzat: Discover the truth about Quern’s past, unfold the mysteries of its present, and be the explorer who shapes its future. Quern introduces reusable puzzle mechanics to the classic genre, making the player think about the game as a whole, and not just as a series of individual challenges.


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Where does this game get off nomming 6+ GB of RAM?
  • FERPS are all over the damn place, ranging from 70+ to sub 30 within inches of each other.
  • However, it’s still completely playable.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Had to edit the prefs file in order to change the resolution of windowed mode. Shaaaaaaame.

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I wanted to give 4 chairs to a Unity game here, for once, but it seems I still can’t.
  • There’s no Unity screen of Nope, granted, but the performance is a crapshoot
  • Look a certain way, 100FerPS, turn 10º to the right 30 FerPS.
  • What in the actual fuck? Have you not heard of culling? Or simply not rendering things which the player can’t see and probably won’t be able to see for a long long time?

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Savage Lands much?
  • Yeah, it really has that everything is slightly grainy filter on it.
  • Even so, it’s not ugly and it’s nice to see something not made entirely with Unity assets.
  • Draw distance is a bit shite (live Savage Lands)
  • Even in the first area, such moutain pop-in.
  • Sounds are there and the voice acting works but this is something that begs to be played with K-pop blasting into your head organ.
  • Than again, that might have been my problem… more about that in the fun section.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Though the framerate is hella inconsistent, it does paint an good looking and eerie setting
  • Good use of atmosphere
  • Yeah, it’s using the savage lands filter, but if it works it works
  • The voice acting is alright.
  • If you end up looking out in the distance through the telescope you find, you’ll see lots of weird texture pop-in in the distance

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It looks good, very good!
  • Everything is detailed and seems to have been designed with a lot of care.
  • The background music, with the ubiquitous exception of a pair of tracks, is also what you’d expect from a puzzle game and they do seem to be completely unintrusive.
    • Except for those two weird ones that sound so out of place I ended up muting the background music altogether and listened to the Enya best of playlist on youtube instead.
  • I noticed something at one point and I have never been able to unhear it.
  • The “footstep” noise has exactly the same cadence whether you’re walking or sprinting and just add insult to immersive injury, they don’t give you a separate footstep slider.
  • For me, I either play the game dead silent, or that is always niggling in the back of my mind.
  • “Why are you paying attention to footstep noises instead of the puzzles?”
  • I’ll tell you why, in the Fun section.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Standard gerbil + keyboard lot.
  • The second camera activation took some time to get use to.
  • Inventory / Notes management is a solid PITA.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Dinging it a chair because of the finicky mouse wheel inventory, but beyond that I have no real complaints. Solve puzzles

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Invisible walls, the game.
  • I get that there are some places where this makes sense. realMyst did it too.
  • But why can’t I jump over a 1’ palisade/hedge/fence/whatever?
  • There was growing sense that I’m being herded by this game, instead of – you know – playing it.
  • I didn’t feel like a player, anymore than I felt like a player in the Star Wars sim-thing in Disneyland when I was 9.
  • I didn’t feel like I was in control… at all!
  • I was just pushing the buttons and sliding the blocks to make the next set piece happen.
  • Technically speaking, there’s nothing wrong with the controls in Quern.
  • You can rebind most of them, except for the movement keys.
  • But they’re already mirrored between WASD and the directional arrows, so that’s fine.
  • The mouse sensitivity slider actually works so that’s always a plus.
  • But for a game with technically sound and functioning controls, I don’t feel like I’m control at all.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • We’re not the A Team, more like the D- Team.
  • That said we all have our own special set of skills.
  • Mine however is NOT solving puzzles in a strange world.
  • You start off at Thor’s Hammer and get a note saying you were abducted because reasons.
  • After that it’s full-metal here’s some puzzles, have at!
  • Unfortunately I’m either out of practice branding on puzzles or pants-on-head retarded.
  • I’ve sorted a few but yeah, I’m basically stuck on the first area.
  • That’s not a bad thing however.
  • It’s been awhile since a game called me a moron and was able to back it up, hard.
  • Quern – Undying Thoughts did just that and I’m looking forward to sorting it.

J-CHAIR

  • I can see the appeal of this sort of game
  • Quiet, atmospheric, solve some puzzles. Have a good ol’ time
  • I’m not one of these people who finds this sort of game appealing
  • I actually busted out a pad and paper for one of the puzzles. This is not a good sign
  • Most of the nice things I’ve said about this game, I’ve said in the shiny and sounds section. I just didn’t have fun with the game
  • Flailing around, feeling dumb. I play video games because they provide escapist fantasies, not to re-inforce my daily life

P-CHAIR

  • And this is the kicker, the reason I started noticing the footstep sounds and their unwavering cadence, is because I spent more time trying to find the puzzles than actually solving them.
  • I’ve played Myst. I’ve played Riven, I’ve played Uru and I even played Uru Online, the multiplayer one.
  • In none of those games did I spent 30 minutes going around the same places over and over wondering “WTF do I do now?”
  • A good puzzle game, and I’ve said this before, hands the player a proverbial loaded gun and then sits back with a bag of popcorn and watches the idiot shoot himself in foot over and over.
    • That’s the Stephen Sausage Roll approach.
  • Quern tells the player there’s a loaded gun somewhere in this stupidly pretty and over-designed island, expecting people will go through the trouble of finding it so that they can proceed to shoot themselves with it for a bit.
  • Fuck. That. Noise!
  • There’s good puzzle design and then there’s being asinine. Guess which one this game fits into…

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIR


Hate Mail:

DOOOM
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?SnqVNBF

Gates of mamories
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?Q4aGSio

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