LinuxGameCast Weekly 234 – Shady Russian Website

Agent 47 targets Linux! Croteam gets Serious about Vulkan, Steam nopes Greenlight, and Project CARS 2 could be headed to the penguin. Then Dungeon Souls faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

Metrics
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/291118/

Is this the guy I have to blame for this shit?

Goodbye Greenlight (this time for real, you guys!)
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/291277/

At least they’re offering an alternative this time.
An alternative which people have started dissecting, already.!
Aaaand, shots fired:
- https://itch.io/direct
  - That’s adorable!
Alright, Steam is no longer pretending that community voting has anything to with a game getting accepted.
The new system is simplified like so
- 1. Give Steam $$$
- 2. Game goes on Steam.
Basically they plan on jacking up the application fee to “decrease the noise in the submission pipeline”
This will not fix the problem with shovelware, nay.
It will only limit the shovelware to devls / publishers with deep pockets.
It’s a win/win for Steam since it looks like they are doing something for the consumer (they’re not) while not losing revenue thanks to the increased application fee.
They’re debating the amount devs will have to pay VALVe for each game and they say they’ve gotten feedback suggesting it should be between $100 (what it currently is with Greenlight) and $5000 (somewhat prohibitive for many 1-2 man teams).
- Steam monster needs about $350

Exploit explained
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/5srlwd/

So basically, if you’re dumb enough to want music to play on your steam profile, you’ve opened yourself up for an XSS attack
So much for valve’s emphasis on securitAHAHAHAHA.
Moral of the story is SANITIZE ALL OF YOUR GODDAMN FUCKING INPUTS YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOTS!

The same thing we do every night Pinky…
http://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/?snr=1_5_9__205

It’s out. Roommate already hahttp://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/?d a copy, so I gave it a spin
It runs. That’s about as far as I got
The whole CIV thing is simply beyond me.
- Could you say it’s beyond earf?
I genuinely don’t see the difference unless it’s in space of some shite.

Ballistic Over-watch-kill
http://store.steampowered.com/app/296300

Wicked good performance. +
Fairly well done too. Sandy, Venn, Empty and I gave it a whirl
There are still some balance issues, but still reasonably good.
Generic white-dude shooty game.
It’s like Paladins with none of the charm and pretty unbalanced.
I got to level 3 as the sniper class and the first unlock was 25% extra damage while invisible. I can only imagine how much more damage higher level players deal than new players.
That means new players coming in are going to have a hard time.
And with a 30 day average of 160 concurrent players, this one isn’t going to live long.
Still a better love story than Storm United.

Neon Drive
http://store.steampowered.com/app/433910/

Is this Guitar Hero with cars?
Single player only.
This is the video game equivalent of the meisner technique
Move left, right, up and down. In many different seizuretastic contexts

Gunmetal
http://store.steampowered.com/app/332270/

I’ve been playing around with this critter before it hit Steam.
It’s no Owlboy but definitely hipster-pixel done right.
If you liked Zelda II this will scratch that itch.

News:

Serious update
http://www.croteam.com/serious-wednesday-update/#more-5147

Daaamn! They really do mean ALL THE GAMES.
All Linux, all Vulkan and apparently all VR for 2 people left in the world who give a damn.
I’m really excited now that I can play a modernized version of SS:TSE on linux. With vulkan no less!
It makes me so happy I almost forgot we’re 14 bucks away from subjecting myself to BFE though…

HitMang
https://twitter.com/feralgames/status/828996811692060675

Coming next thursday.
The silver lining here is that we don’t have to wait for all the episodes to release.
People on that thread are so psyched for vulkan support. Shame they’re not getting it
- If it had teh Vulkan they would let EVERYONE know.

Long and Hard
https://twitter.com/feralgames/status/829279076133257216

Just a heads up for the Xcom 2 fans in the audience. You can now play the Long War TC mod on linux.
It adds a bunch of extra content and ramps up the difficulty of the game, so if that’s your jam, here it is.

Cars 2
http://www.wmdportal.com/projects/project-cars-2/

Fool me once, right?
They said something last year about focusing on getting Cars 2 on Linux (new engine) then going back and supporting Cars 1 after it was on said engine.

Texture Compression (Thanks Scott Michaud)
https://twitter.com/sehurlburt/status/829974580890525697
http://www.binomial.info/blog/?category=Compressor

Oh hey, this is a project co-headed by our old pal Rich Geldreich. I wonder how he feels about it being on linux now
Their easy mode texture compression solution is now up and running on the linuxes, and can potentially reduce texture size by 75%

CandyMan
http://www.blacklightinteractive.com/uncategorized/golf-with-your-friends-update-0-0-98-candyland/

“If you are in a pass-worded lobby or another region it will take them to the password menu and swap the region for them.”
- Why wasn’t this a thing from the start?
That donut was horrifying

My veins. Hook it to them
http://subsetgames.com/itb.html

Tactical grid based strategy game from the makers of FTL? FSM help us all. Well, me specifically
THey’re not promising day one linux support,

GODOT (thanks Foxy)
https://godotengine.org/article/godot-30-new-internals-progress-report-4

New memory management arch
XML file format was noped
New audio engine with built in effects.
And a new import system

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Dungeon Souls
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/383230/
Devel: Lamina Studios, Mike Studios
Engine: GameMaker: Studio
Price: 12.99 / CDN 13.99

Wazzat: Dungeon Souls is an action-adventure roguelike dungeon crawler which draws heavy inspiration from Nuclear Thro ne, Risk of Rain, and Overture. Explore vast procedurally generated dungeons, collect loot, and slay hordes of challenging enemies!

Mandatory Disclosure: The devs sent us keys.

Makes with the working

V-

This thing start in a tiny little bit-o-screen every time it’s launched.
I have to face FK my monitor in order to sort it.
And forget about dealing with that noise in Bog Picture.

J-

The tiny screen. It’s real
Compounded by the fact that you need an xbox controller plugged in to fix that.
At least it remembers your settings

P-

If I start the game in fullscreen, it renders in 320×240 in the bottom left corner of the screen.
It reminded me of the Serpent in the Staglands.
I worked around it with the KDE Advanced Window rules by disabling fullscreen in game and forcing it through KWin.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

Remember how Owlboy did everything right?
Well this is Bizarro Owlboy… wait, that’ insulting to Bizarro.
This looks like every other hipster-pixel hot mess currently on Steam.
Hell it’s worse than most.
Even after disabling some of the text and BS effects it’s still pixel soup.
Never bothered to check if it had sound.

J-

Pedro thinks a 320×240 window at 1080 is bad, try it at UHD.
Shit gets crowded fast on the screen.
The pixel art isn’t anything to write home about
I guess there’s a soundtrack

P-

Wow, 4:3 in 16:9 screens looks like ASS.

Total-

Control

V-

I like how this game SCREAMS about needing a keyboard/gerbil in order to play in Big Picture.
Have you tried to play this with a keyboard… it’s rubbish.
Not that controlla support is better.

J-

Doesn’t support DS4 Controllers. 360 controller works
Aiming is really weird

P-

Doesn’t support the Steam controller. Logitech F310 works.
The only way to use the Steam controller is to use Steam Big Picture mode and setting it to emulate mouse/keyboard.

Total-

FUN

V-

70 plus minutes in this game and I don’t really know… what’s going on.
I might have put more time into it IF I didn’t have to break out the magnifying glass each time I launched it.
Than again I might not since there is nothing here that has not been done before, better.
Kill, die, repeat.

J-

It’s not the worst thing in the world
Running around indiscriminately murdering things with arrows or magic can be fun.
The problem becomes, sometimes there’s just too much shit going on the screen and sometimes you end up accidentally running into or triggering a trap
I’d imagine it’d be a combination of more fun and more frustrating with online multiplayer
- It’ll be a hard sell for couch
The controls aren’t fantastic either.

P-

I hate this game… for exactly the same reason I hate most.
It’s not terrible, but it’s not exactly good.
They were trying to do something along the lines of Legend of Dungeon, remember that?
It’s Nuclear Throne with a heavier dose of medieval fantasy.
This is the kind the game which, even though I usually suck at, tend to enjoy quite a lot.
I’ve sunk over 30 hours into Enter the Gungeon, 18 in Binding of Isaac, 27 in Risk of Rain.
This is the kind of genre I will excuse the bullshit hipster pixels for the sake of the mechanics. But they managed to cock that up, too!
Not only are the controls less than ideal, ensuring you will never be able to truly enjoy the mechanics as the developers themselves envisioned you would, there are mechanics and RNG bullshit actively fighting one another.
The Rogue-lite elements in this game can be summed up into perma-death and randomization. That’s it. The two most overdone and completely fucking boring elements of something which constitutes a rogue-lite.
But in order for a game with those elements to be enjoyable instead of Nope-inducing, it needs to curb the randomness. Especially when there are levels entirely randomly generated in a way that makes it almost impossible for you to progress.
In Enter the Gungeon, which is possibly the closest to this game I’ve experienced, I can reliably get to the 4th level of the dungeon. In Dungeon Souls, the only way I can even beat the first area, let alone the first boss, is an exercise in trial and error.
Everything is so random in fact, creatures will often get stuck in random bits of scenery because their pathing AI just can’t deal with it.
If the AI in your game can’t fucking deal with it, what makes you think people will?