MAD MAX travels to Vulkan! Half-Life 2 returns to Ravenholm, Ticket to Ride drops Linux support, and Unity 5.6 completes the cycle. Then Ballistic Overkill faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.
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Steam News:
Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam News:
- I don’t know what irks me more.
- That a new HL episode was in the works or that dude left the project for Disney.
- For a rather unmemorable game too
- In a way, I enjoy when these kinds of “leaks” happen.
- It’s better to get a little glimpse at what could have been than languish in ignorance until the end of days.
- Magnet gun seems a bit…I dunno. Overlapping with the gravity gun?
LLAP MAX
http://www.feralinteractive.com/en/news/753/
- Well hot damn. I would have lost that bet
- Considering Feral’s track record though, I’m sure it’ll take a few iterations to smooth things out
- Also interested to know what kind of technology they’re leveraging to pull this off.
- This also debunks the whole “Warner Bros. hates Linux” thing.
- WB didn’t have shite to do with this, son.
- If they did, Feral wouldn’t be allowed to run updates like this so long after release.
- At best, Feral asked if they could improve the game’s performance (for free) and WB said okay.
- It’s doing some type of dark magic.
- The OpenGL render already maxed the GPU at 100%.
- Htop does not show any noticeable improvement in CPU usage.
- However, indoor areas have went from 23/45 to 59/80.
- And for me the outdoor areas came down from over 100 FerPS to 60 with dips into the 30s.
- Can confirm the outdoor jank.
- It’s also very very janky!
- And I’ve had a segfault.
- Reverting to the old version, all of these issues go away and the performance goes back to what it used to be.
- There’s also a new Benchmark of LIES!!1!, moar info and results:
- The benchmark uses scenes that are CPU bound.
- Even in hyperthreading land, one core was constantly booked @100% throughout all of the benchmarks
- That’s why OGL is running like arse (It’s not a fair comparison)
- If you compare Vulkan performance to the 1.0 version of MM it’s not that big of an improvement.
- At the end of the day we traded indoor jank for a outdoor random freeze fest.
- I have no doubt it will get better but I’m not going to pretend that this first beta fixes all the things.
Torment
http://steamcommunity.com/games/272270/announcements/detail/616271552114468967
- Ooh! Upcoming free content
- They’re fixing issues, which is good. Since you guys can see how far i’ve got, y’all know I’ve ran into none of these.
- Spoiler territory in the patch notes
- The new Torment game is selling like gangbusters, so Hasbro’s gotta get their share
- Honestly though, this is a terrific game and if you haven’t played it, you should once it comes out
- The one nice thing about beamdog updating the infinity engine is now all of their nostalgia grabs work under linux. So they have that going for them
- Planescape: Torment – Chris “Stab Used Game Sales in The Chest” Avellone’s Cut
Ballistic Release
http://steamcommunity.com/games/ballistic/announcements/detail/468778664304068015
- It’s not going to be generic white dude shooter very long.
- You’ll be able to shoot white girls, as well!
- White ninja girls.
- You’ll be able to shoot white girls, as well!
- They can add DLC but can’t be bothered to add bots.
- More on that at 11.
Dungeon update
http://steamcommunity.com/games/383230/announcements/detail/223332484623735914
- There was crafting in this game?!?
- Only made the show because the devs watched our review and wrote back saying they fixed some things we (and the community) had issues with.
Ticket to abandon
https://steamcommunity.com/app/108200/discussions/0/133256959377980187/
- You want bad steam reviews?
- Because this is how you get bad steam reviews.
- The board game it’s based off is actually pretty fun. Shame I gotta shit on these guys now.
- Yeah, at time of writing you can no longer access the game on steam.
- “Supposedly” That’s a bug, but I really don’t think the devs give a shit either way. They got your money already.
News:
Official Mesa PPA
https://tjaalton.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/mesa-17-0-2-for-16-04-16-10/
https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/ubuntu/updates
- If you don’t want want to rely on those unofficial PPAs.
- Although, Feral still recommends Padoka0’s Mesa Stable PPA with the Vulkan patch for Mad Max.
LLAP Unity
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/03/31/5-6-is-now-available-and-completes-the-unity-5-cycle/
- I can’t wait for the influx of babbys first Vulkan game.
- Remains to be seen what will break horribly on Linux with version 6, once it’s out.
- Well, at least with Vulkan support, it only has to generate the GPU code once. Maybe in an ideal world, that would help with a lot of the unity jank, considering it’d come through on windows as well.
- And android too. Fantastic for all the shovelware free on play but not on steam shit we get
- I know we’ve complained time and again about the lack of google cardboard support in unity titles. Now, finally, our wish comes true
- Nintendo Switch support is also available now.
- Silly Venn, this isn’t BSDgamecast
Multi Bundle
https://www.humblebundle.com/hooked-on-multiplayer-bundle
- Three whole Linux games… progress.
- Not sure 8 bucks is worth it for Tricky Towers and UCH
- Guess they don’t want Linux users to pay for the $10 tier, I know I’m not.
- No new unlocks at the time of writing, so Imma say give this one a pass.
Inner Pyr
https://www.aspyr.com/games/innerspace
- This is another layers of fear type situation. Ass-pyre is just doing the publishing.
- Yip, looks like another budget Unity title.
- They’re also publishing Observer on Linux which is made by the same people who made Layers of Snore.
Gadget!
https://github.com/pjasicek/CaptainClaw
- Linux – CMake is on the way
- Much to Venn’s chagrin
- I still don’t like cmake but it’s come a long way.
- It builds but I don’t have the *.rez
OpenCarrot (RTheren)
https://github.com/soulweaver91/project-carrot
- It works: https://plus.google.com/+PedroMateus/posts/2YXBCRw7geb
- You will also need the extractor which opens the .J2A files and lets you play the original campaign.
- But that extractor doesn’t have a makefile or a cmake list worth a damn.
- Because the developer used Visual Studio and said “If you can’t run Visual Studio, figure it out!”
- I could probably figure out how to do it, since Jazz Jackrabbit 2 was one of the very few action platformers I truly enjoyed.
- But I’m lazy.
Party
https://github.com/CharlesMartinUK/open-party/wiki
- Would adding a description of the included games kill you?
- Clearly developed on windows, as all of the python files in the tar.gz need to have dos2unix run against them
- Also it don’t launch
HeckPoint
http://www.cradlegames.com
http://www.cradlegames.com/Demo/Hellpoint_Demo_Linux_v016a.zip
- Has a little Dark Souls vibe to it.
- More than a little, they ripped the leveling system wholesale from Dark Souls.
- Unity game but kinda works on the Xclone controlla.
- And nothing else!
- What’s that? You’d like to not use WASD? Good luck figuring out how to remap the controls in the screen of nope.
- Also, I think this is a first for a Unity thing, but the sensitivity is way too low!
- Quit distributing games in *.zip files, it’s full-metal amature hour.
- chmod +x should not be a step to launch any game in 2017.
- Those issues aside, it performs well enough.
- It looks pretty and if this does actually materialise into a proper full game, I’ll probably enjoy playing it very much.
- It comes with a pdf Marketing Aid manual.
- Yay busted unity demos.
- The game launches fine, but I get about 3 seconds of level before I get a funky space background. Apparently I’m doing something in game, as my staminal drains and the dude makes grunty noises.
CHAIRQUISITION:
Game: Ballistic Overkill
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/296300
Devel: Aquaris Game Studio
Engine: Unity
Price: 11.99 / CDN 12.99
Wazzat: Ballistic Overkill is a fast paced PvP shooter. Select one of 7 classes, each with their own skills and weapons. Make multiple loadouts with each, creating different builds within the same character. No wimpy support classes, in Ballistic everyone is a killer!
Mandatory Disclosure: They sent us keys
Makes with the working
V-
- For a Unity title this critter screams.
- It’s always nice to see a game that noms more than two threads.
J-
- The unity 5 scream of blue
- As stated on the stream, you can make a well performing unity title.
P-
Total-
Shiny / Sounds
V-
- It’s not fugly by any stretch of the imagination-organ.
- Plenty of time to stop and check out the level design.
- More about that in the Fun section.
- The player models are well done and the same goes for most of the weapon models.
- The guns go bang but nothing really stood out.
- Didn’t notice a soundtrack.
- It’s a FDM damned AAA title compared to most of the shovelware on Steam these days.
J-
- The game looks fine. The models don’t look completely ridiculous (although they are a bit samey) and all the classes look distinct
- The UI here looks like something right out of UT4
- The voice acting is super cheesy. I realize they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on it, but it’s just shy of laughably bad
- It honestly fooled me into thinking it wasn’t a unity game. It deserves some credit for that
P-
- The environments all look good, even if the level design makes that pointless, since they all have the same basic layout.
- The player models are all very… samey.
- Remember my complaints regarding how the Space Marines in Warhammer 40K all look the same?
- Well, they might as well have payed for the Games Workshop license and made this a 40K FPS.
- The soldier men all look the same, regardless of class. At a distance, they’re pretty hard to tell one from the other.
- Sure, if they look semi-transparent they’re either a sniper or a ninja, but the grenade guy, assault guy, marksman guy, vanguard guy and the heavy weapons guy all look like they’re related.
- And sound-wise, the guns all sound piss-weak.
- You get more of a sense of firing projectiles from blowing spitballs out of the shell of a bic pen.
Total-
Control
V-
- WASD, Shift runs, and Alt crouches.
- G throws grenades.
- Seems legit.
J-
- No issues here. When you’re making an arena shooter, it pays to stick with the basics
P-
- I have many complaints about this game, the controls are not one of them.
- Although, you do start questioning whether or not you’re in control when you turn a corner and almost a second later you die from a shot which came from the other side of the wall and the person who killed you, very clearly, doesn’t have line of sight anymore.
Total-
FUN
V-
- I’m going to talk about the only class I am remotely proficient in, the sniper.
- Sniper reload is WAY to long
- You can thumb-up palm-down almost anything bolt-action in a hot second.
- This is a problem since every arena ive played was hella closed in and maze like.
- Yeah, no real hiddey holes.
- If you try to run-and-gun with the sniper you get about one (maybe two) shots off before you are killed to death.
- And don’t talk to me about the secondary weapon since it’s rubbish.
- All that said, multiplayer /w friends is borderline enjoyable but adds nothing in terms of originality.
- It’s just meh… not bad but yeah, meh.
- If you want to play solo you’re going to have a bad time.
- Well, at least in deathmatch.
- All of the servers (with good ping) are either full or empty.
- This is mainly due to their being 3 or 4 populated servers at any given time.
- Guess I will just practice with some bot… oh, wait.
- How the hell am I supposed to get good and or practice?
- P.S.
- Leveling systems in arena shooters need to DIAF.
- I know developers think it keeps people playing longer but it don’t.
J-
- It’s just kind of Meh.
- It’s a perfectly competent shooter that does nothing to distinguish itself from it’s peers.
- Technically, it’s very well done, so it gets points for that, but it’s otherwise indistinguishable from the myriad other shooters out there that do the exact same thing
- Needs bots. I don’t like playing with internet randos.
- The leveling system gives you some incentinve to try out other classes, but where something like overwatch actually demands that you master multiple character types, this really just lets you pick one you like and stick with i t
- I am a bit cheesed that they nerfed the tank though. I Liked being all invincible and whatnot
P-
- It’s a functional game.
- But it has absolutely no charm.
- “There you go again using meaningless words to describe videogames.”
- Fine! Charm is what can make a bad game still work and you’ll enjoy your time with it regardless.
- Charm is what make Bethesda’s buggy ass games compelling to play for hours and hours on end. Charm is what got me through two playthroughs of Bound by Flame. Charm is the reason that shitty Dark Souls PC port still gets a lot of players to this day.
- Charm is what Ballistic Overkill doesn’t have… at all!
- It’s actually amazing how you can make a shooter this generic, with no identifying features, no odd quirks, nothing and not have to pay Activision money for the Call of Duty license.
- Yes, Ballistic Overkill is exactly the kind of samey boring repetitive shooting that the mainstream seems to love to hate but somehow gets a pass because it’s a “small indie studio”.
- No! I refuse to let slide what is a deliberate attempt to cash in on Overwatch’s success (They even put Over- in the name, for fuck sake) and replacing everything which has made that game successful with a bunch of Uncanny Valley looking white dudes and CoD shooting.
- My suggestion to the devs? Be fucking creative.
Total-
Final –
Hate Mail:
Mother
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?YERZson
Thimble
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?YsC4VSv
Grey
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?Q18XbME
- Heeeey! Gustavo is still alive!
- There is no “little” about G2A being shady.
- Hell this week they were double charging people for some random game bundle.
