LinuxGameCast Weekly 253 – Weird Involuntary Squeak

Steam gets flat! Serious Sam 3: BFE travels to Vulkan, Hollow Knight receives a big update, and someone pokes the Lithtech engine with a Linux stick. Then Myrne: The Quest faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

Flat steam
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/06/steam-now-available-flatpak

  • flatpack run com.valvesoftware.Steam
    • If your DE doesn’t have flatpak integration
  • Installs on fedora 25, fails to launch steam proper after the runtime is set up
  • Speaking of Steam, did anyone elks have to randomly sign in after the last few updates?

Catch them all
http://steamcommunity.com/games/250820/announcements/detail/3062859752419079879
https://blog.vive.com/us/2017/06/22/vive-jumps-on-steam-summer-sale-with-discounts-on-vive-hardware-and-software/

  • I’m not sure how giving a bunch of clutter for a virtual house helps the whole VR market seem more attractive
  • I’m sure there are some obsessive completionists who will be all over this, but they will already have bought their vive.
  • VRHome is Valve’s own custom “launcher” for VR. The end goal seems to be to create something in VR which can be your “desktop” as it is on your PC.
  • So, putting on the Vive without starting a game proper you get to run around your own custom VR Home.
  • And I guess with adding to that feeling of individuality and customization that you get in your traditional desktop, will help people who bought the Vive feel a little less like they spent a shitton of money on another gimmicky gaming peripheral.

Vulkan BFE
http://steamcommunity.com/games/564310/announcements/detail/2542694703633010179

  • Ya know how your box curb-stomps HL-2 and L4B2?
  • Yeah, that’s what the Vulkans did to the once chuggy Serious BFE.
  • I put everything on Ultra and then manually increased all the things which weren’t maxed out and it never dipped below 100.
  • Getting anywhere from 50-70@UHD with everything on ultra. Pretty good stuff
  • Still not making me feel any better about needing to play it

Bogus
http://store.steampowered.com/app/272620/Serious_Sams_Bogus_Detour/

  • Admittedly i’m only interested in this for the aftershowzen.
    • 12 player shenanigans are pretty fun
    • Think this one is limited to 4.
      • Only for campaign. Vs and survival are 12 man

Anime… Seriously!
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/crunchyroll

  • Only a couple series I actually recognize
  • I mean, if you really want to watch animoo on linux, there are better ways.
  • Diversification motherfucker!
  • Crunchyroll proper still requires flash, so this is a good alternative if you don’t want to resort to your local video store.

Squeeeeeeee *faints*
http://store.steampowered.com/news/?appids=367520

  • 2 new bosses, a Stag station, and enhanced fast-travel.
  • I actually made a weird involuntary squeak when I saw this.

Geoid
http://store.steampowered.com/app/636910/Geoid/

  • Play with your balls: The game

DD crimson FKR
http://store.steampowered.com/app/580100/Darkest_Dungeon_The_Crimson_Court/

  • My Veins!
  • After watching an hour of this business I’m unable to see the difference from the original game.
    • There isn’t much.
  • What they did was tweak some of the mechanics and added a whole new campaign.

Free Hit
http://steamcommunity.com/games/236870/announcements/detail/2574219120186500379

  • The tutorial level is released for free. Buying the rest of the game lets you continue where you left off from the free version (a feature absent in a few games)
  • Really, this is just a glorified demo, but it’s a decent litmus to see if you’ll actually like the game proper.
    • It’s kinda strange watching everyone heaping praise on them for releasing the first mission.
    • Yeah, back in my day it was called a demo and it’s something that should make a comeback.

Delayed Mesa
http://steamcommunity.com/games/362890/announcements/detail/2767873904708195662

  • That first comment is legit, Xen looks like a Little Mermaid set piece.
  • It looks pretty, I wish I could play it!
  • So, this has me wondering… when is Steam going to do away with this Early Access nonsense?
    • Probably never. It makes too much money
    • Alternatively, there arises some sort of speculative gambling based thing out of seeing whether or not projects enter early access, the parents complain and then they shut it down
  • Cuz of the sale, it’s six bucks

In Soviet Russia…
https://steamcommunity.com/games/333420/announcements/detail/2790391902845801813

  • People in glorious soviet linux brotherhood get some free swag
  • These guys apparently can figure out cross platform RTS
    • *eyes feral suspiciously*

Radical Access
http://store.steampowered.com/news/externalpost/steam_community_announcements/1980870483556384508

  • It’s got achievements, now
  • Custom music detection is better and it support subdirs.
  • And they introduced what is possibly the worst, corniest, edgelordiest, voice over imaginable!

Woof!
https://steamcommunity.com/games/475490/announcements/detail/1330100338748799641

  • It’s on Linux now and only here because MrFoxDogg seems to really really enjoy it.
  • Like, to an almost uncomfortable level.
  • One of the few visual novels that actually give you a choice.

17.1.3
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2017-June/159891.html

  • This seems to be a maintenance release. Lots of patches and bugfixes
  • APUs using RADV all get detected as having integrated graphics now. I’m curious how that actually affects performance, considering the shared CPU/GPU mem
    • It should in theory improve memory ops, since the system now knows the GPU doesn’t have dedicated VRAM and can allocate things properly.
  • I’d love to be able to test this properly but the only APU I have has a single core 1.2GHz processor and memory is the least of this system’s bottlenecks.
    • Pretty sure my APU’s 7660D won’t be that support either

Cry Vulkan
https://www.cryengine.com/news/new-push-coming-to-github-ce-54-sneak-peek

  • Ah, they are taking the “better start implementing this Vulkan thing since nobody wants DX12” approach.
  • …and let slip the irrelevance of an engine.
  • The good ol’ reactionary approach. Usually means that the end product will be of dubious quality, just like their openGL backend. PROVE ME WRONG CRYTEK

Ass
https://blogs.unity3d.com/2017/06/22/introducing-a-new-asset-store-experience/

  • The Quick View and Global search will greatly increase the efficiency of asset flippers.
  • Most of which will end up on the Play store since Greenlight is no more.
  • Speaking of, wonder if the shuttering of Greenlight impacted their sales.

Lithtech
https://github.com/rohit-n/lithtech/

  • It’s been fun watching this get developed in Discord.
  • Getting Shogo Mobile Armor Division working would be awesome as far I’m concerned.
  • NOLF2 was the first game that came with my first gaming PC. Would be nice to revisit it.
  • Maybe some AVP2 if you’re nasty

Crown
https://github.com/dbartolini/crown

Pretty slash machine
https://ninslash.com/

  • Open source, multiplayer, platformer.
  • Empty servers…
  • More Liero!
    • Actually, it seems to be more run around and kill shit then liero. Awesomenauts-esque if you would
  • Also causes my xbox controller to spaz the fuck out with vibrations

TabPad
https://github.com/nitg16/TabPad

  • We need things like this on the off chance touchscreen Linux devices ever become a thing.
  • Since I want a nice linux tablet, I approve of this
  • You could set that up on a RasPi with those tiny touch screens and have it work as a network remote for whatever.

Social A.D.
https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22476-open-position-social-media-manager/

  • Just getting the word out.

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Myrne: The Quest
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/589470/Myrne_The_Quest/
Devel: Beldarak Games
Engine: Unity
Price: 8.99 / CDN 9.99

Wazzat: Myrne: The Quest is a single-player, first-person, action-RPG. Get back to the world of the Myrne with its silly humor and discover why the night never goes away in this new region..

Mandatory Disclosure: They sent us keys


Makes with the working

V-CHAIR

  • It’s 2017 and you released a game that does not LAUNCH out of the box.
  • That, and this things struggles to hold 30 @ 1080 in the first dungeon.
  • Hell, most of the time it’s 16 / 20.

J-CHAIR

  • Had to disable windowed mode in the prefs file and set it to 1080 in order to even play it
  • Don’t ever set it to fullscreen in game, or the next time you start it up, you’ll be back to square one.
  • Then, after 1.5 hours it hardlocked my X session. Good thing I had the backup one so I could kill the fucker

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • You gotta do the Ballistic Overkill thing and disable Fullscreen in the prefs file.
    • gedit ~/.config/unity3d/Beldarak\ Games/Myrne\ The\ Quest/prefs
  • It defaults to 4x MSAA and we all know what MSAA in Unity games does.
  • You can’t turn it off but lowering it to 2x made the FerPS considerably better

Total-CHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIR

  • This looks like a bunch of store bought assets crammed together.
  • I’m not saying they are but yeah, that’s what it looks like.
  • At least they all follow the same theme.
  • It’s got some repetitive bullsh*t humming in the background that I noped right quick.
  • Technically things go beep and boop but again, it feels lazy.

J-CHAIR

  • Sometimes minimalist can be an interesting and compelling design choice
  • This is not one of those times.
  • The lighting in this game is also really bad.

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Outside of Minecraft, this voxely art style has always looked completely unimaginative.
  • There was a game, Eldritch, which did the voxel, big pixel, square-y, art style but complemented it with proper atmosphere and a few other subtle visual clues.
  • In Myrne: The Quest, there is no atmosphere.
  • Swinging your weapons about has almost no aesthetic feedback as to whether or not you’re hitting.
  • You need to keep your eyes along the bottom of the screen to see the enemy HP bar.

Total-CHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Everything “works” the best I can tell but the game leaves it to you to figure out what does what.
  • It might make a bit more sense if you Minecraft but more on that in the fun section.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Standard WASD, but with the infuriating twist of using tab instead of I for inventory
  • Also, scrolling up to move through a document is pretty weird man
  • Crafting is basically talking to people and throwing items at other things.

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • There were issues with the mouse, but those have been fixed so I can’t really complain here.
  • Controls work exactly as you expect them to.

Total-


FUN

V-CHAIR

  • First off, This game assumes I have some basic understanding of Minecraft… I don’t.
  • Secondly, you might want to nope those three reviews on the store page because they read sketchy as hell.
  • So, what do we have here?
  • Buest guess, a Minecraft like something that gives you quests.
  • That’s all I could gather in my 56 minutes of playtime and quite frankly that’s 50 more than this game deserved.
  • But hey, it has crafting!
  • The only thing I found interesting was how you managed to make an 8-core CPU paired /w a 980 average 18 / 24 FPS.

J-CHAIR

  • Honestly, this game didn’t really make that much of an impact on me
  • It’s basically a crappy looking elder-scrolls esque romp through dark corridors. Sometimes a skeleton appears. Sometimes it’s a zombie pirate
  • The combat isn’t all that engaging. Run away and shoot, or run away and stab and hope you can slog through their crap
  • There’s an use-based skill system here that seems rather tacked on. You don’t really get to see the fruits of your effort
  • The dungeon design is nice, albeit bare boned
  • And then it hard locked my x session and I thought to myself: Why bother?
  • Combined with the boring art style, it’s kind of hard to find something enjoyable about Myrn.

P-CHAIR

  • An attempt was made.
  • An attempt to make a humorous action RPG.
  • What you end up with is actually a bland fantasy, first person shooter with minecraft-like graphics, 0 feedback as to whether or not you’re actually interacting with the world around you, contrived puzzles/quests, very little in the way of humor and almost no signposting as to what you need to do.
  • Don’t get me wrong! I’ve played and enjoyed many games with very little signposting.
  • But in order for a game to motivate you to go out there and explore, it needs to actually let you go out there and explore.
  • If you start railroading people and stop them from having their exploration early on, they will assume your game is not about exploration and will expect some guidance or at least a clear linear path to follow.
  • Most games do one or the other.
  • This one sits right in the middle, like a deer in the headlights and doesn’t really do anything spectacularly bad or really amazing.
  • It’s… mediocre.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIR


Hate Mail:

Mooo
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?xTicG8H

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