LinuxGameCast Weekly 258 – French Rage Intensifies

Full Throttle Remastered comes to Linux! CryEngine accepts pull requests, Steam drops some shade, and Humble releases a Mighty Bundle. Then Demon Peak faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro Mathieu

Steam News:

Flat steam
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/1458455461499646564/

Flatpak support means a lot to Lutris, I means that we can entirely drop support for Debian 8 based distros.
- OhSNAP is teh future!11!
They have patched Apache and Bind9 for security vulnerabilities. Nice for people who run their production server on SteamOS! (And if you don’t, you totally should)
This opens up Steamos to the possibility of being a more general purpose OS, but I still think the damn thing should be as tivo-ized as possible
Best possible out of the box steam gaming experience. But hey, you can run blender now

Beta Shade
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta#announcements/detail/1447197096908335573

After waiting over a minute for Mighty No 9 to throw some shade this is a welcome addition.
“Updated STEAM_RUNTIME_PREFER_HOST_LIBRARIES logic to still prefer Steam Runtime libraries if they are more recent than the host system” wait, wait, WAIT… you can DO that‽
- I guess if you’re still on 12.04
Hopefully this should help with some of the abysmal startup times for some openGL games if the devs will support it
Vulkan supports precompiled shaders, so vulkan games don’t have to deal with that

Let me stand next to your
http://store.steampowered.com/app/462770/Pyre/

I feel bad for not having played Bastion and Transistor yet.
Like those 2, this looks like a very well made game.
It doesn’t look like the type of game I’d usually play but if it’s done correctly, I might just dig into it.
So, much, hype but after watching some footage i’m a bit nonplused.
I was a big fan of Transistor, and I like squad based RPGs. This seems right up my alley

When your attempts at new IP fails
http://store.steampowered.com/app/228360

Played it in the DOS ages and have no real desire to revisit.
Played it in the ScummVM days and I do want to play a remastered version!
Good to see all the LucasArt games getting the hi-res treatment.

Drop the Cloudbase
http://store.steampowered.com/app/511250/Cloudbase_Prime/

It’s a mix platforming, shooting and environment manipulation
The minimalist art style seems interesting
The complaints seem to be the repetitive nature of the gameplay
Looks like a fun 1st person puzzle platformer, I’ll pick this up when I get the chance

Sun-der!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/535480/Sundered/?newsId=31160

I like the style.
Remember when Jotun was free last week? The announcement of Sundered was the reason (although, not many people seem to have made the link)
Has the Metroidvania tag on the Steam store page, which means I’ll probably like this game a lot (more on that later)
Hopefully they’ve refined their combat a bit from Jotun, but I do like their hand drawn aesthetic

Down Under
http://steamcommunity.com/games/360950/announcements/detail/1430307963823694879

Wow, the latest reviews are harsh!
Based on those reviews, the game is still vastly unfinished but the announcement says otherwise and tells us they are pretty close to shipping the final product.
We can add this to the pile of games that were ruined by going into early access.
Damn thing is unable to authenticate through their unnecessary launcher.
They fixed it.
Players can now start matches on servers in Australia.
New map.

Coming out party
https://steamcommunity.com/games/506500/announcements/detail/2633894414308654872

Depending on how many players it supports this could be Aftershowzen bait.
It include drinking games? This is not going to end well…
I’m all for encouraging alcoholism in the kids
RIP your analog stick tho

News:

Git er pulled
https://www.cryengine.com/news/cryengine-github-pull-requests-are-go-here-s-what-you-need-to-know

If I’ve learned one thing from Unreal Engine, it’s that having an open engine will bring better Linux support even when the underlying company doesn’t really want to support Linux.
The other thing I’ve learned about Unreal is that there will be lots of games released without a Linux client even when the engine fully supports the platform.
I just had to read about their JIRA workflow. I already have to do this for work guys
They’re only accepting submissions based off their “pullrequest branch”
Right now they’re only accepting non-operational changes. So chumpwork. So they can “Validate their procedure”

Mighty No Bundle
https://www.humblebundle.com/saints-row-bundle

I wish I knew if Homefront: Revolution will get a Linux port or not…
I have the Saints Row games but I’ll still pick it up for MN9 and the Windows games
MN9 is slightly less dogshite than I was led to believe.
I don’t think the issue was ever that MN9 was bad, just underwhelming for the hype and time to delivery

NCC Stage 9
http://stage-9.co.uk/download/

But how good are the simulated fish?
- As it turns out: Shit
It works! And the gameplay is very smooth at Epic settings
- I dunno brad. My skylake + nvme drive says otherwise. It’s a total chugfest
- Disable motion blur
If I can call that gameplay, at this point it’s more a tech demo than anything else
And it seems it doesn’t aim to become a game ever, the goal is to let you walk around the Enterprise and other Star Trek locations. Making this an actual walking simulator, unlike Gone Home or Firewatch which are adventure games.
This is actually really cool. There’s a lot of detail and hard work that went into this. There are lots of little nice touches
Even if their default controls are JANK

Fighting aliens and not afraiding of anything (Thanks Sharpy)
https://installation01.org/

Downloads > … SOON!
If this ever does materialize, it’ll be a nice addition to the libraries of people who haven’t experienced halo. Despite being a microsoft property, it’s a pretty fun game

PS3 binaries
https://rpcs3.net/blog/2017/07/25/rpcs3-appimages-are-now-available-for-linux/

Precompiled binaries are a must… for Arch users.
The irony here is that only Arch users can build RPCS3 without having to jump through hoops (and a few other bleeding edge distro like Tumbleweed). All other distros don’t have Qt 5.8 yet.
- *waves from f26 land*
- Yes, also Fedora 26
At last,I can test the latest improvements I’ve been hearing about!
I like how AppImages/Flatpacks/Snaps are changing the Linux landscape. Before that, we would usually have builds for Windows and MacOS and a big “build it yourself” for Linux users.
Who will be the first to play Strider flawlessly? Wine or RPCS3? The race is ON!
- I’m pretty sure that’s LGC
I’m honestly surprised they can’t get xinput working. Their schpeil about it being a windows exclusive interface is a damn lie though
They also have full support for mesa vulkan. Yay for people on intel or AMD

Alpha 22
https://play0ad.com/new-release-0-a-d-alpha-22-venustas/

They’re using STUN, so you can start up servers without needing to configure port forwarding
Redone art for a bunch of units
There are also a bunch of maps with scripted challenges, like floods or volcanoes to add an additional dimension to your match
No mention of AI balancing, but surely, they must know it’s broken, right? Everyone says it is!
The list of changes is very impressive, Alpha 21 was released not that long ago.
Lutris build coming soon!

3.0 alpha
https://godotengine.org/article/dev-snapshot-godot-3-0-alpha-1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0MXsx79KQ8

This is just a sample of what’s going to be release later down the road, so people can prepare their anuses themselves
On the topic of no vulkan support, it does make sense. They gotta focus on the features that people are likely to use. Plus it retains a higher degree of cross platform functionality (IE Macs)
- That, and you don’t really need Vulkan for 2D games.
  - 3.0 does have some 3d stuff though.
The post is from fellow Lutris contributor and Mageia maintainer Rémi “Akien” Verschelde!
Going for a GLES renderer instead of Vulkan makes sense if they want to preserve iPhone/iPad/OSX compatibility
Mono/C# support is soon to be merged but not yet available in this release.

Watch out Steam
https://gemly.com

Windows only game store in 2017, fascinating.
- Oh, this is confusion-sauce.
- Some games have Linux support listed while others with Linux ports are not.
- Also, this is nothing more than a place to buy Steam keys.
A video game store from Techland that doesn’t sell Dead Island!
They do have Linux versions of Dying Light and Tide of Numerama
- Numerama is totally my next comedy Numenera campaign
They went fancy with the design but I found a bug within a couple of minutes (or Destructoid really likes Alien Isolation). I’ve pinged Techland about this on Twitter because complaining about issues on a podcast will lead you nowhere in life.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Demon Peak
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/525380/Demon_Peak/
Devel: Kajak Games
Engine: Custom engine using MonoGame framework.
Price: $4.99

Wazzat: In Demon Peak, you play as the nameless warrior, trapped inside the depths of an unholy Mountain. Explore the mysterious and perilous enviroments, fight against a multitude of different enemies and gather magical abilities to overcome the Mountain’s evil inhabitants.

Mandatory Disclosure: They sent us review copies.

Makes with the working

V-

Like Strider will point out it locks onto your default sound sync and refuses to let go.
This is a legit problem since most people have speakers and a headset.
If I have to quit a game, change my default sync, then restart… you done goofed.
That could be one of the reasons you don’t see many streams of Demon Peak.

J-

M-

The sound device can’t be changed while in game of by setting the default device in pavucontrol, I have the exact same problem with SpeedRunners.
That’s a minimal issue and everything else works perfectly.
The engine is Mono based, maybe FNA but doesn’t look like a Unity layout.
You even get a bonus Windows and Mac executables in the same folder!

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

It’s semi well done hipster-pixel 2D art.
The main character looks out of place / or from another game.
Everything is brown mixed with varying shades of dark.
Sound effects are meh and the background noise is on a short loop causing the headset to get noped.

J-

At this point, you need to be pulling a hyper light drifter or owlboy and have a rad ass soundtrack in order to get me to give more than two chairs for a hipster pixel game
Everything is acceptably done, I have no real issues with either the soundtrack nor the graphics.
They’re just kinda meh to me.

M-

The art style is really close to what an actual 16 bit console would be capable of
I’d even go further and say it has a Genesis vibe to it
As anyone would expect, not a huge amount of options for a 2D platformer but you can go crazy with the scanline settings
The music is excellent, totally fitting for a Metroidvania game, each track has a different style and while some have a Castlevania feel, others are closer to what you’d hear in Super Metroid.
If that wasn’t good enough, the save points are giant cats, in rooms with normal sized cats!

Total-

Control

V-

Hollow Knight has proven that you can have tight responsive controls.
This has neither.
OOTB it binded movement to the analog stick because reasons.
However, everything is rebindable so it don’t get 1 Chair.

J-

I get that they want you to be able to moon-walk dash, but I’m not a fan of how they implemented it
If you want context dash, you gotta enable it in ze menu
General movement and attacking is fine, but some of the finer jumps expose the lack of the control tightness

M-

Controls exactly like you would expect from a 16 bit era platformer.
You can even play with a Super Nintendo pad, I recommend it, it’s even better than the x360 controller!
Everything is rebindable but the default settings are good.
Uses SDL2 so the mappings are still correct when switching between controllers

Total-

FUN

V-

The furry savepoints really fail to jive with the rest of the game.
No hate, just saying.
Dark Souls comparison incoming!
Why? Because Demon Peak is Dark Souls hard.
Developers, developers, developers, Dark Souls was /is a great series despite it being unforgivingly FU hard, not because of it.
You can’t slap a YOLO difficulty mode on your game and expect it to garner the same amount of respect and attention.
This map sucks donkey arse and I have no idea where the hell i’m at.
Speedrun setting.
Seriously, if I see that setting you just told me that your game was designed from the ground up to allow me to bullsh*t my way past enemies.
If you build a game with speedrunning in mind you’ve missed the goddamn point, son.
That shite is only remotely interesting because people have found ways to hack around games that were never designed to be beaten in that time.
Speaking of enemies.
My kingdom for some hitback!

J-

Gotta echo the knockback sentiment
Attack, then run away, attack then run away is kinda boring. And considering that’s most of the fights I’ve run into, colour me bored
It’s either that, or do the super cheesy jump to avoid all the enemies outright, which I can’t do reliably, so it’s back to hit and run away
Metroidvania games are a bit of a mixed bag to me. Stuff like Owlboy and hollow knight, I really enjoy. Stuff like this, not so much
Once you get the double jump, the game opens up a bit more, but it still devolves into the same thing
The exploration part of the formula is kinda meh as well. Levels do loop back in on themselves, but navigation is a bit of a pain
Also,I gotta admit, as a cat owner, when I see a cats face poking out of a hole, I stay aware from it. Cuz you’re gonna get bit. In this, they’re the save points. Pretty weird brad.

M-

If there’s one game genre I’m particularly a fan of it’s Metroidvanias. Dust, Owlboy and AM2R are among some of my favorite games on Linux (and Super Metroid is one of my favorite games of all times).
This game delivers just what I like.
But let’s go back to that Dark Souls comparison for a minute. I noticed in the past years that comparing a game to Dark Souls is the lazy way of putting a label on any game where you died more than 3 times in the same spot.
It’s not a LGC thing, even big Youtubers like Jim Sterling or TotalBiscuit will do it. But it’s funnier when people who haven’t even played Dark Souls do it.
That said, the game is not even that hard and if you want to compare it to a modern 3D game, Darksiders (also one of my favorite games) would probably be more fitting, mostly because of the game’s environment.
The game is hard though, but with patience and training you will get out of any situation. The bosses are another story, they’ll kill you in a couple of hits if you’re not careful (1 hit for the Hierophant’s strongest attack!).
The map system might feel clunky at first, with rooms much bigger than what you would have in a Metroid game but it forces you to remember levels and they are small enough that you wouldn’t get lost for too long.
There is indeed a speed run clock you can activate in the options, which is not that surprising since games of this style are usually popular among speedrunners. This makes me want to go back to the game after I’ve beaten it.
It’s not a super long game but I’m almost at 5 hours of playtime and still haven’t beaten it. I’m not very good and I tend to die a lot and get lost a lot so a normal playthrough (if you’re better than me) should be around 3 hours.

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

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