LinuxGameCast Weekly 260 – Horsecutus

Valve goes full Hearthstone! DOOM 3 gets some Vulkan love, Blizzard opens the StarCraft II API, and Albion Online is under attack. Then Wonder Boy faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

1,000 Direct
http://www.pcgamer.com/steam-has-launched-over-1000-games-in-7-weeks-following-direct-introduction/

Did they really think a $100 fee would stop the madness?
With Greenlight gone the community no longer has the option to downboat a game \:D/
Seems to be averaging at about 110-120 games per week
We’re gonna start seeing some of the holes in Valve’s system now. There’s too much content for people to keep up with
Games aren’t youtube videos, they actually take time to get into and enjoy to any capacity. Eventually we’ll just get back to the point where a few well promoted indies will be in the top tier with the heavily promoted big studio games.
And nothing will have changed, except there is more crap that smaller dudes need to claw their way up through
The amount of shit coming out on Linux alone is enough to get me to find something else to look at on the bus to work. Learned that yesterday…
I can imagine the amount of shit hitting Windows.

Hearth-DotA
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/08/valve-announces-artifact-a-dota-themed-digital-card-game/

From the designer behind massive chalice
Trying to make DOTA a card game could be interesting. I have zero interest though, having had the joys of CCGs ripped from my being by MTG
As an aside, what the fuck is a “bespoke” VR game?
A card game based on DOTA?
Talk about a nope salad.
Maybe this will be the Linux card game I actually enjoy, because I just can’t get into Faeria.

GOKEN
http://steamcommunity.com/app/671260/discussions/0/1470840994962008530/?ctp=4#c1470841715940294595

Coming soon™
Anime Diablo. It could be good
I look forward to playing it WHEN and IF it comes out of Early Access.

High-carb Left 4 Brad
http://store.steampowered.com/app/346330/BrainBread_2/

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Another source engine zombie game!
So trying to blend Left4Dead with Deadisland. Very original…
What do you think the over/under is on this leaving early access tho
Made it to the point of learning that “jump crouch” was a thing.

Ummm.. nope drawing a blank (from Foxy)
https://steamcommunity.com/games/506500/announcements/detail/1443820118332738595

Big kudos to the devs for sending us keys!
Remains to be seen if it’ll be any good or at least good enough for aftershowzen shenanigans.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (UE4)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/414340/Hellblade_Senuas_Sacrifice/

I know, it’s not on the Linux.
I also know it’s built using UE4 and we could do some good (for once) by asking everyone to politely bug the everliving shite out of Ninja Theory for a Linux port.
Hell, it could even be an unofficial alpha.
I’d like this to be on Linux.
This looks like it’d be the good version of Bound by Flame we never got.
If wishes were fishes, we’d all be smelling like bad tuna
Viking Psychoanalysis meets Dark Souls sounds interesting. Looks pretty from the trailers too

News:

Unreal 4.17
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-17-released

UBT will use all cores during a native Linux build
- But only if you have 16GB RAM or more
- Who doesn’t have 16GM of R… wait.
Native builds on Linux are now faster due to parallelized relinking instead of a single FixDeps step.
Removed obsolete PhysX deoptimization
But guys! Scorpio support! DX12 is the future man! XBAWKS

MXGP3:The Official MotoNOPE (alpha)
https://www.vpltd.com/

A motocross game in 2017, wow.
The reviews say it’s a glitchy mess so yeah, good match for VP.
Great! Another game I don’t need to worry about.
Of course this is a skip, but some of our less principled brethren are going to pick it up anyways
Maybe it’ll get accrued as part of some bundle. If you want to play it, play it in wine

Albion Online DDoS’ed and ransomed
https://forum.albiononline.com/index.php/Thread/69947-Update-on-DDOS-Attacks-Compensation/?postID=657553#post657553
https://forum.albiononline.com/index.php/Thread/69216-DDOS-Incident/?postID=650149#post650149

DDOS is pretty annoying like that. You need resources to take the brunt of the traffic and null-route it. Or you can use the tar pit route if you’re particularly vindictive, but that too is expensive and legally dubious
Shitty scammers are trying to double dip. There’s no guarantee that if they’re legit, they still will continue their DOS even if they pay up. Scumbags gonna scumbag
Guessing some script kiddie was banned and used his allowance to buy some bots.
On the 5th they were DDoS’ed into the ground.
On the 6th they got a ransom letter, when they didn’t pay they got DDoS’ed into the ground again.
Premium players will receive 7 days of extra premium as compensation for the week the servers tanked.

BFGs over Vulkan
https://twitter.com/DustinHLand/status/895176373676978179
https://github.com/RobertBeckebans/RBDOOM-3-BFG

Again, Vulkan is the thing developers want to play around with.
- Read: Nobody wants to use windows 10 still
Still waiting on some Vulkan love for Xbill.

Starless Headcraft
https://github.com/Blizzard/s2client-proto#downloads

Proof that Blizzard could easily support linux if they want to. They just don’t want to
This is primarily for people interested in machine learning and AI development. Most of the people doing this development probably don’t use windows

City of the Damned (Roguelike written in Common Lisp)
https://github.com/gwathlobal/CotD
http://forums.roguetemple.com/index.php?topic=5261

Oh my god those compile instructions for windows. They hurt my balls!
The cursor keys only work if you disable NumLock.
- How retrograde is your input mapping that the cursor keys are mirroring the numpad?

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/543260/Wonder_Boy_The_Dragons_Trap/
Devel: Lizardcube
Engine: Reverse Engineered from the Master System version
Price: £14.99 / US$19.99 / CDN$21.99

Wazzat: Cursed into a half-human, half-lizard monstrosity by the Meka-Dragon, you are in search for a cure! The only way you can return to human form is to find the Salamander Cross, a magical item with the power to remove curses…

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys!

Makes with the working

V-

Seeing some chugging when there’s a bunch of sprites on the screen.
This affects the remastered and original.

J-

This was a master system game. And now it’s a gig in size. Progress
Don’t disable frame lock though. Everything is tied to the frame rate

P-

There’s definitely a lot of chugging at points.
The FerPS don’t seem to drop from 60, at least according to the overlay counter, but you can tell it’s not smooth either.
At first I thought it could be vsync or the frame limiter, because this game has both as separate options.
But regardless of whether those are enabled on disabled it doesn’t seem to help whatever is causing the frametime jank.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

Playing the remastered is like watching a Disney movie.
Beautiful hand drawn art and wicked-fluid animations aboud.
I’m guessing this is what my little brain-organ was seeing vs what was being displayed on my Master System way back when.
But a simple press of a button will throw you face-first into the OG pixel goodness.
Can’t call it hipster-pixel since (minus the aspect ratio) it’s a 1:1 rectration.
I can take or leave the new soundtrack but like the visuals the original business is included in the box.
Outside of that things go bloop when you jump and bleep when you thwack.

J-

I really like the feature to instantly switch between the old graphics and the new ones
It’s either the cheerleader effect, or it really highlights how good the new look is
I also like the contrast in art for the nurse and shopkeep. I want a game about the smoking pig merchant. That dude is my hero
The remastered music sounds great as well. The Original soundtrack isn’t bad either

P-

If you hit the right trigger, you get to toggle between the old and new graphics.
And if I’m being perfectly honest, in a purely aesthetic way the game looks good.
It’s still a 2D platformer, but seeing the new vs the old is actually jarring how much better it looks.
The same goes for the music.
If you hit the left trigger, you can listen to the old chiptunes and immediately hit the trigger again because that half-a-second of the screeching load of nope was enough to make your ears bleed.
So, yeah. You’re going to want to stick to the new graphics and sounds.

Total-

Control

V-

The remastered version controls like delayed arse.
OG mode controls are spot-on.
This caused me to spend most of my time in HD mode but switching to OG when I needed to get good.
Both versions still flip out on occasion when you unlock Mouse mode and that’s something that should have at least been sorted in the remaster.

J-

It controls like a master system game
I did notice that the insta-turns are only really possible in the classic graphics mode. Maybe it’s additional animation requiring time?
Either way, they’re pretty sluggish. I’m not 100% about the jump arc either

P-

I don’t know how many times I’ve said this but it seems people don’t learn!
If you’re releasing a platformer in this day and age, you need to be absolutely fucking sure your controls are tight.
You need to have the absolute fundamental way with which players interact with your fucking video game down pat!
And you really don’t.
The playable characters slide around like they’re constantly on the ice level.
There’s this weird feeling of shit momentum whenever you try to jump, it feels absolutely horrible.

Total-

FUN

V-

Sometimes being faithful to the original can be a bad thing.
And when we’re in the court of public option I will use this game as exhibit A.
When Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap was released in 1989 it was praised for colourful graphics and nonlinear gameplay.
It was panned for slippery controls.
So, what do we have in 2017?
A remake that is wicked-pretty but still suffers from controls that range from “slippery” to “oh, FK THIS Alt+F4”.
The platforming is atrocious, story is nonexistent, and the whole nonlinear gameplay was a thing back in the day used to cover up games you could 100% in under 8h and handley beat in under 5h.
You could get away with that in the 8-bit days but times have changed, man.
Like several “remasters” from DoubleFine this is the same, exact, game, with a fresh coat of paint and some new tunes.
If you missed the original you will be frustrated by clunky 80’s game design.
If you want to do a nostalgia dive with the extra pretty you will end up playing it in pixel mode so you can control the damn thing.
I can’t recommend spending $20 for that experience.

J-

You know what? I didn’t hate it
I probably would have sank a good amount of time into it if I had a master system and this growing up
Since I didn’t, I just gotta give the first impression
I like the nonlinear elements, but this is pretty much designed as a master system game, with all the limitations therein
The level designs aren’t all that impressive. Everything seems to be chopped up into these “challenge screens”, kinda like long megaman levels
If you’re particularly bad, you can grind for coins which you can spend on gear which lets you deal more or take less damage. It helps a little
The main thing that honestly holds this game back is the controls. If they didn’t suck, this might be slightly more palatable

P-

Everything beyond the 10 minute mark and tutorial “boss” “fight” was me forcing myself to play this game.
I tried to make it to the two hour mark. I couldn’t.
I was so fucking tired of dying because the character failed a jump or one of the enemy things does one of those fucking jumps with a weird arc, which no matter how many times you see and die to it, you still can’t accurately predict where they’re going to land.
And the moment you think you’re getting the hang of a character and you beat a boss, all that muscle memory goes to shit because you will be “cursed” and transformed into a different character.
I thought with Mighty No. 9 I’d be so jaded that even shitty platformers would get a pass because there’s no way they ever be that bad!
Thankfully, this is not the case. Wonder boy is not Mighty No. 9 bad, but it’s also not good.
It feels horrible to play and while I am still very much opposed to the nostalgia fuel which keeps making games like this happen, I am willing to admit to liking some platformers which came out in the past few years.
From Salt & Sanctuary to Hollow Knight, with some Owlboy down the middle, I am capable of enjoying platformers.
I just hate Wonder Boy’s type of poorly executed, horrible to control, nostalgia ridden platformers.

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

Jordan
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?VdslEKt