LinuxGameCast Weekly 261 – Pick the Wiener Man

Steam nopes the key fountain! Pedro reviews a gaming laptop, RPCS3 rewrites PS3 GPU emulation, and Ethan Lee wants to preserve XBLIG with FNA. Then Party Panic faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key:

Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

Beta update
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/SteamClientBeta/announcements/detail/1447198999525237825

  • Oh, some Linux fixes. How about that?!
  • Or, better yet, how about fixing the fact Steam gobbles the shutdown request (Git issue #3301), or the the fact that if you hit the right shift key Steam will act as though you’re holding it down (#3451), or the issue that you can’t create desktop/menu shortcuts for your games (#5012), or even the one that’ll cause games to freeze if you keep the Steam overlay open too long (#4933)?

Steamy Audio
http://steamcommunity.com/games/596420/announcements/detail/1443821299800933888

  • For those of you who don’t remember, this is related to the VR positional sound api that Valve has been developing.
  • Now a plugin exists for people developing VR apps on unity.
  • They’ve also now made the source available, so people can start hacking on it

Denied
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/6u8ytk/valve_instates_new_policy_to_combat_shady_key/
http://www.pcgamer.com/valve-may-deny-developers-large-batches-of-steam-keys-if-it-isnt-worth-the-cost/

  • Why was this not already a thing?
  • Ditto to Venn’s point. I was always curious if there was actually a limiting factor to how many steam keys a developer can get
  • One can hope that this’ll also curtail review bombs, trying to flood their store page with positive reviews

$30 point-and-click
http://store.steampowered.com/app/234270/Ken_Folletts_The_Pillars_of_the_Earth/

  • Does this have some hype behind it that i’m unaware of?
    • A book series which sold 15 million copies.
    • A Starz mini series.
    • Yeah, it’s kinda famous.
  • And the game was made by the folks who made Silence and Derponia.

Fall 2: The sequel
http://store.steampowered.com/app/510490/The_Fall_Part_2_Unbound/

  • We covered the original some time ago. Looks like it’s going to be similar to it’s predecessor
  • I like AI stories like this. We’ll see if this is one of those sequels that can match or top it’s original
  • The first game would’ve been awesome if it didn’t control like complete ASS.
  • If they sort the controls and make finding object work better then i’m all for it.

Space race
http://store.steampowered.com/app/669350/Outracer/

  • This looks like a playstation game
  • It’s probably one of these racers I’m absolutely terrible at because the whole point of the game is to keep accelerating and not crash into things. Y’all saw my demolition derby performance
  • It does have multiplayer, so I may just have to shoot them an email.

Because ninjas
http://store.steampowered.com/app/475530/Go_Go_Electric_Samurai/

  • Full screen option does not work but you can stretch it out.
  • No controller support.
  • Outside of that it could be a fun game.

News:

Preservation
https://www.patreon.com/posts/xblig-fna-and-13853646

  • Would it be too much to ask for Strider and flibit to get together and make Lutris Dev, or some such?
  • I say this because to me, the preservation of technology in and of videogames is something I care about.
  • And Lutris, for all it’s python-y shortcomings, takes care of getting the software side of things running without issue for end users.
  • If Flibit and Strider worked together on a more developer oriented version of Lutris, it’d be perfect!
  • Flibits points about portable open source technology is spot on. Using and contributing back to high quality open source libraries ensure some standardized skill and ensures that games can continue to exist after their publishers and makers all go away

Well, they took last week off
https://rpcs3.net/blog/2017/08/16/rewriting-vertex-processing-for-massive-performance-gains/

  • The PS3’s GPU had access to CPU ram, which is not now PCs are architected
  • The way these guys found around it was to copy everything to GPU RAM and have their shaders handle all of the vertex processing
  • They also needed to support asynchronous frame processing to get the performance gain on Vulkan
  • Now games that would black screen show up, including Metal Gear Solids 2 and 3! (YAY)
  • These guys seem to be hitting some issues with Vulkan’s model though, as they’re reporting that now OpenGL is as fast or faster than VK.

Snap
https://forum.snapcraft.io/t/call-for-testing-gnome-twitch/1701

  • This was always a neat little toy project, but I still don’t understand what the point is of a native desktop twitch viewer is
    • It’s for the kids, gramps.
    • The ones who have a dedicated Twitch monitor.
      • Le new browser window?

Pedro’s Kratos review (Friday)
https://linuxgamecast.com/2017/08/portable-linux-gaming-entrowares-kratos/

  • They kept calling it a Gaming laptop and “since you’re a gaming outlet, we’re gonna send you our gaming laptop”.
  • It’s a really good desktop replacement laptop if you’re going into university or college, or whatever.
  • It’s a really good laptop for design work, since it comes with a really nice IPS screen.

1D Switch (from dacresni)
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-08-16-engineer-invents-switch-controller-peripheral-for-one-handed-gamers

  • Turns out the controllers just “work” via xinput.

Multi Axis and Allies
http://www.triplea-game.org/

  • Get ready for some salty bitching about installing java folks!
  • I never really played axis and allies though. Apparently it’s a pretty fun boardgame
  • According to it’s site, it has a 52 page rulebook though. I tried you guys

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Party Panic
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/506500/Party_Panic/
Devel: Everglow Interactive Inc.
Engine: Unity
Price: £12.99 / US$16.99 / CA$18.99

Wazzat: Party Panic is a crazy online and local-multiplayer party game. Compete against your friends in 30+ rapid fire minigames, race through the brutal Gauntlet, or complete the trophy challenges on Trophy Island. There is even a built in drinking game! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s stupid. Grab your friends, pick your characters and get partying in this exciting and panic filled game!

Mandatory Disclosure: The dev sent us keys.


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • I hope you like playing @ 30 because you’re going to be playing @ 30.
  • 2160, 1440, 1080, 720 nope, don’t matter 30.
  • Worse, it struggles to maintaining THAT even with a GTX 980.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Hoo-wee that UI is busted
  • I think this game might have an issue with 700 series nvidia cards
    • Both Empty and I had severe performance degradation on the 750TI and 780TI that wasn’t there on the 980

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • If you try to uncap the framerate in full screen mode, the game will break.
  • Uncapping the framerate is a bit useless, at least on my box since it only took the FerPS up from 30 to 35-36.
  • 35-36 FPS for a game with no textures running on a 4.5GHZ FX8370E and Geforce GTX 1080.
  • I thought we were done with Unity games having really terrible performance on Linux…

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • It looks, primitive.
  • Clay like beings and wicked simple levels.
  • Nothing lazy, just primitive.
  • It has some once and wub soundtrack but that can be largely ignored.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Yeah, the graphics are just kind of there
  • Nothing particularly striking. You can customize your dudes with costumes. I picked a weiner man

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The graphics serve their purpose and nothing else.
  • The sounds… most of them are also perfectly fine for what they are, but the random screams and guttural interjections by the are completely uncalled for!

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The controls are slippery and we have a word for people who say otherwise, liars.
  • That’s when the game bothers to register input in the first place.
  • How the hell are you supposed to play this thing drunk?

J-CHAIRCHAIR

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • On more than one occasion I noticed the game outright ignored my input.
  • I’m not entirely sure if it was because of Unity shitty default input handling, the crap performance or a combination of both.
  • I’m going to guess the latter.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIR

  • Unless you have IRL people to play this with look elsewhere because the online community for Party Panic is D E A D.
  • Runs like arse.
  • Bugs and glitches galore.
  • Shite controls.
  • Minigames are not well explained and what explanation there is live on the wrong screen.
  • “Built-in drinking game” is nothing more than telling the loser to drink.
  • This might appeal to streamers who want to play something that’s busted but still technically playable.
  • But even then they might have a hard time with the pricetag.

J-CHAIR

  • I was never really a fan of mario party
  • This is mario party, without the board game element, generic characters and a tacked on drinking game
  • I suppose if you can get a couple people to play it with you, you could theoretically milk some fun out of it by shit talking each other
  • This game makes that incredibly dificult by having a very poorly designed UI that magically resets your preferences and shit performance
  • The combined couch-network multiplayer is a nice feature, but it doesn’t really help the game all that much

P-CHAIR

  • I’m a big fan of Yahtzee Croshaw, that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone at this point.
  • Unless this your first time watching, at which point I’d have to ask why.
  • He says that a game should be able stand on its “single player” to justify its price.
  • I never really agreed with that.
  • I think if a game is designed from the ground up with multiplayer as its core concept, co-op, competitive, whatever, then it’s perfectly acceptable to judge those games for what they are.
  • And Party Panic!, as it is, is a perfectly serviceable party game…
  • …If you have a 30Hz TV and have music blaring over the rest of the house to drown out the stupid screams the plasticine men make.
  • Otherwise most people will play a, singular, minigame with you and tell you they’d rather help you do the dishes.
  • Unless they’re like me and have this reputation of not being terrible at videogames to uphold.
  • At that point I’d play the game with you for the sole challenge of it.
  • But that has nothing to do with the game specifically.
  • It’s a bit of friendly competition, the game doesn’t really matter.
  • And at the end of the day, that’s Party Panic!’s worst shortcoming.
  • It doesn’t really matter.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIR


Hate Mail:

MegaMan 2
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?DuG2fIL

Metro
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?Q5JKj2l

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