LinuxGameCast Weekly 266 – A Dog In This Horse

Humble releases a Linux heavy Bundle, Steam fights back against review bombing, Super Mario 64 Online opens the source, and Vulkan comes to SDL2. Then Darkwood faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

For your review
http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1448326897426987372

  • They added a histogram because Firewatch.
    • No, they added it because DotA2 got review bombed after they announced the card game.
      • No! They added it because of <INSERT INTERNET DRAMA HERE>!
  • It’s actually not a bad little feature. It also can help account for games that had a very rough start but later on fixed their issues. IE Octodad
  • On another note the store page now shows dev and publisher under the release date.
    • That means I don’t need to scroll in search of who to send emails to.

DiiiiiiiiIIIIIiiiiiiicks
http://store.steampowered.com/app/378860/Project_CARS_2/
https://web.archive.org/web/20170205083707/http://www.wmdportal.com/projects/project-cars-2

  • Not only did the ass-banjos never deliver the PC1 port they noped SteamOS from the PC2 release page.
  • But we should be patient and understanding because PC3 will support Linux, right?
  • They pulled this shit twice, now.
  • They just got lumped together with Carmageddon.
  • Simply put, Slightly Mad Studios can go fuck themselves.
  • Releasing a third tier racing sim with a triple A price is one thing.
  • Taking advantage of the Linux hype machine (Linux gamers, we’re are a small but highly vocal lot and Slightly Mad Studios knows this) not once but twice is another.
  • That’s it, I’m not mentioning another thing you dipshits touch unless I need an example of what not to do as game development studio.

HL 1.5
http://www.dsogaming.com/news/modders-are-demaking-half-life-2-in-half-lifes-goldsource-engine-demo-is-now-available-for-download/

  • Another one of those “Neat…but…why?” projects
  • At least it keeps the devs doing drugs
  • This is like that tribe who created effigies of airplanes they saw during the war in hopes the sky gods would return.
    • Cargo Cults. You figure they’re waiting for the Free Man to come bequeath his third gift to us all?
  • So it’s reverse Black Mesa.
  • Like Jordan asked, Y tho?
    • MEE STA FREE MAN

Hollow pump-kins
http://teamcherry.com.au/the-grimm-troupe/

  • New charms and map markers!
  • It’s got other stuff as well but… map markers!111!
  • It’s getting to the point where if you’re saving hollow Knight for the home, you might not be able to beat it before you die
  • I gotta say though a version nom the switch could be cool. Hollow Knight OTG

World of Castles
http://store.steampowered.com/app/619430/World_of_Castles/

  • Ya might consider getting rid of the dude on the main page because… dat look.
    • He knows what’s going on
  • Also a $29.99 asking price for an “online action themed strategy game” that’s single player if beyond delusional.
  • So it;s an army grand strategy game with a mount-and-blade style commander mode.
  • Free advice, you have a $9.99 prototype at best.
  • On top of that you are clearly still trying to figure out how to Unity.
  • If you market it like that you might build a (albeit small) audience.
  • Current state
  • – unlimited sandbox build mode
  • – flag customization tool
  • – your marshal skill tree and equipment tool.
    • Translation: “This is the shit we could buy off of the Unity asset store”
    • “We have literally developed nothing and we’re asking for your money”

Crypto bikes
http://store.steampowered.com/app/713610/Qbike_Crypto_Motorcycles/

  • Multiplayer sneks could be fun for aftershowzen.
  • Might want to change the name since Qbike is already an established company.
  • I think Disney is gonna sue somebody
    • Mickey gonna bust some kneecaps.
  • Does it mine for bitcoins while you play?Popcorn (pending)
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/google-htc-smartphone-business-hardware

    • Does it look like a chess game?
  • I don’t get the title, otherwise.

Popcorn (pending)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/21/google-htc-smartphone-business-hardware

  • Welp, googs picked up the mobile division.
  • Looks like the VIVE is safe, for now.
  • HTC gets a $1.1 billion dollar cash infusion, which it still plans on burning through trying to compete in the smartphone and VR markets.
  • This played out how most people expected. I didn’t think google really cares about VR. AR aligns more with their business and technology goals
  • So we’ll get at least another year of VIVE sales.

News:

NVidia 384.90
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/123918

  • It’s a thing, it works.
  • I didn’t really experience any of the regressions the release notes talk about, but hey!

Humble not-Indie-but-all-Linux Bundle
https://www.humblebundle.com/very-positive-bundle-2

  • Well… Except for the $80 level, but if you’re pre-ordering a game which don’t know whether or not will have a Linux version, you’re the reason we can’t have nice things.
    • $59 game /w a $21 T-shirt?
    • What a bargain!
  • Picked it up for RIVE and Neon chrome.
  • RIVE is an interesting SHMUP / platformers mix type… thingy.
  • The PATA bundle seems to be the best bet. Death Ride is alright, but if you’re strapped for two bucks, take a look at that one

vkSDL2
https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/sdl-2-0-6-released/23109

  • All the OS bits are in place to start using Vulkan with your game. They give you a nice little sample too
  • Much to the Atomic Ass’ delight, they have a prototype jack driver
  • There’s also some functions to help determine controller information. Helpful if you want to have different bindings for different controllers by default. Or to just complain that the controller lacks buttons

Vulkan CRY
https://www.cryengine.com/news/cryengine-54-major-release

  • Welp, every major engine now has Vulkan support.
  • Now, if only installing CRYENGINE on Linux didn’t involve having Windows.
  • I’m still going to need to see something other than SNOW on Linux before I believe it actually works and it wasn’t just a fluke.

Full Time GODOT
https://godotengine.org/article/patreon-first-goal-achieved

  • They now have one full time dev.
  • The next goal is to hire some contractors to focus on highly demanded features or high profile issues.
  • They just need to pay them Juan at a time

Open Abe
https://github.com/paulsapps/alive

  • I knew this was a thing but double checked because all the Abe was free today.
  • This is kinda neat. The guy normally makes a level editor for these games and realized that the engine itself is starting to become a limiting factor. So now he’s rewriting it
  • And it’s SDL2 too. Good stuff!
    • So you’re saying the platforming in the old Abe’s games will finally be tolerable?
  • Could not get it to build and by that I mean it didn’t build OOTB.
  • Apparently installing GTK3-dev is beyond my intrest of if this works or not.

Multi Mario
https://github.com/Guad/sm64o

  • Only took about a week since the original project was released.
  • Their CI system barfs out an EXE that doesn’t seem to run in mono. The source is mostly C#, which makes me think you’ll have a fun time building it on the linux
  • I assume it just takes your rom and patches it for multiplayer, sort of how the mother fan translations or Pokemon BlazeBlack/VoltWhite work
  • Wicked-sweet aftershowzen bait.

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Darkwood
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/274520/Darkwood/
Devel: Acid Wizard Studio
Engine: Unity
Price: £11.99 / US$ 14.99 / CA$ 16.99

Wazzat: Darkwood – a new perspective on survival horror. Scavenge and explore a rich, ever-changing free-roam world by day, then hunker down in your hideout and pray for the morning light.

Mandatory Disclosure: Dey sent us keys


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It has a constant slight flickering on the right side of my monitor.
  • It’s subtle as hell but caused me to launch something elks to see if it was a hardware issue.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It has some issues with alt-tabbing. Even with steam overlay
    • Also separate X screens
  • No cloud sync either

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • The pixel graphics and the still images clash, hard.
  • I’m not saying that’s a bad thing because it tells us the studio was going for a certain style.
  • While I don’t like hipster-pixel bullsh*t I can easily tolerate it when done correctly.
  • At first glance it looks like your standard fare butt pay attention and you will see all the low-res intricacy.
  • Like most good survival horror games Darkwood relies on sound.
  • Not only does it rely on it it manages to nail it.
  • Shite son, a top-down pixel game got a legit jump out of me.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Acoustically this game is fantastic
  • They really nailed the creepy atmosphere. The line of sight mechanic also works really well at giving you just enough information to get yourself in and sometimes out of trouble
  • Visually, It’s a top down pixel game. The sprites are well defined enough to roughly make out what they are. Objects are a bit of a crapshoot

P-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Weren’t it for the shitty pixelated graphics and the same boring top down view, every low budget game and their grandma use these days, I would be more than alright giving it 4 chairs.
  • The non-pixely art style and sound design, give this game a really good, very tense atmosphere.
  • Not too dissimilar to what you got in the Penumbra series.
  • Unfortunately, for it’s day Penumbra look alright.
  • In 2017, Darkwood looks bad.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The game talks about not holding your hand but explains 95% of everything when you play the prologue.
  • On top of that it gives you extra instructions in-game IF you pay attention.
  • That said everything related to controls in Darkwood is either wicked-clunky or BAD.
  • Clunky: Inventory and crafting work but they are far from intuitive.
  • Bad: Moving like a goddamn MECH. STHAP!
  • If I can run one way and shoot another something has went, wrong.
  • Tonnes of survival horror use this movement system so I’m not just picking on Darkwood.
  • However, there are parts in the game where you need to get the lead out and moving (at speed) with any accuracy genuinely feels like i’m fighting the game.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • I couldn’t find a control scheme I really liked for this game
  • It does the brigador style tank movement, so I’m not too fond of keyboard and mouse.
  • The default Xbox/PS4 bindings are jank
  • I found a half decent steam controller config, but it doesn’t have any inventory management buttons that work
  • The controls do make sense in a resident evily style. Combat is very stilted, meaning you gotta dodge where you can and play it safe. It jacks up the tension
  • However, death has minimal penalties

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I was going to give it 4 chairs but then I remember that deliberately, artificially inflating the difficulty of your game by not explaining over half of the stuff needed is very much a user experience issue.
  • And no, telling me in a loading screen the game doesn’t hold my hand isn’t doing you any favors.
  • There’s not holding one’s hand and there’s deliberate information withholding.
  • Outside of that, it controls exactly as jankily as many horror games in the past did.
  • Which I now recognize as a way of convening to the player that their character is not a one man army, power house, a la Sam Stone.
  • Their weak, survivors in a hostile place.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIR

  • Interact with the oven and it will save the game #protip
  • Shite is tense, yo.
  • That’s tricky to pull off with top-down pixel business.
  • However top-down anything is tricky in 2017 since it’s the first sign of low effort shovelware bullshit in the genre of survival horror.
  • I lasted 96 minutes before running out of FKs to give so it has that going for it.
  • I’m not saying Darkwood is a bad game, hell, it’s the best of of these EXACT SAME GAME i’ve had the pleasure of spending a little time with.
  • Graphics, meh.
  • Controls, ICK.
  • Game, you got one interesting story going on there Brad and I want to know more but I just don’t see it happening.

J-CHAIR

  • Survival horror’s always been a tough sell for me
  • I’m pretty sure Alien Isolation is the only game in the genre I enjoy
  • This game does some interesting things to create tension
  • The convoluted controls mean you can’t react quickly to changing situations, your limited line of sight and finite light sources mean that you’re often working with limited information, and all the while you’re scrambling to find things you can use to craft shit.
  • That’s all well and good, but I found the game itself to be kinda boring
  • The lack of information means I just wander around aimlessly trying to get a more and more complete map
  • But then nothing happened. I met a wolf man, went into a house where the floor killed me, got high on spores. But it didn’t really amount to all that much
  • Which also helps boil down the problem I have with these survival crafty games. You gotta keep me interested enough to keep building shit and progressing the tech tree
  • But you didn’t brad.

P-CHAIR

  • This game disappointed me in Early Access.
  • At first I thought “Another survival game with crafting from a top down perspective”.
  • Then there was the whole horror theme, which reminds me of a cross between Blair Witch and Silent Hill, two series of horror games I very much enjoyed playing.
  • So I gave it a chance and played it during the Alpha.
  • It was literally a survival game with crafting where you had to grind for everything and the day/night cycle happened so fast, you couldn’t really do anything else besides the basic survival grind.
  • “Fuck it, then! I’ll come back to it when it’s finished.”
  • It’s finished now and while you have a little bit more time to scrounge for shit during the day, it’s still almost goddamn impossible to make any degree of progress.
  • The best weapon I could craft was a board with nails and it broke after killing 2 dogs.
  • Suffice it to say, the other two dogs in the pack made short work of me.
  • If you’re giving me an option to defend to myself, I’m going to rely on it.
  • If you spit in my face and kill my character for relying on the game’s own mechanics, I’m going to stop playing your game and just not care.
  • As much as I like the atmosphere and the theme, the lack of a proper story and poorly implemented mechanics make this particular fan of the horror genre very disappointed in Darkwood.
  • I really, really wanted to like this game.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIR


Hate Mail:

AMD
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?dCgmTfb

  • I have nothing but love for those involved with the open source AMD driver development.
  • I’ve said multiple times I’m willing to take the AMD pepsi challenge. Send me over an rx4/580 or Vega card and I’ll start using it in the chairquisition

Killer
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?I54hXPU

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