Thrones of Britannia gets Vulkanized, Steam opens the floodgates, Paradox Plaza teases a Linux client and new games for GOG Connect. Then Visual Out faces the ChairQAsition!
All this, plus your hate mail!
Special tanks to:
Nine Bullets (new patreon)
Bithir (new patreon)
Orderly Unicode (returning patreon)
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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam News:
All welcome
https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1666776116200553082
- Read “we can’t code our way out of it and too many people are complaining about whatever we implement.
- Therefore our only remaining option is to do nothing until someone threatens to call the cops”
- Oh FK right off, VALVe.
- You had a system where people could vote games off the island and you ditched it.
- Since then it has been proven that anyone with a few $$$ can get their game on Steam.
- And if your internal system is not automated like you claim ya’ll motherfu*kers just damn incompetent.
- If you’re willing to be the wall people throw shit at to see what sticks, Valve, more power to you.
- If you choose to double down on the hands-off approach, don’t be surprised when shit hits the fan and you get some of it in your mouth.
- Part of me likes this idea.
- I really don’t get the “we’re letting everything in” bit.
- You, already, did.
Make up your damn mind
https://www.pcgamer.com/aids-simulator-and-other-games-removed-from-steam-valve-clarifies-trolling-policy/
- Well that trolling “clause” was a bit vague.
- Besides, I wonder how long VALVe will keep up the pretense when someone finally takes to court over something to do with shitty products being sold on their store.
- We’re letting everything in unless it’s illegal or violates this vague BS trolling clause.
- I mean, I don’t think anyone’s gonna miss this batch of games
- Still, trolling is ambiguous and they’re going to lean into that ambiguity.
- If enough people complain, they’ll probably do something about it
- Pretty much valve’s modus operandi these days anyways
- I like to think JFSS’s “VALVE endorses AIDS Simulator” video had a little to do with this.
Polski jęz
https://steamcommunity.com/games/617480/announcements/detail/1655516030150417160
- They seem to be listening to what players have been complaining about.
- Though they don’t seem to be changing the walls of text out for some actual CG scenes and player character animations.
- But did they sort the performance?
Thrones of Fish & Chips
https://store.steampowered.com/app/712100/Total_War_Saga_Thrones_of_Britannia/
- On behalf of the Linux gaming community, meh.
- ^
- Again with the Intel only system requirements.
- I’m sure there is a market for these sorts of games
- We are not them tho
- That’s the thing. Brad.
- The three of us like radically different games but can all agree hells to the nope on this genre.
- Once again I find myself pondering whether the overlap is worth it or if that engine port just makes these piss cheap.
- Mac/Lin multiplayer so only pick this up if you like playing in forever alone mode.
- This one has been met with mixed reviews because they nerfed it down to “streamline the gameplay” and (as always happens) pissed off the core fanbase.
Mesozoic Park DLC
https://www.rocketleague.com/news/jurassic-world-car-pack-dlc/
- I Kinda like that Rex goal.
- I wonder how much performance jank we’ll see from that.
- The Jurassic World Jeep Wrangler uses the Octane hitbox.
- Whar Jeff goldblum bobble head topper and accompanying sound pack?
Free ones
https://store.steampowered.com/app/670350/The_Free_Ones/
https://farsky-interactive.itch.io/the-free-ones
- This looks a lot like that game we tossed the Chairs at a few months back.
- It looks like Valley, but with much less production value to the trailer.
- Oh, it plays a lot like Valley as well.
- Hopefully the game will be good.
Soda Girls
https://store.steampowered.com/app/519080/Soda_Girls/
- 2d sprites on a 3d background. My eyes bleed
- Eeeeeh I would say 2.5D.
- Not gonna fault the guy (English is hard) but this seems like the store page was written by google translate
- Looks like a well done little brawler (and take a shot) without online multiplayer.
Aragami: Nightfall
https://store.steampowered.com/app/771720/Aragami_Nightfall/
- We talked about it before, but it’s out now.
- If you liked the base game, get ready for more ninja shenanigans. Shenaninjas?
- Ninjanigans
- Oh, say this aloud on the show.
- Ninjanigans
News:
Stable
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/driverResults.aspx/134859/en-us
- Hey! Wine fixes.
- Say what you will about nvidia’s open source track record but they do fix their damn bugs
- Quite a few crash fixes in this one. Makes sense for the stable branch
- Hopefully we’ll get back to proper NVidia drivers soon.
- These past few releases have been on par with AMD’s FGLRX.
420 Vulkan
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/8osbac/vulkan_in_unreal_engine_420_shows_huge_30_gains/
- Vulkan in Unreal Engine 4.20 shows huge (30%+) gains for AMD over DX11
- Unfortunately, these are windows only, so no real notion of what this means for Linux users on AMD cards beyond speculation
- But this is Linux fuck mothering game cast.
- Baseless speculation is our bread and Mayo
- What this does is gets developers looking into Vulkan.
- Especially those wanting to make up the AMD / NVIDIA performance delta.
- Trickle-down rendernomics.
- In other shocking news, sky reportedly still blue.
- I wonder what the next excuse for the shoddy Linux support will be?
The PPSSPP Hello
https://www.ppsspp.org/#news
- A whole whack of vulkan performance improvement and prime time support on the SDL builds
- Opengl is now multithreaded, much to the joy of mac gamers everywhere.
- A bunch of mobile improvements, mainly centred around a better aarch64 JIT compiler.
Coming soon for Linux?
https://play.paradoxplaza.com/
- Like, before or after Carmageddon Reincarnation?
- I would have used GOGGalaxy as an example but that’s a bit unrealistic.
- Welcome to the brave new world ladies and gents.
- Every studio with a few games under their belt will be testing the Steam-free waters.
- With the shitetastic way Steam has been acting as 3004of late can’t say I blame them.
- Yeah, this is what happens when the monopoly no longer offers the best experience.
- Wouldn’t hurt Steam to get something in way of competition and if GOG doesn’t step up, Paradoxx has a big enough Linux line up to make it worth considering.
New Connect offers
https://www.gog.com/connect
https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDealsMeta/comments/8oh4xi/new_games_have_been_added_to_gog_connect/
- FTL, Psychonauts, Jotun and A Machine for pigs.
- Joton, Grimlock.
- Note: I had to set my games profile on Steam to public?
- Well, it bitched about it but added the games anyway.
Open Star Seeds
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/8ocemc/seed_of_andromeda_and_vorb_engine_are_now_open/
- Now with 100% less Kevin Sorbo
- The devs of this open source planet explorers style game got too busy to maintain it so they’ve released everything they can under the MIT license
- Compiling it on Linux may or may not work according to the dev.
- It was sorted once, but things have changed since then
- Dev says the code was mid refactor when they decided to open it, so a lot of it commented out.
GPD Win 2
https://plus.google.com/+flibitijibibo/posts/XwfpN313VpX
- I can’t get over the sticker shock.
- I want one but it’s 100% something I would tinker with for an afternoon and never use again.
- 3 lines of “copypaste code” as Flibit put it and now the GPD Win 2 works ootb for the Linux, or it will once that code reaches the mainline kernel.
Game: Visual Out
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/675910/Visual_Out/
Devel: MadameBerry Games
Engine: Construct 2
Price: £6.99 / US$9.99 / CA$10.99
Wazzat: As a program defying your operating system’s wishes, plunge into the depths of a dying computer, and augment yourself with data-scrambling abilities like the Jammer, Current, Turret, and more. Uncover the secrets behind the computer’s – and its creator’s – demise.
Mandatory Disclosure: Dev sent us keys
0 Does it FKN Work (does it even launch, bro) ✅ | ❌
- Venn: ✅
- Jordan:✅
- Pedro: ✅
1 Performance @ 1080
- Venn: ✅
- 2D pixel and does not work with overlay but no noticeable jank.
- If you can load Facebook you can play this game.
- Jordan:✅
- Don’t play it on your raspi
- Pedro: ✅
- It runs well enough.
- Then again, this is an HTML5 engine.
2 Graphical Fuckery (black screens, missing textures / windowing / multi-monitor issues)
- Venn: ✅
- Jordan:✅
- Pedro: ✅
3 Control Fuckery (non-rebindable / non-working)
- Venn: ❌
- Oh, this is a hot damn mess.
- If you try to rebind the controls it inputs gibberish… and saves.
- Yeah, I had to button mash to get out of the configure menu and decrypt the button mashing in order to reset it because FK ALL if I could locate where it stored the config.
- Jordan: ✅
- Yeah, didn’t grok the steam input DS4. Fortunately you can remap the control s
- After that, everything is fine
- Pedro: ✅
- I didn’t try to rebind the controls because the 8bitdo controller worked fine.
4 Fuckery Fuckery (hard-nopes and the like)
- Venn: ✅
- F12 brings up the Devel Tools Chrome extension.
- That’s a new one.
- Jordan: ✅
- Pedro: ❌
- Game doesn’t save progress when you shut it down.
QA Score:
Fun section: (Catch all) Were the controls good, graphics pretty, nice sounds etc.
Hate:
- Venn
- Forced me to play with the keyboard.
- I can’t platform using a keyboard, my brain-organ is no longer wired for that.
- No quick way to access the map.
- Several fake walls that lead to nothing.
- Guess you get something to sort that later on.
- Severely limited by the Construct 2 engine.
- Jordan
- This game really doesn’t give you much to work with
- You can make the argument that most metroidvania’s don’t really start you out with much in teh way of information, but at least they have clearly established combat mechanisms
- This is “Find a glowy ball that kills both you and the enemies” and drag them to the enemies, which will often involve putting the thing that kills you directly in your path
- Also not very helpful is the whole not showing your health thing
- You unlock other ways to interact with the environment, but they’re a little esoteric
- Pedro
- I couldn’t save progress. It would nuke my save every time I quit.
- I guess you could just finish it in one sitting
- But that leads me to the other point I hate about this game.
- The graphics are kinda meh.
- Which is disappointing.
Hate least:
- Venn
- I dig the look, and the minimalist but fitting soundtrack.
- Has a Axiom Verge on a budget vibe to it and that’s not a bad thing.
- Lot’s of bullsh*t to explore.
- Not horrid for something that came out of a game jam but it’s too bare bones to justify the $9.99 price tag.
- Jordan
- I’m torn when it comes to the visual aesthetic. Sometimes it feels genuinely inspired, other times it feels kinda lazy
- Once you get it in your brain that you can’t really fight things, it gets a little better. Until you need to fight things
- It really does make sense that this came out of a game jam. Experimental stuff like this has to thread a needle of complexity
- And it isn’t horrible
- Pedro
- I like Metroidvanias and this very much fits the bill.
- I really liked the atmosphere.
- The music really helps and the background noise of random computery bleeps, bloops and old hard drives spinning up adds to the atmosphere.
- Honestly, I wouldn’t have an issue recommending this game if only I’d been able to save progress.
Fun Score:
Hate Mail:
Valve takedowns
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?NSEJSQy
WINE uses
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?SxMhruO
Disgaea 2 Review
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?wNc6I4m