LinuxGameCast Weekly 303: Poutine Samurai

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.

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.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

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:

Fedora:
Soulless:
Ubuntu:

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.