LinuxGameCast Weekly 327: LinuxGameCats

Steam kills Link, Shadow of the Tomb Raider heads to Linux, NVIDIA 2060 details leak and Humble has another JUMBO Bundle.

Special thanks to:
Drumr7 (latest executive producer)

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

RIP Link

Low on Links.
This should have been obvious since the first time they went on sale for $5.
Two firesales and there is still stock.
They’re still handy if you want to set up a minimal party rig, but it’s one of those things where basically the entire target market owns one now
I wonder if they’re going to basically fold all this stuff into the Steam mobile app so that shit like Rokus or other set top android boxen can fill the niche
They are out of stock in the EU, apparently.

♬SALE♬

*checks nier automatic tomato*
- It’s half off, but it’s still 40 bucks
- Same with SoTR if you wanna test it before…well, spoilers
Pulled the trigger on DS III and sent that fkr right back.
Might have to get the Jedi Knight bundle since most of those are 75% off.

Steam: Game Updates

Artifact update

Quite the list of changes
I do like that they let you play offline without opening the starter packs so you can still get a refund.
You can also huck your garbage cards for event tickets at a rate of 20 to 1. How that stacks up moneywise, I dunno. Can you enroll in keep drafts with those tickets?

RIP Keys

Supposedly keys from indiegala were the only ones supposed to be revoked, but everything bought from groupees is as well
Apparently Indiegala has not been paying the developer their share of the sales
Normally, when one party does not hold up their end of a contract, the other party gets a lawyer and sues the former
Now y’all just have a bunch of pissed off customers
- “On a side note I will work to make sure you guys get your keys back one way or another as it’s not your fault, I feel like we’ve both been screwed over by these sale sites.”
  - Might be a wee too late for that brad
Dude nuked keys that were on sale over a year ago.
Went scorched earf and killed a lot of keys that were not from the bundle as well.
Also, Indiegala called him the FK out, son. (post #10)
Should a developer be able to nuke 20K keys without providing some damn good reasons?
There should be something to prevent revocation after say, 90 days.

Moment of Xen

14 years later.
- Still running at a better clip than HL3
The game will not be delayed again until Q2 2019.
HD Ballsack boy!
He so bouncy!
- HAWT!
The flying Manta Rays have a derpy face!

A17

Has an option for Vulkan in the launcher.
It might need a little work.
OpenGL still runs like poo, struggling to maintain 60.
Really wish they would get the performance sorted, could be a fun game.

Steam: New Games

Yo Tombs

Lost that bet.
It’s surprising
My guess is that Feral had all of the tomb raider sequels on lockdown
Yeah, that and they are doing the MAC port so might as well.
First real battle for IndirectX vs DXVK.
- Performance consistency is another thing. Feral has some trouble with AMD in ze past.
- We might get a case where with Proton it runs better on AMD and on Feral it runs better on Intel+Nvidia
Did their contract with WB EABOD?
Not so much as a peep about Shadow of War.
First tweet’s gone!

News:

415

Basically moves all the stuff from the 415.13 beta to the stable branch
They work, not much new to report.
I’m back on the repo version of the drivers for Solus, hopefully they keep following the short lived branch.

2060

This could be an interesting little card for those of us looking to get the new nvenc hardware on the cheap.
Chances of it being sub $300?
The 980Ti really holds up on that particular benchmark and that, that’s kinda sad.
If they want to sell it in favor of the RX 580/90 they will have to sell it for under $350
Though if those benches translate into reality, it’s beating the Vega 56.
Leak a better benchmark next time, NVIDIA.

Jumbo 12

Pay 5 bucks for 3 linux games
Pay 10 bucks to see if Derp 4 runs well in proton
DiRT 4 does in fact work!

Zmach 2019?

https://www.reddit.com/r/smachz/comments/9yh4ws/hands_on_testing_smach_z_by_blogger_and_youtuber/

Both videos at the bottom contain the same gameplay footage
Remains to be seen whether or not

A “warehouse fire” doesn’t destroy all the units
There are Power and thermal issues out the wazoo
The performance is actually shit

Either way, this thing sold all the units it’ll ever sell in the kickstarter
Believe, see.
You too can prove to your mates, if this ever comes out, that you’re financially questionable by buying the €100 golden version.

Vendetta Vukan

A single cross-platform standard is also easier to maintain: instead of supporting DirectX, OpenGL and OpenGL ES on various different platforms.
It’s experimental for the Windows client only for the time being.
Oh, the one I never played because monthly sub!
An engine overhaul seems pretty overdue for these folks
The current vendetta looks to use SDL 1.2 and shuts down my other monitor

Dungeon pixels

For those of you who don’t know, devler is a hipster pixel first person dungeon crawler in the style of Pool of Radiance or Eye of the Beholder
Good on the developer for open sourcing their engine
Oh look, it’s done in java! Spool up the REEEEEEEEEEEEE drive
You can buy the full game on Steam for £6 during the sale, if you want to tell the devs you appreciate this!
I know I did.

Sonic Kartz

This is incredibly well done.
- So well done I’m surprised neither Nintendo’s or Sega’s lawyers have said anything…
Also sports multiplayer.
Requires SDL2 Mixer.
The controls seem a little…off I suppose? I keep spinning out of control just by tapping left

Don’t blame WINe

TLDR: Homeboy thought it was because he was using Wine.
Turns out he’s using some mouse scripting utility to get through menus faster which Actiblizzion’s anti cheat picked up.
Someone brought up that this has a very subtle effect on overwatch, given that in ranked matches you could use it to guarantee which character you get, which is antithetical to the OW design
Life cheaters find a way.
Let this serve as a lesson.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Mark of The Ninja
Webzone: Mark of the Ninja Remastered
Devel: Klei Entertainment
Engine: Custom
Price:$20 USD, $5 if you have the original

Wazzat:In Mark of the Ninja, you’ll know what it is to truly be a ninja. You must be silent, agile and clever to outwit your opponents in a world of gorgeous scenery and flowing animation.

Venn:

Does It Launch

Works OOTB unlike the non-remastered version.

Performance @ 1080

It maintains a solid 60 except when it don’t.
Sometimes depending on the hour of the day and what shoes you are wearing it will nosedive into the 40’s every 10 seconds or so making it unplayable.
This can be resolved by restarting the game… a few times.

Graphics

Dark and flashy.

Control

Steam controlla no issues.

Jordan:

Does It Launch

yessereeboberooniemajigger

Performance @ 1080

Runs smoothly @ UHD #Wintel

Graphics

The animated cutscenes give me newgrounds flashbacks. Not that that’s a bad thing, I just haven’t seen that sort of animation in a good long while

Control

Works OOTB with the ps4 controller. Still getting xbox prompts

Pedro:

Does It Launch

It does start right up

Performance @ 1080

Oh yes, when the performance tanks it tanks like the Panzer VIII
It’s jarring to see.

Graphics

Graphics look crisp and even when your character is hiding you can still see it
Which I guess is where the focus of this particular remaster went into.

Control

Yes, the Quick Time Events are still just as responsive as they were last time but more on that later.

QA Score:

Fedora:
Soulless:
Ubuntu:

Fun section:

Fun?:

Venn:
- Like HitMan this game has a little thing I like to call the nope cascade.
- One little mistake can trigger a tsunami of guards and that’s that.
- It’s repetitive as hell and that really sinks in around the two hour oh hi Mark of the ninja.
- Press X to stab respects is hella annoying and adds nothing to the game.
- When you are not doing that it’s hurry up and wait.
- It does provide you with a bag-o-tricks to overcome situations designed for said bag-o-tricks.
- When this game first arrived on Linux is was busted with the always run mechanic taped down.
- Even after that was sorted it was nothing exceptional but OMG NEW GAME ON LINUX!11! allowed me to overlook a lot of shortcoming.
- In 2018 we have a gang of games and more incoming so revisiting this is not a good idea.
- Even with a new coat of HD it’s still… boring.
- How, fkn, evar.
- If you have been waiting for a remaster of bitch ninja Mc. bag-o-tricks and have the original pick this up for $4.99 and kill two hours.
Jordan
- I’m with pedro, I’m not that big a fan of the QTE assasturbations
- Aragami had it right, position yourself and press a button
- The sneaking gameplay is pretty good, although sometimes you get screwed by the context sensitive menus
- Sometimes though, the best option seems to be to cheese the fuck out of the enemies and make a mad dash to the next checkpoint
- I guess I’m not very good at this game. It requires a sort of patience I really don’t have
- Nice touch, you no longer run by default
- Everything looks nice in UHD, so If you enjoyed the original one, want some new side missions and some crisper art, it’s not the worst 5 bucks you could spend
Pedro
- I suppose I shouldn’t have expected much since it’s just a remaster rather than a remake.
- But I still hate the QTE stealth kills.
- And just how annoying it is, the moment you’re spotted, ninja dude forgets he has a sword until the enemy is knocked down.
- Also, and I mentioned this last time, you get rewarded for not killing guards or raising the alarm.
- But all you can do with those rewards is to buy more skills for your character to make the game easier.
- If you’re already good enough to get through the levels without those skills, why would you want to buy them?
- Klei does good games.
- Shank is fucking awesome! Shank 2 is just more of that fucking awesomeness! Don’t Starve is great if you enjoy that kind of game.
- Of all the games they decide to remaster this one… I don’t get it.