Steam reveals the biggest sellers of 2018! Dead Cells adds babby mode, Quake 2 gets support for Vulkan, and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night drops support for Linux.
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Colour key: Venn Jordan Matheww
Steam: News
- Rocket Cars is still printing money.
- Algon with CIV VI it was the only other title that reaches platinum.
- Going through that list of games, I only see a few that are not playable on Linux at all
- Afaik, except PUBG, AssCreed Origin, NBA 2k*, Paladins and For Honor, every game on here can be played in some way or another!
- The percentage of Linux native games is nothing to be ashamed of, I hope we see more ports of best selling games in the upcoming year.
- Some information of who is playing what games with which controllers
- There’s a lot of overlap because duh, people typically don’t factor controller in when they buy PC games, they just want it to work
- That said
- Steam INPUT. Maybe try doing something about not using xbox prompts for games that have native dualshock support
- Switch and PS controller owners are more weeb than Xbox and Steam controller owners, unsurprisingly
- There’s no particular killer game for the Steam controller, we see it has a very similar use to the Xbox controller
- This is just one step closer from the ultimate Wine build, makes me want to finally ship gallium9 builds with lutris as well
- I tested Wine Gallium9 recently with my RX580 and would get stupid performance like 300FPS in DmC: Devil May Cry on Ultra settings. This stuff is *good*, and until we have a working implementation of VK9, it is currently the best choice for Dx9 games
- That said, DX9 games are old enough and computers powerful enough that most dx9 games will be perfectly playable on nvidia as well, without gallium9
- The inclusion of gallium 9 is interesting. It’s a definite win for Intel integrated and AMD users as it should drastically improve performance. Important to know
- Especially important for lower end systems
- DXVK by default
- Curious if Valve is considering mainlining this or as frenchie said, dumping all their effort into vk9. Probably the latter
Steam: Game Updates
- Flash drinking game: every time we say Warcraft 2, take a shot.
- I didn’t know this was open source until it was mentioned in a steam review
- It’s based on the Stratagus engine, which is an open source reimplementation of the Starcraft engine (a slight improvement over the Warcraft 2 engine)
- Valve, buddy, listen to me.
- Know a great way to retain the loyalty of your linux market without resorting to the fact that you have a more or less captive market?
- Let open source games on steam for free.
- That said, this is mostly gameplay updates
- Implementation of season
- Iron/bronze/steam age represented by a little UI icon
- Hail Loki. Although his wife is dumb to not have 2 cups
- Mod Data and scripts are now considered separate resources, which should make modding a wee easier
- This might be the update that solves the conflict I had with this game: I love Metroidvanias but hate permadeath. With the new update I can just give myself back the upgrades I deserve to have.
- Cuz you’s a big ol’ biatch
- They did add a warning, which is valid with any kind of trainer. This can spoil the game for you if you use it not carefully. I did ruin a few good Minecraft maps by fooling around in creative mode.
- I do like the addition of the feature where if you can just smoke through the first 60 enemies in a level, you get extra gear and treasure to speed shit up if you’ve done it all before
- Cheaty-cheaty-Mcbitch mode also lets you do some other cool things like mess with spawn rates, starting gear, level seeds. It’s a bit like the mutators in rocket league. You can really fuck with the game if you want to and create a fresh, new hell in the dead cell
- Motherfu*ker don’t work with no Steam Contolla.
- Crashes Overlay.
- Even with the Xclone plugged in the button prompts dance between keyboard and gamepad.
Steam: New Games
- Hey, the Linux version works again, neat.
- Something something Wipeout.
- Online multiplayer.
- Every time I hear about this game, I always think of the Linux native 2001 game called Ballistics, which is also a futuristic racer: https://lutris.net/games/ballistics/
- The development team went as far as naming their studio “Neognosis”. Just as a reminder, Wipeout was developed by a studio called Psygnosis.
- Since Psygnosis is no longer around (got merged with sony) and the Wipeout IP was abandoned, this game is more than welcome!
- [Linux] Your chosen screen resolution is no longer handled by Unity and is instead managed by the game, this fixes the games resolution needing to be reset on every startup after the first one.
- This seems to be a thing that escapes developers from time to time.
- Glad they have it sorted on this end at least
- Better than their previous bash script workaround
- Did they mix the trailer audio wrong or does it do that in-game?
- Stereo! Music in one ear, effects in the other!
- Looks like something from the days of Amiga.
- This is what a game called Erik on a Amiga looks like (because of course there is one): https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/792865-erik-amiga-screenshot-a-snail.png
- It genuinely looks like the most generic platformer
- The Amiga was the platform for generic platformers, we had them by the shovel
- This is what a game called Erik on a Amiga looks like (because of course there is one): https://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/792865-erik-amiga-screenshot-a-snail.png
News:
- With 3 billion in profit Epic is most definitely in a position to take on the Steam.
- Something their store is missing is community tools.
- Epic buys Discord, 2019, calling it.
- Discord has confirmed Linux support for their store.
- Timothy D. Sweeney only cares about Linux when his company can extract something from it without contributing anything in return.
- It’s depressing that a company that was once our ally turned their back on us.
- UT99 had a Linux version on the CD-ROM. The UT 99, 2003 and 2004 ports still work to this day on modern Linux systems
- Then things became worse, they cancelled the UT3 port Icculus was working. Released their new engine under a source available license without doing anything for Linux.
- Then you have Tim Sweeney topping the whole thing off with his passive-aggressive tweets
- Epic has the power to massively reshape the world of Linux gaming, they can provide native Linux games in a post-Proton world.
- Let’s take a very low number and estimate the Linux user base at 1% of the global user base. I’m not asking them to allocate 1% of 3B (30M), I’m asking them to allocate 1% of 1% (300k) and see where it takes them.
- Windows only but Linux is in the works.
- It’s vanilla Q2 so I think I’ll stick to quake2xp, which is a lot more advanced
- Same author who brought you vkQuake, which was excellent not at all the same guy
- Further ensuring that if we as a species can escape the looming cyberpunk dystopia and escape into some fucky star trek future, we’ll be able to play any of the old quakes on the holodeck
- Now we wait for vkQuake3
- It builds but I opted not to DL the 35GB of games.
- 57GB? Tss… see you in 20 minutes
- I remember having slow internet, kinda.
- What do you think he is? A peasant?
- The 7z archive is hosted on archive.org so you get peasant speeds anyway
- I remember having slow internet, kinda.
- I obviously have to keep that for archival reasons
- I am so thankful to the people who do that kind of work
- I understand why they did it but goddamn I hate doing NPM builds
- Pretty that’s because you use an outdated version of NPM…
- No
- Pretty that’s because you use an outdated version of NPM…
- OpenGL 3.3 Core support.
- Revamp of rendering engine.
- I’ll admit the graphics were always a big turn off for me, so despite knowing that game for over 10 years, I don’t think I’ve beaten the first level
- So we have closed source games with thousand of mods and skins but this flagship open source game only has one sprite tileset to choose from? Come on, someone do something about it!
- I’d love to get a more retro-pixel look to that game. It’s extremely hard to get good 2D HD graphics
- You can almost feel the “Gimp” feel to those graphics. But the Gimp is not made for that. Krita, MyPaint or Pinta are a lot more appropriate for such uses.
- Whenever I see supertux, my brain autocompletes to Kart. That’s the biggest thing this game has going against it in my book. I keep forgetting it exists
- I almost laughed when I saw one of the features of the 0.6.0 release was official binaries, but I checked and they’re flatpaks and appimages. So I guess less chuckle worthy
- Switching to GL3.3 and GLES2.0 means that they can get this working in WebGL fairly easily.
- I remember playing this game in France!
- This could be very good material for Friday FUBAR
- I don’t see it working without the video chat though, or without local multi. Being able to hear and see each other is a pretty important of the game (it’s mostly based on bluff)
- The GiantITP PbP forum has had a werewolf game going for a few years. It can be done
- For those of you who never went to summer camp (jewish prayer camp or otherwise), this is a game where one person in a group is made the werewolf/wolfwere/mafia hitman and everyone else needs to locate them, with every round the person isn’t identified taking more people out of the mix
- A cross-platform 2D game engine written in C++17 using OpenGL 3.3.
- I don’t see this taking off, this is a project done for educational purposes, it doesn’t seem to be driven by an actual need.
- THAT SAID, the student group who is making that engine is totally dope and as a shitton of cool projects https://sdslabs.co/
- Even for educational purposes only, this is excellent. It gives those students some real engine building experience instead of merrily scripting everything in Unity.
- Like strider said, this is an academic exercise.
- This trend of cancelling Linux ports is getting very old
- It just shows the sad sad state of our ecosystem
- They didn’t cancel the port out of lack of resources but because the of the poor quality of gaming middleware on Linux
- This just seems like poor planning.
- If you’re planning to support multiple OSes, use multi-OS friendly middleware
- Let’s just focus 2019 in ensuring that our tools are the best
- Linux users, please, increase your expectations about software quality
- No Linux demo, no bux.
- Even if the project is funded to the tune of 5 million.
- Kickstarter funding for games fell from $42.5 million in 2015 to roughly $17 million for each of the last two years.
- Do they plan on providing a $100 voucher towards a copy of Windows?
- The worst part is that they’re not offering refunds.
- You can swap your “linux purchase” for another one
- Which may be in and of itself a violation of kickstarter rules.
- Like that actually means anything
- I hope that people who backed this don’t stop asking for a refund
- Hollow Knight, Hollow Knight, Hollow Knight.
- A team of 3 or 4 people made one of the best platformers of recent time for sub 100K, delivered on time, on Linux, MAC, PS4, and Switch.
- Don’t blame middleware for incompetence.
- Blaming the middleware is the easy way out when you want to nope out of a Linux port
- I would like to ensure that this excuse cannot be used anymore
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Game: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/234080/Castlevania_Lords_of_Shadow__Ultimate_Edition/
Devel: MercurySteam – Climax Studios
Engine: Custom
Price: 24.99 USD/32.99 CAD
Wazzat: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Ultimate Edition is the complete edition of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, a dark and vivid new re-imagining of the Castlevania mythology. It is the end of days and ungodly powers isolate the Earth.
Venn: 
Does It Launch
- Everything works OOTB and I mean everything.
- Changing resolutions, switching from windowed to fullscreen etc.
Performance @ 1080
- 120 / 140 @ 1080p with everything on YOLO.
- 45’ish @ UHD.
Graphics
- No noticeable glitches but this is a DX9 title so that’s to be expected.
Control
- This is a perfect title for the Steam controller since camera movement is not an issue.
- Sorry Valve, no amount of futzing with settings make the right areola an analog stick.
- Well, it’s is an issue, just not in the way you might think.
- Also works with the XClone.
Jordan:
Does It Launch
- Yes
Performance @ 1080
- Averaging 160fps @1080
Graphics
- They’re OK. Xbox 360 standard
- Remember when castlevania had good music?
- I had to dig up the rondo of blood soundtrack and it made playing this game so much better
Control
- Everything works
- Xbox prompts though. RIP Dualshock users
- FUCK THE CAMERA
Strider:
Does It Launch
- Nothing to complain about, just launches the way you’d expect it too
- Wanted to test on openSUSE but couldn’t get the HDMI sound to work so I only tested on Ubuntu 18.10 (Intel and AMD)
Performance @ 1080
- Ran perfectly smooth at 1440p on the GTX970 and at 1080p on the RX580, but it is a 5 year old port of an 8 year old game so you’d expect that.
- Not going to bother with framerates for this reason, makes no sense to benchmark a game that old on the hardware I have. It’s smooth, that’s all you need to know.
Graphics / Music / SFX
- For it’s age the graphics look really good (if you don’t look to close at some textures), there are some beautiful environment, it’s really tastefully made.
- In term of visual richness, I’d put it between a Darksiders and a Devil May Cry
- The voice actor cast is seriously good, we have Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, The Full Monty), Natascha McElhone (The Truman Show, Californication) and of course Sir Patrick Stewart who narrates the whole game.
- That’s one way of making me pay attention to your loading screens!
- The music is OK but it’s a pretty generic heroic fantasy, LOTR style score. I keep progressing through the game and expecting to be rewarded with a remastered version of Vampire Killer or Bloody Tears.
Control
- You sure would like to rotate that camera, uh?
- Let me remind you for a second what game you’re playing: it’s Castlevania
- Whether in 2D or in 3D, Castlevania is a game that doesn’t show everything to the player
- Notice how the early games didn’t always scroll, you switched from screen to screen, and sometimes you have a bad surprise waiting for you
- Think of it more like a 2.5 action adventure game.
- You want bad camera controls? Play Curse of Darkness on PS2.
- Since there are no camera controls, this is perfectly suited for the Steam controller
QA Score:
Fedora:
Ubuntu:
Ubuntu:
Fun section:
Fun?:
- Venn:
- Oh hi Patrick Stewart.
- Dicks, the things QTE can eat.
- I mean, the QTE have QTE and that’s not even an a exaggeration.
- Camera control? What camera control!
- You know what they added in Lords of shadow 2?
- Camera control.
- I’ve noticed the lack camera control severely limits my willingness to explore.
- Fairy titties, Snake titties, Golem titties… decided lack of penis titties.
- Normal difficulty is Darks Souls hard.
- I should say Dark Souls III hard since it’s the only one I have played.
- BTW, Dark Souls isn’t hard, nay, it’s meerley done a masterful job exploiting gamers lack of impulse control.
- Jordan
- It’s not really dark souls hard. Dark souls hard is the first enemy in the starting area bodying you
- This is God of War hard. And this game does a very good job of converting castlevania into god of war
- Oh there be quicktime events. Every bossfight is a series of them, just like god of war
- And that almost ruined this game for me. I hate QTEs. They’re not hard, I just overthink them
- The rest of the game, running around, killing giant spiders, regular 3d castlevania stuff is actually pretty fun. The platforming/exploration is a little dumb though
- The combat is fluid and they have a little RPG mechanic in there to unlock different combos and magic powers
- The combo meter/magic health regen thing is pretty neat. It’s different than the health orbs that GoW used
- I spent about 30 minutes trying to remember the name of the main character’s voice actor. He was the fucker from SGU and the Full Monty
- Strider:
- 3rd person action adventure games happen to be my favorite style of game (or just action / adventure, doesn’t have to be 3D)
- Doesn’t mean I’m really good at them
- Remember that hard game we had before we started comparing every single hard game in existence to Dark Souls? What was it called? Oh, yeah, Castlevania.
- You just need to practise and you’ll finally beat that boss.
- The jump to 3D is very nicely done as it doesn’t go full 3D and preserves some aspects of the 2D platformers
- Like DOOM and Tomb Raider, this is a pretty solid reboot
Fun Score:
Venn:
Jordan:
Mattieu:
Hate Mail:
- This is kinda planned for the next year
- As the social media manager for Lutris feel it’s my duty to point this out.
- The download page tells you how to install Wine Staging
- But I should correct that, you only need a recent version of Wine, staging isn’t needed
- At some point, I want the Lutris package to add the WineHQ PPA by itself during the install phase
- The lutris.net homepage needs a redesign, which is coming soon. The news are going away.
