LinuxGameCast Weekly 334: Smash That Fright Button

NVIDIA drops the F-bomb, Unity reminds us of the danger of proprietary software, Valve issues a tsunami of VAC bans, and the developer behind Smith and Winston explains how to Linux.

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Colour key – Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Water wet

Yeah. If there’s reduced barrier to entry, more cheaters and bad eggs will just take advantage of it
I wonder what the breakdown of banned accounts to individual is
Wonder if CS:GO going free was just an excuse to tune up VAC.
Over 600,000 accounts received VAC bans in December.
Third most popular game on Steam goes free to play and all the hack kiddies come out to play.

DLC

Handy for games like Train Stimulator that have literal hundreds of DLC
Okay, it lets the developers create lists but where’s the button you hit to “Buy all DLC you don’t already have”?
I can’t help but feel like a button of that sort would put all of those DLC in “Fuck it” range during a sale.

Steam: Game Updates

Dew Royale

I mean, I’m not surprised someone turned this game violent
I get that the joke is everything needs BR, but it’s a little tired now
It was inevitable, Mr. Anderson!

7 dayz 2 die 17.1 Experimental B8

7 minutes and 8 seconds to generate a new world.
Vulkan still don’t work.
Known issues:
- Some Linux users experience problems
  - Tell me about it, right?
  - That… That is spot on!
I can’t help but feel that much like DayZ, the chance this game had is long gone.

Sir you are being Volcan

Steamcraft, now with Linux goodness.
Ark but steampunk.

Steam: New Games

Smith & Winston

3D Twin stick shooter
It has a bunch of ugly voxel art, which I guess is good cuz you can blow it all up
That said, some of the level design seems pretty cool
Is it worth the 10$ for early access?
Well, the dude wrote a pretty good article we’re going to talk about, so maybe yes
Yeah, just giving this guy a plug for his most excellent blog post.
The simple fact the dev is actively supporting Linux and that he’s decided to share how he does it, is a pretty solid selling point.
Even if the faux-Minecraft style graphics are a bit passé at this point.

Hypermoon River

The art style reminds me a lot of hyper light drifter
More puzzley than fighty though. Focus is on room warping
Apparently it’s only about 2 hours though and 5 bucks isn’t too steep for that

Trands

Might be fun for a FUBAR.
Looks Google Feud’ish.

News:

Nvidia brings G-Sync support to FreeSync monitors

Just in time for Kernel 5.0.
They’ll give you a wild west mode, just like proton
I look forward to $100 amazon freesync monitors catching fire and exploding
This is going to be a delightful shite show since vendors are willing to slap FreeSync on anything.
- I mean, variable refresh rate is cooked into the hdmi 2.1 specification, and freesync just uses that
- Sometimes “Freesync” =’s 50 to 70.
- My UHD monitor has freesync between 40 and 60Hz.
- I still want to try it!

RTX on

Welcome to 2019, where short-bus GPUs clock in at $350.
- Them tenser cores are made of diamond dust and unicorn farts!
- Which explains why the very few games out there that support them are stupidly expensive and run like shit.
This card has what streamers crave.
Solid 1080p gaming and access to the new NVENC hotness without needing to sell a kidney.
IF you bought a 1070Ti because all things from NVIDIA starting with 20 were hella priced, you pissed.

OBS

Streams from LGC Actual are about to look noice.
Mix this with cheese making device strings unique and we’re cooking with evil gas.
If this is the true-true NVENC will have roughly the same overhead as Shadowplay ™ .
It will also work for older cards.
This is possibly the only current selling point for the 2060/70/80.
It’s not like there’s anything using RTX on Linux.
So you’re either buying a 2080Ti because fastest, (arguably) consumer-grade, GPU on the market or you want the streaming bits.
- DLSS masterrace!
- Which, just like RayTracing, no Linux game uses.
  - Proton.
  - Fine, 1 game (Hellblade)
  - Wolfenstein has adaptive shading.
    - Adaptive Shading
  - On the DLSS wagon
    - Ark: Survival Evolved.
      - Oh, I didn’t know that was a thing. I stand corrected.
    - Anthem.
    - Atomic Heart.
    - Battlefield V.
    - Dauntless.
    - Final Fantasy 15.
    - Fractured Lands.
    - Hitman 2…

RadiWTF

- 7nm instinct leftovers, the card.
- Alledgily competes /w a 2080 for $799.
- This would be a good thing if you couldn’t get a 2080 for less, but you can get a 2080 for less.
- For those of you saying it’s for media creation… it ships with three games.
- Yes, I’m grumpy.
- Really wanted to see 7nm Navi cards competing with the 1080 for $299.
- History has lead me to be skeptical of AMD marketing performance numbers
  - The Vulkan performance though, I think a lot of linux users are hoping that that’s a real boy
- Yeah, I think we were all hoping for a much cheaper price
- The only reason Ryzen sold so well was the lower price.
- Bzzzt!
- Lower price + better multithreaded performance.
AMD doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to delivering on GPU performance, so pricing it at the same tier as the 2080 is just scaring people off.
I was hoping they would talk about Navi, instead it was this.
Co-worker Dave said after this announcement he’d rather spend £500 on a 2070.

Borialis

I ran the critter and sent in the results.
Uses UE4 + Vulkan for the test.
Rus like poo.
Vulkan averaged 36FerPS and OpenGL averaged 87… Come on!
- Tap that export button, fam.

Give to em

Ethan wants to finally put this to bed
The short version is:
- Don’t assume more than a basic C library and openGL
- Build your own libs and ship them with the GD game
- Use libraries without many dependencies to minimize what you have to ship
- Use SDL because why wouldn’t you at this point?
- Use mojosetup for the installer. He even provides a handy script to do it
- Dos2unix is your friend
If every windows game ships its own version of DirectX, Visual C, .NET and whatever the fuck else, stands to reason you would do something similar on Linux.
If anything, VALVe gives developers a rather comprehensive runtime to target and people still bitch about fragmentation…
- Though I will concede that it does cause issues with Mesa graphics drivers in some situations.
Basically, Flibit’s post is a way of saying AppImages are a very good way to distribute your game.

Get off his lawn

It fills me with warm fuzzies when actual developers like Flibbit, Icky, and now this dude explain that incompetence is not something you get to blame Linux for.
It is nice to hear from people who actually do the work and not from armchair game devs and people who don’t like learning new things
However, I fear that the damage has already been done. Nobody cares that whathsisfuck has been refuted. The people who want him to be true have already made up their mind.
Damage done or not this is handy to have around for responding to people spouting bullshit.
Now compare this to Jonathan Blow’s tirade of madness: https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1082329608572174336
- Jonathan “Let’s not depend on libC and write games into the kernel” Blow.

Disunity

Unity has blocked the use of SpatialOS (MMO-making platform used by lots of indies).
Could be wrong but it reads like “They didn’t give us money so we killed it”.
- Definitely a whif of it
The sketchy thing is that they invalidate their licenses, so Improbable straight up can’t legally use the unity pro stuff
- Supposedly in development or live games won’t be affected, but i’m not sure how.
- Developers should email Unity for clarification
Unity claims that Improbable was in violation of their EULA for over a year and were warned
To Unity’s credit they gave them a full year to bend the knee.
Unity wants to make money and Spatial didn’t want to pay, seems rather clear cut.
Make no mistake, indie devs, Unity is not your friend. They are your licensor.
- Yup. That’s what you get for using proprietary software

Shots fired

Find it hard to believe this was thrown together in 24 hours.
The plot, it thickens.
Unreal’s license is version specific.
Changes to the ToS does not retroactively apply to previous versions.
So Epic will straight up pay you to switch from unity to UE4
Ties into the broader plot of getting as many people on your store as possible

Unreal offer

Something something Skullgrills.
- I mean, it sorta worked for cybik
To answer the question the thread was originally positing: Yes. 100%.
Ben Romer, Kernel developer at Canonical, is offering to port your game for free!
This is the point where we learn if the problem was either ineptitude or unwillingness.
Port does not = support, you have been warned.

CHAIRQUISITION:

– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Godly Corp
Webzone: Godly_Corp
Devel: TR8 Torus Studios
Engine: Unity
Price: £5.79 / US$7.99 / CA$8.99
Wazzat: An intern in an intergalactic corporation managing the universe. Use your tentacle to perform unusual office tasks and try to not destroy all life on the planets you look after. Every day brings completely new challenges. Expect everything – chainsaw robots, bug infestation, space trips and more.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys over Curator Connect

Venn:

Does It Launch

By LUCK it launches somewhere between my UHD and 1080 display in a way that I can cheese my way into the resolution options.
From there I can set everything and play a game.
Until I launch it again because it remembers FK ALL options.

Performance @ 1080

60 @ 1080 /w YOLO.

Graphics

Looks as good as any VR FK around game.
However it looks like rubbish by default, the setting you have to change every, single, time.

Control

I mean, come on. You’re a tentacle.
That controls like a cocaine infused penis.

Jordan:

Does It Launch

Yeah, it kinda just spawns it’s window wherever the hell it wants at whatever resolution it wants
Also, it doesn’t seem to save my game, cuz you have to restart every time?

Performance @ 1080

It’s v-stuck at either 30 or 60FPS, your choice
That said, it even performs well on the laptop APU. I think

Graphics

Oh yes, they do look like crap

Control

And you thought surgeon simulator was bad

Pedro:

Does It Launch

It launches, in the middle of my 3 screens in a UHD window, every goddamn time.
It doesn’t remember any settings.

Performance @ 1080

60 at UHD, which is more than Surgeon Simulator could ever do at 1080

Graphics

They work, the game doesn’t remember any settings, but the graphics work.

Control

Both WASD and the Arrow keys work, everything else is gerbil input

QA Score:

Fedora:
Soulless:
Ubuntu:

Fun?:

Venn:
- - Ever think to yourself, what if Octodad was handicapable?
  - Welp, Godly Corp is going to answer that question like it or not.
  - At this core this is your classic FK around physics simulator.
  - The spin?
  - You’re an intern at a corporation and it’s your job to complete random tasks assigned to you by a developer who really really liked GLaDos.
  - It’s hella rough around the edges but not bad if you like surgeon simulator and the like.
  - You can see some ideas and mechanics that definitely have promise but need to be fleshed out a bit more.
  - But you know what, none of that matters because if you have more than one monitor (in 2019 who doesn’t) this critter gets refunded shortly after a launch followed by realization that not even the prefes file can unfu*k this nonsense.
  - Test, yo, shite.

Jordan
- You know, I’ve always wondered what would happen if you gave octodad a gun
- It’s very much a fuck around game.
- Try to tentacle your way through your work day, shoot invading robots, etc, etc
- Therein lies the rub though, I really don’t care and the game doesn’t really want me to care
- I did get a good laugh when the robots invaded, but the mission immediately after that just lost my interest
Pedro
- It’s surgeon simulator but the play field changes every time.
- The fuckery goes up a notch every damn time.
- The no gravity level in space where you have to build the planet and shoot down asteroids at the same time had me flailing around and sending pieces flying all over the screen to the point where I could even see what I was doing.
- At least until I used the tentacle as a windscreen wiper.
- It’s the not the kind of game I would play by myself, but it would be fun to load this up with people over and let them have at.