LinuxGameCast Weekly 361: Tetris Fears Me

Cortex Command goes open source! CoreCtrl simplifies gaming profiles, Linux gaming performance vs Windows 10, and Valve is working on something code-named Citadel.

Note: Jordan’s audio was jacked in the Hate Mail segment. Fixed version.

Special Thanks to:
Mostly_linux (liberapay)
David (liberapay)
Giovanni (Chicago Kicks Arse)
Scoots (Exex prod)
Nathan (new pats)
LinuxGNURU (paypal)


Timestamps:
04:52 Steam client update
07:49 New Valve game?
11:49 Black Mesa July update
14:18 Knight Rider rocket car
16:54 Lost Orbit
18:50 Robo Instructs
20:50 shameless self promotion
29:23 CoreCtrl
35:16 DXVK 1.3.1
37:42 D9VK 0.13
40:19 Cortex Command open source
42:45 Linux gaming performance
48:46 CHAIRQASITION: Flinthook
1:00:28 Hate Mail


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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Beta client update

  • Big whack of actually useful improvements
  • You can now change the controller slot via steam input and bind it to a chord even
    • The scenario they bring up would have been useful at scale
  • Better detection of download servers means slightly faster steam downloads. Maybe?
  • The previous Beta was also merged to Stable and it includes the new runtime update.
  • Which breaks it in Solus or if you’re using the Native Runtime from LSI rather than Steam’s own runtime.

 

Valve game rumours

  • Ah, crawling through engine code to look for hints of projects
  • We’ve seen this before, naming conventions in the source sdk that indicate level names and even in-development games
  • Unfortunately, they rarely pan out. Valve likely has several different versions of new games in varying states of completion that their engine has to support. Sometimes stuff that never gets released trickles into the public release of the tools
  • Ok, buzzkill ovar, ZOMG HL3: The Artifacting VR Auto chess confirmed
  • It’s Artifact 2 VR.
  • Can we stop /w the OMg HL3 every time Valve poops an update?
  • I would trade HL3 for a side of L4B3 at this point.
  • Then again, Valve has released 2 games this year and gobbled up some talent so who knows.
  • You’d think after finding all that Source 2 stuff about L4D3 in the engine and it leading nowhere that people would chill.

Steam: Game Updates

Black Mesa in July

  • Oh, they are working on the new UI… that has no set date of being finished.
  • Gotta have something to keep the EA going after Xen.
  • New UI to be tested in August… Because that’s what everyone’s been asking for, isn’t it?!

 

KARR

  • No volleyball until next week
  • Weren’t it for a certain decision to “up until September” the game being fully supported on Steam, I would totally buy the KITT skin.
  • But seeing as they want Epic’s money more than people’s money, I shall not.
  • Yeah, I’m still doing Ctrl+F volleyball.
  • WHAR Knightboat!

Steam: New Games

Lost Orbit

  • The art here reminds me a bit of Kerbals
  • It’s a dodge’em’up set in space. The description indicates there might be some gravity shenanigans, which could actually be pretty cool
  • That actually looks nice!

 

Robo Instructs

  • Moar programming puzzles for the trs-182 crowd
  • Outright lists Arch linux as a system requirement. Good luck supporting that mess fam
  • I don’t mind programming logic games like Hack/Slash or Baba is You, this one I hate just looking at it.

News:

CoreCtrl

  • Mandatory invocation of XKCD 927
  • That said, I think it’s a good idea.
  • Having 100 utilities installed to manage your hardware is a little cumbersome.
  • A central place for it is a good plan.
    • Unfortunately the idiosyncrasies of open source means that’ll happen
  • We’re going to talk about getting Windows users over to Linux in a minute.
  • We needs tools like this with nice big colourful clicky buttons so they feel at home.
  • You can install it in Fedora 30 if you enable the Testing repo.

 

DXVK 1.3.1

  • GPU load monitor to the hud
  • Render fixes for Sekiro and Spellforce
  • Nvidia Memory allocation improvements so that your 970 will eat less shit
  • Some fix for better moltenVK compatibility for people trying to run wine on mac
  • Sekiro is playable again so I might have to grab it at some point.

 

D9VK

  • Well, that was quick
  • They’ve ingested the discard optimization from DiXsViKs
  • R8G8B8 was borked, so they just stopped supporting it
  • Xinput still spite-nopes Heel Gun.
  • Another update hot on the heels of the last one.
  • This one doesn’t necessarily have game specific fixes but it has a bunch of fixes which will indubitably help with a great deal of games.

 

Cortex Command

  • Good on Data Realm for releasing the sauce to a game they’re still actively selling
  • You’ll need to buy it anyways if you wanna use this as a standalone client.
  • THe steam version has workshop support so I’m curious what exposing the plumbing can do for the modding community
    • I wouldn’t be opposed to have a way to opt in to mods from the Nexus.
      • Entirely unrelated, but I had to diagnose a performance issue related to Sonatype nexus and the google search for “nexus CPU allocation” returns a bunch of nexus forum posts about skyrim
  • This was in one of the OG Humble Bundles.

 

Linux gaming performance

  • Continuing the discussion from last week, we learn that Proton+ACO+DXVK has the potential to be faster than the native DX11 drivers under windows
  • How do we leverage this to get people to come over to linux?
  • Well, I dunno.
  • Getting people to switch Oses is the same as getting people to switch religions.
  • They’ll only do it due to the promise of death or sex.
  • We need to start a “don’t be a casual” campaign.
  • Because that’s what windows gamers are, casuals.
  • This is very good for AMD.
  • People who use Linux are often attracted to this idea of an underdog and, for some reason, a billion dollar corporation qualifies.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game:  Flinthook
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/401710/Flinthook/
Devel: Tribute Games Inc.
Engine: FNA
Price: £10.99 / US$14.99 / CA$16.99

Wazzat: Live the life of space captain Flinthook! Armed with your mighty hookshot, your uncanny slow-motion powers and your trusty blasma pistol, plunder and fight your way through an infinite variety of randomly-assembled spaceships for treasure, loot and fame!

Mandatory Disclosure: RTheren



Venn:

Does It Launch

  • No issues in windowed or fullscreen.

Performance @ 1080

  • 60 gonna 60.

Graphics

  • Hipster-pixel.

Control

  • Can’t rebind controls and the defaults are a little madd on the xclone.


Jordan:

Does It Launch

  • Yerp
  • And comes in a tasty sub 500mb package

Performance @ 1080

  • Pixels

Graphics

  • Also Pixels

Control

  • I didn’t get any stinking dual shock prompts

Pedro:

Does It Launch

  • It do

Performance @ 1080

  • No complaints here

Graphics

  • 16-bit-ish looking hipster pixel
  • There’s a lot of detail to the background and that causes some character/hazard blindness.

Control

  • Dual shock prompts

QA Score:

Fedora:
Soulless:
Fedorf:


Fun section:

Fun?:

  • Venn:
    • Fuck rouge-anythings.
    • The only thing worse would be… oh dammit, it has procedurally generated levels doesn’t it!?
    • At least it’s not… oh, oh wait… it’s also hipster-pixel.
    • At least by this point my body went numb from the pain so the chiptune nonsense doesn’t hurt as much.
    • That said.
    • The pixel art is extremely well done.
    • This chiptune bullshit sounds legit.
    • Controls are reasonably tight despite not being rebindable.
      • Guess you could call that authentic?
    • Groundhog Day is movie, not game.
  • Jordan
    • If you enjoyed rogue legacy, you’ll enjoy this game
    • My one real gripe here is that you aim and move with the same stick
    • You end up needing to put yourself in a bunch of real goofy positions by virtue of you needing to point the gun in a certain direction that won’t land you into spiky death
    • The music in this is really good. It really does stand out as a cut above
    • But yeah, this is something you can really sink your teeth into if you’re into metroidvanias
  • Pedro
    • If I was to be sent to gamer prison and I could only play one game for the rest of my life, and the only options were this and Shovel Knight, I’d pick this.
    • That hypothetical scenario may seem a little convoluted but I genuinely have grown to hate 2d Hipster Pixel platformers.
    • I prefer this to Shovel Knight, but I wouldn’t play either unless I had to.
    • What sets it apart here is absolutely the hookshot mechanic.
    • If you can do a smooth run of hooking exactly where you want and shoot the enemies in mid air, it feels great.
    • The thing is, I could never do it reliably and the rest of the game isn’t really selling it for me.
    • There are some rogue-lite mechanics at play which I don’t mind, it’s just the core gameplay for that doesn’t feel that interesting.

Fun Score:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

Chute

  • It’s because I love the taste of pubes. And glue. I have a problem. Leave me alone

Muchu

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