LinuxGameCast Weekly 373: Bonsai Namco

Building a £300 Linux Gaming PC! Steam’s ‘Remote Play Together’ brings local multiplayer games online, open-source GTA San Andreas, and we find out what it took to port Indivisible to Linux.


Listen:


Download:


Timestamps:
03:39 Steam September hardware survey
06:51 30% game industry cut
10:29 Steam Remote Play
14:12 Proton 4.11-7
16:38 Indivisible Build #39125
17:45 Portal 2 update
19:08 Half-Life 1 update
21:03 CS:GO update
22:57 Pine
25:12 Hexa Trains
27:27 Shameless self promotion
30:35 Interviewzen: Cybik: Porting Indivisible to Linux
52:46 OpenTESArena 0.10.0
55:33 AMD NUC
58:04 Atari VCS architect quits
01:00:50 Games for Grunts
01:02:03 £300 Linux Gaming PC
01:05:36 Google Stadia negative latency
01:11:40 Hedgewars 1.0.0
01:13:55 SanAndreas Unity
01:16:16 Open Gothic test build
01:19:23 Carnage 3D
01:21:12 CHAIRQASITION: Indivisible
01:35:57 Hate Mail


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

September Hardware survey

  • Linux usage crawling up by .03%. Awww yisss
  • 1060 still seems to be the card of choice across all platform
    • Apparently on linux the Rx480 shoots ahead by .79%,
  • Someone other than me finally bought a 2060!
  • The lack of Ryzen is still bothering me!
  • Most people have 2 or 4 physical CPUs.
  • I was thinking this was because laptop but the popular GPU is the 10 series.

 

The Steam cut

  • So it seems with the exception of Humble, Itch and EGS, ~70% takeaway is about the best you can do
  • Although if you’re dealing with Sony, M$ or Nintendo and you got some backing, you may be able to negotiate a better deal
  • One thing we haven’t really shut up about though is the fact that there are some real tangible benefits to valve taking that 30% like free linux support via proton, mobile streaming infrastructure and an entire private network for hosting globally accessible game servers
  • I mean, Valve could offer an “Epic” tier.
  • We only take 12% and you only get a Play button on the Store page.
  • No forums, no workshop, no Steamworks etc.
  • I don’t think developers would be happy about that but it’s all you get with the Epic store.
  • That’d be fun to see, for 12% you get exactly the same Epic offers you in terms of store infrastructure!

 

Steam multiplayer

  • It’ll probably be hella janky at first
    • But either way: Yaaaaaaasssssss
  • This gets extra interesting when you realize only one person needs to own the game.
  • Will Player 2 end up playing via streaming?
    • I’m thinking this’ll end up being the case
    • They’ve been putting a bunch of development into the steam mobile play app, so that’s some pretty solid foundation
  • If so this will be a good datapoint for testing the upcoming Steam streaming service.
  • 30% cut, people.
  • Death Road to Canada!
  • Yeah! This is the kind of value added to your game if you’re willing to part with a 30% chunk of each sale.
  • This is going to require the host PC to encode and stream to player 2.

 

Proton 4.11-7

  • WHAR the goddamn Batman!
  • Better support for controller hotplugging.
  • It broke fullscreen in one of the games I have been cocking around with.
  • Proton 4.15 to the rescue.
  • Introduced some performance regressions in Shadow of War.
    • We’re only talking like, 5%.
    • Unfortunately it brought back the cutscene spite-crashes and those can nuke 15/20 minutes of progression with a quickness.
  • Such is the way of WINE and Proton.
  • Fix some issues, introduce others.
  • Over here, I didn’t really notice anything in the shift from 4.11-6 to 4.11-7.

Steam: Game Updates

Indivisible

  • Some changes to the default controller layout.
  • They mention one specific achievement no longer always popping up.

 

Material Portal update

  • Correct prompts for dualshock and switch controllers are nice
  • Plugging security holes in your multiplayer game is nicer
  • I wonder if the material rendering issue fix allows it to be captured by OBS without fucky workarounds now
    • That would be a nice accidental fix.

 

Half-Life 1 confirmed

  • GoldSRC updates!
  • If memory serves, aside from the linux update this is the second time we’ve seen this ol’ gem get das patch

 

Counter Strike 1.6

  • This is the second update in 2019, probably something to do with the half-life update above.
  • This new layout on the patch notes pages is great, since it shows the latest 3 down the bottom as well.

Steam: New Games

Pine

  • 3.5 years in development by a 7-man team.
  • It looks rather impressive.
  • Better yet, no turn-based.
  • That looks really nice!
  • I think I’d enjoy a well done survival RPG with some crafting elements, but the ones I’ve played thus far are all … meh!

 

Hexa Trains

  • Fucking moon trains! Trains going to the moon!

News:

OpenTESArena 0.10.0

  • Someone saw that an Elder Scrolls game was going without an open source engine re-implementation and said “NAY”
  • Written in C++17 and uses SDL2 for cross-platform video, WildMIDI for music, and OpenAL Soft for sound and mixing.
  • No actual gameplay yet.
  • M-O-O-N.
  • Might as well, I guess.
  • There’s already engine reimplementations for TES2 and 3, so it had to happen.
  • I hope OpenMW gets Morrowind done so they can start focusing on the Oblivion bits.

 

AMD NUC nuc

  • The desktop is dead. Long live the desktop.
    • I am the desktop?
  • I mean, the article is right. Desktop computing these days is either for people who want to play video games/heat their house or folks doing actual work like development, design or content creation
  • Most folks are happy with just a cell phone or table, let alone a small form factor PC
    • In fact, I’d even say that SFF computers appeal more to the former crowd for stuff like set top boxes, single task on-site servers or jitsi machines and the like
  • I want a full sized PCIe hole!
  • I don’t think I ever saw a proper NUC.
  • I saw some of the clones, like those Zotac nano boxes.

 

ATARI VCS architect quits

  • Moral of the story: Pay your fucking contractors.
    • Love, a contractor.
  • Makes you wonder where those millions in crowdfunding disappeared to.
  • Nice to know there will no longer be a custom Linux OS.
    • At least, if it comes out, we know it can run proper Linux.
  • Remember that person they mentioned wasn’t going anywhere despite having started another company?
  • Yeah, this was that person.

 

Games for grunts

  • Want to throw this out there as a little PSA.
  • Free games for current and ex US military.

 

£300 Linux Gaming PC

  • For $379.31 you too can build a bitching system that can kinda-sorta play the video games.
  • I’m sure you can find these parts for much cheaper on US eBay.
  • Outside of Metro and Deus Ex, this will play just about everything on High/Ultra.
  • I’m including the whitelisted Proton games in that blanket statement.
  • It may not be able to do so well with newer AAA games, if you can get those running in Proton.
    • I guess we’ll see once the rest of the ACO work is done
    • Speaking of which, since this is my tinker toy, I loaded the mfutex kernel and the ACO version of mesa to see what shakes loose.

 

Stadia go fast

  • Game streaming will be the future.
  • That future is not “a year or two” away.
  • I can imagine how, especially in a multiplayer game, predictive latency compensation could be a bit frustrating.
  • Granted, the predictive control was only noticeable when using the keyboard / gerbil during the beta.
  • Depending on how it’s implemented, it may get better over time as their algorithm begins to better learn how people play certain games
  • So what if this AI can play out and render (think 3 or 4 streams) predicted scenarios and switch to the one you choose.

 

Hedgewars 1.0.0

  • Open sauce Worms reaches 1.0!
  • As is tradition, all that means is that they feel reasonably confident in their work.
  • I hope they keep working on it.
  • It’s been a while since we’ve had an open source game on the chairquisition that wasn’t tuxkart

 

SanAndreas Unity

  • Case sensitive file system support is nice. It’s amazing how difficult this is for some people to grasp
  • Should build OOTB in unity editor now

 

Open Gothic test build

  • FYI: VirtualBox doesn’t support Vulkan, so don’t expect to see full Linux support in next release.
    • Developers! Please please please please PLEASE don’t fucking do this
    • You know what supports Vulkan? A $50 Ivy Bridge/Haswell laptop and it’ll run Linux better than VirtualBox.
    • Welcome to container culture.
      • Welcome to linux support as an afterthought culture
      • It’s open-source, someone can ferk it.
  • The Swick speaking the tru tru!
    • There isn’t really a compelling reason to NOT use SDL2.
    • Unless you just want a faster path to hair loss
    • Helps to mitigate that one scenario you didn’t account for.

 

Canarage 3D

  • And to round off the engine reimplementations this week, one for the OG GTA.
  • This one seems to just be a hobby project. Also no SDL used.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Indivisible
Devel: Lab Zero Games / Cybik
Engine: Z-Engine (like Skullgirls. Thanks Cybik!)
Price: £34.99 / US$39.99 / CA$53.46

Wazzat: Indivisible is a hand drawn action RPG platformer from Lab Zero, creators of the critically acclaimed Skullgirls! Set in a huge fantasy world, Indivisible tells the story of Ajna, a fearless girl with a rebellious streak who sets out on a quest to save everything she knows from being destroyed.

Mandatory Disclosure: Dev sent keys



Venn:

Does It Launch

  • No issues with launching outside of the constant Funded achievement spam.

Performance @ 1080

  • 60 @ 1080 & 2160.
  • Needs a gang of memoryram or 8GB of swap.

Graphics

  • No issues.

Control

  • Correct buttons /w Xclone and PS4.


Jordan:

Does It Launch

  • Yes

Performance @ 1080

  • Holds 60

Graphics

  • Weird mexican, indian, mongolian anime vibes
  • I’m in to it

Control

  • All the buttons work on the dualshock
  • The interface though, that’s another thing entirely


Pedro:

Does It Launch

  • It does launch.

Performance @ 1080

  • It holds 60 on El Cheapo!
  • Also holds 60 at 2160p in this box.

Graphics

  • Anime as shit and Razmi is best waifu!

Control

  • The prompts change to match the device you last poked with your greasy fingers.
  • DualShock 4 also worked out of the box.

QA Score:

Fedora:
Soulless:
Debian:


Fun section:

Fun?:

  • Venn:
    • 33 minutes in and my working theory is this kid snapped after witnessing the death of her pops.
    • Turns out I like speed TBS less than regular old fashioned TBS.
    • I spent the first 30 minutes getting the exposition dump and learning the base mechanics.
    • I spent the second 30 getting killed by the first Golden Oozaru.
    • Some people were complaining about the battle mechanics never clicking for them, guess I fall in that group.
    • Kudos on Lab0 for trying something new but it just confused my old arse more than anything.
  • Jordan
    • The beginning of this story is very clearly a reference to the 1983 masterpiece, Conan the Barbarian.
    • They even get Worf to voice their Thulsa Doom character
    • From there, you take on the role of a lady who sucks people into her brain and forces them to fight for their very survival
    • There’s also a bit about how Thulsa Doom thinks that she’s the herald to the end times or something to do with those weird 3 circle things in the intro battle
    • The gameplay itself is alright. The platformy bit’s aren’t too difficult, although some of them do involve quite a bit of trial and get blasted by face lasers
    • The combat system is kinda weird
    • You have four characters, each of whom have a fantasy strike style attack bound to one of the face buttons. Based on their speed and your level, their attacks recharge at a given rate. Sometimes you have to do fighting game combos to break through enemy defenses.
    • Then on your enemies’ turn, they attack one or more of your dudes, and you gotta either block with everyone or hit that character’s face button
    • It’s interesting in theory, but in practise it kind ajust ends up being a little button mashy.
    • The map and save stuff is also a wee dumb, having to hold donwn a button and press a directional key. Seems a bit needlessly complicated
    • But all together, the experience is pretty enjoyable. They got a talented stable of voice actors and the story is tolerable
  • Pedro
    • I’m 5 hours in and only now has someone actually explained Ajna’s background
    • This is the point where I’m going around to unlock the fast travel system.
    • I still haven’t unlocked the abilities to get through the green and orange sparklies.
    • I was going to tear this game a new one for the price, but fuck me sideways!
    • This is a huge fucking game!
    • I can absolutely see the cost justification and something tells me there’s going to be even more stuff to do (and probably a bunch of optional bits once you unlock everything)
    • The way the story is going sorta reminds me of Final Fantasy X.
    • Granted, not the best of the bunch, but not the worst either. Final Fantasy IX still exists, after all.
    • The big difference is that indivisible is 2D and the combat is a bit more active than most turn-based games.
    • It took a couple of hours of play for my brain to click and a big thanks to Lockdonnen for the Steam Controller!
    • Because for some reason when I was using to play the game on El Cheapo, the nubbin that constitutes my right thumb kept going exactly to the right button.
    • Once it clicked, even the occasional difficulty spike became minor.
    • And the game as a result became very enjoyable.
    • It’s still expensive as balls, though!

Fun Score:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

Gaming PC

  • CPU and depending on which software you prefer, a GPU with 8GB of VRAM.
  • If you’re doing editing, it may be worth the extra cash to go for the Ryzen 5 1600 if you’re trying to keep the cost down.
  • For GPUs, basically anything with 8GB of video memory or higher.
  • But then you’re not looking at £300, at least £600.
  • And you’re going to want more storage.
0 Comments

Leave Your Reply