LinuxGameCast Weekly 379: Moose Violence

Valve teases Half-Life: Alyx! Fantasy Strike gets full crossplay support, Steam Play Together exits beta, and experimental Linux drivers for your force feedback devices. Then NieR:Automata faces, the CHAIRQASITION!

Special Thanks To:

  • Reuben (new pat)

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Timestamps:
04:39 Steam beta client
07:09 Steam play together exits beta
08:58 Steam Achievements manager
11:59 Operation Shattered Web
13:59 Fantasy Strike crossplay
16:04 Half-Life: Alyx
24:09 Steam Marines 2
26:19 Cthulu’s Catharsis
28:44 Shameless self promotion
31:39 Mesa 19.2.5
33:19 Montezuma’s source code
36:39 Experimental Logitech fore feedback
39:34 vkBasalt
42:29 Flax for Linux
44:54 Matric OBS support
49:39 CHAIRQASITION: NieR:Automata
01:05:34 Hate mail


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Steam beta

  • Split shared games is something I’ve seen people screech about.
    • That was a thing with the old library
  • Fixed possible client crash when there are more pending gifts than installed games
    • That’s a weird freaking edge case
      • Not when you’re building your account back up after your previous one was VAC Banned.

 

No longer beta

  • As of last week it was working well enough for Sandy and I to play megabyte punch, and if it’s good enough for Canada, it’s good enough for you
  • With a SALE!!1! To go with it: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/together

 

Steam Achievements Manager 201911

  • Lengthen or shorten your e-peen. On linux!
  • Oh look, a search bar!
  • So… is VALVe okay with people cheating their system to unlock achievements?
  • I don’t really want to tempt a VAC Ban.

Steam: Game Updates

Operation Shattered Web

  • Counter strike gets their own edgy mascots after 22 years
    • Can’t let Forknight have all the fun.
  • Co-Op campaigns for the fans of Condition Zero and Deleted Scenes who wanted more.

 

Fantasy Strike crossplay

  • More people to get instakilled by.
  • Until now we could only tango with PS4 heathens.
  • Sony was being a doofus with their crossplay rules, but they’ve changed their tune. For now
  • There’s no technical reason why it wouldn’t work, but Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo wanna ship more units and one way to do that is FOMO
  • That’s awesome!
  • I hope Fantasy Strike can come back from the 6 concurrent people playing it on average the last month.

Steam: New Games

Alyx VR

  • I look forward to Team Fortress: Alyx and Left for Dead: Alyx.
  • This is apparently #1 of two VR games that Valve is developing
  • Signs point to this being a midquel between HL1 and 2?
  • I really don’t see this selling well unless they a) have a compelling non-vr option or b) the hardware costs reduce drastically
  • Yeah, this makes as much financial sense as HL-3 being Linux exclusive.
  • Then again, Valve doesn’t have shareholders so whatevs.
  • It’s set before HL2? FFS.
  • Would it kill them to continue the story.
  • Windows only.
  • Unfortunate the whole windows only thing, but with proton many things are possible
    • If we wanted that tinfoil hat optimism, this could be in part a test to see how well Proton handles VR
  • Will this be that game that brings VR to the masses?
    • Not when it requires a very expensive bit of equipment.
    • Not when it requires two functioning hands
  • It may be the most successful and, by all measures, the best VR game when it comes out.
  • But it’ll still be a VR game.
  • I had a think on this while trapped in a booth today.
  • It’s not the price of the VR, well, not entirely.
  • I say that since we all have more than $700 tied up in our systems.
  • It’s the price, hassle of wearing shite on our heads, and needing a spare room to set the damn thing up.

 

Steam Marines 2

  • Perma-ironman X-Com gets a sequel
  • They’ve progressed from SNES graphics to Early XBOX
  • They say it’s in the Steam Marines franchise on the side of the store page but they never went back and added the previous one to said franchise.

 

Cthulhu’s Catharsis

  • Be a lovecraftian elder horror they said. Destroy the world they said. It would be fun they said
  • It’s got online PvP so that could be interesting.
  • Risk at the Mountains of Madness?
    • Ry’lyehsk?

News:

Mesa 19.2.5

  • Gotta fix GLXgears on POWAH
  • Some game fixes for STK and Tropico
  • CIV6 now runs if you’re on AMD graphics
  • A very “boring” release, which is not a bad thing.
  • Everything is chomping at the bits for 19.3 for the ACO and proper Navi bits.

 

Revenge!

  • Just so ya know, losing a key is a BS excuse.
  • It would be nice to see the code one day even if it’s an incomplete form.
  • I liked that game!
  • It’s a first person platformer/collectathon
  • Still, of the three people involved in this story, Richard Geldreich’s only fault is that of laziness

 

New-lg4ff

  • For those of you who do use logitech driving wheels and like authentic resistance, get ready to build some kmods
  • No DKMS provided, which can get a little annoying if you like to keep your kernels kurrent
  • Still experimental, if you have a Logitech Wheel that isn’t the G920, give this a go and let the person know.
  • It’d be great to have this in the kernel
  • Turn left, turn left.

 

vkBasalt 0.2.0

  • Still a big old “USE AT YOUR OWN RISK” sticker slapped on this boy
  • Stick to testing it with single player games
  • Better Anti-aliasing and making it so you don’ t need to set a separate environment variable for 32 bit apps is nice
  • I do wonder what the performance hit is.
    • From my testing with Fallout 4 it didn’t have a noticeable impact.
  • However, since they’ve improved the AA quality it may become more noticeable.
  • Especially if you jack up the subpixel AA amount.

 

Flax

  • X11 is used for window system and mouse/keyboard input.
    • Much like Unity, these guys decided to re-invent the wheel and not use SDL2
  • More open source engines are nice though
  • Beta is still coming soon with this one.
  • Getting it to work on Linux, as we have discovered, can make porting to other “unix-related” platforms that much easier.
  • Like the PS4 and the Switch.

 

Matric for OBS

  • Can’t get it to connect.
  • If it was working shite could get real with a quickness.
  • This thing has settings for games, Netflix etc.
  • With OBS you would have a wicked-custom desk for macros, scene switching and the like.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: NieR:Automata
Devel: Square Enix, PlatinumGames
Engine: Custom (Platinum developed, specifically for NieR:Automata)
Price: £29.99 / US$ / CA$

Wazzat: NieR: Automata tells the story of androids 2B, 9S and A2 and their battle to reclaim the machine-driven dystopia overrun by powerful machines.



Venn:

Does It Launch

  • Everything works OOTB.
  • Only grips is setting it to a non-primary monitor is impossible.
  • Can only select the primary monitor.

Performance @ 1080

  • 1080 on YOLO it slams 59.96 minus random chunky parts.
  • Japan tax.

Graphics

  • Quite the bit-o-pop-in.

Control

  • Works with the Xclone and PS4.


Jordan:

Does It Launch

  • It doesn’t seem to like level 2
  • Too much white?
  • No issues with 440.36

Performance @ 1080

  • I made the mistake of playing half the tutorial in UHD
  • Once you knock it down to 1080P, it holds 59

Graphics

  • Oh it pretty

Control

  • It works fine with the dualshock 4


Pedro:

Does It Launch

  • It do

Performance @ 1080

  • With Max settings and Blur off
    • At 1440p on the Ryzen box it goes anywhere between 45 and 60
    • El Cheapo, at 1080p, goes anywhere from 22 to 60
  • Performance is a bit shit, but the game is still playable for the most part.
  • Turning down the graphics to Medium (with Blur off) on El Cheapo puts the FerPS count on par with the Ryzen box.

Graphics

  • Grass and higher res textures can be seen popping in quite a lot.

Control

  • DualShock 4 worked out of the box and it lets you customize the layout.
  • I did run into an issue between this box and El Cheapo because the games syncs the controller config to the cloud.
  • And since the DS4 config couldn’t be applied to the Steam Controller, it just reverted to defaults.
  • But most of you wouldn’t necessarily run into this issue.

QA Score:

Fedora:
Neon:
Debian:


Fun section:

Fun?:

  • Venn:
    • It’s not often I play a game that makes me question what qualifies as intelligence, or AI? Human?
    • More to the point I have never been hit with a “OMG WTF” moment like this game drops on your face from orbit.
    • You don’t expect it since at first everything is all “yeah yeah, robots think they are android, androids wanna be people” I get it game, I get it.
    • Then on the third playthrough with all the backstory a thing goes down that made me tap the pause button and take a moment.
    • It was a deep-fried fkd up thing that for lack of a better explanation shows the dangers of being human.
    • Or at least attempting to emulate them.
    • Game wise the combat it solid but repetitive and the world is a lot smaller than it seems.
    • That said there is still plenty to explore and… smash the shite out of.
    • If you like doing the upgrades by collecting chips and finding secrets this game will consume you.
    • RIP Pedro.
    • I don’t, so whatevs.
    • For me it does what I want in a brawler, wait…
    • Can we really call it a brawler?
    • I mean, rush head on into damn near anything and you will come back in a robo body bag.
    • Regardless, you get to smash shite and look good doing it while enjoying a solid story that they SOMEHOW managed to deliver over three playthroughs without coming off as gimmicky.
    • It took me some 30+ hours to Venn my way through it and I rather enjoyed it.
    • Performance is still a little hit-or-miss and it has some bugs.
    • Unfortunately two+ years later not so much as a single patch has come out to address any of the outstanding issues.
    • Still, if you can find it on sale pick it up, you’ll dig the experience.
    • Oh and the ending ending… is heh, but WTF heh with a side of REALLY?
  • Jordan
    • Never have I seen a game truly incentivises the amount of moose-violence that is required in this game
    • This game is weird as fuck, and I’m kinda into it
    • First there was the boss with not one, but two bagger 288s for arms
    • Then there was the wombo combo of the juggalo tank immediately followed by creepy robot android-corpse diva
    • Not to mention the urban decay aesthetic is really pretty looking, and the areas you run around in are aweomely barren
    • Except for all of the saassage robots
    • Gameplay is pretty fun too. It’s the devil may cry, bayonetta, metal gear revengeance air juggly flashy fighting, and it’s s god damn enjoyable
    • Story wise, it’s pretty clear you’re playing the baddies
    • “Robots don’t feel fear” he says as we mow down robot civilians who are running for their lives screaming about how scared they are
    • Normally I find these sorts of games a bit monotonous considering how stage based they usually are. The open world fixes that for me
  • Pedro
    • Between Nier and Bayonetta, I much prefer Nier!
    • It’s got a bit of the Squeenix influence but the over the top choreography, penis shaped robots, and sexy protagonist androids in maid/school boy outfits are very much on brand for Platinum.
    • Nier is Bayonetta with more of an open world and with the Final Fantasy like RPG elements built around the highly choreographed combat.
    • It’s unfortunate the performance is a bit jank in places because I very much enjoy everything else about this game.
    • The combat feels awesome.
    • All the weapons have different interactions and moves when you combo them together.
    • Different enemies react differently to combos and counters.
    • Honestly, this is an awesome game.
    • And much like the previous Nier, you don’t get to play the “whole” game until you’ve beaten it several times over.
    • I like games that aren’t afraid of hiding content away from players
    • Dark Souls, Skyrim, Fallout 2, and NieR Automata.
    • So while the performance needs improving, I honestly did not see it as a hindrance to my enjoyment.

Fun Score:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

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