LinuxGameCast Weekly 383: Faptain’s Log

The Steamy Winter sale is upon us! Life is Strange 2 comes to Linux, Eggroll powered fixes for GTA V, ceiling Unity watches you game, and a working driver for your Xbox One wireless dongle.

Special thanks to:
MikeG (For all the stuffs)


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Timestamps:
04:53 Steam Winter sale
07:03 Steam VR 1.9
09:33 Proton 4.11-11 mouse fixes
11:33 Proton-4.21-GE-2 GTA V fixes
14:08 Golf with Friends Museum update
16:13 Life is Strange 2 comes to Linux
18:53 Red Eclipse 2
22:53 Shameless self promotion
26:53 DXVK & D9VK merge
30:38 Unity tracking issues
34:33 Killer Sheep in Vim
35:08 Linux driver for Xbox One wireless
37:18 Open Joystick Overlay
40:03 Linux gaming challenges Windows
46:48 CHAIRQASITION: Dead End Job
57:58 Hate Mail


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Winter Sale

  • Heckblade for $9.99, worth it.

  • Going to have to do better than 30% before I yoink Code Vein.

  • Might have to pick up Hellblade.

  • Folks should grab vermintide while it’s 8 bucks so we can do it on thursdays

 

Steamy VR update

  • Some honest to god linux fixes, with a little bit of breakage. There is an opt-inable beta to help mitigate it

  • They are trying to squash some bugs, so it seems they haven’t given up on VR for linux yet

 

4.11-11

  • Ah, the gerbil stuttering was not on my end.

  • Gobbled up the big Dicks Vicks merge, but we’ll get to that later

  • Backported the patches for the GTA V launcher.

 

GE 4.21-GE-1

  • Disabling Proton’s input handler in favor of the Staging WINE ones.

  • The Halo MCC stuff is implemented as well, so at least you can play in forever stallone mode

  • Much like the official Proton, GE will also let you play the newest version of GTA V again.


Steam: Game Updates

Golf at the museum

  • 18 holes to shove your bones in.

  • Runs better than the Worms map, AKA above 30fps.

    • Not a particularly high bar, that one!


Steam: New Games

Life is finally strange

  • That, that took a minute.

  • It’s 75% off during the winter sale.

    • 3 Bucks is a pretty sweet deal. Only the first episode. Works out if you don’t like the game, doesn’t if you do

  • Requires Vulkan.

  • More sitting around and having a story told at you with occasional QTEs

  • £16 for the complete complete game during the sale.

 

Red Eclipse 2

  • Available for BSD. Now we’re just waiting on the BSD steam release

  • Looks like a quak, smells like a quak, actually based on the Cube engine


News:

The Merge

  • D9VK is now implemented as a frontend in DXVK

  • What does this mean? Not much, short of having one less library to manage

  • Still, it’s nice to have

  • And this will make VALVe’s job a bit easier to keep Proton up to snuff.

  • At least, as far as graphic API support goes.

 

Unity tracking

  • I don’t mind sending stats but that should be opt-in.

    • ^

  • What gave me the case of GRRR was an uninstalled game still sending the databits.

  • Gotta set it per game too. I’m sure you could whip together a cron script to make sure that everything in .config/unity3d gets that shut off

  • I had seen the global prefs file but I never opened it.

  • That’s a load of BS, having it send up stuff without giving people the choice.

 

Killer Sheep

  • For when you can’t install rogue on production servers

  • Emacs has a video editor but VIM has a game, now.

  • I’m over here still using nano… You know, as a text editor!

 

New Xbox wireless

  • Driver for the new Xbox wireless dongle.

  • The slim one.

 

Stream Controller Overlay (RTheren)

  • Give people the evidence they need to talk smack about how you suck at the video games you stream!

  • I could see that also being useful for fighting game tournaments

 

Linux gaming progress

  • “Windows has always been viewed as the absolute best platform for gaming”

    • Someone doesn’t know the history of the Windows Games SDK.

  • MS had to make that because Windows was an absolute hot mess for gaming.

  • “… with everything aside from the Logitech C920 webcam working.”

    • How?

      • Probably plugged it into the ethernet port

  • I don’t think Microsoft is worried about Linux becoming a better gaming OS.

  • I’m willing to bet there are some in the company wishing Proton reached the unishark of feature parity for gaming.

  • That way they won’t have to worry about it going forward.

  • It’s been quite an almost 8 year stretch.


CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Dead End Job
Devel: Ant Workshop Ltd
Engine: Unity
Price: £13.99 / US$16.99 / CA$19.49

Wazzat: Dead End Job sends you into a madcap, Ren & Stimpy-esque world to bust up ghosts. It’s a procedurally generated, couch co-op, twin-stick shooter that straps a vacuum pack to your back and puts a plasma blaster in your hand. For you, it’s just another day in the office.

Mandatory Disclosure: HeadUp Games sent us keys



Venn:

Does It Launch

  • Has the black screen issue when you first create a profile.

  • Have to kill the game and restart to get into it proper.

Performance @ 1080

  • 60

Graphics

  • No glitches.

Control

  • The only thing this works with is the Dual Shock.

  • Steamy, nope, Xclone, nope.



Jordan:

Does It Launch

  • They really gotta fix that first launch thing

Performance @ 1080

  • There’s some initial herky jerk, but then it’s smooth sailing

Graphics

  • Reminds me of a flash game from newgrounds

Control

  • Everything works and is reasonably mapped



Pedro:

Does It Launch

  • On first launch I was stuck on a black screen, after creating the initial profile.

  • Second launch made it so it worked just fine, so I’mma call that a hiccup

Performance @ 1080

  • Mostly stays at 144Hz @1440p

  • It’ll dip a bit in loading screens, but nothing that affects your game playing experience.

Graphics

  • Barring the aforementioned screen of dark on the first run, everything worked.

Control

  • DualShock 4 worked out of the box.


QA Score:

Fedora:
Neon:
Debian:


Fun section:

Fun?:

  • Venn:

    • What do you look for in a top-down shooter?

    • How about a smooth range of fire?

    • Dead End Job lacks that, hard.

    • Sorry not sorry but that not so little issue has bugged me for the entirety of my playtime.

    • It’s like you’re firing in quadrants…

    • The gap between up, down, left, and right when making /w the pew pew can eat all the Nixons.

    • As for the game proper, it’s a rogue-like plain and simple.

    • Pew some ghosts, suck them off, upgrade the things, collect some coin.

    • It works as a game, iguess.jpg.

    • Unless you count multiplayer, seriously, what the hell it that nonsense?

    • Player 2 has the ability to (wait for it) annoy the ghosts!

    • Yeah, you basically play the role of a participation trophy.

    • Also, the Remote Play Together is a wee touchy.

    • At the end of the day this comes across as top-down Luigi’s Mansion that was developed on a budget… of C11H17NO3.

    • While old home-recorded VHS episodes of Ren & Stimpy played in the background.

    • Seriously, where did you find a working VHS player in 2019?

  • Jordan

    • Dead end Job follows the BOI-esque formula of procedurally generating a maze full of room fights and making you shoot and suck up the ghosts of office supplies, trying to find people to save.

    • Make some money, die sometimes, rinse repeat

    • It’s almost like you’re working a dead end job for real!

    • The humour in this is a bit of a miss. Although ZX Spectre got a chuckle out of me

    • The multiplayer feels incredibly tacked on, especially considering steam encourages you to try the remote play stuff

    • Your friend gets to play as your ghost grandma/business partner and they can shoot goo

    • That goo not only slows the enemies, but also you

    • It seems incredibly tacked on. Basically a way to add a mulitplayer mode without really needing to rebalance the game. But it just feels kinda pointless

  • Pedro

    • Clearly there was an attempt to make funny game here.

    • Unfortunately the humor is a bit meh and funny does not a fun game make.

    • I wasn’t having fun.

    • Dead End Job, true to its name, made playing ghostbuster feel boring.

    • And when it wasn’t boring, it was disheartening because I was dying from stuff I couldn’t see.

    • I can tell there was some work put into the game, but it’s not my cup of tea.


Fun Score:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

Salaam

Shocking

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