LinuxGameCast Weekly 407: Xowy Wowy

PT comes to Half-Life Alyx, EA returns to Steam, Nvidia 3080 leaks blow, and Supraland considers pulling their untested Linux builds. Then Nimbatus faces, the CHAIRQASITION!

Special tanks to:
Aldius (1U UPS, yoga paaaaaants, long long cords) from our whishlists.


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Timestamps:
06:58 VR adoption surge
09:38 Proton 5.0-8
12:08 Alyx PT MOD
13:58 EA returns to Steam
16:38 Drox Operative 2
18:08 Electro Ride
20:14 Resolutiion demo
22:24 Savage Halloween
25:04 Shameless self promotion
29:53 Nvidia 3080 blows
33:21 Atari VCS updates
38:59 Wine 5.0.1
42:09 Supraland Linux builds
48:08 Gamepad viewer
49:58 The Force Engine
51:48 Xow 0.5
53:08 Text Flight Alpha
54:10 CHAIRQASITION: Nimbatus
01:03:25 Hate mail


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

High VR

  • Dozen of person still playing VR after Alyx.
  • I guess once you’re done with Alyx, you gotta start playing other stuff to justify the $500+ you spent on a headset
  • There are a bunch of fun VR games out there even now though. Superhot, gorn, beatsaber and tetrisFX (when it’s done being an epic store exwoosive. Although lutris does exist) to name a few. Hopefully people are checking them out
  • And the comments degenerated pretty quickly into discussing the meaning of niche.

 

Proton 5.0-8

  • Come on, at least update the versioning.
  • This does seem to smooth out Weeb Souls a bit.
  • If you have a 5.7 kernel, you might get some rumblies from your racing wheel now
  • It’s nice to see Valve doing some public facing pre-releases so they can get bugs hammered out.
  • Now that proton has basically taken over linux gaming, the extra QA is kind of needed
  • The RC2 build removes the wine-mono upgrade, causing a regression in the game DARK.
  • This build also includes fixes for the GTA4 issues some users were reporting here.
  • I opted-in to the beta and didn’t notice much.
    • Look at Mr. has a fancy graphics card.

Steam: Game Updates

PT VR

  • Ah PT, a brief flash of hope before Konami gave up and.decided to just make pachinko machines
  • Now hit can experience the fan remake in VR via Alyx
  • No word yet if there’s any case sensitive.shenanigans with this on Linux

Electronic Sharts

  • Well, at least one of these games are playable under linux. With minimal thanks to EA mind you
  • Here is za list.
  • Don’t see anything that looks amazeballs.
  • Always wanted to tinker with Mirrors Edge.
  • Depending on how good the Proton reports on the DB are, I might have to give up my almost 11 year-long boycott of EA.

Steam: New Games

Drox Operative 2

  • This one looks kinda cool. Play as a spaceship in the midst of AI factions playing stellaris, essentially
    • Space torchlight. Sporchlight
  • Plus it has online and cross platform multiplayer
  • That could be really fun!
  • I hope it doesn’t overstay its Early Access.

 

Electro Ride Prologue

  • So it’s distance, but with reasonably priced sedans and station wagons?
    • Soviet station wagons tovarich
  • OS: Linux 64bit + proton
    • So it’s proton? Are you allowed to do this now?
    • That’s not cool.
    • If you want to say the game works with Proton, that’s fine.
    • But you shouldn’t get to use the SteamOS icon if you didn’t even bother clicking export for your Unity game.
  • Also, Distance this is not.
  • It looks like dude just doesn’t know better?

 

Resolutiion

  • Totes not Hyperlight is out with a demo.
  • /beware the giant kitty.
  • There’s a demo if you want to make sure this scratches your HLD itch
  • I like what they’re doing.
  • I’ll need to get the complete thing to give a try, but I liked that demo.

 

Savage Halloween

  • But he made too many enemies…
  • There are so many helloween jokes I could make right now
    • Although I was very disappointed by the lack of Macho Man
  • Does the split screen co-op thing, so once again you’re stuck using remote play if you want to bring a buddy on board
  • Apparently the monsters are trapped in the Earth.
  • Problem solved, right?

News:

3080 Leaks

  • Slow news week, bitches!
  • Man, those things are going to blow.

 

VCS 4 Real

  • I’m watching the video but still not believing it.
  • I’m having SmachZ flashbacks.
    • That one isn’t out yet either.
    • Yeah, they were quick to jump on the COVID delay train.
  • I see Borderlands 2 running in one of those videos.
  • That will probably ensure a successful life rather than the actual ATARI stuff.
  • The first 500 Units will leave the factory in mid-June, apparently.

 

WINE 5.0.1

  • RIP extended Torchlight loads.
  • Seems to mostly be a maintenance release.
  • GCC 10 support seems to be the big feature here
    • It would be nice if CUDA could get some of that.
  • It’s just a roll up of a number of bugs and minor quality of life improvements to the 5.0, so called Stable, branch.

 

Supra Damned

  • It’s on GOG as well so news section.
  • Literally tapped the export button, fam.
  • They cannot financially justify installing Linux on a spare Laptop to support it properly.
  • Yikes.
  • How can the Linux version be “more work than gain” if you are doing little more than tapping that export button, fam?
  • Your words fail to make sense.
  • Yeah, we kinda knew it was an export job from the performance hiccups.
  • It’s sad though, cuz it’s a real good game. I would hope the dev cares enough to support all platform
    • Apparently reading a stack trace is too much though
  • Dude was quick to point out that refunds were out of his hands, okay.
  • You pull Linux support, you need to offer refunds.
  • Shouldn’t be an issue, for the 6 Linux users, right?
  • Rocket Cars & Rust did, the mechanism most certainly exists.
  • Consider the Curator recommendation revoked if this happens.

 

Gamepad Viewer

  • Since Pedro single-handedly killed the other project.
  • This is really more of the same but being weeb based you can pull it right in as a source.
  • Tried it in Firefox and the DS4 is completely off.
  • To be fair, with OJD I had to use it plugged in for it to register properly.
  • Works fine in Chromium, even better than OJD since it registers the buttons/triggers/analog sticks correctly even in blueteeth mode.

 

TheForceEngine

  • Ye might remember a few years ago when LucasArts shuttered their doors, some sauce leaked for the jedi knight games
  • Those releases had a bunch of copywritable code, and also were years old. People got the code ported over to linux, but it’s still game code from over 15 years ago
  • This is a from-scratch re-implementation of the engine for modern platforms
  • I’d like to play Outlaws at 2560×1440@144Hz

 

xow 0.5

  • Make your Xbone controller pretend to be a 360 controller!
  • IF you want to use the non-blueteeth mode for your Xbone controller, this is the thing to use I guess
  • Still debating on picking one up.
  • I’m kidding, damn things are never in stock.

 

Text Flight Alpha

  • You can connect without downloading the client as well! For example, using socat.
  • socat – ssl:leagueh.xyz:10000
  • So, MUD?
    • I guess?
  • Netcat, the game

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Nimbatus
Devel: Stray Fawn Studio
Engine: Unity
Price: £15.49 / U$19.99 / C$22.79

Wazzat: Command the Nimbatus and craft drones out of hundreds of different parts. Survive unknown threats in a fully destructible, procedural universe, compete against other players in different arenas or enjoy complete creative freedom in the sandbox.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys, a long time ago.



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • No issues in windowed or fullscreen.
  • Solid 60 @ 1080 @ 2160p.
  • Keyboard + gerbil combo works as expected.

Fun?

  • Nimbatus is what happens when you create a drone constructor / physics simulator and throw in a gaming element at the end.
  • Like a rug, it really ties things together.
  • So what is that thing?
  • Well, it’s a planet, or should I say planets.
  • You spend a lot of time flying in circles is the point I’m trying to get across.
  • The “gaming” element of Nimbatus feels like an afterthought since you spin in circles and destroy space bees.
  • What the hell have space bees ever done to anybody?
  • The fun is spending the time building your drone and booping about in the test chamber.
  • Making something that is both controllable and useful for the mission is challenging.
  • Multiplayer could be fun with drone racing & deathmatch modes.
  • There is at least one other person playing.
  • I’ve had a good time cocking about in it.
  • Can’t say I would recommend it for $20 but if you catch it on sale have a look.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Plays when you click play
  • Your resoluton options of tiny window or big window are ok. You can just resize the window though
  • Gotta assign buttons to thrusters, so if you don’t like the controls it’s kinda your own fault
  • Performance wise, it holds 300+fps in big window mode

Fun?

  • I think 12 year old jordan would have loved the crap out of this game
  • It’s basically build a spaceship with knex, which was what a lonely 12 year old jordan did a lot
  • Adult Jordan is a little more lukewarm about the game
  • Building the ships is fun, but in the campaign doesn’t really do it for me and creative mode gives me the same options paralysis
  • There are lots of prebuilt drones on the workshop though, so you could always just start with thate
  • Also There is online multiplayer though, so maybe there could be the potential for some besige-like hijinks.

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • It launches
  • It holds 144 if you turn on VSync on a 144Hz monitor, it does around 600FerPS on the drone building bit if you don’t.
  • If there is background music, I honestly didn’t notice it.
  • The controls… well, you make your own.
  • With each piece you apply, you can set a key to activate it.
  • Though it defaults to WASD depending on where you first place a piece, you can easily change it.

Fun?

  • It’s Retrobooster by way of Besieged, with FTL style progression, and a bit of planet exploration.
  • Honestly, those are all very good games and really good donors of individual mechanics
  • Having played a bit during Early Access, which was totally not because I didn’t realise it was in Early Access and absolutely because I wanted to, – hm hm, yeah! – I also did like the semblance of a campaign to give people a goal.
  • I think it’s very well done but if I’m being asked for my own personal opinion and whether I’d like to play more of it, my answer would be “Meh!”

Verdict:

Venn: CHAIRCHAIR
Jordan:CHAIRCHAIR
Pedro: CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Hate Mail:

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