LinuxGameCast Weekly 415: Camel Clutching

Valve’s new hire will help improve open-source graphics for Linux, Proton GE learns how to Death Stranding, Hellpoint gets a Vulkan powered release, and Humble has a Fury bundle.

Special Tanks To:
Romeo Sid Vicious (new patreon)
Basil (WeeFee card and a ushanka for Nory)
Noctiluus (HUGE MKII)

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Timestamps:
05:26 Steam manual update
07:46 Valve hires RADV developer
09:46 Proton GE Death Stranding support
11:16 Steam cracks down on VPNs
13:21 Northguard balancing
15:21 Hellpoint
19:56 Monsieur PAF
21:26 Really bad flying machine
23:26 Shameless self promotion
30:46 Humble Raw Fury Bundle
33:01 Atari VCS spotted
36:11 PCSX2 updates
38:41 System76 keyboards
43:31 Freeorion 0.4.10
45:36 Thrive 0.5.1
47:31 Thimbleweed Linux
53:31 CHAIRQASITION: GoNNER
01:05:41 Hate mail

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Manual updates

It might not sound like much but this one is a time saver.
Games with manuals will now include a link to the manual in the Additional Content section of their game details page
I feel this impacts a lot of older games these days. Manuals kinda went the way of the dodo after games on physical media stopped being a thing
You needed something to read on the way home to get you hyped for the hour long install process on your 1000 RPM ide drive

New hire

Having a background in WII emulation is probably pretty useful for writing AMD graphics drivers
Wish this guy the best. Hopefully he helps release some cool stuff
When I see things like this it really enforces that Valve is committed to Linux as a future platform.
Yeeees! Moar RADV!

Proton-5.9-GE-5-ST-K100-OMG-YOLO-3-WTFBBQ

Death Stranding running with mesa RADV/ACO.

Vpnope

Never crossed my mind.
This is a real big “Fuck you Australia” from valve
It was rather inevitable considering VALVe’s previous moves to stop people from buying games in other countries.

Steam: Game Updates

Northguard balance

No Linux specific changes.
Which is a good thing in my book, unless there are some long standing issues which need to be addressed.
4X Vikings still does not interest me.

Steam: New Games

Hellpoint

Dark Souls in space made with Unity.
You need 4 threads or 4 cores, pick one.
Unity Vulkan!
It runs very well
They changed the combat from the jank fest that was the Thespian Feast demo.
It’s much better now
Performance is very good, but it doesn’t hold 144 at 2560×1440 with everything cranked
This game has some legit game breaking bugs ATM.
Little things, like all of your inventory going nope and no way to recover.

An Interesting Journey of Monsieur PAF

Another pretty looking 3d sokoban game
This one has some platforming elements too.
Will allegedly run on your favourite linux distribution. What’s yours?
3D verticality in magnificent homemade, two-dimensional environments?
So, 2.5D platforming?

Really Bad Flying Machine

This boy’s 30 dollars. And it looks kinda junk
But so did Stephen’s Sausage roll, and that game kicked my ass
They seem like they could be interesting puzzles, but that gold price man
I don’t think the top down camera is doing this one favors.
At least, it certainly isn’t selling me on it.
Supposedly a vulkan title

News:

Raw furry bundle

Couple of solid Linux titles in this one.
That’s more penguins than we’ve seen in the last few bundles!

We have a box!

https://twitter.com/Dropiez/status/1288913632340844545

It’s certainly a box
What I care about is the box inside the box and how well it runs stuff
No news on how/what it runs, thus far.

PCSX 2 Progress report

No word on RasPi compatibility yet.
It would be nice!
Especially since from my experience, PCSX2 runs so much smoother than RetroArch.
An improved zbuffer implementation fixed a bunch of text and image ordering issues with several games
On the linux side of things they’re dropping gtk in favour of wxwidgets

System 70 Keys

No blink, no clack, much split.
Things I look for in a keyboard.
Reinventing the keyboard is a lofty goal.
One we’ve seen fall flat into the niche market repeatedly.

Freeorion 0.4.10

Suck it python2
Honestly, these all seem like solid improvements. Freeorion was one of the first games I ever tried on linux, so I’m glad to see them still chugging along

Thrive 0.5.1

Switching out game engines is tricky. Godot is good, but it doesn’t do the work for you
You can save your game now though. That’s pretty nifty
Added a launcher to fetch the latest builds from their build system
They added a filter to make everything look like you’re viewing it through a microscope

Thimbleweed Linux

When it clicks that Apple cares not for the Desktop.
And Windows was never an option.
Going to be interesting to see what iBook devs do when ARM becomes the norm.
Ah the learning phase.
When you realize half the stuff you’re used to is just gone, and you discover brand new features that leave you baffled as to how you ever lived without it
The XPS was good call, but the stupid limitations Dell have arbitrarilly posed on the Linux configurations still baffle me.
That’s twice I’ve pointed it out on LWDW and now here’s Ron Gilbert stating the same thing.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: GoNNER BLüEBERRY EDiTION
Devel: Art in Heart
Engine: Unity
Price: £6.99 /U$ 9.99 / C$10.99

Wazzat: GoNNER is a tough as hell procedurally-generated 2D platformer with roguelike elements, following the largely misunderstood and altruistic Ikk on a journey to cheer up his only friend in this world – a giant landbound whale named Sally – by searching for just the right trinket in the deep and dark places nearby.

Mandatory Disclosure: N/A

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Press Proton for controls.
That was the first memorable bit for me when firing up Gonner.
Xclone, boop boop, PS4, boop boop, nada.
Keyboard worked a treat but no.
Love it or hate it this is one of the little talked about bonus sodas of Proton.
Sometimes a 4+ year old native game can have compat issues.
Tapping that Proton button more often than not sorts them.
At least in my experience.
Using Proton it held 65/90 @ 2160p depending on how much shite I was decimating on-screen.

Fun?

Sometimes it’s all about presentation.
If you start me off wondering just WTF is going on you’re doing something right.
The entire game comes off as some type of fever dream.
But, what is it at the core?
Well, two things you should know about upfront are rouglike and procedural levels.
That said it’s really a platform shooter more than anything else.
Plenty of random upgrades and power ups that can all eat some dicks once you get the shotgun.
That particular weapon is a little OP, even for my taste.
But you can mix-and-match during your run or adjust your loadout when hanging with death.
I like it, it’s cute, and just good old fashioned FKN strange.
I can excuse the roguelike and generated levels to an extent since jumping, exploding, and smashin is rather enjoyable.
Also, back to the presentation, I really want to see more of the world / waking nightmare.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches OOTB and holds 60
Works fine with the dualshock 4. Pretty tight controls
Everything looks fine. Video options are pretty basic
Everything looks good. Sounds are definitely blips and bloops, and is a little forgettable

Fun?

Ah, another one of these action platformers I’m terrible at
This one is decently fun though,
The platforming is super smooth, everything is responsive and therefore feels like it’s genuinely your fault when you die
However, I do gotta fault it for the “hit” animation. Sometimes I lose track of where my dude is
The health system is kinda neat too. You can and gain lose your weapons or your extra hits as you go. Reminds me a lot of ghosts and goblins
I really dig the art style and the enemy designs. I’m pretty sure sega gonna sue somebody though. Those red sonic the hedgehog dudes are way too on the mark
The presentation of it is very cool as well. It reminds me of that one bugs bunny bit where he starts arguing with the animator
It’s a roguelike, so mastery of the platforming is more important than learning specific levels, but if you’re not into that, this one might not sell you

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launched just fine
Holds 144FerPS
Funky music and psychedelic graphics
DualShock 4 works if you enable Steam Input.
Very rumbly!

Fun?

I may or may not have sat in the menu for a couple of minutes to hear the funky music
The audio I like, the video I could honestly do with a bit… more… of everything?
I criticized Salt & Sanctuary for the same thing.
However background is literally just that, background.
It’s not the core focus of GoNNER.
And GoNNER actually goes the extra mile to make you focus on its core.
The only things on the screen are you, your pieces, the enemies and the start and end of the level.
The rest appears only as you come close to it that it would be relevant.
It makes it plainly obvious you don’t have to worry about the environment until you have to, at which point it shows you the environment you need to care about.
It’s a different approach to the presentation of the 2D platformer roguelike genre.
I like it, not enough to make it a daily staple of my gaming habits, but I do like what they did.