LinuxGameCast Weekly 418: Peanuts On Rambos

AMD updates their Vulkan sauce, Nvidia 3090 prices leak, DDraceNetwork comes to Steam, and Veloren brings their open-source multiplayer voxel RPG to Linux. Then Really Bad Flying Machine faces, the ChairQAsition.

Special tanks to:

  • sempai (new patreon)

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Timestamps:
05:03 Valve clarifies promoting games on storefront.
08:13 EA comes to Steam. Will it Proton?
10:53 Steam client beta unhangs Vulkan shaders.
12:53 DDraceNetwork
14:23 SpiritFarer
16:13 Helheim Hassle
18:13 Epic Apple slapfight continues.
23:26 Shameless self promotion.
28:06 AMD Vulkan hotness.
30:26 New Nvidia drivers.
31:46 Nvidia 3090 pricing.
35:06 GeForce Now pulled from Playstore.
37:06 LibRetro hacked.
40:56 Veloren voxel MMORPG.
43:47 Chairqasition: Really Bad Flying Machine
54:58 Hate mail.


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

 Valve rules

  • So according to their clarification, this isn’t anything new.
  • Just a reminder for a few unnamed parties who are trying to push their luck with big V.
  • Can we stop devs from promoting sales for their other games on their game page?
  • The point where VALVe considers strongly wording their FAQs means someone’s been really pushing it.
  • I can think of a few culprits, and most of them are now selling on the Epic Store.

 

It’s in the Steam

  • Lookit that, not a single steamos symbol anywhere
  • I suppose this means that Proton is gonna get real good at running EA games in the near future
  • This being one of the aforementioned culprits, though it is the one who isn’t bending over to take it from Timmy.

 

Vulkan fixes

  • Anyone run into that stuck shader compile issue? I’ve seen it a few times
  • Also some steam input fixes for virtual mice input
    • Adding mouse stuff to the gyroscope might have some interesting results for some games
  • I’ve never had one hang but some of them will make you wonder if it did.
  • I did have a couple of instances of it just stopping while claiming it was still doing it.
    • Checking htop confirmed that there was no CPU usage.
  • And now I no longer see the #VKShaderComp_… bit, just the actual text.

Steam: New Games

 DDraceNetwork

  • Gives me some speedracers vibes
  • What’s this? Online multiplayer?
  • This could be some free fkaround multiplayer goodness.

 

Spiritfarer®

  • Side scrolling stardew valley?
  • This one has been getting a lot of love on the Twitch.
  • There was a lot of hype behind this on one of the gaming conventions from years prior.

 

Helheim Hassle

  • This looks a LOT like Manual Sa.. oh, that tracks.
  • Yeah, perfectly paranoid seems to have a low key body horror thing going
  • It has a demo. It works

Epic watch continues

Apple Nukes Dev Accounts

  • Did Epic expect Apple’s scorched earf policy?
  • Devs, it’s a good time to look into Unity, a company that (at least) half supports Linux.
  • VFX companies, you’re on your own.
  • I want to know who at Epic came up and executed this stunt in the first place.
  • They / them live in a bubble, ignorant of how the company is viewed by the public at large.
  • The unity devs are probably squeeing with glee ATM
  • Hey developers. THis is why you should use open source, cross platform tools so stuff like this won’t screw you over
  • Tinfoil hat is picking up a signal that says apple doesn’t care about gaming anyways, this just forced their hand
  • Now Epic is trying to get Spotify and other major services to coalesce to fight Apple.
  • Second story: This looks more like a lil Tim hissy fit.
  • Moral: Don’t play hardball with Apple, just ask Nvidia.

News:

AMD Vulkan update

  • This is the AMD produced open source vulkan driver.
  • Apparently this gets used in the windows driver too
  • Has a couple fixes for proton games, less crashy wayland support and updates the api to 1.2.150
  • Frenchy reported a smoother creepy fetus.

 

Swapy Vulkan

  • Matrox, eh?
  • They appear to be working.
  • Triple buffering for Vulkan is probably a good way to stop tearing with less of a performance impact than just clamping the FerPS to 60Hz.

 

Nvidia pricing

  • That’s cheap.
  • Give me a 3060 /w 16GB for $5/600 and you has my monies.
  • That’s still a chunk of money but I’m more inclined to believe the $1999 price tag.
  • 3 slots of fury.
  • This is probably just for the 3090?

 

Almost Chrome

  • Going to be a bunch of sketchy *.apk’s floating around.
  • That didn’t last very long.
  • Also, no x86! Booo!
  • There’s gonna be a webRTC client coming spoon™

 

Retro hacks

  • According to them, someone gained access to a high level member’s github account, wiped out their buildbot and stabotaged their primary git repository
  • Apparently no malicious code has been pushed anywhere, so they say that none of the cores code was compromised
  • The last real backup they had was several months old, apparently cuz backups are expensive (not really)

 

Multiplayer voxel RPG

  • …General Kenobi!
  • Name aside, this has more in common with Zelda than minecraft.
  • It’s supposed to be an MP breath of the wild style game with voxel mechanics
  • It does work.
  • Fuck all idea what there is to do other than attack animals and be mauled to death.
  • You can also zoom all the way out.
  • It holds 60, just.
  • Honestly, a bit more put together than I was expecting.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Really Bad Flying Machine 
Devel: Eyal Hazor
Engine: Unity
Price: £19.49 / U$24.99 / C$28.99

Wazzat: This is a puzzle game where you play as a flying machine. Shoot your propellers off to break boxes. Once you shoot a propeller, you lose the ability to move to its direction. Collect keys to advance through the floors.

Mandatory Disclosure: Dev sent us keys via Curator Connect



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Woof, this one has some rough edges.
  • Out of the box everything launched and it picked right up with the Xclone controller.
  • Then I made the mistake of dicking around in the menu.
  • Know how many clicks it takes to get back to 2160p? 38.
  • That’s with having to move the cursor around because it does the screen jumpy nonsense.
  • You can speed things up by pressing D or right but there is a bug that causes it to jump to Language every so often.
  • Outside of that it held 60 @ 2160p and things moved when I told them to.

Fun?

  • This game started life as part of Ludum Dare 46.
  • In fact, the prototype is still available.
  • Gonna be honest, I like the art style of the prototype.
  • Once you get in the game things settle down.
  • Move up, down, left, right, up, down?
  • Using a propellor nixes movement in that direction.
  • Like Stephen’s Sausage roll this is one of those fkn games that looks simple but shows you who is in charge in the first 30 minutes.
  • Hell, on the second puzzle I had my “oh, it’s going to be like that” moment.
  • Unfortunately presentation counts for something.
  • Everything from the menus to camera movement going out of bonds screams unfinished.
  • And it has bugs.
  • Got stuck twice on the second set of stages because my flying machine bottomed out.
  • You have a good concept for a game and the working mechanics in place.
  • What you don’t have is a finished product that passes the $24.99 sniff test.
  • Can’t sell a game on mechanics alone.
  • If you really really like mind scratching puzzle nonsense Really Bad Flying Machine has it.
  • Just be aware, only the absolute minimum has been applied to make it function as a game.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches, holds 60@UHD
  • Dualshock works as does wasd.
  • Firing takes a little getting used to.

Fun?

  • The most obvious comparison here is stephen’s sausage roll. It’s a puzzle game with crappy visuals and an oddly high price
  • And it can be a damn brain tickler. Some of these puzzles are tricksy, and there are enough new variables introduced to keep things fresh
  • It kinda just seems like it’s lacking something. Certainly polish, but something else
  • One issue I do have is how finicky it actually is. One could argue that’s almost the point, but then have a button that just resets the level quickly.
  • Beyond that, the puzzles are hard. If that’s what you’re after, 25 bucks isn’t that big a deal. If not, I can’t recommend it.


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • It launched
  • It holds 144Hz at 2560×1440
  • There’s a definite lack of sound, except for the occasional clink
  • WASD and directional arrows were both mapped out of the box.
  • If there is a way to turn the camera, I couldn’t see it.

Fun?

  • There’s the prototype of a damn good puzzle game here.
  • It’s not quite there and not being able to rotate or zoom out so you can see everything at once isn’t doing it any favors.
  • It all boils down to where are the diagonal blocks and how many bits can I sacrifice to still be able to use them.
  • But it does a very good job of slapping your brain across the occipital lobe and calling you an idiot.
  • I straight up couldn’t figure out at least one of the levels in each segment of the factory.
  • Good puzzle game, but it needs a bit more.
  • Sound if nothing else…

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

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