LinuxGameCast Weekly 431: Twerking Cash Penguins

Humble releases a Linux filled Bundle! Steam teaches the DualSense to swipe left, Radeon RX 6800 benchmarks, and Vulkan powered War Thunder. Then Butcher faces, the CahirQAsition. All this, plus your hate mail.


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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
09:12 PS5 DualSense updates
12:01 Mangohud Proton hacks
14:16 Proton 5.21 GE
18:11 Warthunder Vulkan support
21:41 Eight Dragons refresh
24:21 Fantasy Ground Unity
27:06 Shameless self-promotion
31:16 Radeon RX 6800 benchmarks
35:46 NVIDIA 3060Ti performance leaks
39:01 NVIDIA 455.45.01 and CUDA
41:00 D3D12 API Trace
43:38 Humble Farm Bundle
46:09 OpenMW summer review
49:44 Review: Butcher
01:00:49 Hate mail


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Dual Swipe

  • Now all we need is Tinder for Steam.
    • It’s probably gonna be really handy for visual novel games
    • Those folks ain’t using tinder
  • The icons in Big Picture Mode have also been updated with the white circles and grey symbols like they appear on the controller itself.
  • Which means if you have a low contrast screen, you’re going to have issues telling one from the other.


Mango hax

  • Ah the growing pains of switching to containerized runtimes.
  • Step one, make sure teh stuff you need is in your container
  • Or in this case, make sure your container has read access to the relevant libraries.
  • Steam, start packing in the Mango.

Eggroll updates

  • Now even the eggrolls need mango hax.
  • Gave this a shot w/lutris and vkd3d-proton. No luck yet
  • Does that mean I can actually play Borderlands 3 now?
  • I would also like ProtonGE to go back to using the Proton fullscreen hack which actively stops Windows games from trying to set exclusive fullscreen and, more often than not, fuck my 144Hz refresh rate.
  • The flickering on Serious Sam 4 is fixed, which makes the game markedly more playable
  • Native vulkan is also working for SS4 on nvidia, which is nice. I should check and see which performs better now
  • More and more fixes for BG3 make me continue to meat sweats


Vulkan Thunder

  • They’re trying to see if they can get it ready for the 2.0 release.
  • The Linux server has the Vulkan bits enabled
  • Would probably install it again to try with Vulkan.
  • 33GB of tanks, damn.
  • Switched to the test client and it does indeed show Vulkan.
  • Averaged 181 on Pacific War (day)
  • Only using around 30/40% of the GPU.

Steam: Game Updates

Refreshed Dragons

  • Now with a fresh coat of arcade.
  • Bonus dash.
  • Since when does making something blurry make it look extra nice?
  • Can you still turn off the screen effects?
  • Still gotta remote play your way baby.
  • If they patched in some network multiplayer i’d actually be willing to give this another shot. SoR 4 is fun with friends and we need more of that

Steam: New Games

Fantasy Grind

  • Figure I’d give this a mention cuz some folks like using FG to play all sorts of tabletop RPGS
  • This is the unity one. Previous versions only worked in wine, so it’s nice to see that they moved to something a little more cross platform
  • Usually I recommend roll20 cuz this one follows the train stimulator model and can get real pricey REAL quick

News:

AMD 6K bits

  • Wendell threw some Linux native games and VFIO at the 6800 and according to him this is the best AMD launch experience on Linux.
  • So I suppose it figures that it would be the one which would release at the worst possible moment in history.
  • I would have liked if the 6800 was £399, as it stands, they can stuff them.
  • Having release driver support is a nice touch. I suppose it’s architecturally similar to the the 5000 series that the drivers just work
  • Let’s hope AMD can keep that up for their newer HW releases

3060 Reality

  • 8GB Boourns!
  • If that price holds, and once the scalpers/bots move on to something else, I might just get that one.
  • Now the people who forked out for the 2080TI can feel the pain!
  • If it can legit match the 2080 Super for sub 400 that’s still a good deal.

CUDA!

  • I didn’t see it in the announcement but this restores CUDA with 5.9 kernels.
  • Even fixed two Linux games.
  • The Graphics Drivers PPA takes some time to catch up to releases these days
  • It works, running 5.9 on the Threadbooper.

Ray tracing

  • It aspires to trace the rays.
  • It also helps getting the valhallas running, so I guess I’m waiting on the new vkd3d-proton release
  • The article is a huge deep dive, so it’s definitely worth the read if this kind of stuff interests you
  • Still, now that capture and replay capabilities exist, we should start seeing a lot more progress on the dx12 linux front. Which is the future.
    • And also what I need to play damn games that come with my motherboard


Bundle Farm

  • Out there looks real cool, and you can get it for dirt cheap
  • Sigma theory is the only linux game on the over the $15 tier
    • Loophole!
  • You can back it at the $15 level and get a Hat in Time without burning a heretic purchase.
  • Which is the cheapest I’ve seen it at.
  • Picked it up for Superhot.


AutumnMW

  • Asynchronous physics.
  • Better animations
  • Better TES3MP support
  • Better SSE engine level support for extracting the LZ4 files like the one Skyrim SE and Fallout 4 use.
  • I still want that OpenObv with Fallout 3/New Vegas support
  • I’ll do a New Vegas stream beginning to end with it when it works.
  • Automated build coverage is nice. If they can get an automated testing framework in place, that could really help speed up development.
  • Still, not having to build it yourself is nice

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Butcher
Webzone: https://www.gog.com/game/butcher
Devel: Transhuman Design / Crunching Koalas
Engine: Unity
Price: $10.37 (UK) / / (currently 75% off)

Wazzat: BUTCHER is a fast-paced 2D shooter game and a blood-soaked love letter to the early 90s. As a cyborg programmed to eradicate the last remains of humanity, your sole purpose is to well… annihilate anything that moves.

Mandatory Disclosure: Was free on GOG



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Fun?

  • Have you ever wanted to play a 2D DOOM inspired bullet-hell action pew pew game?
  • Bitch, you like pixels?
  • Well damn, do I have just the game for you!
  • Step right up and try and figure out which brown blob is your own silly ass.
  • Straight out of 2016 and oh boy, does that Linux port ever show.
  • Slammed right into my left most monitor and activated smurf mode.
  • I was able to grab the window, scoot it across, and Alt Tab into the game.
  • But hey, at least the controller works.
  • Man, do those chonky brown pixels look crisp at 2160p.
  • And those nonstops screams, the sweetest of all background music.
  • But you whisper venn, is it fun?
  • Yeah, it’s alright in a this motherfuck*r would be rated NC17 if it weren’t for those cutesy pixels.
  • Because like it or not, evisceration by chainsaw is FSM damn adorable if it’s pixelated.
  • At the end of the day it’s a 2D arena shooter that works with a controller and despite the damn near perma character blindness it’s a fun little pick up.
  • Hell, I like it enough to buy a copy.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launched out of the box on both Nvidia and AMD
    • AMD fucks up a little on the first launch, so you gotta restart the game but after that is fine
    • Also yeah, starts up on the wrong monitor
  • Dualshock straight up doesn’t work. Switch pro-controller can move around in menus and fire, but not move. Hmmmmm
  • The default controls are…a little bad. Up is not jump
  • You can remap everything though and it does work
  • Oh dear lord the character blindness
  • The soundtrack is bumpin’ though

Fun?

  • I can see how this could be fun. Once you unfuck the controls, it plays like a doom schmuping platformer
  • Which I guess is okay I guess, I’d just like to know where my character is at a given moment
  • If you’re going to do hipster pixelly games like this, your dude needs to look distinct and clear amidst a myriad of effects and entities. This game’s colour palette is red and brown, which doesn’t really lend itself to that
  • Running around and shooting people to death is fun, up until you lose yourself
  • But yeah, you either gotta have real good reflexes or memorize enemy spawns, kinda just like Doom. It’s definitely got the difficulty down
  • It might be a fitting tribute to Doom, but it doesn’t really do it for me.


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launched out of the box
  • Went to the wrong screen
  • Hung around the dark blue screen of nope for a bit
  • I really don’t miss old Unity.
  • It did hold 144Hz at 2560×1440
  • Didn’t try the controller
  • You can really hear in exactly how much pain the not quite dead enemies are when you shoot half of their body off.
  • The Doom inspired music certainly fits the theme they’re going for.

Fun?

  • The theme here being, what if old Doom but 2D platformer.
  • There’s wearing your inspiration on your sleeve, and then there’s what Butcher is doing.
  • The difficulty curve is more of a hockey stick.
  • The tutorial and first set of levels are very easy and then it immediately ramps up like crazy.
  • The gameplay on screen if you’re watching the video version is from the second set of levels.
  • The AI is damn merciless.
  • The good thing is, those levels are pretty short so if you die and have to go back to the start it’s not a big issue.
  • It’s also a very good pick up randomly and then ragequit back out game.
  • I’m not sure I’ll keep playing it but it is an alright game.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

Vods

  • They’re not choosing.
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