Valve rips open a Steam Deck! Twitch leaks reveal an unreleased Steam competitor, Valve Jupiter benchmarks, and SCUMM celebrates 20 years of being awesome. Then we unpack the latest episode of Linus & Luke hear a Linux.
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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
06:47 Linus & Luke attempt to Linux update
20:04 Steam Deck teardown
24:57 EAC games supported on Steam Deck
29:15 Valve Jupiter benchmark
32:55 Turing Complete
34:48 Bonfire Peaks
36:27 Aeon Drive
38:23 Hazelnut Bastille
41:03 Ion Fury 2.0
50:33 Twitch hack leaks Steam competitor
57:10 Nvidia 450W 3090 Ti
01:06:17 Godot games in Steam Next Fest
01:08:46 20 years of SCUMM
01:10:34 LGX2 Linux driver
01:13:12 Github removes GTA fan project reVC
01:15:54 Review: Staxel
01:28:09 Emails
Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam: News
- Multiple “Do not do this” warnings. So at the very least when a bunch of steamdecks get borked on release they can say “We told you so”
- Still, big props on Valve for even putting out a video like this. You’d never see this from Sony, microsoft or nintendo
- I hope they share pics of RMAs.
- 99% of people will never crack their Deck.
- That said, I look forward to the water cooling and liquid metal mishaps.
- In the era where a laptop which actively encourages you to take it apart exists, and a solid movement behind Right to Repair is well underway, this feels good.
- A great big massive company like VALVe putting their drivers where their screws are and telling people what they need to do.
- I was going to wait for Gamers Nexus or someone of their ilk to do the disassembly, but now I don’t need to.
- Wrist straps over a glove.
- War Thunder, Rust, Dead by Daylight, ARK.
- Why is 7 Days to Die on the list? Because Verge.
- War Thunder has a linux version, no? Same with ARK. Nobody gives a shit about rust anymore
- Lots of “No comment” though.
- Guess they’re waiting to see some sales digits?
- Or hoping that announcing their availability on the deck will boost sales
- PR/marketing sure love their “Ooooh, we’re so mysterious. We’re going to be non-committal about it”
- If that’s a pre-production unit, then alright!
- Because my Ryzen Laptop seems to curb that handily in single thread, while getting curbed in multithread:
- Heck, if you wanna play with Geekbench, here’s my 2400G:
- Of course, CPU performance is all well and good but we need some GPU numbers too
- And if the Pentium II/III bit is confusing, that’s what Geekbench defaults to on Linux when it doesn’t recognize the processor, as evidenced by my Chromebook:
- If everything is gonna be running through dixvix, yeah you’ll probably want multi core performance over single core.
- I too wanna see them gpu numbers
Steam: New Games
- More programming games. yay
- THis one is kinda neat cuz it has you build a basic computer out of logic gates
- The reviews seem to indicate that it’s actually reasonable to grok via this game, which is always bodes well for these sorts of games
- I’m getting flashbacks to the digital systems course in my first year in university
- Nope!
- Little inferno with extra steps. And cubes
- It’s an island full of puzzles, and voxels.
- Shot them an email, but never heard back.
- Looks good, but Y U NO ONLINE MULTIPLAYER
- It’s Strider /w coop, I’m down.
- I knew that art-style looked familiar, it’s the peeps who made the completely mental Dimension Drive
- Kickstarted in 2018 it’s almost ready for public consumption.
- Zelda inspired but it looks like a 2D ARPG on the PS1.
- Yeah, it’s very A Link to the Past inspired
- There is a demo available on their website
Steam: Game Updates
- Improved spider collision!
- Frame Rate / pacing / performance upgrades.
- Better controller support.
- Linux no longer nukes savegames.
News:
- https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/7/22714160/twitch-hack-security-data-breach-problems
- https://twitter.com/Sinoc229/status/1445653203740098560
- 125GB torrent listing the entirety of Twitch’s source code with comment history.
- Creator payout reports from 2019.
- Proprietary SDKs and internal AWS services used by Twitch.
- An unreleased Steam competitor, codenamed Vapor.
- Change passwords and enable all ze factors.
- No credit card info was compromised cuz Visa and MC don’t let you keep those if you want to keep getting money from Visa and MC #PCI-DSSlyfe
- Vapor is kind of interesting. Obviously a working title, but we’ve seen guys like discord try to get in to the game selling business
- Although this could be an amazon pushed project. Maybe Bezos wants in on the Sweeny/Newell slapfight.
- Smells like someone walked out with a thumb drive.
- If there was _ever_ a time for Twitch to open a generous bug bounty programme.
- The best way Twitch has out of this, would be to clean up the bits they can’t actually share from the code and release what they can officially.
- Minimize the amount of people actively searching for the leaked one because you’re offering 90% of it already.
- Get two!
- One for rendering and another for tripping overload protection on your 1000W PSU.
- I hear rumors of these things they call “new video cards”.
- I can’t say I even remember what they look like.
- 7 months and 14 days after the release of the 3060 your only chance of yoinking one is paying the scalper price.
- Not paying $800+ for a sub $400 card, no sir.
- I can only assume a 3090Ti would be targeted at Nvidia’s new BFF.
- Miners.
- I’m afraid (much like Intel of old) the bean counters are running the show.
- Mining sales are not sustainable in the long run and I know you know this.
- Are you lot content with AMD and Intel eating your lunch in the consumer market?
- I have no brand loyalty, none, zero.
- If Intel drops something reasonably priced with better performance than my 2060 and halfway decent compute, I’m buying it.
- If Nvidia has been sitting on stock prepping for the Intel launch, still buying it… but out of spite.
- Will I miss nvenc?
- Yeah, but I can always buy the BM encoder for streaming.
- “Picture to be leaked”, “price moneymoneymoney” huehuehue
- I mean, considering what the price point is for mid range now, I don’t even wanna think about the price on this. And I paid MSRP for a 1080TI
- You’re making cards people can’t buy to compete with other cards people can’t buy.
Godot games in the Steam Next Fest
- The Zone: Stalker Stories and Ex-Zodiac both jump out at me for completely different reasons.
- Only two games here seem to want to tangle with 3d Godot
- Happy 20th Scummversary-m
- With this, you get version 2.5.0
- Grim Fandango, The Longest Journey and Myst 3: Exile are the big games that get support
- Better HiDPI support and an improved Nintendo DS support
- It’s very much in POC form
- Hopefully this project doesn’t get a DMCA takedown request
- The article posits that Take2 wants to essentially force GitHub to enforce it’s repeat offenders policy on the repo and principal contributors
- I want someone with a lot of money and a lot of lawyers to take Take2 down a peg.
- They just pulled GTA 3, VC, and Sanan from Steam.
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Game: StaxelWebzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/405710/Staxel/
Devel: Plukit
Engine: FNA
Price: £14.99 / $19.99 / $21.99
Wazzat: “Staxel is a creative farming and village life game with a cast of quirky characters. Build your farmhouse, help villagers, take to the wilds to fish or hunt for bugs, and grow a variety of crops in your backyard. If you’re feeling social, you can even invite your friends over to share in the fun!”
Mandatory Disclosure: Game-Drive PR sent us keys
Venn:
Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control
- Windowed and fullscreen work.
- No option for resolution.
- Picked up the Xbox1sx controller and everything was mapped.
- OpenGL and running @ 60.
Fun?
- Ah yes, my second least favourite category of games.
- The “I need something to do” simulator.
- What’s with the bedrock being only a few blocks down?
- How am I supposed to build an underground vegan sex dungeon?
- For a “I need something to do” sim it’s a wee lacking in the something to do department.
- I planted the veg and gave it some water.
- Went around town and chatted with people, even the creeps with cat ears.
- Climbed a mountain out of boredom.
- Then I explored a cave that I had hopes of tuning into a vegan sex dungeon.
- I got stuck in the cave and had to spend 25 petals to teleport home.
- Took a nap, checked on the veg and noped right on out of the game.
- Then I came back looking for something, anything… I found a treasure chest with some petals in it.
- So technically I broke even.
- The map is wicked small and the NPCs all hang out in town.
- It’s like a dark and twisted version of Lost.
- Multiplayer only supports IP and friends :(
- Wanted to look around and see what other people were up to but no dice.
- It’s still being actively developed so who knows, it might turn into something one day but today is not that day.
- If you’re looking for a game built around harvesting, skip Staxel and pick up CARRION.
Jordan:
Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control
- Launches OOTB
- Holds 60@ “Fullscreeen” w the 1080TI and the RX580
- No cloud save by the way. Tsk tsk
- No resolution control, gotta drag your own in windowed mode
- Has support for the Xbox and Switch layout, but not Ps4?
- Very minecrafty music
Fun?
- This game is a lot of busywork
- I get that this is the appeal of farming sims and harvest moons and whatnot, but man it’s just not my thing
- The tutorial could be a lot better. Farm Fan is kinda sus and I think she might be a pyro
- Wake up, water crops, harvest, sell, do quests/build, sleep. It’s not a bad loop, but I don’t find it super engaging
- Like real relationships, you can get into the digital ones here by giving various townspeople the stuff that they want and doing crap for them
- Everything in here is a little too cute, which makes you suspect something sinister around the corner, but it doesn’t seem to ever happen
- It’s just a happy little farm, with happy little trees and happy little animals
- IF that’s what you want out of your gaming experience this game will happily provide that
- I put my girlfriend in front of this, and she had a blast taking care of all the animals, so take that for whatever it’s worth
Pedro:
Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control
- Works out of the box
- It’s FNA, so VSync is a damn lie.
- If you have freesync/GSync Compat enabled your monitor will refresh at 60 to keep up with it, but all it does is limit the FerPS to 60.
- It creates a fucking folder in my $HOME, -1 Chair.
- You can remap all the controls, which I like
- Didn’t bother with the controller since I’ve always Minecrafted with the keyboard.
- And make no mistake, this is the unwanted child of Minecraft’s weird relationship with Stardew Valley.
Fun?
- Unfortunately, it seems to have inherited more from Stardew Valley than Minecraft.
- Which happens to be the one I like the least in that equation.
- And by the least I mean I do not like it.
- I liked Minecraft because it gave you this great big world for you to make your own fun.
- There were cave systems full of natural stuff to find, abandoned mines, towns with NPCs that didn’t treat you like their best friend, and later even ruins of old underground civilizations.
- I like the exploration, it’s the only thing I like about these games.
- If the exploration is rewarding, I will engage with its other mechanics.
- If it isn’t, I won’t.
- And the first thing I did in Staxel was go explore the world and find things, and I realized how small the game map was.
- And the two chests I found combined, contained less than 200 currency and not much of anything else.
- It is Stardew Valley, but in voxelly 3D with edgelord, catgirls, and bishounen villagers.
- Someone’s bound to love it, but it did nothing to change my opinion.
- In fact, it only soured it when I saw that stupid fucking “My Games” folder in my home directory.
Verdict:
Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:
Hate Mail:
