Linux Game Cast 491: Floppy Things

Humble removes DRM-free Linux downloads from the Trove, Steam Deck shipping updates, running God of War on Linux, and €300 Radeon RX 6500XT’s because reasons. 


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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
05:50 Steam Decks shipping on time
08:25 Monster Hunter on Proton
10:40 God of War on Proton
15:05 DOOM Eternal multiplayer on Linux
17:40 Buck up and drive
20:25 Museum of lockpicking
22:55 Easy Red 2
25:20 Slay the Spire testing Steam input
27:00 Besiege 64-bit
35:10 Nvidia beta drivers
38:00 AMD 6500 XT pricing
43:10 No futext2 for WINE
45:30 Linux powered VR face-toasters
49:20 DXVK 1.9.3
51:55 Humble nukes the Linux trove
56:35 Review: Buck Up And Drive!
01:07:25 Emails


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

On time Deck

  • Looks like there won’t be any secondary delays
    • Although now that both valve and I have spoke, another boat is gonna get stuck in a canal or something
  • I look forward to the email saying I can pay the rest of it.
    • Then and only then will we have a hard date.
    • …ish.


Monster

  • I was talking with a friend the other day about Monster Hunter and apparently Rise runs like ass on the switch.
  • Hopefully the steam deck is a better love story. Hopefully the goddamn netcode will work
  • I see people playing Monster Hunter and I feel like I want to like it, but then I play it and everything is fucking chore.
  • The primary gameplay loop is literally collecting what in other games would vendor trash and crafting stuff from it.
  • Sorry, you need to kill the same big monster thing like 3 or 4 times before you can get the stuff.
  • Why? Because fuck you and your time, that’s why.


God of Proton

  • I guess you can say something looks solid if you overlook the lack of fullscreen support.
  • Outside of that nonsense it’s running fine (58/65) with Proton and DLSS on fugly at 2160.
  • Welp, I got the first realm and it’s struggling around 45.
  • That’s what I’m forced to play at unless I want to live that windowed life.
  • Or set my desktop resolution to not 2160p.
  • No moon glyphs for the PS4 controlla.


Eternal Proton Multiplayer

  • The 2v1 thing looks interesting re doom multiplayer
  • One day Proton will Make pathfinder WoR run like not poop.
  • Has someone done a coop MOD for it yet?

Steam: New Games

Buck Up And Drive


Museum of Mechanics

  • Remember the best part of Skyrim?
  • The developer’s goal here is kind of interesting
  • Lets collect and reproduce all of the examples of a specific subsystem in games and stick them in a sandbox where you can compare and contrast to see which ones you like better
  • Lockpicking is the first candidate, and lo and behold they tossed a lockpicking roguelike on top of that just for gits and shiggles.
  • Depending on how arcade the lockpicking is.
  • I would not mind learning how to pick some old school locks if there was more to it than wiggle, break, repeat.
  • The Oblivion lockpick mini game was the worst.


Easy 2 Red

  • Verdun, but this time with World War 2
  • This is a shooter focused on being a “realistic combat simulation “
  • Very big maps, but its’ giving MoH Allied Assault for the PS2 graphics a run for its money
  • Also big kudos to the dev for sending us three keys.
  • I know it’s called Easy Red 2 but look at the logo and tell me it’s not Easy 2 Red.

Steam: Game Updates

Deck of Cards

  • Adding Steam Input to prepare, though this is one of those games I’d play with the touchscreen.
    • I’m sure the devs of those hundreds of lazy mobile ports are rejoicing at that bit of hardware addition
  • With bonus log4j mitigations.


64Bitsege (Foxy)

  • 64 bit means that you can go a little crazier in multiplayer
  • There’s a also a whack of new stuff for the level editors, logic gates
  • More performant explosions.

News:

Nvidia 510.39.01 BETA

  • Lots of new vulkan extensions. A couple EXT ones, a couple khronos ones
  • Looks like they’re still fucking around with the GBM backend
  • 3.10 kernel or bust. RIP centos 6
  • Apparently globally setting _GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS globally was causing some vulkan hiccups that are now fixed.
  • Davinci is a little fussy with them but no issues outside of that.
  • Turns out Davinci is really fussy, had to revert.
  • Fixed a bug which caused OpenGL and Vulkan applications to generate excessive traffic over dbus while attempting to communicate with nvidia-powerd, even though nvidia-powerd was not running.
    • That’s been an issue since October
  • I found it odd because when I wondered what was happening to my RAM and KWin was actually behaving, I had fuck all idea what it could be.
  • Lo and behold, the Nvidia drivers were filling up my RAM with dbus-message spam about powerd (which isn’t even running)


6500xt pricing

  • Why you might ask? Because fuck you that’s why.
  • The TUF (supposedly the lowest end of the custom designs) has a $35 MSRP markup.
  • Let’s see what this and the 3050 shake loose.
  • I would expect these to go for 270+ freedom units.
  • For a card that trades blows with a 1660 Stuper.
  • Like most of you I don’t care because I’m not buying a new GPU unless the 2060 splodes.


No futex2 4 WINE

  • Apparently the Futex patches in wine staging have been a maintenance nightmare.
  • That and other reasons are why it’s not going to end up in vanilla wine any time soon
  • Looks like if you want to use FUTEX2 with your games, you’re stuck on proton or a custom wine build with the futex patches.
  • Yeah, the cost / benefit is out of whack for the WINE team on this one.
  • Apparently it was a lot of work for just a few games that showed any actual improvement.


Wireless VR Toasters

  • They need to raise 2.5M in order to start cranking these toasters out.
  • Selling 892 headsets @ $2,799/unit is the break even point.
  • It’s a realistic price for a company trying to ship a (reletavely) small batch of headsets vs RNG pricing that only works if they attract an outside investor.
  • A Linux based self-contained VR headset is a niche in a niche.
  • It’s an ambitious goal to say the least.
  • I do wonder if there is a market for what amounts to devkits.


DXVK 1.9.3

  • DLSS will now work with the dxvk implementation of nvapi
  • More accurate DX9 behaviour to fix issues with that dark souls game pedro hates so much
  • Less sketchy shadows in black mesa
  • The disappearing grass bug at the start of the OG (DX9) version of Dark Souls 2 is fixed!
  • Heck yeah!


Humble levelling

  • No more DRM free downloads for Lin/Mac for those of you with a monthly sub.
  • This will not affect Bundle purchases.
  • Gotta have that Windows app if you want your 90 or so DRM-free game downloads.
  • I want to get angry about this but I only use it for the Steam keys.
  • I’m glad I downloaded all my humble Linux native games.
  • Given humble’s history of neglecting their linux infrastructure, this don’t surprise me.
  • I ain’t happy about it though

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Buck Up And Drive!
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1714590/Buck_Up_And_Drive/
Devel: Fábio Fontes
Engine: GameMaker Studio

Price: £5.79 / $7.99 / $8.99

Wazzat: Endless driving game inspired by arcade classics, with simple yet intense gameplay featuring a total slap in the face of realism. And a kick in the spleen, too!

Mandatory Disclosure: Dev sent us keys on Curator Connect



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Does not launch out of the box.
  • This is not acceptable 2022, the year of our Deck.
  • I gave Buck Up And Drive a solid thirty minutes of my time and that’s 30 more than the dev spent testing their Linux build.
  • Let this be a learning moment, do not rely on any engine to poop out a perfect build be it Gamemaker, Unity, Ureal etc.
  • These things need testing.
  • The “hurrr linux nerds, just boot into windows” excuse goes up in a glorious ball of smoke when the Deck gets released.
  • It’s time to develop new habits.
  • After launching the game from a terminal (sorry linus) it popped up a window that was easy to fullscreen.
  • Xbox worked without complaint.
  • Both the analog stick and left button worked.
  • 60 gonna 60.
  • Hope you like that one soundtrack.

Fun?

  • Buck Up And Drive was clearly inspired by the arcade game from Yakuza 0.
  • Like the arcade game from Yakuza 0 it’s an endless runner where you race the clock, but with a twist.
  • It would seem scientists have managed to splice the DNA from a car built for drifting, with Tony Hawk.
  • While this might seem like a bad idea at first, the results can be quite entertaining.
  • What we have is a motoring vehicle that only sees gravity as a suggestion.
  • Able to generate boost by wiggling its bum.
  • While that’s all quite entertaining at first, with flippity dodas and the grinddidy spark-slides, well, at the end of the day it’s all about outrunning the clock.
  • Like the arcade game from Yakuza 0.
  • If you like putting points on the board to compete with the internet, wait until the developer decks their build, then consider giving it a look.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Let’s take the opportunity to remind our dear viewers and developers about line endings, and how different operating systems have different ones
  • That said, dos2unix fam. We better see a teeny weeny update before the deck launches
  • Then it launches
  • Runs pretty well afterwards.
  • Controller prompts are nice and generic
  • I like the little soundtrack loop. Well done

Fun?

  • It’s an infinite runner, with a twist
  • You’re a car, and you gotta do skateboard tricks
  • It’s certainly no skatebirb in that department
  • Still, I didn’t hate it, which is pretty good for someone who doesn’t like driving games
  • Lining up those tackles is a bit pain though especially cuz once you pass a car it gone
  • And sometimes you gotta tell people to move bitch get out the way or you’re not gonna make the checkpoint in time
  • It’s just ok in my book


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Hitting that play button out of the box does nothing
  • And it’s because of the invisible DOS end of line characters
  • The Humble version of Risk of Rain has the same problem in the run.sh file.
  • You can work around it by deleting the steam/steamapps/common/Buck\ Up\ And\ Drive\!/assets/steamrun.sh and creating a blank one called steamrun.sh in the same folder with just:

#! /bin/bash

./BuckUpAndDrive

  • Or run it directly from the proper binary one directory up.
  • It’s locked at 60 because GameMaker Studio.
  • Given my experience with controllers in past GameMaker Studio games I didn’t even bother
  • The music is on a fairly short loop, it’s very high energy but you will start to notice the loop if you’re on a run for 10 to 20 minutes.
  • The graphics are where this game shines.
  • That’s a very fluid, very retro, but very good looking game.

Fun?

  • It is, in small doses.
  • Have a sit down, do one of the “endless” drives until you run out of time and enjoy the wonky cars and over the top physics.
  • I like this.
  • But it doesn’t really keep me hooked beyond that.
  • It is cleverly done, the stage lengths keep increasing the better you do to give you a challenge
  • There’s a lot of different stages, some are very busy around the edges of the road, so I find myself favoring the non-city ones.
  • There’s different cars but you have to unlock them so you’ll always use the latest one to show yourself off.
  • I’d have given it 3 chairs but that cock up with the launch script is pretty bad in 2022.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


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