Linux Game Cast 499: A Familiar Blur

Google threatens to update Stadia, universal DXVK Cache files, Elden Ring is better on the Steam Deck, and Windows drivers for your Linux console.

Special thanks to:
Stein (new patreon)
Tomasz (executive producer)

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
04:44 Steam 2021 year in review
08:26 Elden Ring smoother on Deck
12:02 Silent Windows for Steam Deck
16:32 15 fps mode for Deck
19:22 Core Keeper
25:12 New features for Google Stadia
29:42 Linux gaming on the go with wineapOS
33:02 DXVKache
35:13 Discord Overlay 0.4.3
37:42 GameStudio
39:58 Review: onKey Up
49:22 Emails

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Year-o-Steam

27% increase in spending.
2.6M first-time purchasers each month of 2021.
Those remote play numbers are vague.
- Based on the verbiage It’s supposed to be people streaming the game to their mobile/link/other computer vs folks using it for multiplayer
Spreading the Deck pre-orders between the reservation fee and actual purchase in different years also means you can claim profits for those two years.
On top of making the whole scalping business really pointless.

Smooth Decks

This is one of the pros of valve controlling the driver stack all the way down.
Shitty dx12 programming be damned!
The Deck can overcome shitetastic Japanese PC ports.
Smoother than an RTX 3070? Allegedly.
Smoother yes, higher frame count no.
You could easily test the difference on Linux too by using experimental bleeding edge with VALVe’s optimizations and then switching to ProtonGE
But now GE is based on Proton rather than WINE so it’s not an issue anymore.

Sound doesn’t work on windows

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BAA8

Now windows finally has feature parity with linux. No sound 4 u.
Windows 10 only.
Don’t expect any support from Valve when you install your hacker OS.
You need a dongle to install Windows.
Games run like poo.
- It’s so bad GPD tried to bullshit folks with 3dmark scores
Well, you do have to run AMD’s drivers on Windows and at this point I thought everyone knew that shit doesn’t fly.

Choppy Deck

Use case for 15? Vangers?
- That runs at 20
For visual novels, you can play your porny hentai still frames at 15 FPS.
Puzzle games that aren’t time dependent or in 3D
Turn based strategy?
Yeah, I guess games where you really don’t care about the animation and you just want to stretch the battery life as far as it can go
The battery seems to be the most common complaint of the deck by far, so short of some duct tape and a battery bank this is what you’re getting
Weee keyboard themes

Steam: New Games

Core Keeper

Didn’t expect to see co-op.
Isometric Hipster Pixel co-op Minecraft?
8 players is pretty dece
Add .5 dimensions to your terraria experience

News:

Stadia for the Win

Welcome to the “should have been available at launch” segment.
Stadia is an example of what happens when you put the work on the game devs.
Facilitate the ease of developers and publishers making use of the white label service?
So Stadia runs on Windows KVMs? Or are they calling their own WINE an emulator?
Hey, at least google is capable of operating a live stream, so we shouldn’t have long patches of nothing like when valve tried this

Game with Linux anywhere

The bane of library computers everywhere.
Suck it underpaid IT workers!
Boot off of your external drive, play some games. ??? Profit
No nvidia support at the moment
Persistent storage live OS is not new, the gaming focus is the big one here.
I have a 120GB SSD I can play with for this.

DXVK cache files

This is neat.
Valve does this via steam, but if you’re gaming with lutris or heroic, you’re not gonna gonna be running in circles until your game works good
Now there’s a vendor neutral way of sharing shader caches.
Up next, CacheDB.
Yes! Get to sharing those shadery bits so everyone can have access to them.

Discover Overlay v0.4.3

Getting the Deck bits setup.
New readme with extra sarcasm
Still a terrible name, as the KDE package manager is also called Discover
Gamescope mode forces 1280×800, so if you’re running Gamescope on your custom built box with 1080p screen or higher, you’re gonna have to get creative.

GameStudio

Holy readme batman!
C++ based 2D engine for platformers with an eye for also supporting tile based stuff like zelda or tactics
QT and openGLES 2.0
When I read the little index and I saw Graphics (todo), I wondered how they got that little gif they have there.
Valgrind support and everything, very nice!

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: On Key Up
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1460480/
Devel: Roppy Chop Studios
Engine: Unity
Price: £5.79 / $7.99 / $8.99

Wazzat: Get to know your keyboard with this unique, physics-based puzzle game! Bounce, roll, paint, and even break objects with each press of a key.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Hey look, dark mode!
You can play full or 720p windowed. Alt Enter does the trick along with the ingame menu.
QWERTY & QWERTYZ & AZERTY but FK Dvorak.
Sound on & off.

Fun?

I had a good time with what I played.
Balancing a cylinder, rolling some dice, and popping a balloon.
The cylinder did a good job explaining how to use other keys to align things.
Dice were alright but I discovered keyboard smashing got the job done, eventually.
Popping the balloon is where I tapped out after some time.
The grip on the keys were a bit much for my liking.
That, or Mr. Poppy triangle was made of superglue.
Still, I will probably go back because I want to make a hamburger and play with pew pew lasers.
I like myself a good fk around physics game with optional RNG and On Key Up gets the job done.
You should be able to get your $7.99 worth without too much trouble.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches OOTB
Yeah, it’s a tiny window
The doopy background music fits
The controls are just keyboard, but don’t mash too hard. The function keys aren’t blocked out

Fun?

I spent most of my time during this game screaming
It’s definitely not using a keyboard in a way that I’m used to
The challenges get progressively worse as you need to find ways to contort your hands to achieve the desired result
The car driving one can EABOD
I suppose I’m a glutton for punishment cuz I keep coming back
Based on you getting 1 cheebo per level, I’m gonna assume there are 24 levels total. That could very well get you over the two hour mark

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launched out of the box
720p is all you get unless you feel like futzing with the prefs file
Even fullscreen is just upscaled 720p.
It holds 144 FerPS
I like the background music.
The graphics are certainly there.
It’s not going to blow anyone away but they’re perfectly serviceable
And it’s a keyboard game, literally.
You can use the mouse for the menu, but it’s a keyboard game.
And it’s a keyboard game you can only play if you have an English layout set for your keyboard.
So if you have a different layout, there are certain keys which you can’t press, like the one on the top left corner above tab and next to the alphanumerical 1.
To get this to work, you need to force the layout change system wide.
Starting the game with LC_ALL=C %command% unfortunately doesn’t make a difference.

Fun?

Yes, if you have an English keyboard layout or don’t mind switching before playing it.
The worst part is that there’s a keyboard layout chooser, but they’re all ANSI keyboards and it doesn’t really account for the exact local variant.
That’s going to push a lot of people away.
Probably not the majority, since according to the steam survey the majority seems to have their system set to English, but still.
Even if you have the keyboard layout set to English UK, it’s an ISO keyboard so some of the keys are in the wrong place.
I really, really like weird games like this.
You’re literally playing with your input device and it’s making you aware of your keyboard.
But the lack of proper local variants is something I can’t really overlook.