Linux Game Cast 501: PotatOS

Steam on Chromebooks is now a thing! NVIDIA is working on Gamescope, Steam Decks get opt-in feedback, and RIP RetroArch Playtest.

Special thanks to:
Aldius – Valheim

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
05:32 Steam on Chrome OS (alpha)
08:52 Proton experimental updates
10:57 Steam Deck opt-in feedback
15:52 ChimeraOS in Steam Deck
17:12 Amazing Steam UI consistency
19:47 Dracula’s Revenge
23:22 RIP RetroArch Playtest
31:07 Mysterious Intel announcement
35:17 Gamescope for Nvidia
38:37 DXVK 1.10.1
40:37 GPU screen recorder
45:02 Open Golf
46:56 Review: Hyperbolica
58:56 Email

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Official Steam on Chromebooks

https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamworks/announcements/detail/3128319763053339627

It’s finally here! Kinda
There’s actually a pretty decent selection of games that are verified
If the iris mobile GPUs can actually do some decent punching, you could have an argument for a decent google gaming platform.
Hopefully at least on par with the deck.
That’s a list of $6/700 Chromebooks.
Core i5 or i7 processors, and at least 8GB of RAM.
Alpha means anything can break.
I look forward to seeing if ChromeOS Flex runs this, since my Chromebook proper apparently is falling out of support in June and only has a Celeron.

Experiential

Fall in Labyrinth, King of Fighters XIII, Montaro, Metal Slug 2, Metal Slug 3, Double Dragon Trilogy, Baseball Stars 2, ATRI -My Dear Moments- are the new playable games
Lots of random little fixes
Update to the latest released vkd3d-proton
- It was more of a wording update since the bleeding-edge Proton Experimental is pulling directly from git, so that’s the one that’s actually running the current development version.

Opt-in Annoyance

They are not crowdsourcing the compatibility testing process.
They are asking the crowd ™ if the system works and will alter things based on the feedback.
There is a difference.
I stopped Elden Crack since the battery was down to 10% after around 2 hours and it prompted me if I wished to contribute.
I answered yes since I figured that’d be fair to ask of the Early Access Adopter crowd.
Recaptcha for game compatibility isn’t a bad thing. That’s ultimately how you train these algorithms, so comparing against human control means they are actually trying

ChimeraOS Deck

They recommend a $800+ dollar Chromebook to use it.
Feature parity with Windows! Woot!
I gotta wonder what’s so special about the audio out here that everybody is having problems?

Steam consistency

This is not a collection of Steam over the years, nay.
This is Steam in 2022.
You can use them to carbon date when each UI element was last worked on.
You can tell this person doesn’t have a Deck because there’s quite a few missing there.
I guess there isn’t a consistency initiative at valve.
Either that or the dudes in that pod are just collecting paychecks
If it aint’ broke don’t fix it?

Steam: New Games

Dracula’s Revenge

Want some more OG Castlevania in your life after you played through all the bloodstained prequels and somehow got tired of listening to the excellent Rondo of Blood Soundtrack?
Five bucks for levels + hard mode seems decent, and the reviews seem to really like it
Apparently the soundtrack isn’t that great, but why fret when you can listen to rondo of blood again?
Looks like a DOS port of Vania.
They tacked on that mustache, damn.
Any Potato Linux is recommended.

Steam: Game Updates

RIP RetroArch Playtest

Uh oh, they’re centralizing deployment of an appimage on steam.
That’s a no no for some reason.
Nice of them to include instructions for moving your bits.
I guess the Playtest was working well enough that people didn’t really bother to get the full version.

News:

Ham slicer?

Boy, we got a date for, something.
Smartphone, IntelDeck, top-heavy lappy?
I don’t look like a release date & pricing info for ARC.

Gamescope soon?

The main blocker is VK_EXT_image_drm_format_modifier but it is being worked
Apparently between the nvidia driver and gamescope, there are more than 1024 file descriptors per vkfence, which exceeds the defaults of most systems
- That is exactly the default cap in quite a few distros.
This can apparently be handled by a rewrite of gamescope’s vkfence subsystem or on the nvidia driver end
Joshie already has something ready to push to see if it helps.
I look forward to moving this box to Wayland and getting my gamescope on, outside of the GabeGear.

DXVK 1.10.1

Initial support for shared resources.
Currently, only basic 2D texture sharing between D3D9 and D3D11 is supported when using DXVK for both APIs.
Speed bump for Ass Creed 3 and BF.
Fixed frame pacing issues on AMD with the latest GOW patch.

gpu-screen-recorder

Very performant screen recording on linux.
Gotta patch your nvidia drivers if you don’t have a quadro or a tesla
- You’d think nvidia would throw out that limitation given general availability, but fuck that noise give us money
The replay (and just recording in general) functionality being available without having to run full OBS in the background is probably the most welcome thing.
Does not work when using gtk client side decorations (such as on Pop OS).
No love for AMD, yet.
There is a plugin to use NvFBC with OBS, it works.
New nvenc is still in testing hell for OBS.

Open Golf

Browser based GILF
Linux & Android as well.
Even has a nifty in game editor.
Very simple mini-golf game built in C.
Comes with some GLSL code for your shading purposes.

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Hyperbolica
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1256230/Hyperbolica/
Devel: Code Parade
Engine: Unity
Price: £13.49 / $16.99 / $19.49

Wazzat: Hyperbolica is a whimsical Non-Euclidean adventure with mind-bending worlds full of games, puzzles, mazes, and secrets! Immerse yourself in reality-warping geometries where lines can never be parallel, horizons are curved, and space grows exponentially.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Clean bill of health on the working bits.
As you might have guessed it can do 60 @ 2160p.
Xclone picked up OOTB and the default keymap was sane.
Options for windowed and fullscreen.

Fun?

This is a cool game mechanic demo but that’s where I’m at.
In my 59 minutes I have collected a map, walked in the woods, visited a cold wall, and failed to find the kitchen in a restaurant.
Oh, I found a watch in a bottle at the beach as well.
Aaaand was bounced from a museum because I was not on the guest list.
I did spend some time bouncing on the trampoline.
That’s where I’m at.
59 minutes in and waiting for the “oh shit” clever moment to kick in.
It didn’t.
I may be a simple ancient Greek mathematician from Alexandria but a game is supposed to, ya know, game.
Hyperbolica might just be a wee advanced for my simple brain-meats because I don’t get it.
I’ll stick with my smooth brain puzzle games like Superliminal.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches OOTB
Holds 60@UHD on “maximum”, although there isn’t really a lot going on
I swear every quirky physics indie game uses this exact same soundtrack
Controls are wasd

Fun?

The hyper sonic lion tamer gives me a headache
I’m able to power through it eventually, but damn, it hurts my brain
After wandering through a city for a while, I talked to an oracle who told me to find a farm
I was then tasked with exterminating gophers. Which, to it’s credit, the game does give you the strategy. Unfortunately, it’s find a beeg gopher and fire until it decides to show it’s noggin again
Rinse repeat 10 times
I do appreciate the effort to do something innovative. The three maps and how they combine to orient your euclidian brain was interesting
But oh god my brain. It physically hurts.

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches out of the box
On the Steam Deck it holds 60FPS on the maximum preset at 1280×800
Controller bindings are sensible and they work out of the box.
Can’t really complain about the controller inputs but I can about the keyboard ones.
On this box I tried playing it with mouse and keyboard to record the video.
It’s WASD only (the directional arrows do nothing) and you can’t rebind the controls.
Minus one chair right off the bat.
The graphics are pretty simple and there’s not really any voice acting involved.

Fun?

Meh.
As a videogame, it’s pretty mediocre.
It’s a bunch of fetch quests to make way for the overarching fetch quest.
As a tech demo and proof of concept, it’s alright.
Some of the puzzles actually do actually require you to make use of the hyperbolic, non-euclidean physics.
But the thing that stuck out to me was how whenever I started moving my character in game, either on the Deck or on this box, my upper torso leaned back by itself to try and compensate.
Kudos! Your video game directly impacted me in the real world.
Unfortunately, the impact was just vertigo.
I would give it two chairs but not allowing people to rebind controls in 2022 is beyond inexcusable.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:

Hate Mail:

EAC

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