Linux Game Cast 511: Captain Tracy Morgan Freeman

Steam Docks get delayed, Proton powered MechWarrior Online, Deck-sized BioShock Remastered, NVIDIA learns to Gamescope, and Mario comes to Garry’s Mod.


Listen:


Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
07:03 Steam Hardware & Software Survey: May 2022
09:34 Steam Dock delayed
12:15 Valve experiments on animals
13:51 Top games played on Steam Deck
15:41 Better ExFAT / FAT 32 support for Steam client
17:39 Proton RC added a bunch of new games
20:26 Daydream JRPG
23:06 Hack & Slime
26:26 Rocket Sword!
27:36 Steam Deck optimized Bioshock
31:26 Mario comes to GMOD
38:52 Nvidia driver update works with Gamescope
41:22 About those open-source NVIDIA drivers
45:02 Monado hand tracking
49:06 Quake with SPEED using ironwail
53:19 Review: Sonority
01:05:14 Emails


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Steam Hardware & Software Survey: May 2022

  • Arch overtook the Buntu.
  • Still want to know WTF other is.
    • I determined with maths that Other is just the combined share of all other distros/data point/etc, with less share than the named ones.
  • That might be temporary, what got knocked out was Ubuntu 20.04
  • 22.04 seems to be the highest growing distro.


Delay on Dock

  • Those of you who want one will be staring at a clock going deck dock deck dock deck dock.
  • People don’t seem to be wound up about the dock.
  • It’s probably being bundled with Half-Life 3.
  • Well the only thing this dock has that most of the other type C ones, which already work with the Deck, don’t is the little slot that acts as a stand.
  • And most people who care already got or made their own stands.
  • But the good thing seems to be that this shortage isn’t directly impacting Deck manufacturing.


Doge blow

  • On high settings the steam fan can be used as K9 repellent.
  • A vijeo for those of you out there who don’t like to/can’t read that sums up all the updates we’ve been talking about for the past several weeks.


ExFAT STeam

  • Gotta support them exfat sd cards
  • Why you wouldn’t want f2fs or ext4 on your SD card I can’t say. Unless you’re copying games from your windows pc
  • So you should now be able to have one drive shared for your games in Windows and Linux because you’re a filthy dual booting heathen.


7.0-3 RC

  • This is an RC, so you gotta opt into the beta on proton 7
    • They want feedback on stuff specifically broken on this version, not general proton bugs
  • Nothing super crazy here, just some crash and performance fixes
  • None of the newly working games really peak my interest.
  • Mechawarrior Online might be interesting, but I think I’d need time to get into that properly.

Steam: New Games

Daydream

  • A short, non grindy Snes style JRPG
  • It’s got voice actiled cutscenes


Hack and Slime

  • That is certainly a game description
  • The pixel art looks pretty good and the game is pretty cheap now
  • Has a demo too


Rocket Sword

  • This, this is why video is so important.
  • Went from “meh” looking at the screenshots to “neat” after watching the video.
  • That looks hilarious!
  • Murderwiggle: the game

Steam: Game Updates

Mini BioShock

  • Begun the Deck shrinking has.
  • Do you suffer from small Deck syndrome?
  • SD card enhancements not getting the job done?
  • This MOD will shrink Bioshock Remastered by 7GB.
  • Removes unneeded language files and derps the video down to 720p.
  • They also smashed the hell out of the dev commentary.


G64

  • The one thing Half life was missing Super Mario
  • Gotta rip some stuff from a legitimately acquired SM64 Rom
  • Installation instructions mention a DLL so either you’re doing this in wine or you’re gonna be submitting some pull requests
  • Is this bait?
  • Is someone trying to get a suit going against Nintendo on the grounds of fan made content/mods?

News:

Gamescpoe speed

  • Hey! It’s the non beta version of the driver now with added user feedback
  • Oh yes, the gamescope performance is so much better. Much improved from the chugfest
  • Cyberpunk holds 45 with both FSR and NIS upscaling
  • FSR seems to be a little more stable
  • Remember when I said I hoped this would remove the delay between releases and PPA availability, it hasn’t yet.


NVIDIA sauce

  • The nouveau team seems to be taking the long view of things
  • A promise of a future of being able to run nouveau and the nvidia driver side by side seems pretty neat.
  • A lot of work has to be done by all sides and this is something that will take years to get finished.
  • Hell, Nouveau might even get the ability to reclock GPUs.
  • The out of tree source code kernel driver has been tested to support CUDA usecases on datacenter GPUs and that’s about it. Le shock.
  • Binary drivers will stick around for legacy cards so run out and buy a new one ASAP.
  • For the end user this will mean a better OOTB experience, eventually.
  • This post brought to you by IBM.


*waves*

  • Well, Moses has been very productive
  • Hand tracking is working with the indexes external cameras even though they’re not really supposed to do that
  • A lot of AI image processing shit that’s above my pay grade
  • Handedness detection is a little squirrelly
  • I’ll care about this kind of tech when VR is accessible.


Speedy Quake

  • GL Quake fork with a focus on highest performance possible at the expense of compatibility with quake mods
  • Apparently some of the newer maps are a wee more ambitious than others and the existing engine can eat poo on some systems.
  • Another delightful example of because i can.
  • Minimum is an ATI 5450, or an Intel HD 4200, that will run even on pre Vulkan software.
  • Which is something most modern source ports for these games seem to neglect a bit.
  • No legacy support what-so-ever.
  • Which is why I appreciate this and quakespasm.

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


Game: Sonority
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1432390/Sonority/
Devel: Hanging Gardens Interactive
Engine: Unity
Price: £15.49 / $19.99 / $29.99

Wazzat: Sonority is an innovative music puzzle adventure set in a lovingly designed, fascinating world. Play as Esther and discover the rockery, a place full of music and unique puzzle mechanics.

Mandatory Disclosure: Publisher, Application Systems Heidelberg, sent us keys



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Windowed / fullscreen.
  • Controller support & detected after game launch.
  • Does not lock the input cursor.
  • Easy 60 @ 2160p on high.
  • Graphically it falls into the “they tried their best” category.
  • Notes play when button mashed.

Fun?

  • Welcome to ocarina of bullsh*t.
  • Want to teach your kids the foundations of reverse engineering?
  • Seriously, It took me a solid 45 minutes to really grasp how the notes affected the blocks.
  • Up until that point I was semi brute forcing the puzzles.
  • Fortunately I stumbled into the fact that you can jump down from blocks, sometimes.
  • I got about an hour in, somewhere in the Stone temple pilot area.
  • The one where you button mash on ¼ until the door opens.
  • I had four notes and was not looking forward to the fifth because there is only so many times you can move blocks around until it becomes samey.
  • So yeah, about an hour of enjoyment’ish but not challenging enough to keep my attention.
  • Also, what’s with the camera?
  • Camera should move or not move.
  • The 20 degrees of semi kinda rotate is annoying.
  • At 1.13 Hollow Knights it’s a bit expensive for what it delivers.
  • Unless you look at this as a kids game, you know, for kids.
  • As long as the horror racoon does not give them nightmares.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches OOTB
  • Holds 60@UHD and 1080P
  • Controls are…well…remember ocarina of time. The ocarina part. This is the whole game
  • Also very slippery platform navigation where you can just sort of fall off the path sometimes
  • It’s very musical and tooty
  • Visually it looks like one of those early 2000s dirt cheap CGI direct to DVD movies you found in gas stations and grocery stores

Fun?

  • Oh boy math puzzles! My favourite
  • I gotta admit, on paper it seems like a clever idea for a puzzle game.
  • Manipulate platforms based on steps derived from musical notation
  • In practise, it forces me to engage the grade 11 math test part of my brain that I’ve been trying to kill for years with drugs
  • Also I get that you’re supposed to play along with the stone troll heads to unlock the door, but by randomly noodling on your flute you can brute force most of the ones I encountered in like thirty seconds or less
  • But here’s the rub. This game seems aimed at young children. And I can see this actually helping teach kids to understand musical scales
  • As an adult it feels too much like homework


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches out of the box
  • Does not hold 144 at 2560×1440, mostly hovering between 90 and 130.
  • You can play with the controller but I wouldn’t.
  • There’s technically camera control but it’s worse than a gimmick.
  • Completely pointless comes to mind, with how limited the movement is.
  • For a game focused around sound, the background music seems kinda meh.
  • Though maybe that was deliberate to emphasize the actual notes and sounds you need to play to progress.

Fun?

  • Either way, Sonority is a puzzle game in which the focus seems to be a story about talking animals and the healing properties of music.
  • Yeah, I don’t much play video games for the story.
  • I play videogames for the mechanics, the atmosphere, and the more video games I play the more I realize I don’t give a crap about the story.
  • And if I do, I go looking for it.
  • So I’m left with just the puzzles and metroidvania-lite exploration and backtracking.
  • The puzzles are pretty good at introducing you to the type of maths you need to do in your head to figure them out
  • But just as I start to get what the extra note or limitation of the new instrument does, there’s exactly 1 or 2 puzzles that make use of it and then you’re done.
  • Move along, that area is complete.
  • Feels like something is missing, a wasted opportunity to have really clever headscratchers, maybe even referencing popular music just close enough to be recognized that you don’t need to worry about licensing, too!
  • Might be good if you have a young child you’d like to indoctrinate to the world of vidjagames.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


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