Linux Game Cast 516: Rabies Soup

Microsoft nerfs Xbox Cloud Gaming on Linux, Anbernic launches a budget Deck competitor, QR code powered Steam logins, AV1 hardware encoding on the Arc A380, and FEX-Emu learns how to Proton.

Special thanks to:
Oil_of_hope: Fog machine of hope
Basil resub 30x
Nubbn 26x


Listen:


Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
02:00 New sound card
03:01 Surprise squirrel
05:17 Steam Next Fest October
07:27 Steam Deck reviews in NY Times
11:17 Valve mobile working on QR codes
13:32 RetroDECK updates
16:37 New game: Loop
18:22 Update: Vampire Survivors
23:57 Jordan gets fogy
27:57 Intel ARC A380 in the US
32:07 Fog Volumes in Godot 4.0
34:47 Low quality Xcloud on Linux
37:32 Anbernic Steam Deck competitor on a budget
41:13 X86 gaming on ARM with FEX
44:07 Review: LOOP
58:21 Email


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Steam Next Fest October 2022 Registration

  • Festival is in the first week of october. Registration deadline is july 21
  • Get your demos in now if you want to be featured
  • One way to work around the limitation of only being allowed 1 next fest is to keep the Demo up after it’s over.


Strange Times

  • Yes, the New York Times reviewed the Deck
  • And they were positive about it.
  • That’s peak mainstream media right there, not just tech media
  • But the real question is:. How do you install times new Roman on the deck?
  • Jokes aside though this seems pretty consistent with all the other feedback we’ve been hearing
  • I guess now we can conclusively say that valve did a pretty alright job with the deck


QR Steam

  • Does anyone at Valve remember how to make changes to the mobile app?
  • This will be handy for the Steam Deck?
  • It’s convenient for discord, it’ll be nice for steam too. Especially to log in quickly and check curator connect
    • I do like the Discord QR sign in, is handy!
  • Are they going to update the app or will it be a more fundamental revamp?


RetroDeck v0.4.2b

  • All of the emulators have got updated to the latest versions
  • Button remaps for all the thing
  • PCSX2 Standalone doesn’t have hotkey support, so you gotta do shit through the menu

Steam: New Games

Loop

  • Do you find your puzzle games lacking in ethereal temples?
  • Recommended GPU of 5 years or less.
  • Yes, I added this before I checked the Chairs.
  • Big kudos to Pablo from Hug the Chilli, love the studio name, for sending us keys.

Steam: Game Updates

Vamp 0.8.0

  • I’m still trying to figure out how people get the addicted to this one.
    • Immediate gratification with very simple rules and reward system.
  • Some visual tweaks
  • Some new additions
  • The roadmap shows them being almost done with a lot of the base content
  • I really like the little quality of life changes they made, like filtering out everything you already have from the unlocks list so you can easily see what you still need to do.

News:

380 AV1 encode

  • That just became an interesting add in card.
  • Like, buy one just to fk around with.
  • Yeah, might be worth a curiosity fuck if the price is right
  • Dedicated hardware encoder for streams or Handbrake.


Loud Fog

  • Your fog volumes are boxes, ellipsoids, cylinders or cones
    • Or you can Do silent hill mode
  • Oh, volumetric fog!
  • I look forward to some horror game really going ham with it.


Xcloud protips

  • Nerfing quality unless you’re on Edge.
  • How… Microsoft.
    • They just can’t help themselves
  • Changing your user agent string can help
    • Folks have also confirmed that changing your user agent to linux on windows also causes degraded quality
  • But microsoft loves linux you guys
  • If you tick the clarity box on Edge for Linux it also changes it to the better quality version
  • Ars Technica posited that it may be because Android’s user agent includes “Linux”, that it’s just blanket treating everything with that as a mobile device with costly data plans.
  • Which makes a lot of sense and, if correct, Hanlon’s Razor stands.


NotAdeck

  • I’ve been waiting for some Deck clones.
  • AMD Athlon Silver 3020e & Vega 3.
  • $299.
  • $299 for a turbo entry level Deck clone is not bad!
  • That Vega 3 is going to be the hard cap, think 720p30 at best.
  • Baby budget steam deck is built for both windows and SteamOS. Which basically means it’s AMD based
  • Given the Anemic APU this is gonna be great for your vampire survivors or ITB players but not much else unless you’re emulating


These nutters

  • Yes, finally!
  • If you have a Pinebook Pro, like me and you’ve been pulling your hair out getting both Box86 and Box64 to work and play nice, this is what you’re looking for.
  • Run that 32bit x86 Steam client and the 64bit x86 game!
  • You need to change the Soldier Runtime to the beta version if you want to try Proton.
  • I don’t think this is gonna let you run elden ring @60FPS but maybe you could play some of the same games you might think of playing on an Anbernic Win600

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Loop
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2057790/Loop/
Devel: Hug the Chilli
Engine: Unity
Price: £7.19 / $9.99 / $11.49

Wazzat: Loop is a vibrant Contemplative Puzzle Game; where you and your companion travel through a mysterious, ethereal temple. During this Journey, you will traverse many riddles and face the ultimate enigma: can the endless loop be broken?

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys on Curator Connect



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Windowed and fullscreen.
  • Sound and other sound volume sliders.
  • Alt+tab loses the controller, sometimes.
  • Your save file does NOT transfer from Proton to Linux native.
  • Keep that in mind if your gaming PC is Windows and you has a Steam Deck.
  • I wish cloud saves weren’t so wicked expensive and difficult to integrate.

Fun?

  • Do you really want me to think “this would be 1000% better with multiplayer” for the entirety of my playtime?
  • Cause ya did Brad, ya did.
  • It takes a solid 40 minutes to get past the escort mission and BAM!
  • Time for some solo brain scratching.
  • Or so I thought.
  • I’m not particularly clever but every puzzle I’ve encountered takes about 10/15 seconds to sort (high ballin here) and a few minutes to execute.
  • Time to complete doubles when the scripted buddy goes bye bye.
  • It’s like a mini fetch-quest hell and your character moves at the speed of smell.
  • At the end of the day it’s a $0.99 mobile game and you should keep that in mind.
  • LOOP works in small doses when you need to kill time and don’t really want to stress the old brain organ.
  • Unfortunately, that does not translate well into a sitdown gaming experience.
  • At least for me.
  • Then again, if you added some extra bang for the $9.99, say, online co-op.
  • Well, then you might have something.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches OOTB
  • Holds 60@UHD
  • You can play this with one hand
  • The soundtrack is alright knockoff enya music
  • The visual style is pretty striking though, I though the minimalist approach worked for this style of game
  • It is very unity looking though

Fun?

  • I beat it in about 2 hours with one generous bathroom break
  • The story was interesting enough, and the delivery was stylistic enough to keep me interested
  • But man does it drag. It was a very long two hours. And the game design does it’s best to pad out the experience
  • The story is nothing groundbreaking, and when you only have the level and game design, a couple cinematics and a mural here and there, you probably don’t want to try and go overboard with the subtlety
  • And it’s very well conveyed. As an art piece it’s very good. As a fun game? Not so much. More of a narrative experience
  • The puzzles aren’t really puzzles. It’s gonna require minimal brain power
  • I wish there was a run button though. The movement is painfully slow
  • There are also some pathing bugs with your buddy. I had to restart a level cuz he got stuck on a platform due to being unable to rise high enough
  • BTW, if you want to replay this after you beat it, you gotta manually delete your save file. Otherwise it just sticks you just before the final segment.


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launched out of the box
  • Only drops from 144 when loading new things
  • Also works on the Deck and holds 40 or 60 or whatever refresh rate you’ve set it to.
  • The mouse didn’t work at first in game, but the update released on Thursday fixed that
  • Controller worked just fine, though.
  • Graphics seem to have taken inspiration from Journey and I won’t stop believing.
  • Not that Journey
  • No cloud saves, that’s bad.

Fun?

  • It’s very simple.
  • Even after the tutorial bit when the “Master” figure goes away, none of the puzzles were difficult in any way.
  • In the same way that The Talos Principle puzzles are not difficult but the further along you get the more of a chore they start to feel like.
  • And that is present in Loop as well.
  • The thing I was curious about in the Talos Principle that kept me playing as long as I did was the story, and I gave up and just went on Youtube to find someone to tell me the story.
  • In Loop, the story isn’t told in words or dialog though.
  • It’s one of those games that tells a lot of what is going on from your gameplay.
  • Like a lot of Half-Life 2 and the first time you play through a Souls game before you know that the story of the world is told in the item descriptions.
  • It does a very good job of showing rather than telling
  • And not having a single word on screen and still be able to convey that story and the necessary knowledge to the player so that they can play the game, that to me is praise worthy.
  • It gets 2 chairs because the puzzles do turn into a bit of a chore rather than become in any way shape or form challenging and no cloud saves.
  • Give it to a young child, that seems to be the target audience here.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


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