Linux Game Cast 517: The John McClane Of Squirrels

Intel shows off Arc A750 graphics performance, Valve wants to put SteamOS on the GPD Win Max 2, Crowsworn releases a new trailer, updated driver requirements for Proton, and delisting games for fun and profit.

Special thanks to:
Mir – 33x resub
Jill – Steam Gift Card
RTheren – Terminator Resistance
Game_Mo_Tron – BeamNG.drive


Listen:


Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:26 Squirrel update
07:01 SteamOS for the GPD Win Max 2
09:41 Proton Experimental requires updated drivers
12:06 Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II
15:11 RC racing with Crazy Wheels
18:41 Crowsworn 1 year update
21:56 Armello removes Linux support
29:01 LGC vs Kimiko Miyashiro
32:12 Intel Arc A750 does not impress
40:57 Unity merges with adware company Ironsource
46:37 Publishers delisting games
52:37 DXVK now requires 5X series Nvidia drivers
55:32 Making games with LISP with Kandra
58:02 Review: Fake Racing
01:09:32 Emails


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

WinDeck

  • Ah yes, GPD.
  • The ones who were attempting to besmirch the Deck by releasing benchmark results at 1440p which neither their direct competitive device or the Steam Deck support on their native screens.
  • And its developers had some… incendiary comments about Steam OS specifically.
  • Someone is eating some crow right now!
  • You know, I do kinda like the idea of more computers shipping SteamOS
  • So far SteamOS is earning its keep as a decent platform for gaming on the go, other companies might like a more mobile tailored option than plain jane windows 11
  • I really just like the idea of a future where windows not necessarily being considered the default for gaming anymore
  • Valve contacted them in March of this year to give them a hand with SteamOS.
  • Valve will need a system (6800U) to test & tinker with.
  • That process could take 6 months.
  • Valve has offered to promote the Win Max 2 on the Steam Store.
  • Valve wants as many devices running SteamStoreOS as possible.


Proton Odyssey

  • Gotta be on Nvidia 510+ or Mesa 22+ if you want DX12 on experimental
  • The MFDXGI hack got removed cuz it seems like they have solved the root of the image corruption problem
  • Warframes’ launcher got fixed and Ass Creed O: stopped hanging
  • LeChuck’s revenge is no longer thwarted
  • Experimental regression is the expression of the release.
  • Never had I seen it mentioned so much.

Steam: New Games

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance II

  • Couch coop only, but to be fair that was the case when I bought this game for Playstation 2 those many centuries ago
    • Still you could throw some folks a masterwork bone
  • This one has Drizzl and Artemis as unlockable characters
  • Still waiting for the first one to drop in price so I can buy it again.
  • It looks like a game from 2004.
  • They listed req packages for Linux.
  • 64-bit only.


Crazy Wheels

  • People really like the little RC racing games.
  • It has online multi.
  • Humble or YT audio in that trailer.
  • There’s a rearview camera!
  • It looks like the Hot Wheels game on a budget but I’m ok with that as long as that multiplayer is online.

Steam: Game Updates

1 year of Crowsworn

  • I want to play 2D Hellsing Knight.
  • Yes, half the team worked on Hollow Bug.
    • Ah, so there was a legitimate reason as to why it looked like that.
  • We mentioned this last year and it’s still very much in the works.


v2.2 Crossplay is now live

  • Offering refunds for those that want them.
  • They ceased support for the DRM Free version of the game back in 2016 #TIL.
  • Reading the forums the new multiplayer is all kinds of busted.
  • If you bought Armello based on the promise of Linux multiplayer with your friends, you should ask for a refund.
  • It’s good that they’re offering it, I fully support their reasoning and wish that other game developers would do the same.
  • But you really should take your money back, send the message that this is not ok.
  • Unless you really want to keep playing it.
  • No refund for me cuz mine was a gifted copy
  • It makes me a little sad to have to give League of Geeks the double bird after all of these years because Armello was a genuinely fun game. Lots of good streams
  • I’ll say that if you have a multiplayer provider that suddenly drops platforms, you should probably find a new multiplayer provider.

News:

Intel a750 (RTheren)

  • Control, F1, CYberpunk, BL3 and Forknife are your games in question
  • All we know about this model so far is that it’s got an 8 pin and a 6 pin connector
  • Shrout seems pretty quick to remind us that this is stuff that got first party support and not everything’s gonna run this good
  • Something 3060ish for a reasonable price would be super nice if this isn’t intel fuzzing the numbers again.
  • It kinda sorta trades blows with a 3060 according to Intel Benchmark ™. ***********
  • All testing was performed at 2560×1440 and ‘high’ settings.
  • Intel’s GPU delivered 13% higher performance on average (geometric mean), with a lead ranging from 6% in Fortnite to as much as 17% in F1 2021.
  • The MSRP for the 3060 is/was $329 and with the Nvidia overstock it’s getting closer to that in the real world.
  • If the 570 is sub $300 it might find an audience.
  • All Nvidia has to do is announce the 4060 in Q4 and even that dream is dead.
  • So, a 3060 without RTX… It’s a 1080!
  • The GN review of the A380 revealed that the Intel card was only competitive in DX12/Vulkan.
  • Which, you know, modern day APIs and what not.
  • But there’s about 60’000 games on Steam which use neither of those, on Windows.
  • For Linux, this will probably be a competitive GPU.
  • Since everything DX9+ is already running in Vulkan.
  • It’s just the old OpenGL games that probably won’t be great unless they fix it.


Iron Unity

  • Yes, that Ironsource, the one known for leveraging their ad network and installers to distribute spam, malware, and adware bundlers.
  • Unity makes the majority of its revenue from ads.
  • This is a merger, not an acquisition.
  • It certainly took a while for John Riccitiello to go back to his old ways, back when he was the CEO of EA.
  • But here we are, greed above all.
  • Someone please tell him that EA still exists, we don’t need another one.
  • Doubling down on ads as a business seems like a logical move for unity to make some money since they’ve slashed their engineering division
  • That said, the messaging here is piss poor.
  • Unless the plan is to just completely tank the video games side


On delisting old games

  • If you pull your game from sale I have no moral issues with people yarring the hell out of it.
  • That said, what happened here is a classic move to keep the peasants happy.
  • The plan was to delist the game from the jump and now the internet is thanking them for it.
  • Well played.
  • The major brouhaha came from people misunderstanding the message on the Steam store page which seemed to imply that even if you already had it, you wouldn’t be able to keep playing it at all.
  • Not so, though it may limit your access to the DLC that required the online DRM bs.
  • But is still absolutely a truly Ubisoft-level moronic thing to do.
  • You lose money and you actively incentivise people to pirate your game.
  • Congratulations, Ubisoft! Not only have you harbored sex offenders for years, you’re also now shooting yourself in the foot.
  • Again, not great communication here.
  • I’ll bet dollars to donuts it’ll show up in another compilation, maybe as a remaster
    • “You loved it so much, buy it again! Now with bonus NFTs!”


New drivers needed

  • You are going to need 5x series drivers in nvidia land for the next release.
  • Fixing bugs for Limbo… Yeah, that one!
  • Even though it wasn’t a DXVK problem specifically, they still fixed it.
  • Big, big kudos all around!


Kandra tech

  • Kandria is an open world side scrolling RPG, and it’s developed in LISP and based on the trial engine
  • Could you run this in Emacs? Maaaaaybe
  • The blog post is a pretty interesting technical breakdown of how the game and engine works.
  • LISP isnt’a super common language for gamedev, but hey the more resources on it the better

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


Game: Fake Racing

Devel: Roman Shuvalov

Engine: Unity

Price: £6.99 / $9.99 / $11.49

Wazzat: A retro-style indie racing game with a monochrome pixel graphics and a fake car physics. Features Air Attack and Elimination modes.

Mandatory Disclosure: Dev sent us keys on Curator Connect



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches out of the box.
  • Xbox controller detected.
  • Windowed and fullscreen.
  • FOV slider.
  • Assertion failed popup box generated correctly when the game crashed to desktop.
  • It’s OpenGL if you’re wondering.

Fun?

  • I rolled into this game not knowing what to expect.
  • A game titled fake racing has a bit of wiggle room.
  • I smashed the go button, hit the second turn, and flew into the bushes.
  • Ah, an attempt at simulation physics.
  • So I went to the control menu and looked for the handbrake and gear selection.
  • Found a handbrake but no gear selection, ouch.
  • Hmm, I guess I will suss things out using the speedo, brake, and handbrake.
  • Right, the speedo is unnumbered, lovely.
  • Welp, I could probably make due using the overhead map and some luck.
  • Ah, no overhead map.
  • And you might think having a chopper flying about dropping shit in your way would make up for the lack of gear selection, overhead maps and number digits on the speedo.
  • It fucking doesn’t.
  • Fake racing might make sense in VR but I doubt it.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches OOTB
  • Got one crash so far just as I was gonna finish a race too. Too many objects
  • Oh boy in the handling garbo. Real phake physics
  • The monochrome visuals are neat until you try all of the different tracks and realize it all looks pretty samey
  • It has VR support for those who want to experience life inside an OG gameboy
  • There’s music in the menu, but in game it’s just vroom vroom

Fun?

  • So what you got is a pretty bare bones racing game with no multiplayer, bad handling and a striking, but highly samey looking aesthetic, so…
  • Gotta complete the tournament if you want to unlock the last track and the other car
  • I couldn’t honestly give you a compelling reason to go through that
  • There’s also a mode where an apache helicopter hovers around you and fires missiles that nudge you slightly. I don’t know what that’s about, but it’s the first option in the non-tournament mode
  • The AI cars drive a little too perfectly
  • You can slow things down, which I thought might help with handling, but you just kinda fly off the map in slow motion


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • It launched out of the box on the desktop and the Deck
  • VSyncs appropriately, like most Unity games.
  • The controls are fairly simple
  • There is a little bit of music on the menu, but not in game proper
  • Graphics-wise it doesn’t look all that demanding, right?
  • It’s using fake dithering to emulate a 2-bit color scheme.
  • Until you try to capture game footage of it.
  • The pixels are either one colour or another, and they all move as the car moves.
  • I couldn’t record this with X264 on the 3700X, I had to use VAAPI to bring the RX 6700XT in.
  • This graphical behemoth was causing an encoder overload on my 8 core/16 thread Ryzen processor even on Ultrafast.

Fun?

  • I tried to find the fun
  • I actually, genuinely, thought that this was going to be a Soda Drinker Pro/Glittermitten Grove type of deal.
  • I couldn’t find Vivian Clark.
  • If it is there, I couldn’t find it and neither could anyone else on Steam to share the deets.
  • So all we’re left with is a racing game where you’re not actually racing cars but trains that look like cars and drive off-road.
  • Yes, there is an infinite speed boost to be had if you go downhill and much like a train, your car can’t go uphill past a certain incline.
  • The trees are also not solid, and the CPU cars are on a fixed track.
  • If something does knock them off course when they shouldn’t have been, they will brute force their way back and catch up to you like the cheating rubberbanding pricks they are.
  • As much as I didn’t like Art of Rally, or Absolute Drift, those games really do set the benchmark of what a one person studio can do.
  • Fake Racing is unfortunately not very good.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


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