Linux Game Cast 535: Tricaine

The Steam Autumn Sale is almost here! Rapid GPU-based asset loading with RTX IO, Direct3D 8 for DXVK, Stunt Rally 2.7 rocks, classic Microsoft Flight Simulators on Linux, and Candice DeBébé’s Tantalising Tricks.

Special thanks to:
Mir & p1nk_is_pretty & Basil


Listen:

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:01 Mountain Bi-Cane
01:21 100GB of RAM
04:03 Nano Pi 6 order
05:38 Spectator cam PC
09:00 Blinky arse-keyboard
STEAM NEWS
14:03 Steam Autumn Sale dates
17:22 Discount cooldowns for developers
22:43 Steam Deck 4K fixes
NEW GAMES
24:41 Candice DeBébé’s Tantalising Tricks
26:55 TailQuest Defense
GAME UPDATES
29:46 Broforce Forever
31:47 Rouge Legacy 2 Linux port
NEWS
40:17 Nvidia RTX IO & Vulkan
42:23 Direct 3D for DXVK
45:07 Classic MS Flight Sims on Linux
47:13 Stunt Rally 2.7 ROCKS
REVIEW
50:05 Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home
HATE MAIL
01:04:38 Braille support
01:05:42 Problems with ARC
01:08:12 We’re wrong about everything


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Autumn sale

  • Usual round of discounts along with the nominations for the awards, which will be awarded proper on the Christmas sale.
  • 22nd to the 29th is when you should look at your wishlist to see if the games you actually want to play are on a decent discount.
  • Valve wants noms for the steam awards.
  • There’s a new one special for the deck too cuz you gotta promote that shit!
  • How many do you figure Elden Ring is gonna take?
  • Games on my whishzone being between 10 & 30% off but steam is crashing so it must be a sale.
  • It’s like the other 11 months of the year but with a difficulty multiplier.


30 days of sale

  • What if I want to raise the price of my game before a sale so the discount looks bigger?
    • Wait 30 days or raise it just before one of the seasonal sales.


Deck Stable

  • They fixed the stupid 30 second delay when attempting to launch a game if you didn’t manually set offline mode beforehand.
  • Better support for 4k displays in docked mode.
  • I guess you could play vampire survivors at 4k with the deck
  • Apparently this also includes a macOS fix for the amazon luna controller.
  • Talk about an edge case.

Steam: New Games

Candice DeBébé’s Tantalising Tricks

  • Sterling did a video on one of the previous games.
  • It had an actual game hidden under the jank.
  • I want Steph Sterling to do a video on this one too!
  • All the previous games in the series have linux support all the way back to 2016, so you gotta give props for that
    • Run it on centos 7 baby


Tails Quest (RTheren)

  • It’s colourful.
  • Cute and cuddly tower defence
  • Has a linux demo too
  • However it commit’s that most horrid offence: Only split screen coop

Steam: Game Updates

Broforce Forever

  • …bro.
  • More explosions? 16 Player mayhem? A mode that make it even harder to tell what’s happening?
  • Coming spoon ™


Linux Legacy 2.0

  • About 6 months delayed, not bad!
  • Quite a few bugfixes as well.
  • Rogue legacy 2 seems like it would go perfect on the deck so it’s good to see a native release.
  • They are aware some Steam Deck users are experiencing intermittent crashes.
  • Only the Proton version for you lot.
  • Rogue Legacy 2 is what you’d get if you mashed Rogue Legacy and a sequel together.

News:

RTX IO

  • RTX accelerated Decompression with a schmancy new format Nvidia is open sourcing called gdeflate
  • Two new vulkan extensions VK_NV_memory_decompression VK_NV_copy_memory_indirect available on linux to handle this
  • This will be a neat feature for the developers Nvidia pay to implement it.


Direct3D 8

  • Direct3D 8 for DXVK!
  • An alternative to using dgvoodoo2?
  • This would save the DX8>11>Vulkan conversion.
  • Great for preservation?
  • Some DX8 games of note:
    • Battlefield 1942, freedom force, Frogger; Ancient shadow, max payne 1+2
    • I guess there are some memorable PC releases from the early aughts that can one day work under vulkan


Flight Sim

  • Web version of the first four MS flight simulator games
  • This is pretty neat cuz it actually runs the games on an emulated CPU
    • According to the readme it works similarly to dosbox


Stunt Rally 2.7

  • Longtime LGC humans will remember this game.
  • The last major release was in 2015 and that changelog shows it
  • 7 new vehicles, 34 new tracks and 8 new rocks
  • Enhancements to the main menu
  • Make sure to build this with the absolute latest ogre
  • There is an early 3.0 port in the works.
  • Racing lines for cheaters.
  • New ROCKS!
  • Bunch of work on the GUI editor as well.
  • It still uses Ogre.
  • SR can be built using Conan on Linu… LOL, no.
  • There was flatpak of it so I played a bit of 2.7
  • The camera movement is less stilted, it’s much better
  • The car physics are still a little on the side of janky but much better than I remember.
  • Not bad!

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


Game: Space Tail: Every Journey Leads Home

Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1975660/

Devel: Enjoy Studio S.A., Longterm Games S.A.

Engine: Unity

Price: £15.49 / $19.99 / $22.79

Wazzat: Space Tail is a 2.5D adventure platformer, which immerses the player in a deep, emotional plot, and lets him explore new planets and interact with alien civilizations.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Garbled mess of static nonsense.
  • Dev solution is to play with Proton.
  • “we’ve been unable to replicate this issue on our end”
  • Na, homie.
  • You couldn’t be arsed to try this on a system with a NVIDIA GPU.
  • Ya know, the company with 83% of the discrete GPU market.
  • Even has the GTX 950 listed as a requirement.
  • If this game malfunctions with Proton the developer can only provide blank stares and the occasional shrug emoji.
  • I have zero love for unsupported Linux builds.
  • By all means release a Linux (beta) but it’s the end of 2022, this doesn’t fly.
  • On Debian Bookworm with Proton 7.x and the 3060 it manages between 75/82 on YOLO @ 1440p.
  • Xclone works as well.

Fun?

  • Take this for what it’s worth since I only completed the tutorial to get in game proper to check the FERPS.
  • You need to add some grace period to the instakill red smoke in the tutorial.
  • The first level art style reminds me of Ori on a budget.
  • But instead of gaining skills over time you start off with a dump truck of them.
  • I went to explore the first level to check out the scenery but that plan was kicked in the face thanks to the instakill object peppered everywhere.
  • The peak player count on Steam today clocked in at 4 and I know where three of them came from.
  • Try the Windows only demo and see how far you get before tapping out.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Yeah it’s a mess on Nvidia
  • Kinda unacceptable if you’re gonna put that on sale.
  • Smash that proton button fam
  • Barely holds 45ferps @UHD on the crusty ol’ 1080TI
  • Smooth 180 @1080
  • Controller is sanely mapped, but you’re getting xbox prompts no matter what

Fun?

  • It’s another cutesy puzzle platformer. You’re a pupper who’s been lost in space and now you gotta find your way back
  • You can switch between three senses, hearing, smell and sight to solve puzzles
    • Dog sight. That famously accurate thing
  • You get some other powers as well, but it boils more or less down to timing puzzles
  • As someone who has to mind dogs pretty regularly, the part of the game where you have to try and figure out what the people want with the magic combination of gestures seems pretty true to life
  • As a gameplay mechanic? Eeeh, I’m not that big a fan
  • Especially trying to get the people’s attention. That takes some button mashing
  • It’s just okay. There isn’t really a “aha!” moment where it all comes together


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Native version launches fine out of the box on Nobara 36 and on SteamOS
  • Holds 144 FerPS unless OBS is capturing the window.
  • Didn’t make a difference if I was on Wayland or X.
  • On the Deck it holds 60 without issue.
  • It’s a 3D rendered doggo in a 2D world. It’s the new kind of 2.5D.
  • The sounds are certainly there
  • No option to rebind controls in game, -1 Chair.
  • You need to use the Steam Overlay to rebind the controller inputs, which I had to do because I can’t reach the right analog stick and the right trigger both at the same time.

Fun?

  • It’s doggo Limbo with less child maiming and more colors.
  • I suppose you have cube bot to “hack” the planet enemies and other bits of Technology.
  • Which you just have after the tutorial and then there’s a “2 hours earlier” bit to explain where it came from and why protagonist pupper likes it so much.
  • That whole bit feels like an afterthought. Like a playtester went to the devs as they were finishing the first “chapter” and asked “what is that 808BY robot and why should I care?”
  • There’s also a bark/emote mechanic which every time I had to use it I was reminded of the Oblivion conversation wheel minigame.
  • If you don’t know why that’s a bad thing, well… I’m a little jealous.
  • As minigames go, that is one that you often find in the “worst game mechanics of all time” listicles.
  • And it’s often required to progress.
  • Not always which is praiseworthy in that it gives you multiple paths around most obstacles.
  • But when you compound a fairly boring and bad mechanic with the lack of rebindable controls, I lose interest.
  • Perfectly functional game if you’re on AMD or use Proton, but that’s about it.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

Gpus


Wrong

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