Linux Game Cast 538: Gigs and Shittles

Installing Linux on on the Playstation Classic, test driving a N64 Rocket League demake, RTX portals with Proton, and a new 2.5D fighting game with rollback netcode.

Special thanks to:
MFoxDogg: Games from our wishzones
Oil of Hope: Fog juice
Twitch subs: Skittles, Velcro Tek, nubbn, gamemotron

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
STEAM NEWS
06:44 Big updates for the Steam client Beta
10:31 Proton GE 7.42
NEW GAMES
14:00 2.5D Fighting Umbral Core
18:14 Football mayhem LOCOSOCCER
GAME UPDATES
21:20 Barony Quality of Death Beta
23:30 Portal RTX
34:28 Linux on the Playstation classic
38:38 Hipster-pixel 3D block editing with Blockbench
40:25 Rocket Boop 64
REVIEW
45:22 Curse of Eternity
HATE MAIL
57:52 Equipment
59:24 Mixing it up

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Big Beta

That one Linux specific fix doesn’t sound particularly bad, pun intended.
In fact, it doesn’t sound at all and it would cause the in-game overlay to crash when you took a screenshot.
That’s right, that little snapping sound most people have now disabled? That’s what was triggering that libaudio bug.
And the next thing they should fix is when editing controller layouts in desktop mode, stopping the window from freezing when you try to close it.
Replaced launch option dialog with new UI that includes a checkbox.
It remembers the user’s selection!
It can be changed via a dropdown on properties.

GE Proton7-42

Pulling in the latest and greatest everything
Also some protonfixes on specific games.
No love for Vahalla but that goes for Proton Exp as well.
Luxtorpeda and pick RVGL for Re-volt, seriously.

Steam: New Games

Umbral Core

It’s early, but playable.
Unity and native.
Always good to see more fighting games show up on linux. It’s still a pretty underrepresented genre
Dark fantasy and eldritch horror meets fighting game? Ooookay
I played around with the demo and it’s in good shape for an Alpha Tech Demo +.
You can play as not Vergil and the cover art shows not Aurora as well.
They are looking for 300K with 27 days left.
That is around 100K a year for the two person team for 3 years.
For comparison, Hollow Knight was made for $24K total.
$70 gets you early access during development.
Planned release date of 2025.
They are worried about slippage since working on the game will not be their full time job during development.

LOCOSOCCER

There’s online multiplayer, it’s already looking better than most other Linux releases recently.
Apparently runs on any linux
5v5 means that this qualifies as premium aftershow bait.
This is LocoSoccer Classic with updated graphics and online play.
Imagine if tanks had legs.

Steam: Game Updates

Barony Quality of Death Beta

I’ve had this game for so long and I have yet to play it.
- I’m down
Wait, 4 player multiplayer roguelike daggerfall is a thing?
New Item: Monocle! c
180+ map changes and additions.
Reworked monster ally alerting/infighting to help keep large groups alive during accidental friendly fire.
Base class rebalance.
Loaded the game and all the text is cocked up.

Portal RTX

No, it’s not native… but it runs.
That’s a win for Proton.
RADV_PERFTEST=rt %command% will get past the unsupported GPU but then it crashes as it finished loading the title screen/main menu on AMD on the desktop
There’s some shenanigans on Deck where you can start the game but half the textures don’t render and the camera ends up inside the character.
OG Portal and Alien Swarm were the two Valve games that never made it over to linux. I guess Alyx also exists on that list, so it makes sense this didn’t get a native job
- Also I have my doubts about lightspeed studios
I can’t play it on my peasant 1080ti but that trailer made it seem…chuggier than usual?
The 3060 crushes this at a mind melting 56/62 @ 1080p with DLSS set on balanced and the tracing on medium.
As for the wow effect.
It’s like walking into a reflective puddle gallery.
You walk around looking at the lighting effects and that’s that.

News:

PS Classic (RTheren)

Throw debian on your old PS Classic.
Kinda sorta works with the asian version
Use it to emulate a roland mk2
LXQt on that very slow ARM chip, just use LXDE or even just openbox.
Conky? In 2022? Really?!
Did you jump on the mini console bandwagon back in 2018?
Now you can put that quad-core A35 to use, kinda.
The proprietary drivers provided in the stock firmware are a complete trainwreck and only partly work in Wayland.
USB drivers are nearly unusable.
1080p max resolution.
This is a POC so don’t expect additional work from the author.
It’s basically the same experience as running OtherOS on the PS3.

Blocks

Runs in the browser which is neat
Make it easier to export those models into something other games can take, without too much finagling, and Venn’s Trackmania streams will look positively retro very quickly.
Right now the editor presets are for minecraft skins and blocks
It is open source, so hopefully some folks will see this and we can get support in there for stuff like minetest and veloren

Rocket Boop 64

https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/zcpkky/what_rocket_league_would_look_like_if_it_was_made/iyznduz/

You can run it with godot –main-pack Soccar64Win.pck
There is a Linux build now.
Now you increase the arena size to the point where you have to use distant fog to cull distant objects and make it so you can play 4 on 4 online.
Seriously, add some camera controls and proper gamepad support.
Better yet, open-source this and see what happens.
Chmod +x on the linux version

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Curse of Eternity
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1230000/Curse_of_Eternity/
Devel: Imakeda Games
Engine: Unity
Price: £15.49 / $19.99 / $22.79

Wazzat: A hardcore Action RPG with diverse combat and feats-based multiclassing. Start as one of three hero builds and either continue to specialize, or branch out and make your build your own. Slice, shoot, and zap your way through a dystopian world and fulfill your own deific journey.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Out of the gate you have OpenGL and Vulkan launch options.
OpenGL works but Vulkan does that frame hitching thing unless you are running a compositor.
Your opt out of data collection button does not function.
The agree button works a treat.
Getting around 70 @ 1440 and 100 @ 1080 with everything maxed right the hell out.
I suggest cutting everything down to fugly and try to spot the difference.
Picked up the xbox1x controller and the PS4 but only showed the glyphs for Xbox.
It makes sounds but nothing memorable.

Fun?

$20 for a 5 hour game, eh?
I knew that going in since I took a peek at the forums when we talked about the game last week.
It functions as a game.
You can boop, you can roll, you can die.
You get weapons and ability points.
Melee combat is clunky and impactless.
Ranged was okay if you have the patience but it’s souls so you clearly do.
The areas are kinda barren but plenty of baddies are crawling around to engage with.
Yeah, after an hour I was all “this functions as a game” but at no point was I drawn into it.
The developer needs to bring back the demo.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Has a bunch of launch options for openGL, Vulkan, and Wayland
Holds 60 @ 1080P w/ vulkan on medium
Frame timing gets a little choppy @ UHD
Cuz it’s a dark souls clone it maps attack to the right bumper/trigger. I like attacking with square/triangle so if you remap it according you can’t use ranged weapons as you need to hold down the attack button to aim and release to fire. I had to resort to fast switching between controller and mouse the odd time I wanted to use a ranged attack

Fun?

This is definitely another one of those games that’ll end up in an iron pineapple video
I’ve never actually seen one, but he’s at least one person playing all of these soulslikes
Curse of Eternity seems like another technically competent addition to the genre
I’m usually very lukewarm on the gameplay for soulslikes and the thing that draws me to them is the production design
Stuff like Hellpoint at least fills the wold with cool looking shit that’ll kill you over and over again.
This just seemed more like generic fantasy to me, at least as far as I was able to piddle forwards.
I will give props to the environment designers though. Those maps are very well jacquays’d and play with the camera blind spots
Plus there are some pretty neat environments to fight in
That all said, the gameplay really didn’t click with me. I suppose that means I just need to find a weapon that matches my playstyle, but the ones they dropped at the beginning really didn’t seem all that interesting never mind I found the halberd

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches out of the box on the desktop and Steam Deck
Almost holds 144 at 2560×1440 on the RX 6700XT
Almost holds 60 at 1280×800 on the Deck
With post processing on high, like what you’re looking at right now, you almost can’t see the motion blur.
Because you can actually see the post processing and what it does to the textures.
Enemy idle chatter is louder than you smacking them in the face at point blank.
The world looks a little barren, the character animations are pre-baked assets, along with most of the buildings.
And the combat is what you get when you ask Venn to describe what Dark Souls combat is.
The key thing to point here is that it functions pretty much as you expect. Except the post processing.
No stupid controller fuck ups, no crashing when you set it to fullscreen, they didn’t even claim they only tested it on the Deck only for it to be revealed that was clearly not the case.
No, Imakeda Games only tested Curse of Eternity on Ubuntu and it works on Nobara and the Deck with no issues, except the performance… sometimes.

Fun?

But even then I didn’t hate it.
There was thought put into how things are laid out
There really isn’t a need to backtrack past each of the self-contained areas
Loop around, unlock the shortcut, kill the boss and unlock the door to the next area.
It’s a linear souls-like and there’s nothing wrong with that.
The combat is over-simplified souls-fare, like The Last Hero of Nostalgaia.
Though it does improve on the magic system by allowing you to bind 8 different spells or weapons to a HUD wheel or shortcut key.
Then you can select each one or cast/swap to it immediately by tapping the shortcut.
That’s a really good idea and a marked improvement over the VGA game of the year.
But the stilted character movement, pre-baked enemy combat animations, and other pre-baked assetery are jarring to see in an otherwise perfectly serviceable game.
I was genuinely surprised when buildings and tents actually stopped enemy projectiles.
But that’s me being extremely jaded.
If it was $10, I’d give it 3 Chairs.