Linux Game Cast 543: TidePod Cast

GOG disconnects from Steam! Team Fortress 2 leaks all over the place, Google enables Bluetooth on Stadia controllers, GitHub removes Mortal Kombat II source code, and hipster-pixel platforming in Lisp.

Special thanks to:
Aromantic_dev: bawk bawk

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:37 Long preshowzen
01:13 Linux hipster cast
02:03 Installing Windows 10
07:44 Twitchy John Romero
09:38 Disneyland
10:31 Half-off laptop
STEAM NEWS
12:22 Less Steam restarts
14:14 Valve clogged up
15:48 GOG closes Valve
19:22 Big honking TF2 leak
NEW GAMES
21:40 Juan Sin Miedo
24:40 Car Racing GOTY
27:18 Kandria
30:06 Dino Run goes open-source
NEWS
33:12 BAWK
39:14 Nvidia nouveau progress
43:16 Unlocked Stadia controllers
46:08 RIP MK2 source code
48:36 ATARI handheld and mini arcade
52:44 The size of every ATARI 2600 game
56:46 Veloren 0.14
REVIEW
58:35 Bots Are Stupid
HATE MAIL
01:12:18 PS classic

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Beta time

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4397053?emclan=103582791433918461&emgid=6763877288727266767

This fixed the random moon-glyph error screen.
Changing download regions no longer requires restarting the Steam client!
- Really handy when you’re trying to find the “sucks less” East coast server.
The Jan 11th has a severe bug which causes Steam to create tons of Xorg/XWayland clients until you can no longer open any other applications because you’ve reached the max limit.
- Yeah, that was fun to figure out.
The Jan 12 update fixes that.

GOG disconnect

Eh, I forgot it was a thing.
You will be missed, by someone.
Most of my GOG games were from connect
- Same
It steals sales away from GOG and really only served to get you on their malling list
Admittedly I forgot that was a thing as well.
Why offer a DRM free version when people can just buy it again from you?
And not even have the Linux version because your shop makes/made the process of validating Linux builds hell for developers.
I have 112 games on GOG and I’m guessing 100 of them were from connect.

TF2 Leak

61GB of TF2 including source, and I don’t mean the engine.
Though, that’s been leaked multiple times already.
Bunch of maps and assets that were never used.
With Valve handing over the reins of the game to the community, maybe this’ll be helpful.
60gbs of unused maps, modes, mechs and witches.
As the article alludes to, all of the missing stuff is going to get modded in to the.
I watched the Valve guys video on it and didn’t see anything amazing.
Then again, I don’t know much about TF2.

Steam: New Games

Juan Sin Miedo

A 1 man project dio de los muertos adventure platformer
According to the reviews it hard
Indiana Juan indeed!
Castlevania and the last crusade?

Car Racing Highway Driving Simulator, real parking driver sim speed traffic deluxe 2023

Are you ready for the next level of driving video game happy fun good time excitement?
Amazon product listing: The game!
From the trailer, those driving mechanics are a solid PS1 era type of deal.
V-Rally, NFS Porsche Unleashed, that era.

Kandria

https://reader.tymoon.eu/article/413

Please have good kombat and movement.
It takes after celeste, apparently.
At 1.27 HollowKnights it fkn better.
It’s done in Lisp, naturally.
We actually talked about this back in episode 517
Now they’re on steam
The platforming does scream “I’m not Celeste but I really wanna be!”

Steam: Game Updates

Open-source dino run

https://github.com/pixeljam/DinoRunDX

Nobody wants to join your Discord server to download the source.
Flash game is it? Yeah, no.
I guess if you’re a big dino run fan and want to volunteer to keep it on life support you might as well give it look.
It would be interesting to see if someone reimplements it in not flash.
Hey, they did the github.
ActionScript, that’s a blast from the past.

News:

Open-source Nvidia

5 fps but it’s working.
I look forward to seeing performance double
Hey, Vulkan!
Gives me hope for that NVidia ION EeePC.
Assuming anyone gives a damn about the Tesla series, released originally in 2008.

Stadia bricks

Google did a good.
At least they won’t end up in a landfill.
Might be a good time to yoink a few.
They seem to be going for around $30.
What did they use before?
- WiFi?
- The controllers were self-contained Stadia things.

RIP MK Source

We knew it was coming. That’s still a big fuck you to warner bros though
I look forward to the re-engineer: Human FIghting.
Warner Bros employee sent a DMCA notice to GitHub.
It’s a 30 year old game so don’t expect much in the way of outrage.
Pretty sure there are multiple local copies of the repo floating about already.
The original uploader uploaded a new repo with the wiki article bit describing the abusive work conditions at NetherRealm which were made public following the release of MK11.
Well done!
WB accomplished very little and only made it so the dirty laundry of one of their subsidiaries is once again made public.

My Arcade

Gamestation plus is a fake ass-product name.
Not quite okama gamesphere but close.
Going back to the cheap low effort knick knacks.
This is what I expect from ATARI.
Oh, yeah. That was worth killing off the one product that actually had interesting use for tinkerers.
Nah! Just release another OUYA. Only this time with games no one really cares much about anymore.
The historical argument falls kinda flat since the retro enthusiasts have the original hardware already, and every other android emulator knockoff gets sold with most if not all Atari games already built in.

Veloren 0.14

Trade with your pets!
Redwoods and dead woods
Reflection settings and some FSR like stuff
Better Death Stranding compatibility.
Ran around in single player for a bit.
Zoooooooooooooooooooooomed all the way out.
That initial startup / world gen takes about half a minute.
Has a launcher, Airshipper.
Ooh, shiny!

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Bots Are Stupid
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1578160/Bots_Are_Stupid/
Devel: Leander Edler-Golla
Engine: .Net Core 2.0 / MonoGame
Price: £10.99 / $12.99 / $16.99

Wazzat: An ultra-precise 2D platformer where you give robots instructions instead of directly controlling them. Master the campaign levels or create and share your own.

Mandatory Disclosure: RTheren bought us the game

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

On Debian Bookwork it does not launch.
This has been a problem since before the holidays and despite the community providing a solution it has not been addressed.
Granted, it’s an easy fix and the system requirement lists Ubuntu 16.04+.
I’m just saying.
No controller support but you could get away playing with a touch screen.
Keebs and gerbil get the job done.

Fun?

You know how Kerbel is for kids too clever for minecraft?
This is for the Meat Boy kids.
I grew up with Logo in the classroom running on Apple II E’s.
This kinda hits me in the nostalgia feels.
Really wish we had something like this back in the day for the 5 year old crowd.
Yeah, I just threw your game into the edutainment category, deal with it.
Does it teach programming?
Nope, but neither did Logo.
It does give you a syntax to control your little robot and several A to B challenges.
Good way to introduce the concept of debugging to someone in primary school / still running Windows 7.
Teaches you about optimization.
I’m down with the puzzles and I like anything that teaches problem solving but there is 0 chance of playing this for fun.
Not with our crowd.
At $12.99 it’s priced to sell and includes a level builder along with an online leaderboard.
I want to give it 1.5 but yeah, it fails to launch.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

As Pedro Mentioned, does not work out of the box
Once the magic dotnet environment variable gets set you can run it though
No graphical options other than drag your windowed mode resolution
There is a soundtrack. It’s mildly inoffensive. Not what I listen to when I program
Mavis bacon teaches controls

Fun?

This is baby’s first TAS
The thing about TAS is that they are pretty fun to watch, but the actual creation of them is pretty niche
The gameplay itself is pretty trial and error
I’m sure after long enough stretches of time you can see through the matrix but at least at the start, it’s very much debugging 101
But then if you actually give debugging features like the ability to step through, it removes the challenge
And there’s the rub. As someone who has to deal with code for a living this isn’t my definition of fun

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Does not launch out of the box either on the Desktop or the Deck.
Boy, that sure hasn’t happened in a while.
You need to add the following as a launch option to run it on anything more up-to-date than Ubuntu 22.04:
DOTNET_SYSTEM_GLOBALIZATION_INVARIANT=1 %command%
Here’s the link if you want to figure out what that does exactly: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/main/docs/design/features/globalization-invariant-mode.md
Guess this isn’t exactly a game for people to play on the Deck in handheld mode, given the lack of an actual physical keyboard by default.
It’s still pretty naughty of a native Linux game to not run properly on SteamOS, though VALVe shares some of the blame with how long they’ve taken to release the iso for SteamOS 3.
But after that to say the rest is barebones would be a bit redundant for a programming game.
Though an option to limit the FerPS at 200, as that is what the game claims its internal clock runs at, would be very welcome.
The visuals are ok and the soundtrack wasn’t terrible, but it got real repetitive, real quickly.

Fun?

No
I hate programming and I’m not going to bother learning your game’s programming syntax and flags because I never intend to start it back up again.
The primary gameplay loop is to code and watch to see what happens, then rinse-repeat until you have something that works.
You can absolutely go back and optimize for time or script length
But I sure as shit didn’t want to do it
There’s nothing wrong with the actual game, other than it doesn’t start without launch codes, in more ways than one.
I just hate the subject matter and the trial and error gameplay based on my hatred of programming and just brute forcing my way to the next level is not helping.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:

Hate Mail:

PS Classic