Linux Game Cast 547: Sony Yeeta

GODOT goes mobile! Framework enters the Steam Deck business, Next Fest is bringing back game demos, and TheForceEngine gets a Linux button.

Special thanks to:
Kyrylo (new pat)
Nubbn 33 months

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:52 What is ART?
STEAM NEWS
11:33 Steam Next Fest!
16:50 Why Steam Deck is significant
21:32 2TB Deck SSD from Framework
26:10 Valve time security patches
NEW GAMES
28:56 Formula Retro Racing
31:32 Slopecrashers
33:10 Saga of Sins
36:00 End of the Sun
GAME UPDATES
38:18 Bioshock Infinite Linux patch
NEWS
46:00 GODOT goes mobile
50:54 Force Engine Linux build
53:48 Ambermoon rewrite in C#
59:12 Steel Dawn for Unreal
REVIEW
01:03:40 Kandria
HATE MAIL
01:23:24 Steamy mouse

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Next the Fest

I’m starting to really dig the Next Fests.
It’s getting developers to make demos.
I tried a couple.
The new System Shock and a boomer shooter called Coven.
Gave up because both didn’t allow me to play with the arrow keys.
System Shock at least allowed me to rebind the controls, but then didn’t register them.
Darker than Dark looks pretty neat

A Decking moment

As a big fan of netbooks I too played many many games on my Asus Eee PC 1005HD and later the Toshiba NB550D back in early 2010s.
Regardless of the Deck’s prowess as a general use machine, and it is proud indeed, it is very much a gaming machine.
And I’m very glad when I spot the occasional one.
The most popular games console released in 2022 was a Linux computer, how about that?
It’s a long read, and has a couple dubious but ultimately harmless points about the linux ecosystem, but this is a pretty decent previously on if you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few years
One interesting point it does bring up is the cost of everything. New good parts are hella expensive so having a popular platform that ultimately brings down the average spec does help make newer games more accessible

2TB Deck

Better than buying 4x 512GB micro sd cards.
That’s awesome, but it’s not available in the UK and $300 is a bit.
I just want a a 1TB 2230 that doesn’t cost £1.5/GB
…Aaaand they’re sold out! https://twitter.com/FrameworkPuter/status/1624082775493218305

Valve Time

Remotely exploitable heap corruption was reported in DotA2.
Valve couldn’t be bothered until someone was actively exploiting it, for the third time.
No word what malicious effects those infected game modes caused but they’re gone now.
These are exploitable via custom game modes, but once you load one there’s some stubborn persistence tech
I do like how the code was included a file called evil.lua
Moral of the story is to update your damn V8 libraries.
If your VM is compromised then all your code is fucked!

Steam: New Games

Formula Retro Racing – World Tour

Has an arcade sim Virtua Racer feel to it.
“Fusing 90s-style arcade racing with realistic physics”
- Do they have to be realistic?
It’s no Car Racing Highway Driving Simulator, real parking driver sim speed traffic deluxe 2023.
- That’s just you running over people in Cybertruck.

Slopecrashers

Downhill stuxcart with ,ultiplayer.
The trailer doesn’t look terrible.
Super Tux Board.
Oh man, I really loved SSX tricky on the PS2. Just gotta do me a little bit of that

Saga of Sins

Get ready to slog through some dialogue.
I never got to the combat. Goddamn.
So Blasphemous but in stained glass stylee?
- Darkest Dungeon.

End of the Sun

These guys have sent us so many emails.
SO MANY EMAILS!
- So, so many emails
It’s a slavic themed puzzle adventure game with some nonlinear elements
You can travel through time!
From the folks who brought us the mims.
We talked about that many years ago on lgc ep 126

Steam: Game Updates

Our bad?

I did not expect that.
Thanks Virtual Programming.
I’m not shocked they accidentalltied a Linux.
I’m shocked they gave it a mention.
That game does not like ThreadBooper so I’m sill in a holding pattern.

News:

Mobile GODOT

This makes me happy.
The next great game could come from some kid on their tablet.
Considering how many schools use Chromebooks, there’s one more tool for teachers to get kids into game making.
There is some touchscreen support like pinch zoom and rotate, but they do recommend pairing a keyboard and mouse and using a larger screen device
Although I do wanna see someone crank out something on a phone. Just to see what you could actually do

TheForceEngine

We all got to watch Empty try to get this compiled in our discord server this week. Good times
- According to him: no mouse capture, midi support still needs work and controller support is described as “okay”
They’re considering a flatpak or snap. Please be flatpak or appimage. I don’t wanna install snapd! Nobody does!
Librtmidi, and libdeveil we the only odd libs I needed.
Outside of that it was standard cmake nonsense.
Assets are $5.99 on GOG.

Ambermoon rewrite in C#

We’re not doing Rust anymore?
Now Strider can say “nice amiga game”
Now you can experience the classic RPG without having to swap floppy disks every 30 seconds!
Look at all these, screenshots!
The binaries make with the working.
Comes with a trainer.
Good luck building it.

Steel Dawn

8 levels and 8 DM levels.
Community-made prequel to the OG Unreal.
Apparently this is a resurrection of a previously scrapped content pack

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

Game: Kandria
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1261430/Kandria/
Devel: Shirakumo Games
Engine: Trial – built in LISP: https://github.com/Shirakumo/trial
Price: £15.99 / $19.99 / $22.79

Wazzat: Explore a ruined open world of caverns and settlements. Hack and slash your way through missions: patrol, repair, scavenge – choose your quests and dialogue. Or go fishing, forage mushrooms, and race the clock! The old world is gone – the future is up to you.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys on Curator Connect

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Everything launched out of the box, no complaints.
Xclone picked up.
Plenty of sound and graphical options.
Vsync and frame limiting do not stick.
I have to go into settings before every play so my 3060 is not at 100% generating eleventy hundred frames.

Fun?

In Kandria you play as an amnesic robot that starts off with all abilities intact.
And no, it does not pull some Symphony of the Afternoon type bullsh*t.
I liked this at first but soon realized why ability progression matters.
What caught me right out of the gate was the artstyle.
Image a 2D hipster-pixel reimagining of Nier Automata on a budget.
Aaaaand you’re an android full of crazy combat kung-fu… and there’s fishing.
Can’t have a 2D hipster-pixel reimagining of Nier Automata on a budget without fishing, right?
That’s why I’m 100% confident calling Kandria what it is, a Celeste clone.
And that’s where the problem lies.
If you are going to ape a mechanic from any game you best get it right or at least improve on the original.
Layers of Fear fucked that simple equestion right up when they added Mr. grabby hand to thir Door opening simulator.
I saw the hand and (based on past experiences) reasoned that I could manipulate everything in the environment.
Wrong.
I’m not entirely convinced that it’s the players fault for making that assumption.
Regardless, it’s a bad foot to start off on.
Anyway, Kandria plays like Celeste.
Down to the spikey bullsh*t.
And by plays like Celeste I mean plays like Celeste is 20 years past her prime attempting an ill fated comeback.
I got about 4 hours into the game, somewhere around the devils grow farm.
Hey, the floor was lava and the spikes turned green.
Anyway, that’s where I tapped out.
I got tired of playing a bad Celeste clone and at that point I was spending 90% navigating the Celeste clone bits.
I enjoyed my time exploring the world, and found combat serviceable.
I could do with less dialogue since it’s mostly talking vs explaining.
I didn’t like the Nier inspired scrap collectathon buy/sell/trade system.
Basically, if you boil everything down, my point is this.
Fuck your save system.
Also, did someone make a sitting animation and you just had to use it? Benches.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Does not launch in Emacs.
Although the readme does have instructions on how to set up the lisp dev environment
Launches OOTB
Holds 60@UHD
Hey, actual graphics options
Correct button prompts too
The soundtrack is okay. It’s competently done and isn’t in the way

Fun?

It’s kinda Okay.
You play robot waitress with a sword who comes to help a colony of survivors in a post apocalypse with the power of jumping, climbing and stabbing
Venn said something a few weeks ago that kept replaying in my head. “This game is unfocused”
And it is. It could be a neat metroidvania or a precision platformer but it’s trying to do both and is kinda mediocre at both
The combat is kinda meh. There’s a basic system in place that’s serviceable with light and heavy attacks in all directions and speeds
Exploration kinda gets nerfed just because there are these long spiky levels off to the sides
They don’t seem to go anywhere and are pretty tricky to get through. Maybe they link up with other areas. Sometimes they’re just dead ends with treasure. But then you gotta haul your ass back.
There are some celeste style accessibility options in case you get too stuck, but even still, it is a pain
But you do have to find other towns, dungeons and whatever. Maybe some kind of limited use recall item could fix this issue?

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches out of the box on both the Desktop and Deck
Holds 144 at 2560×1440 and 60 at 1280×800, no issues.
The issues start to crop up on the game’s inability to function with overlays.
You can get the Steam overlay working by running it on the Deck or with gamescope on the desktop.
Mangohud on the desktop was a no show regardless, on the Deck it works as it should.
DInput controllers didn’t work at all for me unless I enabled Steam Input.
On the Deck that’s less of an issue, since the built in controls always require Steam Input.
Though maybe not for long, if a certain Phoronix article is to be believed.
That music, that sounded like a different game but more on that later.
The graphics were serviceable hipster pixels, they convey what is happening but that’s about it.

Fun?

Heh!
I see what it’s doing with the music and the metroidvania-style quests.
It wants to marry Nier a tomato and Celeste so bad, it’s already picked out the dresses.
Thing is, I tolerated Celeste because you only had to go through the really hard bits once and in one direction.
In Kandria if you have the gall to explore the off-the-beaten-path areas, you better be on the ball and be ready to pull it off in reverse as well.
So I stopped doing the thing I like doing in games because there were no save points for long stretches of time, and the game deliberately does not autosave.
And since I may have to quit out of the game at some point, losing 30 minutes of progress after some of those grueling Celeste-like areas, I start to feel like I’m wasting my time.
And if a video game is making me feel like my time is being wasted, especially when doing the thing I like doing the most (going off the beaten path), something’s gone awfully wrong.
I really like Nier Onomatopoeia and I see what Kandria is trying to do.
I just don’t like it.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:

Hate Mail:

Gerbils