Linux Game Cast 550: Thighceroy

Aphex Legends bans Proton users! DOOM traces rays on Deck, GODOT 4.0 is ready for public consumption, and Thorium Nova is the best next-gen bridge simulator you’ve never heard of.

Special thanks to
Mfoxdogg (increased pledge)

Listen:

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:35 Pi cam live stream
02:27 Benchmarking SilverLube
05:24 Jordan on Deck
08:35 Desk booster seat?
STEAM NEWS
10:44 Apex Proton EAC bans
17:24 Ray traced DOOM on Deck
21:40 F310 vs Steam client
NEW GAMES
27:22 Beef Jerky
29:52 Stack Machines
NEWS
43:52 New Nvidia beta drivers
47:02 GODOT 4.0
51:12 Amazon basics HSF
55:34 OpenRA in 2023
58:30 Thorium Nova bridge sim
01:02:31HL-1 traced with rays
REVIEW
01:05:00 Joshua’s Legs
HATE MAIL
01:21:24 Kazoo
01:24:02 Alpakka pricing

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Apex Bans

How many of them were running Tanya?
Was this a parting gift from EA’s Baton Rouge QA team?
I see a few Proton hotfixes get pushed this week.
Could have been something with EAC.
Some people have reported they’ve now been unbanned.
The timing does seem a bit too coincidental.

DOOM Rays

https://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/1631472039289843712

The latest SteamOS Preview can trace DOOMY rays.
35fps for raytraced doom on Deck is not horrid.
That’s pretty cool
I wonder though, does ray tracing improve battery life at all on devices like this. Or is the dedicated hardware even more of a power hog
35FerPS looking at the floor in an enclosed room.
It’s impressive but I suspect actual FerPS might be a bit less.

F310 Returns

Big picture mode still missing them nvidia fixes
Apparently there were some regressions involved with adding cli flags to your steam shortcuts
The F310 was “the default” Linux controller for a while.
It’s good that it’s been fixed.
More HDR dev tools for the Deck.
The overall Steam client has been sluggish as of late.
That, and the white screen of nope on store pages.
And it likes to forget my game drive all of a sudden.

Steam: New Games

Mmmmm jerk

Apparently it’s a really short narrative experience. Only an hour
People seem to like it.
You can punch a Karen cuz it’s got punch out mechanics.
Justice punch?
It has one of those square TVs and big cassette tape players in the trailer.

Stacks not snacks

More programming edutainment to inflict on the young.
Similar to games you’ve played: BabNOPE!
Someone took my least favourite minigame in Spider Man and ran with it.
Histograms!?

News:

Hot driver action

Yo, that speedy decomp is no joke.
- indeed.gif
They work.
For whatever reason I needed to manually regenerate my initramFS after installation
On fedora land, that’s sudo cp /boot/$(uname -r).img /boot/$(uname -r).img.bak && dracut -f /boot/$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

Godot 4.0 Release (Katana)

This time for real, you guys!
The Vulkan button and web Godot are now official.
Hopefully we’ll start seeing some more 3d godot games now
Godot 3.x is now gonna move to long term support

OpenRA in 2023

Support for C&C remastered edition on steam and initial support for Tiberian Sun HD.
Control -f linux doesn’t find anything, but I did scope some DE specific fixes in the big changelog
Again, huge surprise that EA supports this.
What’s epic/bethesda’’s excuse?
The C&C Remastered Collection must be installed through Steam.
It’s not 100% baked yet so expect performance to increase.

SS Gofkyourself

More bridge simulators! My gaming white whale
It has a dungeon master like role for referees to introduce complications and narratives
NodeJS based so theoretically you can play this anywhere.
Thorium Classic has been in development since 2016 and is primarily intended to be used in brick-and-mortar space centers.
Thorium Nova is currently under development and is intended to be used by a broader audience. It will include much more content, pre-built missions, and more integrated tutorials.
Apparently it’s closer to a virtual tabletop for starship RPGs than a standalone game.
I want a Nimbus BP-1729 bridge simulator.

Half-Life: Ray Traced (Rtheren)

Forked from the original Xash3D
You can now trace those rays in the OG Half-Life.
Follow these simple eleventy steps.
Then use Proton? Na.

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

Game: Joshua’s Legs

Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934330/Joshuas_Legs/

Devel: PetitLegume

Engine: Unity

Price: £10.99 / $13.99 / $15.49

Wazzat: Joshua’s Legs is a unique game with devious controls about a two-legged arachnid hoping to find his long lost prosthetic legs collection. Venture in a world that will only reveal its secrets to the true hardened climbers.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys via Curator Connect

Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

It launches, fullscreen.
Couple of options for sound but that’s it.
Shows controls for keyboard / gamepad.
Keyboard works but that’s an extra level of hell.

Fun?

Yall motherfuckers ever sit back and think, yeah, QWOP could use a plot!
You play as Joshua and the best I can tell is he’s stuck in a vacuum cleaner.
Something has happened to his family and there are upgrades scattered about to aid in your journey to, well, fk if I know.
I even picked up the map and learned about Josh being traumatized at summer camp.
Nope, still no idea what I’m supposed to be doing at this point.
Joshua’s Legs does the story slowly unfolding through exploration thingy and I like that.
Well, I would like that if A WHOLE LOT MORE if movement was not such an absolute chore.
I rewatched the game trailer this afternoon and the developer had Joshy swinging and boopin so hard it would have made John Ditko blush.
You’re not going to be moving like that until you have a few dozen hours under your belt.
An hour in and my movement consist of walking + the occasional misguided jump.
Joshua’s Legs could do with some traversal education mechanics in that first hour.
It might take away from the ookie spoopy atmosphere but it might keep people playing longer than 60 minutes.
I like what I played of the game but my brain meats started doing ROI calculations around 45 minutes in.
I might go back and explore using the spinny slingshot mechanic I stumbled across by flailing.
If you’re a TwitchTube streamer with anger issues pick Joshua’s Legs right the fk up.
If you’re looking for a well done metroidvania that controls like a rabid emu on a meth binge, pick up two copies.
I have no doubt this game is delightful, deep, and dark but I can’t recommend it for the casual fk you hard spider-based metroidvania puzzle-platformer connoisseur.

Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches OOTB on the deck and on 1080Ti
There’s barely enough stuff drawn on the screen to truly tax any level of GPU.
This isn’t a bad thing. The minimalist style works for this sort of game. My wife called it “super cute”
Consequently, no resolution options
Also no cloud saves
The controls are extra fucky, but that’s kinda the point

Fun?

I don’t think it’s particularly fun
I really like the minimalist art style and the show-absolutely-never-tell storytelling
But do I have fun playing it? No
Frankly it kinda hurts my thumbs
Jumping kinda sucks
But here’s the thing. This game isn’t for me. It’s aimed at people who liked stuff like meat boy or getting over it
It’s a challenge of your physical ability to execute the tasks that the game designer put in front of you. Some folks relish that challenge and can push back on the frustration and master the super janky mechanics.
But that takes a bunch of time and effort that I really don’t have.

Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

Launches out of the box on the desktop and the Deck
Holds whatever FerPS your screen is refreshing at.
The font in the menu is blurry and as someone who wears glasses, that shit threw me off.
The graphics are simple but everything seems to be properly conveyed.
There’s background noise but that seems to be it.
Controllers seem to work… as long as they have 2 analog sticks.
Keyboard controls are WASD and IJKL and you can’t rebind them.

Fun?

Did you ever feel like what QWOP was missing was metroidvania style mechanics?
Joshua’s Legs is the game for you.
You navigate where you can (poorly) and collect bugs, rings, and movement upgrades.
While I was fumbling around like what you see on the video version, I was thinking.
“Boy am I glad video games made movement/jumping a single button/analog input.”
Cuz I’d hate video games if they all played like this.
Also for a game so keen on accurate analog stick movement, it seems weird to not account for stick bounce when you let go too quickly.
Which is a problem if you want to do the jump thing.
I jumped the wrong way 99% of the time because the game would register the direction of the bounce not the actual direction I flicked the sticks to.
After adjusting the deadzone on the controller it got better and I could reliably jump in the direction I wanted.
Spider Qwoptroidvania is not a bad game, but I don’t like it.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:

Hate Mail:

Gunky

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