Linux Game Cast 551: Double Deckin’ It

Automatic snapshots for the Steam Deck! Fly Dangerous tracks heads, GZDoom powered Apocalyptic Vibes, celebrating ten years of Robocraft and Google torches what’s left of Stadia.

Special thanks to:
Don m (bits)
Nubbn (34 month resub)


Listen:

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:16 Silverblue Wednesday
03:30 Jordan’s new laptop
05:33 Pedro pew pew
STEAM NEWS
07:30 AMD’s Steam Deck APU
11:15 Save states with Steamback
15:15 Proton GE 7.50
NEW GAMES
16:42 Apocalyptic Vibes
GAME UPDATES
19:16 Fly Dangerous
22:12 Robocraft 10 years
24:38 Aragami devs close shop
NEWS
35:32 Stadia never existed
41:02 FEX Proton optimizations
42:36 Mac gaming
44:12 Box64 gets Heroic
50:22 Alpakka firmware update
52:26 Gamescope with NVIDIA
56:36 Epic self publishing
REVIEW
01:02:12 Rushway
HATE MAIL
01:18:39 EVGA
01:23:04 Haunted Arch


Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam: News

Deck APU in 2023

  • LPDDR5 sux for CPU and GPU
  • The APU makes some sacrifices in the CPU department to maximize GPU performance in comparison to a similar laptop part
    • Less power and heat to and from the CPU means the GPU can push more pixels.
  • The L3 finding on Linux is likely caused by the C3 entry cache flush, which goes away in Valve’s upcoming 6.1 kernel.
  • Serious case of Redmonditis over at Chips and Cheese.
  • Even compared to the 6000 series APUs like what the Aya Neos use, the GPU on the Deck tends to deliver better performance for the power it draws.
  • And if the new kernel helps combat some of the CPU cache woes, all the better.


Steamback

  • Savegame backups taken to their full exploitative extreme.
  • You can use this to cheat and dupe items in some multiplayer games *cough* Souls games *cough*
  • But in its essence this is very good to backup savegames and let you recover in the eventuality that something does end up corrupting your saves *cough* Bethesda games *cough*
  • This only works if the game in question supports cloud saves
  • You got 10 slots per game, so don’t fuck it up
  • I found out that cloud saves need to be specifically enabled for the steam deck. PoE2 didn’t copy my save, but I can access it from any other PC


Proton GE 750

  • On the small side with just updates for the internals
  • Even more protonfixes removed since the games should now work without them.
  • Though Metal Slug of all games needed one adding.
  • Strider has failed to kidnap eggy so the updates keep coming

Steam: New Games

GZDoom STALKER

  • Had a solid 14 emails back and forth with the dev but the Linux version is there and it works properly!
    • I like his little note at the end
  • YAY!
  • It’s a lot like STALKER but done in GZDoom which I approve of.
  • Big thanks to the dev for sending us keys as well.
  • We will be doing a proper review in the coming weeks, because we need to specify that these days.
  • Apparently talking to an NPC is like talking to a “nonsensical drunk”.
  • I’m sure a lot of hard work was put into it but $25CAD for GZdoom is a bit of an ask
  • Contains excessive caffeine consumption. Just like zombie admin

Steam: Game Updates

FlyDangerous EA 2

  • 25 new tracks to crash in.
  • You need to spend more time explaining the boost mechanic.
  • I think I understand it but something is not clinking.
  • None of the times require Thrusbooster 9000 hardware, right?
  • Terrain generation time is brutal.
  • Support was added for motion sensors, so if you got one of those fancy chairs that move around you can hook it up to fly dangerous. Also head tracking
  • #Driftcam


10 years of Robot MOBA (RTheren)

  • Almost 200 hours I spent in Robocraft
  • It was simple but it was dumb fun with robots of your creation.
  • Admittedly I spent more time building and dismantling robots than actually fighting with them.


RIP murder bush (RTheren)

  • Shutting down after nine years of development, primarily creating 2016’s Aragami, its Nightfall DLC, and 2021’s Aragami 2.
  • Running out of time for a mystery project is a bit cryptic.
  • Weird suggestion but how about you open-sauce everything you can?
  • Don’t let your work go to waste and let people use it for other things.
  • I guess whatever money they had is gone and they couldn’t find a new source?
  • Aragami 2 never came out on linux so I had no reason to pick it up

News:

Stadia never existed

  • Stadia was going to live on as a white label service.
  • Something other companies could license and ATT streamed the goddamn batman with it.
  • They torched the whole stack.
  • Seems a little petty to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
  • Take a note from AMDs book and release the source if you’re not going to be arsed with it anymore.
  • I was reading a really interesting twitter thread aboyut google’s internal engineering process and how a lot of what they build is specific to google and is on a parallel track with the rest of the world
  • I wonder how much of this is the result of some internal google power struggle that went real bad for a stadia champion.


Proton optimizations

  • They clawed back a second.
  • New Snapdragon dev machines.
    • I kinda want one of those myself
  • At this rate, you might actually be able to play some older non-open-sauce games on your Pinebooks and Asahi Linux machines before long.


Box64

  • Heroic box updates
  • Gallium nine support if you’re using an AMD GPU with your ARM machine.
    • I wonder how that compares to dxvk performance wise
  • Steam big picture mode works
  • Man, progress on getting shit running on aarch64 blows my tiny little mind


Alpakka Firmware 88

  • Dynamic adjustment of the conductive filament touch sensitivity to avoid accidental gyro activation when only just slightly touching the capacitive bit.
  • Can define if the gyro is enabled by the conductive bit or if you’d rather hold down a button to do it with individual profiles.
  • Basic macro support.


Gamescope With NVIDIA

  • Let me tell you about his brand new technology that was released last year.
  • Seriously, most people don’t know what the hell a gamescope is.
  • People with Decks use it without knowing.
  • And it works a treat with team green in 2023.
  • At least for my limited use case.
  • I’m showing it with steam but you can use it for anything.
  • Explained some common options and use cases.
  • Hurr-durr something something AMD.
  • Fair warning, the latest version of gamescope locks my keyboard input.


Self publishing

  • Shovelware parity.
  • No porny visual novels, that’s a lot of money off the table.
  • Gotta support epic achievements and cross-store crossplay, which is nice
    • I’m pretty sure epic needs this to be the case or else folks just won’t buy shit on epic if they can’t play with their friends

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


Game: RUSHAWAY
Webzone: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2091540/RUSHAWAY/
Devel: Ninestudios
Engine: Unity
Price: £9.29 / $10.99 / $13.99

Wazzat: RUSHAWAY is a 2.5D fast-paced single-player platformer, where your objective is to find the fastest ways towards the goal. Explore different paths for every level, and discover the more optimal ones, avoiding or exploiting different hazards.

Mandatory Disclosure: Devs sent us keys on Curator Connect



Venn:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Everything works, ish.
  • Menu system is annoying with extra pauses, steps, and not working with the d-pad.
  • Can’t rebind the controls, seriously?
  • This wouldn’t be a problem if you got them right out of the box.
  • Can’t manage 60 at 2160p on a 3060.
  • It can do it at 1080p but I don’t know about 1440p since it’s not an option in the resolutions.
  • Seriously, what is going on with the resolution selection? It’s RNG?
  • Volume options close out the available settings.

Fun?

  • Fun is a strange metric to pin down on this one.
  • I was at the First Trial level.
  • I found myself having to make an executive decision.
  • Do I want to continue playing or do I want to risk damaging the analogue stick on my PS4 / Xbox controllers.
  • Fk you hard precision platformers are, my, thing.
  • D-pads exist for reasons.
  • I was putting way too much mojo into my sticks doing the wall jumps.
  • That, and the throw from left to right is cavernous compared to the d-pad.
  • Yeah, this might get fun later on but I would have refunded this on the controls alone.
  • Did I like what I played?l
  • Well, you know the soulless uninspired bonus levels from Sonic on the Mega Drive?
  • It’s like that with fez traversal mechanics.
  • Think Sonic 1, but slower.


Jordan:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches OOTB on the deck. Same with the 3900x and the 1080ti
    • Speaking of which! Hey! Cloud saves!
  • Gotta agree with Venn on those menus. Oof
  • Controls work ooTB, but no d-pad on dualshock or steamdeck
  • Visuals are minimalistic. Everything gets the point across
  • I like the soundtrack. It’s some good ruan noodling

Fun?

  • This is sweaty hands: the game
  • I need me some gamer chalk after about 10 minutes
  • Oh boy, precision platformers! My favourite genre! And we’re competing for time? Joy
  • Despite my misgivings, the game is certainly okay
  • The controls are reasonably tight and the the levels are definitely designed well.
  • One gripe is the abundance of dead ends. If you’re competing for time, having insta-death pits seems a bit redundant
  • Control wise it’s a bit of a hybrid between action henk and speedrunners. But no sliding. You just have to trace the curve of the track
  • There’s also a degree of momentum management involved. You can’t just gun it or you’ll overshoot
  • If you’re a speedrunny type and you want something to sink your teeth into this might be for you
  • Not for me though


Pedro:

Launch/Looks/Sounds/Control

  • Launches out of the box on the desktop and the Deck
  • If you enable Vsync it actually syncs to your display’s chosen refresh rate.
  • Performance is also pretty good.
  • Probably because it doesn’t support 2560×1440 at all, 1080p or 4k.
  • At least it does 1280×800 on the Deck.
  • Controllers work, though on the DualShock the DPad is misconfigured.
  • I thought that might just be the usual Unity cockup but no, the triggers are move left and right respectively.
  • Something tells me that was intentional, mostly the fact that the issue is present on the Deck too.
  • It seemed to miss some button presses but I’m not sure if it was just me and my old age showing.
  • There’s some background music but it’s even less intrusive than elevator music.
  • And the graphics work for what they are.

Fun?

  • Did you ever find yourself wishing for a single player Speedrunners in which you play on a quasi-Fez type of 3D spinning tower and compete with yourself for the lowest time to the top?
  • That’s awfully specific of you, but hey! RUSHAWAY is exactly what you’ve been waiting for.
  • I liked Speedrunners purely for the multiplayer aspect.
  • Wouldn’t catch me playing it on my own in my spare time.
  • RUSHAWAY doesn’t have that.
  • Yes, it does have online leaderboards for you to obsess over if you like.
  • But that alone is not enough for me to keep playing.
  • I got the gist of it and the timing of holding the jumps and twirling the analog stick in the direction the path goes rather than just left or right.
  • It’s neat but I find myself not really invested.

Verdict:

Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:


Hate Mail:

EVGA


Haunted

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