LinuxGameCast Weekly 252 – Brief Review

Steam Direct is live! Humble gets kinky, Hitman goes indie, and Two Worlds II delays their Linux port. Then Dawn of War 3 faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro

Steam News:

Live direct
http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1328973169870947116

They are going to mass dump the remaining greenlight games onto Steam.
And that explains the Steam store this week.
“This fee for each appID is returned in the payment period after that game has at least $1,000 in Steam store or in-app purchases.”
- So if you’re releasing a free-to-play game, your only chance of recouping this fee is to load it with Microtransactions.
If you have a game on greenlight that didn’t get tossed on the steam store, you can get some refund action if you haven’t ever got a game greenlit
“we have a couple of brief review periods where our team plays each game to check that it is configured correctly”
- No you fuc*ing won’t / don’t.
- Unless this “team” is like the dozens of unpaid translators.

A little updateOS
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse/discussions/1/2333276539589853731/

The big fix here is the patched sudo, although I’m pretty sure SteamOS doesn’t fucks with the selinux
- I’d say fixing crashing with DS4s counts as a big enough update!
New Mesa and Kernel as well. Radeon Users rejoice

Lots
http://www.techspot.com/article/1416-steam-machines-what-happened/

What happened was that VALVe undercut their hardware partners.
I “like” how the predominant feeling is that SteamOS or Linux is to blame for the poor performance.
- I wonder how many of these people blamed Windows for the shitty Dark Souls port.
Lack of promotion, lack of compelling content, reliance on another more powerful computer to play the majority of their library
But no, linux itself is the issue here.
But why buy that when, for $50 more, you can get an almost identical-looking, living room-friendly Alienware Alpha that comes with Windows 10
- Go die in a fucking fire
The tech was simply not ready.
SteamOS was (and still is) in beta and Vulkan was not in a shippable state.
Mix that in with hardware that was underpowered and overpriced.
Speaking of, Valve didn’t do the hardware thus had no skin in the game.
Compare that to the Steam Controlla which still receives massive promotion.

War of the Chosen
https://www.feralinteractive.com/en/news/772/

A reminder that I need to go back and finish Xcom 2
The expansion is inbound and Feral’s got our back.
The one thing that interests me is the unit synergy mechanic, where certain squaddies learn how to work better together.
Apparently they’re adding an enemy that’ll clone your dudes. That’ll get annoying

Two Worlds II?
http://steamcommunity.com/app/7520/discussions/0/357288572117353726/?tscn=1497540728#c2333276539593383857

Having problems delivering the Linux build?
Why not wait until launch day to tell everyone \:D/
Yes, Topware put microtransactions in Two Worlds II
Curious if it’s gonna be a wine port, VP or Ravens Cry Mark 3

Annihilation update
http://www.pcgamer.com/dawn-of-war-3s-annihilation-update-introduces-new-multiplayer-modes

They’re adding a straight up MOBA mode to DOW 3 Multiplayer.
Without going into too much, I’m still kinda lukewarm on the DOW 3 multiplayer. Not sure this’ll avail my woes
The one and only multiplayer mode you had before this patch took place in what looked very much like a MOBA map, already. 3 lanes with random interconnected paths.
But if you want to hear moar about what we think of DoW3, stick around for the chairs.

News:

Oh FFS
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2017/06/13/creative-sound-blasterx-ae-5/1

I was going to say something along the lines of “the only thing stupider to slap LEDs on would be ________” but came up empty.
- It’s a “Gaming” sound card, it has to have pretty LEDs.
- And make sure the 12 yos screeching profanities sound extra crisp in your ears.
For those of you too good to use the integrated sound on their video card
- Or a USB one
Doesn’t even flash in sync with the sound

Nope
https://www.humblebundle.com/sekai-project-bundle

Some of these are a few pixels shy of straight up hentai
Only 5 out of the the 17 “games” in this bundle have Linux versions.
I put air quotes around games there because a few of these are “kinetic novels”.
As in, you don’t choose anything, you just click to move the completely non-interactive story along.

Wonderport
http://boilingsteam.com/ethan-lee-is-porting-wonderboy-iii-to-maclinux/

Did you know Ethan can kill a yak from 20 yards away? WITH MIND BULLETS?
- That’s telekinesis venn
So they added an OpenGL renderer and handed it off to floobit
It’s a pretty good looking hand drawn side scroller, and the the port will probably work fine. But is it a compelling game?

Hitmango future
http://www.ioi.dk/the-future-of-ioi/

2D hipster pixel Hitman platformer, incoming!
In all seriousness, I can only hope they will keep supporting Linux. Or at least, keep hiring Feral for their Linux ventures.
And, assuming they will maintain Linux support, maybe start making spin off games in the Hitman mythos.
MS will buy them and Hitman will become a XboXxxXSx exclusive.

Halp
https://www.patreon.com/ue4linux

GNU/Linux (GNUX)
- If you weren’t doing good work, I’d totally take a shit on you over this. Yer lucky you beautiful bastard
This dude wants to actually get the UE4 IDE workable on linux and is asking for some financial support to do it.
- Because Epic literally cannot be arsed to do it
- Pros of a source available engine tho
Stuff he wants to add includes:
- HTML5 Packaging support on GNU/Linux
- Android Packaging support on GNU/Linux
- Vulkan support on GNU/Linux
Seeing as Epic is too ashamed to feature the Linux builds of both the editor and game, in their respective download pages, it’s up to the community and folks like Yaakuro to actually put in the work needed to support Linux.
Mr. Sweeney is also guilty of this, it’s nothing short of amazing the lengths he’ll go to, to NOT mention Linux.
Case in point: https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/874717987386863616
- You know that desktop OS which actually does fulfill all the requirements to actually be called an open platform? Never heard of it!

Webby godot
https://godotengine.org/article/progress-report-april-may-2017

Customized purty editors
They’re adding openVR support, which theoretically should work on Linux using the Vive
The cool thing in this update is the Webassembly and WebGL support. Looks like someone’s been following ickybutts’ twitter
- The demo they have is super rudimentary, but works reasonably well in the chromes and firefoxen

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

Game: Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 3
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/285190/
Devel: Relic Entertainment / Feral Interactive
Engine: Essence Engine 4.0
Price: 59.99 / CDN 71.99

Wazzat: Step into a brutal battle between three warring factions In Dawn of War III you will have no choice but to face your foes when a catastrophic weapon is found on the mysterious world of Acheron.

Disclosure: Feral sent us keys.

Makes with the working

V-

Running @ 1080 /w everything on high is holding 60 in-game.
45-50 in multiplayer.
All with Vulkan.
However.
The Intel only sys requirements when the R7 has been out since March and the R5 since April is straight-up amature hour.
Like it or not you’re going to have to learn how to AMD.

J-

The vulkans! They work!

P-

That menu jank, though.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

Have you played Dawn of War II, Chaos Rising, or Retribution?
Then guess, fkn, what… you already know what it looks like.
Not good, not bad, just your standard RTS fare.
I have to agree with jordan on the voice acting.
That business is legit, at least in the single player campaign.

J-

The voice acting is solid and gets the point across. Warhammer dialogue can get pretty goofy at times
Visuals wise, this doesn’t do anything to distinguish itself from the hundreds of other RTSes that have been released in the past 10 years
Occasionally, you go “Ooh! Cool! A titan! A dreadnought!”, but that’s more recognition than any specific visual acumen
Plus things get a wee clusterfucky when large numbers of units are involved

P-

They let you customize the colors of your units.
But you never get to see any of that in the heat of things.
In fact, unless you zoom all the way in, the only way you have to tell your units apart from the enemy is the color of the HP bar floating above each squad.
Still, when you do zoom in or you get one of the Titan units everything looks really good and easily identifiable.
The voice over also have just that right amount of camp and cheesiness to it to make everyone sound like they were born and raised in the 40K lore.

Total-

Control

V-

I hate games that don’t have WASD for movement with a passion.
Oh, you can rebind all the things but prepare to spend an hour re-rebinding all the other bullsh*t somewhere elks.

J-

I get that the qwerasdzxc keys are used for the unit and building hotkeys, but goddamn, I’d just really like to be able to pan with WASD

P-

Total-

FUN

V-

Warhammer is just like sportsball.
The slightest mention of either in the vicinity of a proper fan will cause you to get an ear full.
When you explain you only have a passing interest (casual) they will happily point you to guides so you can become more fan.
This is DAW for babbys and if we’re being honest it’s even too dumbed down for my enjoyment.
The single player campaign is basically an overextended tutorial.
Multiplayer OTOH is absolutely fantas…. hahahahahah I’m just FKN with ya.
On Windows this critter averages 1K players.
On Linux you only play against people you have scheduled games with.
Even if you do hook up, the available multiplayer modes are balls boring.
So, what is it? Well, it’s
Collect resources, build shit, attack, the game.
Basically Dune 2 minus the nostalgia.

J-

They dun made starcraft
Which is fine, starcraft is a perfectly fine RTS, but DOW 2 made a fantastic change by focusing just on squad management as opposed to all the micromanagey stuff that bogs down most RTSes
Apparently, most people didn’t like that, so they brought number 3 back to a more traditional RTS, while still keeping some of the squad stuff tacked on
And it feels super tacked on
Ultimately, anything I say though will be just comparing it to starcraft, which is kind of ironic considering 40k was the basis for starcraft
And when it boils down to it, I didn’t find star craft all that fun

P-

And they fucked it!
I really enjoy Dawn of War 2.
It’s the game I keep on my laptop for when I have an hour or so to kill
Dawn of War 3, on the other hand, shirks the squad focus, which made its predecessor more of a strategy RPG, and brings back the usual RTS mechanics.
Streamlined as the resource collection may be, I get to the point where I have enough to spawn a boat load of units, select all and then plow my way toward the objective marker. Hoping the objective was one of the things that died or exploded on the way.
I loathe pure real time strategy games and Dawn of War 3 is just that!
No advanced resource management, everything is boiled down to basics, and the Squad management aspect, which had me singing the praises of Dawn of War 2, has been toned down as well.
Gone are the loot and equipment drops and all you do is the standard “unit upgrade” which I’m not entirely sure does anything.
This isn’t an issue with Warhammer or 40k specifically, it’s an issue I have with RTS games.

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

Intel
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?CYxla1h

Remember how some people were going to make bitcoins rain on our face-organs if we just took the time to setup a wallet thingy?
Notice how those people houdinied the FK out of here when we set it up?
Yeah, we’re kinda done adding things and let’s face it, ain’t nobody dropping $900 on a i7-6900K.

E3
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?TXcSx6I
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/270406768750886912/324758580823719936/IMG_1650.JPG