LinuxGameCast Weekly 296: Linux Ice Princesses

Serious Sam 4 is headed to Linux! Steam clamps down on NSFW groups, Hollow Knight: Lifeblood exits beta and Rise of the Tomb Raider attempts to Vulkan. Then Tower of Time faces the CHAIRQASITION!

All this, plus your hate mail.

Special tanks:
Jonas R(increased pledge)
Truggy (Arts & Crafts from the wishzone)

Subscribe:
Linux Game Cast
Linux Game Cast
LinuxGameCast LLP

Morning zoo radio thinly disguised as a Linux gaming podcast. Whether you're a seasoned Linux gamer or just starting out, we have something for everyone. So join us on our journey into the world of Linux gaming!


Listen:

Download:

Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro


Steam News:

Steamy
https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/8cfaqx/steam_is_clamping_down_on_nsfw_groups/

  • Some theorize that is has to do with the new sex trafficking laws being passed in the US
  • Of course, we won’t hear a peep from valve until it starts becoming a big deal
  • I don’t think this will become a big deal because, likely, people who took part of those may not want the rest of the internet to know about it.
  • So, instead of clamping on shit games, stolen assets, card farmers or really any of the hundreds of bugs in the Steam for Linux github, they kill communities about people who pretend to fuck each other.
  • Unless something has already happened and it was linked back to such a community, so VALVe is being proactive and noping them before the news come out.

Simple CLI
https://github.com/berenm/steam-cli

  • Not to be confused with steamcmd
    • The official one.
  • Basically trying to turn steam into yum/zypper/apt/pkg/pacman/emerge

The Ark
https://steamcommunity.com/app/783170/discussions/0/3211505894125320045/?tscn=1524076566

  • Looks neat, sorta want.
  • That looks like a more modern Enclave with a sci-fi setting
  • That sentence has me drooling all over my keyboard!
  • Promises promises. One can only hope.

Hollow Blood
https://steamcommunity.com/games/367520/announcements/detail/3398405279323824778

  • A brand new boss with a new music track by Chris Larkin!
  • One boss has been seriously upgraded. A true challenge awaits!
  • Custom Map Markers
  • If you have opted into the beta you already know all this.

ROTT
http://store.steampowered.com/app/391220/Rise_of_the_Tomb_Raider/

  • Oh, we’re still doing the Intel recommended thing?
  • R3, R5, R7 and their Gen2 variants would like a word.
  • Intel graphics cards are not supported.
  • Over 2 months from the end of Spring, that’s something
  • Shite don’t work, yo.
    • Have to kill compton to get the game to launch.
    • Even then it only runs in windowed mode. Fullscreen causes this.
  • The most common errors I have seen reported are spite locks when / if the window loses focus.
    • Ur friend is playing whatever” pop up. Freeze, drop to desktop. -Truggs”
  • Spite crashes seem to be a thing but less common.
  • When it does run I average 82.42 on high @1080.
  • I really question the 396.18 driver recommendation since it’s only slightly less of a shite show vs 390.

Sam I AM
http://store.steampowered.com/app/257420/Serious_Sam_4_Planet_Badass/

  • That trailer looks a bit meh.
    • It does a look a bit Serious Sam 3 with a greener palette.
  • a brutally bigger scale, and not a single desert level,”
    • Boooo!!!11!!
  • I’m ass-cited. I look forwards to levels of neverending green. It beats brown
  • Probably gonna eat up more than a few thursday streams
  • Yay! A good quality first person shooter… It is an FPS, right?
  • Open world Sam could be interesting?

Double Turn
https://store.steampowered.com/app/762680/Double_Turn/

  • Cute looking fighting game, which we’re severely lacking on the linuxes for raisins beyond our control
  • 4 fighters seems like a painfully small roster though
  • Maybe they’ll Add some more during their early access stint
  • Online multiplayer means I’ll have to at least try it.

2 meet U
http://store.steampowered.com/app/575570/ICED/

  • Another frozen wasteland survival game.
  • Not interested cuz I live in an actual frozen wasteland!

Horizon TURBO
http://store.steampowered.com/app/389140/Horizon_Chase_Turbo/

  • No online multiplayer for a racing game in 2018?
  • Bold strategy, Cotton.
  • It’s Outrun with 3D polygonal graphics.

News:

Drama
https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/18/amd-nvidia-gpp-freedom-radeon-geforce/

  • Radeon Vice President Scott Herkelman made a post on the Radeon website Tuesday that was a not-so-veiled shot at Nvidia over what AMD sees as an attempt at anti-competitive practices. Here’s a snippet:
    • Over the coming weeks, you can expect to see our add-in board partners launch new brands that carry an AMD Radeon product. AMD is pledging to reignite this freedom of choice when gamers choose an AMD Radeon RX graphics card.”
  • Oh, I wants me some corporate war (we all win) but AMD needs a product to back up the smack.
  • We need something to provide 1080 level performance without sucking 300W and costing £1200.
    • Like this?
    • Yeah, but we’ve all seen these promises from AMD in the past.
    • But yes, that would be awesome! Especially if they can deliver that at the sub 125W level.

LLAP WINE
https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases

  • When you don’t want to go to vulkan, vulkan comes to you
  • Taking the heavy lifting off of wine is a good idea. It’s why that d3d9 state tracker in mesa was awesome
  • Strider linked me a video of Dark Souls 3 running on DXVK.
  • Admittedly, the settings were set a bit low to maintain 60ish, but that’s a really good start.

GPU Thingy
https://github.com/arunsivaramanneo/GPU-Viewer/releases/tag/v1.9

  • A little graphical tool for figuring out what your GPU can do and what stuff it supports
  • Much nicer to read than glxinfo output
  • It combines the glxinfo and vulkaninfo outputs into a neat little GUI.
  • It’s not an advanced tool by any stretch, but having that information in an easy to read format can help a great deal.

Flibounty (empty)
https://github.com/flibitijibibo/flibitBounties/issues/4

  • So this is pretty neat.
  • Flibit is attempting to ensure that FNA libraries work in as a drop in replacement for XNA libraries
  • Part of that involves re-engineering a bunch of wine code to work directly with Faudio, the new audio subsystem
  • If you can do it, you get 500 bucks.

Pro Switch
https://github.com/FrotBot/SwitchProConLinuxUSB

  • That’s the regular non-moon controller, right?
  • That’s nice if you have one of these, but I wouldn’t trust these drivers to give you a good experience on par with the Xbox 360 controller.
  • The udev rules just scream Steam Controller, so it may be great for Steam games and letting you rebind things just as easily.

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Game: Tower Of Time
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/617480/Tower_of_Time/
Devel: Event Horizon
Engine: Unity
Price: £19.49 / US$24.99 / CA$28.99

Wazzat: Tower of Time is an incredible adventure packed with over 50 hours of gameplay, hand-crafted levels, and a rich story told through cinematics. Taking classic RPG gameplay to the next level, Tower of Time features flexible character development, thousands of pieces of loot and equipment and the complex and tactical Arrow-Time real-time combat system.

Mandatory Disclosure: The devs sent us keys.


Makes with the working

Venn-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Nothing to complain about aside from the performance.
  • It struggles to maintain 60 @1080p.
    • Not CPU bound, the 1700 barely acknowledges the games existence.
  • That, and a bit of audio popping during the cinematics.

Jordan-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

Pedro- CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

Venn-CHAIRCHAIR

  • It’s Unity, I can tell by the jaggies.
  • Environments look like a bit of alright.
  • Characters… not so much.
  • Passable generic epic background music during the intro.

Jordan-CHAIRCHAIR

  • It’s got some decent production quality, I’ll give it that.
  • When all the enemies and characters lump together, it gets a little character blindy
  • The soundtrack is generic and fantasylike

Pedro-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It looks good but the playable characters seem to stick out from the world.
  • Which is ironic considering how finicky the game is with letting you select a character.
  • But that’s me getting ahead of myself.
  • Aesthetically speaking, it works.
  • I’m still not a fan of the story dump as a big ol’ wall of text which obscures everything else.
  • But it looks and sounds competent.

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Control

Venn-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Everything works unless your cursor gets out of screen then things get FKY.
  • Yup, no rotation.

Jordan-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Lets you rebind the controls. That’s a thing
  • The lack of camera rotation kinda sucks, considering the map is 3d and stuff gets obscured by your fixed perspective!

Pedro-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • You wouldn’t think the simple omission of camera rotation would introduce such a limiting feeling to a game.
  • Games should, in my opinion be about player agency.
  • By not letting me rotate the camera, or even giving me the option of a “free camera” outside of combat, you’re taking away my ability to interact with your game how I want to.
  • You’re taking away my agency.
  • But more on that later.
  • Also, how you cock up character selection with the mouse?
  • I had to resort to using the keyboard for selecting characters because, half the time, it wouldn’t select the character I wanted and the other half selected a character when I wanted to tell the previous one to move close to the first.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


FUN

Venn-CHAIR

  • Upside down tower? Throne? Gravity motherfuc*er.
  • Aaaand it just became
  • Item barfing, the game.
    • Like Torchlight 2 and Victor V I lose interest when spoiled for choice.
    • If I spend more time stat juggling vs playing something is wrong.
  • Combat == boring.
  • Going to agree with jordan on this one that dialogue is a slag.
  • Would have prefered some bad voice work.
  • It has the return to the town mechanic like Darkest D.
  • Listen, it’s a well done game despite performing like poo.
  • It’s just not my cup-o-chainsaw.

Jordan-CHAIRCHAIR

  • The dialogue in this game is so fucking long winded. Seriously, it’d give Pedro a run for his money
  • By the time you get through everything, you kinda don’t feel like you care about the characters anymore. Evil chair. Woooooooooooooo
  • Like is said on the stream, Divinity gives you lots of options and allows you to ask as much or as little as you want. This game is a slog
  • I was intrigued by it earlier, but I’m not really digging the final fantasy style system. Exploration mode really feels tacked on
  • The combat is sorta boring tower defense. I’m not really digging it.

Pedro- CHAIRCHAIR

  • The reason Divinity Original Sin is a great game, it’s the sheer amount of freedom, or agency, that you’re given as a player.
  • Freedom which you really start to crave when you’re basically being led by the nose down a linear narrative and little to no deviation possible.
  • And that’s Tower of Time’s biggest sin.
  • It’s one of those “Tell. Don’t show.” style of games I don’t really like.
  • It literally calls the main character “you”, but when it comes to letting you actually play it, it feels very limiting.
  • The camera really only exacerbates just how restricted your agency is in this game.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIR


Hate Mail:

FMV
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?OcrZuSN

WINE
https://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?Dg71feA

0 Comments

Leave Your Reply