Proton powered Gamehub, Ballistic Bloodlust, zombie SMACH Z and Open Jam 2018 on this week’s LinuxGameCast Weekly.
Special thanks to:
Freedom Penguin (increased pledge)
Colsta (new)
Subscribe:
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:
Subscribe Spotify | Pandora | TuneIn | RSS | More
Colour key: Venn Jordan Pedro
Steam: News
- Updated Chromium version.
- You can play local co-op by streaming to multiple devices simultaneously (high quality 5 GHz WiFi network required)
- This part is super interesting
- Giving everyone in couch co-op their own screen is an interesting play. I wonder if they’ll be able to extend it so that remote people can hook into local co-op.
- Would certainly address a number of our multiplayer woes
- Especially fucky for screencheat
- Fixed install scripts for Steam Play games sometimes not properly running after using Big Picture mode.
- Allow language selection before game install if current Steam UI language isn’t supported.
- How about a fix for all those 0 byte downloads in the Proton games?
- So the 2 hours or 2 weeks clause for steam refunds breaks the laaaAaaaaaaaaawwwww
- According to France, you get 2 weeks period
- The fine is a literal drop in valve’s bucket, scant of 200K euro
- Ubisoft got slapped with this too, but considering they don’t put out Linux games, fuck em
- The biggest fine here is having both stores display the little box about it.
- Shame is the real punishment here.
- Based on feedback from knuckles 2,/valve is gonna start mass producing knuckles 3
- Boasts better build quality and 2 hours more battery life
- There’s a demo made in unity for people to dissect as well as a unity plugin
- Don’t call valve for this. They’ll call you
- VALVe will now moderate game forums.
- It’s opt out.
- VALVe just hired a bunch of people, didn’t they?
Steam: Game Updates
- Kill faster, kill more, get more points
- This is not news to anyone whose played shooters before
- Ya need to restart Steam after the update because reasons.
- -force-vulkan still works right up until you get into the map.
- Get ready to see this, often.
- We’re not exactly known for backwards compatibility and developers will (almost always) take the path of least resistance.
- I brought this up re: Wayland support last week
- Devs don’t want to produce new builds to support backend changes and will try to do something like this
- So proton for gaming may be necessary unless we want another 30 years of Xorg
- If only those other people who did put out godawful ports went back and just disabled it so people could play it with Proton, Saints Row, then I’d be happy.
- Aaaand we’re back to native Linux builds.
Steam: New Games
- The art style tennis me a bit off samorost
- Another time fucky puzzle game
- Doesn’t require a distro or ram. Neat
- Big kudos to the devs for sending us keys for this one
- 2D Sci-fi action RPG
- Has a demo
- You fight using the shoulder buttons, which is a bit of an odd choice for this sort of game but it’s fun enough
- By weebs 4 weebs
- Artifex Mundi was kind enough to send us TWO keys over the Curator Connect.
- I’ve sent an email to their PR person asking for the third.
News:
- They had a prototype at their booth but is was non-functional because reasons.
- Anyone elks watch the video in the article from July?
- Take a look around 00:49 seconds in.
- That looks like power, HDMI/DP and USB attached to the device directly.
- AKA dumb terminal.
- Hee hee. Smarch OS
- Something tells me the Linux version doesn’t run Origin/Uplay/Streaming games.
- Intel Mesa driver dev gives a pretty high level account of the optimizations to DXVK which make not just Intel graphics viable, but also help everyone else with a Vulkan capable GPU reap the benefits.
- Considering the cheap intel laptop is the mainstay of a poor college kid, this sort of barrier lowering is super helpful
- And considering DXVK is a big chunk of why Proton has been so successful, this is all very welcome news.
- We also got a nice little anecdote about how Jason fixed some performance bugs in Arkham knight in order to make the fucker actually playable
- Soon to be absorbed by Borgtris.
- The UI already looks similar, might as well!
- Now it can launch the linux steam client and install a game!
- Why do people think this will ever happen?
- Poor little GOG (Estimated Annual Revenue $98M) doesn’t have the resources to support Linux.
- There’s over 20 thousand games on Steam which, in theory, could work on Linux in a way not too dissimilar to what GOG has been putting out with some of their WINE “ports”.
- Or the shitshow that was the Witcher 2 for Linux.
- Which reminds me, has anyone run a comparison with Proton vs eON on that one?
- Bwahahahahaha No
- Just use lutris
- Got a little over 3 weeks to make and submit your open source game
- Brick Simulator 2 powered by Vulkan incoming! not really
- New SPU LLVM compiler fixes physics, graphics and audio on a bunch of games.
- Improvements to mouse binding, if you want to play shooty games but the idea of doing so with a controller makes you cringe.
- The Rocket League prototype is also playable now.
- Finally, we can preserve that masterpiece of gaming known as 50Cent: Blood on the sand
- A bit like planet explorers, but with the realms on yggdrasil
- It’s got the online multiplayer, which is definitely a plus
- Linux version comes in tar.gz, very good!
- This is a pay what you want Alpha version, the full game will be released “later this year”, according to their little blurb.
- Paying money now will not get you the full game, so keep that in mind.
CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope
– Not sure if want
– Check it out
– Shutupandtakemymonies
Game: Distance
Webzone: Distance
Devel: Refract
Engine: Unity
Price: £19.49
Wazzat: Distance is an atmospheric racing platformer. Fusing futuristic arcade racing with parkour, survive a deadly, mysterious, neon-drenched city by jumping, rotating, and flying.
Venn:
Does It Launch
- No issues.
Performance @ 1080
- 120 @ 1080 and low 50’s at 2160.
Graphics
- Dark, more on that @ 11.
Control
- Yall cocked up the button prompts but you can still rebind everything.
Jordan:
Does It Launch
- Yerp. Really likes my samsung monitor for some raisin
Performance @ 1080
- With everything up to 11, I still get about 200 ferps @1080
- Holds about 100 in game @ UHD
Graphics
- They’re very trippy
Control
- For whatever reason, the game doesn’t like my dualshock or steam controller. Had to dust off the ol’ USB xbox controller
- Also, guys, you’ve been in development as long as we’ve been making this fucking show. Figure out how to do controller specific button prompts
- Do you know what button 5 on an Xbox controller is? I do! I HAD TO LOOK IT UP
Pedro:
Does It Launch
- On the SteamBox it freezes after 30 seconds, but that may have something to do with the fact that the Ryzen 5 2400G is still very poorly supported on Linux in general.
- But over here on the desktop with the Ryzen 5 1600 and the GTX 1080, no issues
Performance @ 1080
- Some tracks the FerPS dips to the 60s at 1080
- At 3840×2160 those same tracks dip to the 30s.
Graphics
- I hadn’t seen z fighting textures since Victor Vran released the Motorhead DLC.
- Though, judging by how the fighting makes those “textures” disappear, I’m more inclined to think it’s Z Fighting Tessellation.
- There’s also some issues at 3840×2160 which cause seizuretastic flickers and, on some tracks, they just don’t render at all. The screen just stays black.
Control
- You can rebind everything.
QA Score:
Fedora:
Soulless:
Ubuntu:
Fun?:
- Venn:
- I hate being right.
- The “story mode” (so far) is a 5 minute tutorial stretched out to 30+ with some random VO in the background.
- And it randomly locks your ability to fly at times.
- Alright, Story mode is a massive waste of time and energy so what about the Arcade Mode?
- It’s a collection of Workshop tracks with a few Refract classics smattered about.
- You can try and frame this as “we love our community soo much we included Workshop Tracks into our final product to showcase their skills” or you could simply call it what it is, lazy.
- Playing Workshop tracks was already an option, Refract.
- Empty brought up a good point on last night’s stream.
- Most (if not all) of the included Workshop tracks were designed by people who have played Distance for years and wanted something more challenging.
- For the new player these levels come off as something akin to impossible levels from Mario Maker.
- At the end of the day what you get for $24.99 is a single player arcade racer where your only opponent is the track.
- It’s forever alone mode with no AI, no collisions, just ghosts.
- And that’s it’s biggest sin.
- Distance went from a promising neon TRON game of OMG pretty to post apocalyptic nope-scape filled with cheap shots and shite lighting.
- Yes, the shite lighting is used to hide the cheap shots on the track.
- Not angry, just massively disappointed.
- Jordan:
- Most racing games I don’t really grok, and distance isn’t an exception’
- I guess I’m not that good at carkour, and this game makes no qualms about shoving it in my face
- Story mode? I guess if you want to have a reason to drive from point a to point b.
- It looks alright, despite being dark AF
- The Arcade mode tracks are OK I guess
- I typed out the entire lyrics to sir mix a lot’s “I like big butts” into the trackmogrifier and it made the easiest fucking track I’ve ever played
- Honestly, for 6 years of development and fine tuning, I’m not horribly impressed. Sure the game looks good and has decent controls (when you’re using the right controller), but short of carkour It doesn’t seem to do anything revolutionary
- Pedro:
- 58 minutes, that’s how long it took me to destroy the single player campaign they had been promising for several months.
- Even got the speedracist-runner achievement to prove it.
- Having the Nitronic Rush levels included in a remastered style form was a nice touch
- What wasn’t a nice touch, as Venn pointed out, were the workshop levels.
- And if you watch the Stream from Friday, people weren’t having fun with those levels.
- Or the official levels with z fighting.
- That used to be a staple of Unity games back in the olden times of Unity 3.
- That said, I did really enjoy the atmosphere and design of the campaign.
- Not sure I’d call it worth the long, LONG wait but it was really nice.
- Despite the poor choice of Workshop levels given official status, I do still very much enjoy Distance.
- And they did fix the horrible performance the last few betas introduced.
- It doesn’t look like it has 6 years of “Early Access” behind it but it’s still pretty fun to play multiplayer and the atmosphere they so promise does indeed seem to be there for the single player.
Fun Score:
Venn:
Jordan:
Pedro:
Hate Mail:
