LinuxGameCast Weekly 240 – A Bunch Of Tools

Star Citizen goes full Vulkan! AMD wraps, SuperTuxKart is headed to Steam, and RPG Maker gets a Linux port. Then Kona faces the CHAIRQUISITION! All this, plus your hate mail.

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Steam News:

Craig
http://www.rocketleague.com/news/free-easter-items-start-dropping-on-march-22/

WHAR giant lowercase T topper!??
- Combine it with the flaming exhaust and you have a recipe for controversy
Do we get an animated bunny humping a colored egg? I’d use that!
Separation of church and Rocket Cars!

Crowbarception
http://www.moddb.com/mods/hl1-inside-hl2/news/hl1-inside-hl2-beta-release-one

RIP MOD, I hardly knew thee.
Seriously, anyone know what happened here?
They were remaking HL-1 and it looked like a bit of alright.
Poofed overnight.

RPG Maker
http://store.steampowered.com/app/363890/

No good will come of this.
Alright, I’m kinda looking forward to Brick Stimulator RPG.
I remember when this was available for the original playstation and I thought it was the coolest fucking thing ever
Cheap during the week, 80 wet stinkies otherwise

Kona
http://store.steampowered.com/app/365160/

Hello film grain my old friend.
Stick around for the chairs!

In spaaaace
http://steamcommunity.com/games/445220/announcements/detail/240220455166387074

Ah the perils of early access. All of the fans are likely going to have to rebuild their shit. Can the game survive that?
This is a pretty big patch otherwise
- They have a bunch of multiplayer improvements, including a server browser
- Lots of small things that mean nothing to me, but probably will either result in much enthusiasm or grumbling from the playerbase
Ship generator not using gyros
- That’s fine. I prefer shawarma anyways
I like the idea but I can only imagine the frustration after spending hours building your ship only to have to noped with a quickness.

Local Moribund
http://steamcommunity.com/games/500790/announcements/detail/671434308877976151

Wait, I thought Frenchy said prices never went up after exiting Early Access.
Towerfall with less cartoony characters and a post-apocalyptic aesthetic.
Kudos to the devs for sending us keys.
That said, do we really need another one of these?
This game wants to be Mortal Kombat soooo bad.

Trek (from linuxgnuru)
http://www.stellariswiki.com/StarTrek_NewHorizons

I wonder if this mod is compatible with the Rick and Morty modpack
I wanna see Q vs Rick. Or at the very least, Spock vs Birdperson

Green Tux
http://blog.supertuxkart.net/2017/03/weare-greenlit.html

I’m interested to see what comes of their research into integrating steamworks into a GPL game. If they can legit pull it off, it would be a pretty cool way to increase visibility of open source games
Better start working on that networked multiplayer tho
- Steamworks will probably help with that, especially if they integrate well enough to where you can use the Steam Overlay to join your friends for some kart racing.

News

Anvil
http://gpuopen.com/gaming-product/anvil-vulkan-framework/

One step closer to Visual Vulkan!
GLSL -> SPIR V runtime translation layer, similar to what IndirectX does with HLSL to GLSL.
That said, whar HLSL -> SPIR V layer?
- In the Wet Dreams of microsoft’s legal department
It would make Feral’s job a whole lot easier.
- DirectX to OpenGLto Vulkan. Gainz out the window
- Throw in a Glide translation just for the hell of it.
This is AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s VK-HLF
You can tell this is and AMD project because in the requirements, they allude to the fact that it’ll probably work on radeon. Shrug emoji for Nvidia
- Or linux

Keys
http://www.feralinteractive.com/en/news/752/

Speaking of Feral…
Stuff like this really helps Mesa development.
It’s win/win for everyone involved
Now hopefully we’ll see some performance gains on mesa. Or possibly not because the mesa devs are too busy playing mad max now.

Star Vulkan
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/7581676/#Comment_7581676

So we are getting a Linux port… would have lost that bet.
Well, if it ever comes out.
- In the year 2525. If Venn is still alive. If Pedro can survive, what will they find?
Glad to see someone clued into the clear advantages Vulkan has over DX12
- Regardless of no Visual Stupido to do your coding for you.
- If you are going to do the work for DX12 might as well switch to Vulkan.
Vulkan will win this war due to Microsoft’s stupidity alone.

Annorath
https://plus.google.com/+Annorath-Game/posts/X2XXrK1bY6M

Changing engines, wow.
- To the extent that they’re moving to the latest version of unigine, to maximize heat output in the winter
I remember being happy to get 25FerPS on the Calculator while wandering around the 1 town and surrounding environment they had at the time.

Terasology
https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology/releases/tag/v1.4.0

Alpha 7 is out with 151 additions and fixes.
322 engine commits.
However, it requires Java and what do we say to Java in 2017?
- /usr/java/latest/bin/java -jar -Xmx 4G -Xms 2G?
Speaking of java memory tuning, apparently they still have an issue where you can get out of memory errors in the in-game help

Free Boxes
https://zaywolfe.itch.io/boxbyte

Tempest much?
Packaging your linux game in a zip file? Tsk Tsk

CHAIRQUISITION:
– Nooope

– Not sure if want

– Check it out

– Shutupandtakemymonies

Game: Kona
Webzone: http://store.steampowered.com/app/365160/
Devel: Parabole
Engine: Unity
Price: 19.99 / CDN 21.99

Wazzat: Northern Canada, 1970. A strange blizzard ravages Atamipek Lake. Step into the shoes of a detective to explore the eerie village, investigate surreal events, and battle the elements to survive. Kona is a chilly, narrative-driven interactive tale you won’t soon forget.

Disclosure: The devs sent us keys

Makes with the working

V-

The loading system while driving can fuck right off.
And get this, it use to not be a thing until they nerfed the game for consoles.
Using about 45% of the 980.
I’m sick and tired of developers farting out Unity ports without giving them the TLC needed to run at an acceptable framerate on Linux.
It can be done but you lot chose not to do it.

J-

Dat loading scream

P-

Gah! Those loading screens…
Still and since this is a Unity game, having the choice between a wide open area with shit performance or a segmented area with passable performance, I’ll take the latter.
However, changing resolution doesn’t seem to stick.
I was going to forgive the loading screens, but when you compound that with an old Unity bug where the resolution will keep reverting to 960×540 if I didn’t pick 1080p before applying the settings… Yeah! You’re getting dinged a chair.

Total-

Shiny / Sounds

V-

Staticky film grain effect, the game.
Outside of that it looks alright for an indie title.
Then again it should since it’s all trees and snow.
The one “alive” human character was unintentionally horrifying.
Lets just say animation rigging is not this studios strong suit.
Feet! You have feet! #bonussoda
Graphically it’s well done for what it is.
Hell, in a strange way some of the jank helps get you into that 70’s Canadian mindset.
I took off my headphones after about 30 minutes since the narrator bored me and provided useless information.

J-

I like our narrator’s buttery smooth, Peter Cullen ass voice
I can dig the 70’s rustic aesthetic, and it works with the film grain effect
The scenery is just so…racist.
The soundtrack smacks of the Twin Peaks, Stranger Things tropes, but it’s good for the mood

P-

Outside of the thing at the end when your character does a thing while another thing tries to do a thing you don’t want any part of… It actually does look alright.
But what really shines here is the background noise.
Not the music! That got muted since it managed to take away any form of suspense from certain situations which would have benefited greatly from a little bit of tension.
My PSA for the devs: Learn how to music!

Total-

Control

V-

WASD plus gerbil, no complaints.
Xclone Controlla worked but that shite don’t fly for First Person.

J-

P-

A Unity game with a sensitivity slider which actually works is always good to see.

Total-

FUN

V-

This game starts out with LIES!
You are trying to tell me a Canadian would be traveling about in FK all nowhere without winter gear at the ready?
Canadians don’t take a shite without having a heavy coat and gloves nearby, son.
Regardless, you’re stuck in a town and given FK ALL direction… I like that.
The goal is to keep warm, don’t get stressed and spool your kleptomania drive while trying to figure out what’s going on.
BTW
What’s the point of a Cold and Stress meter if Captain Canuck doesn’t need to eat or sleep? Cause he don’t.
Then again I would properly hate the game if those mechanics were included.
At the end of the day this is a scavenger hunt with a few puzzles thrown in to keep it out of the walking simulator category.
And if you can power through the first three hours, the story starts to get wicked interesting.
Yeah, that’s where I’m at right now.
If we’re being honest I was going to give this critter 2 Chairs plus an Astro (mainly due to the price) until I discovered something.
You can kill yourself to death by chain smoking.
THREE CHAIRS!

J-

This game’s an interesting comparison to that other one we reviewed, Lifeless Planet
The games are pretty similar. You’re thrown into a strange hostile environment with little information, things aren’t making sense, but you find clues and other strangeness, go solve some puzzles along the way
I’d say Kona does that better than lifeless planet
Plus no stupid bullshit platforming segments
Had to backtrack a few times because I missed some item I needed for later though, which kinda took me out of the fun as I go over previous areas with a fine tooth comb. That doesn’t really keep me invested
Still, it’s a good looking, good sounding game, and if you’re into these marathon walkathon/findallthethings type games, you might enjoy it.
Or if you’re interested in supporting canadian content.

P-

There’s definitely a mix of genres here.
And they sorta work.
This is the game you’d get if you threw Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and The Long Dark into an ice blender.
From Shattered Memories you get the need to photograph everything and the general atmosphere, from Ethan Carter you get the sense of not knowing what the fuck is going on or where you need to go next as well as the “Detective Sense”, and from The Long Dark you get the setting, survival elements and the wolves being big fat douchebags.
But when you do turn on that canadian ice blender, ‘eh, all you end up with is a game with a contrived story which leans on the supernatural crutch a bit too much.
Not saying that’s a bad thing but you need to either set up a story in which that works or you’ll end up with people like me asking: How the fuck does “that person” do “that thing”? And don’t give me any bullshit about the local lore, you shoehorned that in pretty terribly, if you ask me.
“But Pedro, why are you complaining about the story? Aren’t you the one who says mechanics are the most important thing in a video game?”
Yes, but all of the mechanics in Kona have been done before and I didn’t exactly enjoy any of the other games which did it, either!
They’re tolerable at best, as is Kona.
So I was looking at the story as it being the saving grace for this particular occasion, it was in vain.

Total-

Final –

Hate Mail:

Manipulated
http://linuxgamecast.com/bradley/?thyJMWD
http://www.manipulatedgame.com/