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Thursday, April 30, 2020
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Steam hit another all-time high for concurrent users - as did Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
Tags: Steam, Valve
Does this seem familiar? You would be right. In the last week, both Steam and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hit new records for users online and they've been broken yet again today. Absolute madness.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive went from a record of 850,485 set in 2016 to a new record of 876,575 set on Saturday February 8. This was then smashed on Sunday, February 9 as CS:GO hit around 901,681 (SteamDB). Pretty damn good for a first-person shooter that's been around since 2012.
Then we have Steam itself which went from a record of 18,537,490 set in January 2018 up to 18,801,944 this month. Again, that record has been smashed with a new high of around 19,107,803 users on Sunday February 8 (SteamDB).
What do you think is driving all this sudden and repeating growth?
Shows that in the face of increasing competition, Valve is once again continuing to grow their Steam platform. Good news for us since Valve continue to try and improve Linux gaming with Proton for Steam Play, the ACO shader compiler for AMD, their new experimental Container system and also Gamescope. That's only the tip of the iceberg too—Valve do quite a lot it's just not often talked about outside Linux circles.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Mess with everything in the physics sim ''Universe Sandbox'' now DRM-free on GOG
Tags: Simulation, Early Access, GOG, New Release
Originally Universe Sandbox 2, Giant Army has since stopped selling the original and the 2 was wiped from the name. A massive space simulation game about screwing with physics, creating and destroying.
Just recently, they put it up for sale on GOG so if that's your preferred store you're in luck. It's still not finished though, it's in Early Access (or rather just In Development as GOG say) so it's not perfected yet.
Watch video on YouTube.com
I'll admit that I've not followed it along for a very long time, after releasing with Linux support on STeam back in 2015 so it's one of the longer running Early Access titles. Very interesting though even back then when it had far less features than it does now.
An impressive game that lets you act like a god, as you throw planets and stars around and perhaps add a black hole in the middle just to see what happens (I might have done that a few times…). As a massive fan of everything spacey and out there, the scale of it is absolutely mind-boggling.
Find it now on GOG.com or Humble Store and Steam as before.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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UnderMine gains a female peasant and tons of new content in the latest update
Tags: Steam, Indie Game, Adventure, Action, Early Access, Dungeon Crawler, Update
Action, adventuring, dungeon exploration like found in The Binding of Isaac and a sprinkle of RPG mechanics makes UnderMine a lot of fun to go back to and a huge update is out.
Since it doesn't affect the story in any way, they added a female peasant avatar to play as. They say it's more than just a sprite-swap though, as they've given them "a new portrait, new sounds, new names, all custom animations, and is occasionally referred to differently by NPCs".
There's new encounters in all zones, a bunch of new NPC chatter, the Black Rabbit NPC will now buy Relics you collect that you're not a fan of and a strange Altar may appear between Goldmine 1 and Cavern 4 that might do something interesting too.
You're still given the peasant entirely at random—both their look and gender.
Additionally there's 28 new relics to find during a run, 17 new potions, 16 new blessings and curses and a ton of bug fixes as well.
UnderMine is definitely one of my current favourite Early Access titles. The developer, Thorium, are hitting the sweet spot of repetition with the dungeon crawling side of it as you travel through some of the same areas with various different encounters and enemies to gradually build up your gold and unlock more. The exploration is fun, the combat can actually be quite challenging and it looks great. Personally, I'm enjoying the setting here a lot more than Isaac.
Going by their roadmap they're going to be adding in an entirely new game mode, a new zone, new traps, hundreds of new encounters and more. A lot still to come, can't wait!
You can find UnderMine on Steam now in Early Access.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Served! - an amusing looking top-down racer with a culinary theme
Tags: Steam, Indie Game, Upcoming, Racing
Enter the world of waiting tables, only this time it's a racing game. Served! is coming to Linux from developer Chromatic Room later this month.
Supporting 1-4 players in local multiplayer, there's 4 different characters to choose from all of which have their own unique attack corresponding to his cuisine to spice the game up. This will be spread across 8 locations that each have their own containing dynamic events with quick rounds.
Watch video on YouTube.com
Looks like a lot of fun, so we spoke to the developer who confirmed in a message that "Yes, Served! will have a gnu/linux release.".
You can wishlist/follow on Steam where it should release on February 27.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Colourful action RPG with a satirical twist ''Underhero'' lands on Linux
Tags: Steam, Indie Game, Unity, Humble Store, Action, RPG, Itch.io, New Release
Yesterday, a new Humble Choice bundle went up and when looking over what games were supported on Linux it turns out that Underhero only just that same day released their Linux version.
A side-scrolling RPG adventure, with timing-based combat. Full of colourful visuals, silly characters full of personality, quirky dialogue and a satirical twist aimed at RPG tropes.
Watch video on YouTube.com
It actually looks and sounds awesome, with a "Very Positive" user rating on Steam it seems like another game worth picking up. Perhaps something to keep you occupied this weekend?
The update that added Linux (and macOS) support also added in cloud saves, plenty of bug fixes and they're working out some kinks in the Unity engine for a future update to support more gamepads.
Feature Highlight:
- A sidescrolling RPG adventure full of beautiful pixel art and cartoony aesthetics.
- Turn-based combat with a twist: there are no turns! Use your reflexes to evade, and your timing to attack or parry! We call it timing-based combat.
- Level ups let you choose between three options! HP, attack and stamina! Choose wisely...
- Enemies consider you their ally, so talk to them in-battles!
- Critical hits occur when you hit an enemy with the beat of the music, not randomly! Groovy~
- You want to escape a tough battle? Bribe your enemies!
- A wonderful original soundtrack composed by Stijn van Wakeren.
- Explorable worlds sprinkled with many hidden secrets.
So you can get it in the Humble Choice, itch.io or direct from Steam.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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As AMD launch the monster 3990X CPU, System76 offer it up with their stylish Thelio Major
Tags: Hardware, AMD
Today, AMD officially made the Ryzen Threadripper 3990X available as a seriously high-end desktop processor. Along with that, System76 jumped in right away to give it as an option on their powerful Thelio Major.
Coming with a huge amount of cores, the Threadripper 3990X certainly isn't cheap in the region of around $3,990/£3,696. For that you get a lot of everything though with 64 cores, 128 threads, PCIe 4.0 support, 32MB L2 cache with a base clock of 2.9GHz up to 4.3GHz boost. It's a monster. For gaming, quite likely serious overkill but if you play games and do plenty of content creation, compiling software and things like that all those cores will obviously come in handy. Nothing like playing a game while all your work is going on in the background eh? Find out more here.
If you're after a Linux system with it right away, Linux-focused hardware vendor System76 are coming in hot with the Thelio Major now having the option to configure it with a 3990X. System76 said they spent a lot of time on the internals to accommodate such a powerful CPU. From the press release that was sent over:
Optimizing for the heat produced by a 280 watt, 64-Core CPU was a significant engineering undertaking. We added a large 5.5" (140mm) duct that pulls cool air in from the side of the system, directs it across the heat sink, and exhaust through the rear. This has the added benefit of physically compartmentalizing GPU and CPU heat sources and the air that's pulled in to cool them.
I have some serious computer envy right now looking over the possible specifications of the Thelio Major. You can become envious too using their special landing page which shows some of the tests you can try on your current CPU. Trying out the circular motion blur test detailed on it, which the 3990X can do in around 44 seconds, my current Intel i7 i7 5960x took almost 3 and a half minutes!
You can see more about the Thelio Major from System76 on their official site.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Please Follow is another short and very tense psychological horror
Tags: Indie Game, Horror, Itch.io, Short, New Release
Please Follow from developer somewhat who also made Please (which I certainly enjoyed) recently released another short psychological horror. Much like their previous, it's a mix of a walking sim with some horror elements that rely on the environment and your own imagination to disturb you along with light puzzle elements.
In the official timeline, a lone surviving soldier ventures into the tunnels dug by the opposing forces. Deep inside the bowels of the battlefield, they come into contact with a presence that will open their mind to worlds and events better left unseen.
Watch video on YouTube.com
Since I'm somewhat of a coward, I enjoy these short bursts into the weird and unnerving. It allows you to go through all the emotions and not be completely destroyed by one going on for tens of hours and I think it's great there's more like it being made.
The Linux version of Please Follow was made "based on manifest interest on past titles" but it's not been thoroughly tested.
You can find it for $1.99 on itch.io and they have a bundle of all their shorts for you to save some monies.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Top down strategy and tactics returns with Door Kickers 2
Tags: Steam, Upcoming, Strategy, Action, Early Access
KillHouse Games have now re-announced Door Kickers 2: Task Force North, the sequel to their excellent 2014 tactics game.
Originally announced in 2016, with it due out cross-platform that same year. Sadly it seemed to just sort of vanish for some time—but it's back! KillHouse freshly announced it yesterday with a brand new trailer:
Watch video on YouTube.com
Feature Highlight:
- Top Down view, optimized for tactical analysis
- Real Time gameplay with pause-at-will to analyse and change plans
- No turns, no hexes, no action points - just freeform planning
- Realistic but action packed
- Non-linear levels, multiple paths and break-any*-wall kinda freedom
- Multiple units to play with, each with their distinct playing style
- Weapon customization
- Destructible environment
- Single Player & Online Cooperative Multiplayer (2 players)
- Custom-built 3D engine, allowing for increased moddability
- Mission editor
In regards to Linux support, it's still going to happen and it has not been dropped from their plans. They said that "Task Force North is planned to release on Steam Early Access (Windows) in Q2 2020, with other OS versions coming later once development stabilizes". Checking in with the developer, they clarified to us on Twitter that does mean Linux just not right away. They also mentioned this on their Steam forum post.
You can wishlist and follow Door Kickers 2: Task Force North on Steam.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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The sad case of Unreal Engine 1 on Mesa and Linux in 2020
Tags: Editorial, Wine, FPS, Unreal Engine, GOG, AMD, Drivers, Intel, Mesa, Third-person shooter
One of the great game industry battles of the turn of century was the standoff between Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament. With both multiplayer focused first person shooters released just weeks apart from one another, that the two games would wind up going head to head was inevitable. If pressed I am always going to have to say I favour the former, but the remarkable thing for us Linux users is that, for a time, both games lived harmoniously under the same publisher.
More than any other developer, Loki Software can be credited with founding the Linux games industry, and with them still riding high at the time, they went on to publish both titles on our platform. More than just popular games, Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament were also flagships for the engine technology within. Unreal Engine 1 and id Tech 3 would go on to be used in dozens of other titles, some of which would also be ported by Loki Software before their closure in 2002.
While Quake III Arena was granted its place in eternity when its source code was released in 2005, community support for Unreal Tournament was able to breath some new life into the game, even with the limitations of the closed binary. By 2018 however the game was no longer launching for Mesa users. Due to the Core.so file being statically linked to an archaic libstdc++ library, the game can only be ran outside of Software mode on the free graphics stack with use of a hacked Mesa patch.
After spinning my own Mesa packages by use of the Arch Build System, I reinstalled Unreal Tournament using the data from GOG.com and the ut-install-436-goty.run Linux installer. I could now start the game without producing a segmentation fault, and other than some sound quality problems everything seemed to be normal. After installing a third party OpenGL renderer, OpenAL audio device, and S3TC textures the game was looking and sounding better than ever before.
With my love of a straight bot DeathMatch, it took me a while to discover that changing to any other kind of game mode from the menu would cause the game to crash with a "Signal: SIGIOT [iot trap]" error. This, along with the need to apply Mesa patches in the first place, severely hampers the game for use at my next LAN party. With the Linux versions of Unreal Gold, such as those provided by icculus.org or Unreal 227, also relying on this game to work, that takes them out of contention as well.
As I mentioned before, Unreal Tournament was not the only Unreal Engine 1 game Loki Software worked on. Rune has to be the most fitting port they ever produced, with the company's namesake Norse trickster god even appearing as the archvillain. It was also one of the last ports that Loki Software released before closing down, and as such is just modern enough to make me wince at the fact I am no longer capable of getting it to work.
With a patched Mesa the game launches and renders fine, but you can no longer load your saved games while using OpenGL, meaning you are once again stuck with Software mode. The crackling stuttering audio I encountered with Unreal Tournament is also present here, but is now unavoidable due the game shipping only with its default OpenAL audio device. I tried using some of the alternatives available for Unreal Tournament, but Rune refused to load them.
I remember playing through the whole game close to ten years back when I was still on Fedora and having a good time with it. Rune has a very solid if lengthy campaign with tight controls that plays more like its first person shooter contemporaries than many other third person games did. The developer Human Head Studios would go on to work on the original Prey, which also supports Linux and I have wrote about previously.
If there is one silver lining in all of this, it is that all of these games can be made to work reasonably well with WINE or Proton without the need to fiddle around with Mesa to get them to launch. Performance does suffer if you do not supply an OpenGL renderer such as those by Chris Dohnal, but once properly configured the games can be made to run almost as if they were native applications. I even got a higher frame rate in Unreal Tournament.
Launching them still requires some patience, as they all seem prone to false starts, but once you do get to the main menus all seems to be well. This also allows you to reunite the games with their brethren Deus Ex, which if not for the closure of Loki Software would have become a native Linux title. I can confirm that Rune Gold, Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament GOTY Edition, and Deus Ex GOTY Edition from GOG.com all can be made to WINE well with a few tweaks.
For an engine with such a pedigree on Linux this outcome is still disappointing. It may just be my pride getting in the way, but there is something special about being able to get the old native binaries to work, especially in the case of Rune where I have it on disc with the full retail packaging. It also makes me wonder how well my modern library of native titles is going to run in twenty years time, and if I will be forced to use a compatibility layer to run some of them too.
According to Ryan Gordon's recent Patreon post, the former Loki Software employee once came close to reviving Rune on Linux in some form but it "slipped through [his] fingers". The source code release of Quake III Arena has allowed it to transcend all the boundaries imposed by time, while its erstwhile adversary begins to languish. For those who value games as more than just ephemera, I can only hope such releases start to become the norm.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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OpenRA has a new release for classic Westwood real-time strategy - massive upgrade also in testing
Tags: Free Game, Open Source, Strategy, Game Engine, RTS
The team working on OpenRA, the game engine that keeps classic Westwood real-time strategy games alive have pushed out a new release. Plus there's some real exciting advancements coming.
Firstly, OpenRA release 20200202 is out right now. It's not a big one, mainly focusing on fixing up some issues that slipped through the last full release. Fixes include solving a performance and behaviour regressions with aircraft, some fixes to stop crashes when loading saves, sorting out some issues with mission scripts and the skirmish AI plus there's updates to the UI. Actual changelog can be found here.
More excitingly, they've been working on a massive overhaul to the rendering system to bring in more modern features. Previously not properly announced, and with builds only shared between IRC and Discord but now they need some wider testing due to how big of a change it is.
This new "Render Test" build brings in smooth zooming instead of the pixel doubling option, so now you can zoom in and out to get a better look just like other modern real-time strategy games. Quite easily my most missed ability when playing the current stable OpenRA builds, fantastic to see it in! A quick gif of it in action from my testing:
Also included in the experimental build is support for High DPI, along with UI scaling. An overhauled settings menu, a new introduction screen and it uses more modern OpenGL as "a first step towards supporting modern rendering APIs (Vulkan/Metal)".
If you wish to try the big upgrade testing build, see here on their forum. Otherwise if you want the stable build, you can download it on the official OpenRA website.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Volcano eruptions no longer prevent exploring in Volcanoids with Blast Shelters added
Tags: Steam, Indie Game, Early Access, Update, Steampunk
Volcanoids, an incredibly unique and extremely promising steampunk base-builder just had a huge feature update and it's a big improvement.
Your base, the Drillship, is also your transportation but the island you're on has a constantly erupting Volcano which usually meant a mad-dash back to your ship. This made exploration a bit of a nuisance but no more! You can now find dedicated Blast Shelters to hide in, with each village having one and so you can explore further without too many worries. The developer also added in various mines to find spread across the map.
Watch video on YouTube.com
With this release loading times were cut dramatically, I've tested their claim of it myself and loading time is insanely quick compared to what it was which is great. There's also a new F1 help menu, enemy robot drillships will now spawn their COG bots from dedicated tubes you need to destroy inside their ship.
One other big change, is that if you manage to get further into the game and destroy the enemy COG lava source they will no longer spawn drillships. They're working on adding in specialised "Hunter Drillships" that will come for you directly in those areas but it's not quite finished.
As for what's to come next, they're going to focus a lot on the multiplayer side of it which should release for Volcanoids this year. Some of the core features needed for it are done, but a lot of other pieces need to be fixed up, added and adjusted to accommodate multiple people. Sounds like a Alpha-level build with supports for 4 players will be coming, for testing and to iterate on. All sounds great!
Find the very unique survival game Volcanoids on Steam.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Puppygames have formally announced Battledroid - a massively multiplayer strategy game
Tags: Steam, Indie Game, Free Game, Upcoming, Strategy
Using their own state-of-the art custom voxel graphics engine named Voxoid, Puppygames have formally announced their next game with Battledroid.
Did you ever want to play games like Revenge of the Titans against other players as if you were playing a traditional war game? Now you can with BATTLEDROID!
Puppygames
Coming with Linux support just like their previous games Basingstoke, Revenge of the Titans, Ultratron and more this is something quite different. It's a strategy game on a massively multiplayer grand-scale. It takes elements from tabletop games into the massively multiplayer world, with factions fighting for control over an entire planet.
Watch video on YouTube.com
The way it works is that the world is divided up into a huge hex-grid of territories, each harbouring a game resource. As you pick a place to attack and hopefully conquer, everyone else will be doing the same. As you conquer territory, you collect different kinds of units all with different stats, abilities and battle costs.
It's going to be free to play, with all content unlocked over time as you play and all players share the same army budget. You will be able to pay money for "pre-made army sets, or single colossal titans to crush your enemies with" however to keep it balanced you can't go over the total unit cost so no one is overpowered. They're promising no grinding since it's free, as "the game has no repetitive, pointless tasks: every battle is for real, against real enemies, for real advancement".
For a strategy game fan, it sounds like a huge amount of fun. Capturing and defending territory, watching huge explosive battles happen in real-time after planning, then come back the next day to see how the territory of the world has changed.
You can now follow it on Steam and you can also support the Linux-friendly developer on Patreon. Once it has a release date, we will let you know. There's also more information on the official site.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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Frictional Games are getting sneakier with their teaser - looks like we have a baby coming
Tags: Indie Game, Upcoming, Teaser
I hope you're getting as ridiculously excited as I am about whatever this ends up being. Frictional Games have updated their teaser website for their upcoming game again.
Here's an overview of how it's changed. This growth happened from late December last year, up until January 29 when the video was updated:
It sure does look like a baby now, perhaps this is still to throw us off and it's going to turn into a disaster somehow? Well, Frictional Games are the creators of SOMA, Amnesia and Penumbra so some horrible thing is bound to happen.
When writing about it last time, I noted how they were also putting up secret videos on YouTube you had to find the code for. They either showed up inside meta tags in the HTML code of the teaser website, or somewhere else like a title that pops up when you hover over something. Checking back again, they actually put a code in a hidden span HTML tag:
Exxpedition: frrequenncy oof raddioo 78.3 short WWave seQQuence
When you work out what that means, it's "Exxpedition frrequenncy oof raddioo 783 short WWave seQQuence". Taking the double letters with the numbers and then the doubled capitals leads to another of their hidden videos:
Watch video on YouTube.com
Attempting to read the letter shown is difficult. Something about an itching behind their eyes, trying not to be afraid and it ends with the writer wishing they had their gun. The video description is:
Recovered 12/5/2018, via source S576a. Salzburg, site TBD. Document retrieval failed, investigation commissioned.
Oh Frictional, you tease.
Article from GamingOnLinux.com
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