Gaming
Games: Testing, SC Controller and Some Game Releases
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 1st of March 2018 02:29:33 AM Filed under
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RadeonSI NIR Support Is Getting Squared Away, A Call For More Game Testing
Valve Linux GPU driver developer Timothy Arceri provided a status update today on the RadeonSI NIR back-end that is needed as part of the SPIR-V ingestion upbringing and that this Radeon GCN OpenGL driver may switch to using NIR by default in the future.
Arceri shared that when it comes to Piglit test cases, they are starting to get in good shape. There still is about 61 regressions but he has been digging into those and in some cases is just due to some functionality not yet being implemented.
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SC Controller driver and UI for the Steam Controller has a fresh update
The incredibly useful SC Controller [GitHub] tool has a fresh update out that sees the return of AppImage support, a few new bits and some bug fixes.
Currently, you can't really use the Steam Controller without Steam. However, SC Controller is a driver and UI for working with it outside of Steam. It has profile support and even includes support for other popular gamepads now too.
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The situation with 'Underworld Ascendant' and Linux support is currently a little confusing
Underworld Ascendant [Official Site], the action RPG from the original creators of Ultima Underworld added Linux support as part of the original Kickstarter back in 2015. Now, it seems they're not too sure what they're doing with Linux support.
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Work is under way to get proper Steam Controller support in the Linux Kernel
In addition to an update to the excellent SC Controller software, it seems there's also work towards getting full Steam Controller support in the Linux Kernel.
Currently, to get proper use out of the Steam Controller you either need the Steam client open, or to use something like SC Controller. However, this could change due to the reverse engineering effort from one hacker. This is actually the second revision to their patches, which cleans it up and implements a few more features.
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Learning to game-dev on Linux: Resolutiion is a Zelda-like in the making
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Ion Maiden, a new 3D Realms FPS has launched in Early Access with Linux support
Well this was unexpected! 3D Realms is back, teaming up with Voidpoint for a brand new FPS named Ion Maiden [Steam, Official Site] and the first part is now available in Early Access with Linux support.
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Boo! Greedy Kid is a pretty amusing puzzle game about scaring people for soda money
Flying Oak Games certainly get points for originality here, as Boo! Greedy Kid [Steam, Official Site] is a pretty amusing idea for a casual fast-paced puzzle game.
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One Hour One Life, a very unique survival game where you can be another player's baby
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Games Leftovers
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 28th of February 2018 06:14:49 AM Filed under
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WWI FPS 'Tannenberg' to get a good performance bump
Tannenberg [Steam], the WWI FPS that follows the Eastern Front is going to get an update sometime soon that should give a decent performance boost.
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Steampunk dungeon crawler 'Vaporum' is now officially available on GOG & Steam for Linux
Vaporum, a steampunk dungeon crawler from Fatbot Games has been officially released for Linux, available from both GOG and Steam. I've spent some time with it now and here's some thoughts.
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The free to play MMO 'Tale of Toast' has launched, with some major scaling issues
Much like the initial full launch of Albion Online, the servers for Tale of Toast have been completely overloaded. Naturally, there's a lot of upset gamers out there, some of which have waited for hours to still not get in.
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Power Rangers-inspired tactical RPG 'Chroma Squad' adds Episode Creator & Steam Workshop support
If you enjoyed the camp tactical RPG Chroma Squad [Official Site], get ready for more action as it now has a free Episode Creator and Steam Workshop support.
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Heroes of Hammerwatch releases in two days, check out their new trailer
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Games: Crossing Souls, Albion Online, Market Share, Godot and More
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 27th of February 2018 11:09:34 AM Filed under
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The 80's inspired action-adventure Crossing Souls is out, it's pretty good
Crossing Souls [GOG, Steam], from Fourattic and Devolver Digital is an action-adventure love letter to the 80's and it's pretty good overall. I did some impressions of the demo previously, where I actually came off pretty impressed and wanting more.
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Albion Online 'Lancelot' update to land March 12th with Fishing, Roaming Mobs & more
Albion Online [Official Site] is set to expand again with the 'Lancelot' update that has been announced for release on March 12th.
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The developer of 'Rise to Ruins' has shared some Linux sales and players data
While obviously small, the numbers are in-line with what we've seen a few times, it's also much higher than the currently reported Linux market share on the Steam Hardware Survey. This is a similar situation as seen with games like Maia, Helium Rain and Deep Sixed in regards to a higher share of Linux sales than developers might have expected.
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...developer also shared the percentages per-platform of actual players who loaded it up during December, where Linux accounted for approximately 5.12%.
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Godot Engine to work on Vulkan support
Speaking on their official blog, Godot Engine [Official Site] developer Juan Linietsky writes about how the open source game engine will be getting Vulkan API support.
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Moving to Vulkan (and ES 2.0) instead of OpenGL ES 3.0
Edit: Changed post title for clarity (previously Abandoning OpenGL ES 3.0 for Vulkan (and ES 2.0)). We are not abandoning the current OpenGL ES 3.0 backend right now: as outlined in the post, we will start working on a Vulkan backend, which will eventually coexist with the OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 backends - and eventually we might deprecate the OpenGL ES 3.0 backend if Vulkan cuts it.
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Godot To Focus On Vulkan Over OpenGL ES 3.0 Now That There's Mac Support
The Godot Game Engine is one of the few projects already announcing a change in their plans following this morning's announcement of better and open-source Vulkan support on macOS/iOS.
The Godot engine had been focusing on its OpenGL ES 3.0 renderer as the single code-base for supporting all of their major platform targets. But with OpenGL ES 3.0 not working perfectly everywhere (particularly on some mobile devices) and poor WebGL 2 adoption along with driver issues in some cases, it hasn't worked out as they would have liked. But now they are interested in having Vulkan replace this OpenGL ES 3.0 renderer.
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Feudal Alloy, a metroidvania action-RPG with robots controlled by fish will support Linux
That's a title I didn't think I would ever write! Robots controlled by fish is certainly an amusing idea and it's coming with the metroidvania action-RPG 'Feudal Alloy' [Steam, Official Site] later this year.
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Attrition: Tactical Fronts, a quick play, turn-based strategy game for 1-2 players added Linux support
Here's one that didn't seen to get any attention, Attrition: Tactical Fronts [itch.io, Steam, Official Site] a quick play, turn-based strategy game for 1-2 players added Linux support back in December.
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Games: Solstice Chronicles: MIA, BYTEPATH, MoltenVK
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 26th of February 2018 04:49:11 PM Filed under
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The developer of Solstice Chronicles: MIA is continuing to work on a Linux port
Solstice Chronicles: MIA [Steam] might still be a few months away, but the developer has confirmed they're continuing to bring it to Linux.
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BYTEPATH is an arcade shooter with a huge skill tree, retro visuals and it's insane
It might not seem like much on the surface, but boiling below is actually a rather good arcade shooter full of character. There's quite a lot of customisation on offer through different classes, different ships, a big skill tree and so on.
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Vulkan can now run on Mac as MoltenVK is now open source
Not exactly Linux news, but still interesting since Vulkan is what will likely power many Linux games in future and having Vulkan on Mac could result in easier ports to Linux. The Khronos Group has worked with Valve, LunarG, and The Brenwill Workshop to make this happen.
Announced today by The Khronos Group, the MoltenVK project is now officially open source under the Apache License 2.0 and you can find it on GitHub right now. There's no fees or royalties involved, so any game developer can use it without any hassle—which is really great.
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Vulkan Is Now Available On macOS/iOS By MoltenVK Being Open-Sourced, Vulkan SDK for Mac
Two years and a few days since the Vulkan 1.0 release is now marked by a new significant milestone for this cross-platform graphics/compute API... It's not a new Vulkan release today, but Vulkan is now available on Apple's iOS and macOS platforms! Here are the details with the embargo just expiring on Vulkan now on macOS/iOS but still without the official support from Apple.
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Games: Deep Sixed, Streets of Rogue, Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues and More
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Monday 26th of February 2018 02:03:06 AM Filed under
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Deep Sixed is another game that shows some promising early sales on Linux
One of the people behind the recently release Deep Sixed [Steam] has been talking about Linux sales for their title, turns out it's been worth it so far. See Also: My thoughts on Deep Sixed.
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Streets of Rogue, the insanely fun mix of genres now has lots more content & shorter loading times
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The RPG 'Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues' is to launch next month
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Crazy top-down shooter 'Monsters and Monocles' adds challenge rooms, a mini-map and more
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Some thoughts on 'ERSATZ', the speed focused hardcore action-platformer with a musical twist
Last month, ERSATZ [Steam, Official Site], the speed focused hardcore action-platformer with a musical twist added Linux support and since I love a good beat I gave it a go. Here's some thoughts.
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Games Leftovers
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Sunday 25th of February 2018 07:51:46 PM Filed under
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Tactical RPG Ash of Gods set to release in March
Following a successful crowdfunding campaign last year, this beautiful RPG with hand-drawn animation is nearing release. We should be getting our hands on it sometime in March.
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RADV Vulkan Driver Improvements Coming For Wolfenstein 2 On Wine
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus makes use of the Vulkan graphics API on the id Tech 6 engine but sadly remains Windows-only aside from the consoles. While it runs with Wine, there are some bugs when using the RADV Radeon Vulkan driver but fortunately one of Valve's Linux developers is working on some improvements.
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Nintendo finally catches up to other console makers, allows user game reviews
To those who may wonder why this is news in an era where user reviews are commonplace, this is a significant detour from Nintendo's long-held attitude about user-created content. The company has traditionally restricted its fans' ability to post and share content in or about its games to other users—at least, without exchanging friend codes. The company's last major exception was Miiverse, a platform that debuted with the Wii U and allowed players to share stylus-authored drawings to the entire world should they receive moderators' approval. Some dubious users still came up with creative ways to get suggestive and inappropriate drawings past Nintendo moderators' eyes (and Miiverse has since been discontinued).
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Wine and Ganes: World of Warcraft, Farm Together, Madcap Castle, Cityglitch
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Saturday 24th of February 2018 05:12:18 AM Filed under
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Wine "PBA" Shows Potential For Improving Direct3D-Over-OpenGL Performance
University student Andrew Comminos wasn't too familiar with Direct3D or Wine development, but out of a desire for better World of Warcraft performance on Linux, he figured out the code-base and a means of enhancing the WineD3D code.
Thanks to the perf subsystem and APITrace, he was able to figure out World of Warcraft's rendering technique and how a GPU pipeline stall was happening. He ended up making use of OpenGL's ARB_buffer_storage extension to write a GPU heap allocator that performs much better for buffer maps.
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Farm Together is actually quite a relaxing and sweet experience, now in Early Access
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Madcap Castle is a retro-inspired puzzle platformer that’s not for everyone
Proudly showing off its Game Boy aesthetics and high level of difficulty, Madcap Castle [Official Site] seeks to fill its own niche. I gave the game a whirl and have a few thoughts to share.
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Cityglitch, a puzzle game with ghosts and glitches, is now available on Steam
For those of you looking to fly across rooftops and solve puzzles in the dead of night, this new puzzle game may tickle your fancy. It was released earlier today with same-day Linux support and I have a few brief thoughts.
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Wine-Staging and Games
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Thursday 22nd of February 2018 12:23:42 PM Filed under
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Wine-Staging Has Been Revived, Working Towards New Release
Wine-Staging has been a flavor of Wine popular with Linux gamers for often carrying bleeding-edge patches and other experimental work prior to being mainlined. But over two months ago, Wine-Staging went silent without any further updates. A few days ago the original maintainers announced they parted ways with the work due to lack of time and would not be issuing any new releases. Now there are new developers taking over.
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Trailblazers, a co-operative racing title where you paint the track announced with Linux support
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Hardcore first-person adventure game 'Far Out' released with Linux support
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I Hate Running Backwards, a fast-paced infinite runner shoot 'em up hybrid with Serious Sam, confirmed for Linux
After teasing us on Twitter, the developer behind the awesome looking infinite runner shoot 'em up hybrid 'I Hate Running Backwards' [Steam, Official Site] has confirmed Linux support.
Originally, the game was going to be called Serious Sam: I Hate Running Backwards, however, they've ended up adding in a lot more content than they originally planned. It still has Serious Sam as a playable character, but there's other characters in it now too.
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Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun beta patch dramatically improves performance and load times
Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun [Steam, GOG] is a very good tactical stealth game, it just got a whole lot better with a new beta patch too.
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Games Leftovers
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Wednesday 21st of February 2018 07:40:38 PM Filed under
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Update on recent VR developments
The focus for development has remained on OpenVR support for the most part and it is slowly finding use within the community.
With the release of Godot 3.0 the OpenVR module can now be downloaded directly from the asset library.
It comes with support for OpenVR on 64-bit Windows and on Linux. We'll add more platforms as testing is rounded off. On Linux it is important that Godot is started from the Steam runtime or it will not find Steam VR.
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Godot Working On Ramping Up Their VR Support
With the recent release of Godot 3.0 there is an OpenVR module, but that's just the beginning of this open-source 3D game engine in supporting virtual reality.
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Microsoft Launches Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, Game Crashes on Launch
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Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus announced with Linux support, due in 'late 2018'
Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus [Steam, Official Site] has just been announced by Bulwark Studios and Kasedo Games, it's due this year with Linux support. They aren't giving any solid release date other than "late 2018", so hopefully more about it will be revealed soon.
As Magos Dominus Faustinius, in Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, you will be taking control of The Adeptus Mechanicus (also known as Cult Mechanicus or Cult of the Machine), one of the most technologically advanced armies in the Imperium. There's not a great deal about the gameplay, but what I do know is that it will be a turn-based strategy game in some form.
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The Humble Classics Return Bundle is a really good deal for Linux gamers
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Nirvana Pilot Yume mixes a 'steamy' visual novel with racing and it's now on Linux
The developer of Nirvana Pilot Yume [Steam, Official Site] sent word to us today that their mix of a 'steamy' visual novel racing game hybrid is now on Linux.
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Unique puzzle experience 'We Were Here Too' will make you shout at your friends
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Shotgun Farmers, the FPS where bullets grow guns now has smarter AI
Shotgun Farmers [Steam] really is a sweet FPS, I consider it a hidden gem since it doesn't have a huge following. It's been updated again with even smarter AI.
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Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy is out with Linux support, mod tools and constant patched improvements
A release I didn't actually cover was Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy [GOG, Steam], the revamp of the 2003 3rd person action-adventure game. Since release, it's had a lot of patches to keep improving it and now they've even released their official mod tools.
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Season-changing action platformer 'FOX n FORESTS' to release this Spring
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Pirates Crack the First Windows 10 UWP Game
One of the reasons Microsoft is pushing so aggressively for developers to bring their apps and games to the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 is that with the UWP approach, they can target more than one platform at the same time, including PCs, mobile phones, tablets, Xbox, and HoloLens.
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Software and Games Leftovers
Submitted by Roy Schestowitz on Tuesday 20th of February 2018 06:38:57 PM Filed under

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LXD Weekly Status #35
This past week we’ve been focusing on a number of open pull requests, getting closer to merging improvements to our storage volume handling, unix char/block devices handling and the massive clustering branch that’s been cooking for a while.
We’re hoping to see most of those land at some point this coming week.
On the LXC side of things, the focus was on bugfixes and cleanups as well as preparing for the removal of the python3 and lua bindings from the main repository. We’re also making good progress on distrobuilder and hope to start moving some of our images to using it as the build tool very soon.
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Performance Co-Pilot 4.0.0 released
It gives me great pleasure to announce the first major-numbered PCP release in nine and a half years - PCP v4 - is here!
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Performance Co-Pilot Sees First Major Version Bump In Nearly A Decade
The Performance Co-Pilot open-source cross-platform monitoring/visualizing stack has reached version 4.0 as its first major version hike in almost ten years.
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Sci-fi mystery 'The Station' has released, it’s a short but memorable experience
What would happen if we discovered the existence of alien life? A question I've often asked and a question many games, films and books have covered in great detail. The Station [Steam] is a sci-fi mystery that sees you investigate The Espial, a space station sent to research a sentient alien civilization.
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Halcyon 6: The Precursor Legacy DLC released, some good content for a small price
Halcyon 6: The Precursor Legacy DLC [GOG, Steam] was released earlier this month, adding some really nice content at a small price to an already great game.
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Parry and dodge your way to victory in 'Way of the Passive Fist', launching March 6th
Way of the Passive Fist [Steam, Official Site] is a rather unique and very colourful arcade brawler and it's releasing with Linux support on March 6th.
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