Overlord and the Overlord: Raising Hell expansion have been ported to Linux thanks to Virtual Programming. I was able to get advanced access yesterday and here are some thoughts.
Note: The Linux release is not yet on Steam. This is a DRM free release from their own store. It's using MojoSetup, so you can install it wherever you please.
I was only sent it late yesterday, so you will forgive me if this isn’t as in-depth as I would have hoped it would be.
While I do have issues with previous ports from VP, I always take each game with a fresh mind as some are really are fantastic (like Bioshock and DiRT Showdown) and some not so (Saints Row series ports).
I’m pretty damn happy that Overlord is now on Linux, as I’m pretty sure a good 90% of games see you being some sort of hero and rarely the bad guy. Somehow being the bad guy in games just seems more exciting.
Port report
I’m really impressed. First of all it has a decent launcher to pick resolution and game options before loading. I always like being able to do this before a game ends up giving me some wonky resolution:
So I started off impressed right away, great start.
It also appears on the correct monitor with my dual-monitor setup. The amount of games that utterly fall over themselves at trying to accomplish that one task is amazing, but Overlord gets it right first time without any messing about.
I haven’t had a single crash in multiple hours of testing, so it seems to be very stable.
The only issue I have encountered is the audio seems to be a little buggy. The speech is always fine, but the background music and other audio seem to vanish at random. Relaunching it seems to fix it. This has been reported to the developer.
Performance wise, with max settings at 1080p it’s constantly staying above 100FPS with not a single dip below it. It only dipped just below 100FPS while I was recording.
You can see how it performs with this Linux gameplay video I did, I left the GLXOSD overlay on so you can see all the gritty details:
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They also removed the "Exit to Windows" text (yeah I know, it’s an old game), so it just says "Quit" in the Linux port. Funny, because I noticed people whining about that on another website. Goes to show that VP do have a nice attention to the small details for us Linux gamers.
Gameplay
The gameplay is actually quite interesting and amusing. Not only do you control your movement, but you control the movement of your minions too. So you can send your minions in to fight, while you kick back and let off some spells, or you can join them with your sharpened axe.
It plays a bit like an action RPG, with a sort of strategy element too it with the minion control.
The minion control is a little wonky though, as it is an older title, but you get the hang of it after a while. Took me a good few minutes to get it right during the tutorial and I keep messing it up during gameplay so I have a while to go before I properly master it. You control your minions with the left and right mouse buttons, while your character uses the keyboard, it feels quite odd but it works.
It’s a little like the game Pikmin if anyone has ever played it, only you’re completely evil.
Sending my minions around destroying everything in their path feels pretty good, watching them smash crates, kill sheep and so on is pretty funny. One thing I didn’t realize until later on is your minions can actually pick up weapons and items if you direct them to walk over to them, so having minions geared up certainly makes it easier. I have to admit I let off an audible chuckle when some of them decided pumpkins make good helmets—idiots.
What is really cool is that it has a skirmish arena mode where you can pick any minions you have unlocked and battle with them against any enemies you have defeated. It’s a nice practice mode that sits nicely alongside the campaign to restore your tower to its former glory.
It’s quite hilarious, performs rather well and generally a fun experience. Do check it out it’s an easy recommendation.
You can grab it now from VP’s official store. No word on when it will be available on Steam yet. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: LukeNukemThat kind of thinking is why we've got so many windows only games.
On the contrary. Game developers dislike shooting for moving target. It's one additional situation they need to test.
I completely understand the motivations why Wayland is being developed from a developer point of view, but it's really hard to make a business case for Wayland for end-users at the moment, and especially for gaming.
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A few years ago Valve explicitly came out and said they were not supporting Wayland for steam. 2500 existing games require X. That can be xserver, xwayland or xmenuniverse .. it doesn't matter. For the foreseeable next few years upto 4000 Linux games will always require X <- just like they will always require X86. Now you could say some devs may choose wayland but then again you could say some devs can't even be arsed to test Linux games on Linux before selling them. So everyone will be running Wayland with X and that is that for a long time.
Last edited by on 22 July 2016 at 1:02 pm UTC
Last edited by on 22 July 2016 at 1:02 pm UTC
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A two handed pat in the back for all the hard working minions who brought this to the penguins.
Last edited by Overlord on 22 July 2016 at 1:15 pm UTC
Last edited by Overlord on 22 July 2016 at 1:15 pm UTC
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shame it isn't available via STEAM... steamLink + steamController.... My children really want to play this (they were a bit too young when I got Overlord on the Wii but <3 watching)
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SteamDB has alot of update to this and Overlord2 associated with linux... maybe it will be out on steam soon(tm)
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lucifertdark Jul 22, 2016
Quoting: Naibshame it isn't available via STEAM... steamLink + steamController.... My children really want to play this (they were a bit too young when I got Overlord on the Wii but <3 watching)You can still use both the Steam link & Steam Controller with non steam games. My son plays the non steam GTA V on his big screen tv through steam link.
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Quoting: mr-eggFor the foreseeable next few years upto 4000 Linux games will always require X
No game should require X. Games should talk to OpenGL / EGL, Vulkan / WSI, and stuff like libinput and such (or use SDL and etc.). X does not need to be a dependency for games. If it is, developers are doing something wrong.
Last edited by Shmerl on 22 July 2016 at 4:21 pm UTC
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Absolutely not. Obviously, using abstraction layers like SDL, allows you to support both X11 and Wayland, so X is no longer a dependency. But in the tradional Linux desktop, which was always X11 based, it wasn't wrong in any way to use X directly. Many games are doing this and it is a simple fact that lots of games depend on X directly. Even SDL games sometimes see a need to contact X directly, if the abstraction layer is not sufficient. Also don't just think about the actual game engine. Games often use traditional GUIs for launchers, installers and configuration programs.
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It wasn't wrong way back in the past. Today it's wrong, because developers are aware that switch to Wayland is in progress and they shouldn't stand in the way of it on purpose. So, absolutely not goes to "games should depend on X".
GUI for launchers can be made without dependency on X either. There are toolkits for that. That's exactly what this conversation started from if you didn't follow. GTK2 doesn't allow it, but GTK3 does. So does Qt 5.
Last edited by Shmerl on 22 July 2016 at 6:34 pm UTC
GUI for launchers can be made without dependency on X either. There are toolkits for that. That's exactly what this conversation started from if you didn't follow. GTK2 doesn't allow it, but GTK3 does. So does Qt 5.
Last edited by Shmerl on 22 July 2016 at 6:34 pm UTC
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Quoting: STiATI haven't seen any good looking GTK3-only themes anyway. It's usually the other way round, you have a good GTK2 theme that doesn't have a GTK3 port and all GTK3 apps either look ugly or use another theme (both cases are equally bad). So I don't see it as a major flaw.Quoting: rkfgSupports GTK themes as well so it also looks good.
<caugh>.. Qt 5.7 ;-).
https://github.com/manjaro/release-plan/issues/73
"QT 5.7.0 doesn't support GTK3 theming" And it's true ;-). Will be fixed in 5.8 though (hopefully).
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