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The Sunday Section - keeping up with some missed Linux and gaming bits

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Hello and welcome to another Sunday Section here on GamingOnLinux, pointing out a few bits we wanted to cover across the week but didn't get time to do so. Grab a coffee and get ready for a little light reading across a few subjects.

A new website recently popped up that rounds up a huge list of various open source, experimental, and tiny tools that might be useful for people making games, websites and more. It's a pretty sweet idea and there's absolutely tons on it to discover.

AMD developer Marek Olšák has proposed a radical redesign of how Linux graphics drivers work. Most people likely won't understand it but the basic idea is that they want to do away with multiple parts that currently increase CPU overhead and latency and replace it all with something simpler and hopefully better.

Super Tux Party, a free and open source party game had Alpha v0.9 released. This adds in a huge amount of improvements across the whole game including: HiDPI support, AI fixes, plenty of UI overhauls, updates to a number of the included mini-games with quality of life improvements to make them more fun and the list goes on.

A huge update to Endless Sky, the free and open source sandbox-style space exploration game is coming, with version 0.9.13 now available for testing. The new update will have over 70 new missions, you can now choose your starting scenario, an overhaul of almost all human outfit images and outfits can now be stored on planets, without needing to install them on a parked ship.

Monster Sanctuary, a great metroidvania with a monster raising twist has a big 1.1 update out now that added in a whole New Game Plus mode. There's also now Casual & Master difficulty modes, new and improved PVP Matchmaking and lots more. You can buy it on the Humble Store or Steam.

Want to learn a little more behind the scenes on game development? The Godot Engine team have another interview up, this time with John Watson about the game Gravity Ace. Nice to see more developers using an open source game engine, and Linux to make their game. Gravity Ace is available on Steam and Itch.io.

The Valheim team are teasing the upcoming Hearth and Home update with some small shots of what to expect. They're not very clear shots but if you zoom you might be able to see some interesting details. Looks like water in a ditch (perhaps buckets to move water?) and a focus on the boots someone is wearing, with perhaps some gold in the corner? Who knows.

Oh, the Troll is also getting a graphical overhaul in Valheim and looks just as terrifying. The second and third boss will also be getting updated looks - with these mob changes due in the next patch.

Are you getting lost in so many messaging applications? Take a look at Ferdi, an open source tool that bundles them all together all under one roof. It has support for loads including: Telegram, Discord, Element, Facebook, Feedly, GitHub, Mastodon and the list just goes on and on.

WorldBox, a 2D sandbox god sim that looks simply hilarious might be coming to Linux officially. The developer has asked on Reddit if you want to see it, so let them know (if you would purchase it!). It gets my vote, looks like an absolute ton of fun!

We hope you all had a great weekend!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc, Round-up
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7 comments

hardpenguin Apr 25, 2021
Awesome. Meanwhile I am playing Fallout: New Vegas through cloud gaming.

I wanted to play it with Proton, but there is no easy working around a bug with background and radio music.

In the end, I still am playing it from a Linux computer, so I am glad that game streaming tech is a thing :P


Last edited by hardpenguin on 25 April 2021 at 11:39 am UTC
MisterPaytwick Apr 25, 2021
Quoting: hardpenguina bug with background and radio music.

Let's be honest, it may not even be a Proton issue anyway. While Bethesda's engine is homebrew, they did learn amazing lessons from Troïka Games (people from it founded Obsidian). Stable and bugfree games are not part of it. But on Proton 3.16 I had only a few (but some were massive) FPS dips here and there (and as far as I know, it was just the game kind of shitting itself).

I'll look into Ferdi, because I've now 3 or 4 applications and it's a real hassle.

I'm a bit sad Endless Sky news drop now, as I started up a new StarSector game. I guess I'll look into it at a later point.
denyasis Apr 25, 2021
Nice news about Monster Sanctuary. I think Monster Crown got a recent update as well.

I liked Endless Sky (although I was really bad it). Kinda the same for me with Transcendence. (Also really bad at it)

I'll have to try them again. So fun
crabel Apr 25, 2021
Ah, Troika. Those guys. I loved Fallout and later Arcanum. I have played Fallout 1+2 again a while ago with the community patches. Still good. True, those games were not the pinnacle of stability, but considering the complexity of the games, they were simply amazing.

Interestingly, since Obsidian and InXile were acquired by Microsoft, they kinda all work for the same company again. I hope, they do another game together.
Dunc Apr 25, 2021
Quoting: MisterPaytwick
Quoting: hardpenguina bug with background and radio music.

Let's be honest, it may not even be a Proton issue anyway. While Bethesda's engine is homebrew, they did learn amazing lessons from Troïka Games (people from it founded Obsidian). Stable and bugfree games are not part of it. But on Proton 3.16 I had only a few (but some were massive) FPS dips here and there (and as far as I know, it was just the game kind of shitting itself).
Yeah, the only problem I had with FNV was that I couldn't have anti-aliasing and SSAO on at the same time. Otherwise it worked fine (as far as a Bethesda game can be expected to). I even installed a few mods without any issues.
fenglengshun Apr 26, 2021
I've used Ferdi, but unfortunately I believe it is electron-based and thus has almost the same footprint as an actual browser. It IS very handy if you have the memory overhead to use it, but I found that running official Telegram app (or the AUR version) + whatsapp-for-linux on snap actually has less footprint in my case. That's important since I only care about Whatsapp while working while using my rather old laptop, and I do need a client seperate from the browser as sometimes I need to swap between Firefox and Chromium (Brave) which makes WA for web rather annoying to use even if it is the most efficient option (not to mention that Firefox on Fedora 33 has a drag-and-drop bug where it randomly crashes after a few drag-and-drops).

It's something that you gotta try though, and the Workspace function is very nice as it allows you to set what stuff to be opened, when, and what should be kept opened depending on what you're doing.
chr Apr 26, 2021
I have been using Ferdi for about half a year - ever since the Facebook plugin for Pidgin stopped working for me .

Ferdi sure is heavy (Electron), but it still serves a function for me - I like having a separate window for chats and if I need more RAM or CPU for other processes, I can individually unload some of the services/tabs or close all of Ferdi.

In my case, I am not receiving notifications from Facebook messenger, only Telegram. And sometimes the dark mode doesn't work, but that is a 2-click fix (reload service/tab).

Definitely looking forward to trying using more services when I get a beefier computer. But until then - I miss Pidgin with its light perfection - well... if you ignore the lack of emoji reactions and some messages with links disappearing.
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