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Heavy Gear Assault now on Linux, some thoughts after testing it

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Heavy Gear Assault is the Early Access mech combat game built with Unreal Engine 4 and it's now available on Linux. The developers graciously sent over a key, so I had a chance to have a bit of a play with it.

At first look, the game is absolutely gorgeous. It doesn't always look this good, but a lot of it does:
image

The main problem the game has right now is a lack of players, the servers seem to be basically empty. Due to this, I've only been able to have a limited amount of time with it. I did manage to get a little bit of fun out of the survival mode, were it seems more and more enemy AI mechs just spawn and attempt to take you down.

What I can see is quite impressive though, running through a map in a mech and a sandstorm comes sweeping in was very cool! At least it has some good map variety with sand, snow and so on.

It seems to already have quite a few customisation options, like being able to customise the different parts of mechs to suit your liking:
image

I ended my last match with one hand blown off and my other arm dangling down as the upper arm fixture seemed to be broken. Quite hilarious to see, but apart from my missiles I was rather useless. The per-part damage system will certainly make games interesting.

The control system does feel a little weird. I luckily found another player online who told me the basics of weapon switching which isn't explained anywhere. It's actually quite simple funnily enough. You hit the hotkey, then click left or right mouse button to bring it up in the left or right arm.

That's another part they're going to need to work on, it needs even a basic tutorial on the major parts. They have confirmed to me they're working a tutorial, so that's great news.

Once it gets onto Steam which sounds close, it's going to be awesome to play it properly when the Steam user-base flows into it.

You can see the changelog for their most recent release here.

I plan to keep playing it at each new release to let you know how it's progressing, but I'm rather impressed so far! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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Houruck Jul 19, 2016
If you guys have questions about the development of Heavy Gear Assault register a free account (if you don't have one already), head to the forums and fire away. We are going to answer everything we can during this week’s Play with the Devs session.

http://forums.heavygear.com/discussion/1265/play-with-the-devs-q-a
scaine Dec 4, 2016
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Quoting: c927776
Quoting: ElectricPrismWithout steam I'm easily complacent, steam makes installing easy & management easy.

Same could be said about any other "store" from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony etc.

Steam client is bad, steam client forces you to use 32 bit binary's. Just NOW Store/Community tab in steam client stalled on me when I tried to play youtube video and that happened on Windows, I dont know why they are trying to be a Web browser when they suck at it. Im losing authentication with steam way to often and then I get kicked from multiplayer rounds in some games, fucking DRM, if Steam API/Authentication servers are down every game that depends on them is unplayable. As a guy who plays multiplayer games 90% of the time, that is a big problem.

Please stop propagating Steam because we all will regret it very soon, insist on games that could be played without any third party dependency.

If there were an alternative, I'm sure it would at least be popular with Linux players. However, there isn't.

And the whole multiplayer angle tends to work because of Steam - look at all the multiplayer games that refuse to launch on GOG due to a lack of SteamWorks. I remember the pain of having multiple gamespy skins in the 90's and early noughts - UT, Quake 2, Half-Life, Counterstrike, etc. They all did things slightly differently and it was tedious as a result. Different friends lists, different ways to filter, some were in-game, others launched from gamespy directly (which was often slow, particularly if you were disconnected), different options to build favourites lists, master servers failing all the damn time. And Workshop offers a simple way to distribute custom server content without being stuck in a capped queue before you're allowed to play.

Lots of reasons to dislike Steam, but choosing "multiplayer" seems an odd one to focus on. It's pretty much one of the reasons I don't mind Steam's DRM. That, and the game auto-updates, in-game voice, community hubs, workshop content and regular cut-throat sales of course.

I just wished they'd get the little things right.
Kuduzkehpan Dec 6, 2016
Quoting: c927776
Quoting: ElectricPrismWithout steam I'm easily complacent, steam makes installing easy & management easy.

Same could be said about any other "store" from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Sony etc.

Steam client is bad, steam client forces you to use 32 bit binary's. Just NOW Store/Community tab in steam client stalled on me when I tried to play youtube video and that happened on Windows, I dont know why they are trying to be a Web browser when they suck at it. Im losing authentication with steam way to often and then I get kicked from multiplayer rounds in some games, fucking DRM, if Steam API/Authentication servers are down every game that depends on them is unplayable. As a guy who plays multiplayer games 90% of the time, that is a big problem.

Please stop propagating Steam because we all will regret it very soon, insist on games that could be played without any third party dependency.

Steam changed many daily linux life. As we are able to reach many games via steam. And SteamOS Feral does this so much beyond of our imaginations. So Steam should be spread to linux world.
Steam based on 32bit libraries but just for client. we can run many 64bit games. Steam never changes this.
DRM is kind of protecting commerical softwares so buy them or not. if you buy them you have to obey license so steam does this. Steam providing anti-piracy to the developers beyond distrubution.
Authentication only works when you join the server rest of time you have no problem with auth.
i regret playing non-linux games many times. So steam is at least good of the worsts.

and i got my key waiting for it.
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