Patreon Logo Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal Logo PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
Latest Comments by Anza
Escape Simulator adds VR support in the latest free update
4 Apr 2024 at 2:23 pm UTC

Quoting: toorI wasn't able to run the VR mode from Linux
Do you have OpenXR enabled?

Stop Killing Games is a new campaign to stop developers making games unplayable
3 Apr 2024 at 1:57 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: CatKillerLegislators getting involved in what you can and can't include in your game, and how a company runs their online infrastructure years after the fact is going to get quite messy, with companies still pushing boundaries and finding edge cases.

Full automatic refunds for every copy when a company kills the game is much simpler, and removes most of the financial incentive for that undesirable behaviour (you've still given them an interest-free loan, after all).
That sure will make any kind of games where players can't host their servers financially unsustainable. Not necessarily bad thing, though will cause major changes in the market.

I'm not sure if that kind of change is easy to push through.

Just knowing when the support ends might help like with phones. If you know that you get two years of support, you know not to buy phones that area close to end of their support period unless you know you can replace the stock OS with something with longer support.

With games things can be bit fuzzy, but at least some kind of minimum support period would be good. Especially with multiplayer and games with mandatory online component. With single player games if DRM allows, there are more workarounds.

Escape Simulator adds VR support in the latest free update
3 Apr 2024 at 1:35 pm UTC Likes: 1

At least demo worked with Proton. Probably for me what helped is that I enabled OpenXR with Steam VR beta.

VR implementation is not as immersive as Alyx. Objects are picked up with a button, which handy as you don't have to crouch as much and you can pickup up multiple objects quickly. It just takes bit time to get used to. Index could do better as with the finger tracking, grabbing things is quite natural.

Full room VR experience is almost practical, my play area is about half of the games room size. So have to utilize buttons now and then to move. There's vignette when that happens, which might help with motion sickness.

I can imagine though that VR could be fun with multiplayer as you can do quite lot of gestures naturally (cartwheel might be one of the exceptions). You can also make quite a mess, though you can also clean up by moving things into trash.

Humble Choice for April has Terraformers, Victoria 3, The Callisto Protocol
3 Apr 2024 at 12:24 am UTC

Quoting: Purple Library GuyAmong those, I've just been playing Terraformers. It's pretty decent. The learning curve isn't bad, and it does have a fair dose of that "just one more turn" feel. I'm not sure how much mastery it really takes, though. After only a few playthroughs I'm feeling like I pretty much get it.

I do find one thing rather gratifying--so, like, there's this mechanic of how happy the colonizers are with things. And the game does "rising expectations" where over time, the amount of "support" you need to have increases, fairly steeply. And depending, all the little bonuses you can create, entertainment centre kind of things and tourist attractions and so forth, probably aren't going to be enough. But when you do various things that make Mars a bit more terraformed, it makes the whole population happier, giving you a massive ongoing bonus. So if you're doing a decent job at that stuff, you'll be getting the bad news that "rising expectations" are going to put you in deep, but then you bump up the heat level and the atmosphere level, plant a forest, and the penalty gets totally wiped out and you're golden again.
I have had the game even before the bundle and for me it it hold up for total 6 hours, which was time it took for one playthrough. Playing the prelude might have made the game feel bit less fresh.

Game feels bit like simplified version of Terraforming Mars, though having the board game feel and being about terraforming Mars might have something to do with it.

AMD FSR 3.1 announced with Vulkan support, upscaling quality improvements
23 Mar 2024 at 10:33 am UTC

Quoting: pete910
Quoting: Anza
Quoting: pete910More crap we don't need,

Instead of spending god knows how much on dlss/fsr spend it on better hardware
Problem is that the better hardware doesn't always exist.

Technology doesn't always advance in sync. Monitors first get higher resolution or refresh rate and then GPU:s need to catch up. Also GPU features like raytracing rise demands for the GPU. Dropping resolution gets the framerate back to acceptable level, but FRS and DLSS offer a good compromise.
Not really anything to do with monitors.
What I am meaning is either better hardware per tier or find ways of making the hardware more affordable at a given tier rather than £1000 odd for a 80 class card which is just **** ridiculous.
I have the money for a 4090 but be damned if I'm feeding the greed of these companies!
Upscaling should help in both scenarios. Though if money is the issue, previous gen cards might offer close enough performance. Every update doesn't always have things that are absolutely essential. New and shiny things take time to be implemented into games. Downside is that hardware becomes obsolete faster.

Also one saving opportunity is to avoid playing the latest AAA titles. Indie games and older AAA titles are less demanding on hardware. Easier said than done though, I still updated to beefier machine, though still I spend most of my time in indie games.

Proton Experimental fixes up classic EA games and fixes more regressions
21 Mar 2024 at 9:27 pm UTC

Did quick testing and first Command & Conquer doesn't work. It didn't work with previous experimental either and game is unstable with most of the previous Proton versions. Same was with Red Alert which I didn't retest. However, remasters are the same games, but better, so these ones don't matter that much.

Tiberian Sun stars, though starting campaign causes screen to go black. I think it should show a menu, at least I managed to click something that sounded like a button.

Red Alert 2 worked nicely. Played the tutorial without issues.

AMD FSR 3.1 announced with Vulkan support, upscaling quality improvements
21 Mar 2024 at 6:29 pm UTC Likes: 13

Quoting: pete910More crap we don't need,

Instead of spending god knows how much on dlss/fsr spend it on better hardware
Problem is that the better hardware doesn't always exist.

Technology doesn't always advance in sync. Monitors first get higher resolution or refresh rate and then GPU:s need to catch up. Also GPU features like raytracing rise demands for the GPU. Dropping resolution gets the framerate back to acceptable level, but FRS and DLSS offer a good compromise.

Command & Conquer The Ultimate Collection launched on Steam (and other classics)
16 Mar 2024 at 7:33 pm UTC

I bought the collection too. Though for me the C&C and Red Alert have been quite unstable and crashing during saving was bit scary. Proper fix was to buy the remasters and they have been joy to play. For me it would have been way to go right from the start and wait for the issues with collection games to be hopefully ironed out.

Did try out the Renegade with the tutorial and didn't notice mouse issues. I'm not sure if I have missed some lore as I originally played only C&C and Red Alert and then moved on to Total Annihilation. Also switched to FreeBSD so wasn't really into Windows games when the sequels came out. Have to see how they're like without the nostalgia. Having too much replaying the originals though, so it might take a while to really start playing them.

There's no end to Vampire Survivor-likes with Temtem: Swarm announced
21 Feb 2024 at 6:08 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: GetBeanedThen again, after Vampire Survivors (which I really enjoyed), nothing has really grabbed me in the same way. Halls of Torment was fun enough, but I just kept wondering why I didn't just go play VS instead. I'm yet to see a really big evolution with this genre.
I really should play the original one for reference, I have played just the clones. Though based on the clones, I think innovation have been bit more subtle.

Overall theme could be stronger gameplay loop to get you hooked bit quicker. Some of the clones have been quite shallow before the upgrades kick in and even them could be uninspiring. Automatically shooting enemies is good base, but it alone is boring.

Hall of Torment has two mystical things to discover, which both are something that introduce something new once you reach them. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor has mining and you need to be bit tactical about it as your default mining speed is quite slow. Bore Blaster has mining too and short time limit, which gives risk vs reward mechanic to the game.

Bore Blasters doesn't actually have one of the genres hallmarks: hordes. Mining is however somewhat still related to the hordes. Ground is obstacle in your way and if touch the ground with your helicopter, you receive damage.

So maybe none of the things are so influential, that they get copied in all of the clones, but at least best games in the genre are trying out new things.

Steam Next Fest 2024 was the biggest for Valve and game devs yet
14 Feb 2024 at 10:38 pm UTC

Quoting: EhvisDidn't try a lot, but nothing that I didn't know was coming stood out for me. One unfortunate find was that Escape Simulator VR is XR based and won't work.
Works for me. Though I did at some point fiddle with OpenXR settings with SteamVR beta.