Good news for fans of six-degree-of-freedom-shooter games, as OVERLOAD has been officially funded on Kickstarter.
I actually didn't think they would make it, but it's nice to see another Linux supported title be funded. They even had a Linux build for backers to play with, but as I am not someone who funds Kickstarter projects (too much risk) I wasn't able to test.
Personally I thought it already looked and sounded fantastic:
Will keep you posted on developments. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I actually didn't think they would make it, but it's nice to see another Linux supported title be funded. They even had a Linux build for backers to play with, but as I am not someone who funds Kickstarter projects (too much risk) I wasn't able to test.
Personally I thought it already looked and sounded fantastic:
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Will keep you posted on developments. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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9 comments
slaapliedje Mar 12, 2016
Awesome, I've backed a few Kickstarters, but haven't in quite a while. Satellite Reign and Bard's Tale 4 mostly. This one looks awesome. I wonder if they'll also support SteamVR?
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The Linux demo works quite well. There might be a few quirks to get it working, but once it do the game itself is quite nice. It is a Unity based game so performance is on par with other Unity titles (read mostly bad but still playable). Included with the demo are a version for both 64-bit and 32-bit systems. A list of current problems with the early Kickstarter demo version can be found here.
Gameplay and control wise the game feels like a modern version of Descent. In this version it is easy to get lost in your hunt for the evil and corrupted reactor because an interactive map is missing. I presumes it is not implemented yet, so you do not really have any guidance or indications of your whereabouts in the dungeon/mine. The laser weapons and missile weapons works very similar to the classical games but looks and feels so much better, especially with the much more advanced physics engine available nowadays.
Visually the game looks very nice. It might not be as visually astonishing as some modern titles but for this pre-alpha version the graphics works really great considering the current feature level and gameplay available. Of course now that they have reached their goal and got some founding the gamplay experience and the graphics will improve a few notches. Performance is restricted by the Unity engine, but hopefully this will be addressed in future versions of the engine (thinking of Vulkan here).
The gameplay available in the Kickstarter demo is enough for at least one hour of entertainment so not to bad. I am looking forward to final version. "Estimated delivery: Mar 2017".
Gameplay and control wise the game feels like a modern version of Descent. In this version it is easy to get lost in your hunt for the evil and corrupted reactor because an interactive map is missing. I presumes it is not implemented yet, so you do not really have any guidance or indications of your whereabouts in the dungeon/mine. The laser weapons and missile weapons works very similar to the classical games but looks and feels so much better, especially with the much more advanced physics engine available nowadays.
Visually the game looks very nice. It might not be as visually astonishing as some modern titles but for this pre-alpha version the graphics works really great considering the current feature level and gameplay available. Of course now that they have reached their goal and got some founding the gamplay experience and the graphics will improve a few notches. Performance is restricted by the Unity engine, but hopefully this will be addressed in future versions of the engine (thinking of Vulkan here).
The gameplay available in the Kickstarter demo is enough for at least one hour of entertainment so not to bad. I am looking forward to final version. "Estimated delivery: Mar 2017".
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: slaapliedjeAwesome, I've backed a few Kickstarters, but haven't in quite a while. Satellite Reign and Bard's Tale 4 mostly. This one looks awesome. I wonder if they'll also support SteamVR?They have plans for VR but I guess it is up to Unity how well it works and which brands will be supported. Additionally we need to get proper vendor support on Linux as well.
Last edited by Donkey on 12 March 2016 at 3:50 pm UTC
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boltronics Mar 12, 2016
I backed it (first time I've ever backed something on Kickstarter), so I got the demo and finished it pretty quickly (R9 285, amdgpu/Mesa stack on Debian testing). It's a bit buggy, but it shows a lot of promise and I had fun with it.
Particularly interesting (for me) was the lighting, where you could see shadows of something nearby. There's also a button mapping option to quickly rotate the ship 90 degrees, which I don't recall having from the original Descent games and made navigation feel slightly quicker (even though the actual ship speed is just the same as the originals).
The Revival Productions developers promoted the heck out of this game throughout the last week with constant e-mail updates, new demo builds (with comprehensive change lists), the Windows demo on Steam and even a 24-hour live stream for the last day. My only gripe at this point is the lack of a GNU/Linux demo for non-backers, but there are issues with it not working in full screen and some graphics corruption on certain graphic settings, so perhaps they will also add a GNU/Linux demo when those two problems have been addressed.
When they first posted the download link, they misspelled "Linux" and the download link didn't work because of that, so I get the feeling that the team were extremely busy burning the midnight oil to pull the demo off.
Revival also has a YouTube channel where they show off a bunch of weapon prototypes and some development time-lapse videos. For the curious, the game is apparently developed using Unity and Mono.
Particularly interesting (for me) was the lighting, where you could see shadows of something nearby. There's also a button mapping option to quickly rotate the ship 90 degrees, which I don't recall having from the original Descent games and made navigation feel slightly quicker (even though the actual ship speed is just the same as the originals).
The Revival Productions developers promoted the heck out of this game throughout the last week with constant e-mail updates, new demo builds (with comprehensive change lists), the Windows demo on Steam and even a 24-hour live stream for the last day. My only gripe at this point is the lack of a GNU/Linux demo for non-backers, but there are issues with it not working in full screen and some graphics corruption on certain graphic settings, so perhaps they will also add a GNU/Linux demo when those two problems have been addressed.
When they first posted the download link, they misspelled "Linux" and the download link didn't work because of that, so I get the feeling that the team were extremely busy burning the midnight oil to pull the demo off.
Revival also has a YouTube channel where they show off a bunch of weapon prototypes and some development time-lapse videos. For the curious, the game is apparently developed using Unity and Mono.
3 Likes, Who?
Cheeseness Mar 13, 2016
If anybody's interested, I gave some rambling thoughts on Overload and Descent-likes while playing the Linux teaser build here. It probably gets a bit more interesting about 40 minutes in when another Descent fan drops in to chat.
As I understand it, there were no plans to release a Linux demo at all initially, but they sent me something to test when I offered to let them know if it worked out of the box. Since the rendering issues had reliable workarounds and performance was passable, I recommended that the build be released to backers for broader testing.
They definitely didn't have time to look at addressing problems across the campaign, but I'm glad they were willing to interrupt their plans to try Linux builds, and I'm hoping that we'll see platform parity soon.
The issue that some people have encountered running it fullscreen was something that I didn't come across when testing before the build was released to backers.
I'm still having trouble properly identifying the cause, but I'm starting to suspect that aspect ratio might be related. What resolution is the game trying to run at when you have fullscreen problems (that should be listed in the log file at ~/.config/unity3d/Revival/Overload/Player.log after the big list of available GL extensions)?
Last edited by Cheeseness on 13 March 2016 at 10:42 am UTC
Quoting: boltronicsWhen they first posted the download link, they misspelled "Linux" and the download link didn't work because of that, so I get the feeling that the team were extremely busy burning the midnight oil to pull the demo off.
As I understand it, there were no plans to release a Linux demo at all initially, but they sent me something to test when I offered to let them know if it worked out of the box. Since the rendering issues had reliable workarounds and performance was passable, I recommended that the build be released to backers for broader testing.
They definitely didn't have time to look at addressing problems across the campaign, but I'm glad they were willing to interrupt their plans to try Linux builds, and I'm hoping that we'll see platform parity soon.
Quoting: boltronicsthere are issues with it not working in full screen
The issue that some people have encountered running it fullscreen was something that I didn't come across when testing before the build was released to backers.
I'm still having trouble properly identifying the cause, but I'm starting to suspect that aspect ratio might be related. What resolution is the game trying to run at when you have fullscreen problems (that should be listed in the log file at ~/.config/unity3d/Revival/Overload/Player.log after the big list of available GL extensions)?
Last edited by Cheeseness on 13 March 2016 at 10:42 am UTC
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I used to hang with Mike Kulas on the Volition forums. Those guys are great, happy to give cash to them.
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Quoting: CheesenessThe issue that some people have encountered running it fullscreen was something that I didn't come across when testing before the build was released to backers.If I set the native resolution for my primary monitor 1920x1200 the game will not render correctly. If I instead change it to 1920x1080 everything works great. With the lower resolution the rendering is still scaled to full screen without any black bars. To me it definitely looks like certain aspect ratios causes the bug.
I'm still having trouble properly identifying the cause, but I'm starting to suspect that aspect ratio might be related. What resolution is the game trying to run at when you have fullscreen problems (that should be listed in the log file at ~/.config/unity3d/Revival/Overload/Player.log after the big list of available GL extensions)?
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Quoting: DonkeyIf I set the native resolution for my primary monitor 1920x1200 the game will not render correctly. If I instead change it to 1920x1080 everything works great. With the lower resolution the rendering is still scaled to full screen without any black bars. To me it definitely looks like certain aspect ratios causes the bug.I'm running it fullscreen in 1920x1200 without issue in both KDE5/Plasma and XFCE4 on an NVIDIA GTX 970. I haven't tried other resolutions though.
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Cheeseness Mar 15, 2016
It seems like there are multiple issues with the same symptoms. There was definitely a locale related problem, but there may be something else at play as well.
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