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Trash, trash and more trash. That's how I would describe what has been gaining a foothold on Steam over the past year or so. Today it's time to rinse 'Noob Squad' [Steam], an indie FPS that normally costs £0.75.

I'm all for stores being a bit more open, but stuff like this takes the biscuit and then some. It's usually £0.75, but right now it's on sale for £0.37. I know what you're thinking, and I don't expect anything really for that amount of money, but damn this is a game that's actually being sold on Steam.

Their official description of the game on Steam is just full of pictures of random people, rather than actually giving a proper description of the game itself.

I purchased it to see if maybe, just maybe, the developers were acting like children on Steam to be "edgy", but no, the game is just junk. This is the kind of thing I would expect to see fail to gain enough votes even on Greenlight, which is supposed to be Valve's way of weeding out the crap. Valve are utterly failing at any form of quality control. Sadly Greenlight is often abused by developers, giving out free keys for votes, bot voting and so on.

To make it clear: This is not an Early Access game, this is a full and complete game suggesting it should have some level of quality to it.

I'm damn sure the developer simply slapped some low resolution stock Unity assets along with some kind of FPS tutorial and called it a day. It sounds like it even rips kill announcements from Unreal Tournament.

I'm not asking for GOG-level curation here where legitimate indie games get turned down all the time, but at least a little please Valve.

Games like this flooding Steam take away some of the valuable time other new games would usually get in the newly released section, which can be a real problem for other more deserving developers who need the visibility. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Ehvis Oct 9, 2016
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Quoting: Alm888This number inflation by "porters" will do no good. The only hope is direct personal work with (mostly indie) developers via Kickstarter or otherwise to persuade them in releasing day-1 versions and not "ports". And this will be way harder.

I don't think you quite understand what you're saying here. With the exception of OpenGL only stuff, EVERYTHING is a port with some sort of wrapping. Even Unreal Engine and Unity. As proven by the lower performance. Having an optimal solution would require a full blown rewrite, which is never going to happen for the Linux+Mac market share. Unless the Windows market share starts dropping drastically. But DX12/Vulkan will solve the problem way before that. For new stuff anyway.
Alm888 Oct 9, 2016
Quoting: kalinStop crying like a baby. Without valve and steam we probably will have nothing.
ORLY?
Valve is just another name for Microsoft for all I care. Valve did not do a thing for Linux.

The recent advances in Linux gaming have begun from "Humble Indie Bundles", the first of which began on the 4th of May, 2010. These events hightlighted the viability of the Linux market.

But the true impact for Linux gaming was "Wasteland 2". Remember, when Bryan Fargo launched the campaign, he seriously underestimated backer's interest and promised Linux version before he even decided on the game engine?

QuoteAt $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline. We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more. We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X and Linux!

That was March of 2012. But what happened next? After the successful conclusion of the campaign Fargo began to look for the engine. It was then when Denis Shergin proposed to use UNIGINE engine (free of charge), but (as we know) Fargo decided to stop on the Unity3D engine which did not support Linux at the time. But in order to secure the deal Unity3D developers were obliged to add Linux support in the 4.0 version in November of 2012.

We all know how big role Unity3D support played in the case of Linux gaming development. There is no need to list all the great games made with Uinty3D.

But when did Steam store came to Linux? That's right: "Open Beta" on 22nd of December, 2012. Like a scavenger Valve just came to claim all the credit without any of the work.

And what exactly Valve did to promote Linux gaming? Steam machines flop? OpenVR without Linux support? Infamous "The Withcer III" ads or "SteamOS sales"? Changing Tux icon with it's own SteamOS icon for Linux (like Valve owns Linux, no less)? Or constant removals of said icons after preorders and just before launch?

Quoting: EhvisI don't think you quite understand what you're saying here. With the exception of OpenGL only stuff, EVERYTHING is a port with some sort of wrapping. Even Unreal Engine and Unity. As proven by the lower performance. Having an optimal solution would require a full blown rewrite, which is never going to happen for the Linux+Mac market share.

Objection!

If we look onto this game we will see that apart from the obvious OS difference its system requirements are identical. This alone proofs that Unity3D is not "port" or "wrapper". It's "*.dll"-s are managed bytecode and not wrapped Windows PE executables. But if it so not enougth to convince you than we can look into any Unity3D log file located in ~/.config/unity3d/<company_name>/<game_name>/Player.log:

Quoting: "Wasteland 2 DC Player.log"Selecting FBConfig
GLX_FBCONFIG_ID=263
GLX_BUFFER_SIZE=32
GLX_DOUBLEBUFFER=1
GLX_RED_SIZE=8
GLX_GREEN_SIZE=8
GLX_BLUE_SIZE=8
GLX_ALPHA_SIZE=8
GLX_DEPTH_SIZE=24
GLX_STENCIL_SIZE=8
GLX_SAMPLES_ARB=0
GLX_SAMPLE_BUFFERS_ARB=0
GLX_CONFIG_CAVEAT=NONE

Desktop is 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
Initialize engine version: 5.2.2p2 (67d68477bb52)
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
GPU_MEMORY_INFO_DEDICATED_VIDMEM_NVX: 1048576
OpenGL:
Version: OpenGL 4.5 [4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.63]
Renderer: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
VRAM: 1024 MB
Extensions: <lots_of_OpenGL_extensions>

See? OpenGL all right. Right there, in the engine. Sure, Unity3D is a crappy engine per se, but it is crappy on all of the supported platforms.

And this is a completely different story. Surely, you can see a difference between
QuoteAMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz or ntel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz
1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)
DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT, nVidia 8600
on Windows and
QuoteIntel i3 or AMD FX-6300
4GB Memory
Nvidia GeForce 640 with 1GB of Video Memory, AMD R7 260X
on "SteamOS".


Last edited by Alm888 on 9 October 2016 at 12:46 pm UTC
Guest Oct 9, 2016
This turned into a decent thread. It will be interesting to see if we really do have "the year of the Linux desktop" by the second quarter of 2017.
If Linux hasn't captured a decent wedge of ports that doesn't mean it's a dead platform, 3000 games (even if 70% are guff) it's still a lot to enjoy, but the dust will have pretty much settled from 2010 to mid 2017 and everyone should have a pretty clear picture.

At 7.5 years That is getting awfully close to the '10 years to make a platform'

There is Vulkan & AMDGPU drivers here now, so im optimistic. Perhaps Linux doesnt become thee goto PC gaming platform.. shrugs, Linux has a lot more going for it than just games in this world of endless data harvesting ( stealing ) and security issues.


Last edited by on 9 October 2016 at 9:42 pm UTC
kalin Oct 9, 2016
Quoting: Alm888
Quoting: kalinStop crying like a baby. Without valve and steam we probably will have nothing.
ORLY?
Valve is just another name for Microsoft for all I care. Valve did not do a thing for Linux.

The recent advances in Linux gaming have begun from "Humble Indie Bundles", the first of which began on the 4th of May, 2010. These events hightlighted the viability of the Linux market.

But the true impact for Linux gaming was "Wasteland 2". Remember, when Bryan Fargo launched the campaign, he seriously underestimated backer's interest and promised Linux version before he even decided on the game engine?

QuoteAt $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline. We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more. We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X and Linux!

That was March of 2012. But what happened next? After the successful conclusion of the campaign Fargo began to look for the engine. It was then when Denis Shergin proposed to use UNIGINE engine (free of charge), but (as we know) Fargo decided to stop on the Unity3D engine which did not support Linux at the time. But in order to secure the deal Unity3D developers were obliged to add Linux support in the 4.0 version in November of 2012.

We all know how big role Unity3D support played in the case of Linux gaming development. There is no need to list all the great games made with Uinty3D.

But when did Steam store came to Linux? That's right: "Open Beta" on 22nd of December, 2012. Like a scavenger Valve just came to claim all the credit without any of the work.

And what exactly Valve did to promote Linux gaming? Steam machines flop? OpenVR without Linux support? Infamous "The Withcer III" ads or "SteamOS sales"? Changing Tux icon with it's own SteamOS icon for Linux (like Valve owns Linux, no less)? Or constant removals of said icons after preorders and just before launch?

Quoting: EhvisI don't think you quite understand what you're saying here. With the exception of OpenGL only stuff, EVERYTHING is a port with some sort of wrapping. Even Unreal Engine and Unity. As proven by the lower performance. Having an optimal solution would require a full blown rewrite, which is never going to happen for the Linux+Mac market share.

Objection!

If we look onto this game we will see that apart from the obvious OS difference its system requirements are identical. This alone proofs that Unity3D is not "port" or "wrapper". It's "*.dll"-s are managed bytecode and not wrapped Windows PE executables. But if it so not enougth to convince you than we can look into any Unity3D log file located in ~/.config/unity3d/<company_name>/<game_name>/Player.log:

Quoting: "Wasteland 2 DC Player.log"Selecting FBConfig
GLX_FBCONFIG_ID=263
GLX_BUFFER_SIZE=32
GLX_DOUBLEBUFFER=1
GLX_RED_SIZE=8
GLX_GREEN_SIZE=8
GLX_BLUE_SIZE=8
GLX_ALPHA_SIZE=8
GLX_DEPTH_SIZE=24
GLX_STENCIL_SIZE=8
GLX_SAMPLES_ARB=0
GLX_SAMPLE_BUFFERS_ARB=0
GLX_CONFIG_CAVEAT=NONE

Desktop is 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
Initialize engine version: 5.2.2p2 (67d68477bb52)
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
GPU_MEMORY_INFO_DEDICATED_VIDMEM_NVX: 1048576
OpenGL:
Version: OpenGL 4.5 [4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.63]
Renderer: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
VRAM: 1024 MB
Extensions: <lots_of_OpenGL_extensions>

See? OpenGL all right. Right there, in the engine. Sure, Unity3D is a crappy engine per se, but it is crappy on all of the supported platforms.

And this is a completely different story. Surely, you can see a difference between
QuoteAMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz or ntel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz
1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)
DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT, nVidia 8600
on Windows and
QuoteIntel i3 or AMD FX-6300
4GB Memory
Nvidia GeForce 640 with 1GB of Video Memory, AMD R7 260X
on "SteamOS".

Strange coz I have 231 games for linux and most of them are good and they are ported because valve initiative and the only shity games that I have was from humble bundle indie initiative. Don't get me wrong I'm very gratful to humble bundle but valve is the company with power to make the difference and yes valve make money as I and You there is nothing wrong with that
Ehvis Oct 9, 2016
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Alm888
Quoting: EhvisI don't think you quite understand what you're saying here. With the exception of OpenGL only stuff, EVERYTHING is a port with some sort of wrapping. Even Unreal Engine and Unity. As proven by the lower performance. Having an optimal solution would require a full blown rewrite, which is never going to happen for the Linux+Mac market share.

Objection!

If we look onto this game we will see that apart from the obvious OS difference its system requirements are identical. This alone proofs that Unity3D is not "port" or "wrapper". It's "*.dll"-s are managed bytecode and not wrapped Windows PE executables. But if it so not enougth to convince you than we can look into any Unity3D log file located in ~/.config/unity3d/<company_name>/<game_name>/Player.log

...

Benchmark it. You'll see lower framerates on OpenGL. That's down one thing: DX11 came first and got the best optimisation, then came OpenGL layer that was suboptimal. You can call in anything you want, but the net effect is the same.
Liam Dawe Oct 9, 2016
Quoting: kalinStop crying like a baby.
Really? You're going to bring it down to that level?
Quoting: kalinWithout valve and steam we probably will have nothing. Steam is very good serves and the only one I have know to have refund.
I think you will find GOG do refunds and have done so long before Steam.
Quoting: kalinAlso it is not possible for valve to manage all indi entries and for that they create steam greenlight and if something bad pass the greenlight its users fault.
It's not as simple as that, Greenlight is often abused quite badly by developers. Bot votes, free keys for votes and so on.
Quoting: kalinNext time bofero buy somethin watch the reviews and videos attach to the game
You missed the entire point of the article. I did not go into it blindly expecting a miracle, I am highlighting it because it is bad.
Alm888 Oct 9, 2016
Quoting: kalinStrange coz I have 231 games for linux and most of them are good and they are ported because valve initiative and the only shity games that I have was from humble bundle indie initiative. Don't get me wrong I'm very gratful to humble bundle but valve is the company with power to make the difference and yes valve make money as I and You there is nothing wrong with that

Sadly, since then Humble Inc. had strayed from the path. Yet, they port something from time to time (more correctly, they contract porters but...). Now their role is mostly over.

Quoting: GuestActually Valve never claimed any thing, it was their users/fanbase that did.
And to date, Valve have (tried to) do more than anyone else for "gaming" on Linux, and continue to do so slowly but surely.

True :)
Some guys just love to seek Messiah. When Valve finally had risen from its throne and descended upon Linux they saw this as a sign of the New Age. Yet, so far I myself did not see anything that great happening and it seems since then Valve lost interest (provided Valve had it in the first place and not just feigned retaliation move towards Microsoft's Windows Store). The only way to shift the balance in our favor is to work harder: reach developers, persuade them, provide them any help possible. Valve will not do this for us.

Quoting: EhvisBenchmark it. You'll see lower framerates on OpenGL. That's down one thing: DX11 came first and got the best optimisation, then came OpenGL layer that was suboptimal. You can call in anything you want, but the net effect is the same.

Sorry, can't do. I do not own a single Windows machine. But be assured, if the framerate is worse on Linux it is because of poor OpenGL implementation on the Unity3D side. There are (historical) reasons: before that my little fairy tale of "Wasteland 2" Unity3D crew just did not see any reason to support Linux. They only supported MacOS and since MacOS (at that time) was limited to OpenGL 2.0 they initially just slapped Linux support on top of their MacOS support. Hence, Linux OpenGL was equal to Mac's (read -- pretty poor). This has nothing to do with "ports": it's just the way Unity3D is (or was, as in their 5.0 version Unity3D devs introduced OpenGL 4.5 support).
Segata Sanshiro Oct 9, 2016
I'm kind of puzzled by some of the bad reaction to this. With the "don't but it" crowd, that's kind of part of the point of this site - Liam is playing a shit game in this case so you don't have to (tm).

I also disagree with the "who cares? there's refunds" view. While refunds are a nice option, quality control is important. It's the reason Nintendo (despite what some would consider very aggressive business practices) did so well in the 90s and Atari became almost non-existent. There's plenty of other places for cheap shovleware or places for people to sell their first stab at making a game - but Steam isn't that place. I think Valve already do a pretty good job at giving very small developers a decent shot (games like Stardew Valley come to mind) but there's no need to publish stuff which borders on exploitative, all that does is crowd out the well intentioned and talented indie developers.

As for Valve doing nothing for Linux gaming... Come on guys. Say what you will about Valve, about it being a huge multinational who uses the same tax loopholes as Apple, Amazon et. al. but that kind of argument by association doesn't fly. It's a reality that we have many of the games we do because Linux is a platform on Steam (the largest digital distribution platform) and Valve pushed a lot for Vulkan development and created things like VOGL.
Nel Oct 9, 2016
Quoting: Alm888And this is a completely different story. Surely, you can see a difference between
QuoteAMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz or ntel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz
1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)
DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT, nVidia 8600
on Windows and
QuoteIntel i3 or AMD FX-6300
4GB Memory
Nvidia GeForce 640 with 1GB of Video Memory, AMD R7 260X
on "SteamOS".

Oh please stop this bullshit, this has been explained til death...
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/life-is-strange-released-for-linux-steamos-some-thoughts-and-a-port-report-included.7682/page=15#67360

Quoting: edddeduckferal
Quoting: manero666The problem here is that this Feral port requires way more hardware power to get the job done..
The requirements differences between Window$ and Linux (native) are huge
I think we have one of these posts for every port we've done. :)

We only support hardware back to the hardware we could buy when we started porting. Often our games might run on older low spec hardware however we can't go an buy all the older 5+ year old hardware on eBay just so we can test the odd game on older and less popular hardware. Apart from the issues with buying second hand equipment from eBay the potential cost of buying (and then hiring more staff to test on them) isn't really feasible.

We set out our min spec hardware based on the min spec hardware targeted for the initial SteamOS boxes when we announced XCOM 1 on Linux. I hope that explains why our min spec will never drop below certain hardware (Nvidia 640, AMD R7 Series & Intel Iris Pro).
Alm888 Oct 9, 2016
Quoting: NelOh please stop this bullshit, this has been explained til death...

Are you trying to sell me that porters do not know how much RAM or how recent GPU their port will need?
Sorry, but I do not buy this piece of... smooth talking.

It could pass as truth for "minimum" system requirements but not for recommended. Their "minimum" specs for "SteamOS" far surpass those for "recommended" on Windows.
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