Sumoman [Steam] is a brand new and rather hilarious puzzle platformer powered by the UNIGINE engine. It released with day-1 Linux support and I took a look.
Disclosure: Key provided by the developer before the release.
The game is pretty damn funny thanks to the glorious use of physics. It's the simple things like timing a jump wrong and Sumoman falls flat on his face, to rewind time but just not rewind enough to end up doing it again and I really can't help but laugh at it. Take a look at some of my failures in the video below:
I tested it with the Steam Controller and it seemed to be picked up perfectly, without needing Big Picture mode.
If you only looked at the game from the official trailer, you might have been left thinking it would have firmly sat in the crapware pile Steam has been growing, but the truth is I've had way more fun than I thought possible. It's a game that has a weird charm to it and it instantly hooked me with that. The mix of simple puzzles, some tricky platforming with a sprinkle of hilarious physics has actually made a pretty competent and surprisingly good looking platformer.
One part about the games controls does annoy me a lot though! You can only jump forward whilst you're moving. It has tripped me up plenty of times, as jumping without moving only allows you to jump upwards. So you will at times be forced to back track a few steps, just to make a simple jump. A little tuning of the controls to allow jumping forwards without moving and it would be solid.
Issues
The game does not play well with the Linux desktop. You cannot alt+tab at all and if you do the game will lose focus, forcing you to kill it from another TTY session (CTRL+ALT+F2).
OBS doesn't even show it when capturing the entire screen, so the game is doing something strange with the way it renders.
Thankfully it does have a windowed mode, which makes everything work fine. That's the only way I was able to capture a video of it.
Strange bugs aside, it's actually not bad at all. Tricky in places, damn funny at times and certainly something to take a look at if you need some dumb fun. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Disclosure: Key provided by the developer before the release.
The game is pretty damn funny thanks to the glorious use of physics. It's the simple things like timing a jump wrong and Sumoman falls flat on his face, to rewind time but just not rewind enough to end up doing it again and I really can't help but laugh at it. Take a look at some of my failures in the video below:
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If you only looked at the game from the official trailer, you might have been left thinking it would have firmly sat in the crapware pile Steam has been growing, but the truth is I've had way more fun than I thought possible. It's a game that has a weird charm to it and it instantly hooked me with that. The mix of simple puzzles, some tricky platforming with a sprinkle of hilarious physics has actually made a pretty competent and surprisingly good looking platformer.
One part about the games controls does annoy me a lot though! You can only jump forward whilst you're moving. It has tripped me up plenty of times, as jumping without moving only allows you to jump upwards. So you will at times be forced to back track a few steps, just to make a simple jump. A little tuning of the controls to allow jumping forwards without moving and it would be solid.
Issues
The game does not play well with the Linux desktop. You cannot alt+tab at all and if you do the game will lose focus, forcing you to kill it from another TTY session (CTRL+ALT+F2).
OBS doesn't even show it when capturing the entire screen, so the game is doing something strange with the way it renders.
Thankfully it does have a windowed mode, which makes everything work fine. That's the only way I was able to capture a video of it.
Strange bugs aside, it's actually not bad at all. Tricky in places, damn funny at times and certainly something to take a look at if you need some dumb fun. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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This actually seems kind of neat? The stiff animation seemed bad at first but there's almost a unique charm to it. I imagine the average person will go "this game sucks, you just fall over all the time" but that's the whole point!
Unigine always had issues with Alt + Tab on Linux. It captures the X11 keyboard directly, just like screen lockers do. It also doesn't use SDL so you can't use a patched SDL to fix it. I imagine one could patch the X libraries directly but then you'd likely open a huge hole in your screen locker.
Unigine always had issues with Alt + Tab on Linux. It captures the X11 keyboard directly, just like screen lockers do. It also doesn't use SDL so you can't use a patched SDL to fix it. I imagine one could patch the X libraries directly but then you'd likely open a huge hole in your screen locker.
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I've had a lot of luck with just dropping down/over to another desktop (I use ctl+shift+arrow) instead of ALT+TAB, even with full screen like DiRT Rally or Civ6. Always worth a shot..
Definitely been there though, like with Vulkan up to about December; it would freeze on me where it took not just F2 but all the way out to like F7 before the SIG went through. It seems to have come a long ways since last year, but it used to lock the system hard if fps got too high (or maybe coincidence?)
Thanks for the video! It looks like a good casual or perhaps with friends/pass the controller type game.
Definitely been there though, like with Vulkan up to about December; it would freeze on me where it took not just F2 but all the way out to like F7 before the SIG went through. It seems to have come a long ways since last year, but it used to lock the system hard if fps got too high (or maybe coincidence?)
Thanks for the video! It looks like a good casual or perhaps with friends/pass the controller type game.
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I bought it, but it won't launch for me. :(
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I bought it, but it won't launch for me. :(
Your having more luck than me, just runs in the background.
Debian testing, Mesa/radeon.
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I bought it, but it won't launch for me. :(
Your having more luck than me, just runs in the background.
Debian testing, Mesa/radeon.
Gnome shell/WM/DE?
Anything useful it you start steam, then on a separate workstation/desktop screen (same X session) launch the game (without > /dev/null) to see where it's getting stuck? Hope it's a quick fix : )
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I'm using KDE Plasma. There is nothing in the terminal when it freezes, although the dev just replied in the thread linked above. There's a log file at `~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Sumoman/bin/game_log.html` that might be relevant. I'll run it again tonight and see what happens.
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I'm using KDE Plasma. There is nothing in the terminal when it freezes, although the dev just replied in the thread linked above. There's a log file at `~/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Sumoman/bin/game_log.html` that might be relevant. I'll run it again tonight and see what happens.
Hah, great minds.. I actually have it ready to go tonight as well. I'll report back if I have any issues and what I am able to do to fix it (I've only refunded one game ever.. level one is sometimes getting to the main menu... and I feel like we should get a Steam achievement for that!) ;)
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I actually have it ready to go tonight as well.
Nice one! I did send them the log, but I don't think it was helpful (as per that thread). They suggested downgrading my Nvidia drivers, but that's not easy in Arch. Perhaps you could comment over in the Steam thread, so they know if affects more people? Cheers.
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I actually have it ready to go tonight as well.
Nice one! I did send them the log, but I don't think it was helpful (as per that thread). They suggested downgrading my Nvidia drivers, but that's not easy in Arch. Perhaps you could comment over in the Steam thread, so they know if affects more people? Cheers.
For sure. I haven't gone through my normal pre-flight checklist :) e.g. checking the launcher script.. making sure all the libraries are linked.. but I'll get something out there within the hour so they have a better idea.
I'm also on Arch and agree; not a chance I'm downgrading the system because the game should have spent longer in beta.
That's like the gas station telling me to sell my car for one with lower fuel requirements if i say my car runs like crap using their premium blend.. :|
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For sure. I haven't gone through my normal pre-flight checklist :) e.g. checking the launcher script.. making sure all the libraries are linked.. but I'll get something out there within the hour so they have a better idea.
I'm also on Arch and agree; not a chance I'm downgrading the system because the game should have spent longer in beta.
That's like the gas station telling me to sell my car for one with lower fuel requirements if i say my car runs like crap using their premium blend.. :|
Thank you for doing that.
Yeah, I definitely agree with you, but I did give it a shot, just to see if I could isolate the problem. However, it wasn't a previously-packaged version in Arch, and changing the pkgver didn't work, so…
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Ok.. starting countdown. I had to post on X-Plane as I've been doing the beta
any bets on sumo.. i have a good feeling.. (brb!)
Edit: if you choose answer c.. it will run, but not in 2160p, and will lock all but one core and all but one hyper-thread **twice** on the main menu... you were correct! This is where Linus jumps in and writes the email for you :)
I about had to switch tty. Now I feel like a jerk saying to just drop down to another workspace. Right, no. It locked hard. Like were talking a 40? car err threat pileup. It wasn't pretty. I realized that my mouse was still active and was able to drop the resolution down, get a terminal and kill it.
Did it die gracefully you ask? No. Took down Steam like a pile of toothpicks. Someone convince me this is worth messing with. Supposed to be a relaxing game, no gdb required :(
The overlay was going crazy, so I'm going to recompile/update sc (running the git version) so I have the new patches, then disable the overlay and try again. One more core dump and it's going straight to /dev/null.
Last edited by saildata on 31 Mar 2017 at 3:51 am UTC
any bets on sumo.. i have a good feeling.. (brb!)
Edit: if you choose answer c.. it will run, but not in 2160p, and will lock all but one core and all but one hyper-thread **twice** on the main menu... you were correct! This is where Linus jumps in and writes the email for you :)
I about had to switch tty. Now I feel like a jerk saying to just drop down to another workspace. Right, no. It locked hard. Like were talking a 40? car err threat pileup. It wasn't pretty. I realized that my mouse was still active and was able to drop the resolution down, get a terminal and kill it.
Did it die gracefully you ask? No. Took down Steam like a pile of toothpicks. Someone convince me this is worth messing with. Supposed to be a relaxing game, no gdb required :(
The overlay was going crazy, so I'm going to recompile/update sc (running the git version) so I have the new patches, then disable the overlay and try again. One more core dump and it's going straight to /dev/null.
Last edited by saildata on 31 Mar 2017 at 3:51 am UTC
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@saildata Sorry, I have no idea what you are talking about!
Ok, sorry I gave up on it last night.. was too tired to mess with it :|
Today, I got it to run and checked a few settings to see what seemed to be the optimum settings for my system (see 'View PC info')
Things I changed to get the game running/ without freeze
1. Disable the Steam overlay for the game
2. Use sc-controller (v3.8.1+), launch before starting Steam
3. Run the game from the normal Steam launcher, not big picture
Graphics settings and noted impact/fps
Note: I wasn't able to get it to run in 3840x2160p, even when manually changing the config file before launch.
- 1080p/AA=0x, CPU=12%, fps=350-450
- ***1440p/AA=0x, CPU=14.0%, fps=200-220***
- 1440p/AA=4x, CPU=17.3%, fps=180 (no variation noted)
- 1440p/AA=8x, CPU=15.5%, fps=120 (no variation noted)
In the end, I feel like the *** 1440p without AA (or vsync) gave the best game play. I stared at a scene with water/other dynamic elements and could not see a different with or without AA. Maybe the waves? It wasn't noticeable unless you were really really looking for it. The only major difference was whether the laptop fan was on..
I would still recommend this with the changes made. I think the Steam overlay is what was causing the freezing, because immediately after removing that, the game would gracefully exit. So make sure if you're using the Steam controller, to export a local config and import into sc-controller, version 3.8.1+. I'm not sure if v3.7 or v3.8 has the required changes or not since I pull from the git version and it just grabs the latest off the main branch.
Hopefully that helps others wanting to play this without everyone having to go through the debug loop and can just jump in and play :) Enjoy --
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Thanks for the tips @saildata. Unfortunately I still can't get it working. I disabled the Steam overlay, and I wasn't using a Steam controller anyway. I even set it on minimum resolution with no AA, just in case. Looks like this one is heading towards the refund bucket.
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Thanks for the tips @saildata. Unfortunately I still can't get it working. I disabled the Steam overlay, and I wasn't using a Steam controller anyway. I even set it on minimum resolution with no AA, just in case. Looks like this one is heading towards the refund bucket.
If you're willing to debug a little/ would care to.. I'd be happy to look at some of the logs and see if we can't get it working for you. If not and you're tired of messing with it, I understand 100%.
I went back and looked at your Steam dev conversation. Looks like they're recommending a driver release from about 1.5 months ago. But as you said, our kernel has the 4.10 patch for the latest Nvidia driver.. so why revert??
Since you have a dual (Optimus?) card, have you tried changing your launch mode to what's in the Arch wiki? I.e.
primusrun %command%?Also, I'm a little surprised the person helping you didn't dig into the missing library link.. that seems like it would have been a red flag as to the crashing. Unless their LD_LIBRARY_PATH env variable changes that.. but it points to .local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/Sumoman/bin/x64 which does not have libUnigine_x64.so. That library is in the main folder. What I just did was
cp libUnigine_x64.so x64/ so that at least when the game is loading the libraries it has what it's looking for..Double check that the library libUnigine_x64.so is linked correctly..
cd ./x64 ldd libUnigine_x64.so Make sure all the arrows point to something. Thats the system libraries it will reference once the game loads that library..So that should help see if anything obvious is missing from your system. After you try that, if you decided to go at it one last time :), also check the logs /tmp/dumps/*.txt. That sometimes has some useful info, but is typically more related to the Steam runtime.
Now that mine is correctly copied in, I'm curious to see if anything in the game runs better or loads quicker :p
Cheers --
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Thanks for the offer. I've put the error log up here. To be honest, I've spent over an hour troubleshooting something that I've spent money on, so I'll likely give up soon. Please don't spend too much time helping me! I'll let you know what I tried though.
I've tried the following:
* launching vanilla steam, and using `primusrun %command%`
* launching `primusrun steam`, and running the vanilla game command.
* launching either option above with `LD_PRELOAD='/usr/$LIB/libasound.so.2 /usr/$LIB/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/$LIB/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/$LIB/libxcb.so.1 /usr/$LIB/libgpg-error.so'` first (I think I got this from the Arch wiki.
Neither of the four permutations work.
I tried copying libUnigine_x64.so to the x64 directory as you recommended… but this meant that the game wouldn't even get to the *first* screen now!
I checked `ldd libUnigine_x64.so` in the original directory, and all the files exist.
I looked at /tmp/dumps/*.txt and it only had similar information to the sumoman log above.
I've tried the following:
* launching vanilla steam, and using `primusrun %command%`
* launching `primusrun steam`, and running the vanilla game command.
* launching either option above with `LD_PRELOAD='/usr/$LIB/libasound.so.2 /usr/$LIB/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/$LIB/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/$LIB/libxcb.so.1 /usr/$LIB/libgpg-error.so'` first (I think I got this from the Arch wiki.
Neither of the four permutations work.
I tried copying libUnigine_x64.so to the x64 directory as you recommended… but this meant that the game wouldn't even get to the *first* screen now!
I checked `ldd libUnigine_x64.so` in the original directory, and all the files exist.
I looked at /tmp/dumps/*.txt and it only had similar information to the sumoman log above.
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Thanks for the offer. I've put the error log up here. To be honest, I've spent over an hour troubleshooting something that I've spent money on, so I'll likely give up soon. Please don't spend too much time helping me! I'll let you know what I tried though.
I've tried the following:
* launching vanilla steam, and using `primusrun %command%`
* launching `primusrun steam`, and running the vanilla game command.
* launching either option above with `LD_PRELOAD='/usr/$LIB/libasound.so.2 /usr/$LIB/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/$LIB/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/$LIB/libxcb.so.1 /usr/$LIB/libgpg-error.so'` first (I think I got this from the Arch wiki.
Neither of the four permutations work.
I tried copying libUnigine_x64.so to the x64 directory as you recommended… but this meant that the game wouldn't even get to the *first* screen now!
I checked `ldd libUnigine_x64.so` in the original directory, and all the files exist.
I looked at /tmp/dumps/*.txt and it only had similar information to the sumoman log above.
I'm kinda with you at this point. I just went through two rounds of it freezing again. There are workarounds for the key lockups.. but I feel like I've spent 4-5X more time debugging this game than playing it at this point. I need to learn when to quit on these games that feel like they were rushed out at the last minute.
Someone seriously yelled at them, after four years (per their release announcement, 4 years in dev), to "SHIP IT!" and here we are.
I'm curious how they are locking the keyboard, but like I said, I'm done with any form of tracing syscalls, hexdumps, or the like. I know what happened to break it this time (changing my desktop back to 4k (silly me, going native on them).. it can upscale to 1440p but not downscale apparently).
Do I really want to go through dconf, gnome-tweak-tool, and xorg.conf to play it? ehh.. I have a script to do it but that's not the point. It's cool but not that cool. Or maybe it is, I haven't played past the third checkpoint. I'll give it one more day.
Sorry things didn't work out on your end. I looked over your log next to mine and they were pretty much the same. They actually don't give very much info in the logs as far as when things go wrong.. it freezes and the logs stop as well. Not so helpful.
Anyone else reading this -- hold off for now. It's a beta release quality worth about $5 wrapped in a production release for $i forget.. over $10. :) This may serve as the foundation for my review, lol. I've returned one game on Steam, and never given a bad review. Records are meant to be broken, perhaps.
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Sorry things didn't work out on your end. I looked over your log next to mine and they were pretty much the same.
No worries. Thanks for your help anyway.
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