Overload [Official Site] is easily one of the best six-degree-of-freedom shooters in my eyes and the full release is now available with great Linux support. I've played a number of similar games, but nothing has come as close to perfection as this for me.
Disclosure: My key was provided by the developer some time ago.
Even during the Early Access builds of the game, I spent quite a few hours happily roaming around the challenge levels. The great style to it, along with the silky-smooth gameplay showed how Revival Productions knew exactly what they were doing. With good reason too, since their team is made up from some of the original creators of Descent.
The full release comes with everything I could want in such a game, including a singleplayer campaign with plenty of levels, a ship you can keep upgrading, 20+ different enemy robots with different attacks and behaviours and a story written by the writer of FREESPACE 2 (one of my all time favourite games).
It has such exceptional combat, with weapons that feel as meaty as they look and sound. Firing off a rocket and seeing it impact on an enemy, it's absolutely glorious. It's not just the combat that makes it great, graphically it's really quite impressive too. The textures as well as the lighting, especially during combat-heavy sections is very impressive with all the reflections of the weapons bouncing off the walls, it's really quite a sight.
Since this is the full version, this also comes with online and LAN multiplayer for up to 8 people, with multiple game modes. I was a little cautious in my optimism for the online mode, I wasn't too sure how it would feel in comparison to the singleplayer as it's so focused. Silly really, because it's wonderfully fun and really gets your blood pumping. See this awesome shot I managed to grab during a firefight:
Pretty sure I died shortly after this was taken.
The Linux version is absolutely quality too. It looks good, it performs well and I haven't actually encountered any Linux-specific issues at all (aside from the menu still saying it's a development release—woops). All through development they've managed to have a Linux version that could put others to shame. Seriously, I'm amazed by it.
It deserves your time and attention. You can find it on Steam. It's supposed to be on GOG too as per their announcement, but it seems to not be showing up right now.
They're also doing a launch livestream on YouTube and Twitch.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
- FPS is kind of spotty. I have a Core i7 8700K @ 3.7GHz, 16Gb RAM, admittedly with a weak video card (NVIDIA GTX 760, driver version 396.24). Sometimes the game is smooth as silk, other times it seems to get down to ~10fps. Resolution is 1920x1200
- Sometimes the mouse buttons are "stuck" on or off (e.g. weapon won't fire or won't stop firing). Hitting escape twice resets that
Other than that, it's a lot of fun.
Cheeseness Jun 1, 2018
Quoting: sjrSometimes the mouse buttons are "stuck" on or off (e.g. weapon won't fire or won't stop firing). Hitting escape twice resets thatDoes this coincide with the frame rate drops you've experienced? I've not seen that happen with the release build or any of the pre-release builds so far - I think I've sunk maybe 15 - 20 hours in all up.
If you crank all the settings down, does that make a difference (turning off AO and AA if you haven't already will probably give you big gains)?
If there are specific places in specific levels where you're noticing significant frame rate drops? If so, it might be worth reporting these so that Revival can combine them with other reports when considering future performance optimisations.
Quoting: CheesenessIf there are specific places in specific levels where you're noticing significant frame rate drops? If so, it might be worth reporting these so that Revival can combine them with other reports when considering future performance optimisations.
I haven't played in a month or so, but back then, Phoebe Refinery really tanked my fps (on my GTX 970). Other areas ran over 100 fps. No settings changes helped. Another user on Steam discussion said he had the same problem. I also agree that these are issues that should be reported and can probably be fixed over time. It seems like the Unity engine takes some extra care to get it performing consistently well, but it is possible, as evidenced by games like Shadow Tactics.
It seems completely missing from steam except my inventory...
Quoting: ArdjeWhat happened to Descent: Underground ?Ah...
It seems completely missing from steam except my inventory...
delisted since https://www.gamasutra.com/view/pressreleases/308759/Descent_Underground_Developers_Team_Up_With_Publisher_Little_Orbit.php
and will be published this year.
And the developer is even active on steam.
Last edited by Ardje on 1 June 2018 at 10:36 am UTC
I've got an old Saitek Cyborg 3D relic, so I'll see it that works in this game. The Stick itself gets regular duty in X-Plane 11, so it just depends on the game support.
Quoting: melkemindQuoting: CheesenessIf there are specific places in specific levels where you're noticing significant frame rate drops? If so, it might be worth reporting these so that Revival can combine them with other reports when considering future performance optimisations.
I haven't played in a month or so, but back then, Phoebe Refinery really tanked my fps (on my GTX 970). Other areas ran over 100 fps. No settings changes helped. Another user on Steam discussion said he had the same problem. I also agree that these are issues that should be reported and can probably be fixed over time. It seems like the Unity engine takes some extra care to get it performing consistently well, but it is possible, as evidenced by games like Shadow Tactics.
I haven't got my hands on then release version yet (because I'm waiting for the GOG/DRM-free version). But I have a couple hundred hours playtime with the various beta versions. From my experience, turning on "Screen Space Reflections" makes the framerate very unstable. Without that but everything else maxed out, I get constant 60fps @1920x1200 on a i5-6600 + GTX1060, with GPU utilization <=75%.
I made some frametime measurements, and on my system, it actually helps to enable nvidia's multithreaded GL mode by setting __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1. Furthermore, I use the latency limiter mode of glx_hook which prevents some micro-stuttering which are otherwise happening.
QuoteI'm not certain what the GoG issue is, but I think there is a problem on our side with the Mac version and the wrapper/installer Gog uses. Matt is handling this stuff. The holiday didn't help, nor does the time difference. I would expect us to be up Monday or Tuesday.
(This quote comes from the overload discord channel.)
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