Catch up on some recent big news and some things we haven't covered through the week on GamingOnLinux.
Let's start with the really big one, Creative Assembly and SEGA officially announced Total War Saga: TROY. Game porting studio Feral Interactive will be bringing this one to Linux "shortly" after the Windows release next year. Total War games must sell reasonably well on Linux for Feral to port so many of them.
Linux For Everyone interviews CodeWeavers
Jason Evangelho, who writes for Forbes and ended up becoming quite a huge Linux fan now has his own podcast called Linux For Everyone. I guest speak on it here and there to highlight a fun game every few episodes, with episode 9 having a really great interview with Codeweavers CEO Jeremy White and Wine developer Andrew Eikum.
Valve lose a court battle, users should be able to re-sell their digital games
Still a lot to think about on this one, something that could cause major issues for the gaming industry. I've yet to see an indie developer happy about the possible issues this comes with. If this actually goes through, the decision may force developers to change how they treat digital sales of games.
Canonical detail what 32bit packages will continue to see support
Now the dust has settled on Canonical nearly dropping 32bit entirely and then deciding against it when Valve were going to drop support for Ubuntu, Canonical have given some info on what packages will continue to be supported through to Ubuntu 20.04.
While a big step in the right direction, with a lot of new and useful features it has come with numerous issues that need solving. There's no mention of Steam Play, all games are bundled regardless of operating system support into a single list, a pretty big memory leak somewhere and more. I've been greatly enjoying the new dynamic collection feature though, very handy!
The full animated opening for the upcoming game Indivisible is up
Releasing with Linux support on October 8th on GOG (no page up yet) and Steam, Indivisible is the latest game from Lab Zero Games the creator of Skullgirls. Take a look at their opening animation in full:
Direct Link
Subsoap updates Faerie Solitaire Harvest, still free on itch for Linux
Faerie Solitaire Harvest continues to be free for Linux gamers on itch.io, with it recently being given an update. Windows and Mac have to pay but we can either donate to support the developer or play free. The developer shared this image, showing very little income for it on itch and almost all downloads on itch were from Linux (source). It's also on Steam and they have announced Faerie Solitaire Dire.
KDE launches the beta release of Plasma 5.17
Another release of KDE Plasma is due soon, with it now in Beta. Lots of improvements to all areas of the desktop, with the promise that Plasma will start "even faster".
GNOME 3.34 released recently with a much improved retro gaming application "Games" that allows multiple saves per game.
AMD possibly up to 25% of the desktop CPU market
According to Wccftech, it's looking like AMD may have captured 25% of the desktop CPU market thanks to strong growth powered by their Ryzen processors although supply shortage is causing issues.
Weekend deals reminder:
Recent reviews:
Let's end with a question for readers: What have you been playing this week/weekend and what are your thoughts on it?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
As for what I'm doing -- I have fallen into the same trap as Sin and fired up Minecraft again. Goodbye non-working life, I will remember getting shit done with fond memories.
Quoting: NanobangI enjoyed this Sunday roundup article. Is it new? I don't remember seeing it before. Anyway, kudos.We do it sometimes, this was a bit of a new format though, just trying something a lil different.
BrazilianGamer Sep 22, 2019
QuoteTotal War games must sell reasonably well on Linux for Feral to port so many of them.
That's my opinion too. They announce a new game and right after it, they announce it will be ported to Linux. Linux sells very well otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for so many ports. May they come more and more
Last edited by BrazilianGamer on 24 September 2019 at 1:58 am UTC
Not much to say about the former; the fact I've been playing that for close to 175 hours speaks for itself. I've only got one and a half DLCs to finish, though, so the end is drawing near.
Jenny LeClue turned out great, after all those years of waiting. It's delightfully funny and mysterious. It's not too difficult, but that also means the narrative flow doesn't get interrupted by unfair or illogical puzzles thrown in purely to stall for time. After Heaven's Vault, that's this year's second highlight in gaming for me!
Quoting: BrazilianGamerQuoteTotal War games must sell reasonably well on Linux for Feral to port so many of them.
That's my opinion too. They announce a new game and right after it, they announce it will be ported to Linux. Linux sells very well otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for a many ports. May they come more and more
And they are allowed early ports for near simultaneous release. I think they had Three Kingdoms up only hours after the Windows release. Which keeps it nicely visible in short period of high attention.
Quoting: BrazilianGamerProbably the cost is also very low by now. I mean, Feral must know the codebase inside out at this point, they just poke around to see what's different, do a little update to their now-almost-standard setup for porting Total War titles, and Bjorn Stronginthearm's your uncle.QuoteTotal War games must sell reasonably well on Linux for Feral to port so many of them.
That's my opinion too. They announce a new game and right after it, they announce it will be ported to Linux. Linux sells very well otherwise there wouldn't be any reason for a many ports. May they come more and more
I just finally finished the game of Stellaris I'd had going for ages. There I was, coasting to the finish line, even the ancients were Pathetic next to me, and then stuff started happening. First one of the ancients decided to go all crusader . . . fine, time to beef up the navy and crush them, no worries, and they hadn't even declared war on me in particular yet . . . then some AI thing starts trying to kill all sentient life, OK, let's whack that and ignore the ancients until I'm finished . . . then these other ancients decide it's their job to stop the first ancients . . . great, they'll keep each other busy while I kill off the AI thing . . . then the second group of ancients want me to join up with them to stop the first ones . . . with them as my boss. Yeah, thanks but no thanks . . . so then I find both ancient groups have declared war on me and intimidated half the galaxy into joining them, and I'm barely started crushing the AI things. And then I make the mistake of going along with a proposal to head a Federation to stop the ancients; the rest of the federation is useless but my fleet size cap drops because some of it is now allocated to the federation!
I took them all down, but it was like playing whack-a-mole for a while there. Ended up inadvertently owning most of the galaxy. All in all, the very late game turned out much more eventful than I'd been expecting.
So now I've started Battletech. Seems good so far.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 22 September 2019 at 7:34 pm UTC
Quoting: bird_or_cageFinally played EVERSPACE past week as I wanted to understand if I should wishlist the next one, and it`s been collecting dust in my library for too long. Game is fun and looks and sounds great, but I am new to roguelikes (several hours Dead Cells, several hours Tangledeep, maybe 10 hours Prey: Mooncrash) and I am totally new to space sims. So far it is still too hard for me, I only got to Level 4 once, but I enjoy it.I'm at sector 6 after 50 tries on normal level, it is damn fun.
Last edited by kokoko3k on 23 September 2019 at 12:00 pm UTC
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: NanobangI enjoyed this Sunday roundup article. Is it new? I don't remember seeing it before. Anyway, kudos.We do it sometimes, this was a bit of a new format though, just trying something a lil different.
Well tally me in the "dug the new format" column. :)
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