Another week has dragged on and here we are, the weekend. It's time to go over a few little bits and find out what our readers have been playing this week.
For me, I've been playing rather a lot of DRAG, the fancy new racer from Orontes Games. As pretty as it is and how smooth the performance is, the game itself might be the most frustrated I've been with a racing game—ever. Not the kind of frustration to put me off because of technical issues, more at my own inability to keep the damn car from sliding about everywhere and then smashing into a tiny little tree and losing a precious wheel.
Have you ever had a game truly give you stress-sweats? It's not just because it's ridiculously warm in the GOL office, DRAG is nail-biting edge of your seat tough. It took me over 4 hours to beat the first set of time trials on the "Wood" medal (the lowest). 4 hours, split across a few levels that take ~30 seconds to beat most. Who set these crazy times? Orontes we need words. Challenging physics aside, DRAG is a great entry into the racing genre that I hope goes on to become a success. It's been a while since I was properly excited to see a racing game evolve and DRAG has such an impressive start. I did at least get a few good runs in like this on video.
Now how about a little round-up of some interesting recent news?
As for game engines, the cross-platform and open source Godot Engine is changing how it will provide rendering options with Godot 4.0 when it gains Vulkan support. Instead of a high-end and a low-end renderer, they will instead have a single renderer that is efficient for multiple uses. You can read more about that here. Additionally, Godot is getting a Volumetric fog implementation which is merged in ready for release (shots below).
Additionally, a normal Fog system is also back in for Godot 4.0 that's less complex than the system in the 3.x series that should look good with "less effort". The Godot team is also looking for help funding to hire more developers which you can do so on Patreon. If you're a game developer reading, I do urge you to look into using Godot.
This week we also had the KDE August 2020 application updates bringing with it improvements to the Dolphin file manager with lots of usability improvements, like improvements to how it cuts the filenames when they're too long and a new "Copy Location" option. This Copy Location ability was also added to Konsole, KDE's terminal app and there's plenty more updates across KDE apps. Digikam especially got a big upgrade with Digikam 7.0.0 with much better facial recognition.
Something very concerning is what's happening over at Mozilla. There's been some conflicting reports but they're definitely changing and letting go of 250 staff members. MDN (Mozilla Developer Network), practically one of the go-to places for reading up on web tech and standards also had its team gutted and they're trying to find a way forwards. Hopefully it's not all as bad as it sounds. It's alarming since they make Firefox, and it would be really bad if we ended up with just Chromium sticking around. Open source still sure, but Google pretty firmly control it. The somewhat good news, is that Mozilla has now managed to sign a new deal with Google for funding, which makes up the majority of their incoming monies.
Deals Reminder:
- Killing Floor Humble Bundle
- Humble Store - Racing Games Sale
- Dying Light - 66% off (Steam) - just had a new DLC
- The Traditional Roguelikes Bundle (Steam) - save on Caves of Qud, Sword of the Stars and more
- PAYDAY 2 (Steam) big anniversary sale - 50% off
- GOG have a sale on Automation games, with some great Zachtronics in there like Opus Magnum
Over to you in the comments: what have you been gaming on Linux lately and what are you clicking on this weekend?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Also have Empyrion: Galactic Survival's 1.0 working via Proton just fine.
World of Warcraft via Lutris / Wine.
Sometimes Europa Universalis IV or Hearts of Iron IV on my own.
Honestly kind of spoiled for choice these days, which is great!
brokeassben Aug 15, 2020
Just replayed Dishonored via Proton and it runs extremely well at max settings on an ultrawide monitor. Installed Dishonored 2 as soon as I completed the first one and it is unfortunately a bit stuttery when entering new areas--hopefully there's a fix for that.
Also playing Prey from the same studio and it too runs really well using Proton. Highly recommend it.
Picked up GTA V and even though I've played all previous GTA titles, I almost immediately realized I am no longer a person who enjoys GTA games. Might be getting old...
Quoting: brokeassbenJust replayed Dishonored via Proton and it runs extremely well at max settings on an ultrawide monitor. Installed Dishonored 2 as soon as I completed the first one and it is unfortunately a bit stuttery when entering new areas--hopefully there's a fix for that.
Turn on esync. Also make sure you let shaders compile, it takes a bit longer for this game, don't know why. After that it's smooth as butter. I enjoyed it greatly.
Other than that, it's my never ending story: Tanks in War Thunder
soulsource Aug 15, 2020
). Runs perfectly fine in Dosbox.Apart from that I've been playing Death and Taxes, and while it's fun, it lacks a bit of challenge.
TobyGornow Aug 15, 2020
I've started playing Blood : Fresh supply on Proton, a game from my childhood I've played on shareware that I've never owned so never finished. It's fast, it's fun, I like it.
And Still on my Borderlands 2 run.
Last edited by TobyGornow on 15 August 2020 at 9:50 pm UTC
Quoting: soulsourceI dug out the very first PC game my parents bought for me: The Settlers 2. 24 years after release it's still an incredibly awesome game, and of all Settlers games I've played it's still my absolute favourite (though it might be the nostalgia talking
Apart from that I've been playing Death and Taxes, and while it's fun, it lacks a bit of challenge.
I spent many hours in Settlers 2 - it has an atmosphere which is hard to describe, but which hooked me in. Combined with that perfect learning curve and mid to late-game challenge, it's a classic.
I might try Widelands, after Liam covered it a few weeks back: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/07/inspired-by-settlers-ii-the-open-source-widelands-has-a-new-test-build-up
appetrosyan Aug 15, 2020
Quoting: scaineQuoting: soulsourceI dug out the very first PC game my parents bought for me: The Settlers 2. 24 years after release it's still an incredibly awesome game, and of all Settlers games I've played it's still my absolute favourite (though it might be the nostalgia talking
Apart from that I've been playing Death and Taxes, and while it's fun, it lacks a bit of challenge.
I spent many hours in Settlers 2 - it has an atmosphere which is hard to describe, but which hooked me in. Combined with that perfect learning curve and mid to late-game challenge, it's a classic.
I might try Widelands, after Liam covered it a few weeks back: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/07/inspired-by-settlers-ii-the-open-source-widelands-has-a-new-test-build-up
Settlers 4 was my favourite of the old ones. I especially loved the animations of the "people". Was a lot of fun to watch even if nothing special was going on.
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