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.
*appear since around 3 hours
https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud/releases/tag/v0.5.0
Last edited by mrdeathjr on 16 August 2020 at 4:48 pm UTC
kaktuspalme Aug 16, 2020
These games distract me from playing Final Fantasy IX. It runs fine with Proton, but Moguri Mod (a mod with HD textures enhanced with machine learning) is glitchy, so I'm playing the unmodified version. It has some improvements upon the PS1 version, like speeding up the gameplay without speeding up the game timer - helpful for some mini-games.
Final Fantasy 9 is one of my favourites. I played FF7 some weeks ago, and there are many patches too hd textures etc. It didn't work that well and I thought in some cases these AI upscaled textures look odd. So in the end I just played the unmodified version and it was totally worth it. So my tip to you is, don't think too much about all these modifications and just play the original.
Last edited by kaktuspalme on 16 August 2020 at 4:56 pm UTC
It annoys me how many of the Doom levels have unreachable secret sectors though. Especially in Thy Flesh Consumed.
Artifact Beta 2.0 (beta) - the first 3 campaign matches. I liked it before but I think it's finding the late road to success soon^TM.
Synergia - not that much, just a little further than the demo. great visual novel.
THE IMPOSSIBLE - amazing puzzle game if you're into those. Also, lve the DEV's comment:
I'm glad everything is alright! Supporting Linux is very important to me. Linux forever :D.
Fall Guys - yes windows only but runs flawless using SteamPlay and is just hilarious esp with friends!
Pixel Cup Soccer 17 - didn't know about this. I think it's abandoned by the DEVs but it runs perfectly and is sooooo much fun!
coryrj19951 Aug 16, 2020
If it's on Steam, you know that you can simply edit the controller setup to that game and assign keyboard presses to the joystick buttons, right? This way you can play a keyboard-only game using the joystick/gamepad.Sure, but in that case I have to memorize what key is assigned to what button. I do that for some games. In The Coma 2 most actions are signed on the screen, and I instantly know that N is an inventory and M is a map. Also, some actions are quite handy assigned to several keys. Like, E is "action", but for navigating in menus Space and Enter also can be used. Q is "cancel" as well as Esc. Both WASD and arrows are used for walking, both Shift keys to run, etc.
slaapliedje Aug 17, 2020
But the MiSTer plays many of the arcade games written for it flawlessly and I'm finally able to put my Mayflash F300 to great use!
slaapliedje Aug 17, 2020
I started to learn how to play Ancient Cities and Horizon Zero Dawn. Unfortunately both Windows games that do not work on Wine...I beat Horizon: Zero Dawn on the PS4, such a pretty game. Though now I kind of want to see if it supports my new Super Ultrawide monitor so it'd be even prettier....
brokeassben Aug 17, 2020
Check your PSU, maybe it is underpowered when the GPU and the CPU are working at 100%, which is the case for AAA titles
Power supply is the next item on your checklist.
That was my initial thought, but I should have about 200w to spare if PCPartPicker's estimate is correct.
In addition to CatKiller suggestion, you may also want to try setting a fixed voltage for your CPU, closest to the "auto" setting. I remember having to do that on "cheap" motherboard, and setting a fixed value solved the problems for me. Might be worth a try. Also, check the CPU temperature, in these hot days ; you may want to try underclocking the CPU a little, and see if it improves stability.
The system freezes are very random--sometimes happen while idle and with temperatures less than 40C. Tried underclocking just to give it a go and still had a couple of freezes.
Buuut, I installed a newer kernel, 5.7--both Manjaro and Ubuntu had 5.4 as default, and so far haven't had any freezes. Really hoping it was just something about the hardware not having support in 5.4. Had issues with the network card not being supported and requiring an install of the driver from Broadcom.
Anyway, I appreciate all of you giving me some ideas to test out and being very helpful. Thanks!
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.
You're right! I have it set to ultra at 3440x1440 and it's running really well around 70fps.
Dammit, I haven't had time to game at all (except regularly scheduled paper&pencil over Zoom) this week. Right now I am just about to go squash a ton of blackberries so I can make jelly.
Did you succeed in jelly making?Yes I know this is off topic. Just being curious. As for myself I picked up some blueberry from nearby woods. Soon I will pick tons of lingonberry from my secret place in the woods and make jam.Very healthy.
Lingonberry, huh? Sounds good. We don't have those around here--I think the only place I can get lingonberry stuff is Ikea.Dammit, I haven't had time to game at all (except regularly scheduled paper&pencil over Zoom) this week. Right now I am just about to go squash a ton of blackberries so I can make jelly.
Did you succeed in jelly making?Yes I know this is off topic. Just being curious. As for myself I picked up some blueberry from nearby woods. Soon I will pick tons of lingonberry from my secret place in the woods and make jam.Very healthy.
Yup, worked fine. 8 jars of blackberry jelly; I spent 3 hours picking 'em. Had a step-stool with me so I could pick the stuff too high to reach that hadn't been picked over. My jelly and jam always turn out pretty well, but I don't have any special way of making 'em. I just use the instructions with the Certo pectin except I ignore where it says don't scant the sugar or it won't set and scant the sugar anyway by a cup or two. It always sets fine anyway and their way is too sweet.
One thing though--in my family we've found that if you want to keep jam a long time, freeze it. Not that it's freezer jam--freezer jam sucks. No, it's boiled up normally, but after it's made and cooled down we freeze most of it, that way it stays pretty much like new even a couple years later. If you just keep it on a shelf somewhere it gradually gets sort of darker and loses that powerful, fresh zingy fruitiness.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 17 August 2020 at 7:36 am UTC
KrootShaper Aug 17, 2020
The system freezes are very random--sometimes happen while idle and with temperatures less than 40C. Tried underclocking just to give it a go and still had a couple of freezes.
Definitely sounds like Ryzen low power bug. As I said, if you have first or second generation Ryzen, find in EFI interface "Power supply idle control" and set it to "Typical Current Idle". AMD never admitted to this CPU errata, so Linux developers didn't fix it. Instead AMD reached to mobo manufacturers and they silently added this setting to the EFI interfaces. In Windows it was stealthily solved by tweaking the power management.
Click "View PC info" under his avatar and you can see he has a Ryzen 9 3900X. No need to guess. :)The system freezes are very random--sometimes happen while idle and with temperatures less than 40C. Tried underclocking just to give it a go and still had a couple of freezes.
Definitely sounds like Ryzen low power bug. As I said, if you have first or second generation Ryzen, find in EFI interface "Power supply idle control" and set it to "Typical Current Idle". AMD never admitted to this CPU errata, so Linux developers didn't fix it. Instead AMD reached to mobo manufacturers and they silently added this setting to the EFI interfaces. In Windows it was stealthily solved by tweaking the power management.
Definitely sounds like Ryzen low power bug. As I said, if you have first or second generation Ryzen, find in EFI interface "Power supply idle control" and set it to "Typical Current Idle". AMD never admitted to this CPU errata, so Linux developers didn't fix it. Instead AMD reached to mobo manufacturers and they silently added this setting to the EFI interfaces. In Windows it was stealthily solved by tweaking the power management.Where have you been when my PC was plagued by this on "Ryzen 3 1200"???
It was definitely worth knowing back then.Luckily, the "R5 3600" does not suffer from this bug.
Finally tackled the Heart of Stone and Blood & Wine AddOns to Witcher 3. I love this game, the whole series. I've rarely played anything this atmospheric.
Did you finish both expansions? Feel free to discuss the game in the dedicated thread.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me