Got the need for speed? You should check out Wreckfest! It's a lot of fun and it works amazingly well on Steam Deck.
This isn't a new game, far from it, Wreckfest was released back in 2018. One reason I wanted to try it is that I love these destruction derby style games, and the developer clearly cares about the Steam Deck experience too since they put in a dedicated crash-bug fix. It's hilarious too, you get to drive a speedy lawn mower and even a motorized sofa — and it's as ridiculous as it sounds.
Performance really is surprising too, with it mostly giving a smooth 60FPS on Medium on Steam Deck with Proton 7.0-6. Check out my Steam Deck video below:
Direct Link
As for how it runs on Desktop Linux? Trying it there too on Fedora KDE 37 with my Ryzen 5800x and an NVIDIA 2080 Ti and it's a bit different. The Epic and even High settings presets at 1440p did not give a smooth 60FPS, some tracks really struggled. Swapping it down to 1080p, and it didn't make enough of a difference.
The performance on desktop is just odd. At the start of a lot of races, the performance will be a fair amount lower than even 30 seconds into the race, when you're sat with all the other cars. Once you get properly into a race, even on more demanding tracks, the framerate goes up quite a bit sometimes (not always) so it seems directly tied to how many cars you're seeing so turning down the amount of cars on an event will help.
Ignore the big spike on the graph, that's the screenshot being taken. I don't entirely get why, even when making a screenshot without a UI via terminal, that it causes such performance spikes in games. Likely some sort of x11 issue. Wayland still isn't usable enough with NVIDIA for me.
Want to buy a copy? It's available on Humble Store and Steam.
IMO the menu UI is absolutely horrible though. I mean, selecting cars takes a lot of time as you can't click the car you want and directly confirm your selection but rather you have to wait 1-2 seconds until it actually loaded the preview of the selected car. And as the server moderator selecting tracks without any kind of preview / thumbnail? Really? In 2018? C'mon ;)
The biggest gripe for people who only want to have fun with friends and are not into playing the single player stuff: You have to unlock a lot of cars by playing solo. Some can be unlocked by spending the earned in-game cash that you also get in MP but this would take lots of time. No idea why there's no way for servers to say "you can select any car you want (and own in terms of DLC)". Luckily there's a mod that unlocks all of them: "Give Me Every Car And Part".
But I guess this does demonstrate why some are hesitant with porting their game to Linux. Can't say I blame them.
Quoting: BeamboomI think it's SO strange that the steam deck performance can differ this much from the desktop Linux.
But I guess this does demonstrate why some are hesitant with porting their game to Linux. Can't say I blame them.
Blaming entire platform for shortcoming of a game, or a GPU driver. This is common when BFUs compare Linux vs Windows for gaming, I would expect better from actual Linux users though.
Quoting: SolitaryBlaming entire platform for shortcoming of a game, or a GPU driver. This is common when BFUs compare Linux vs Windows for gaming, I would expect better from actual Linux users though.
That's overly defensive don't you think? It's not like this is the first case of these differences.
I'm talking purely from a technical point of view. Not all Linux users are cultists and apologists, thank you very much.
I mean, essentially the fundamental system is the same (or not). Yes different chipsets and drivers, but still. It does indicate to me that the port challenge Indeed is a task with many unknown variables, more to than the other platforms. Something that would make sense I suppose, since the Linux desktop is comparable with a Lego set where the others are matchbox cars.
Last edited by Beamboom on 21 February 2023 at 4:44 pm UTC
Quoting: SolitaryBFUsWhat is a BFU?
Quoting: mircallaThe driving looks fun but how are the tracks?https://wreckfest.fandom.com/wiki/Maps
Shows a lot of them (not all due to not being completely up to date AFAIK). There's way more than just pure derby tracks, a lot of them are more for actual racing just with the potential of still wrecking other cars while going for the best position ;)
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