Ruining It For Everyone Else Since 2004
I did my first public YouTube livestream today. My choice of game was the first Tomb Raider.
It’s a little glitchy at first, mainly due to the emulator changing resolutions between cutscenes and the actual game. Actual gameplay and audio is pretty solid though. Hopefully my next stream will go a little smoother.
Temple Of Osiris has been spotted as another possible candidate for my (and others obviously) another great game to run under Linux.
If you haven’t played it already I recommend it. It’s fun to play by yourself, but a LOT more fun playing with other friends even if you try to screw each other over. Here’s some of best gameplay bits:
Gaming On Linux did a benchmark comparison between Linux and Windows 10 showing off framerate differences.
It’s kind of depressing. Great that people on Linux have access to these titles, but sad that the OpenGL optimization can be flat out sucky. I have noticed this with most games on Linux. And it’s one of the reasons why I still keep Win 7 on my system, especially since I like to record my gameplays for video projects, and the better the framerate the better the video output… those numbers aren’t good. We need games to move over to Vulkan… badly. We don’t want Microsoft to control our PC gaming realm, and Linux needs to fight the good fight.
Today is a good day to be a Linux user, well, everyday is… but it’s nice to see this game transition over to the open source side.
Targeting a release date for Tomb Raider on Linux? You’ve hit the bull’s-eye: Lara will arrive on Linux… today! pic.twitter.com/GiHjR42uEt
— Feral Interactive (@feralgames) April 27, 2016
Now the question, how well will it perform under OpenGL? Tomb Raider was rather taxing on Windows, you needed REALLY good hardware to run it. I wonder how well it’ll handle TressFX.
Minimum and Recommended specs were released for the Linux port of Tomb Raider, they are as follows:
Minimum
OS Ubuntu 14.04 or SteamOS 2.0 (64-bit)
Processor Intel i3 or AMD FX-6300
RAM 4GB
Graphics card 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce 640 (driver version 364.12) or 2GB AMD 5770 (driver version MESA 11.2)
Recommended
OS Ubuntu 14.04 or SteamOS 2.0 (64-bit)
Processor Intel i5
RAM 8GB
Graphics card 3GB
NVIDIA GeForce 760 (Driver version 364.12)
Of course just about any flavor of Linux will do, obviously. 😛
Maybe not on April 1st, but sooooon.
TR isn’t out April 1st; there was a glitch with our news post! Sorry pals. ETA is still spring.
Gonna have to see how that performs… and see if I can get the latest AMD GPU drivers working under CentOS.
First video of the new year! Here are my friends and I having a threesome in Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris! When we play together things get insanely magical.
Hmmmm… The Tomb Raider 2013 reboot on SteamDB.info with bunches of Linux type things going on? Interesting…
Yesterday I took it for a field test on one of my TF2 servers to see how it stacks up compared to other controllers or a Keyboard and Mouse. I went in as a Pyro with the default layout tweaked a bit to my liking. Not many people know it but the Steam Controller comes with a built in Gyroscopic sensor not too different from what you would find in a VR headset or a smartphone/tablet. I used that combined with the right touchpad and managed to get the drop on my enemies multiple times. Keyboard and Mouse will always be king IMO but this makes it great if you want to get away from your desk and just sprawl out in another area while doing basically the same thing.
The response time over wireless was amazing, in fact I didn’t notice any latency when I pointed my controller towards an enemy. The gyro sensor does take some getting used to though. I played it with some racing games and it does take some practice if you want to use the Steam Controller as a steering wheel, but it’s fun once you get used to it!
The Steam Controller also supports DOS games. I tried to play some Wolfenstein 3D but didn’t really care for it on the controller. However it handled the original 1996 Tomb Raider like a champ. I didn’t use the D-Pad as I find it to be too stiff compared to your typical controller, but the analog stick worked perfectly. Someone made a config that makes it handle kinda like the old Playstation controller. It was comfortable and I think even better since it has extra places for button assignments. For example sidestepping was assigned to the bottom bumpers of the controller instead of it’s more traditional spots like LT and RT, which to me felt more natural.
Overall I still haven’t regretted the pre-order. In fact it keeps getting better and better with every update. They recently introduced a shortcut menu that you can use to bring up keyboard shortcuts. It’s handy if you play games like Skyrim which have a big keyboard layout.