Fuduntu Gaming: A Textured Compression

March 16, 2013 by 9 Comments

Ohai there Fuduntu, it’s been awhile since we’ve had one of these, hasn’t it? Much like last time good things come for those who wait!

This time around, and with Steam officially out of beta, I come bearing news that will let many of you better enjoy the stream of games coming down Valve’s chute. If you don’t follow us on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter (shame on you), you probably don’t know that our MESA drivers have been updated to version 9.0.2. “Tell us… oh callipygian guru of the Tux Gaming scene, why is a MESA update of such relevance that it deserves a blog of its own?” Well my flattering uninformed friends, our mostly benevolent overlord Fewt has once again stepped in to help us slackers get our game on and patched the MESA backend to allow for S3 texture compression out of the box. Stay with me here, it’s not as complicated as it sounds.

You see, S3TC (or DXTn/DXTC) has been a standard for 3D accelerated graphics since the days of OpenGL 1.3 (or DirectX 6, for you Windows fiends) and in so being it became the norm for 90% of all 3D video games, with its fixed-rate data compression coupled with the single memory access this TC algorithm is ideal for rendering the graphics at the Hardware level thus streamlining the process, which in turn results in a much better performance.

It was this particular algorithm that was disabled by default in the Open Source drivers that most GNU/Linux distributions ship with, much like it was in Fuduntu. The good news is that if you’ve kept your system up-to-date you’re already running this version of MESA and you can now play a lot of 3D games without the need for proprietary drivers (It’s RMS’s wet dream). Tasteless FOSS joke notwithstanding, this update makes gaming on Fuduntu even less of a hassle, which with Steam constantly pumping out new games for Linux, there is barely any need for those 2-3 hour long forays into the terminal just to get a game running.

Don’t believe me? Here’s Trine 2 running with the FOSS drivers:

“But that’s a native game. I still won’t be able to play WINE without the prop drivers!” – Well my skeptic friend, you are wrong! And to you I say feh… as in Fehllout 3 (ok… that was terrible):

What’s your excuse now?

But that’s not all, the Intel XOrg driver has also been updated to better reflect this update to MESA, meaning if you have an Ivy Bridge CPU the integrated Intel graphics adapter should now outperform many of the discrete graphics adapters out there. Intel GMA users not on Ivy Bridge will also see some performance increase, just not as much. Speaking of discrete graphics drivers, if you have one of those discrete NVidia graphics adapters you’ll be pleased to know that with Nouveau’s 1.0.6  update you now have 3D acceleration without the need for proprietary drivers.

As always, this was Pedro Mateus aka M4t3us aka Unaccounted4 fighting the urge for another tasteless FOSS joke at Mr. Stallman’s expense with a high dose of FOSS enabled gaming.

P.S.: Happy Birthday Richard, I may not agree or even stand by those FOSS convictions as much as you do, but none of this would be possible without you. Thank you.

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Fuduntu Gaming: A Steaming pile of fun (Round 2)

November 30, 2012 by 6 Comments

Steamed Fuduntu: Now with more games!

It’s certainly been awhile, hasn’t it?! No matter, good things come to those who wait and since you’ve all been the nicest bunch of boys and girls this side of the Milky Way, Santa’s come early this year. Alright, alright… Maybe I’m not here to give you anything still I come bearing gifts, the gift of awareness that Steam is officially working for Fuduntu! Yep, you read it right the first time.

You see, being the incorrigible gamer in the team I’ve been nagging our mostly benevolent lord and master fewt to support Valve’s latest flirt with the FOSS community. Somehow and against all odds (glibc updates, libX11 updates, etc.) Mr. Wyatt stepped up and ironed out a few more wrinkles in our quest to make Fuduntu the one true, fun, GNU/Linux distribution and it is with great satisfaction (and a few more grey hairs on my head) that I come before you today to recount my tale and how I got it to work.

Steam for Linux

It started a few weeks back when Venn Stone shared on Google+ the news that Steam had a few unofficial Linux repos, and I thought I might finally catch a break and it would work right out of the box, close but no cigar. It wasn’t until last night, when fewt himself noticed said repo that things really started moving along for Steam on Fuduntu and it went from 0 to 60 in no time. Shortly thereafter the updated and previously-missing packages found themselves in our Unstable repo.

It sounded too good to be true, which is precisely why it didn’t work right away. Turns out, in their baby steps into the GNUorld, Valve decided to use Ubuntu for their testing ground (something I may have not been particularly appreciative of, but still I was glad it happened) and in so doing they made it so it would work with Ubuntu and didn’t really care for anything else. Turns out we were missing yet another dependency which our fellows over at Canonical include by default, gksudo, which fewt also packaged and uploaded straight away. “Finally, Steam on Fuduntu! Woooooot!” thought I in my ignorance, t’wasn’t to be so for me. As I mulled it around and around in my head, and after fewt himself helped me trim down the list of possible reasons why it wasn’t working on my end, I decided once again to follow Venn’s advice: If you’re setting up a Linux gaming environment, use 32bit. Grab the PAE kernel if you must, but use 32bit. i686 it is then… And it’s been barely an hour or two (at the time of writing) since I first saw Steam running on my soon to be “Fuduntu exclusive” laptop… and all it took were a couple of long nights, 2 packs of cigarettes and a fresh install…

Now I’m just nitpicking, to be honest I’m delighted to finally have Steam for Linux. I’m still pissed Bethesda will not start porting their games to Linux, at least not for the time being, but if I can have all those games I purchased in the Humble Bundles, Valve’s very own titles and a few more Indies, I’m a happy camper!

I haven’t tested all those games you see in the screenshot above, but so far Amnesia: Dark Descent (launching from Steam itself causes a bug with the launcher, launching it from the ~/Steam/SteamApps/common/Amnesia The Dark Descent/run_steam.sh works) and World of Goo both work.

All of this just to say: Steam is now available through our Testing repo, if you’d like to take a whack at it go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources and tick the Testing repo, then open up a terminal and run ‘beesu yum update’ followed by ‘beesu yum install steam‘ (this goes without saying but…) without the ticks.

How about you? Have you guys tried it? How did it go?

Let us know in the comments.

This was M4t3us straddling in for yet another long, long night for a much, much better reason this time.

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Fuduntu Gaming: A Steaming pile of fun!

July 27, 2012 by 7 Comments

My thoughts on Steam coming to Linux? About fucking time!

My thoughts on Steam being exclusive to Ubuntu for the time being? Come on, man! There’s Linux beyond Ubuntu, you know?!

Sure… Ubuntu is still the one Linux based OS with the highest user base and I also can’t argue it has been part of the driving force for mainstream “Linux-awareness”. I know… But come on, man! I’m really dying to get my hands on a “distro free” Steam client, you know, like Linux veteran digital distribution service Desura?

Speaking of Desura, some people are claiming that with Steam coming to Linux, Desura will pretty much die or be absorbed by Valve… Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be the case. You see, Steam holds the largest share of digital games distribution in Windows, while Desura holds the Linux market almost exclusively. sure Steam will drain some customers from Desura, but competition is always good, both to the end user and the companies themselves. Friendly competition may just be the kickstart of a new age in the OSS side of the OS market, the Tux Gaming Age!

Don’t agree? Think I missed a few interesting points? Let us know in the comments.

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[UPDATED]Fuduntu Gaming: The Humble Indie Bundle V

June 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It’s that time again boys and girls. After their last bundle didn’t prove to be as successful as previous ones, the Humble Bundle team is back in search of redemption; and what better way to do that than to offer four awesome games right out of the gate, with Bastion reserved for those who choose to pay above the average?!

None of these games need introducing, but just in case you’re still reading this from a dial-up connection and the internets still confound and bedazzle you, allow me to elaborate:

  • Bastion - Reserved for the people who may more than the average, this little gem was carved to flawlessness by SuperGiant games, an indie game developer with no priors in the industry. Don’t let their inexperience deter you, Bastion is quite possibly one of the best isometric RPG games I’ve ever played, the presentation and witty narrator with a deep voice will suck you in like an industrial vacuum cleaner.
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Frictional Games are well versed in the Humble Bundle series, in fact their latest released game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, only came to be because of the success of the first Humble Indie Bundle which included their previous title: Penumbra. Much like Penumbra, Amnesia is a first person, survival horror, adventure game with physics puzzles that is certain to make you poop your pants. I’m not kidding, theirs is the best kind of survival horror.
  • Psychonauts - Even if you’ve been living under a rock for the past year, you’ve heard of Tim Schafer, the man behind Double Fine productions? The one who raised 3 million dollars on KickStarter when he had only asked for 400k? Yeah, that guy! His first game as a creative director was Psychonauts, released back in ’05, which regardless of critical acclaim and very, very positive reviews all across the board it didn’t fare so well in the sales department, selling under 100’000 copies before Majesco withdrew itself from the ”big budget console game marketplace”. But that is all water under the bridge and the witty humor filled platformer is back and ready to suck you in.
  • Limbo - I don’t know know if you watch Japanese horror films, not the Hollywood versions, the true japanese versions, but they are unnerving… in a good, interesting way. That’s the best description I can give you of Limbo’s visuals, a dark gritty sense of being alone in a world designed to maim and maul you in the most gruesome way possible (although the black and white presentation mellows it down somewhat). This 2D platformer recaptures the unforgiving difficulty of the early platformers, Alex Kidd in Miracle World comes to mind, and gives it the grim twist I mentioned above. It’s not great, it’s pretty darn awesome!
  • SuperBrothers: Sword & Sworcery – You know those indie games that fly so low under the radar you’d need to be deep in the Mariana Trench to be able to see it? Well, Sword and Sworcery was released in 2011 for the iPad and even though it recieved the Independent Games Festival Mobile Achievement in Art I had never even heard of it. It wasn’t until April this year when it was released on Steam that it caught my eye due to the lego inspired stick people which comprise the game’s visuals and is one of the few interesting adventure games that have come out in the past couple of years.

If that alone isn’t enough to loosen the bindings on your wallet let me, once again, remind you that all these games come in Linux, Mac and Windows versions, and if you happen to be a Ubuntu user, Wolfire has included direct links for the Ubuntu software center. It won’t get any easier than that.

I currently play Amnesia: The Dark Descent on Fuduntu and not only does it play out of the box, as its performance is amazing. As for the rest of them I’ll update this post and the one on the forums after I’ve ran them through the hoops.

So tell us, what do you think would be an awesome game to include in future Humble Bundles?

Update: Test Results

These tests were conducted on my netbook, an NB550D-118, C-30 AMD Fusion APU (Radeon Mobility HD 6250), 2GBs DDR3 RAM and an OCZ Agility 3 60GB SSD running Fuduntu 2012.2.i386.

  • Bastion: Needs some tweaking to run properly;
  1. To run the Bastion installer, make it executable: Right click the Bastion-HIB-2012-05-29-2 file -> Properties -> Permissions ->tick “Allow Running as a Program“;
  2. To run the installer you need to use the –target command, because it attempts to extract itself to the /tmp folder and since Fuduntu’s /tmp folder is on a ramdisk, you probably won’t have enough RAM space if you have less than 3GBs: Open a terminal on the folder on which you have the installer and type this in: ./Bastion*.sh –target /home/<your username>/bastinst
  3. Once the installer starts leave the “Allow for easy removal” box unticked (otherwise it’ll screw up the permissions);
  4. The path to which you should install to, is one which you can access with regular user permissions (your home folder) so in the path screen replace /user/share/games/ with /home/<your username>/;
  5. On the next screen choose a path for your executables (one which you can access with regular permissions as well), I went with: /home/<your username>/.bin (that way they stay hidden);
  6. Once the installer is finished navigate to the Bastion folder, it should be in your home folder, and open the OpenTK.dll.config file with gedit (or your text editor of choice);
  7. Add this to a new line before the </configuration> line: <dllmap os=”linux” dll=”libXi” target=”libXi.so.6″/>
  • Amnesia: The Dark Descent:  Works out of the box. (Needs a decent graphics card… sorry GMA guys!);
  • Psychonauts: Works out of the box (also needs a decent graphics card and processor.);
  • LIMBO: It’s a self contained CrossOver bottle and works out of the box (assuming you have WINE installed);
  • Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery: Needs SDL_mixer installed, after that it works perfectly.
  1. Open a terminal and type: beesu yum install SDL_mixer ;
  2. Log out of your session and back in for it to take effect.

Guess redemption will have to wait, then… ^.^

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Fuduntu Gaming: The Humble Botanicula Debut Bundle

April 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Today on Fuduntu Gaming we bring you the Humble Bundle‘s newest time sink, the Humble Botanicula Debut Bundle. Truth be told this bundle doesn’t offer as much in terms of variety like previous ones did, while all games offered have something to make them unique, they all fall in the “artsy” adventure/puzzle category, which may deter those gamers who don’t particularly enjoy that side of the spectrum. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great games and ideas for games coming out of that niche but, it is still a niche market.

In any case, this Bundle was set up to help the World Land Trust which is an international conservation charity, devoted to protecting “the world’s most biologically important and threatened habitats acre by acre“- in their own words. Having been born in the country side myself I can relate and in that spirit I present to you:

This time around the Humble Bundle team, which was originally spun off from Wolfire Games, presents us with three base games: Botanicula, in which you must guide a “motley band of tree creatures in a journey to save their home from brooding, spider-like invaders” and it lends its name to the bundle; Machinarium, a game that has been featured in quite a few Bundles, it is a point and click adventure game set in a dystopian future where robots rule the world; and Samorost 2, another “repeat offender” in the Humble Bundles in which you guide a tiny gnome in search of his dog. For those who don’t mind forking over some extra dough, the HB team has a nice indie movie, Kooky, made by Czech picture studio BIOGRAF, which tells the tale of a stuffed bear on a quest to return home, and Windosill another puzzle, point and click adventure game built around odd looking visuals.

If this post hasn’t convinced you to loosen the grip you have on your wallet, let me remind you that all these come with Mac, Linux and Windows native versions, Steam keys included for those who pay more than $5. No Desura keys this time either, if any of our readers knows why leave us a comment! ^.^

Word of Caution: It seems as though Botanicula relies on Adobe Air to work and, since Adobe has long since dropped support for Air on Linux, there may be issues to get the game to work. I haven’t had the time to test it myself, but I’ll update this post and the one on the forums when I do. If nothing else this is a Bundle worth supporting, just to get Kooky!

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Fuduntu Gaming: The Humble Bundle for Android #2 is Live! [Update]

March 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

For those among you who dwell on the internet, like your’s truly, the Humble Bundle team is possibly “no stranger in your lands”. For the rest of our readers: The Humble Bundle, Inc.  is a group dedicated to bring you bundles of multi-platform indie games in the pay-what-you-want format, in which the money is split between charity (Child’s Play, EFF, etc.), the game developers and HB itself. Whichever amount you donate is divided between those three in whichever way you choose.

For those of you who clicked on the links in the previous Fuduntu Gaming post, you know that I’ve delved into these bundles to see whether or not the games work on our OS and it is in that spirit that I bring you these news, which like the title indicates: the Humble Bundle for Android #2 is now live and ready to rock across PCs, phones and tablets alike.

Whether you get your game on in Linux, Windows, MacOS or Android these guys have your back. The games included in this bundle are Canabalt, a 2D side-scrolling parkour platformer, Zen Bound 2, a self-proclaimed meditative puzzle game, Cogs, a steampunk puzzle game that mashes sliding blocks and PipeMania together, Avadon: The Black Fortress, a classic take on the RPG genre in the Heroes of Might and Magic division, and for those of you willing to fork over some extra dough Swords & Soldiers, a 2D side scrolling strategy game, “how does that work?”– you ask — beats me, but I’m about to find out!

As for our comment question of the day: Which is your favorite game from all the Humble Bundles so far? Mine is Penumbra: Overture from the first Humble Indie Bundle.

P.S.: I’ll update the Humble Indie Bundles thread as soon as I’ve had the chance to test all the games.

UPDATE

Snuggle Truck, a satirical game, originally named Smuggle Truck where you drive illegal immigrants across the toughest terrain ever seen, has been released as a bonus on the second Android Bundle. Don’t worry, you don’t get the original one (unless you want to and own an Android Phone), what you do get is a trial driving/action game where you have to carry cute stuffed animals safely back to their zoo. Have good one Fuduntu! ^.^

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Fuduntu Gaming: An Introduction

March 9, 2012 by 4 Comments

We all know how much of a headache it can be to run games on Linux, starting from the lack of support from the game developer itself and ending in having to do a lot of debugging on your own end, to ensure a pleasurable experience.

Even so, there are some people whose hate for Microsoft’s OS extends so far, they will masochistically put themselves through the trials and tribulations of gaming in Linux. Personally, I don’t hate Windows, I don’t particularly like it either but I can live with it, with that in mind I’ve been putting myself through such trials and tribulations in an attempt to finally rid myself of Microsoft’s alluring grasp in terms of “ease of gaming”. Thankfully the WINE team have come a long way from their early days, and the Windows Compatibility Layer is now in a much more workable state, making the paid alternatives, like CrossOver, Parallels or the discontinued Cedega, seem like a strange investment. Sure, they’ll make your gaming life in Linux much simpler if you have the dough, but for us who can only marginally keep a house, car and girlfriend, the free alternatives stop being alternatives and become the norm. Said alternatives being PlayOnLinux, which is still not supported by Fuduntu (but we’re working on it), or simply setting up a virtual desktop with Windows XP/7 to play your games, assuming you have the processor to keep two operating systems plus a game running.

Since I’ve brought up the hardware issues, gaming on Linux carries one more woe over it’s proprietary OS counterpart, hardware drivers and support. NVidia and ATI both offer proprietary linux drivers, but when running a game on WINE, you’ll notice the performance is nowhere close to what you could achieve on Windows or OSX, let me give you an example: Portal 2, which relies on veteran Valve Source Engine, in a Windows environment or Macintosh computer you will need little else than a 1.73Ghz Intel Centrino and a dedicated ATI xSeries Radeon Mobility to run the game at medium detail (not counting Anti Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering), while on Linux you’ll need a considerably more powerful processor and graphics board to run the game at the same Frames-Per-Second, as the previous do, in Portal 2′s case you’d need at least a 2ng Generation Core 2 Duo with at least 2Ghz and a dedicated 512MB VRAM ATI from the 4k, 5k or 6k series or an NVidia 7600 GS. All things considered, NVidia and ATI users will probably be able to play their game at some point, but people stuck with some obscure brand of graphics board will probably have problems running any games at all in Linux, of course, Fuduntu has the edge over most distros in this department, with XOrg 1.11.1-2 and Mesa 8.0.1.

Gaming on Linux is not easy, even the native Linux games require, more often than not, some tweaking to work, but considering some of the alternatives out there, Fuduntu is actually one of the best distros for us Tux Gamers.

… Pretty grim picture I painted there, hm? Worry not, for the light at the end of the tunnel is actually getting considerably brighter.

WINE 1.4 was just released and it’s on its way to the repositories, bringing with it that much needed increase in performance in some Windows applications and games, along with better support for PulseAudio. You can read the release notes here. Not only that but more and more game developers are offering Linux versions of their games, some groups like Humble Bundle or Indie Royale provide both Windows and Linux versions of the bundled games, the latter offers both Desura and Steam keys while HB usually only provides Steam keys and direct downloads.

Whether you choose native Linux or Windows games played through WINE, Fuduntu has you pretty much covered on both sides of the spectrum.

Since everyone on the W.W.W. is doing it, here’s the comment question of the day: What have you been through to get a game to work on Linux?

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