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      Feel the need for a little karaoke? Check out UltraStar Play and UltraStar Deluxe

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Monday, 10 May, 2021 - 09:45 · 1 minute

    Two interesting projects we've not covered here before are UltraStar Deluxe and the newer UltraStar Play, both open source games aimed at karaoke fans. You've likely somewhere heard of SingStar, an exclusive PlayStation series. Sadly, it was shut and so it's mostly lost. Thankfully though, as usual, open source to the rescue!

    UltraStar Deluxe has been going for a while now, with an aim to create a similar experience. It's been going strong but there hasn't been a release of it since 2020 and going by the GitHub page, not much development activity for the last year either.

    Another more recent project appearing is UltraStar Play , which we're told is "the youngest of UltraStar games, currently in development and available for desktop (including Linux) and mobile (Android already available, iOS planned)" and that in response to SingStar shutting "UltraStar Play fills this gap by allowing everyone to create their own sing-along version of songs. And it removes the need to buy USB-microphones via the Companion App such that you can use a regular smartphone as mic (see the Companion App).".

    14766879141620639901gol1.png It's not pretty but it does the job.

    Note: while UltraStar Play is open source, the project itself relies on the proprietary Unity game engine.

    It's not finished but it's perfectly usable and should be fun enough to get a party going. With the UltraStar Play Companion , you only need a phone to use as your microphone so it's quite cleverly thought-out.

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      Ubuntu getting a new installer, desktop lead to leave Canonical

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 3 February, 2021 - 12:50 · 1 minute

    Two big bits of news from Canonical and Ubuntu to cover today and both about the future of the Linux distribution.

    Firstly, the sad news to get it out of the way: the current desktop lead for Ubuntu, Martin Wimpress, will be leaving Canonical and moving over to slim.ai . Wimpress wasn't in the role particularly long, taking over from when Will Cooke stepped down in October 2019. However, it's not all sad news. Wimpress will be continuing to lead Ubuntu MATE which is a passion project so you can expect that to continue as normal.

    We wish Martin Wimpress all the best and continued success with life and Ubuntu MATE.


    Additionally, in related news, it looks like Ubuntu is set to get a new installer. Announced in a post on the official Ubuntu Discourse forum, noting that the current installer dates way back to 2006 which is ancient when you consider how quickly all other parts of Ubuntu (and Linux as a whole) moves on and so it has become "cumbersome" to keep it going.

    Interestingly, they're going with the new Flutter UI from Google, which Canonical worked with Google on to get early desktop Linux support hooked up that was announced back in July 2020 .

    The original installer will remain (for now) and their plan is to have an initial version ready to test in the Ubuntu 21.10 release due out in October 2021. From there the hope is it becomes the default for the next big LTS (Long-term support) release of Ubuntu 22.04 due in April 2022.

    20024094911612356591gol1.png Pictured - a prototype

    See the full announcement here .

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      Valve to lose $4 million for patent infringement with the Steam Controller

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 3 February, 2021 - 11:09 · 1 minute

    Valve are yet again hitting the spotlight for the wrong reasons following the ruling from the EU Commission over geo-blocking , a lawsuit involving game pricing and now the Steam Controller too.

    The lawsuit involved Ironburg Inventions (a subsidiary of Corsair Gaming), who have a patent for a game controller that has back paddles and they've held the patent since 2014. According to the press release , Valve lost the case and so "the jury unanimously found that Valve Corp infringed Ironburg’s 8,641,525 controller patent and awarded Ironburg over $4 million" additionally Valve were apparently aware of it and so the infringement was "willful". Due to this, there's a potential for "enhanced damages up to the statutory limit of treble damages" so the $4 million figure is only the beginning.

    14079245661612350148gol1.jpg

    Any company that wishes to have back paddles, are then required to license the tech from Ironburg Inventions Ltd which is exactly what Microsoft does for their special Xbox Elite Controller.

    The Steam Controller (sadly) was discontinued back in 2019. It was my favourite controller , and I still hope they bring out a proper second generation. Perhaps this was a big supporting reason for why they no longer continued with it? Probably not though, since they're now into VR hardware instead where there's likely a lot more monies.

    If they do a second generation, perhaps they will be a little bit more careful with licensing next time and I will be first in line if they do another.

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      Saber Interactive / Embracer Group acquire Aspyr Media

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 3 February, 2021 - 09:04 · 1 minute

    Another day another acquisition with Saber Interactive / Embracer Group acquiring Aspyr Media and so we see the continuing worrying trend of consolidation in the games industry.

    For those not aware, Aspyr Media are well known for their porting efforts to both macOS and Linux. For Linux specifically they ported the likes of Borderlands 2, Civilization V, Civilization VI, STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords and more.

    From the press release:

    I have been a fan of Aspyr for longer than I have been in the industry. Michael and Ted are true entrepreneurs that have built a business by identifying and exploiting opportunity where no one else saw it. They are a perfect fit for Embracer and I am proud to now call them partners. Together we will be able to greatly expand our development and publishing activities here in the US. Stay tuned for details on some of the amazing games we have under joint development. Today is a truly amazing day for Saber and the entire Group ” says Matthew Karch, CEO Saber Interactive and Director of the Embracer Board.

    We are thrilled to join forces with Saber and to become part of the entire Embracer family. We are confident that Embracer is the ideal partner for us as we look to accelerate growth and execute on our exciting pipeline. We have been in the games industry for two and a half decades, but it feels like we are just getting started. We look forward to exploring opportunities to collaborate with other entrepreneurs within the wider Embracer Group to bring celebrated games to our fellow gamers around the world says Michael Rogers, Co-founder and CEO Aspyr.

    See the full release here .

    Embracer Group already owns the likes of Coffee Stain, Gearbox Software, Koch Media, Saber Interactive, THQ Nordic and multiple of those also own multiple other studios like Warhorse Studios, Flying Wild Hog, Bugbear Entertainment and quite a lot more.

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      Tencent now own majority stake in Don't Starve and Oxygen Not Included creator Klei

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 22 January, 2021 - 20:58 · 1 minute

    More game industry news coming at you following the Team17 buying up Golf With Your Friends and YoYo Games being acquired by Opera we now have Klei Entertainment agreeing for Tencent to take a majority stake in them.

    Speaking in a forum post , studio head Jamie Cheng mentioned they've "agreed to deal for Tencent to purchase a majority stake in Klei Entertainment" and that "Klei retains full autonomy of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio, including projects, talent, and more".

    Klei have actually been working with Tencent since 2016, as Tencent helped Klei distribute games through China on the WeGame platform and more recently a mobile Don't Starve game. Cheng also mentioned how a "large proportion" of their players are actually from China.

    Tencent have invested in a lot of different companies including Riot Games, Epic Games, Funcom, Supercell, Bluehole (PUBG) and many many more.

    4283224941611347961gol1.jpg Pictured - Don't Starve Together

    Klei have been good to Linux for games giving us the likes of Don't Starve, Don't Starve Together, Oxygen Not Included, Invisible, Inc. and Mark of the Ninja. Hopefully more to come with creative control remaining with the current Klei head.

    This trend of companies pulling together lots under their banner is a little worrying, too many eggs in one basket.

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      Valve have multiple games in development they will announce says Gabe Newell

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Wednesday, 20 January, 2021 - 21:44 · 1 minute

    Gabe Newell of Valve Software (Steam) recently spoke to 1 NEWS in New Zealand about everything that has been going on and teased a few fun details. For those who didn't know, Newell has been staying in New Zealand since early 2020 and decided to stay after a holiday when COVID-19 got much worse.

    Newell continues to talk very highly of New Zealand, even somewhat jokingly mentioning that some Valve staffers appear to strongly want to move their work over there now too. Newell mentioned why there's no reason other game companies couldn't move to New Zealand, and joked how they're a producer of "not-stupidium" seemingly referring to how well New Zealand has dealt with COVID-19.

    The real juicy details though come when, as expected, questions were asked about upcoming games. Newell said very clearly "We definitely have games in development that we're going to be announcing — it's fun to ship games," and that "Alyx was great — to be back doing single-player games, that created a lot of momentum inside of the company to do more of that.".

    When asked about Half-Life 3 and the other usuals, joking about Valve being afraid of the number 3, Newell said directly "I've successfully not spoken about those things for a long time and I hope to continue to not talk about them until they are moot questions. Then we'll move on to a new set of questions," and that the "nice thing is, by not answering those questions, I avoid the community coming up with new, equally-difficult-to-answer questions.".

    It's good to know that the game development fire has been lit under Valve once again. Nice to see they continue to keep Linux in their sights for games too with all their recent games (Artifact, Underlords and Half-Life: Alyx) all having Linux builds, although Alyx is not directly mentioned on the store page for Linux it is available .

    What are you hoping their next game announcement will be?

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      Is opening up your source code worth it? Terry Cavanagh thinks it was for VVVVVV

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Monday, 11 January, 2021 - 11:20 · 1 minute

    A lot of game developer still worry about being more open with their code but it seems Terry Cavanagh (VVVVVV, Super Hexagon, Dicey Dungeons) believes it was worth it.

    There are certain legitimate reasons to worry about going all-in with open source, but we're not here to debate that. Plenty of developers have warmed up to the idea of open source over the last few years, with Cavanagh now being amongst them. Cavanagh opened up the source code to their puzzle-platformer VVVVVV back in early 2020 .

    Now on the 11th anniversary of VVVVVV's launch, Cavanagh has a fresh blog post up to go over a previous Game Jam but they also gave some thoughts on the source code drop too. It's worth pointing out though, the code is open but not under a proper OSI-approved open source license. It's certainly a good step though!

    So what happened? Well they accepted and merged over 400 pull requests from the community, which will result in a big new release of the game later this year. They got a port to the Dreamcast, the Haiku operating system and there's also a webassembly port now too.

    Summing up their thoughts on opening the code, Cavanagh said "So, I guess for other game developers thinking about doing this, here’s a data point! Only good things have happened. This whole thing has been a really positive experience, and I’m really glad I did it.".

    Nice to see such a healthy experience!

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      Getting Linux running properly on Apple M1 Silicon has begun with Asahi Linux

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 8 January, 2021 - 10:25 · 1 minute

    Asahi Linux is the name of a new project aiming to get Linux properly supported and working on Apple Silicon, the new ARM based chips designed by Apple like the Apple M1 found in their latest hardware.

    This is being spearheaded by Hector Martin "marcan", who some will recognise due to their work involved in porting Linux to the Sony PlayStation 4. It's a crowdfunded effort, with Martin putting up a Patreon campaign which has now hit enough funding for the work to begin. Martin also has a GitHub Sponsor account, with plenty backing there too.

    Their plan is to start with the 2020 M1 Mac Mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro and they don't want to just get Linux running on them as they want to get it polished to a point where it can be used as your main daily operating system. It's a lot of work though, as they explained "this requires a huge amount of work to be done, as Apple Silicon is a completely undocumented platform" and "we will be reverse engineering the Apple GPU architecture and developing an open source driver for it".

    All their work will be up on GitHub .

    You might not like Apple or macOS but there's no denying the hardware is nice. Even our own Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, said in 2020 "I'd absolutely love to have one, if it just ran Linux".

    Martin is of course not the only one involved. Alyssa Rosenzweig, who works with Collabora on the Panfrost driver for ARM Mali GPUs, seems to also be involved. Rosenzweig wrote on their blog about work towards an open source Mesa driver that's hit the first milestone of understanding enough of the instruction set "to disassemble simple shaders with a free and open-source tool chain" and this work lives on the Asahi Linux GitHub here .

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      Epic Games has acquired RAD Game Tools so they now own Bink video and more

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Friday, 8 January, 2021 - 09:45 · 1 minute

    Epic Games latest acquisition is RAD Game Tools , one a great many game developers will be familiar with. As confirmed on the official Epic Games news post , the plan is to integrate RAD tooling into Unreal Engine.

    RAD tooling is used by close to 25,000 games, according to the post, making it massively popular. Probably the most well-known of their tools by gamers is Bink Video and you might have seen a logo of it across some of your favourite games going back to the 90's.

    As graphics in game development and beyond become more photorealistic and powerful, developers need best-in-class compression software that can manage increased data requirements without compromising quality. Members of the RAD team will partner closely with Epic’s rendering, animation, insights, and audio teams, integrating key tech and improvements across Unreal Engine and beyond. RAD and Epic combining forces will allow even more developers access to tools that make their games load and download faster, and offer their players a better, higher quality video and gaming experience.

    Epic Games

    The good news is that Epic will not be locking it down to their systems. As the post explains, RAD will continue supporting and selling licenses for their products across all industries and those that don't use Unreal Engine.

    So now Epic Games own Psyonix (Rocket League), Quixel (Megascans), SuperAwesome (kids digital media ecosystem), Hyprsense (facial motion capture), Easy Anti-Cheat and no doubt that list will grow.

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