Open source games roundup

Week of August 17 - 23, 2014

After stumbling through a three-day fever this week—during which I couldn't even play video games—I spent some time planning my new gaming rig. I'm thinking of trying out this fun little mini-ITX case with a water-cooling kit. Wish me luck!

In this week's edition of our open source games news roundup, we take a look at the Linux beta of the super fun Gunpoint , Argentina's game dev scene, and more speculation on the Steam Controller.

Gunpoint beta for Linux released

This stealth-based puzzly-platformy-hacky-punchy game (that's a genre, right?) was released in 2013 to some pretty widespread acclaim, but—big surprise—was only available for Windows. The developer of the game, Tom Francis, promised OS X and Linux ports, but with no concrete timeline. Well, they're here and they're ready for testing. Francis recommends that people wait for the beta period to end before buying the game, but, hey, Linux users know what betas are, right? The game is a blast, and you'll only be helping make it better.

Linux game development in Argentina

creative commons licensed ( BY-NC-SA ) flickr photo shared by LGBuriola

A writer calling himself Segata Sanshiro, which is either a great nom de plume or the Sega stalwart survived his encounter with the enemy missile and is trying to re-join the games industry—is moving to Argentina. He's started up a weekly feature on Linux game developers throughout the world, and takes a look at the history of the industry in and around Buenos Aires, as well as companies like Senscape, 3f Interactive, and Saibot Studios. Check out the article over at GamingOnLinux.

Still don't grok the Steam Controller?

It's like your standard Xbox controller, right? Except... what's with the trackpads? Does it have a thumbpad, too? How is this thing going to work? If you're not one of the lucky few who's gotten a chance to get your hands on the Steam Controller, it's a bit mysterious, but Styromaniac at GamingOnLinux has a breakdown for you:

"Valve's aim was to allow both M+K [mouse and keyboard] and console controls to work on their controller, because not all PC games feature console controller support. The end result is taking more PC titles to the big TV and couch, which was Valve's goal all along."

So according to this writer, the whole reason behind the touchpads is so Valve can enable controller support within games where the developers haven't hard-coded it? Hmm. Not sure I'm on board with that one. A less-than-ideal control scheme seems like the last thing Valve wants to introduce to Big Picture mode.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

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