Back in 2023 I started a new game in where I did set out (on a whim) to build the – and fair warning: I never finished it. I found some measurements of this iconic ship from the verse online, which is apparently something like 1.44km x 551m and converted this to 179.6 x 68.9 Satisfactory Foundations (look Mom, a game made me do MATHS again).

Finding a spot with enough space was a task on it’s own and I settled for the West Coast in the end. This is so close to the edge that the game starts to kill the player because the map ends there. This is also a Vanilla game with no mods.

After laying a square for the proportion and being somewhat satisfied (haha) with that I started refining the outlines. This took ages and some mad image editing skills to scale photos with correct proportions and overlaying them with a grid in the Gimp editor. Ah well not really but you get the idea.

The goal was to build a mega factory inside the hull working with the given layout. Vehicles and trains would pick up all required resources and bring them in via the fighter decks. I kinda imagined what could have happened if the Galactica crashed on a planet after her last journey. Using the powerful engines to power machines that would aid in starting with a settlement program or something like that, while the former ship itself would get decommissioned and transformed piece for piece.

I am rather happy with the result, even without ever completing this. My gaming focus shifted a lot and with the announcement that no further early access updates would happen I kinda lost interest in the project. I am not expecting to complete it once the release drops. That’s okay though. I am still looking forward to said release.

I mean after ~850 of casual hours I kinda have seen it all. Best early access ever – and yes all on a Linux PC – as usual for me 🤘I’m very curious what else the devs will come up with for this title. Anyway, here are the rest of the 16 screenshots. This shows more of the inner ship including the various power plants and reactors.

Thank you Coffee Stain Studios for making such an entertaining game. I enjoyed every hour of it and despite this being basically an endless grind game it never felt like grinding at all. Heck, thinking of all the possible ways to transport, collect and divide stuff is endless fun for me ❤️

So, Timelines released today. Bagged it, of course. Don’t even really know what’s coming but the X series are something I enjoy since X: Beyond The Frontier in 1999. Kinda rad that a company that old managed to stay in business and true to their very own franchise.

Oh and also native for PC, my daily (and only) system for .

I could ramble on why X4 is a great Space Pew Pew game but others can do that much better. Like ObsidianAnt for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCcaA1FAuAg

I had the chance to play Flight Of Nova (https://flight-of-nova.com/) for the first time today. This was on my wishlist for quite some time now. Dived in blind and had no idea what to expect. 3 tutorial missions later: Oh boy… this is hard. I can see myself sinking many hours in this.

Anyway, as usual, my focus is on interfacing with my home cockpit (or simpit) and while there is no ship telemetry [yet?] I was able to get it running just fine via Proton and with my DIY headtracker using OpenTrack. Hats off, seldom that I see a game that detects my joystick just fine, has great ingame calibration, offers me a windowed mode and a bunch of ultra width resolutions without having to resort to hacking config files or use gamescope to resize it ❤️

Head tracking is, as usual, TrackIR only so far (I guess the native Linux PC version does not have UDP in place here but I couldn’t check due Steam refusing to download another version today). Anyway, you can see me fooling around with the buttons and do an A+ crash landing in the end – sunny side up 😆 Not too shabby considering that this was my 3rd landing at all.

Pick your poison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2A_uVbUKWU / https://tube.tchncs.de/w/iV21V6EZxNCTsC8bvsCQDt

The Expanse: A Telltale Series by TelltaleTelltale (The Expanse: A Telltale Series – Telltale Games)
Experience the exciting universe of The Expanse like never before in Telltale’s latest adventure, The Expanse: A Telltale Series. Follow Cara Gee, who reprises her role as Camina Drummer, and explore the dangerous and uncharted edges of The Belt aboard the The Artemis. From scavenging wrecked ships in a zero-g environment, to surviving a mutiny, to combating fearsome pirates, you make the difficult choices and reveal Camina Drummer’s resolve in this latest Telltale adventure.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

There are rumours that I “just checked” if this game works at all and finished it 6.5h later in one sitting. I can neither confirm nor deny that. I’m also very sleepy today.

I got this Telltale-game to my birthday and decided to give it a go yesterday. Didn’t expect much and was already kinda annoyed when the starter suggested it requires a gamepad controller (turns out it doesn’t – it can be played with a mouse too). So I got my good old sturdy Steam Controller from next room, jacked it in and… watched it crash. To be fair: I was starting it on Linux, and this game is not made for this. So I checked briefly with the ProtonDB and switched the version from Experimental back to Proton 8.0.

Smooth sailing from here. Game started without a hitch, the controller was recognized, the provided Steam layout worked perfectly fine and it did not crash once until I finished the game hours later. It would also seamless switch to mouse input when this was touched but I decided to keep playing with the controller.

The graphics are nothing to write home about. Sound and music feel immediately like home though, as my wife put it (we’re both fans of the books and show). There are some puzzles but nothing too complicated and – thankfully – sparse. Same for some quick actions that require to hammer a certain button in time (without penalizing hitting a wrong button too). The Zero-G walks are amazing and gave my brain something to chew on when the ceiling suddenly became the new floor.

I won’t talk about the story itself, but I did like that it shows percentages of how other players decided in key situations after each chapter. Kinda interesting to know that there are other outcomes and that also makes me want to play it again. There are plot twists, backstories that may be uncovered, drama, tension, violence, love and death (yes yes, it is a telltale game :D).

Can recommend. Get it and don’t forget to change the air filters 🤓

So I was making a montage full of native Linux games by Marc Di LuzioMarc Di Luzio (Medium)
…and then Valve dropped their Proton bomb

Did you know that you can play hundreds of games nowadays? Not just Windows through Proton – no. I’m talking about native games.

https://medium.com/@mdiluz/so-i-was-making-a-montage-full-of-native-linux-games-92ce12b21631

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U8bLArlRXw

Disclaimer: Many of the snippets were contributed by me. @mdiluz did the fantastic job of wrapping everything up.