Valve released an update for SteamOS available from the brewmaster-beta repository! Happy to confirm that the BETA update fixed most, if not all, of the issue I had with the previous 2.49 release. No more screen lockups,freezes and client crashes on the Brix Pro with Iris 5200 and, as a small bonus, the game list from the STORE finally only totally shows SteamOS games by default! In order to celebrate the update I went ahead and bought Bound by Flame, a cute looking RPG with decent requirements and full controller support. Ogh my did I get myself in a world of pain trying to play through it!
I initially heard about Bound by Flame from Total Biscuit’s coverage of the game from way back in May 2014 and later on from Liam’s article on the game up on GamingOnLinux! I suggest checking out the article for a more in-depth look on the game. As far as the game goes, it’s a good port in terms of features, graphics, usability and control. Works well bundled with Steam Big Picture’s Mode and, as opposed to Liam’s initial experience the 360’s gamepad works right off the bat! Only downside? Performance is terrible on my Brix Pro. How terrible? Let’s say that I cannot hit 30 FPS even with all the settings set to low ( ALL OF THEM)! The game’s requirement are extremely low (Nvidia GT 8800, a card older than my drinking problems) and yet I cannot seem to hit even the bare minimum FPS for enjoyment. Since I already did a fresh install (+update to beta 2.55) I decided I can stomach another ~120 minutes of downtime so I grabbed my Win8.1 disk and installed it on the Brix! 45-50 minutes of painful restarts later (Windows install? Restart! Intel Graphics? Reboott! Audio drivers? Downtime! Wifi card? You bet!) and ~10 minutes more to download the game and I’m sitting here hitting 60 FPS without many problems on medium settings and Antia Aliasing enabled on 1080! What the loving *fluff-ball* Intel? I went ahead and enabled Debian Jessy’s experimental repository and updated xserver-xorg-video-intel to the latest version available and no changes were noticed. As of now the Driver Version that comes wth SteamOS is 3.0 Mesa 10.6.3 and I haven’t tried (nor have any knowledge on how) to upgrade to the latest Mesa Version 11.0.6. Might be a while before that hits my setup.
So if you are running SteamOS on a Brix Pro might want to hold back on Bound By Flame until better drivers hit our neck of the woods. If you can stomach 20-ish FPS then by all means go ahead and grab it! I have 97 minutes spent on the game even under those poor conditions and I like it! Might grind my way through it step by step just to experience it a bit more.
And yes, I installed SteamOS again after trying the game on Windows 8.1.. The OS is meant for my living room even though, so far, most games I can enjoy decently are indie games or older titles! Hopefully things will pick up and I’ll be here to report on the improvements! Till next time o7!
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