#antipainter

[kyou-ko]

they are both literally green

[kieuecaprie]

I played a bunch of Steam Next Fest demos, all of them on my Steam Deck; just to see how well they perform. I'm gonna be listing them all so the post will get long, so if you really want to know my opinions about the games I've played, you can click the read more or whatever.

I'm not gonna go into too much depth, mind, I'm just gonna state my general feelings about each game and how well it ran on my Deck.

Terratech Worlds

This game I didn't spend too much time on. It seemed interesting at first but when I first launched it, it crashed.

So I launched again.

Crashed.

So I launched it on my PC which is 100x more capable than a dinky little 15W-consuming handheld PC.

Crashed.

Eventually I got it to launch but... all my enthusiasm for it had already faded and I just got tired of it real quick. Not to mention the joystick cursor got stuck and I couldn't move it after a while.

Into the trash it went.

Lightyear Frontier

A common theme I noticed through these Next Fest demos is the fact that they're not really optimized for handheld PCs at all, which is fine because not everyone has a Deck on hand to test. And, to be honest, most games worked perfectly fine and breached the 30 FPS mark anyhow, some better than others.

Lightyear Frontier seemed like another game that would be fun and I did play it for a bit. It felt alright, it played pretty well, the visuals were fine despite being crunched down by me fiddling with the settings.

It didn't really grab me very much, though, and it kind of ended up losing me after a while. I don't think it's the game's fault.

If I had not gotten lazy and added a gyro option to my steam input configuration, I might've gotten more enjoyment.

Star Racer

F-Zero at home and boy does it wear its inspiration on its sleeve. Framerates seem fine although it does dip quite a lot (but not really dipping below 25) when there's a bunch of ships on-screen.

It was a little bit fun and I welcome the high-speed anti-grav racing game genre's return. We need more titles to challenge F-Zero's empty spot (F-Zero 99 notwithstanding).

Geometry Survivor

It's... just one of those twin-stick survival shooters where you move around an arena and blow stuff up. One of the few titles I've played from Steam Next Fest that made me feel like I was back in front of my Xbox 360 playing demos I downloaded off of Xbox Live Arcade.

It played fine. It ran fine. It's fine.

Antipaint

Another one but this time it has a gimmick of enemies being killed dropping paint splotches on the canvas and eventually having those canvas saved in a gallery, which is pretty cool.

It ran pretty well all things considered and I played all the way to the end so that's something.

Voxlands

One of the few Next Fest games that were on my radar before Next Fest. Voxlands kind of interested me with the trailer, so hearing it had a demo is pretty baller.

It just barely hits 30 at default settings and fiddling with shaders and pixel rendering brings it back up to 60, which is pretty good.

I played through the Island of Vox campaign just to get a feel for it and it seems to be more along the lines of these specially-curated maps you adventure through than a survival crafting block-building game. Kind of reminds me of the old Minecraft adventure maps, well, pre-monetization of course.

Pretty good, I look forward to seeing it release.

Toree Saturn

It's Toree. What's more to say? It's a platformer with speed elements. That's about it. It's cute, the demo is short, that's it.

One issue I have with it, though, was the fact that the most recent proton and proton experimental weren't working, it'd always crash to desktop upon loading the level. Not even the GloriousEggroll Proton saved me! Fortunately, a post on the Steam forums said that Proton 6 worked.

Kill it With Fire 2

Just more Kill It With Fire but in space and with dimensions you go to to kill spiders, introducing mimics that turn INTO spiders! No matter what I did, I couldn't get it to stay at a stable framerate, whether that's 60 or 30, but I was able to play through it regardless. I dunno what's going on to make it eat up so much frames but it was never consistent. Again, at least it's playable.

Harold Halibut

I... tried. I tried to play this on the Deck but I just couldn't.

The menu's brightness would suddenly go dark, the menu would expand in size, cutting off most of the screen to the point where it'd look like I had magnify mode on, none of the options I tried gave me any consistently good results and there's a lot of stuttering in the the in-engine intro.

It was so bad that I just kind of lost steam to play through it on the Deck.

Fortunately, it seems the dev is aware and plans on getting a build for Deck users so hopefully it'll be better by then!

Bears in Space

The only game I played in Steam Next Fest that necessitated me changing the ENTIRE steam input config to KB+M because hybrid controls was making it stutter something fierce.

Remember when I mentioned XBLA earlier? Yeah, this game has that very feel to it. Referential humor, oddball moments, just general goofery on top of being a manbear (bearman?). It's pretty decent, although I do feel like I keep zipping off into the direction I'm pushing from a slight tap, sometimes felt too fast moving around.

As for Deck performance, I tried locking to 30 with the Deck's frame limiter but it didn't like that, so 60 it is! It ran fine, stayed above 30, but playing at 60 is out of the question.

Sometimes it feels like Unreal Engine is purpose-made to run poorly in WINE/Proton... but that's not the fault of the devs!

Geneforge 2: Infestation

I'm pretty sure I may be one of the few who knows what this is. It's a remake of an RPG made by Spiderweb Software using more modern systems. I used to play the demos for the Avernum series all the time!

It's nice to see Geneforge 2 be next in line for a remake and it's still nice to see that Spiderweb Software is still going along doing their own thing.

Either way, the main menu ran at about 35 FPS but once I got into the game, it ran at 60 just fine! No idea what that's about but whatever.

The interface makes it look like it'd be a good game to play with the touchscreen, plus with the touchpads and joysticks, it'll feel like it'd be an easier ride playing through than a desktop pc, funnily enough.

Frogun Encore

I kinda liked the first game. It was fun but the sharp difficulty spikes and general control issues made it feel less fun overtime to the point where I just finished the game and dropped it. It was still fun, though!

The sequel looks like it's shaping up to feel better in terms of movement and the locked camera is kinda nice, although it comes with the issue of not being able to see where you're going sometimes, especially when jumping away from the camera onto a moving platform that is below the platform you just jumped from.

It ran perfect out of the box, surprisingly, but there's one issue:

Start and Select is swapped. Why? I swapped select and start back but unless I accidentally tripped a "swap button" feature for start and select in the options, I don't understand why select is to bring up the pause menu.

Just a small nitpick.

My General Feelings

Overall, it seems like a good portion of games I want to play may not have a future on my Deck unless they do something about optimization, which is a big shame because I have resolved to make Steam Deck my biggest "platform played" on my Steam Review for 2024.

For the games that did work fine, I look forward to playing them in full in the future.

As for VR, the selection is disappointing, as per usual, but there's a few exceptions: Sushi Ben being one of them. One day, I'll dig out my VR stuff again and play the demo...

[ms-mau]

Martin Barré

 “What I was doing,” he clarified to Millet, “could well appear as antipainting, whereas what I wanted to show, through the traces or points of impact in a clear surface, was what a painting could be if disencumbered of object, color, and form.”

[dargerhq]

Garric Simonsen, 2017, digitally hand-painted carte de vista printed on aluminum, 7x4 in. @vintage_alpine #garricsimonsen #antipainter #cartedevista #digitalpainting (at Darger HQ)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#10yrsago Anti-paint dumping ad from WWF -- effective and haunting

I think that these World Wildlife Campaign posters are incredibly effective -- they depict a giant, skyscraper-sized used paint-can as the mouth of a river (one in the countryside, the other in Tokyo), with the legend "A single tin of paint can pollute millions of litres of water."

https://boingboing.net/2007/12/18/antipaint-dumping-ad.html

[whatsupbreakfast]

Julius Koller ? Recommended! . . . . #juliuskoller #slovak #artist #MUMOK #junkart #antipainting #conceptual #conceptart #avantgarde #UFO #? #nivelacia #galeriaganku #pingpongart #politicalart #mailart (at MUMOK - Museum moderner Kunst Wien)

[speedpasterobot]

@sabralew HOW HOW HOW is going to be the subject, the content, the malcontent of this year's Laundry Room #openstudio. As Ted said, many years ago: "YOU'RE EITHER AN IDIOT OR A MALCONTENT" #ink typography #graffiti #painting #antipainting @artsgowanus @thatpaul2017 (at Gowanus, Brooklyn)

[antipainting]

I'm an artist this is a part of my artwork ✍️🖌️

[antipainting]

Hi I'm an artist 👩🏻‍🎨

[antipainting]

Hi 😊👋

[antipainting]

How you like that? 👩🏻‍🎨 #antipainting #blinkonbeat #blink #tiktokartist #trippyedit #onlineartist #printsforyourhome

[dargerhq]

Garric Simonsen, Postcard collage series, 2017. Exhibition Two Places at Once extended to March 24. @vintage_alpine #garricsimonsen #antipainter #postcards (at Darger HQ)

[dargerhq]

Happy to host MCC’s Arts 1000 Visual Literary class tonight. Smart crew. Exhibition TWO PLACES AT ONCE Craig Roper + Garric Simonsen on view thru March 4. . @ropercroper @vintage_alpine #metrocommunitycollege #antipainter #craigroper #artclass #dargerhq (at Darger HQ)

[dargerhq]

Opening tonight 6-9. Two Places at Once Craig Roper + Garric Simonsen Artist talk at 8 moderated by J. Fatima Martins. First 100 get free artist designed pin buttons. Listen to Garric talk about his work this morning on KVNO! @npr @ropercroper @jfatimamartins #garricsimonsen #craigroper #antipainter #anti #super #kvno #kvnoradio @gin_rickey (at Darger HQ)