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7 Days to Die [Official Site, Steam, Humble Store] is the Kickstarted zombie survival game from The Fun Pimps, colourful history between me and them aside, the game has come a long way. This major update has done a lot for it.

For Linux gamers, this brand new update will fix some graphical issues that has plagued the game on Linux for some time now. We can also now disable EAC (EasyAntiCheat).

I was one of the original Kickstarter backers for the game, and I've repeatedly tried to get over my own annoyance at the developers for their previous attitudes towards me and the rather long delay the Linux version had. I think I have finally done this, I checked the game out today and I finally feel like I might be able to actually play it.

The tutorial the game has now certainly helped me get into it, as the game does have a bit of a learning curve to it.

I'm still not sure if I will end up liking the game, but at least now it's properly playable on Linux once again. Hopefully they won't break it again any time soon. I lasted about 10 minutes before getting eaten, so I guess I have some learning to do here.

New stuff:
- New Distant Terrain feature renders terrain over 1 kilometer away.
- Almost 2 square kilometers of new explorable space has been unlocked
- New highly embellished height map with huge mountains in every biome
- New giant desert canyon
- Over 23 new locations have been added to Game most in both Navezgane and Random Gen
- NPC traders
- Vending machines
- Improved farming and new crops
- Zombies loot has been massively improved
- New Zombie behaviours
- New languages: Spanish, French and German
- Lots more

See the full release notes here.

As far as Early Access games go, they have impressed me a little bit with just how much content they have been able to put in, especially in this massive update.

It's still not the best looking game, a fair amount of it is quite ugly, so I hope they do a graphics pass on the texturing in an update soon. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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Alloc Oct 6, 2016
Yay, we finally made it to a positive article :)
Just nitpicking here but English has been in there since the first release ;)

Also recommend trying the GLCore renderer, as that seems to look better / more the way it's meant to be. Just not the default yet as it's not had widespread testing.
Xpander Oct 6, 2016
GLCore renderer has graphical issues for me when steam overlay is enabled. blinking white screen and weird polygons on the screen.
disabling overlay makes it work just fine and it looks really good indeed
Liam Dawe Oct 6, 2016
Quoting: XpanderGLCore renderer has graphical issues for me when steam overlay is enabled. blinking white screen and weird polygons on the screen.
disabling overlay makes it work just fine and it looks really good indeed
Possibly still a Unity issue, a fair few games have needed to go back to the old OpenGL system to overcome issues.
InverseTelecine Oct 6, 2016
Yay! I bought this maybe 2 years ago back before I was disillusioned by Early Access, but never really played it after starting it on my primary (old) desktop and finding out it was a slide show without better hardware. By the time I was able to build a new machine I had found out about the frequent issues the Linux version had, so in the tradition of Starbound for me (buying it in very early stages, then never playing it again until it's polished) I never played it again. Maybe it's time to try it out again! :D

I really don't feel well-informed on the topic of Liam's issues with the devs, so I won't comment on those at all, and I'll just say:

Thank you Fun Pimps for continuing to work on the Linux version! I know it isn't always easy.

Thank you Liam for keeping up coverage of the Linux version! I wouldn't know how it's doing without it.


Last edited by InverseTelecine on 6 October 2016 at 2:46 pm UTC
Beamboom Oct 6, 2016
I purchased this one to play with a Windows friend just a few weeks ago, but was really put off by the graphics. I expected at least Fallout 3 level visuals. That's the impression I get from the videos.

But I'll give it another go now with that new GLCore renderer! How do I choose it? A setting in the game?
Stebs Oct 6, 2016
Quoting: BeamboomBut I'll give it another go now with that new GLCore renderer! How do I choose it? A setting in the game?
Update2: Just finished the download, they added the option to show a game launcher in this version.
In the game launcher, using GLCore is a simple setting, so the "old" way below is not needed anymore...

I think it's set by command-line (Properties of the game -> Set Launch Options):

-force-opengl: To use the legacy OpenGL back-end

-force-glcore: To use the new OpenGL back-end. With this argument, Unity will detect all the features the platform support to run with the best OpenGL version possible and all available OpenGL extensions

-force-glcoreXY: XY can be 32, 33, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 or 45; each number representing a specific version of OpenGL. If the platform doesn’t support a specific version of OpenGL, Unity will fallback to a supported version

-force-clamped: Request that Unity doesn’t use OpenGL extensions which guarantees that multiple platforms will execute the same code path. This is an approach to test if an issue is platform specific (a driver bug for example).

Those settings are valid for all Games with a recent enough Unity Engine

Update: Does someone know if the command-line option for Nvidia proprietary driver threaded optimizations is still useful for new Unity-Engine Versions (4.4+)?: LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1
Would be nice to know which games still run better with the above "trick".


Last edited by Stebs on 6 October 2016 at 4:05 pm UTC
Stebs Oct 6, 2016
After first quick test, I can also recommend GLcore with NVIDIA 370.28 (650ti Boost).

FPS went up from around 18-20 to around 35-36 fps with my custom settings.
Colors look also a bit different (better imho).
And with steam overlay, I also get weird glitches (polygons) on the sreen, so I let it disabled, don't need it anyway, fps seems to be the same in both cases.

With "LD_PRELOAD="libpthread.so.0 libGL.so.1" __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 %command%" in the Launch options (not in the game-launcher - there it seems to have no effect), fps goes a bit up to 39-40 fps and more cores are used (from 2-3 to 4-5?) for a total around 220% (before it was only 115%). Maybe this could make a difference in CPU-bottlenecked scenes (terrain-generation etc.)...
Mike Oct 6, 2016
Such a great game! I played a lot with some friends until an update messed with the rendering and I couldn't see farther than 3-4 chunks and nothing under water which was pitch black...

Now it's playable again!
SirKatar Oct 6, 2016
I love this game, 1300 played hours can't be wrong right?
Try it, you will love it too :)
Beamboom Oct 7, 2016
Quoting: StebsUpdate2: Just finished the download, they added the option to show a game launcher in this version.
In the game launcher, using GLCore is a simple setting, so the "old" way below is not needed anymore...

Class act, Stebs. Thanks for taking the time to assist me with the elaborate reply, and also thanks a lot for updating when discovering the launcher setting.
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