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Feral Interactive's latest Linux port, Life is Strange: Before the Storm the prequel to the original Life is Strange is set to release for Linux on September 13th.

About the game:

Life is Strange: Before the Storm is a new three part; standalone adventure set three years before the first game in the BAFTA award-winning franchise.

You play as sixteen-year old Chloe Price who forms an unlikely friendship with Rachel Amber, a beautiful and popular girl destined for success.

When Rachel learns a secret about her family that threatens to destroy her world, it is her newfound friendship with Chloe that gives her the strength to carry on.

No longer alone the girls must confront each other's demons and together, find a way to overcome them.

The good news, is that it seems Feral is once again officially supporting both NVIDIA and AMD. However, Intel GPUs are not going to be supported at all. The needed specifications, as listed on the Feral Store:

Minimum
CPU: Intel Core i3-4130T 2.9 GHz
RAM: 4GB
HDD: 28GB
GPU: 2GB AMD R9 270 or better, 2GB Nvidia GTX 680 or better

Recommended:
CPU: 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7-4770 3.2 GHz
RAM: 8GB
GPU: 4GB Nvidia GTX 970 or better, 4GB AMD RX 470 or better

AMD GPUs require Mesa driver 18.1.6, Nvidia cards require driver 396.54 or better. No word yet on if it's OpenGL or Vulkan, will update when we know. Update: It's using OpenGL, not Vulkan.

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Those who wish to support Feral Interactive's porting efforts, can pick up a copy from the Feral Store. Alternatively, Humble Store and Steam.

Only one week to go! I very much enjoyed the original and Feral's port ran really quite nicely so I'm very hopeful for another good experience. As a reminder, Feral also have a teaser for another Linux port they haven't yet revealed the name of as well as Total War: WARHAMMER II.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Liam Dawe Sep 6, 2018
Update: OpenGL, not Vulkan.
x_wing Sep 6, 2018
I think I have a crush with Feral... I promised myself to buy this one on Steam (you know, to save some money due to country economical problems) but they deserve my effort. Sorry government, I have to pay the highest price for Feral games (love is love).

Quoting: GuestIf Feral mentioned AMD R9 270 in the minimal requirements, that possibly means that OpenGL is at least an option. They usually don't test Vulkan-only games on these old cards.

If the users activates AMDGPU for GCN 1.0 & 1.1, they should be able to run Vulkan games with that card.


Last edited by x_wing on 6 September 2018 at 11:05 am UTC
aejsmith Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: GuestIf Feral mentioned AMD R9 270 in the minimal requirements, that possibly means that OpenGL is at least an option. They usually don't test Vulkan-only games on these old cards.

We do test Vulkan games on them, we just don't officially support them because it requires you to manually switch over to the amdgpu kernel module and support for the older cards there is still considered experimental.
0aTT Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: liamdaweUpdate: OpenGL

No Linux problem but I'm wondering if such games still run under MacOS after Apple completely stops support for OpenGL? It is already discontinued and only a question of time until OpenGL is completely omitted.
Brisse Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: liamdaweUpdate: OpenGL, not Vulkan.

Pretty sure that's why it was delayed. They were probably planning to use Vulkan at first but ran into problems becouse the game requires stream output support which cannot be implemented properly on Vulkan yet. If thats the case then they basically had two choises: Either wait for Khronos to develop a suitable Vulkan extension, or fall back on OpenGL. Looks like they went with the latter. Maybe they initially did plan the former but changed their mind when Proton was released since the game works with PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 %command%. Then again, this is just speculation on my part so I could be wrong.
Brisse Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: 0aTT
Quoting: liamdaweUpdate: OpenGL

No Linux problem but I'm wondering if such games still run under MacOS after Apple completely stops support for OpenGL? It is already discontinued and only a question of time until OpenGL is completely omitted.

Do we know for sure that macOS version doesn't use Metal though? The answer above might have been specifically for the Linux-version.
rkfg Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: Brisse
Quoting: liamdaweUpdate: OpenGL, not Vulkan.

Pretty sure that's why it was delayed. They were probably planning to use Vulkan at first but ran into problems becouse the game requires stream output support which cannot be implemented properly on Vulkan yet. If thats the case then they basically had two choises: Either wait for Khronos to develop a suitable Vulkan extension, or fall back on OpenGL. Looks like they went with the latter. Maybe they initially did plan the former but changed their mind when Proton was released since the game works with PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 %command%. Then again, this is just speculation on my part so I could be wrong.
From what I found this is only the case with DXVK specifically which is not something Feral uses, they have their own D3D implementation. Also, Unity3D already has native Linux support (and Vulkan too, but I'm not sure if it's stable/usable as of now) so I doubt Feral re-ported the engine using their own technology, it doesn't make sense. Most probably it was a middleware issue that took them this long to solve. Whatever the cause, I'm happy the game releases next week! Ready to visit the Feral store once again despite the economic situation in Russia right now.
aejsmith Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: BrissePretty sure that's why it was delayed. They were probably planning to use Vulkan at first but ran into problems becouse the game requires stream output support which cannot be implemented properly on Vulkan yet.

Not every game requires stream output.


Last edited by aejsmith on 6 September 2018 at 12:45 pm UTC
tonR Sep 6, 2018
Very interesting on how this game will run on my out-of-spec "toaster" PC..
Brisse Sep 6, 2018
Quoting: aejsmith
Quoting: BrissePretty sure that's why it was delayed. They were probably planning to use Vulkan at first but ran into problems becouse the game requires stream output support which cannot be implemented properly on Vulkan yet.

Not every game requires stream output.

Sorry, I thought this was one of them, but I guess you just debunked my hypothesis :)
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