Check out our Monthly Survey Page to see what our users are running.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Attentat 1942, a historically-accurate adventure about World War 2 from developer Charles Games has recently switched to the Unity game engine and is looking into Linux support.

Originally released in 2017, it was made using Adobe AIR which dropped Linux support many years ago and Adobe themselves won't even be supporting AIR at all directly as it's moving over to HARMAN. For game development, there's now far better tools available for cross-platform development. The developer actually made a little blog post on Gamasutra about moving to Unity.

For Linux support, out of seemingly nowhere the developer revived a years old topic on Steam themselves to mention this:

Hey hi from 2020! We have started inquiring into possible Linux port! We have switched the whole Attentat 1942 into new engine which is much more versatile so that kind of untied our hands. I can't promise anything definitive, but it is something we are considering and finding if it's even technically feasible (video codecs being main culprit). Thanks for your interest and patience, we'll keep you updated!

That's good news. I've also given them a tip on the codec issue, which Unity apparently still doesn't communicate well enough to developers. If you're using Unity, for Linux and video codecs you need to use either webm / vp8 or ogv (info here) otherwise it's black screens and freezing as I've seen too many times in Unity games.

You can follow Attentat 1942 on Steam. Original trailer is below:

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
6 Likes
About the author -
author picture
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.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
6 comments

CatKiller May 29, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
QuoteIf you're using Unity, for Linux and video codecs you need to use either webm / vp8 or ogv (info here) otherwise it's black screens and freezing as I've seen too many times in Unity games.

Is this a Unity problem? I thought the issue with games was that they weren't using platform codecs, but the Unity documentation there implies they do, and playing h.264 files on Linux hasn't really been a problem for quite a long time - unless your distro takes a free-software-only stance, which you'd already have needed to work around to install games.
Liam Dawe May 29, 2020
Quoting: CatKiller
QuoteIf you're using Unity, for Linux and video codecs you need to use either webm / vp8 or ogv (info here) otherwise it's black screens and freezing as I've seen too many times in Unity games.

Is this a Unity problem? I thought the issue with games was that they weren't using platform codecs, but the Unity documentation there implies they do, and playing h.264 files on Linux hasn't really been a problem for quite a long time - unless your distro takes a free-software-only stance, which you'd already have needed to work around to install games.
Yes, it's specific to the Unity video player. I see it quite often when testing games for developers. The Unity docs make it very clear what they work with on Linux, as I linked.
CatKiller May 29, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: Liam DaweYes, it's specific to the Unity video player. I see it quite often when testing games for developers. The Unity docs make it very clear what they work with on Linux, as I linked.
Yeah, not doubting the accuracy of your reporting, just thinking that it's something that Unity could fix.
Eike May 29, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: CatKillerIs this a Unity problem? I thought the issue with games was that they weren't using platform codecs, but the Unity documentation there implies they do, and playing h.264 files on Linux hasn't really been a problem for quite a long time - unless your distro takes a free-software-only stance, which you'd already have needed to work around to install games.

When testing Encodya, I could play back the video file without problems manually, but it didn't run at all in the game in the first test version. So, it's Unity.


Last edited by Eike on 29 May 2020 at 9:45 am UTC
CatKiller May 30, 2020
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
So, looking into it a bit more, as the documentation Liam linked to says, Unity uses platform libraries... but not on Linux. It doesn't use platform libraries in Linux even for the encodings that Unity supports: they wrote their own software decoder for VP8 and Vorbis and use that exclusively. That seems like duplicated effort for a suboptimal result to me, but they don't seem to have revisited it in four years, so I guess it's not a priority for them.

Interestingly, even on Windows, Intel had to write their own thing to grab a video stream from Unity so that it could be hardware accelerated.
robvv Jun 16, 2020
Out now, and I've just purchased it via Humble Bundle :-)
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.