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Harebrained Schemes have made good on their promise to have a Linux beta for their tactical ‘Mech combat game. It works well with a few caveats.
The Linux version of BATTLETECH [Official Site] has seen some delays since the game’s launch earlier in the year. The communication from the developer has been spotty at times so it’s good to see that they’ve finally gotten around to delivering on a Linux version for the game. It’s not quite bug-free yet so it’s available to download by opting into the “public_beta_linux” branch on Steam.
There’s a few known issues for the game, though none that are real show stoppers:
- When customizing the name of a ‘Mech or a Lance, the characters you type are doubled. So a W would appear as WW.
- Some menus may be extra light or extra dark depending on your system’s screen resolution.
- Hyperlinks are not functional on SteamOS only.
- Logging into a Paradox account always ends in a failure on the first attempt on SteamOS only.
- Multiplayer on SteamOS has intermittent connection issues (better as host than joiner).
- Refreshing the save game list can sometimes hang on the main menu. Restarting the game should fix the issue
The developers have asked that any Linux-specific issues found in the beta should be reported here.
I’ve played a few minutes of this beta and can tell you that it otherwise seems to run just fine. I did part of a skirmish mission and started the campaign and things seem to be running as they should be. I’m looking forward to exploring the game and seeing if it’s any good as I’m a fan of giant robots blowing each other up.
Hopefully it won’t be too long before the developers quash all the bugs and make a full release of the Linux version. It’s been a long wait since the original Kickstarter campaign. At least there’s the silver lining that we’re also getting several months’ worth of updates and quality of life improvements that have been added since launch.
You can get BATTLETECH on Steam. You can also get it on GOG and the Humble Store but note that the opt-in beta is Steam-only.
Kickstarter is an investment that carries severe risk. Unless you can prove they knowingly engaged in deception, you're on pretty thin ice legally. I'd be surprised if they honored a refund.
The gender diversity crap from one of their devs however is a valid argument for me. It's going to take a while to shake that and their _horrid_ launch stream on Twitch. It's one of the reasons I've avoided a lot of games and a hard lesson I hope other companies take note of.
As for Linux gaming in general, BS. Windows users would scream too if a game company lied, and much louder. There are hard core linux players who would beta test for companies too, but we're not slaves. This is something companies need to understand.
tl;dr - there are a lot of things that go into the success or failure of a title regardless of OS. You can spend millions on marketing hype and STILL have your game fade out in a week or you can focus on the long game.
Well, I will buy this game because someone brought up such crap about it on GoL and will thus avoid it.
I'm still waiting for Tower 57. Even the AmigaOS version was released before the Linux version...
Hey, you saved my weekend! That was indeed the solution.
You are acting like the 95%. You're not. Welcome to Kickstarter on Linux. What you say is logical, but in practice its meaningless. I hope one day that changes.
Colombo didn't really say anything at all. So who knows what they really mean? There's not much to analyse in that sentence other than Colombo disagrees with me (without providing a reason why).
I understand not everybody has patience. What I'm saying is the devs don't do this on purpose, like you suggest. So how can their decision be "stupid" when probably they would rather not deprioritise Linux, they would rather release on time? But they can't, for technical and timeline reasons that we are not privy to, and they prioritise Windows instead, like every other developer out there.
So Colombo didn't say anything? And no one knows what it means? But Colombo must have said something, and something meaningful, when you interpreted the meaning as disagreement with you.
Given that there wasn't much to analyse, you made quite interesting analysis of my sentence.
Sadly without getting the simple meaning right in the first sense.
Dude, you should stop babbling.
Even the menus between campaigns feel faster. This was tested on the same hardware.
I was expecting it to be the other way around!