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Feral Interactive just put up a YouTube video to show off Total War: WARHAMMER II running on Linux, it's looking good and they confirmed again their future Linux plans.

What's interesting, is that in this video they did confirm a few interesting bits of extra information. Firstly, they confirmed that Total War: WARHAMMER II is using Vulkan (which we knew already) but the more interesting thing is what they said after. They said "By the way, we do have more sweet sweet Vulkan plans up our sleeves, but they're secret.". It's going to be interesting to find out what they mean by that, since they wouldn't say such a thing if it just meant future ports will use Vulkan, since we already know that as they've said it multiple times before.

Additionally, in regards to a question about Steam Play/Proton being the end of Linux ports, they said "We are happy to say we have lots of plans for Linux, including WARHAMMER II as well as upcoming games like Total War: Three Kingdoms and Life is Strange 2". While those titles were already confirmed previously (I assume this video was recorded before and only now put up) along with the XCOM 2 DLC already released, their wording is interesting as it seems to indicate more are coming which is obviously good news.

They're still not yet confirming a release date, other than later this Autumn.

Anyway, here's the video (Feral said it's played on an Intel Core i7-4790k with 16GB RAM and a Radeon RX 580 8GB):

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mylka Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: mylka
Quoting: LeopardVulkan for some older titles would be nice , like Deus EX:MD , HITMAN and Shadow of Mordor.

but that costs money and i dont think, that they have this capacity

btw hitman has vulkan
https://www.hitmanforum.com/t/hitman-on-linux-steamos-and-mac/14029/52
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYScalkH9js

They can do it , at least they did it for Mac with Metal.

If they don't want to invest so much , they can also take route of Wine+DXVK wrapped solution for their old titles.

didnt apple say, that they wouldnt support opengl anymore? so apple "forced" feral to make it metal
could be a reason


Quoting: kibblesProton came out and I only had about two games to test it with since I only buy linux native ports. Luckily one of them was DOOM, just couldn't pass that one up. I waited and waited for feral to port it and finally caved. Great game, feral really missed some sweet sweet $ with that one...

even if you only buy linux native games there are so many giveaways. humble throws out a lot of games. i remember i got tropico 4 and the ship murder party for free and both run on linux now

and i think it counts more for publishers, when they actually see you buy and play a win game with proton, than just wishlist it
SadL Oct 17, 2018
well.. we have some news from feral

QuoteNo Vulkan updates planned for Company of Heroes 2 or other older titles, we'll let people know if that changes.

Source: Twitter link
Whitewolfe80 Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: dpanter
Quoting: Whitewolfe80question on mesa performance and mad max i have a 4gb rx 550 being used on friend windows build ... he gets about 55/60 fps at 1080p med on windows 10.
:O

RX 550, 60 fps in Mad Max, 1080p, medium??
Dude, I find that somewhat hard to believe... but I'll take your word for it. Accepting those numbers as correct, I'd say the performance will be fine in Linux with Mesa (although there isn't much actual performance to begin with in this little runt of a card. :P)

The RX 550 is about as powerful as a handful of pocket lint. Comparable to the pathetic GTX 1030. Very low end cards, to call them 'gaming cards' would be extremely generous... but hey, if it runs, it runs, right?

I have a low profile RX 550 myself in a tiny HP machine so I'm allowed to sh*t on this card.

Well so far under linux and using the mesa drivers the rx 550 delivers 30 fps in the desert and about 23/27 in camps at 1080p putting it down to 768p (high) and sees a return of 42 in camps and around 50 in desert. To be honest the figure surprised me given i had heard how bad this card was but i did at least see it with my own eyes granted i didnt sit and watch for 30 minutes it was more like 5 minutes. However he seems to be happy with the fact he can run it he basically plays mad max csgo and rocket league so he is more than happy with linux so far granted its only been two days but still hopefully he sticks with it.

Edit updated to latest kernel and for reasons best known to gigabyte the factory overclock reset itself when he went over to linux, i have no idea why card is now back to its factory overclocks with the latest kernel running at 1600x900 at a steady 48 fps in camps and 59 in the desert big resolution bump. Thanks to all that made suggestions.


Last edited by Whitewolfe80 on 18 October 2018 at 8:03 am UTC
Leopard Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: Whitewolfe80
Quoting: dpanter
Quoting: Whitewolfe80question on mesa performance and mad max i have a 4gb rx 550 being used on friend windows build ... he gets about 55/60 fps at 1080p med on windows 10.
:O

RX 550, 60 fps in Mad Max, 1080p, medium??
Dude, I find that somewhat hard to believe... but I'll take your word for it. Accepting those numbers as correct, I'd say the performance will be fine in Linux with Mesa (although there isn't much actual performance to begin with in this little runt of a card. :P)

The RX 550 is about as powerful as a handful of pocket lint. Comparable to the pathetic GTX 1030. Very low end cards, to call them 'gaming cards' would be extremely generous... but hey, if it runs, it runs, right?

I have a low profile RX 550 myself in a tiny HP machine so I'm allowed to sh*t on this card.

Well so far under linux and using the mesa drivers the rx 550 delivers 30 fps in the desert and about 23/27 in camps at 1080p putting it down to 768p (high) and sees a return of 42 in camps and around 50 in desert. To be honest the figure surprised me given i had heard how bad this card was but i did at least see it with my own eyes granted i didnt sit and watch for 30 minutes it was more like 5 minutes. However he seems to be happy with the fact he can run it he basically plays mad max csgo and rocket league so he is more than happy with linux so far granted its only been two days but still hopefully he sticks with it.

Did you turn on Vulkan renderer of Mad Max?
Whitewolfe80 Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: Whitewolfe80
Quoting: dpanter
Quoting: Whitewolfe80question on mesa performance and mad max i have a 4gb rx 550 being used on friend windows build ... he gets about 55/60 fps at 1080p med on windows 10.
:O

RX 550, 60 fps in Mad Max, 1080p, medium??
Dude, I find that somewhat hard to believe... but I'll take your word for it. Accepting those numbers as correct, I'd say the performance will be fine in Linux with Mesa (although there isn't much actual performance to begin with in this little runt of a card. :P)

The RX 550 is about as powerful as a handful of pocket lint. Comparable to the pathetic GTX 1030. Very low end cards, to call them 'gaming cards' would be extremely generous... but hey, if it runs, it runs, right?

I have a low profile RX 550 myself in a tiny HP machine so I'm allowed to sh*t on this card.

Well so far under linux and using the mesa drivers the rx 550 delivers 30 fps in the desert and about 23/27 in camps at 1080p putting it down to 768p (high) and sees a return of 42 in camps and around 50 in desert. To be honest the figure surprised me given i had heard how bad this card was but i did at least see it with my own eyes granted i didnt sit and watch for 30 minutes it was more like 5 minutes. However he seems to be happy with the fact he can run it he basically plays mad max csgo and rocket league so he is more than happy with linux so far granted its only been two days but still hopefully he sticks with it.

Did you turn on Vulkan renderer of Mad Max?

Yes but only after trying it at 1600x900 and he was complaining the drop in frame rate was very noticeable i personally thought it ran fine but its his call and he was happy at 768p
SadL Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: mylka
Quoting: M@GOidIf my experience with Proton means something, Feral is pretty safe. Unless Proton magically hits Gallium 9 levels of performance, their ports will always be better.

And I still keep my promise of "no tux, no bux".

im not sure about that
if you take ROTR and compare linux native vs windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU9jTvWiids
and shadow of TTR - linux proton vs windows
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qubt4vrrh_E

the difference is not that big. lets wait how a native port of the new TR performs, but proton set the bar quite high

im also waiting for valve leting you install windows versions of native linux games on linux and compare it to the native version

You can, if you wish, install Steam via wine and basically run the games that way. Of course, for apples-to-apples, you might want a customised wine version that includes what patches Valve have added. Depends how desperately you want to compare though - obviously it's not a click and play approach, you'll need to build wine for yourself.

"Proton" misses a few other things that might not show in the usual comparisons (at work right now, and watching gaming videos on youtube is frowned upon, so I've not watched the links). Any porting company can tweak parts of the game itself to smooth out gameplay (I know Feral did this for Mad Max, where specific map areas were tweaked with Vulkan to have them run much better). A generic wrapper like wine can't really do this too easily, but then it's also perhaps not something seen in every game either. I only mention because while it might not show up in youtube videos, it can affect game enjoyment quite substantially.

For myself, Rise of the Tomb Raider was extra playable for me personally because of some of the work Feral did with task management and multiple cores. Even my old rig played it smoothly because of 6 cores.

Wine though does let me play even native games that won't work for me (Dawn of War II: Retribution in particular has some audio library incompatibility meaning I can only play it properly via wine). Basically there's more to it than just fps is all I'm trying to say.

Let me quickly jump into this conversation just to add that it looks like it is possible to play a game with proton even if there is a native port. At least that's what people report in some reddit posts (/r/linux_gaming) link. People mention that you can download a windows version of a game through SteamCMD and then use the proton_run script to run it using proton.
dpanter Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: SadLLet me quickly jump into this conversation just to add that it looks like it is possible to play a game with proton even if there is a native port. At least that's what people report in some reddit posts (/r/linux_gaming) link. People mention that you can download a windows version of a game through SteamCMD and then use the proton_run script to run it using proton.
I installed a game with Native2Proton, worked like a charm. I compared it to the Linux native version which I also had installed at the same time. It was just some small indie game but still.
SadL Oct 17, 2018
Quoting: dpanter
Quoting: SadLLet me quickly jump into this conversation just to add that it looks like it is possible to play a game with proton even if there is a native port. At least that's what people report in some reddit posts (/r/linux_gaming) link. People mention that you can download a windows version of a game through SteamCMD and then use the proton_run script to run it using proton.
I installed a game with Native2Proton, worked like a charm. I compared it to the Linux native version which I also had installed at the same time. It was just some small indie game but still.
Yeah..I always forget that script.. and I couldn't find it when was asked about it on steam (Civ VI Linux discussion) ..I really have to bookmark it just to send it to whoever asks. Personally I am just waiting/wanting native games..but its always a good idea to have options.
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