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Going where no Steam Play has gone before with Elite Dangerous

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What’s the one game keeping you a dual booter? Maybe it’s PUBG, or Rainbow Six: Siege? Maybe it used to be Overwatch? For me, that game was Elite Dangerous, and one year on from Proton’s release, I have a story to tell.

There’s a certain “je ne sais quoi” about Elite Dangerous that I’ve never been able to put my finger on. It’s a game set in a scientifically modelled, full-scale replica of the whole Milky Way galaxy, and as with that setting, the game is truly vast, remarkably cold, and frequently incomprehensible. Yet, when playing Elite, I get the same feeling as when looking up at the stars on a dark and moonless night — my hungry soul is fed. Or it could just be space madness. Regardless, it’s a feeling that I like to dip into every once in a while, immerse myself in, and try not to drown.

Back in February of 2018 I signed up for Distant Worlds 2, an expedition to cross the whole of our galaxy and meet up with thousands of others on the other side, at a star system known colloquially as Beagle Point. The system is named as a memorial to the late dog of the first commander to reach it, but is also a location that holds a special place in many other Elite Dangerous players hearts, partially because it’s very much no mean feat to reach it, but also because in one direction it offers a jaw dropping view of our galaxy, and in the other, the sheer black and empty abyss of what lies beyond. In a game so frequently set to a backdrop similar to a mottled night sky, those views, and the immense pilgrimage taken to get there, act as an unparalleled reminder of the scale of the universe and our place in it. It’s the kind of experience that stands proud as the best of what video-games have to offer. I’d never been out that far before, and it would take months to get there, but I just couldn’t pass up that kind of opportunity.

There was one problem though. Elite Dangerous doesn’t have a Linux version, and still had significant issues with Wine. I’ve never been a “No Tux No Bux” kind of person, so I’d been playing the game on Xbox One first, and then on my Windows install, but this was slowly becoming the last game I needed that partition for. Even as a “dirty dual booter” I cringed at the thought of effectively changing my daily driver for a few months, but the expedition was also setting off in 2019, so I’d have to keep my gaming Windows setup alive and well at the very least for another year and a half. I wasn’t too happy with that prospect, but it was the hand I had chosen to reluctantly deal myself.

In summer, while preparing my ship for the trials ahead, Proton was launched and a ray of hope was lit. By winter, Elite was playable, but with lingering issues, and it still required a custom build with various patches and hacks. In testing, it still crashed or disconnected frequently for me, and had painful performance dips when on planets. It wasn’t enough, and I accepted my fate.

On January 13th we set off. I flew on Windows. The game servers crashed from the sheer thousands of spaceships all hyperspace jumping synchronously into the black. At least those crashed servers were probably on Linux.

 

I arrived at Beagle Point late after almost 5 months out there, on the 8th of May, and it was everything I’d hoped — a humbling journey and a pensive rest at the edge of our galaxy. I met with some folks on the surface of a world as far from home as we could imagine, and recounted tales of near deaths, earth-like worlds and black hole sunsets. Meanwhile, on the way, something amazing happened. Those custom patches had made their way into mainline Proton, DXVK had improved, and suddenly, with one small tweak (installing dotnet40, needed for the launcher), I could fly my ship on Linux.

Not only that, but the issues I’d always had with the drivers for my HOTAS, a Saitek x52 Pro, were all gone, including installers that aren’t even fully compatible with Windows 10, default clutch modes that just don’t go away, and weird bugs picking up some buttons as a 2nd mouse. On Linux, a perfectly usable driver for the joystick and throttle is right there in the kernel! The game fully picked up my Ultra-Wide monitor, when on Windows the OS would fight and move my other windows around failing to compensate. “ED Market Connector”, an external app I use for journey tracking, trade data sharing, and more, has a fully working Linux version. Lastly, and this blows my mind, it all works in VR — Sheer magic.

I made my way back to Sol on Linux, faster this time, enjoying every minute of an experience I’d wanted for years. I docked my limping but mostly intact Beluga cruise liner at a starport in the tiny human occupied bubble of space two months later on the 29th of July. I felt like I’d achieved something, and most importantly I’d been able to finally do it on home turf. I set off on Windows, but I came back changed, and these days, my Windows install is kept around almost entirely for work.

I wouldn’t claim that it’s a game for everyone, but there are a huge number of us who enjoy it’s take on the space genre. The fantastic blend of difficulty, control, subtlety, agency, scale, individuality and community all make Elite Dangerous a powerful experience. Those factors all make Linux great too, it’s impossible not to see the clear parallels. They’re both difficult at first, but a joy once you get going, full of wonderful nerds with their own stories and reasons to be, sharing their customisations, doing the hard stuff for its own sake, and creating something much greater than the sum of its parts. A year after Proton released, it’s a match made in the stars.

If you do see me out there in the black, don’t be afraid to say hi and share your stories too. Maybe we can start a squadron of penguin commanders.

You can pick up Elite Dangerous on Steam.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
author picture
I’m a programmer and avid gamer. I currently develop and game on Pop_OS, plus run Mint, Fedora and Raspbian at home. I work at Unity as a Linux specialist in the Sustained Engineering team, while also contracting for Valve. Formerly developer and Linux Group Lead at Feral. Any opinions and thoughts I write are mine personally and do not represent those of my employers.
See more from me
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52 comments
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fnordianslip Aug 20, 2019
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Quoting: Dunc
Quoting: 1xokI played Elite for the first time in the 80s. Back then on the C64. It was my absolute favorite game. An incredible job that Braben and Bell had done. Elite: Dangerous captures the spirit of the original Elite perfectly. I am very grateful for that. But even more grateful for Proton and Valves efforts around Linux.
Yep. I played the Spectrum version first (I still have my original boxed copy, and remember buying it as if it was last week), but I played it on a friend's C64 lot too. And on the school BBCs when the teachers weren't looking. The Commodore's framerate wasn't as good (then again, these things are relative :) ), but I did always envy the Dodec stations. I think it was the first version to have them. And Trumbles, but I wasn't so bothered about missing out on those. ;)
I remember struggling to use the Lenslok device with a 28 inch black and white TV (used as a monitor) in order to get Elite working on my speccy. I had to stand half-way across the room from the TV and squint through the bit of plastic crap to try and read the mangled symbols on the screen!
dpanter Aug 20, 2019
Great article, happy reading!
I fear I'll have to stay away from ED tho. If I dive into it and it turns out to be great (quite possible) I may never get back out... (also quite possible) :P
Dunc Aug 20, 2019
Quoting: fnordianslipI remember struggling to use the Lenslok device with a 28 inch black and white TV (used as a monitor) in order to get Elite working on my speccy. I had to stand half-way across the room from the TV and squint through the bit of plastic crap to try and read the mangled symbols on the screen!
Funny you should say that. I noticed just the other day that my copy has one of the write-protect holes taped over, and it all came back to me: first of all, the original 48K release didn't work on 128K machines (there was nothing added to the 128K “version”; it was just patched to work, and I was buggered if I was going to pay all over again for that), and they also removed the Lenslok. So I just borrowed a mate's 128K version and copied it on to my original tape.
slaapliedje Aug 20, 2019
Quoting: Dunc
Quoting: 1xokI played Elite for the first time in the 80s. Back then on the C64. It was my absolute favorite game. An incredible job that Braben and Bell had done. Elite: Dangerous captures the spirit of the original Elite perfectly. I am very grateful for that. But even more grateful for Proton and Valves efforts around Linux.
Yep. I played the Spectrum version first (I still have my original boxed copy, and remember buying it as if it was last week), but I played it on a friend's C64 lot too. And on the school BBCs when the teachers weren't looking. The Commodore's framerate wasn't as good (then again, these things are relative :) ), but I did always envy the Dodec stations. I think it was the first version to have them. And Trumbles, but I wasn't so bothered about missing out on those. ;)

I said before that I think Dangerous spoils the spirit of Elite by being always-online, since part of the genius of the original (and Frontier) was that you had a whole galaxy on one disk (or tape), but that's a minor niggle. It really is the Elite we all imagined in our heads back in the '80s. I still maintain that the original is the Best Game Ever Made. Open-world, open-ended 3D space combat and trading back in 1984 on an 8-bit machine with 32K of RAM? There's no contest.

[Edit: Oh, and I'm CMDR Gripebucket. I have no idea where that came from; it seemed funny at the time. I don't play Open very often, though.]
Sadly, Elite never made it to the Atari 8bit, so the first one I played was the second on the ST, but didn't play it much, because at the time I did not have the manual.

Unfortunately my commander name is some number because I wasn't paying attention to when they were letting people change it!
Faalagorn Aug 20, 2019
Guess it's time to pop back to Elite; heck maybe I even buy the DLC some day later on, as I onlt have the base game :)
slaapliedje Aug 20, 2019
Quoting: FaalagornGuess it's time to pop back to Elite; heck maybe I even buy the DLC some day later on, as I onlt have the base game :)
Totally worth it. I bought two copies of the full game and thrustmaster controllers for some friends so we could all play. Sadly one of them didn't have time to play it, and the other one played a lot when I couldn't and ended up getting an Anaconda, though he did it one of the cheap ways where you could keep logging out if they didn't give you a good paying job. Ha, they fixed that since.

Game has a steep learning curve, or it used to, apparently they created a much nicer tutorial, and simplified a few things, like scanning.
drmoth Aug 21, 2019
Fantastic article, thanks for sharing Marc!
denyasis Aug 21, 2019
Question;

How does one install dotnet 4 into proton? An earlier comment mentioned using winetricks, but afaik that would affect the base wine prefix, right?

I'd there a way to install it into the proton prefix? For some reason, despite understanding wine a bit, proton utterly confuses me.
joaojotta Aug 21, 2019
DID NOT make the game playable on my machine. Didn't evenget to the launch screen. None of the tricks worked. Maybe I'm missing something...
Anyway: if we ever cross our paths in space, I'm Cmdr Calenulma.
Nanobang Aug 21, 2019
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What a great write up! I can feel your pleasure for Elite and how it grows when you can play on Linux. I'm going to wishlist Elite now.

I first ran across Elite at my local mall sometime in 1985, immediately bought it, brought it home, and loaded it onto my C-64. At the time it seemed impossibly huge---256 star systems in 256 galaxies, if I remember correctly. The best times I had with it was the summer a friend of mine and I played as pilot and co-pilot, taking turns, one of us manning the keyboard and the other manning the Atari joystick.

I've avoided Elite because I was hurt by their reneging on a Linux port. But, now that it's playable on Linux via SteamPlay, I find my anger and resentment have mellowed a lot---not entirely, mind, but enough that I'll buy it one of these days on sale, I'm certain.

Again, thanks for your excellent article. It spoke to the 21 year old BBS posting, Elite playing C-64 cowboy that was me, oh so many years ago.


Last edited by Nanobang on 21 August 2019 at 1:27 pm UTC
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