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Monsters and Monocles, a new co-op top down shooter enters Early Access, some early thoughts
By Nanobang, 19 August 2016 at 12:05 pm UTC
I hadn't heard about this one yet. It's going on the wishlist!

{And out of curiosity, and because, honestly, I'm not certain, are those sales-by-OS percentages pretty close to their respective OS market share? I mean, we're not out-buying WinMac, but we appear to be buying our share, right? Is that good? I want that to be good. :) )
Feral Interactive are teasing another new Linux & Mac port with a new clue
By 0aTT, 19 August 2016 at 11:24 am UTC
Quoting: GuestI think life is strange was the game. Or more likely Total War Warhammer since they finally confirmed it's still coming. Actually the same hint IS still there so I guess we still don't know.

(808 SB12S = MC HAMMER) + (Mars = War) -> War Hammer

Because Total War: Warhammer also shows up now on the radar, it can only be Warhammer 40k. I think this is the most realistic option. This "808" Dr. Doom thing is nice but to weak. How to explain the SB12S string then?

Just my thoughts.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By Mountain Man, 19 August 2016 at 11:14 am UTC Likes: 5
Quoting: babaiI Agree that customers should expect proper performance right now and not wait for another year, also this fix will probably go into the radeonSI userspace driver and not MESA.
Still, AMD has contributed much code to MESA in the past years, show me some from NVIDIA (no please not any Tegra DRM code)?
If you are using Linux for freedom/open source idealism, ideologically you SHOULD buy AMD products and not tell me how a 1060 overpowers an RX480 today. AMD had no obligations towards supporting MESA or opening up millions of lines of DPM code for their chips. They still did.
Support a company that supports your platform.
If you don't follow the open source philosophy and using Linux just because you like say the millions of widget themes it supports or for any other reason, buy Nvidia.
I go with what works. Linux works for me. Windows doesn't. Nvidia works for me. AMD doesn't. It's as simple as that.
Fear Equation, a turn based strategy and horror title is now on Linux
By damarrin, 19 August 2016 at 8:45 am UTC
The trailer makes it look nothing like a turn-based strategy.
Cities: Skylines - Natural Disasters expansion announced, mother nature is pissed
By Ehvis, 19 August 2016 at 8:22 am UTC
With Skylines being a continued development from Cities in Motion 2, I would expect it to be Unity 4. At the moment I can only recall Kerbal Space Program doing a Unity 4 to Unity 5 conversion and it appears that it took quite a bit of effort. Also, they may still be busy porting features over from CiM2 into C:S. :P
Card battler Faeria will gain 20 hours of single-player content
By Pinguino, 19 August 2016 at 7:25 am UTC
That's awesome news! I like the game, but I've stopped playing it since the solo campaign is very short (and I don't care much about endless multiplayer modes).
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By edddeduck_feral, 19 August 2016 at 7:07 am UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: grigiAs a Laptop user stuck with 1G of VRAM on a still-relatively-beefy 7770M, I do notice stutters even with compositing when I have a 2'nd external 4K monitor and tens of apps open in virtual screens. it will be smooth, then stall for 1/4s even.
Exciting times to be an open-source AMD user :-)

Usually the rules are make it work correctly then make it work quickly. It's nice to see Mesa has more time for the second option as more and more of the first part has been completed :)

Quoting: buenaventuraHow nice, it's great that they are working on this. When could one expect to see it in the driver in the ubuntu repositories? Does it take a long time?

This will take quite a while to make it into the official Ubuntu repositories, possibly 17.04 however it will be in a PPA (like the padoka one) a lot sooner once the change has been committed and approved.

Last I checked nothing has been committed yet so it's more like they know the issue and they have a fix in progress but it still needs to be completed, checked in, approved and merged into the trunk, built into the drivers (at this stage you can check it out in padoka) then included in a stable release and finally have that stable release included in the official Ubuntu repository that you can see inside software updater.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By buenaventura, 19 August 2016 at 6:55 am UTC
How nice, it's great that they are working on this. When could one expect to see it in the driver in the ubuntu repositories? Does it take a long time?
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By grigi, 19 August 2016 at 6:40 am UTC Likes: 1
As a Laptop user stuck with 1G of VRAM on a still-relatively-beefy 7770M, I do notice stutters even with compositing when I have a 2'nd external 4K monitor and tens of apps open in virtual screens. it will be smooth, then stall for 1/4s even.
Exciting times to be an open-source AMD user :-)
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By edddeduck_feral, 19 August 2016 at 6:30 am UTC Likes: 8
This issue is all about memory management of the cards memory, this will usually be seen in games as a dramatic slowdown or stall that will suddenly happen at some point only for the game to (usually) recover again some seconds later.

These are caused by VRAM pressure. Most complex games over the course of playing allocate more memory than the card has VRAM. As a result, the memory manager constantly migrates buffers between VRAM and RAM depending on which buffers are
used at the given time. Eventually VRAM becomes fragmented, so the memory manager decides to evict a lot of less important buffers out of VRAM to make space, when this happens you'll experience a stall in gameplay. The size of the stall depends on the size of the buffers involved.

The improvement being discussed the last time I read the thread was to split the memory on the card into smaller chunks reducing the chance fragmentation will require a flush of buffers to fit larger buffers in memory.

Bottom line this is unlikely to boost your base frame rate but it could make noticeable improvements to games where you get stutters and stalls as these could be being caused by memory fragmentation on the card.

However it won't fix all instances in all games as stalls in rendering can be caused by many different things and this is just one possibility.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By Shmerl, 19 August 2016 at 6:22 am UTC
Some speculate, Vega can come early, already this October. Others say it can come sometime in the beginning of next year. I have no idea really if that is correct or not.
Rocket League for Linux & SteamOS getting close to a release window finally
By musojon74, 19 August 2016 at 6:17 am UTC Likes: 1
So. It still isn't here...
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By ElectricPrism, 19 August 2016 at 6:09 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: ShmerlGood. RX 480 seem to be always out of stock. By this rate, I'd probably wait for Vega cards already.

This is where i'm at with it, I had no idea the product would be so slammed with buyers since it seems like the bitcoin miners have passed to custom hardware.

You good sir do you happen to know what time frame Vega is coming?

I just had 2 system builds for Linux users this week and unfortunately Zen hasn't dropped yet so I had to select a Intel combo instead of AMD APU :\.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By Shmerl, 19 August 2016 at 5:58 am UTC Likes: 2
Good. RX 480 seem to be always out of stock. By this rate, I'd probably wait for Vega cards already.
Monsters and Monocles, a new co-op top down shooter enters Early Access, some early thoughts
By tkonicz, 19 August 2016 at 5:56 am UTC Likes: 1
I bought it already and its a blast.
Far better then enter the gungeon. I found enter the gungeon quite selfcontradictory: a game about guns that gives you only on rare occasions new guns to play with, while being stuck with a lousy standard gun for most of the time. Monstares an Monocles gives you lots of powerful guns form the beginning, nice graphics, gentle difficulty curve, good design. Looking forward to play it with my son.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By Zuwefoqu, 19 August 2016 at 5:28 am UTC Likes: 1
QuoteFreedom is not incompatible with responsibility. Linux, lest we forget, is GPLed, not BSD licensed.
So why do you still use internet? Your provider, I believe use non-free software/hardware. Your ethernet and router also non-free, so why do you use them? BIOS\UEFI - non-free, if you don't know. Motherboard chips either non-free. And last thing - Linux contains non-free firmare, so why do you don't use Linux-libre?
P.S. Just put it there.
P.S.S. I just could't resist, sorry.
Cities: Skylines - Natural Disasters expansion announced, mother nature is pissed
By bakgwailo, 19 August 2016 at 3:41 am UTC
Quoting: liamdawe
Quoting: omer666
Quoting: Mountain ManSpeaking of Cities: Skylines, I wonder when they're going to get the Linux performance issues sorted out?
Performance issues are related to Unity engine. While it's getting better, progress is slow. I don't think it's Colossal Order's fault.
I still think it is their issues, considering I personally tested and livestreamed it before release where it worked far better before a patch seemed to nerf it down. They have still never replied to me on that.

I think they are using a customize version of Unity, but I wonder what underlying version it is based off of. I know somewhere around 5.3 they apparently did a complete rewrite/overhaul of the OpenGL backend which might help, and 5.4 was supposed to bring multithreaded rendering among other improvements.

Since they are on a customized version though, no idea how hard it would be for them to upgrade the engine, or if they would even be interested in doing so anyways on a kind of older game. Its kind of a shame - definitely the best (modern) city building sim out there.
Shadow Warrior 2, the awesome looking FPS is due out in less than two months
By Shmerl, 19 August 2016 at 3:39 am UTC
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By bakgwailo, 19 August 2016 at 3:25 am UTC
Quoting: ElectricPrismMy fellow Linux Peeps, we are a community who most of us likely has control issues, when Linus couldn't control the quality of the nVidia driver or force them into using a FOSS driver he gave them the finger.

Whatever floats your boat, but, he was really giving the finger to Optimus support (or lack there of), and their Android support. He did go back and give them a thumbs up, though, especially around their open source efforts on the Tegra K1 chips and integrating it into Nouveau.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By Edmene, 19 August 2016 at 3:00 am UTC Likes: 1
Good news, improvements for AMD drivers are always good.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator is probably the second funniest thing I have seen all day
By neowiz73, 19 August 2016 at 1:50 am UTC
simple yet brilliant, and hilarious. we all should get alpha test keys :D
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By GustyGhost, 19 August 2016 at 12:45 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: babaiI Agree that customers should expect proper performance right now and not wait for another year, also this fix will probably go into the radeonSI userspace driver and not MESA.
Still, AMD has contributed much code to MESA in the past years, show me some from NVIDIA (no please not any Tegra DRM code)?
If you are using Linux for freedom/open source idealism, ideologically you SHOULD buy AMD products and not tell me how a 1060 overpowers an RX480 today. AMD had no obligations towards supporting MESA or opening up millions of lines of DPM code for their chips. They still did.
Support a company that supports your platform.
If you don't follow the open source philosophy and using Linux just because you like say the millions of widget themes it supports or for any other reason, buy Nvidia.

*Cautiously points out that AMD GPUs require closed firmware blobs.
Cities: Skylines - Natural Disasters expansion announced, mother nature is pissed
By finaldest, 19 August 2016 at 12:35 am UTC
This game has taken hundreds of hours away from me so a new expansion pack is good news. I cannot wait to see some actual game play footage.

I have not really suffered performance issues with this game, However I don't run 1000's of mods and I use only traffic related mods. I run a 4770k with 16gb ram and gtx770 and now play CSL exclusively on linux.

Just found out that unity updates will be pushed out into cities skylines once the expansion launches. It was mentioned on paradox forums. This should help improve performance.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By LinuxGamesTV, 19 August 2016 at 12:05 am UTC Likes: 1
Quoting: liamdaweYou should remember not everyone uses Linux for just freedom, there's many reasons. You should just accept others choices and move on. Not everyone needs a lecture and we don't need an AMD topic derailed because of it :)

^ This. If anyone don't accept thats i buy NVIDIA is a Nazi. The freedom is the choice in Software and Hardware and if a Hardware have poor drivers i don't buy the Hardware, thats MY choice.

But if you tell people what Hardware they should buy is a dictation and has nothing to do with freedom.
No Man's Sky has been shown to work rather well in Wine on Linux
By QUASAR, 18 August 2016 at 11:43 pm UTC
I've tested it under playonlinux with 1.9.16-staging 64bit without changing the Windows version from XP to 7 and works perfect.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By libgradev, 18 August 2016 at 11:07 pm UTC Likes: 5
Quoting: ElectricPrismI'm very excited preparing to switch to Red Camp, I'll be TTY switching like it's 1999, and kiss goodbye to GPU buffer corruption from NVidia.

Yes, yes you will my friend :)

I won't go into details but I've just switched from a 660GTX to a RX480 (as mentioned) on my workstation.

Result: I've been running the RX480 (Mesa) for a week and, so far, you couldn't pay me enough to make me switch back - which is a massive statement on how far AMD have come.
No Man's Sky has been shown to work rather well in Wine on Linux
By Debianeer, 18 August 2016 at 10:45 pm UTC
Maybe there'a Vulkan port in the future, if they get enough monies, and some bugs fixed.

I'm still holding out for a native Linux version myself.
A reason for poor performance on AMD plus Mesa has been found and a patch is in progress
By ElectricPrism, 18 August 2016 at 9:55 pm UTC Likes: 7
All that I see going on in here is everyone getting their control boners on - don't you tell me I can't use X over Y.

Don't talk about X or Y - talk about Z.

My fellow Linux Peeps, we are a community who most of us likely has control issues, when Linus couldn't control the quality of the nVidia driver or force them into using a FOSS driver he gave them the finger.

I'm super super SUPER SUPER SUPER SUPER excited about the performance improvements of this patch, I sincerely believe that in about a year the tables between NVidia and AMD will be more or less equal 50/50 40/60 with the major difference being AMD promoting a open driver and having less bugs.

I'm very excited preparing to switch to Red Camp, I'll be TTY switching like it's 1999, and kiss goodbye to GPU buffer corruption from NVidia.

Go TEAM MESA YOU KICK FSCKING ASS!!!! Stay legit, your performance work is critical to the success of red camp and FOSS.
SteamOS 2.88 beta released, newer AMD driver and a crash fix for the updater
By ProfessorKaos64, 18 August 2016 at 9:45 pm UTC
No no no! [Don't stop belieeeeeeeven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCy7lLQwToI), errr updating.. SteamOS. I'll have to start shifting my packaging to Ubuntu and Debian :/

Anyway, I found a workaround for the black screen updater issue, but 2 days later this came out :). Those on the non-beta OS release can reference the wiki page on GitHub if they are still affected.
Nvidia beta driver 370.23 has initial support for PRIME Synchronization
By micha, 18 August 2016 at 9:44 pm UTC
Quoting: babai
Quoting: michaUnfortunately, DotA2 crashes my whole system if using the -vulkan switch since I updated after running for 30sec or so..
For me dota 2 crashes with the Intel vulkan driver with the vulkan launch option. I turned off the steam overlay and the game doesn't crash anymore.

Ah thanks, forget that I recently moved back to the stable Steam client after being on beta version for some time. So it might not have anything to do with the nvidia driver update afterall..
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