Latest Comments

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By Cybolic, 14 August 2015 at 11:58 pm UTC

Quoting: michawell, the graphics actually look worse than most last gen shooters atm. So not really a great advertisement for UE4.. still looking forward to newer versions. =)
There's one level that's up to the visual standard you'd expect (absolutely amazingly gorgeous), so you can see what the engine can do and the rest are, as liamdawe said, placeholders.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By sarmad, 14 August 2015 at 11:35 pm UTC Likes: 2

Quoting: ProfessorKaos64
Quoting: michawell, the graphics actually look worse than most last gen shooters atm. So not really a great advertisement for UE4.. still looking forward to newer versions. =)
I don't get that impression at all. Are you running this on a Commodore 64? You may need to update your drivers.
What are you talking about? What drivers? Look at the video posted by Liam, then Google Call of Duty PS3 and compare.

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By mulletdeath, 14 August 2015 at 11:19 pm UTC Likes: 3

Considering Mac and Linux taken together had 80% of the support requests but only 6% of the sales, it does make me wonder how much they tested the game on a platform other than Windows. Still, like always, I'm grateful that devs still develop for us at all even though it clearly isn't worth the effort at the moment.

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By Caldazar, 14 August 2015 at 11:16 pm UTC Likes: 5

Will you guys please stop panicking and think for a moment?

Those stats say nothing about the quality of sales or the tickets, only the numbers.

What if 2/3 of those reports are proper bug reports or even fixes? Because 2/3 of mine were. Are 10 core dumps worse than 1 "My game doesn't start", is that what you're saying?

How is the relation of Linux development cost vs. the revenue?

Let me put it this way. This is the 7th comment, so I'm responsible for 12.5% of text submits on this page but I get only 0% of the donations. Horrible, that doesn't match!

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By drmoth, 14 August 2015 at 11:09 pm UTC Likes: 4

I bought it, and just like Cybolic said, it had some fullscreen window issues, but that got fixed fairly promptly.

High support requests from Linux users I believe stem from:

1. Broken/not adequately tested Linux releases
2. Linux users being used to submitting bug reports

As Croteam recently reported, Linux users are quick to report bugs and sometimes uncover bugs that affect ALL platforms!

Introducing the Latest Addition To GOL Cast Hardware: Radeon R7 370 [Updated]
By sorath, 14 August 2015 at 11:05 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdaweI am still on the fence if I actually want to even use that Windows key myself. I'm not interested personally, but I know others are. It will take a lot of time away from writing stuff to benchmark on an additional platform I don't care about.

Thank you for your and Samsai's comments.

I realized finally that it is reasonable to make benchmarks only for Linux platform due to the orientation of the current resource - "Gaming on Linux". Also it requires considerably more time to test other platforms .

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By ProfessorKaos64, 14 August 2015 at 11:04 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: michawell, the graphics actually look worse than most last gen shooters atm. So not really a great advertisement for UE4.. still looking forward to newer versions. =)
I don't get that impression at all. Are you running this on a Commodore 64? You may need to update your drivers.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By ProfessorKaos64, 14 August 2015 at 11:03 pm UTC

I don't know what the deal is, but on multiple PC's, when I hit the page, I log in, then the page just sits there trying to load. So frustrating. I wish there was a direct link. Interestingly enough, I can load the forums, but when I log in, it screws up.

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By Cybolic, 14 August 2015 at 10:55 pm UTC Likes: 1

The game did launch in a fairly broken state with regards to window and fullscreen handling though - which is what I noticed most of the support requests being for - so it would've likely been the same percentage for any platform launching with such issues.
(note, I just noticed it on the Steam forum, I have no affiliation with the game or the company behind it)

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By ricki42, 14 August 2015 at 10:52 pm UTC

I bought the game some time ago but haven't gotten around to playing it.
How well did it run on Linux at launch? That many support requests are worrying, but it's hard to judge how meaningful that number is without also knowing how much effort the devs put into testing on each platform. If they developed and debugged on Windows as lead platform, and then just compiled a Linux version a few days before launch with minimal testing, it's not surprising the number of support request would be higher. Not quite this high, though.
But as I said, I didn't play the game at launch, so I don't want to accuse the devs of anything, just pointing out that it may not be all solely due to different Linux distros and setups.

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By scaine, 14 August 2015 at 10:51 pm UTC

Quick calculations, then - they sold 520'sh Linux versions, which generated 262 support requests. As Fergle notes, a better breakdown of support requests would be good, but ultimately... 520 odd sales? That's pretty pathetic. Five grand to put up with 260 support calls? Terrible.

I wanted to love this game - anticipated it for over a year, soaked up every (scarce) blog post, then when it finally launched, I sank 5 hours into it... and stopped playing. I can't remember why, but I'm fairly sure that it was either XCom, or Borderlands that came along and I just lost interest. That and one of the characters, can't remember who, moves stupidly slowly (he has a heavy weapon, or something) and the fast dude is great... but can't hit jack and when he does, it's for a pittance and he's then blown away. You can mitigate this with various armour types, but the inventory is a bit tedious, and with restricted carrying slots, it sometimes just feels a bit like it's getting in the way of game play. It's hard to keep playing when there are similar, but more accessible games to play (XCom, most obviously).

Considering only 6% (about 1500) players ever finished it, I might not be alone.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By Liam Dawe, 14 August 2015 at 10:40 pm UTC

Quoting: michawell, the graphics actually look worse than most last gen shooters atm. So not really a great advertisement for UE4.. still looking forward to newer versions. =)

Well, it's in Alpha, as mentioned most are place-holders.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By LinuxGamesTV, 14 August 2015 at 10:31 pm UTC

Yes it's a very fast game, but the graphics look damn good.
I play it often times. when I feel like it.

Don't forget it's an Alpha Realese and on some Maps have Placeholder textures.
For a good grafic you shoud set the graficsettings to the maximun.

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By RCL, 14 August 2015 at 10:30 pm UTC Likes: 7

If 2% of sales were matched with 2% of support requests, Linux gaming would be healthier. But everyone expects their particular distribution, drivers and what not to be supported - a fair request, but untenable for game developers; on other platforms this support cost is shared with (or competely delegated to, as is the case with consoles) the platform owners.

That's the whole point of SteamOS. Limit the extent to which users can customize the system, so developers can target it as a single platform and make games run "out of the box".

Developers Of Strategy Game Halfway Show Linux Sales & Support Requests
By FergleFergleson, 14 August 2015 at 10:30 pm UTC

I'd be interested to see how exactly they derived some of those stats, but even if they're off by a fair bit it's still a pretty poor report for developing on linux. That's far too few sales and waaaaay too many trouble tickets generated to make it worth while for a developer to consider linux as anything but a loss-leader (apparently Valve/steam gives some level of additional support for devs that support linux, but i've never seen any details on what exactly that means).

I'd also be interested to see a better breakdown of the trouble tickets generated. Are they all from one or two common causes and/or were trivial to address? Or were they the source of many additional hours of labor? Were there any lessons to be learned from the team's development process that might have mitigated these costs?

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By micha, 14 August 2015 at 10:30 pm UTC Likes: 1

well, the graphics actually look worse than most last gen shooters atm. So not really a great advertisement for UE4.. still looking forward to newer versions. =)

Hacking Simulator Hacknet Released, Eventually Coming To Linux
By emphy, 14 August 2015 at 10:15 pm UTC

Quoting: MyeulCIt's now on my wishlist (well.. Sort of). The best (imo) hacking simulation I have tried to date is uplink. Any word on how this title cimpares against it? (besides the fact that it doesnt' seem gui-based :P )

Thanks for reminding me, still need to dig in the hollywood-style-hacking-sim of choice.

Introducing the Latest Addition To GOL Cast Hardware: Radeon R7 370 [Updated]
By Liam Dawe, 14 August 2015 at 10:10 pm UTC Likes: 1

Quoting: Samsai
Quoting: sorathAt first thanks for benchmarks for AMD videocard.

Could you clarify please: FGLRX 15.20 is Catalyst 15.7? On Ubuntu Catalyst 15.3beta AFAIR also was marked as fglrx 15.20.

Could you also compare game's performance between Linux and Windows ports with the same video cards if WIndows OS is available for you?

I'm not entirely sure if the FGLRX I installed from the repositories was 15.7 but I think it was. I still don't understand the Catalyst version numbering too well.

As for the Windows comparisons, I will not run such things on my hardware. The only Windows license I had was thrown to Liam and getting a new license is too expensive. In addition to that I don't like Windows a whole lot and I don't want to put up with its quirks for the sake of booting it up maybe 4 times a year for some comparisons. Also, I would have to get a new hard drive because I'm not wasting a gigabyte of my current storage for something like Windows.

I am still on the fence if I actually want to even use that Windows key myself. I'm not interested personally, but I know others are. It will take a lot of time away from writing stuff to benchmark on an additional platform I don't care about.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By Liam Dawe, 14 August 2015 at 10:07 pm UTC

Quoting: NinoslayerPlaying very very bad :-P

Well, yeah. I'm a tactical FPS player, not a fast paced trick jumping junky, but I still like to check it out now and then.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By MayeulC, 14 August 2015 at 9:34 pm UTC

@dorsker : will UT be published on steam one day? If so, there should be some integration with their network service, which may explain why this hasn't really been worked on already.

I would be interested in a word from an AMD card owner on its performance, since I haven't been able to launch an UE4 demo without GPU hang (which shouldn't be happening at all, in any circumstance, by the way). For this very reason, I haven't tried UT yet, expecting the same.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By dorkster, 14 August 2015 at 9:07 pm UTC

It might be worth trying OBS for recording. When using XComposite window capture, I generally get better performance than SSR.

On the topic of UT, I'm disappointed there's no friends list support on Linux yet. I wanted to play with my friends the other day, so I had to manually navigate to the server they were in. Not very elegant. Of course, the game is still in development, but this seems like a strange thing to be (PC) platform-dependent.

Testing The Latest Unreal Tournament On Linux
By Ninoslayer, 14 August 2015 at 9:06 pm UTC Likes: 1

Playing very very bad :-P

Introducing the Latest Addition To GOL Cast Hardware: Radeon R7 370 [Updated]
By Samsai, 14 August 2015 at 8:10 pm UTC

I verified the FGLRX version and it's indeed the old driver, not 15.7. That kinda makes the results pointless in that it's not the most recent driver version. However, it appears to be nearly impossible for me to install the 15.7 driver so that it works. I had no luck with the installer and the .deb they provided simply boots me into TTY. I'm not really determined enough to try to figure out what is breaking and where, so I'll just wait for someone to properly package that driver. Maybe the Ubuntu Graphics PPA team will figure something out in near future. If I do get the drivers up and running I'll update the results.

Introducing the Latest Addition To GOL Cast Hardware: Radeon R7 370 [Updated]
By Beamboom, 14 August 2015 at 7:48 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestAs for the Windows comparisons some people are asking for, not sure if that’s a good idea… I don’t care how games run on an operating system I will never use. The information is only useful for developers to see if they could optimize better.

I disagree. It is interesting to see how development goes, and again to get some facts on the matter instead of a bunch of undocumented claims, cause the discussions sure isn't going anywhere any time soon.

We all know the performance is not equal today. It should not surprise anyone. But as times goes it will be real interesting to see if there's relative progress, also it will show us with clarity what games are the best ports.

Introducing the Latest Addition To GOL Cast Hardware: Radeon R7 370 [Updated]
By Beamboom, 14 August 2015 at 7:44 pm UTC

Quoting: liamdaweThere may be news on the Windows front in future, as I have a HDD ready for it now, I just need to see if Samsai's Win7 key works for it.

Awesome!

Please tell if it didn't work (on IRC or wherever) and maybe I can sort out something. Not making any promises, but I do have an idea.

Introducing the Latest Addition To GOL Cast Hardware: Radeon R7 370 [Updated]
By sorath, 14 August 2015 at 7:28 pm UTC

Quoting: SamsaiI'll see what I can do with Talos Principle.

Yes, it's a good idea to test "The Talos Principle" as it has free available Demo via Steam with it's own internal benchmark. The only strange thing of it is the work of it's "hardware autodetection": it set CPU to "Ultra" for my current cpu core i3 550 (3.2 GHz).

As for Catalyst version, as mentioned above by DamonLinuxPL, in Ubuntu version "15.20.1013" corresponds to old "Catalyst 15.3 beta" while "15.20.1046" - to new "Catalyst 15.7". For some reason Ubuntu maintainers use "internal" numbering of release version of FGLRX driver instead of public numbering of Catalyst.

P.S.
I found my old test for Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0 with Catalyst 13.4 for Radeon HD 5850 (other system info on the picture):

The Current Humble Weekly Sale Is A Cracker For Linux
By MayeulC, 14 August 2015 at 7:20 pm UTC

They are good games, indeed. I purchased it, but I would also like to see "bigger ones" in a space bundle. Like Star Ruler 2, Planetary Anihilation, Stellaris (not out yet, I know), or similar.

Fallen: A2P Protocol, A Post-apocalyptic Turn Based Strategy Released For Linux, Some Thoughts
By ricki42, 14 August 2015 at 6:26 pm UTC

It's now officially released and -10%. Has anyone played it recently?

Shadow of Mordor Nvidia Benchmarks On Linux
By Eike, 14 August 2015 at 4:58 pm UTC

Quoting: STiATI've bought it now, and it really runs smooth on my i7 with GTX760.

Just having strange freezes here and there which are pretty annoying, but ok.

CPU governor, maybe?

I wonder if we should have articles about such stuff. What to setup and how...