Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: StrangerIt's available to use, and we build with beta support for it, though we default to OpenGL.

That's good to know, thanks! So what they working on then, are there some engine features that can be used only with OpenGL or it's just in the beta state now?

Basically Vulkan is supposed to have close to all features, but slightly slower. The reason we're interested in Vulkan right now is mostly as a stopgap option for AMD users ; and the next Unreal releases should bring performance improvements to make Vulkan a first-class citizen. Ideally, we'd love to use Vulkan on both Windows and Linux !

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: StrangerVulkan is very probably going to be available, especially if this week's beta patch works out. It's probably not going to be as fast as the regular OpenGL implementation yet, though.

So did UE enable Vulkan for Linux builds already? Here they list it as TODO: https://trello.com/c/lzLwtb5P/124-vulkan-for-pc-and-linux [External Link]

It's available to use, and we build with beta support for it, though we default to OpenGL.

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Quoting: scaineRelated - do you have issues with Windows XP and Vista (no longer supported by Microsoft), or differences between Windows 7, 8, and 10?

On Windows, we only support 64-bits versions of 7 and higher. I think we could make Vista work, not that anyone ever asked ; and XP is firmly out of the picture.

For all versions of Windows that we do support, I don't believe we had more than one bug report that was specifically about the operating system itself - one that was solved by updating a Windows component, not the game. Windows is easier to target, if only because the engine we use was always meant for Windows games. Linux gets less attention, it's much more diverse, so it's only natural that we get more issues.

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Thank you Liam, and all of you really :)

Quoting: ShmerlLooks like an interesting game. Did GOG not accept it for their games in development program?

While I wish it was, the game isn't available on GOG right now. I hope that will change when the game has an official release after the Early Access period, but that depends on GOG - they want only the best :)

Quoting: Shmerl

At this moment, we only test on NVIDIA hardware, based on what we currently own. When the game moves to a final release, we'll try to have more testing on AMD hardware ; but hopefully by this point we will have our AMD issues resolved.

This sounds a bit confusing. How can they resolve such issues by that time, if they don't test on AMD?

That isn't well written indeed, so I'll clarify. For now, we've been using our beta channel on Steam as primary testing for AMD hardware, but if this week's upcoming patch still doesn't cut it, we're going to go for some additional hardware. Hence my original answer - we're getting this fixed one way or another, before the game is released.

Long version : it's pretty hard to test a game for Linux. Some AMD GPUs work with the AMDPRO driver (which apparently works well with UE4?) while most modern hardware works only with the open-source Radeon driver ; and we found that different distributions didn't provide the same level of dependencies to the driver (namely, different versions of LLVM were apparently shipped with the same driver). We try to offer multiple options to help players find a working setup - the stable release channel is currently playable on AMD but features a lighting issue ; while the beta channel was meant to provide Vulkan support to workaround OpenGL issues, but has new, different issues.

Quoting: GuestIt is refreshing to see that the game is basically open source. Hope they will support Vulkan on Linux soon. I bought the game as well :-)

Vulkan is very probably going to be available, especially if this week's beta patch works out. It's probably not going to be as fast as the regular OpenGL implementation yet, though.

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We're trying to get on the GOG store.

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Quoting: ttyborgThe source code is available on Github under the "BSD 3-Clause License": https://github.com/arbonagw/HeliumRain [External Link]

Yes it is ! Though it's really that, the source code - it doesn't include the assets. I'm not even sure you could rebuild the game and replace the executable directly. We have a long-term goal of releasing a modding SDK that would allow people to build the game, run the editor, create ships etc. For now the source code is really about sharing with other devs and being transparent on the development.

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GOG support is a common request. I can't promise anything yet, but it's something we're working on and might happen. FWIW, the Steam release is DRM free.

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Hey, dev here ! Glad to see we're getting some love.

Quoting: musojon74Ok it's definitely not bad. Looks quite nice, for me the engine sounds need redoing but it is early access of course. I did a quick trade run as one of the missions required and quite liked it :) And - it's a space game on Linux :)

If you can spare the time, could you elaborate a bit on the engine sound ? Sound design in this game is a bit of a riddle because realistically, you would only hear sounds inside the ships - so engines are meant to be muffled and be more vibration than air sounds. Do you know how they could be better done ?

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Quoting: natis1As someone with way too many hours in X3, I can't wait for this game to come out. Also once the Steam version releases (and I can get my hands on some assets) I'm gonna try to compile it myself for the fun of it because an open source game is so cool in this day and age. (also because I kinda wanna see if it will build successfully on my Raspberry Pi even though I know its specs are too weak to run it)

So wish me luck.

Cool !

We're still working on handling source-code modding for the game. Right now you can very easily build the game, but we don't yet provide the game content - we can't do that for a variety of reasons, including the fact that ~20% of the content is derived from third-party assets. Our plan is to provide a minimal game content with a few sectors, ships, weapons, etc so that modders can actually build the game, play it, modify it, and send us pull requests if they want.

Quoting: Sir_DiealotNeat.Oh, what's the flight model like? I loved the one in B5: I found her

I'll let the author of that part of the game explain it all here :)

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Quoting: peta77Surely look interesting... Will give it a shot...
But regarding realism: Those tons of asteroids... You know that in real space you have to aim very precisely to even find one? There's usually dozens or hundreds of kilometers of empty space between them.. But everyone only remembers the scenes from the Star Wars movies when thinking about asteroid fields, etc. (Yes, I know I'm being a smartass and annoying right now)

Hey, developer here :)

This actually something I find annoying in many movies or games too, because as you point out, you usually don't find asteroids flying in formation. Our lore justification is that asteroids were broken up for mining, resulting in smaller chunks (you actually find mines in these areas). Some other asteroids in the game are much larger and kept intact.

The real reason is that it's a trade-of, as many things in the game, between realism (which we try to keep as much as possible) and interesting things to see while flying.

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