XCOM: Enemy Unknown Released For Linux

This doesn't seem like a very good port to me... It's stuttering heavily on cutscenes and crashes to desktop when I try to build a facility. Also there is a few seconds of delay between the sound and the video when playing the cutscene at the beginning of a mission. Gameplay during missions is otherwise fine. This is all on archlinux.

The requirements for this game are much higher than the requirements on windows, for some strange reason. I didn't even bother to scroll down to the linux section since the windows section asked for an 8 year old graphics card (geforce 8600), a 2 Ghz processor and 2 Gigs of RAM. A game with these requirements basically runs on everything. Turns out the linux version requires at least a GTX 6-- series card and 4 Gigs of RAM. Apparently my GTX 275 is not supported. This is very puzzling. Natural Selection 2 is a far more beautiful and graphically demanding game, yet it runs flawlessly on this computer. The Civ 5 port is also totally fine for me. This game doesn't look like it's been very well optimized for linux.

Had to make an account to make this warning: make sure you check the linux requirements section, they are much higher than on windows.

Hey all. Just discovered something regarding performance. I'm running Manjaro (Arch-based) with KDE, and with or without compositing the performance is terrible. However, if I switch the window-manager to openbox with "openbox --replace" it improves a lot, even on High settings.

Quoting: rustybroomhandleI'm running Manjaro (Arch-based) with KDE, and with or without compositing the performance is terrible. However, if I switch the window-manager to openbox with "openbox --replace" it improves a lot, even on High settings.

This made me think: why doesn't SteamOS run over openbox instead of GNOME? Do they have plans to use it's graphical interface or something?

Quoting: wleoncioThis made me think: why doesn't SteamOS run over openbox instead of GNOME? Do they have plans to use it's graphical interface or something?

IIRC, the GNOME session is completely separate and Steam in Big Picture mode is started without it, with its own compositor (not sure it's used as a WM).

Quoting: rustybroomhandleHey all. Just discovered something regarding performance. I'm running Manjaro (Arch-based) with KDE, and with or without compositing the performance is terrible. However, if I switch the window-manager to openbox with "openbox --replace" it improves a lot, even on High settings.

This is very good info. I would like than someone else confirm it too. I thought the desktop environment (or whatever retated to it) does not affect the performance.

Gave it a try again with the Oibaf PPA. Had to remove libgcc from the Steam runtime (32 and 64 bit, as XCOM is 64 bit only − see there for details: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/3280). While there is still a bit of stuttering, it works really better with Mesa 10.3.0 from the PPA.

Quoting: edoI thought the desktop environment (or whatever retated to it) does not affect the performance.

I believe the culprit is the compositor. In order to play "Sir/Madam, You Are Being Hunted" I also have to run openbox, but for a different reason - mouse issues.

Back to my issues: I just got a pretty nasty problem with Mesa 10.3. When in game, the game kind of froze, my monitor displayed an error message saying "no signal", back to the game, back to "no signal", etc. while sound was kindof hacked. Could go to a tty, the machine was completely stuck, had to do a hard reset. So back to Mesa from the Ubuntu repos. Will probably try Catalyst.

Sadly it is 64-bit only on Linux for no real obvious reason. I just found out myself when trying to locate the binary in ~/.steam/SteamApps/ and start it manually. The customer support was completely overstrained. I sent them all the necessary system information, but just got suggestions like restart your computer and reinstall Steam which of course did not help at all.

Quoting: MilaniumSadly it is 64-bit only on Linux for no real obvious reason.

Well, maybe it's because 64 bit distros are well implemented, that 64 bit has been "the future" for quite some time now and that they don't want to manage/support two different binaries.

Using a 32 bit distro has no real advantages nowadays, unless you have an old computer that can't handle a 64 bit one. But in that case, I'm not sure it would be powerful enough to run XCOM if it was available as a 32 bit version.

Kinda late to the party but I thought I would answer the questions posed just in case people are subscribed and hadn't gotten answers.

Quoting: MilaniumSadly it is 64-bit only on Linux for no real obvious reason. I just found out myself when trying to locate the binary in ~/.steam/SteamApps/ and start it manually. The customer support was completely overstrained. I sent them all the necessary system information, but just got suggestions like restart your computer and reinstall Steam which of course did not help at all.

Yes, sorry during the first few days we were looking for bugs and we assumed people would have checked their hardware against the Linux min spec. Since then we have hardened the game launching scripts so users should be warned on launch that they are on 32bit and it is not supported. Sorry about that!

Quoting: SkarjakThis doesn't seem like a very good port to me... It's stuttering heavily on cutscenes and crashes to desktop when I try to build a facility. Also there is a few seconds of delay between the sound and the video when playing the cutscene at the beginning of a mission. Gameplay during missions is otherwise fine. This is all on archlinux.

Your hardware is under spec and the drivers you have installed have some very critical bugs, if you upgrade to the 340 or later series of Nvidia drivers the bug is fixed and you will get high performance. We also have released a patch with further improves video decoding on lower powered machines.

Quoting: leillo1975I can't play Enemy Within. If I push the button in the initial selector, it shows me the Xcom EW popup, but nothing happens

Check you own Enemy Within, some early users could sometimes get the EW option even if they down't own the game. We fixed this in the patch but the reason you could not play was likely because you didn't own it :)

Quoting: edgleyEnemy Unkown works fine for me -- Enemy Within however, seems to segfault.

It's late and I've got a lot of other things to do at the moment though, so I haven't looked in to it.

Pretty sure this was caused by a network VPN issue that we fixed in the patch. IT could be avoided by disabling your VPN in the original release.

Quoting: fedsowierd requirements, an AMD HD6450 matches the recommended requirements but an HD5870 is not even up to the minimum requirements... anyone has tried to run the game on a system with low/medium end graphic cards? or on FOSS drivers?

If you can run the latest AMD drivers then you should be OK (if under spec) the FOSS drivers however have a number of issues (and are unsupported) however we have offered assistance to the FOSS team and made a few FOSS specific alterations to XCOM in the patch to help with a few stability issues.

Quoting: wolfyrionI have downloaded and started playing the first mission today , I had some random crashes and freezes ... :(

Make sure you have the latest closed source drivers installed sounds like you have an Nvidia card running older drovers upgrading to the 340 drivers should help. The other possibility would be network setup the latest patch has a load of extra fixes to deal with VPN connections to make the game more stable.

Quoting: edoIts a shame than gaming in Linux still sucks. The r600 driver is still not good enough. Luckily I have windows too.

It should be fine as long as you use the latest closed source drivers.

Any issues make sure you drop our Support an email and we can investigate. Happy gaming everyone!

Edwin

Quoting: GuestI normally don't respond to such things, and this is meant only as an observation from an engineer's perspective, but it's highly likely that under spec hardware and drivers are not the only causes of the cutscene problems.

Thanks for your feedback.

The crash the user mentioned is caused solely by under the minimum specification hardware running older drivers. The only example of that crash on the hardware he quoted is due to drivers. As I mentioned the performance in the cutscenes (not the crash) was improved in the patch and was mentioned as such in the patch notes, however the extreme example the user was seeing is primarily caused by under min spec hardware not having enough cores or threads to decode video quick enough so it is much more apparent on under powered hardware. On our supported hardware you would see a much less extreme example.

As you suspected and we mentioned in the patch notes we moved some things around to improve the decoding as part of an overall attempt to get better frame rates for all machines in cutscenes.

Quoting: GuestI am aware you probably didn't mean it that way, and it's a good move posting info in here (I really, really want such thing to continue), it's just that I personally always have warning bells going off whenever someone says "hardware is under spec".

I only mention under spec / unsupported hardware and software when the most likely (or usually only) contributing factor to the issue is that they are running on systems that have not been tested or been supported. When someone says the game runs really badly on my machine it looks bad for everyone reading, I want to make sure that while we help the user we also make sure other readers realise that the reason for the issue is due to the game being run on hardware and/or software that was not tested against and was not on our supported list. If we didn't do this then the idea of supported systems would be pointless :)

We never would want to deny bugs or misinform people as you can see we have been quite active in the community about any issues people see. We also want to inform users about the supported specification and whether an issue is a bug that all users could see (like a few issues we had with OpenVPN connections) or something specific to an unsupported setup or out of date drivers for example like the issue this user was seeing.

The issue in this case was caused by a combination of older unsupported Nvidia hardware and older buggy graphics drivers combining to cause a crash and exacerbate the cut scene performance. I wanted to offer a solution but also make sure readers on the thread knew the reason for the crash so they would not have a bad impression of the port thinking we left in a 100% crash on level 1 on supported systems!

Quoting: GuestBut you mentioned that lower powered machines can get improvements, which indicates internally you managed to fix some issues.

We always look to gain more speed and performance and by doing so for supported hardware it means older unsupported hardware that is under the minimum specification for the game will also get the some benefits as well. However the main issue mentioned the crashing is caused by the combination of unsupported hardware and older buggy graphics drivers.

The upside to all of this is upgrading the drivers fixes the crash and the performance tweaks we did to improve the minor stutter on the lower end supported hardware will make a difference for everyone especially people with lower powered machines so everyone is a winner. It even improves the experience for hardware and software that we don't support officially which is a double win :)

Quoting: GuestCheers for listening to the community and fixing problems, and again cheers for reaching out and posting here!

Happy to help and thank you for offering your thoughts :)

Quoting: GuestI'm just going to shortcut and say: agreed with all, and thankyou again for the good and comprehensive reply, it really is appreciated!

Likewise, posts like yours reinforce to us how the community been overwhelmingly helpful and thoughtful. It's not so much the "Great port" posts (they are great by the way) but the thoughtful posts explaining and suggesting what we can do even better in the future or exactly how some side effect happens.

It's been a great ride so far on XCOM and we're looking forward to the next ones :)

Edwin
feral Interactive