PCGamingWiki Looks At XCOM and Civ V Linux Ports

In addition to its titular wiki of game quirks, fixes and settings (including Linux games), PCGamingWiki also hosts a series of "PC Report" articles which have for the most part focused on the ways in which games have changed (or not changed) as they've been ported from consoles to desktops.


Recently, PCGamingWiki contributor soeb has been comparing the behaviour and performance of Linux ports, starting with Civilization V (take a look at the Gaming On Linux review and gameplay video), a turn based strategy developed by Firaxis and published by 2K Games. The Linux port of Civilization V was done by Aspyr, a well known Mac porting studio who also ported the game to Mac OS in 2010. The report commends Aspyr for providing a good Linux port, but does highlight some discrepancies, such as the lack of anti-aliasing, GPU texture decoding and Steam Workshop in Linux as well as missing languages.


Interestingly, the report notes that the Mac version of Civilization V recently received GPU texture decoding support, which offers hope that we'll see this added to the Linux version in the future, which should improve performance and texture popping when zooming/panning.


Following on from the Civ V report, soeb has investigated XCOM: Enemy Unknown, another turn based strategy title from Firaxis and 2K Games. This time Feral Interactive (be sure to read the recent Gaming On Linux interview with Feral's Head of Production, Edwin Smith as well as our recent gameplay video and review), another prominent Mac porting studio who also delivered the Mac version last year, is responsible for the Linux port. The report for XCOM: EU highlights that the Linux version reproduces its Windows counterpart faithfully in almost all areas, and also mentions the presence of bugs which can be seen on Windows.


Whilst there is a notable performance drop from the Windows version, the report shows that the game is more than playable on most systems. This is interesting in that it brings attention to aspects which may not negatively affect user experiences but are areas for potential improvement (it's also worth noting that Feral have a patch being worked on that includes some performance enhancements, and newer beta drivers may increase performance on Nvidia hardware, so those improvements are already on the way).


As more Linux gamers move away from dual booting and reduce the presence that Windows has in their lives, reports like this can not only help identify which ports have important issues when a first hand comparison is no longer possible. Also of value is the discernment between bugs which appear in games on other platforms which may otherwise be mistaken for Linux specific bugs (which would change how they should be handled/reported).

Though still in their infancy, these articles represent an important type of high level analysis which identifies discrepancies in a way that promotes platform parity. There are still some rough edges (such as a lack of detail regarding video driver versions), and soeb is accepting feedback on these articles to improve future reports, so please consider sharing your thoughts! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.