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Natural Selection 2 development was handed to the community a while ago, but some Linux bugs with OpenGL are making the game on Linux crash happy.
QuoteThere is no shotgun specific bugfix, as we need somebody with opengl knowledge. But there have been other critical linux fixes.
Source
QuoteYou probably misunderstood me. Yes there is a big bug in the opengl code, and yes, there is currently nobody with the knowledge and time to fix it. I would not say that its "badly" broken though, its very likely just one error, causing those crashes. The rest of the opengl code seems to work fine.
Source
This bug has been around for a while, and when you use a shotgun the game on Linux will just die. It would be great to see someone with OpenGL technical knowledge step forward and help them fix it.
It's a shame, as the game is pretty fun if you don't encounter that shotgun crash.
It would probably be much easier if they just opened up the code. They have already given code access to the community developers, so even having the code open, but under a restrictive license (if they still wish to protect it) would enable others to at least take a look.
Not saying they shouldn't put it under a restrictive license, but not all developers are open source fans, but in this case it would certainly be more helpful.
Thanks for poking us Artur!
You can check out Natural Selection 2 on Steam. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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My OpenGL knowledge is close to null but (kind of unrelated to the bug problem) I have 2 gift copies of NS2 on Steam if anyone is interested...
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So are these Community devs getting paid to maintain the Linux version?? Maybe a cut of linux sales? Or is Unknown worlds just sitting back reaping the profits while letting others do the work for them?
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Quoting: fedsoMy OpenGL knowledge is close to null but (kind of unrelated to the bug problem) I have 2 gift copies of NS2 on Steam if anyone is interested...
I've been interested in this but have not pulled the trigger due to the known problems, I would love a gift copy. My name on Steam is the same as here.
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I thought by opening it to the community the game became free?!
Although I'm glad paying for it and not having played >10 minutes means I didn't waste money if I want to pick it up again now...
EDIT: I now realise why I dropped it... it kept crashing in the tutorial before I could even do anything! This time around I was about to complete the Marine half of the tutorial after just 2+ crashes! The one's I remember were: 1 as I shot the handgun, I specifically avoided firing the shotgun) and 1 as I pressed "F4" to switch to the alien team.
The first load also took ages and I needed to reload the game sometimes.
Game looks better than I remembered ...
Although I'm glad paying for it and not having played >10 minutes means I didn't waste money if I want to pick it up again now...
EDIT: I now realise why I dropped it... it kept crashing in the tutorial before I could even do anything! This time around I was about to complete the Marine half of the tutorial after just 2+ crashes! The one's I remember were: 1 as I shot the handgun, I specifically avoided firing the shotgun) and 1 as I pressed "F4" to switch to the alien team.
The first load also took ages and I needed to reload the game sometimes.
Game looks better than I remembered ...
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Played over 80 hours, back when I had dual boot. On Linux the performance is... strange. About 3/4 of a year ago it was pretty okayish, but when the community devs took over I couldn't play anymore. First the shaders wouldn't compile, later I got random crashes on the menu, or on the loading screen.
It was a very, very funny and addictive game, but I'm not willing to maintain a Windows partition just for this and Guild Wars 2 :)
It was a very, very funny and addictive game, but I'm not willing to maintain a Windows partition just for this and Guild Wars 2 :)
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hm I hope the issue gets fixed at least when the steambox becomes available.
I am a dev too, but sadly I'm not familiar with openGL/GFX at all. Nevertheless I'd be glad to use it one day on steamos, or at least for now on my current machine.
fedso
If you still have to spare one, thanks - my ID is XrMb2
I am a dev too, but sadly I'm not familiar with openGL/GFX at all. Nevertheless I'd be glad to use it one day on steamos, or at least for now on my current machine.
fedso
If you still have to spare one, thanks - my ID is XrMb2
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This is strange, I just tested the tutorial and had no crash at all while firing the shotgun...
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Well, it's probably a bug invoking Undefined Behaviour, like accessing invalid memory. Which might crash. Or it might not crash, if, for example, by chance the broken pointer points to memory the program controls. While unlikely, it might even do something weird, like give you full health, delete a file or eat your grandmother.
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Help is no longer needed as much. We figured out what was triggering the issue on the LUA side (which is open to game owners) and there should be a fix in the next build. It still would be nice to have OpenGL devs though.
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Thanks to fedso for the game! I thought from the screen shots and video I had seen that they had a pretty good looking game, but I was pleasantly surprised, it's actually a great looking game. Their engine is pretty nice.. game breaking bugs aside of course. It took FOREVER to load the first time, I guess it was compiling shaders since the next run didn't take nearly as long.
EDIT* missed page two of the comments, I see ceribik says the bug was found so that's good!
EDIT* missed page two of the comments, I see ceribik says the bug was found so that's good!
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