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Now that Terraria has been released, and I’ve had some time to put into it, here’s my thoughts on this new Linux game.
It’s been a long time coming, and we’ve been patient, but it’s finally here. It may have issues here and there of course, but It’s great to see it arrive. It was ported using FNA created by Ethan Lee, but Ethan did not work on it.
About the game (Official)
Dig, Fight, Explore, Build: The very world is at your fingertips as you fight for survival, fortune, and glory. Will you delve deep into cavernous expanses in search of treasure and raw materials with which to craft ever-evolving gear, machinery, and aesthetics? Perhaps you will choose instead to seek out ever-greater foes to test your mettle in combat? Maybe you will decide to construct your own city to house the host of mysterious allies you may encounter along your travels?
In the World of Terraria, the choice is yours!
Initial thoughts
Performance
For me, so far it seems to be pretty good. I am on an Nvidia 970 though remember. It did seem sluggish in build 3, but with build 4 it’s a lot smoother that’s for sure. I’m impressed at how quickly they have been improving it. You can see their changelog here.
I tried Terraria a number of years ago, and for some reason I couldn’t get into it. It’s been at least three years since I’ve tried it (back when I dual booted, I’m clean now, honest), so my experience will be totally fresh. Since using Linux my gaming mind has been opened up, and I am no longer attached to games like Battlefield and/or Call of Duty, so I think that’s why my experience has been better.
I have to say, even though I didn’t exactly get what I was doing at the start, I already enjoyed it more than Starbound, and I very much like Starbound.
It’s not much, but I call it home
My first night consisted of me running away from slimes, and barricading myself into a trench I built. I thought it couldn’t get worse than being sat in the dark in a muddy ditch, but then “they” came. I am of course talking about the freaky floating eyeballs:
Zombies are also annoying when paired with floaty eyeballs
I think those floating eyeballs are the bane of my life right now, it’s bad enough fighting off a zombie hoard, and then one of those sneaky devils makes a dash for you—bloody heck. They have been the reason for my death a few times, annoying little buggers.
My first run didn’t last long, as I climbed down into the depths of the first cave, I came across a Tomb Crawler. They seem to just tunnel through anything—including me. I’m going to need a bigger sword…
Eventually I survived the night, gained an achievement and the zombies decided it was time for bed—so off they went. Hilariously what replaced zombies in the morning was a giant slime with a rainbow umbrella, love it. I was sad that I couldn’t pick up the umbrella though.
There seems to be a really nice variation in the creatures of the game, some are hilarious, some are pretty creepy, and apparently it gets more awesome when you start to encounter boss creatures, and they are huge.
The crafting mechanic in Terraria is interesting, but I honestly prefer the way crafting is set out in Starbound. Both games require crafting tables, furnaces and whatever else you need, but you don’t have any categories. It’s just a simple scrollable list to chose items from. It works though, and it was easy enough to get to grips with.
Eventually I was able to craft an iron bow, a helmet and some body armour, Now I feel like I can take on the world.
It’s quite amusing to find my gravestones spread throughout the world, especially with the little messages they have like this:
Terraria is massive, and has a lot to offer for sandbox fans. I have barely touched the surface of what is possible and I’m enjoying it a lot.
Final thoughts: It’s obviously rough in places being a beta, but I thoroughly enjoyed my blast on it and can recommend it happily. It’s easily one game I’m going to repeatedly come back to, and I don’t do that with many games at all.
Find Terraria on Steam. You can find more information about the beta on their official forum. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
It’s been a long time coming, and we’ve been patient, but it’s finally here. It may have issues here and there of course, but It’s great to see it arrive. It was ported using FNA created by Ethan Lee, but Ethan did not work on it.
About the game (Official)
Dig, Fight, Explore, Build: The very world is at your fingertips as you fight for survival, fortune, and glory. Will you delve deep into cavernous expanses in search of treasure and raw materials with which to craft ever-evolving gear, machinery, and aesthetics? Perhaps you will choose instead to seek out ever-greater foes to test your mettle in combat? Maybe you will decide to construct your own city to house the host of mysterious allies you may encounter along your travels?
In the World of Terraria, the choice is yours!
Initial thoughts
Performance
For me, so far it seems to be pretty good. I am on an Nvidia 970 though remember. It did seem sluggish in build 3, but with build 4 it’s a lot smoother that’s for sure. I’m impressed at how quickly they have been improving it. You can see their changelog here.
I tried Terraria a number of years ago, and for some reason I couldn’t get into it. It’s been at least three years since I’ve tried it (back when I dual booted, I’m clean now, honest), so my experience will be totally fresh. Since using Linux my gaming mind has been opened up, and I am no longer attached to games like Battlefield and/or Call of Duty, so I think that’s why my experience has been better.
I have to say, even though I didn’t exactly get what I was doing at the start, I already enjoyed it more than Starbound, and I very much like Starbound.
It’s not much, but I call it home
My first night consisted of me running away from slimes, and barricading myself into a trench I built. I thought it couldn’t get worse than being sat in the dark in a muddy ditch, but then “they” came. I am of course talking about the freaky floating eyeballs:
Zombies are also annoying when paired with floaty eyeballs
I think those floating eyeballs are the bane of my life right now, it’s bad enough fighting off a zombie hoard, and then one of those sneaky devils makes a dash for you—bloody heck. They have been the reason for my death a few times, annoying little buggers.
My first run didn’t last long, as I climbed down into the depths of the first cave, I came across a Tomb Crawler. They seem to just tunnel through anything—including me. I’m going to need a bigger sword…
Eventually I survived the night, gained an achievement and the zombies decided it was time for bed—so off they went. Hilariously what replaced zombies in the morning was a giant slime with a rainbow umbrella, love it. I was sad that I couldn’t pick up the umbrella though.
There seems to be a really nice variation in the creatures of the game, some are hilarious, some are pretty creepy, and apparently it gets more awesome when you start to encounter boss creatures, and they are huge.
The crafting mechanic in Terraria is interesting, but I honestly prefer the way crafting is set out in Starbound. Both games require crafting tables, furnaces and whatever else you need, but you don’t have any categories. It’s just a simple scrollable list to chose items from. It works though, and it was easy enough to get to grips with.
Eventually I was able to craft an iron bow, a helmet and some body armour, Now I feel like I can take on the world.
It’s quite amusing to find my gravestones spread throughout the world, especially with the little messages they have like this:
Terraria is massive, and has a lot to offer for sandbox fans. I have barely touched the surface of what is possible and I’m enjoying it a lot.
Final thoughts: It’s obviously rough in places being a beta, but I thoroughly enjoyed my blast on it and can recommend it happily. It’s easily one game I’m going to repeatedly come back to, and I don’t do that with many games at all.
Find Terraria on Steam. You can find more information about the beta on their official forum. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
1mHfoksd1Z Jul 28, 2015
Awesome game, awesome devs. I am very happy that this game got ported and that it works. I am confident that it won't be long until the Linux (and Mac) version will be out of beta and as stable as the Windows version.
I am also very happy that they are still bringing more content to this game (When 1.2 came out I thought that was the last big update)
I really recommend playing this game with at least 2 other friends, only then you'll feel the real experience and have a lot of fun.
Well I think I can finally stop maintaining my Wine prefix... I only have 3 games installed on it and I don't play them anymore. Torchlight 2 and Terraria were two big reasons I kept it, but both got ported. On the other hand there's Skyrim (but I don't think there's any chance for a port there) so I'll keep the game data and mods around for when I'll want to play it again. About a year ago I ditched Windows for my first real Linux experience, and now I also ditch Wine. I feel so good now xD
Last edited by 1mHfoksd1Z on 28 July 2015 at 8:38 pm UTC
I am also very happy that they are still bringing more content to this game (When 1.2 came out I thought that was the last big update)
I really recommend playing this game with at least 2 other friends, only then you'll feel the real experience and have a lot of fun.
Well I think I can finally stop maintaining my Wine prefix... I only have 3 games installed on it and I don't play them anymore. Torchlight 2 and Terraria were two big reasons I kept it, but both got ported. On the other hand there's Skyrim (but I don't think there's any chance for a port there) so I'll keep the game data and mods around for when I'll want to play it again. About a year ago I ditched Windows for my first real Linux experience, and now I also ditch Wine. I feel so good now xD
Last edited by 1mHfoksd1Z on 28 July 2015 at 8:38 pm UTC
2 Likes, Who?
QuoteAdded -savedirectory parameter to specify your Terraria folder. (By default this is <user directory>/My Games/Terraria)
They don't seem to respect the XDG guidelines (yet) :(
Anyway, I have it in my library, but I couldn't play it yet.
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ElectricPrism Jul 29, 2015
I can confirm that the FPS seem to be capped as we get 60 FPS on both a GTX 970 and a GTX 750 Ti SC.
We've built dungenous and giant Metroid Statues among many other awesome things of variety in our various Terraria Maps. Maybe I can share some screenshots when I copy that world file over.
I think the data wasn't meant to go into ~/My Games/ - and that is infact simply a undesired mistake in the code.
The game seems to crash for clients when I host a server when they enter certain parts of the world probably due to problematic objects that have minor bugs.
Terraria is addictive, especially with friends - you have been warned. :)
We've built dungenous and giant Metroid Statues among many other awesome things of variety in our various Terraria Maps. Maybe I can share some screenshots when I copy that world file over.
I think the data wasn't meant to go into ~/My Games/ - and that is infact simply a undesired mistake in the code.
The game seems to crash for clients when I host a server when they enter certain parts of the world probably due to problematic objects that have minor bugs.
Terraria is addictive, especially with friends - you have been warned. :)
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Quoting: MayeulCQuoteAdded -savedirectory parameter to specify your Terraria folder. (By default this is <user directory>/My Games/Terraria)
They don't seem to respect the XDG guidelines (yet) :(
Anyway, I have it in my library, but I couldn't play it yet.
Sadly, I don't expect them to reconsider this on their own any time soon, unless of course we grab our pitchforks and demand they change the default savedir to one respecting the xdg standards :/
I hate it when I reinstall games on a different computer/installation/partition and have to manually reconfigure everything the way I like it (especially small 2d games I might install on my laptop for holidays etc).
The way I see it changing the save path to a subdir of $XDG_DATA_HOME or sth else is (or should be) done so as for the picky users to not get disturbed over it and I'm totally not going to like having to set this myself manually whether it's done once or a million times.
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Crazy Penguin Jul 29, 2015
Well, to pitchfork one developer wouldn't be enough. Meanwhile I have 300+ Games for Linux on Steam and my Homedir is a bloody mess :/ Some save in My\ Games, others in .local/share, other create their own (Dot-)Directories and so on.
I think thats something which should be discussed with Valve & the Developers, esp. if there is an useful Standard.
On the other hand, it's on my gaming machine, so I'm not really bothered by it. :D
Back to the game: It also runs pretty well on my Nvidia GTX 8800 (9 years old). No problems at all so far.
It's an awesome game and I waited to play the new 1.3 update on Linux, which adds lots of new stuff to game. :)
I think thats something which should be discussed with Valve & the Developers, esp. if there is an useful Standard.
On the other hand, it's on my gaming machine, so I'm not really bothered by it. :D
Back to the game: It also runs pretty well on my Nvidia GTX 8800 (9 years old). No problems at all so far.
It's an awesome game and I waited to play the new 1.3 update on Linux, which adds lots of new stuff to game. :)
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Nice to see more games that I bought before I switched to Linux are going to be appearing in my Steam library. Still going to stick with Crea when it comes to 2D standboxes though, since I'm a lot more invested in that project.
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Quoting: Crazy PenguinWell, to pitchfork one developer wouldn't be enough. Meanwhile I have 300+ Games for Linux on Steam and my Homedir is a bloody mess :/ Some save in My\ Games, others in .local/share, other create their own (Dot-)Directories and so on.
I think thats something which should be discussed with Valve & the Developers, esp. if there is an useful Standard.
On the other hand, it's on my gaming machine, so I'm not really bothered by it. :D
That's the main reason why I'm running steam under a separate user in my main session... Even if valve wanted to strengthen support for xdg or made their own standard they still wouldn't be capable of forcing the devs to support it :/
Judging by the steam greenlight I wouldn't expect them to create any strict rules regarding steamos games or add any other quality requirements for a game to be released under steam.
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ElectricPrism Jul 29, 2015
QuoteWe are working very hard to address all issues with the 1.3 Updates. Please keep reporting any issues that you find. Please report 1.3 Technical Problems (crashes, installation problems) HERE. Please report 1.3 Game Issues and Bugs HERE.
An Open Beta for Mac/Linux has been released on Steam; for more details and bug reporting, please join the Mac/Linux Beta Test Social Group
I would say in the case of the XDG issue - go and report it as a bug - the squeeky wheel gets the oil.
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1mHfoksd1Z Jul 30, 2015
Well, we can just make a ".hidden" file in our home directory and add the line "My Games" there, can't we? It will hide it, visually, in our file manager.
That's what I used to do when I used Wine, and it was fine by me, and I still do it for Terraria and a few other games.
I don't really care where the savegames are placed as long as I won't see them unless I want to, but it would be nice if they were all in the same place... that way I could have also back them up to the cloud using a single symlink.
That's what I used to do when I used Wine, and it was fine by me, and I still do it for Terraria and a few other games.
I don't really care where the savegames are placed as long as I won't see them unless I want to, but it would be nice if they were all in the same place... that way I could have also back them up to the cloud using a single symlink.
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oldrocker99 Jul 30, 2015
Yet Another Windows Game I bought and has now been ported to Linux :D .
Yet Another Linux Game with zero bytes downloaded and "failed to find executable :><: ."
Yet Another Linux Game with zero bytes downloaded and "failed to find executable :><: ."
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