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Linux finally has a another decent racing game. It’s not a traditional racer by any measure, but still good. Performance is top quality too.

I say “another” because I class Distance as an awesome survival racer, but DiRT Showdown is much closer to a real racing game for us.

Note: I purchased a key to it myself when I saw it was released (by accident), but was later given a key to unlock a beta to help test it. Really liking Virtual Programming’s turnaround in attitude here, I absolutely applaud it.

About the game
Race, crash and hoon your way through a world tour of motorised mayhem in DiRT Showdown! Crowd atmosphere, social gameplay and accessibility are all ramped up in this turbo- injected shot of driving delirium. Smash down the accelerator and earn the adulation of frenzied crowds at hyper-energised events at iconic locations. Trick, speed and smash your way to victory, then do it again.

My thoughts
Port issues - Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first.
Sadly, it’s not perfection yet.

The game will hang sometimes and not recover, VP don’t know exactly what’s causing it and my logs aren’t providing the answers yet. They have tried to fix the bug, but it still happens. Hopefully more reports will help them find why it’s happening. Please do send your logs to them if the game hangs for you. The eon.txt file can be found in the games install folder. It’s a rare bug that’s hard to nail down, so more people reporting it will get it fixed easier.

The game’s audio (OpenALSOFT) is locked to whatever the default current output is. If you plug in a USB headset, the game will not switch to it, or even allow you to switch to it in PulseAudio Volume Control. You need to load the game with the audio device you want set as the current output for it to work. This does not affect normal jack output for headphones. Not a major issue really. You can make it possible to move audio devices by using this file, and simply place it in your home directory under the name “.alsoftrc” and set “allow-moves = true”. Do that at your own peril, I’m not responsible for breakage, but it works for me.

If you have multiple monitors, you can force the game onto a monitor using this:
Quote--eon_force_display=*monitor*

Where *monitor* starts at 0

Gamepads can be a little strange, but my F310 mostly works fine. I say mostly as now and then I need to rotate both sticks around in the menu, and then it's somehow calibrated again.

Performance and gameplay
The first thing to note is performance, which really can’t be far off Windows, as it’s really quite impressive. It’s not really a question of if it’s close to Windows or not though, but the fact that even my old 560ti I dusted off to test was completely playable on High settings. It goes without saying how well it runs on my 970 really. If you’re interested, my previous benchmark article is here.

Note: You will want to turn the announcer audio down, it will only let you go down to 50%, but you will thank me. Most annoying thing to have in a racer, ever.

DiRT Showdown is more about smashing your opponents to put them off than simply racing around. Some game modes are even just all out car smashing battles, and I have been enjoying it rather a lot.

I’m a little torn between which is my favourite mode right now. Elimination is probably one of the most intense, as you are on a timer, and each time it reaches zero the person coming last is knocked out. That really does get your heart going a little bit, and I enjoy it every time.

I think my second favourite mode is probably 8-Ball, as the race has sections that overlap, and crashes will be plenty. There’s nothing like smooth sailing in first place, to be utterly annihilated by an oncoming car from your right, and then you’re last. It’s hilariously frustrating! It’s more amusing to be coming second, and see first places get literally swept off the track by an oncoming racer, and you sail past into first place.

One thing which really annoyed me was the particular event type called “Smash Hunter” that has you driving around a concrete area, and all you’re doing is knocking over coloured blocks. Who in their right mind thought “this is awesome”, I want them fired. Nothing about that game mode is fun, but the rest of the game really is.

My other critique is the choice of colours: why can’t I have a pink car in every class? The limited customization isn’t a major issue, but it would be nice to have and it would make the game feel a bit bigger.

Another annoyance is the score counter in the “Rampage” game-mode, you’re constantly crashing into others to get points, and the counter is constantly going. It sounds like there’s a cricket constantly in the room.

Final thoughts
Honestly, each time I boot it up I completely forget that it’s not native, and I just enjoy it. That’s exactly how it should be, this game has somewhat changed my mind about non-native porting solutions. It will completely change my mind when the issue of it hanging at random points is fixed.

Is it worth the £9.99 asking price? Absolutely. I've already put 13 hours into the beast.

Check out DiRT Showdown on Steam. I look forward to racing with some of you, and annoying you as I give you a little shunt. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Racing, Sports, Steam
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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68 comments
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LinuxGamesTV Aug 18, 2015
...
RE Native/wrapper: this debate is irrelevant, people want to play their games, and many want to give steamos/linux a try. I'm pretty sure that around November they will be checking if their games run on the platform rather than engage in ideological discussions about advantages of one porting technique over another.

No i think not so. Ok the most gamers want play, but if i accept a wrapper tech aka eON and pay for it than i must live with the risks to have all the same bugs, that have eON currently, in many games thats use eON.

Ok in a native port i can get bugs, too. But if the porting house a good house, they find the bugs and fix it, because they use the native linux libs.

But native ports don't must be good ports.

Best exemple for non good ports are Killing floor and Red Orchstra Ostfront. In both games i have a 360° bug with the weapons.

Good ports:

Tropico 5 (native, in house)
Civ V (native, Aspyr)
All Valve titles (native, in house)
All Metro titles (native, in house
Serious Sam 3 BFE (native, in house?!?)
Doom III (and all ports from ID) (native, in house)
All ports by RuneSoft (native, RuneSoft)
Deadfall Adventures (native, in house?!?)
SoM (native, Feral) this port runs great, got a fast fix for AMD Athlon II/Phenom II CPU's, fix for the european keyboardlayout should come this week

Bad ports:

The Witcher 2 ( eON, VP) maybe runs now great, but how long is the port on the marked?
BioShock Infinite (eON, VP) maybe runs now acceptable, but how long is the port on the marked?
Killing Floor (native?!?, in house?!?)
Red Orchestra Ostfront (native?!?, in house?!?)


If i have foget some ports, than i have it in my Lib, but don't play it yet.
All games offer Day One Linux support are be ruled out by the ports, because they are not ports.

If i wan't play a game it should works out of the box, but on Windows we see the same problems.
So it's not only a Linux or Mac problem with good or bad ports.

But Windows ports are all Native ports.

Wine:

If i use wine, maybe the games works or in a next version the game don't works.
With wine it is thus a gamble on a game works or not.

So if i talk about native ports, than i don't have windows files in my game folders.
mrdeathjr Aug 19, 2015
View video on youtube.com

Tested in

Nvidia Drivers 355.00.05
Linux Mint 17.2 Raffaela XFCE Edition 64Bit - Kernel 4.0.0-040000-generic (ubuntu mainline)
CPU: INTEL Pentium G3220 (Haswell 22nm) 3.0Ghz
MEM: 8GB DDR3 1333 (2x4) Patriot value (dual channel: 21.3 gb/s)
GPU: Zotac Nvidia Geforce GT630 (GK208 28nm: 384 Shaders / 8 ROPS) Zone Edition Passive Cooling 2GB DDR3 1800Mhz 64Bit (14.4Gb/s)
BOARD: MSI H81M E33

Runs good (sync to vblank active in nvidia settings panel), hardware settings config file in local folder show various options for tweak

^_^
RCL Aug 19, 2015
But Windows ports are all Native ports.

Not all. Sometimes games are ported from consoles by third party developers. If the engine in question was cross-platform, it may be native (for some definition of native - there might be no major rework to up the resolution or add features that weren't possible on the original platform), however sometimes game in question used a highly platform-specific engine. Then things might get really difficult. If you talk to people in the industry you'll find examples where Windows version contains essentially a software implementation of certain console chips because the engine relied on its particular design and API. Porting houses run really lean and employ just a handful of developers, sometimes one per game; they cannot always afford a several man-year project like rewriting a highly platform-specific engine, it may be easier to add a compatibility layer.

Windows gamers don't care as long as the end result works great; Linux gamers wouldn't care either had that been the case.

Blaming developers for not writing cross-platform code from scratch misses the point; sometimes you don't want to be cross-platform but instead you want to make the most out of a particular platform. It's akin to saying that Stephen King is a shitty writer because he uses English that makes translation of his works to Chinese difficult; had he written in Esperanto it would be easier (if necessary at all) to translate. There are developers who enjoy writing SPU code for PS3 and miss that a lot...
ismaelbonato Aug 19, 2015
Anybody know how much is a Native and eON/wrapper Port?
sobkas Aug 19, 2015
So will it work on r600g?
GenericUser Aug 19, 2015
So will it work on r600g?

The minimum requirements lists OpenGL 4.1 for this game to even run and seeing as the R600G is still stuck on OpenGL 3.3 .I find that it would be very unlikely that you would be able to play this game unless you buy an RadeonSI based card and compile Mesa from git.
Slackdog Aug 22, 2015
Well played it. Can you get a refund cos a game is shit? Horrible camera, dated gfx - I know the game was released a couple of years or so ago but not 1997 surely?

I'll take cream with my humble pie please. ;) Played it some more and some of my comments are still valid but it's a damn good game! Some of the camera angles are still a bit iffy on the default settings but can be changed.

A pair of Hyper X cloud II headphones makes the music a whole lot better!

About as close as Linux gets to burnout revenge atm - can we bribe the devs to make a crash junction mode please!

Oh and Liam - your steam post advice worked! But the 360 pad issues have deffo improved and not had a crash in a while.

:)
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