Alien: Isolation Officially Confirmed For Linux, Releasing On September 29th

Shit, now i have to buy this thing again !!!
I Allready own the PS3 Version of Alien Isolation.
Love that Game !

Well, while I really dislike Steam, I may consider picking this game up. I consider Alien as one of the best sci-fi (horror) films ever made and from what I've seen on YouTube about this game, it simply looks amazing.

In any case, it's fantastic news that another great title is coming to Linux.

Game over man game over!!!

AMD chip designer leaves

Will be all over this game! In about 2 years when I caught up on all the gaming goodness we getting! :)


Last edited by Slackdog on 22 September 2015 at 7:47 pm UTC

Generic all: Feral write their code to work with nvidia's blobs. They don't care beyond that. In doing so, they write code that has performace issues if you stick to the opengl spec, because of (bad) hacks in nvidia's blobs.
The game will likely run on AMD hardware, using fglrx, but Feral won't support it and won't tweak their code to work properly.
....which is all the fault of Feral. We should be pressuring them to up their game, not give them a free pass for mediocre work. My own opinion anyway.

^ That

The real question is, when is the SteamVR coming out and will this game support it? I know there is a mod for doing it on Windows with the occulus rift, but this game just begs for VR.

Well to me right now the best doing games at linux is just valve, check dota 2 with source 2 on radeon si is pretty amazing.

Generic all: Feral write their code to work with nvidia's blobs. They don't care beyond that. In doing so, they write code that has performace issues if you stick to the opengl spec, because of (bad) hacks in nvidia's blobs.
The game will likely run on AMD hardware, using fglrx, but Feral won't support it and won't tweak their code to work properly.
....which is all the fault of Feral. We should be pressuring them to up their game, not give them a free pass for mediocre work. My own opinion anyway.

I fully agree and I still claim that it is just too easy for those companies to only optimize for Nvidia and not care (much) about AMD and get away with it.

Due to AMD's reputation, everyone and his dog will buy the argument that it is AMD's fault the game does not support their chips - even if there is a way to make it work way better. Ofc, this would require further work and, thus, man power. After all, "look at the small share of AMD users... compared to Nvidia".

It seems like most game ports only focus on Nvidia. Intensive testing of AMD hardware mostly happens afterwards. It should then not surprise that games do not perform well and are buggy.

Yes, it's speculation. Yet, I think it's very close...
Correct me if I'm wrong.

View video on youtube.com
RedLetterMedia Alien Isolation

Rewatching this review now to see if I wanna get this or not sometime.

** potential spoilers.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 23 September 2015 at 3:27 am UTC

Generic all: Feral write their code to work with nvidia's blobs. They don't care beyond that. In doing so, they write code that has performace issues if you stick to the opengl spec, because of (bad) hacks in nvidia's blobs.
The game will likely run on AMD hardware, using fglrx, but Feral won't support it and won't tweak their code to work properly.
....which is all the fault of Feral. We should be pressuring them to up their game, not give them a free pass for mediocre work. My own opinion anyway.

Sure. That's how Alien: Isolation got into AMD's driver release notes. By Feral not working together with them.

Sure. That's how Alien: Isolation got into AMD's driver release notes. By Feral not working together with them.

Having looked through previous ports and talking to Feral directly, they do not code with AMD in mind. They code against nvidia blobs only. They might test later, but read back to where I talk about issues if you stick to the opengl spec. One in particular that I've seen should cause a GPU stall on all implementations, except it apparently does not with nvidia (due to a driver workaround). It then magically is blamed on AMD for being a problem.

You didn't touch my only point. How comes AMD release notes mention Alien: Isolation if Feral would not cooperate actively with AMD? Did AMD hack Feral's servers?

Testing with AMD, and writing things with AMD in mind originally, are entirely different. That cooperation you're talking about is likely testing only - i.e, Feral just hand over the game and ask AMD to take a look. Feral won't change their code to make it perform better with AMD, mostly because, I suspect, it'd require a re-write of their d3d translation layer to actually do things properly.

You've started with "Feral write their code to work with nvidia's blobs. They don't care beyond that.", which I consider proven wrong by AMD's release notes, Feral buying AMD GPUs and saying they are running all AMD drivers.
I consider the rest speculations ("likely", "suspect" ). I'd prefer facts from AMD and/or Feral and I choose to suspect that they are going for full support for AMD as well.


Last edited by Eike on 23 September 2015 at 10:31 am UTC

Generic all: Feral write their code to work with nvidia's blobs. They don't care beyond that. In doing so, they write code that has performace issues if you stick to the opengl spec, because of (bad) hacks in nvidia's blobs.
The game will likely run on AMD hardware, using fglrx, but Feral won't support it and won't tweak their code to work properly.
....which is all the fault of Feral. We should be pressuring them to up their game, not give them a free pass for mediocre work. My own opinion anyway.

Sure. That's how Alien: Isolation got into AMD's driver release notes. By Feral not working together with them.

Having looked through previous ports and talking to Feral directly, they do not code with AMD in mind. They code against nvidia blobs only. They might test later, but read back to where I talk about issues if you stick to the opengl spec. One in particular that I've seen should cause a GPU stall on all implementations, except it apparently does not with nvidia (due to a driver workaround). It then magically is blamed on AMD for being a problem.

This.

Testing with AMD, and writing things with AMD in mind originally, are entirely different. That cooperation you're talking about is likely testing only - i.e, Feral just hand over the game and ask AMD to take a look. Feral won't change their code to make it perform better with AMD, mostly because, I suspect, it'd require a re-write of their d3d translation layer to actually do things properly.

You've started with "Feral write their code to work with nvidia's blobs. They don't care beyond that.", which I consider proven wrong by AMD's release notes, Feral buying AMD GPUs and saying they are running all AMD drivers.
I consider the rest speculations ("likely", "suspect" ). I'd prefer facts from AMD and/or Feral and I choose to suspect that they are going for full support for AMD as well.

C'mon, you got his point, didn't you?

In case they really send AMD, mainly Nvidia optimized code, it's not what I consider "caring about AMD".

It's like providing math exams in a foreign language to pupils and concluding that they're not good at math.

In case they really send AMD, mainly Nvidia optimized code, it's not what I consider "caring about AMD".

If that would be the case, he would obviously be right.

But as long as he finds that "likely" - which is what he said -, there's not much point to it.

I find it likely that Feral seeks to support all Steam Machine hardware in the future, including AMD GPUs, in order to have as many possible customers as they can, and that AMD's release notes, Feral buying AMD GPUs and running all kinds of AMD drivers are signs of them actively pursuing that.


Last edited by Eike on 23 September 2015 at 10:59 am UTC

Feral were the ones who said to me that they don't care beyond it working with the nvidia blobs. I have it in an email. That was for Shadow of Mordor.
As for needing a rewrite of their code, that's based upon talks with them, and looking at the apitrace of some games. They look to be improving things already which work nicer with how OpenGL should work, but a proper rewrite takes time and money. That's where my own suspicions come into play.

You may have more information than me. I never did an API trace on any game (what's the tool to do that?).

My main point is that I don't want one of the two (no, I won't count VP) companies to bring "double A" productions to Linux being blamed based on (understandable!) discontent and some assumptions. I hope they are aiming for full support and I do see some indications for that.

mmh too bad that only NVIDIA is supported, would get that even if its a horror game and im afraid of horror games

I think this situation is not going to change, AMD sales are dangerously declining these last months (less than 20% market this year instead of 50% last year)

People act like it's Nvidia's fault when we should be blaming AMD for not stepping up their game.


Last edited by Mountain Man on 23 September 2015 at 10:03 pm UTC

The real question is, when is the SteamVR coming out and will this game support it? I know there is a mod for doing it on Windows with the occulus rift, but this game just begs for VR.

In which case they'd have to bundle it with a defibrillator.

mmh too bad that only NVIDIA is supported, would get that even if its a horror game and im afraid of horror games

I think this situation is not going to change, AMD sales are dangerously declining these last months (less than 20% market this year instead of 50% last year)

People act like it's fault Nvidia's when we should be blaming AMD for not stepping up their game.

I guess it's not that easy.

Feral were the ones who said to me that they don't care beyond it working with the nvidia blobs. I have it in an email. That was for Shadow of Mordor.

Could you quote their exact words on that? Don't know if you're allowed to...

I think for Feral it's simply a matter of what makes financial sense. If you look at the GOL surveys, more than 70% of folks here use nvidia+prop. drivers. About 17% use AMD GPUs, but that's in turn pretty much evenly split between open-source and prop. driver. So you have <10% on Catalyst. This situation isn't Feral's fault, but they are faced with it and have to make the best of it.
It sucks though, because it's a vicious cycle that leads to a monopoly. It's not just on Linux, nvidia has a similar lead on Windows, and basically for the same reasons: unreliable driver support on AMD.
When the latest nvidia cards came out, new Linux drivers were available day-1, when AMD released Fury, it took several weeks (don't remember exactly, I checked some time after release and couldn't find drivers, checked phoronix, but I don't know how reliable that is).

I'm not happy with this situation either, but Feral's lack of AMD support isn't the cause, it's a symptom. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Feral were the ones who said to me that they don't care beyond it working with the nvidia blobs. I have it in an email. That was for Shadow of Mordor.

Could you quote their exact words on that? Don't know if you're allowed to...

I think for Feral it's simply a matter of what makes financial sense. If you look at the GOL surveys, more than 70% of folks here use nvidia+prop. drivers. About 17% use AMD GPUs, but that's in turn pretty much evenly split between open-source and prop. driver. So you have &lt;10% on Catalyst. This situation isn't Feral's fault, but they are faced with it and have to make the best of it.
It sucks though, because it's a vicious cycle that leads to a monopoly. It's not just on Linux, nvidia has a similar lead on Windows, and basically for the same reasons: unreliable driver support on AMD.
When the latest nvidia cards came out, new Linux drivers were available day-1, when AMD released Fury, it took several weeks (don't remember exactly, I checked some time after release and couldn't find drivers, checked phoronix, but I don't know how reliable that is).

I'm not happy with this situation either, but Feral's lack of AMD support isn't the cause, it's a symptom. I think you're barking up the wrong tree.

Agreed. Aspyr don't officially support AMD with their Borderlands ports - so is that their lack of skills and effort? VP's ports nearly all run badly on my AMD machine, and sometimes with missing textures too - but do we only blame VP? How can these 3 porting companies all have trouble with AMD, and yet all their games work without problems on my Nvidia machine. AMD is the common factor here, so where does the problem really lie?