Just a heads up guys, Magicka 2 looks like it could land on Linux this month. A developer mentioned it's undergoing final bug fixes and performance improvements. Their communication with the community on this has been nothing short of excellent, and it's really nice to see them being so open about the ports development.
On the 25th of September a developer said this (more recent posts below):
QuoteI thought I'd give an update on the progress of the Linux and MacOSX ports. We're currently doing final bug fixes and performance improvements for the release.
The Linux version has been tested on Ubuntu and SteamOS but it should run any system with an X11-compatible windowing system. I believe that the recent Mir and Wayland have this compatibility but we haven't been able to test this yet.
If you are interested in the technology, we use the GLFW library for windowing and OpenAL Soft with ALSA and Pulseaudio support for audio. We build the application with static libraries as much as possible with the hope that the Linux version can run on all kinds of distros and setups.
Sounds like they know their stuff. Their attention to more than just Ubuntu is admirable too.
The developer also shared this screenshot:
They have also worked on gamepad support for us too (source):
QuoteAbout controllers, we currently support Xbox 360/One, PS4, Logitech F310, Nvidia Shield as well as any controller with the same underlying button/axis mapping as an Xbox 360 controller for Linux/MacOSX. We've tried implementing support for the most popular controllers as well as whatever we have lying around in the office.
Unlike Windows there's more controllers supported out-of-the-box, but on the other hand there is no Xbox 360 Controller Emulator for Linux/MacOSX so we have to manually patch in support for new controllers.
The mention of the exact Logitech model I have pleases me greatly.
It looks like it may work on open source drivers, as they have done their own testing involving MESA. In addition they have just changed over to SDL now too, this is from a more recent post:
QuoteWe have done tests using the open source MESA drivers and it has worked well. One computer had an issue because the FXAA shader used some extensions that weren't supported on that setup. If that happens you could disable FXAA. We haven't had any issues with the proprietary Nvidia drivers. Still trying to dig information about the AMD testing.
I'd also like to mention that we have switched from GLFW to SDL because it fixed a few issues. This means we also have better game controller support now. The game will be shipped with a pretty extensive list[github.com] of controller configurations. If you can't find your controller there it is supposedly possible to setup a config from within Steam that you can paste into this file. I should add that this applies to Linux only. The controller config linked also includes MacOSX and Windows configs but currently we are not using SDL for input on those platforms.
This is good, as I find SDL much nicer with gamepads and multiple screens than GLFW.
Check out Magicka 2 on Steam. Please don't buy it before the actual release. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Mountain Man Oct 8, 2015
Quoting: berillionsI hope that the game will support the SteamPadTechnically, every game on Steam will support the Steam Controller.
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slaapliedje Oct 8, 2015
SteamPad sounds like something you'd use to relax your muscles.
Magicka 2 is awesome, loved the first one, bought the second one on the PS4, because I didn't want to buy anything for Windows. May have to buy it again for Linux. That and they changed the controls from the first one (I played it on PC, and really like how it played, on the PS4 they changed how you do combos, it's really weird to get used to. Not sure if it's the same on the PC or not).
What I mean by this is that you have 8 elemental powers you can put into combos to create spells, so you can mix up to 5 of them together for various strength/effects. On the first game, you did this with various buttons, so you could do it really fast. On the second one, you have a sort of wheel that you have an alt button on, which you select with moving the second analog stick in a direction and you can hold the alt button to select the second set of elementals. Definitely hard to do when you have hordes of enemies running toward you.
Magicka 2 is awesome, loved the first one, bought the second one on the PS4, because I didn't want to buy anything for Windows. May have to buy it again for Linux. That and they changed the controls from the first one (I played it on PC, and really like how it played, on the PS4 they changed how you do combos, it's really weird to get used to. Not sure if it's the same on the PC or not).
What I mean by this is that you have 8 elemental powers you can put into combos to create spells, so you can mix up to 5 of them together for various strength/effects. On the first game, you did this with various buttons, so you could do it really fast. On the second one, you have a sort of wheel that you have an alt button on, which you select with moving the second analog stick in a direction and you can hold the alt button to select the second set of elementals. Definitely hard to do when you have hordes of enemies running toward you.
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Quoting: slaapliedjeWhat I mean by this is that you have 8 elemental powers you can put into combos to create spells, so you can mix up to 5 of them together for various strength/effects. On the first game, you did this with various buttons, so you could do it really fast. On the second one, you have a sort of wheel that you have an alt button on, which you select with moving the second analog stick in a direction and you can hold the alt button to select the second set of elementals. Definitely hard to do when you have hordes of enemies running toward you.
That must be a problem of the console version due to the lack of buttons. In the screenshot in the article you can see the PC version has the same controls as Magicka.
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slaapliedje Oct 9, 2015
I wouldn't think so, the PS4 Dual Shock 3 has the same amount of buttons, only real difference between it and the xbox 360 controller is the touchpad and the 'share' button. So I wonder why they changed it.
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Quoting: alexQuoting: Purple Library Guy"We build the application with static libraries as much as possible with the hope that the Linux version can run on all kinds of distros and setups."
This. This is what I've been saying people should do. Compared to all the reams of stuff in a game, particularly video and whatnot, a couple of static libraries nowadays take up negligible space, so building that way is well worth it for the robustness and durability and general independence from the specifics of distros. Impressed by the Magicka 2 people.
Lol.
Thats bad for bug fixing. Now they really need to commit to updating the game all the time. Its bad, just like what Frozenbyte did long time ago they shipped their own versions of system libraries that was old and didnt have the latest fixes. Static linking is even worse sine you cannot remove the private shared objects so that the system ones are used instead.
What dependencies other than the supported Steam runtime do they even need? Its only SDL, OpenGL and PulseAudio you really need and those are better left linked at runtime by the system.
Honestly, it sounds like you don't really understand how software development works, I test a lot of games, and a lot of the time they flat out don't work because they are relying on dependencies you have installed. Bundling them stops that issue, there is also plenty of middleware that cannot simply by installed from a repo or by Steam. The list goes on for a while.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 9 October 2015 at 3:27 pm UTC
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Quoting: liamdaweHonestly, it sounds like you don't really understand how software development works, I test a lot of games, and a lot of the time they flat out don't work because they are relying on dependencies you have installed. Bundling them stops that issue, there is also plenty of middleware that cannot simply by installed from a repo or by Steam. The list goes on for a while.
Sure, but why not providing the library with the game, in the form of a shared object ? That way, if there's a bug in the version shipped with the game which is fixed in a later version, all you have to do is to delete the shipped .so (provided the library is installed on your system). I had to do this multiple times, and I occasionally had to use LD_PRELOAD to get some games to work.
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