People keep asking me to highlight this issue, so I will. There is a growing number of games that have at some point said a Linux port will happen and then we wait and nothing happens.
We have a wiki page setup for a while that is need of some love to keep it up to date, but not many people even realise we have a wiki so an article to highlight some is a good idea.
I'm only going to highlight a few, as to be honest, there's a lot and the wiki page doesn't even cover half of them right now.
This is the status of a few choice picks and what we currently know about them.
The one that is really getting on my nerves personally at the moment is Carmageddon: Reincarnation. It released into Early Access on March 27th 2014, over two years later the developer is still claiming we will one day get some sort of announcement. Their level of commitment to Linux has been a bit shocking.
My next annoyance is of course The Witcher 3. It was announced by a big homepage image on Steam and then included in the big SteamOS sale. Over two years since the initial image on Steam and they still aren't confirming anything. My emails go completely unanswered too. We have a forum post that has been going for a while talking about it, where some people do seem to get replies. I fully believe they at one point intended to, and they changed their minds on it. Considering the developers never publicly confirmed it, I'm leaning more towards Valve acting without gaining absolute certainty on the port as they wanted another big name for SteamOS.
Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams is another annoying one. It was promised in Humble Indie Bundle 11, then it was due in 2015. They then took the port in-house and most recently (April 2016) they said they still want to do it. Looks like it just went to the bottom of their list when they took it back for themselves.
Mad Max is another odd tale that was announced in a Press Release in March 2015, but since then we have heard nothing. However, it February this year it was spotted on SteamDB and still in the last week continues to show progress according to the SteamDB page.
Total War: Warhammer was confirmed to be coming to Linux in April of last year, as it listed SteamOS as an official platform on the official website. Then in March of this year it was stated Linux was still a platform, but probably not at the same time as the others. I've seen lots of posts asking for a status update over the last few months, but no developer has been replying.
An "honourable" mention to the always delayed Rocket League. It has blown way past all the previous release windows and still no sign of it. Most recently, 16 days ago (30th of June 2016) a developer noted it was still nearing a release window.
Edit, Rocket League have since sent us a message on twitter
@gamingonlinux For sure. Saw your article. We're working on getting it optimized and will send out an update when we have a firm date.
— Rocket League (@RocketLeague) July 19, 2016
It's always frustrating when developers just don't deliver, but always remember to be respectful. You are talking to humans after all and being rude is a good way to get ignored. There was a game a while ago that was delayed due to abuse/trolling towards the porter, so don't be a fool about it. Being frustrated is only natural, but you need to think about how you come across, get your wording right before posting a message to a developer.
I say it time and time again: If you genuinely care about playing games on Linux and want to support Linux gaming, never buy a game until the Linux port is actually out and confirmed to be playable.
I personally don't fund and will never fund anything on services like Kickstarter unless they have a working Linux build and even then I remain sceptical. It would have to be truly amazing to get my support.
Feel free to comment about others, and remember to help keep the wiki page updated. Keeping that updated and letting others know that page exists should help keep track of this growing port-mess we have.
- Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams
- Gas Guzzlers Extreme
- Evolve
- Elite: Dangerous
- Darksiders and Darksiders 2
But I'm afraid none of these are going to happen anymore. Too bad, so sad.
I'm still pissed about Project Cars too.
That one probably deserves the top spot because it was the original developer that would support it. First as same day release, then with some delay. Now it's a year further without a single word.
I'm glad I have absolutely no desire to pre-order things.
lucifertdark Jul 18, 2016
leillo1975 Jul 18, 2016
I'm also waiting for Mad Max but I have the feeling (perhaps the hope) that this game will be released soon.
Since this has the markings of a Feral port, it will be Feral soon. :D I imagine this one will be a little harder to do because it requires good performance and probably needs to be in the same optimisation level as Shadow of Mordor.
The thing that was most annoying about this one is that it was supposed to be released for Linux. Then it was not going to happen. And then it turned out there was stuff happening in Steam without mention. Is it so hard to say up front that it will come, but (much) later?
I asked about Linux under official YouTube video of SPAZ2 few days ago. They confirmed but said something like: "when the PC version calmes down a little". I happily educated them about what PC means but they removed my comment like I was rude or something... not that I wasn't, it freaking annoys me when PR people misuse technical terms.
While it is correct, you'll not make new Linux enthusiasts (or even supporters) bitching about this.
Ordinary
I mean if you are developer (so a bit of a computer geek) shouldn't Linux be some sort of a "Tweakers Paradise" to get your hands on at least once in your life?
But no, sometimes it looks like my 60+ yo mom knows more about Linux than someone who uses the PC daily as a full time job..
I never got burned mainly because I only buy heavily discounted stuff or bundles, but it's a shame for people who bought a game expecting a Linux port who still has to come.
I guess we will see more AAA port with the advancing of Linux as a "known" Window$ alternative (it is already an alternative but people don't know of its existence).
Also be loud and let devs/people hear our voice in various forums is the way to assure us more ports :)
Right now Unity's latest releases have been causing all sorts of grief to the Linux 64bit Shroud of the Avatar clientI keep reading that in their updates, but I still haven't managed to get any information nor bug reports...
but because they've been slow to address the issue on the Linux side of things the same issues have been appearing on Windowswat - if they have the same issues on Windows and Linux, then they're not issues with Linux support...
I don't know about you guys but I'm always extremely surprised (in a bad way) when I read about developers "not having a Linux Machine"Well, yes and no. Linux gives users a ton of freedom in terms of configuration, tweaking, streamlining; and developers a ton of freedom in terms of being able to read/modify/share source code for basically everything from bootloader to application level. (Context: I've been using Linux personally and doing professional software development (for Linux and other platforms) for coming up on 20 years.)
[...]
I mean if you are developer (so a bit of a computer geek) shouldn't Linux be some sort of a "Tweakers Paradise" to get your hands on at least once in your life?
However, Microsoft has been very careful to create and maintain a very friendly and attractive environment for application and game developers, in terms of tools, diagnostics, etc. For example, there's no C++ IDE that's available for Linux that even comes close to competing with Visual Studio in terms of functionality and usability - the closest ones of which I'm aware are Jetbrains's CLion(which I'm currently using all day, every day)[non-FOSS] and maybe Eclipse CDT[FOSS], and they both have a long way to go. Official SDKs for all current consoles are Windows-only, as far as I know.
Graphical debugging tools, even for OpenGL, barely exist outside of Windows. (I've tried to use the ones from both Nvidia and AMD to debug real-life problems - in my experience, they were buggy and barely functional in the best conditions.) Maybe this will change with Vulkan, but signs aren't promising so far - although I have renewed hope for Renderdoc since Valve started contracting its author.
We have a lot of great low-level tools on Linux: valgrind, gprof, strace, gdb - but it's a hard sell to somebody who's used to having a lot of that functionality right there when s/he hits the play button.
(All of the above is just my opinion/experience, your mileage may vary, etc.)
Mohandevir Jul 18, 2016
Valve giving up on SteamVR for SteamOS and pretty much giving up on SteamOS, at least for now, sure does seem like they decided to not power through and fix/try again after a poorly received Steam Machine release.
Just trying to put things together and this is just speculation, but looking at AMD's recent rate of development on Linux with their AMDGPU-Pro (and/or) Opensource driver and considering the fact that their new apu's are reported to have performances int the range of R9-285, R9-290 gpus (can't find the source where I read this)... I'm beginning to think that it might be the missing piece of the puzzle for another Steam Machine offensive.
What I mean is that you can't have a viable price bracket with Intel CPU + Nvidia GPU or sufficient performances with Intel integrated graphics. I'm talking about low end Steam Machines, obviously, but if you can get an APU for 200$ that does both...
But that is just speculation and AMD has still to deliver what is advertised.
Edit: Can't find the article where the comparison was mentionned, but still, here are examples:
http://wccftech.com/amd-x86-zen-based-highperformance-apu-detailed-rumored-feature-16-cores-16-gb-hbm-memory-greenland-igpu-ddr4-memory-support/
http://wccftech.com/xbox-one-may-be-getting-a-new-apu-based-on-amds-polaris-architecture/
or
http://www.kitguru.net/components/apu-components/matthew-wilson/amds-zen-apu-rumoured-to-launch-in-2017-with-polaris-gpu/
Last edited by Mohandevir on 18 July 2016 at 1:30 pm UTC
I don't know about you guys but I'm always extremely surprised (in a bad way) when I read about developers "not having a Linux Machine" or acting this way whenever linux is mentioned:
I mean if you are developer (so a bit of a computer geek) shouldn't Linux be some sort of a "Tweakers Paradise" to get your hands on at least once in your life?
But no, sometimes it looks like my 60+ yo mom knows more about Linux than someone who uses the PC daily as a full time job..
I never got burned mainly because I only buy heavily discounted stuff or bundles, but it's a shame for people who bought a game expecting a Linux port who still has to come.
I guess we will see more AAA port with the advancing of Linux as a "known" Window$ alternative (it is already an alternative but people don't know of its existence).
Also be loud and let devs/people hear our voice in various forums is the way to assure us more ports :)
Fulltime programmer myself and there are way more geeky paradises I try to evade then fully explore. Luckily, half of my job is done on a linux machine, so I can somewhat profit of my hobby that used to be way more entertaining and time consuming when I was still a student - that's life.
A lot of developers in all categories from banking over engineering to gaming just try to master the things they do as good as they can and try to have an analoge life when work's done. I call that healthy and wise.
walther von stolzing Jul 18, 2016
it freaking annoys me when PR people misuse technical terms.I blame Apple's old "I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC" television adverts. I'm sure they were just trying to call out Windows(tm) directly, but it sucks. Macs are a type of PC too.
Don't forget Microsoft's own run of ads around the time Windows 8 came out (soon after Apple discontinued their 'I'm a Mac...' ads), in which they were trying ardently to establish the notion that 'PC' is synonymous with 'anything that runs windows' (tablets and phones[haha] included).
The other day I was trying to report a bug about Unity games preventing monitors to enter sleep mode but couldn’t find a way to do so.Usually that kind of report should go through the game developers (for any engine), because:
* then they know you (and other people) are experiencing the bug
* they can potentially provide a workaround
* it's often a game bug and not an engine bug
* if it is an engine bug, they can gather data on which of their players are experiencing the bug and forward that to the engine team
Sometimes this doesn't work - maybe the game developers are unresponsive, or maybe there's an engine behavior that affects a lot of people across different games, but not a lot of people for any single game. In that case (for Unity), you can post in the community forum or mail me directly.
Spoiler, click me
The other day I was trying to report a bug about Unity games preventing monitors to enter sleep mode
Huh, I thought that's actually a feature to disable screensaver and monitor sleep mode while the game is running? SDL (both 1.2 and 2.x) do that too.
Because while mouse and keyboard input keep them from triggering, gamepad input usually does not. So if the game doesn't disable them, you either have to disable them yourself manually or have your screen go to sleep every 10 minutes.
I fear we eventually will have to add Star Citizen to this list too :(
The closest thing I heard them actually say about supporting anything other than Windows was that they'd look at it when Vulkan was out and that they definitely had no intention of doing OpenGL. I suppose their CryEngine fork is too modified to simply add the Linux stuff from CryTek.
GustyGhost Jul 18, 2016
I fear we eventually will have to add Star Citizen to this list too :(
There are videos with Ben Lesnick reporting confidently that "Linux will be on or near Windows release" and I can't help but smirk knowing that without even a Linux demo build today, there is no way they will meet a day one launch.
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