Total War: WARHAMMER is still coming to Linux, being ported by Feral Interactive

@ajgp
Perfectly clean, but i5 4670k vs. Phenom II X4 makes huge difference - in my case between playable/unplayable.

Talk to AMD about their shitty drivers. That's not Feral's fault. Anybody who is serious about Linux gaming needs to get an Nvidia card.

FTFY


Last edited by on 4 August 2016 at 3:30 pm UTC

Anybody who is serious about Linux gaming needs to get an Nvidia card.

I don't think that's true. First of all, with your consumer logic we'd all be on Windows (and probably still using IE 7).

It is true that you had more fun the last several years with a Nvidia card. But to **get** one now might be a very wrong choice.

AMD's Linux problems were on the software side (not even necessarily on AMD's software). With Vulkan, Nvidia's problems will be on the hardware architecture side.

As a serious Linux gamer, I wish I had bought a Nvidia card years ago instead of AMD, but getting one now? It doesn't look like that's going to happen, meaning Feral ports are simply no option for me, no matter whose fault it really is.


Last edited by Caldazar on 4 August 2016 at 3:55 pm UTC

It doesn't look like it, meaning Feral ports are simply no option for me, no matter whose fault it really is.

A large amount of Feral games support Linux AMD, the ones that don't have official support render using the latest Mesa git although official support will depend on these features entering a stable release so end users can easily install them.

For some reason people think all Feral games don't support AMD when nothing could be further from the truth. I posted more details about what works on AMD and what drivers are needed a few comments ago if you want more details.


Last edited by edddeduck_feral on 4 August 2016 at 4:23 pm UTC

@ajgp
Perfectly clean, but i5 4670k vs. Phenom II X4 makes huge difference - in my case between playable/unplayable.

True, I do have a dual boot though I cant remember the last time I logged in except for work reasons. And I would agree as nice as the 955 is (i had one in my last build) the i5 is a marked upgrade so I definately would expect that i get better milage from my setup, which definately helps.

the ones that don't have official support render using the latest Mesa git

Nice to hear. I don't care much about official support. As long as I can make it work, it's fine.

[quote=edddeduckferal]

For some reason people think all Feral games don't support AMD when nothing could be further from the truth.

Brand image honestly. It's hard to reverse the first impression.
I bothered to look up the system requirement for the first couple of games and after that it was [Feral == "AMD and Intel graphics cards are not currently supported"].

Anyhow, glad to see the situation improved. With my new graphics card Tomb Raider will be one of the first games I'm going to try. We'll see how that works out.


Last edited by Caldazar on 4 August 2016 at 5:49 pm UTC

Looking foreward to adding it to the collection.

One question remains though:
Will we get full cross OS multiplayer support this time (meaning mainly with that OS named after a glass filled opening in a wall)?


Last edited by Schattenspiegel on 4 August 2016 at 5:57 pm UTC

Here is a list of our games and their status on AMD graphics cards.

Hi Edwin,

Thanks a lot for your lengthy post! I hope the discussion didn't become too hot for you, things quickly heat up. Please see criticism as a good thing, as an ingredient to make things better. And it wouldn't be worth having this discussion if the games wouldn't be any good, so you are doing a good job in this regard.

It is a also a very good thing that you make your games work with the open source drivers. Because open source drivers are installed by Linux distributions by default, this improves the out-of-the-box Linux experience. On the other hand, as I explained in this thread, there are major points with the open source drivers, making 'just use the open source driver' not a practical solution in many situations.

Now to your list:

Officially Supported
===============
XCOM 1 - Supported on launch with Catalyst. Known driver issue on some AMD cards (r600?) using Mesa.
Empire Total War - Supported on launch with Catalyst. (Works using Mesa 11.2)
Medieval Total War - Officially supported with Mesa
Tomb Raider - Officially supported with Mesa 11.2
Life Is Strange - Officially supported with Mesa 11.2

Runs (unsupported) on latest stable Mesa
===============================
GRID Autosport - Works using 11.2 but not officially supported as Mesa was missing features/had issues on launch.
XCOM 2 - Works using 11.2 but not officially supported as Mesa was missing features/had issues on launch.
Company Of Heroes 2 - Works using 11.2 but not officially supported as Mesa was missing features/had issues on launch.

For these games we plan on announcing official support using Mesa once we can confirm all the issues have been resolved and we are happy with the quality of the games on AMD hardware.

Runs (unsupported) on latest git Mesa
============================
Shadow Of Mordor - Works using 12.1git but not officially supported as Mesa isn't stable yet.
Alien Isolation - Works using 12.1git but not officially supported as Mesa isn't stable yet.
F1 2015 - Works using 12.1git but not officially supported as Mesa isn't stable yet.

The situation is not as optimistic as you describe here, exactly because the difference between VLIW/Terascale and GCN cards. I.e. r600g versus radeonsi. As pointed out, there is a big difference in driver quality between R600g and Radeonsi. I'm quite confident that of the above list, few games work fine with r600g. Of course the quick & dirty solution is to remove VLIW cards from the official list of supported cards in the system requirements, as you do. The end result is that there is big mountain of cards that do have the graphics performance to run these games and are not supported.

So what if you have a new GCN card? Well, RadeonSI is great, being worked on and gets even better. If you have the luxury to have installed a bleeding edge Linux distribution, life is good if you work with the Mesa drivers. The fun ends if you want to use Vulkan or OpenCL, because then you install GPU PRO and you are suddenly in the same situation as owners of VLIW cards: Feral games stop working. A more practical issue is if you don't run a bleeding edge Linux distirbution and do not have the latest Mesa. Solvable, but annoying nevertheless.

Let's return to the question "does Feral support AMD"? I think the answer can only be "partially". Because a big pile of otherwise suitable cards are unsupported, you need to refrain from using Vulkan and/or OpenCL, and you need a bleeding edge Meda installation.

I must state I'm still puzzled by the "why" of this all. The list of games that doesn't work with Catalyst or GPU-PRO is really impressive. I'm sure there are bugs in those drivers and I have read other developers complain about AMD bugs. Still, no other developer managed to release such an impressive list of games that has issues with Catalyst and/or GPU-PRO.

We provide builds and log issues with drivers for all our close source vendor partners, we also log public viewable bugs against the open source Mesa drivers this includes making sure they have steam keys etc. Every game we port to Mac/Linux we'll log a handful of graphics driver bugs across all the vendors.

For example here is an issue we found with CoH2 and Mesa that we logged and provided Steam keys to help get implemented. https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94835

Here is a patch one of our developers submitted to Mesa to fix a bug we uncovered during development of our first ever Linux game (XCOM 1) - https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79115

Those are a couple of examples that are on the public Mesa drivers however similar bugs are logged and fixed across all the different closed source drivers in a similar manner. Supporting different cards and drivers is not always easy but we always aim to support as many drivers and cards as feasible as it makes sense as the more hardware we support the more users can play our games.

Again, a really good job that do you this!

We understand if someone happens to have hardware that missed the supported list for some reason they'll be upset but I hope the above illustrates we do put a lot of effort into supporting as much as we can and that this is a constant ongoing progress.

Hmmmm.... It is more than just personal issues with games. I can accept that I need to buy new hardware or re-install my computer, no problem with that, it happens to anyone once in a while that his hardware or software is outdated. But what motivates me just as much to speak out on this is the simple observation that this bad situation is really hurting Linux gaming in general.

If gamers, if they bought a game, need to upgrade to bleeding edge software, switch between two different drivers on a per-game bases, or cannot use hardware at all that is perfectly reasonable to use, this really hurts Linux gaming and will help keeping our market share in the Steam Hardware Survey under 1% for a while. Like it or not, AMD is an important player in the market.

And then there is the topic of Steam Machines. What if Dell release an AMD based Steam Machine during the next months as they announced. Non-experience Linux users buing Feral games that won't work out-of-the-box. I sincerely hope this matter can be resolved before that happens. Even if only partially it would already help a lot.

Right now we're focusing on Mesa as the primary driver on AMD but we are also following the AMDGPUPRO drivers as they mature. One of the reasons for this is based on our usage information more people use Mesa on AMD than proprietary drivers. Here is the latest Gaming on Linux survey, you can view the details in the link at the top of this page.

That's good, but get sometimes the feeling that excuses are being searched for a reason why it is not supported. Catalyst not supported because it is "abandoned" and GPU-PRO not supported because it is beta. The last Catalyst driver was released in november as is the stable version of the driver. AMD has indeed announced that they do not intend to release more Catalyst drivers, but that doesn't mean Catalyst is suddently unusable. GPU-PRO is simply the next version of the driver. The kernel part was replaced by an open source driver, and good so, because the kernel part of Catalyst was major pain, OpenGL wise, not much has changed between Catalyst and GPU-PRO. Therefore I don't see what exactly makes GPU-PRO so special in this regard and why it is necessary until it matures.

At least... unless I buy the story that Catalyst totally unuasble, a big bug nest and AMD is going to fix them all before GPU-PRO is stable. But I highly doubt the situation is this black and white.


Last edited by dmantione on 4 August 2016 at 6:25 pm UTC

Anybody who is serious about Linux gaming needs to get an Nvidia card.

I don't think that's true. First of all, with your consumer logic we'd all be on Windows (and probably still using IE 7).

"Consumer logic"? I'm not sure what you mean by that. It's just a fact that Nvidia's Linux drivers are better than AMD's and have been for a long time now. For that matter, Nvidia's Windows drivers are better than AMD's. It has nothing to do with "consumerism" or brand loyalty. I go with what works.

To be fair NVIDIA has its share of issues. I've had problems with thermal problems and graphical glitches on NVIDIA for years. But having said that. The applications at least mostly fire up and run. On AMD/ATi there has never been that level of success. As a result I still buy NVIDIA as first choice and avoid AMD/ATi. Even Intel has gotten noticeably better whilst from a user perspective AMD/ATi seems to plod along with trouble around driver issues.

"Consumer logic"? I'm not sure what you mean by that.

By that I mean putting the blame for a problem on the first instance that makes the problem apparent to you, without actually knowing.

"Linux sucks for anything but servers. Anybody who is serious about gaming needs to get a Windows PC."
"Firefox (or Mozilla) sucks at rendering webpages. Anybody who is serious about the internet needs to get IE 7."

Both claims were made because one product was obviously superior. At least in practice. Little did people know about the actual reasons for this.

To an extend the same is true for AMD -Nvidia.

Long story short: As a consumer, don't mistake market power for quality.


Last edited by Caldazar on 4 August 2016 at 11:07 pm UTC

Yaaaaaay!!1 So happy, I've been a very long time Total War player since around the original Rome: Total War was released in 2004. It's one of my all time favourite game series. This is excellent news and I'm happy Feral is continuing to bring Total War games to Linux as for about the last couple years, I've been 100% Windows free. Thanks Feral :D


Last edited by a100167 on 4 August 2016 at 11:18 pm UTC

looking forward to this release :)

Huh, I wasn't keeping my hopes up for this one, but now I may actually buy it. I am not so hardcore that I have to buy every Total War game (I have two); a new one every couple years feels right. I think it's time.

Long story short: As a consumer, don't mistake market power for quality.

I'm not. I'm basing it on the fact that Nvidia's drivers simply work better than AMD's. It has nothing to do with market power which I couldn't give a pair fetid dingo's kidneys about. Like I said, I go with what works.

Trust me, I would be thrilled if AMD and Intel stepped up their game and provided some meaningful competition, but they haven't.


Last edited by Mountain Man on 5 August 2016 at 12:24 am UTC

The only one Warhammer game I want on Linux is Warhammer 40.000 Space Marine...

Thankfully i’m not fan of Total War nor WH series, cause i don’t believe Feral make this port good. Even as NVIDIA card user, I can accept (barely) 20% - 30% performance drop but not 50% as it is with Tomb Raider. And I prefer 5 good ports than 20 poor. No offence Feral, but thanx, not this time ;)

I agree 100%


PS: I tried Life is Strange in a 1366x768p monitor and the antialiasing SUCKS...

I'm basing it on the fact that Nvidia's drivers simply work better than AMD's.

That's really fair enough. All I'm trying to say is that the same is true for Windows vs Linux as a gaming platform. Yet we know better than putting the full blame on one single instance and going with the "If you're serious about gaming then you should just get Windows" line.

Then why should we give Nvidia or Feral a free pass, not even asking whether the situation is partly due to an unhealthy relation between Nvidia and game developers.

"AMD drivers suck and that's the reason why Feral ports lack support, go get Nvidia."
To me that's not enough without talking about Nvidia exploiting its market power and some game devs / porters just going with it a bit too lazily.

I can understand why they do it but I also know how that behaviour during the browser wars held back web technology for at least 10 years. Let's just hope history doesn't repeat with the new graphics technology.


Last edited by Caldazar on 5 August 2016 at 3:26 pm UTC

I think the Nvidia driver thing is related to two things: Nvidia is known for working very well together with game developers, and that is abolsutely a strength of them and this has led to many usefull improvements in their drivers. That Nvidia puts a lot of effort in their Linux drivers is a simple fact.

The second point, however, is that Nvidia drivers are known to be very forgiving for OpenGL standard violations. This results into the situation that games appear to run fine on Nvidia drivers, while problems occur when you start to run on AMD or Intel hardware. For the end user, the Nvidia driver appears to work correctly and the blame is falsely on other manufacturers, while it is actually the too forgiving Nvidia driver that is the reason a game does not run on other hardware.

I think this topic has however a bit focused too much on the AMD situation. It is a clear problem with Feral ports, but even for Nvidia and Intel gamers, life isn't as good as it should be due to performance issues. While there are reports of games that run well, I just keep reading reports of games that run better on Wine than the Linux port... not something we should be happy with. IndirectX apparently has a lot of overhead involved, much more than other known translation layers. This is just as much a quality issue as the AMD incompatibilities.

All I know is that I've never had a problem with Nvidia while I hear nothing but complaints from AMD users. It has been like this for years, long before Feral started porting to Linux.

I am very excited that Feral supports Mesa. AMD GPU and Mesa are going to be the future of AMD on Linux for consumer graphics cards. The AMD GPU PRO driver will be for their FireGl/FirePro cards. I use an Nvidia card right now, but with all of the progress AMD has been making I can't see myself going with Nvidia again. As far as Total War: Warhammer goes, I had no intention of purchasing it before I found out Feral was doing the porting. Now I think I'm going to give it a go. I had some performance issues with Tomb raider(lows in the 30s with a GTX 970), but it did not stop me from playing. Keep up the good work Feral!!