The developers of 'EVERSPACE' are still working on the Linux version, seeking help from Epic Games

Ahm, that m ust be some huge mistake on one of the two sides. That's very basic stuff. But if rendering flat or transitioned on two frameworks with the same settings, it's very likely on the epic side to solve.

But that's such basic stuff you will be using not just once in a game that makes me wonder why it wasn't recognized before. Or I'm misinformed about targets, but there are a few developers using it for 1y+.

Still good it gets recognized. And seems like they're really working on a port / trying one, otherwhise they wouldn't see those issues.

Good to make them public too. I can perfectly well live with the developer having issues with an engine - at least I know where the issues are. That kind of communication actually makes me very happy.


Last edited by STiAT on 7 December 2016 at 12:25 am UTC

Glad to see this still coming to Linux, As a fan of roguelikes I'm definitely buying this, although I could say this will be a new experience as it's in space. :D

If I understand correctly, the way UE works is, that developers only create HLSL shaders, and then Unreal somehow translates them into GLSL. Does it use its own translator? What levels of features does it support (i.e. is it capable of translating HLSL for DX11 into GLSL for OpenGL 4.x?). And if such bugs happen, do they need to fix the translator, or they need to tweak resulting shader manually?

I wonder why no one made a good open translator like that in the past. There is this: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/362 but it's not complete yet.


Last edited by Shmerl on 7 December 2016 at 12:57 am UTC

Could it be the shader pass order?

...massive flickering and shader precision issues...massive lighting issues when materials appear too dark or bright and everything is white...

I have a suspicion that they're testing their OpenGL build only on Windows, because the issues described look a lot like what I get from an UE4 project build (UE4 2013 GDC showcase Infiltrator) while running on Windows, with the same project running perfectly on Linux:

View video on youtube.com

Now, the weird rendering on Windows is still an issue that needs to be fixed eventually, but a Linux build might work just fine.
Just as a side note; I'm wondering how many game developers tested the OpenGL builds only on their Windows machines, where probably they've failed and as a consequence they've declared a Linux build problematic. I've heard at least two times: I (we) don't have a Linux machine for testing. Really, how hard can it be to toss an Ubuntu on a spare drive?


Last edited by dubigrasu on 7 December 2016 at 10:39 am UTC

the issues described look a lot like what I get from an UE4 project while running on Windows, with the same project running perfectly on Linux:

What game is that?

the issues described look a lot like what I get from an UE4 project while running on Windows, with the same project running perfectly on Linux:

What game is that?

Is not a game, just the UE4 Infiltrator demo. It was their UE4 showcase around 2013 or so.

There is this: https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glslang/issues/362 but it's not complete yet.

I'm pretty sure versions of glslang are used in some form or another by all of the big engines to do the shader conversion. This is very much work in progress still, as there seem to be commits going in for HLSL support every week. Probably to enable their reference SPIR-V compiler to consume HLSL, but equally useful for GLSL output.


Last edited by tuubi on 7 December 2016 at 10:11 am UTC

Waiting impatiently for release ;)
Even though I played the alpha on Windows, I waited since beta for the Linux version and haven't played it since then.
It's good to see that they gave us some more detailed informations, as it felt like a lack of communication before. Also on the latest Backer update news on Kickstarter Linux wasn't mentioned at all. So the first comments were questions about the status of the Linux port.
I hope they get used to work with Linux and can fix future issues sooner and more efficient. Otherwise I would be afraid of having the Windows/Mac version being better updated and supported than the Linux version.

I'm still a bit surprised, as the Mac and Linux stretchgoal was reached way before the console stretch goal. But there is now a XBox One version, and still no Linux version.

But it looks like they are really close, some last major issues left, hopefully Epic can help them to get this solved. Or someone else... maybe even Valve can help out. There are also a lot of porters available and capable of helping here. But I guess they won't do it for free ;) So it's difficult. Worst case would be that they cancel the port, because they couldn't fix the last issues. Like what happened to Darksiders.

If I understand correctly, the way UE works is, that developers only create HLSL shaders, and then Unreal somehow translates them into GLSL. Does it use its own translator?

Yes, and one of the funny things is that it is based on mesa:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Programming/Rendering/ShaderDevelopment/HLSLCrossCompiler/

The library is largely based on the GLSL compiler from Mesa. The frontend has been heavily rewritten to parse HLSL and generate Mesa IR from the HLSL Abstract Syntax Tree (AST). The library leverages Mesa's IR optimization to simplify the code and finally generates GLSL source code from the Mesa IR. The GLSL generation is based on the work in glsl-optimizer.

I've been watching and hugely looking forward to this for a while. There are so few space combat games on Linux, this will be quite welcome. I've been just replaying through Strike Suit Zero just to scratch the itch. I wish them well. My money awaits...

They had a trello card saying support for OpenGL4 is done in 4.14, but it went missing, but it is set as t he default in 4.15.