ARK: Survival Evolved plans to use Vulkan for Linux this year

Wait, it's still in Early Access? Didn't realise that. Anyway, the game isn't for me, much too PvP-ish.
But ofcourse I'm not just posting to nag about the game in general. The game world does look wonderful, and I'm very curious if it'll perform admirably under Vulkan. Them getting it right will be a decent drive forward for Vulkan, I assume.

I'd love to play this on a private server with buddies, really only waiting for reports on good performance on Linux before purchase.

Lol, right after DX12 for Windows then? :-)

That's pretty huge indeed, not only for ARK, but for future UE4 titles.
Last time I checked UE4 there was an experimental Vulkan option only for Windows.
Hopefully Vulkan will succeed where UE4's OpenGL still has issues and devs will have the incentive to use it (even if we're talking about Windows-only titles that can be later played with Wine).
....
Come to think about it...is not only about future titles but older ones as well. Some other older titles we'd like to see on Linux (I keep thinking about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter) might get to use Vulkan and even get a Linux release.


Last edited by dubigrasu on 2 Jan 2017 at 4:48 pm UTC

That's pretty huge indeed, not only for ARK, but for future UE4 titles.
Last time I checked UE4 there was an experimental Vulkan option only for Windows.
Hopefully Vulkan will succeed where UE4's OpenGL still has issues and devs will have the incentive to use it (even if we're talking about Windows-only titles that can be later played with Wine).
....
Come to think about it...is not only about future titles but older ones as well. Some other older titles we'd like to see on Linux (I keep thinking about The Vanishing of Ethan Carter) might get to use Vulkan and even get a Linux release.

If I understand it correctly, the Ark engine is UE4 but they haven't upgraded it in a long time. They have modified the engine so heavily that updates from UE4 aren't really feasible at this stage in it's development. From what I understand they do any and all updating and programming for new features like this themselves....

Hm, bummer then. I assumed that UE4 itself is soon getting the Vulkan renderer.

Ohhh, I'm sure it is getting it soon. Unity should have a stable version out with the Vulkan renderer around March. I can't believe UE4 is far behind...

Well, there is one already for UE4 but Windows only and doesn't seem to work that well yet. On both engines is still experimental, but the Unity one already works pretty good on both Windows and Linux. Although that coming from me doesn't mean much or anything. I'm not a game dev and all I did was fiddle around with some free projects from their stores.

Guys, I would steer clear of this game at all costs. Performance is wretched across the board regardless of platform. The developers are trying to do too many things and doing none of them, well. They even have paid DLC right now, despite being in early access.

Digital Foundry did several videos on its performance and progress. This video in particular is regarding the PS4.
View video on youtube.com

Vulkan isn't the magic bullet that is going to fix performance problems and bugs for these guys.

Don't hold your breath, DX12 was coming next month for over a year :o)

Performance is not wonderful but it's acceptable for what it is.

Ugh. I don't care much about FPS, 30+ and I'm OK. But this game ... 5-20FPS in most areas is not something I'd call acceptable. And thats in addition to all the sometimes game-breaking graphics glitches that haven't been fixed in forever for the OGL renderer, the noticably inferior graphics and the game breaking input bug if you happen to not have a US keyboard.

Don't hold your breath, DX12 was coming next month for over a year :o)

Performance is not wonderful but it's acceptable for what it is.

Ugh. I don't care much about FPS, 30+ and I'm OK. But this game ... 5-20FPS in most areas is not something I'd call acceptable. And thats in addition to all the sometimes game-breaking graphics glitches that haven't been fixed in forever for the OGL renderer, the noticably inferior graphics and the game breaking input bug if you happen to not have a US keyboard.

What hardware do you have? <snip>

You can click on "View PC Info" under his avatar to see his system specs. Spoiler: he's using a GTX970, decent intel i7 chip, 16Gb RAM.

just a quick note this game benefits from threaded optimizations if you are running an Nvidia card. Enter that command and i saw about a 10fps improvement, which considering i was at 7 - 23 before hand made it playable. Some people should by that metric on better hardware ( im on a 760gtx ) be getting an overall 20fps improvement with that command.


Last edited by on 2 Jan 2017 at 8:09 pm UTC

Love this game. 600+ hours played, performance could be better but runs pretty good on my 960 everything on high, The only time I get serious FPS hit is when I fly into my huge base, masive walled off compound with a metal pyramid built over water, and many captured dinos in it. There are graphical glitches as mentioned already. Usually turn shadows and bloom off in caves using in game terminal command solves it. But nothing game breaking. The devs have won my trust, in my opinion have done a fantastic job. The game keeps getting better and better.


Last edited by Nor Mantis on 2 Jan 2017 at 8:23 pm UTC

That is some great news.. performance is OK, runs mostly over 40 fps all maxed for me but some of the nice graphical effects are missing from linux client due to it being stuck on super old UE4 engine.. 4.5 namely and only supports opengl3.3.

can't wait to try again when vulkan renderer is added.
currently have clocked nearly 200 hours of fun with this game, well worth the money as well as that payed DLC that everybody hates is fair in my book because so much new content is added.


Last edited by Xpander on 2 Jan 2017 at 8:27 pm UTC

Wait, it's still in Early Access? Didn't realise that. Anyway, the game isn't for me, much too PvP-ish.
But ofcourse I'm not just posting to nag about the game in general. The game world does look wonderful, and I'm very curious if it'll perform admirably under Vulkan. Them getting it right will be a decent drive forward for Vulkan, I assume.

Why not try PVE? I host my own PVE server for friends. I like PVP but if you don't have a tremendous amount of time and a large clan it's hard to do anything with PVP. I also change the taming rates etc on my private PVE server so taming something doesn't take 6 hours. ;)

There's also a single-player mode if you prefer to play solo.

I've been able to get decent performance from my GTX 660, but I'll welcome a graphical boost from Vulkan any day.

I honestly think every single game title we have on Linux is inferior compared to the original DX versions as in frame rates and graphics quality

Framerate wise, true, but not to this extreme extend. Graphics quality, I don't think so, people have done side-by-side comparisons and haven't spotted differences for Tomb Raider, Mad Max, ... and so on. And honestly they look a lot better than ARK does on linux. I sometimes watch ARK videos on youtube and can't believe it's the same game I'm playing.

Ahhh Thanks. I see no reason why a 970 with a i7 would be getting 5-20fps then unless maybe with everything jacked up all the way. Shouldn't be any issues with getting a totally solid 30+ fps on that setup with the right configuration. I mean a configuration that would look great as well....

Nope, I have everything on medium. The only time I get 30FPS+ is if there are no buildings, few dinos and not a lot of flora. So maybe you're playing on an mostly unpopulated server.

Guys, I would steer clear of this game at all costs. Performance is wretched across the board regardless of platform. The developers are trying to do too many things and doing none of them, well. They even have paid DLC right now, despite being in early access.

Digital Foundry did several videos on its performance and progress. This video in particular is regarding the PS4.
View video on youtube.com

Vulkan isn't the magic bullet that is going to fix performance problems and bugs for these guys.

This is total BS. Performance is not wonderful but it's acceptable for what it is. This game has an incredible amount of content added to it on a constant basis. Massive game breaking bugs are fixed insanely fast. If you like open world survival games it's top notch and great and so worth the money. I will insta buy anything they add to it. I have well over 1000 hours in the game and am still playing. Don't listen to the haters because of a paid DLC ( which you in no way possible have to have to enjoy the base game ) before the game is out fully. People act like this game is abandoned and it's so not. The devs constantly impress me. If you don't understand performance issues with early access you don't need to play early access. It's that simple. The game is beautiful and the gameplay is so deep you could play 300 hours and still not touch ever aspect of this game. I love this genre and play anything close to it that's available for Linux. This game by far is the best game like it out.

We'll simply have to agree to disagree, while there are some areas that get 25+ fps, the dips and frametimes make this unplayable for me (and a lot of others in the recent Steam reviews). I'm not trying to knock on a game you like, but I feel like the developers really need to focus on performance and bug fixes before adopting two new API's.
Thankfully, Valve allows for refunds and for everyone to make their own decision.

I quit ARK in early 2016 (I even went so far that I removed ARK from my steam library). I had a lot of fun with friends on private servers, but I quit the game cause it was too buggy, even for early access, and the Linux version was horrible when I quit. The Linux version had a lot of common texture books and the game generally looked like it was from 1995, while taking a lot of resources for doing so.

Then I heard about their paid DLC, while still being in early access. If I had stilled played the game by then I would have quit, cause that is unacceptable.

If you really have an issue with unfinsihed games, you're right, you should avoid this game and any early access steam game. If you feel a game should be optimized while in early access that's a shame on you, not a shame on the developer. It's well known games in early access will be buggy and not be optimized...

My issue is not with the fact that there are bugs in an unfinished game. It's the fact that they have paid DLC while still in Early Access and minimal performance improvements for the past year and a half. This is an anti-consumer move.

Does anyone use Mesa 13 to play ark successful?
Ark only work with Mesa 12.0.3.

Even though playing ARK runs smoothly on my GTX1060 on high settings (totally unplayable on my GTX660ti), there are still a lot of graphical artifacts that cause me to restart. Watching a streamer last night playing ARK on PS4, she also had the same artifacts when in the rain or next to water. I think the game just needs way more optimization in general. Would be cool to see on Vulkan, though.

Why not supporting Vulkan on Windows as well? Where is the point to have 3 different renderers now?