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 January 2017 at 4:48 pm UTC

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: dubigrasuThat'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.

Quoting: GuestOhhh, 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)

QuotePerformance 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.

Quoting: Guest

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

QuotePerformance 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 January 2017 at 8:09 pm UTC