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Update: I managed to get it working, head to your prefences file located here:
.config/unity3d/Aquiris Game Studio/Ballistic Overkill/prefs
Set the fullscreen mode to zero and set some height and width and it seemed to reset it. Now it works normally on the first load, but it will break again. You need to set the windowed mode to zero each time you want to load it, for now. Vulkan seems to require the exact height and width too.

Update 2: A better option, is to force all this as a Steam launch option for the game like one of these:
-screen-fullscreen 0 -screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080 -force-vulkan
Or
-screen-fullscreen 0 -screen-width 1920 -screen-height 1080 -force-glcore

Some quick thoughts on the new version:

The new AA modes are nice to have and the higher modes certainly look good on OpenGL, but with Vulkan if you select 2xMSAA or higher the performance falls off a cliff. If you find Vulkan performing poorly, check your AA level as it seems to badly affect the Vulkan version.

This update has also introduced other issues. You can often see enemy outlines through walls, which obviously breaks the game quite a bit.

The new auto join queue feature for full-servers sometimes seems to completely break not letting you actually join a game. Claiming you're next in the queue, even with space available. If there isn't space available, clicking auto join will end up sitting on the player list, claiming you will be a spectator until space is available, but never actually progress into putting you into spectator mode. Sometimes it does work, it just seems to be a mess now.

The new "friends playing" feature also doesn't seem to work, with it showing zero for me. Even though checking my Steam list, with people clearly playing it.

Servers now sometimes outright refuse to let you join them, with a simplistic error message about failing.

The Vulkan version gives higher FPS in certain areas, but it's no way near as smooth as the OpenGL version.

Yeah...they're going to need to polish this up quite a lot.

Original article:

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Confirmed by others as well, the latest Ballistic Overkill that adds in Vulkan and many other things, has completely broken the Linux version.

Yesterday, I broke the news that Ballistic Overkill would be updated today with Vulkan, new friends features, new AA options and loads more.

The OpenGL version gives a black screen and the Vulkan version just instantly crashes, as of today. The developers are already aware of it, as I've already been in touch with them about the issues.

Shame, was pretty hyped to try it with Vulkan and it is a very fun game. I'm willing to give the developer a little leeway here since I enjoy it so much, but considering all the people that have confirmed the Linux version is broken to me, including testing it myself, I am a little annoyed personally. It seems not enough testing was done their end on the Linux version.

Investigating it a bit further, it seems it may be a similar problem to the issues facing White Noise 2 at the moment. The game seems to set zero for the resolution width and height. I tried setting them manually, but the game overwrites the preferences file on loading. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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natewardawg May 17, 2017
From tests with my own Unity games Vulkan isn't going to do much (if anything) for anybody yet as far as Unity goes.

In one of our games which is not very heavy, since it's 2D, I'm getting:
OpenGL: 580 fps
Vulkan: 110 fps

For my other game, which is much more heavy (and 3D), I'm getting:
OpenGL: 120 fps
Vulkan: 80 fps

So, it's not there yet, but that's okay since this is the first official Unity release to include Vulkan support, albeit as an "experimental" feature. I think the initial focus is to get it to work and they'll worry about performance in subsequent releases.

Has anybody experience anything different with Unity builds?
natewardawg May 17, 2017
edit: I just sent it to them via their contact form.

I have the same black screen bug in my Linux game builds. Here's a workaround the devs can use in their first scene that should fix the black screen issue if they haven't already. If anyone wants to send that to the devs please do. I don't own the game since I don't play multiplayer games :)

#if UNITY_STANDALONE_LINUX
IEnumerator Start()
{
        int width = Screen.width;
        int height = Screen.height;
        bool fullscreen = Screen.fullScreen;

        Screen.SetResolution(800, 600, false);
        yield return null;
        Screen.SetResolution(width, height, fullscreen);
}
#endif



Last edited by natewardawg on 17 May 2017 at 8:57 pm UTC
dubigrasu May 17, 2017
Quoting: natewardawgHas anybody experience anything different with Unity builds?
I have some older results:

View video on youtube.com

View video on youtube.com
natewardawg May 17, 2017
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: natewardawgHas anybody experience anything different with Unity builds?
I have some older results:

Awesome, thanks! I remember watching these shortly after you posted them. Any chance you still have those projects setup and can run them in 5.6.1?

Barring the obvious fact that the Unity Vulkan implementation has probably significantly changed since then, I suppose these also might give different results due to them being setup differently. The main difference off the top of my head is that neither of the projects I've mentioned have baked lighting, nor do they have static objects. Both games have fully dynamic objects and lighting. Neither of my projects has realtime GI either. I know at least for the second video you posted the project is also lit with realtime GI. These things might make a difference.

Of course I'll probably need to rebake the lighting and such, but I'm going to see if I can find these and do some tests myself as well :)


Last edited by natewardawg on 17 May 2017 at 9:11 pm UTC
dubigrasu May 17, 2017
Quoting: natewardawg
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: natewardawgHas anybody experience anything different with Unity builds?
I have some older results:

Awesome, thanks! I remember watching these shortly after you posted them. Any chance you still have those projects setup and can run them in 5.6.1?

Barring the obvious fact that the Unity Vulkan implementation has probably significantly changed since then, I suppose these also might give different results due to them being setup differently. The main difference off the top of my head is that neither of the projects I've mentioned have baked lighting, nor do they have static objects. Both games have fully dynamic objects and lighting. Neither of my projects has realtime GI either. I know at least for the second video you posted the project is also lit with realtime GI. These things might make a difference.

Of course I'll probably need to rebake the lighting and such, but I'm going to see if I can find these and do some tests myself as well :)

I still have the projects yes, but it will probably take a while to rebuild them.
Here are the store links anyway:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/29140
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49377
natewardawg May 17, 2017
Quoting: dubigrasuI still have the projects yes, but it will probably take a while to rebuild them.

It shouldn't take that long, all you need for rebaking the lighting is one of those new 16 core Ryzen 9 processors :p

Quoting: dubigrasuHere are the store links anyway:
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/29140
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/49377

Thanks for the links, I found the Viking Village right away, but would have spent forever trying to find the Courtyard since I had forgotten its' name. So, thanks again :)
dubigrasu May 17, 2017
Quoting: natewardawg
Quoting: dubigrasuI still have the projects yes, but it will probably take a while to rebuild them.

It shouldn't take that long, all you need for rebaking the lighting is one of those new 16 core Ryzen 9 processors :p
)
Ah, not that :)
What I mean is it will take a while to overcome my laziness (and rebuild them).
natewardawg May 17, 2017
Quoting: dubigrasu
Quoting: natewardawg
Quoting: dubigrasuI still have the projects yes, but it will probably take a while to rebuild them.

It shouldn't take that long, all you need for rebaking the lighting is one of those new 16 core Ryzen 9 processors :p
)
Ah, not that :)
What I mean is it will take a while to overcome my laziness (and rebuild them).

Haha, I know what you mean.

For the Viking Village I just got everything rebaked and threw my fps counter in there. Eyeballing it, OpenGL is getting about 42 fps at the beginning of the camera loop and Vulkan is getting 35 fps. This is on an Nvidia GTX 960 using Berserk settings, fullscreen, at 1920x1080.

So, that's consistent with what I've been seeing with my own games. I'm sure Vulkan will flip and be better than GL in future Unity updates. But for now, it's nice just to see they got Vulkan rendering everything properly. :)

I'll probably skip downloading and updating "The Courtyard" right now because, like you, I'm feeling lazy right now. :)


Last edited by natewardawg on 17 May 2017 at 11:41 pm UTC
natewardawg May 17, 2017
Interesting, I just re-ran it (edit: Viking Village) using "Fastest" and it's getting 80 fps with Vulkan, but 70 fps with OpenGL. Looking at my system monitor under Vulkan it's cleanly using about 25% CPU on all cores and GL is using a sloppy 20% on the cores, which makes sense and explains the higher framerate.

So, it'll be nice when they can get Vulkan outperforming their OpenGL implementation when the game's played at higher settings.


Last edited by natewardawg on 18 May 2017 at 4:16 am UTC
Tak May 18, 2017
Quoting: natewardawgI think the initial focus is to get it to work and they'll worry about performance in subsequent releases.
The focus for the Vulkan renderer has certainly been "correctness first" so far. From that baseline, and as the engine is progressively reworked from being focused on previous-generation graphics APIs (OpenGL[ES], DX9/11) to also take more advantage of the benefits of modern ones (Vulkan, Metal, DX12+), we'll start to see more and more optimizations.

However, the easiest* wins for Vulkan and similar low-level APIs are actually in cpu-bound content - reducing rendering overhead, reducing/removing blocking for rendering-related operations, etc. - this might explain the differences in performance at different quality levels.
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