ARK: Survival Evolved updated with the latest 'Unreal Rendering code', still terrible on Linux

Quoting: KetilIf we want ark to be fixed, I think we must give ark the victories they get intended or not. That way they are less likely to see us as a mistake, too much support for too few buyers. Maybe it is too late, or maybe not. I hope it is not, because I believe this game can be fixed, and if it gets fixed, then it will be quite awesome.

I don't agree with you on this one. This game is two weeks away from final release with a triple A price tag. This is completely ridiculous for state of the Linux version of the game. Like it or not, until (if?) the game is finally ported to Vulkan and has it's many problems fixed, the game will be in alpha state for Linux users. In my opinion, Liam is correctly informing potential buyers of the game about what they're potentially getting into.

Quoting: Ketil

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: KetilI think this article should have waited until we had done a bit more research because as it is now, it is misleading.

No, it's the exact experience for me, it's not misleading in any way. I've tested all settings, tried resetting them and cleared out any cache as well. I did plenty of tests, all resulting in the same thing.

I'm sorry, I meant the title, and the overall tone in the article was misleading for the state of ark on linux in general. Not that your experience was misleading. The experience is an important part of the state, but it is not the full picture, and I thought your article was meant to show the whole picture. I cannot tell if I read it wrong, or if it is written in a way that is easy to misread.

The article and title as far as I am concerned is accurate.

Quoting: KetilI don't agree that the state of ark on linux is terrible. It is graphically not too great and was terrible before this fix, but the cave issue seems to be fixed in the renderer, if it doesn't use files generated by old version. At this point the water bug is an inconvenience, but it can mostly be worked around by swimming under water when you do water stuff. It is still not good, but it is more an inconvenience that shouldn't be there than a game breaking bug. The cave issue was more game breaking, but I think the new render is able to do it well, if it doesn't use old data that confuses it. I think a clean install would work, e.g. delete all configs and restore the default ones via steam, but I don't have enough data to say for sure.

I am sorry for all the heat in my comments.

The Linux version of ARK is still inferior in every single way to the Windows version.

As stated I've tried everything and my game still looks like that.

Would we accept this level from Aspyr? Feral? Virtual Programming? Ethan Lee?

Double standards are not a good look. Accepting a game that's been broken for a long time and still is in a number of ways (some people can't even run it now) is not good.

Quoting: Ketil

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: KetilArticles like this might discourage further fixes because we don't compliment them for what they actually have done, and claim they are not fixing anything. We should complain about what is wrong, but not claim what they have fixed is still broken.

What have they done exactly? Ignore bugs for many months, pull in some Unreal Engine code which gave some people an FPS boost. I won't compliment them, since they're still obviously not putting any effort into the Linux version. This is very clear.

If we want ark to be fixed, I think we must give ark the victories they get intended or not. That way they are less likely to see us as a mistake, too much support for too few buyers. Maybe it is too late, or maybe not. I hope it is not, because I believe this game can be fixed, and if it gets fixed, then it will be quite awesome.

So we should give them a break because after how many years/months they decided to pull in some fresh Unreal Engine code, which has fixed some issues for some people.

Nope. They still clearly ignore the Linux version for the most part.

We are talking about a £49.99 game.

ARK again. Sigh. The only game in my library I actually regret that I have bought it. Can't the developers just drop Linux if they have no intention of supporting it the right way?

Quoting: mrboeseARK again. Sigh. The only game in my library I actually regret that I have bought it. Can't the developers just drop Linux if they have no intention of supporting it the right way?

And miss out on swindling Linux gamers out of £50 a time?

I didn't try the new patch of yesterday, but I play it since the game was ported on linux. It worked very well until the 261 patch. Then it began the grey water issue and the sky became to be too much lighten.
The windows gamers had for many long time big cave lags, and with my linux client I never had this problem.
On windows my friends had for very long time crash issues, I had crashes for one week only.
Ok, dx graphic has since 261 patch better effects than opengl, but I played the game for years almost flawlessly.
I say, let's have a little pacience, this game is for me (except the Zelda saga and Seiken Densetsu) the best game I ever played.


Last edited by evergreen on 17 August 2017 at 11:25 am UTC

At last, the cave glitches have been fixed (hurrah!), but the water textures are now missing (i guess that the total number of bugs must be constant :)).

The loading times have also been improved and are now reasonnably fast on my set-up (i5+SSD) : around 30s to play, the first time you launch the game (and only a few seconds the second time).

There are many games I regret buying, but ark isn't one of them. Most games for linux these days, especially AAA titles, are not fun for me and I regret buying some of them. It doesn't mean the games are bad, they just aren't for me. The same way ARK is a great game for those who don't get too put off by the graphical glitches, and/or are lucky and get fewer of them. The game can still be quite fun, even with the glitches, on a friendly server.

ARK on linux has come a long way. During the last year performance has increased and the glitches has decreased quite a lot. The only regression I experienced was the non-transparent ugly ocean. Because I have played a lot, I keep seeing areas that I remember was either bad, but now is quite good, or areas that were plain and boring that are now beautiful even on medium graphics.

I will not recommend it over $20 at this point, and only for people who are willing to tweak settings and overlook/workaround graphical issues. ARK is a great game that have issues that may or may not be gamebreaking, depending on point of view. The limited vision I experienced in caves before this patch is quite a lot more game-breaking on a hostile PVP server than a friendly server.

I much rather have an enjoyable game with broken graphics, than a game that isn't enjoyable with great graphics.

I am curious. For those who say the caves work fine for them, what NVIDIA driver version are you running? I have a feeling it's a driver fix, not a game fix. It would certainly help explain that even after wiping everything possible, that I still experience it.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 17 August 2017 at 11:31 am UTC

Quoting: KetilI'm sorry, I meant the title, and the overall tone in the article was misleading for the state of ark on linux in general.

Nope, the title and the article are pretty appropriate. The state of ARK on linux is abominable.

Quoting: KetilIf we want ark to be fixed, I think we must give ark the victories they get intended or not. That way they are less likely to see us as a mistake, too much support for too few buyers. Maybe it is too late, or maybe not. I hope it is not, because I believe this game can be fixed, and if it gets fixed, then it will be quite awesome.

What victories?

• input for non-US keyboards: broken, never got fixed


• caves: unplayable due to graphics glitches, never got fixed


• water rendering: never got fixed, just in various states of brokenness


• performance: abominable, no improvement ever on linux, only got worse over time


• countless other graphics glitches: never fixed, just varied in the frequency they got triggered

And that's only a small excerpt from the linux-only issues.
I kinda started laughing when they announced the stable release date. With all the bugs the let accumulate affecting even the basic game mechanics in favor of dishing out new buggy features I'm expecting they'll just declare it finished at some point and move on.

Quoting: liamdaweI have a feeling it's a driver fix, not a game fix.

Very likely, i've just installed the latest nvidia driver (according to smxi, 384.59).


Last edited by Narvarth on 17 August 2017 at 11:34 am UTC