An update on the cross-platform Civilization VI patch for Linux and the recently announced expansion
After waiting and hoping for a long time, it seems the light is finally at the end of the tunnel for the patch to enable cross-platform play for Linux players of Civilization VI.
We’ve covered it numerous times, so we won’t go over everything again. Instead, let’s cut right to the chase.
We spoke to Aspyr Media privately, who said the patch to enable cross-platform online play should hopefully arrive for Linux gamers “before Christmas” regardless of them solving the issue with Intel i3 processors or not, which has been holding it up.
On top of that, we spoke about the recently announced Gathering Storm expansion which releases for Windows in February next year. Aspyr said they’re “confident” the Linux release will be “soon after the Windows release”.
Delays happen, sometimes they’re way longer than they should have been but it should all be sorted soon. Hopefully this time next month, you will be able to happily dive into a game of Civilization VI with your Windows and Mac friends.
You can find Civilization VI on Humble Store and Steam.
Although I am in love with Feral ports, and people have been repeatedly besmirching CivVI and Aspyr Media around due to their delays and turn to mobile, that's the one thing I really hoped Feral could learn from. If Civilization VI can fix their multiplayer support, why can't the Total War games?
Well, different software yields differnt problems. Some might be solvable, some might not (without e.g. changing the Windows sources). We just can't tell...
If Civilization VI can fix their multiplayer support, why can't the Total War games?
They did. Cross platform multiplayer works perfectly between Mac and Linux. As for Windows, Creative Assembly won't let them.
Although I am in love with Feral ports, and people have been repeatedly besmirching CivVI and Aspyr Media around due to their delays and turn to mobile, that's the one thing I really hoped Feral could learn from. If Civilization VI can fix their multiplayer support, why can't the Total War games?Rationale from the Company of Heroes 2 port is publicly available. I would imagine that in case of other games same rules apply - to some extent.
Any differences in the maths, even at the nth decimal place of precision, will accumulate to a tangible divergence in behaviour and ultimately a disconnect. When dealing with multiple architectures, operating systems and optimising compilers, tracking down all possible differences is a long and complex task. (...)
And although we made progress on some of [multiplayer] issues during development, it's impossible to know how many issues remain and how much more work would be required on ALL platforms to get the title communicating successfully across Mac, Linux and Windows.
Tl;dr: making multiplayer code cross-platform compatible is extremely hard if it was first written with specific hardware, architecture and operating system in mind.
Last edited by hardpenguin on 28 November 2018 at 12:00 pm UTC
Tl;dr: making multiplayer code cross-platform compatible is extremely hard if it was first written with specific hardware, architecture and operating system in mind.Sure for a single title that seems a valid argument, but given the amount of titles in the Total War series since the first port....one might lean more towards: get this shit done already if you want me and at least two of my gaming buddies as customers!
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