Feral Interactive are teasing a new Linux port, time to start guessing

Sure, we may get more games for Linux, but we'll be basically turning Linux into Windows, and market share may even decrease.

I don't see how that follows. Why would Linux 'market share' decrease, when people have less of a reason to purchase windoze licenses?

If it is Shadow of the Tomb Raider, they better reveal it soon because they are losing sales in droves to Steam Play.

This is why Wine/Steam play is a double edged sword.

Wine has it's place for older unsupported software but I get the feeling that devs will make their game work in steamplay and claim Linux support. Which in turn will hit devs like Ferral as they will be deemed unneeded.

I still wont by a game even if it does work in wine/steam play well, the old saying "No tux NO bucks!"

In a world where 100% of all Windows games would run in Proton in a way that's 100% indistinguishable from running it in Windows...why would it still matter if the port is native?

Because that's what Valve wants to do.

When Valve inevitably moves gaming into the cloud and run games on Linux-servers, either native or Proton, even Windows users will be Linux gamers. There might come a time when platform becomes irrelevant.

Not that streaming games from the cloud will be feasible in a long time. Microsoft, Sony, Nvidia, Google, EA, Ubisoft and others are investing big in this area as we speak, but their initial offerings will fail because the internet infrastructure to support it doesn't exist and latency will always be an issue no matter how much they think they can mitigate it.

But yeah, there could come a time when consoles are just thin clients and the games are streamed from Linux servers, and at that point pretty much every gamer will be a Linux gamer even if they might not even be aware of it.

Hopeing its shadow of tomb raider since we got the other two but too much to hope for am guessing palladins

But yeah, there could come a time when consoles are just thin clients and the games are streamed from Linux servers, and at that point pretty much every gamer will be a Linux gamer even if they might not even be aware of it.

At that stage we're just hijacking the definition of 'linux gamer', though -- I mean, we don't call PS4 gamers 'FreeBSD gamers', though that's what runs underneath those systems. 'Linux gamer' pretty unambiguously means 'fellow who sets up or purchases a piece of hardware with Linux -- not a weird abstraction layer like Android, but something that makes it possible to get root access, install packages, etc. (so SteamOS qualifies) -- as its OS, and uses it to run games'. If streaming *ever* becomes *the* default channel for playing games, then 'Linux gamer' won't have much of a meaning anymore.

Is there an unannounced Total War game?

The picture is of petroglyphs of Pusharo which are in Peru.

and as other's have said.. it's highly likely to be Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As that has a Peruvian jungle in it.

In a world where 100% of all Windows games would run in Proton in a way that's 100% indistinguishable from running it in Windows...why would it still matter if the port is native?

Because that's what Valve wants to do.

I installed Proton for some test but I'm not very comfortable/confident with Microsoft things, like dll and Directx, on my pc, I think I will remove it at all in short time. Having a native port feels just right :)
Hope to buy SoTR soon on Linux but probably, sorry, on the first sale...


Last edited by donbastiano on 15 November 2018 at 8:57 pm UTC

Early release of Cyberpunk 2077 for Linux only! YES, finally!!!

If CDPR did that we probably have rioting in the streets! lol


Last edited by TheRiddick on 15 November 2018 at 9:05 pm UTC

"Shadow of the Tomb Raider" would be wonderful and a first day purchase from me. Assuming that the picture represents the Nazca lines in Peru, SotTR would actually fit.

No matter how good Proton becomes, or how many games it enables for Windows, I just can't kill that nagging feeling that it will be a story of "winning the battle but losing the war".

In my opinion it's the other way around. Linux is loosing some native games in the sort term due to Proton. But in the end Proton may help to substantially increase Linux market share and visibility to reach a point where Linux will be considered earlier in the gaming development process. This may lead to more native games in the end.


Last edited by jens on 15 November 2018 at 9:11 pm UTC

But in the end Proton may help to substantially increase Linux market share and visibility to reach a point where Linux will be considered earlier in the gaming development process. This may lead to more native games in the end.

Wine contributes to making people less dependent on windows licenses; that can only help Linux adoption in the long run.

But in the end Proton may help to substantially increase Linux market share and visibility to reach a point where Linux will be considered earlier in the gaming development process. This may lead to more native games in the end.

Wine contributes to making people less dependent on windows licenses; that can only help Linux adoption in the long run.

Yes, sure. Though with gaming, Proton counts as Linux, Steam in Wine counts as Windows.


Last edited by jens on 15 November 2018 at 9:18 pm UTC

Proton is great but it starts becoming less attractive as you scale up resolution, perfect for 1080p and 1440p but to run 4k decently you need 2080TI which is in fantasyland with the inflated price tag.

It's a option between 40-45fps under Proton, or 60-65 fps under Windows, it's just unfortunate. I can't stand sub 50fps on average.

In my opinion it's the other way around. Linux is loosing some native games in the sort term due to Proton. But in the end Proton may help to substantially increase Linux market share and visibility to reach a point where Linux will be considered earlier in the gaming development process. This may lead to more native games in the end.

Hopefully it goes that way. My pessimism is from actually being around in the OS/2 and DOS era, and watching OS/2 disappear when it basically became redundant once it was DOS/Windows compatible. Developers saw that they could just develop for Windows and not worry about OS/2, as it was compatible. We all know how that one ended.

So I see some dangerous parallels here. But maybe I am just being overly pessimistic. If you're into computers for long enough, you begin to see history repeat itself. Just gives me an uneasy feeling.

Anyway, enough of a distraction from this thread. I hope (and expect) this to be Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which will be a day-1 buy for me. I won't buy the Windows version for exactly the reasons stated above.

I've thought quite a bit about that parallel, ever since "Proton" first was announced. (I think I used OS/2 Warp for about a year, it came preinstalled on a laptop) It has kept me (still keeps me) feeling rather ambivalent about the whole project. I just hope the situations then and now are far to different, for there to be any risk of a similar outcome.


Last edited by Feist on 15 November 2018 at 9:51 pm UTC

Shadow of the tomb raider?

Exactly what I was thinking the same considering they have ported the last two Tomb Raider titles to Linux, I would be all over this if it comes to Linux.

QUESTION: Assuming it is Shadow of the Tomb Raider, what's going to happen when the Feral version finds my Proton version already tending the penguin egg?

A regular update that overwrites the existing content as necessary? It works that way with Proton replacing native versions, I'd imagine it works that way in the other direction. Might involve full redownload if the depots aren't set up to reuse the same data.

The analogy with windoze vs. os/2 might actually work the other way around.

Being perfectly compatible with windoze *applications* made os/2 redundant for its purposes. It's hard to imagine Wine having the same effect, because application development on Linux is typically done using open source, cross-platform toolkits in the first place. No one's going to abandon the GTK or Qt projects because of wine.

As to all the lower level software projects, wine is totally irrelevant to them anyway.

But on the other hand, for so many home users, the main selling point of windoze is that it still owns the high-performance 'triple aiaiaiai' gaming world. Mobile OSs, & webapps, etc., already made a dent in their hegemony in the office software space, so gaming is now an even more significant reason to own a windoze pc. Compatibility of the sort that wine introduces weakens that very reason.


Last edited by walther von stolzing on 15 November 2018 at 10:27 pm UTC

Let's Go Crazy ....
I dream about some good FPS !!


Last edited by fedotix on 15 November 2018 at 10:30 pm UTC

After a couple people mentioned Petroglyphs of Pusharo, a quick Google image search turned up these...
https://www.palotoaamazontravel.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Pusharo.jpg
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Petroglyphs-of-Pusharo-MANU-national-park-Dept-of-Cusco-photo-R-Hostnig_fig12_287815507

Compare to Feral image...
https://www.feralinteractive.com/images/upcoming/Cryptic+Obscurity+.jpg

From the little bit I've skimmed/learned, there are some explorers (and also pseudoarcheologists) that think the petroglyphs have some connection with the lost city of Paititi, which apparently is a key place in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
http://www.granpaititi.com/index.php?id=124&lang=en
http://www.exploringtraditions.com/pusharo-and-the-search-for-paititi-the-lost-city-of-gold-part-i
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2016/01/11/move-over-machu-picchu-the-discovery-of-paititi-the-secret-city-of-gold-may-change-peru-forever


Last edited by silentprocyon on 16 November 2018 at 12:00 am UTC

In my opinion it's the other way around. Linux is loosing some native games in the sort term due to Proton. But in the end Proton may help to substantially increase Linux market share and visibility to reach a point where Linux will be considered earlier in the gaming development process. This may lead to more native games in the end.

Hopefully it goes that way. My pessimism is from actually being around in the OS/2 and DOS era, and watching OS/2 disappear when it basically became redundant once it was DOS/Windows compatible. Developers saw that they could just develop for Windows and not worry about OS/2, as it was compatible. We all know how that one ended.

So I see some dangerous parallels here. But maybe I am just being overly pessimistic. If you're into computers for long enough, you begin to see history repeat itself. Just gives me an uneasy feeling.

Anyway, enough of a distraction from this thread. I hope (and expect) this to be Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which will be a day-1 buy for me. I won't buy the Windows version for exactly the reasons stated above.

Yeah, that's a valid thought. Let's hope the future turns out in favor of Linux.
I remember OS/2 Warp too, I experienced there for the first time that you could do two things at the same time on a computer. In my case creating archives in one window and already copying the first part onto a floppy ;).


Last edited by jens on 15 November 2018 at 10:41 pm UTC

The big differences between OS/2 and Linux are that OS/2 was closed source, developed by one company and cost money. So of course it was doomed in the long run once Windows started being preinstalled on new computers. Hardly anyone would wipe a preinstalled commercial system to buy and install another commercial system, but for most people it's not a problem to ditch Windows (which they got "for free" anyway) and install Linux, or at least install it alongside Windows "just in case" and then never boot the doze again.


Last edited by pb on 15 November 2018 at 11:08 pm UTC