Feral Interactive have put out the system requirements for Total War: WARHAMMER II, due on Linux this month

Quoting: mylka

Quoting: dorronAs much as i love Feral and their great work porting games to Linux...they are doing too many games like this one.

They'd be better off doing something with a wider appeal.

its one of the most played game on steam, that dont have a linux port, or is gta5, pubg, etc

tomb raider will have a linux port i guess. not even 3000 players in the past 24h

https://steamdb.info/app/750920/graphs/
https://steamdb.info/app/594570/graphs/

i also wish they would port yakuza, or elex, or sniper elite, but they have to make money
and then there is proton. could be, that they dont make much money with life is strange 2, cause some play it with steamplay NOW!

That is the problem with Feral and episodic games; they wait until all the season is finished.. That was OK before Proton, but now the rules have changed.
They must release NOW the episode 1 and the episode 2 simultaneously with the Windows version...
Or, at least, if they didn't ported the episode 1, they must release a dummy linux depot, and they must add the Linux icon at the game page... If you buy it on Linux, it will work as a pre-purchase...

Or maybe they have an arrangement with Valve and they will get a cut of Proton sales.

About Shadow of the Tomb Raider, if they haven't announced it by now, is because it will not be ported..the same goes for Shadow of War.

Quoting: GuestWhile I know that there are some desperate people that will buy anything that can be launched via Wine and render at least 5 frames per minute, there is also a contingent of self-respecting gamers who want properly supported games. And they will wait for ports from Feral or first parties regardless of rating on ProtonDB.

You are fooling yourself if you think there is any practical difference between a game running perfectly via Proton (for example, Dark Souls 3) and game that has a good native version (for example, the last Tomb Raider).
There is no "better" here, a game that runs well, runs well. End of story.

Of course there is a difference between something that "barely" runs via Wine and something that runs flawlessly (either via Wine or native), but that's kind of obvious, isn't it?


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 13 November 2018 at 8:28 am UTC

Quoting: mylkathey have to make money

I still wonder how Feral makes any money from this.
The number of Linux purchases vs. the cost of porting a game... does it even add up to breaking even? I'm deeply concerned we'll get a statement in the not too distant future from Feral about how the sales aren't motivating the effort, plus "you guys have Proton now, cheers"

Quoting: GuestDude, total wars games are just arcade "gather your 3d blobs and send them upon the enemy 3d blobs" games... There is no thinking in them.

Huh, really? That sounds like my kind of RTS!
Too much micromanaging gives me mental cyber-cancer. :)

Quoting: GuestObviously the Windows requirements are made by a different group of people who had a 770 for testing while Feral may only have 970 for testing so it doesn't automatically mean that the Linux version requires more powerful hardware. Also, the original Windows developers have most likely completely different opinion about "minimum" and "recommended" or "playable" and "non playable". Why do people still compare platform specific optimization based on HW requirements? How do you know that Feral have a 770 for testing? It's an old card. How do you know that the original devs weren't aiming for 720p 30fps with the "minimum" and Feral aren't aiming for 1080p 30fps with their "minimum" specs?

I think that you didn't understand the point I was making.
What I have seen on my tests is that in most cases that old 770+win kicks 970+lin ass.
Where it doesn't, they goes pair.

Quoting: GuestWhile I know that there are some desperate people that will buy anything that can be launched via Wine and render at least 5 frames per minute, there is also a contingent of self-respecting gamers who want properly supported games. And they will wait for ports from Feral or first parties regardless of rating on ProtonDB.

OK, I also believe one should buy native ports, or at least wait for native ports that have been announced, before even considering spending money on non-native games, but, you're so very wrong about performance.

Games running under DXVK often have a good chance of working far better than a native port would. Sometimes not, but that's on a case by case basis.

Quoting: GuestShould depend on the game. Most ports from D3D to OpenGL should really have a perfromance penalty, you can't avoid it. Porting companies just use a wrapper similar to WINE to translate the API calls, they don't actually get the source code and modify the game engine to make it native OpenGL...

Vulkan should help in that regard, a proper Vulkan wrapper should have minimal performance impact assuming optimized gpu drivers. Hell, for some a well-written Vulkan wrapper could actually IMPROVE performance compared to D3D11 on Windows.

Yes, that translate eats performance but e.g. unigine valley gives more fps on 770+win than on 970+lin.

Edit: valley uses opengl on linux and dx11 on windows.


Last edited by Jarno on 13 November 2018 at 9:10 am UTC

Quoting: dpanterI still wonder how Feral makes any money from this.
The number of Linux purchases vs. the cost of porting a game... does it even add up to breaking even? I'm deeply concerned we'll get a statement in the not too distant future from Feral about how the sales aren't motivating the effort, plus "you guys have Proton now, cheers"

Aspyr went a similar route. They went from "we do Linux now!" and putting out loads of ports, to pivoting more towards mobile stuff, and now they seem to be embracing their role as publisher more, which I guess on the upside still means some Linux games. They have to pay the bills and feed themselves, I guess.

Anyway, hope Feral keeps going strong though, they're pretty much the only remaining AAA porter we have left.

Quoting: Comandante ÑoñardoC'mon Feral, stop wasting the time with this! You should be releasing the episode 1 of Life is Strange 2 right now, because it has Platinum rating when played via Steamplay 3.16-4

I'm sure they're not wasting their time.

There is some truth to your post, though.
And I feel sorry for Feral. :/

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou are fooling yourself if you think there is any practical difference between a game running perfectly via Proton (for example, Dark Souls 3) and game that has a good native version (for example, the last Tomb Raider).
There is no "better" here, a game that runs well, runs well. End of story.

There is a huge difference when something breaks, so it's not quite "end of story".

If something breaks, it doesn't "run well". Run well of course implies no breakage.

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: dpanterHuh, really? That sounds like my kind of RTS!
Too much micromanaging gives me mental cyber-cancer. :)

Then forget about Total War. It's micromanagement to the core. The tutorials for them also make this very clear, like this one (whose second title is "You don't micro fast enough!").
Also notice that the total war games have two contexts, the strategic turn-based world map where you build stuff, manage resources, use diplomacy and move units - like, say, the civilization games - and the tactical epic battle stages, which is kind of the meat of the game, although they can be completely sidestepped with "autoresolve" (with mediocre results if you do that). You can play only the quest battles if you want and you can play only the strategic part with autoresolve. The strategic map however does not require much of micromanaging, only the battles do.

That's the biggest inherent problem of the series, really.
The strategic map is extremely simple (though mods can alleviate that simplicity somewhat). While the combat is the meat of the game, you do end up autoresolving 80-90% on a campaign map eventually, because everything else would just take way too much time to get anywhere in the campaign, especially once your empire is big and you have many stacks. At the beginning of the campaign, you still fight most battles yourself, as the power difference between stacks isn't that big yet.
If you know what you are doing, later on you will almost never end up in a situation where you really need the human interaction in a battle. It is strategically unsound to choose even battles for obvious reasons, so you'll pick easy battles and easy captures in most cases (and playing those manually is no fun as it is just too easy), while avoiding battles in the enemies favor as much as possible.
So you spend less time in the fun battles and more on the rather "meh" campaign map.

In other words, playing better (strategy-wise) makes the game less fun. And that is really a curiosity that fits pretty much the entire Total War series.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 13 November 2018 at 10:32 am UTC

Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: TheSHEEEPYou are fooling yourself if you think there is any practical difference between a game running perfectly via Proton (for example, Dark Souls 3) and game that has a good native version (for example, the last Tomb Raider).
There is no "better" here, a game that runs well, runs well. End of story.

There is a huge difference when something breaks, so it's not quite "end of story".

If something breaks, it doesn't "run well". Run well of course implies no breakage.

Trouble is "runs well" doesn't include "will run well in the future". While breakage does happen with native games as well, you're entitled to support in these cases.

*edit* If the trouble is due to a new Proton version, double trouble is that you cannot set Proton version per (unsupported) game via Steam at the moment (while Valve can, according to the options page). And if it's due to changes in the game, well...


Last edited by Eike on 13 November 2018 at 10:45 am UTC