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Originally published by Square Enix and developed by Eidos-Montréal, Feral Interactive confirmed today that Shadow of the Tomb Raider is officially heading to Linux in 2019.

Making sure we have the full experience, with Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider already ported to Linux by Feral this is really quite exciting news! I've no doubt it will be using the Vulkan API, as I'm sure people will be wondering.

This replaces the recent teaser put out earlier this month on the Feral port radar. So we now have Total War: WARHAMMER II arriving today plus Life is Strange 2, Total War: THREE KINGDOMS and Shadow of the Tomb Raider all heading to Linux. Feral sure are busy and that's good for us.

Check out the trailer:

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From the press release:

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a vibrant jungle, overcome challenging tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will be forged into the Tomb Raider® she is destined to be.

Lara's quest will take her from the bustling Mexican town of Cozumel to the dark heart of the Peruvian jungle where the hidden city of Paititi awaits. She'll navigate complex underwater caverns, traverse spectacular landscapes, and discover challenging tombs filled with traps. 

Outnumbered and outgunned by Trinity, Lara must become one with the jungle and instill fear in her enemies through using mud as camouflage, disappearing into jungle vines or striking from above while perched in the canopy. 

Let's hope for an early 2019 release. The longer they wait, the more likely it is they will lose sales from Steam Play. I mentioned before in a comment, that their timing will make or break future ports. I'm hoping for many more Feral ports in the years to come, having officially supported ports is great.

We will share more details closer to release and do our usual port report and review.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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kokoko3k Nov 21, 2018
Bingo. Feral's ports are specifically tweaked directly to run as good as they can possibly do it on Linux in the time they have. Quite different to Proton, which has such a big target I would be surprised if a Feral port ever performed worse than DXVK with Steam Play.
One of the first feral ports i played for hours, Grid Autosport, performed better in Proton:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/for-those-on-nvidia-the-3965405-driver-seems-to-have-some-noteworthy-performance-improvements.12564/comment_id=134440

I suspect even DeusEx MD would perform better, i could not try it because it won't even start on my side, but other people say it works, who knows.
Anyway, if is true that proton gives a 20% performance penalty, (like his developer stated on github), then it should perform 10% better on proton (Feral ports is about 30% slower than native dx11).

I think that was more of an issue with Opengl. From the benchmarks I've seen and when playing Rise of the Tomb Raider I was very close to windows performance for my setup.

Yes, could it be.
Translating to DX11->Vulkan is more efficient than DX11->Opengl
Anyway i'm still waiting to start playing DeusExMD (opengl), and i'd like to try via proton to see if i can squeeze some more fps out of it.
kokoko3k Nov 21, 2018
Those are very early ports, using OpenGL when Feral had a lot less experience porting to Linux. Unfair to compare against DXVK with Vulkan.
It wasn't my intention to be unfair, i also stated that they are early ports.(i also tried hitman and reported how feral port performed better in the old linked thread)
It is just that there are (old) games that performs better via dxvk, so one doesn't have to take for granted that the linux version will be better (performance wise).
Liam Dawe Nov 21, 2018
Those are very early ports, using OpenGL when Feral had a lot less experience porting to Linux. Unfair to compare against DXVK with Vulkan.
It wasn't my intention to be unfair, i also stated that they are early ports.(i also tried hitman and reported how feral port performed better in the old linked thread)
It is just that there are (old) games that performs better via dxvk, so one doesn't have to take for granted that the linux version will be better (performance wise).
Sure, my comment earlier was more about future and newer ports though :)
MasterSleort Nov 21, 2018
Wonder if Feral will make use of stream-output / transform feedback on Vulkan?

Never needed it.

Probably right since it's a newer game, however, it was specifically mentioned that transform feedback was implemented for projects such as DXVK AND porters.
Only needed for games on Windows that actually make us of the DirectX feature it's designed to help with - very few use it.

I get that, but none of you actually answered the question in mind. Just because very few games use it doesn't mean that Shadow of the Tomb Raider wont as well. It's simply not an exhaustive answer. Now if you know it from a Feral employee or a tool enlighten me, or played the game using Proton/wine without any issues (and without the extension of course available in driver), then that might be a good indicator that it is not used.
Eike Nov 21, 2018
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I get that, but none of you actually answered the question in mind. Just because very few games use it doesn't mean that Shadow of the Tomb Raider wont as well. It's simply not an exhaustive answer. Now if you know it from a Feral employee or a tool enlighten me, or played the game using Proton/wine without any issues (and without the extension of course available in driver), then that might be a good indicator that it is not used.

He's from Feral (see Twitter account linked in Profile):

Wonder if Feral will make use of stream-output / transform feedback on Vulkan?

Never needed it.

By the way, where is Edwin_Feral or what was his name again....?
fabertawe Nov 21, 2018
Just popping a +1 on here to say I'll be buying from Feral when released, as I did with the last Tomb Raider title. Really enjoy these games.
Ehvis Nov 21, 2018
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Wonder if Feral will make use of stream-output / transform feedback on Vulkan?

Never needed it.

Probably right since it's a newer game, however, it was specifically mentioned that transform feedback was implemented for projects such as DXVK AND porters.
Only needed for games on Windows that actually make us of the DirectX feature it's designed to help with - very few use it.

I get that, but none of you actually answered the question in mind. Just because very few games use it doesn't mean that Shadow of the Tomb Raider wont as well. It's simply not an exhaustive answer. Now if you know it from a Feral employee or a tool enlighten me, or played the game using Proton/wine without any issues (and without the extension of course available in driver), then that might be a good indicator that it is not used.

Since this is actually a Windows compatibility thing, it's a valid question. I doubt Feral will answer it though. Same as they won't answer whether they will work from the DX11 or DX12 version of the engine.

However, I don't recall seeing any reports of the Win version needing transform feedback with DXVK, so that means that Feral will likely not need it either.
MasterSleort Nov 21, 2018
I get that, but none of you actually answered the question in mind. Just because very few games use it doesn't mean that Shadow of the Tomb Raider wont as well. It's simply not an exhaustive answer. Now if you know it from a Feral employee or a tool enlighten me, or played the game using Proton/wine without any issues (and without the extension of course available in driver), then that might be a good indicator that it is not used.

He's from Feral (see Twitter account linked in Profile):

Wonder if Feral will make use of stream-output / transform feedback on Vulkan?

Never needed it.

By the way, where is Edwin_Feral or what was his name again....?

Thank you and pardon me for missing that :)
mylka Nov 21, 2018
Bingo. Feral's ports are specifically tweaked directly to run as good as they can possibly do it on Linux in the time they have. Quite different to Proton, which has such a big target I would be surprised if a Feral port ever performed worse than DXVK with Steam Play.
One of the first feral ports i played for hours, Grid Autosport, performed better in Proton:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/for-those-on-nvidia-the-3965405-driver-seems-to-have-some-noteworthy-performance-improvements.12564/comment_id=134440

I suspect even DeusEx MD would perform better, i could not try it because it won't even start on my side, but other people say it works, who knows.
Anyway, if is true that proton gives a 20% performance penalty, (like his developer stated on github), then it should perform 10% better on proton (Feral ports is about 30% slower than native dx11).

I think that was more of an issue with Opengl. From the benchmarks I've seen and when playing Rise of the Tomb Raider I was very close to windows performance for my setup.

Yes, could it be.
Translating to DX11->Vulkan is more efficient than DX11->Opengl
Anyway i'm still waiting to start playing DeusExMD (opengl), and i'd like to try via proton to see if i can squeeze some more fps out of it.

i played deus ex MD yesterday. i had to turn off MSAA, because it ruins the performance AND what i also notice was 10GB RAM after 1h gameplay
i wonder if it is the same on windows.
if you only have 8gb ram, then maybe thats a bottleneck
Eike Nov 21, 2018
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Thank you and pardon me for missing that :)

It's well hidden! :-)
Salvatos Nov 21, 2018
Thank you and pardon me for missing that :)

It's well hidden! :-)
Moments like this make me wish we had tags to indicate people from the industry, but they would have to be optional of course.
Whitewolfe80 Nov 21, 2018
Good its the best game suggested that it could be and its great that we get the full trilogy. I do wish they didnt bother with the guessing game and just said Feral is proud to annouce "insert game title" is coming to linux "eta". Maybe i am wrong and people like it but its just get hopes up for games its never going to be.
Whitewolfe80 Nov 21, 2018
I don't care how good Proton is. Unless there is a native/official port of the game I'm not interested. I'm getting tired of all the people spamming internet with "runs fine in Proton, no port needed" - Proton is your unofficial and unpredictable choice, use it, have fun, enjoy playing your games, but stop actively discouraging developers from native support. This behaviour is exactly what changed my mind about Proton from "this is actually good" to "I hate it".

I admire that mindset but its not going to be the majority view loads its rough numbers but google the number of "linux" versions of skyrim there are since after two weeks proton sale counts as linux its a high number not millions but its a high number.
MasterSleort Nov 21, 2018
Too bad we can't vote for Feral in the Steam Awards!
lordgault Nov 21, 2018
Shut up and take my money.
jens Nov 21, 2018
  • Supporter
Good its the best game suggested that it could be and its great that we get the full trilogy. I do wish they didnt bother with the guessing game and just said Feral is proud to annouce "insert game title" is coming to linux "eta". Maybe i am wrong and people like it but its just get hopes up for games its never going to be.

From my understanding Feral announces as soon as possible. The guessing game is a way to give at least some clues to the outside world while they are contractually not yet allowed to announce.
Scoopta Nov 21, 2018
While I'm looking forward to this I'm a bit worried it won't run for me. Rise of the tomb raider hangs for me on RADV 18.2.5. A lot of DXVK games also hang for me although not all of them. Hopefully by the time this comes out it won't be an issue anymore.

Are you running
Ubuntu or Arch ? cause im stuck at 18.2.2 on Ubuntu
Debian sid
Whitewolfe80 Nov 21, 2018
While I'm looking forward to this I'm a bit worried it won't run for me. Rise of the tomb raider hangs for me on RADV 18.2.5. A lot of DXVK games also hang for me although not all of them. Hopefully by the time this comes out it won't be an issue anymore.

Are you running
Ubuntu or Arch ? cause im stuck at 18.2.2 on Ubuntu

Can you not manually update by just adding the ppa and ensuring your running the latest kernel its what i do
massatt212 Nov 21, 2018
While I'm looking forward to this I'm a bit worried it won't run for me. Rise of the tomb raider hangs for me on RADV 18.2.5. A lot of DXVK games also hang for me although not all of them. Hopefully by the time this comes out it won't be an issue anymore.

Are you running
Ubuntu or Arch ? cause im stuck at 18.2.2 on Ubuntu

Can you not manually update by just adding the ppa and ensuring your running the latest kernel its what i do

What you think is the best driver for DXVK on AMD GPU i have a RX 570
Comandante Ñoñardo Nov 21, 2018
Too bad we can't vote for Feral in the Steam Awards!
I just did it.
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