Unreal Engine 4.21 is out, now defaults to the Vulkan API on Linux

"Who knows, maybe now that Vulkan is in better shape in Unreal Engine, Epic Games might eventually bring Fortnite to Linux. I can dream right?"

Could be a good way to make Linux support even better... Yep! One can dream!

How is doing the Linux build of Unreal Tournament? Didn't hear about it for quite a while...


Last edited by Mohandevir on 7 November 2018 at 5:46 pm UTC

epic is a nightmare for a linux user!
remember ut2007? ikkulus ultimated the port and then they decided to forbid it. who knows why... bill... continue to produce futuristic wc’s please...
ark survival evolved port? this port looks like a spot where they say: so this is linux graphic, dx is better.
I will trust in unreal engine again when they’ll stop to support dx.

I dont follow the Unreal Engine Development really much. But it looks like they still dont treat Vulkan like a First Class Citizen. Maybe i'm wrong. But as long as they dont do it. I dont see for example Fortnite coming to Linux in a native way.

I doubt that they treath as second class citizen Vulkan (if so, we must say the same for Dx12). If Fortnite is using Dx11 it's just because they want to reach as much public they can (it's a freemium software, so it makes sense). If they don't make the release for Linux it's probably related with Battleye and that they don't want to pay for the Linux support (AFAIK, Battleye has a Linux client).


Last edited by x_wing on 7 November 2018 at 6:06 pm UTC

"Who knows, maybe now that Vulkan is in better shape in Unreal Engine, Epic Games might eventually bring Fortnite to Linux. I can dream right?"

Could be a good way to make Linux support even better... Yep! One can dream!

How is doing the Linux build of Unreal Tournament? Didn't hear about it for quite a while...

They've long given up on UT4 since Fortnite became so big, last update was in june 2017

If that's true, you just confirmed what I suspected.

Building something new is more likely than refactoring a game that's already released. Good news for the future of Linux gaming though.

I dont follow the Unreal Engine Development really much. But it looks like they still dont treat Vulkan like a First Class Citizen. Maybe i'm wrong. But as long as they dont do it. I dont see for example Fortnite coming to Linux in a native way.

I doubt that they treath as second class citizen Vulkan (if so, we must say the same for Dx12). If Fortnite is using Dx11 it's just because they want to reach as much public they can (it's a freemium software, so it makes sense). If they don't make the release for Linux it's probably related with Battleye and that they don't want to pay for the Linux support (AFAIK, Battleye has a Linux client).

Even if they treat Vulkan as a First Class Citizen as long as they dont make it a option into their Games it doesnt matter. You could say its because of BattlEye that there is no Linux Version but i dont think so. Probably the Vulkan Support in Unreal Engine is just not "good" enough yet. You could say then they could just use OpenGL but the Performance would be way "worse" in comparison to Windows then. I mean with a Good Enough PC i guess you wouldnt notice that much. But still Vulkan is the better Option for Linux and Windows.

BattlEye has a Linux version FYI.

From the official announcement:

"With the help of Samsung, Unreal Engine 4.21 includes all of the Vulkan engineering and optimization work that was done to help ship Fortnite on the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and is 100% feature compatible with OpenGL ES 3.1. Projects that utilize Vulkan can run up to 20% faster than the same project that uses OpenGL ES."

So Fortnite IS using Vulkan, on Android... Mmmm... Interresting.


Last edited by Mohandevir on 7 November 2018 at 6:44 pm UTC

While i am glad unreal have supported linux in engine I would love to see them actually release their one game fortnite. I know unreal powers many but unreal/epic itself it only has one ip since selling gears and bulletstorm

Meanwhile on ARK:SE's upcoming features (since 2016) "Linux - Vulkan support". Here's their chance. But we all know that Wildcard will fail to take advantage of it.

Thats the battle eye on linux :P

[ 19:41:35,601 ] BattlEye: "Initialized (v1.243)"

Three of my games are using it Ark, Tibia and Arma.

BattleEye didn't had a linux version but Ark forced them to release it. Since then we have it. I doubt it's an economic problem for Epic to release a linux version.

It IS odd that they added Linux support to their engine, but their own games do not make use of that feature. Not that I personally miss Fortnite. But it's popular, so it would be nice to have it support Linux. Our AAA games list is still short and probably the biggest remaining hindrance for Linux adoption these days.

Meanwhile on ARK:SE's upcoming features (since 2016) "Linux - Vulkan support". Here's their chance. But we all know that Wildcard will fail to take advantage of it.

AFAIK Ark engine has sufficiently deviated from Unreal 4 Engine so they are basically both 2 different things.

The absolute clusterf _ _ k that has been Ark Engine over the years has showed how development is a un-unified uncordinated rush-fest to graft features on to a unstable core increasing technical debt.

I wonder what my game dev friends who code in unreal will think of this.

I will test this version from tomorrow. I hope that Vulkan in UE4 is really ready for serous use.

In previous few days, for the first time, I found things that are not working at all in the Linux version and that was disappointing. I hope that it's maybe fixed in 4.21

Speaking of: What's the latest on Unreal Tournament? Is there a gui to run it, yet, or is it still run via bash script? I haven't heard much, lately.

Meanwhile on ARK:SE's upcoming features (since 2016) "Linux - Vulkan support". Here's their chance. But we all know that Wildcard will fail to take advantage of it.

AFAIK Ark engine has sufficiently deviated from Unreal 4 Engine so they are basically both 2 different things.

The absolute clusterf _ _ k that has been Ark Engine over the years has showed how development is a un-unified uncordinated rush-fest to graft features on to a unstable core increasing technical debt.

I wonder what my game dev friends who code in unreal will think of this.

Got any source or further info on the extent and nature of their changes to UE4?


Last edited by Kristian on 7 November 2018 at 10:14 pm UTC

Meanwhile on ARK:SE's upcoming features (since 2016) "Linux - Vulkan support". Here's their chance. But we all know that Wildcard will fail to take advantage of it.

Not that I'm defending Studio Wildcard for their Linux port but it's a lot more to port Ark to Vulkan than a basic UE4 update. Their engine is highly modified and upgrading isn't like installing the new engine, loading the game and tweaking, it's a major undertaking to actually port the new code in the new engine and maintain all their custom code for the game. It's highly unlikely we will see any major improvement as they surely are not getting a lot more sales from Linux clients. It doesn't honestly make sense for them to do all the work involved in porting the engine over to make it happen on a game that likely won't result in many if any more sales. Also, UE4's Linux support is less than ideal to be quite honest. Many devs have a large number of issues so honestly, you can't logically put all the blame on Studio Wildcard, some of that blame goes to Epic. Many of the massive graphics glitches in ark such as the rain, caves, dust, etc was a Linux OpenGL renderer problem that happened to be fixed on accident when they upgraded the engine right before releasing out of EA. I wish for a Vulkan port but realistically I wouldn't hold my breath.

Hi,
I have to admit that it's never easy to port changes from a fork to a new "main" version. And even if you just want to upgrade, well.. Take a look at my youtube video about installing / updating the UE4 Editor https://youtu.be/tbhp-b2WdLw
But please don't think Epic is not supporting Linux or fixing bugs. I have made many bug reports (especially about instancing bug) but everything is fixed now. Really. Even in the slice I made in 4.18 8 months ago (you can see it on my website for a french youtuber, I had really good performances in the optimized level (go into the "hell" sewer entrance, the "egypt" part is a "melting pot" of ideas and is not optimized at all lol). But I admit, we were never able to use the Volumetric Fog which disapointing but not a deal breaker. OpenGL performances are not bad at all and we can use all the post-process tools. Vulkan wasn't perfect... at all so I didn't use it on that project. There were crazy bugs lol. But Eoic was working on it ,so I can't wait to see what it has become ! ?
My new project is based on 4.20. I didn't try the 4.21 yet, but I want to trust Epic.

For comparison, if anyone knows, does it default to DX11 or 12 for Windows?

I know. I didnt denied it. He just stated that its probably because Epic doesnt want to pay for the Linux Support of it. I for myself think its because Vulkan is still in an "Early" Stage in Unreal Engine if we look at the Support.

What I said is that it doesn't sounds like there is a problem between their engine and Vulkan, I just said that they are winning tons of money by having a huge player base and using an older API allows them to get to more people as it has been supported for several years, bringing better legacy support (for instance, a GTX 5XX & AMD HD6XXX or older cards doesn't have Vulkan support, but will probably be able to run Fortnite). And about Battleye, I just mentioned that they probably don't want to pay them to get the Linux client (Battleye definitely will want an extra), in the sense that it's an extra cost they think that won't get payback.

From my point of view, the problem to get the port is related with the business model that this game has. We, the Linux market, are a tiny market, meanwhile Fortnite is a game with an exponential revenue growth and with a huge kids players base. So, the issue is not about technical difficulties, but that the revenue speedup that a Linux version could generate is minimum compared with speedup that they will get if they use those resources in order to create a new hat or skin and sell it for hundreds of V-Bucks.

For comparison, if anyone knows, does it default to DX11 or 12 for Windows?

I booted on the Windows I'm keeping for downloading plugins and compiling. Here is a screenshot of the menu that answers your question :

I really hope they at least just do a quick build of UT4 with the new engine so we can play it with Vulkan.

Also, what do they have to lose at this point by just building a GNU/Linux version of their games like Fornite?
I mean, even if it doesn't work properly could it possibly hurt their sales at all? Or do they just have Windows specific code somehow that their engine can't build for GNU/Linux?