A nice way to end the week, Stardock have given some more updates on Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation for Linux and they said something rather interesting.
Firstly, Stardock gave an update at the end of December to mention how the game engine is now "compiling under Debian Linux and running via Vulkan" which was quite exciting to hear for those that missed it.
A few hours ago, they continued dishing out more information on Steam and it's sounding quite positive with this post:
I don't want to make any promises but...it's looking more and more like Linux will be arriving this year.
So here are some of the issues we have to deal with:
1. Performance. Vulkan on linux (driver wise) is...not very mature.
2. There are some differences in how memory management works that we're having to step through.
BTW, I want to send a shout out to AMD who helped us with the Vulkan Linux support.
But the good news is that it's compiling at least.
While that's interesting by itself, what they said next was even more interesting. When asked which AMD driver they were testing, they replied with:
No idea. I’ll try to find to find out. I’m a total Linux novice myself.
There is a lot of industry interest in Linux right now as a game platform. I am not at liberty to explain why but Vulkan is a real game changer.
I'm very curious what they mean by the "industry interest", especially since they're not giving out real details on that.
I'm personally excited. I'm a huge RTS fan and I've been itching to play Ashes for along time now. The fact that they're talking more about it and quite openly too is a very good sign.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
pentarctagon Jan 6, 2019
There is a lot of industry interest in Linux right now as a game platform. I am not at liberty to explain why but Vulkan is a real game changer.
what do they mean? are dev's really looking at linux or are they seeing vulkan as the main benefit (break from DX) and a path to linux is easier if they so wished?
Stardock showing an interest in linux is great but counter to what they have done... so what do they know
You want to make a gaming platform but also want old and beloved games on your shiny new platform? Well , with Linux that is possible. Kudos to Wine and DXVK mostly.
Edit:Typo
Last edited by Leopard on 6 January 2019 at 12:57 pm UTC
Quote1. Performance. Vulkan on linux (driver wise) is...not very mature.
...but perhaps this explains it...
QuoteNo idea. I’ll try to find to find out. I’m a total Linux novice myself.
...no offence intended.
Quoting: BrisseThis one surprised me a bit...I read it as "our engine compiled and is working but not on par with the Windows version". They still need to tweak it to work better on Linux and that might be because of the driver behaving differently (not exactly worse). I'm sad anyway every time an abstraction leaks, in this case the driver/Vulkan abstraction. If you thinkg about it, most of the bad things in our world happen due to some interface not being sufficiently abstract from the implementation.
Quote1. Performance. Vulkan on linux (driver wise) is...not very mature.
...but perhaps this explains it...
QuoteNo idea. I’ll try to find to find out. I’m a total Linux novice myself.
...no offence intended.
TheRiddick Jan 6, 2019
I hope their work together with the driver devs really manage to improve the driver optimizations as well. We need great games to really push the drivers and find the bottlenecks.
I was thinking about buying the Star Dock Humble Bundle since they're working on the Linux support, but I'll rather buy Escalation at full price when they actually deliver the product (even at a beta stage).
Nevertheless Jan 6, 2019
Firstly, thanks Valve for your initiative!
Wasn't it Intel that said lately Linux graphics drivers were a priority for their standalone graphics cards?
Also, whatever platform/console (Mad Box?) might be created in the future, will most probably use Vulkan. Whatever OS those platforms will use, and however open or closed down they might be, more use of Vulkan will help Linux gaming indirectly too, even if it only leads to more Vulkan Windows games.
Why there is a lot industry interest in Linux gaming is a mystery to me, but I would guess it's not our current 0,8% on Steam! ;-)
Last edited by Nevertheless on 6 January 2019 at 12:48 pm UTC
Nevertheless Jan 6, 2019
Quoting: TheRiddickIf games use vulkan then it kinda makes it real easy to port to Linux/Mac/Switch/PS4++ The only platform I know of atm that has a issue with vulkan is the xbox.... does it support vulkan? pretty sure they blacklisted it!
Guess so! Is Vulkan availlable on PS4 by now?
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