The Talos Principle, Croteam's fantastic first-person puzzle game has a fresh beta available to test with some major changes.
It includes massive changes under the hood, including a much more up to date version of their Serious Engine. This brings with it 64bit by default, OpenGL removed in favour of Vulkan along with "various other optimizations, fixes, and tweaks that will make your gameplay experience better without you knowing why that is".
I did a few benchmarks this morning just to see how it's working now and unsurprisingly the Linux version remains incredibly smooth. With the performance options cranked to Ultra, rendering at 1080p and MSAA x4 on it was hitting an average of 112 FPS.
To access it, all you need to do is select the "publicbeta" branch on Steam. You can find it by right clicking the game in your Steam library, going to Properties and hit the Beta tab of the UI. From there, it's in the dropdown box:
See more about the beta here.
Hat tip to mphuZ.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Croteam has a way of working that surprises me again and again. Wonder how they can afford touching old games (even if it's mostly engine changes). Happy they can, of course.
And... do play Talos Principle if you're into puzzling.
And... do play Talos Principle if you're into puzzling.
10 Likes, Who?
officernice 23 Feb 2019
Feels like they'll do anything but tell us more about SS4! :P Pretty cool nonetheless.
1 Likes, Who?
I assume they're testing the engine for upcoming titles using the older game. Seems like a good idea, since they can see real-world results and the fans get an update for their existing library for free. A true win-win!
14 Likes, Who?
I always wondered why they still had 32bit as the default, good to see that this has been changed now to 64bit and especially Vulkan... I won't miss the OpenGL support at all! :-) The update works great, no issues so far!
I am still downloading the beta on my desktop. The old version should be kept as an option because it does work on my laptop with intel HD 4400 and Vulkan does not work there (simple benchmarks do work bun not anything like Talos). What I think really nobody needs is the 32bit nonsense.
0 Likes
Awesome! I was surprised by how poor the performance was with Vulkan before, but they were working against a moving target when they did the first version so it is understandable that the performance might be sub-par because of that. Hopefully this makes a big difference! Looking forward to seeing benchmarks, since I've already finished the game :)
Might try it out a little though!
Might try it out a little though!
0 Likes
Ok I run the game on my amdgpu desktop and it feels a lot better! (I had some microstuttering before) nice :-)
I am not talking about any bug with the game. It is just the way it is with vulkan on intel HD 4400. It is very clear that vulkan support is only experimental on that gpu. I am just saying that they simply just not completely delete that as an option. They do keep even older legacy and a lot less useful options there, so I am not really concerned.
I tried Serious Sam 2017 Fusion as well and there OpenGL support is gone already, but maybe it is available in the previous version. If there is an issue with ANV it is probably the best to write a bug report (if not done yet).
I am not talking about any bug with the game. It is just the way it is with vulkan on intel HD 4400. It is very clear that vulkan support is only experimental on that gpu. I am just saying that they simply just not completely delete that as an option. They do keep even older legacy and a lot less useful options there, so I am not really concerned.
0 Likes
no_information_here 23 Feb 2019
Croteam has a way of working that surprises me again and again. Wonder how they can afford touching old games (even if it's mostly engine changes). Happy they can, of course.It seems they use their old games as a test-bed for developing their new engine. I am impressed at how well they pull it off, and we get "seriously" updated games like Talos!
And... do play Talos Principle if you're into puzzling.
Now, as much as I like SS, I really wish they would do some kind of Talos 2.
0 Likes
Installing this one. I still have a few stars to collect and a few extra DLC puzzles to solve.
1 Likes, Who?
So this means they dropped Mac os x support, since they mention they now only support vulkan and dx12
0 Likes
So this means they dropped Mac os x support, since they mention they now only support vulkan and dx12
They didn’t mention anything about dropping Mac support. They added metal support to the engine in 2017.
http://www.croteam.com/we-decide-to-implement-ios-support/
Besides, the Mac depots got updated with everything else.
https://steamdb.info/app/257510/history/
Last edited by Jmsnz on 24 Feb 2019 at 6:19 am UTC
0 Likes
it runs really smooth, but still have the issue when quitting the game it just hangs..... always need to do a kill
0 Likes
Hm, without Vulkan it's not possible to play it any longer on Optimus Hardware, as far as I know Bumblebee dose not support Vulkan.
There is still a 32 bit version in the beta branch. Might be worth checking if this is an older build which still has OpenGL.
Otherwise it's been running very well. The occasional graphical glitches that I saw when I last ran the Vulkan build are gone and everything looks as it should. Can't really comment on the performance since I switched GPUs since then.
0 Likes
Next to Valve, Croteam is one of the few studios that maintains its games for a long time and conscientiously.
3 Likes, Who?
Hm, without Vulkan it's not possible to play it any longer on Optimus Hardware, as far as I know Bumblebee dose not support Vulkan.
Or do I miss something?
Have and old Intel i5-3230M with and GT 730M (not my main gaming machine) and if I run vulkaninfo it tells me that Vulkan support is incomplete.
Regardless of if I run the command with or with out optirun or primusrun.
I have an Optimus laptop ( GTX 1050) and i can play all Vulkan games.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/aoh5be/guide_hybrid_graphics_on_linux_nvidia_optimus/
2 Likes, Who?
Is this using fusion engine?, or is it going to be integrated as part of the fusion bundle?, its not clear.
0 Likes
sneakeyboard 26 Feb 2019
might be time to pick this one up now C:
0 Likes
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