It seems Stardock Entertainment are continuing to work on their Linux port of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. As a big fan of real-time strategy games, I'm still quite excited to try it out.
In their April 2019 update post, Stardock CEO Brad Wardell posted this:
## Linux ##
So now that GDC is over, I can't really go into much detail but it should be more obvious now why we've been taking Linux support more seriously in all our games. The continued issue is just working with the driver makers to make sure their Vulkan drivers are able to handle what we need them to do. I don't have an ETA on this but we will likely bite the bullet and put out a Linux beta even with the performance challenges (those with high end systems may not have an issue).
When Wardell says it should be more obvious now, they're talking about Google's Stadia which they previously hinted at knowing about, as they said there was a lot of "industry interest in Linux". This latest post was made at the start of April, so considering they're coming up on their next monthly report we might see it on Linux in some rough form soon.
It will be interesting to see if any other developer uses the Linux desktop, as a sort-of testing area for a future Stadia release. That could end up benefiting us quite a lot but I'm not keeping my fingers crossed too tightly on that point.
Hat tip to Jan.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
psycho_driver Apr 27, 2019
Quoting: KandarihuIf all of this "industry interest in Linux" is just for the sake of games-as-a-service systems like Stadia, then they've been using us all along. I have been supporting Linux gaming for the sake of increasing freedom for the consumer, not for pushing some unaccountable streaming system where the publisher has absolute control over every individual instance of the game. If we want to see gaming on our own desktops, we need to amend our cries.
We want to play games on OUR Linux desktops, not THEIR servers!
Yeah the whole games as a service thing sucks. On the other hand, anything that drives developers to developing for linux is an overall positive thing.
Quoting: psycho_driverQuoting: KandarihuIf all of this "industry interest in Linux" is just for the sake of games-as-a-service systems like Stadia, then they've been using us all along. I have been supporting Linux gaming for the sake of increasing freedom for the consumer, not for pushing some unaccountable streaming system where the publisher has absolute control over every individual instance of the game. If we want to see gaming on our own desktops, we need to amend our cries.
We want to play games on OUR Linux desktops, not THEIR servers!
Yeah the whole games as a service thing sucks. On the other hand, anything that drives developers to developing for linux is an overall positive thing.
That can be positive. I am pretty sure, that we will never see Linux binaries for e.g. Ubisoft Titles.
On the other hand, the driver situation gets better and the more familar developers get with Vulkan and Linux the better.
They should probably release it and let the community do its thing, it would be really nice to have another benchmark to optimize against, that stresses out different parts of the stack.
That is, as long as they do not try to do some funky stuff to work around performance issues.
If they are targetting Stadia first, it seems strange to interact with nvidia, so that would likely be for a desktop target.
If they are working with AMD on that, chances are they are working with AMDVLK, which is the only driver officially supported, though I must admit it generally offers a subpar experience as compared to RADV.
On the bright side, the desktop platform is a nice stress test before porting to stadia, and gives developers lots of "beta testers" ('cause that's what gamers are, nowadays). And if most of the porting work is already done, we should probably see more titles anyways, so that's a win.
Plus, as stated by einherjar, more game developer experience is always a plus.
Quoting: GuestEvery time there's something from Stardock about this, it seems like they're worried about something with Vulkan drivers, however have never really said what. RADV is open source; the community is considered the driver maker. Sure, the main developers might have corporate funding, but their work isn't hidden away, and I'm sure if Stardock were working with the community on this, we'd have heard about it. So to me the post doesn't make much sense. I'm still very curious about what the issue actually is.
Which I conclude means the issue is not with radv or amdvlk, but with some blob. Or Stardock aren't used to dealing with the idea of open drivers.
Quoting: liamdaweDoesn't seem like Stardock want to give any more details, I asked which vendor they were having issues with and what the issues were. The response was "We're working with both of them on it. Making iterative improvements." - so basically, nothing.
Oh, this indicates their issues are with amdvlk, and not with radv. Since radv isn't controlled by the vendor. And that makes sense, since Stadia is using amdvlk. It also shows that they possibly don't even test it on radv to begin with.
Last edited by Shmerl on 28 April 2019 at 5:10 pm UTC
As for Stardock, they are coming from the common closed source development mentality, and probably are totally not used to open development model with public bugs and so on. That's why they are eager to talk to "vendors", but there is zero communication from them on any public Vulkan bug trackers.
Last edited by Shmerl on 28 April 2019 at 9:28 pm UTC
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