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Frictional Games have now released their latest horror title with Amnesia: Rebirth, as you walk in the shoes of Tasi and guide them through an emotional experience.

Using the same game engine as their previous game SOMA, which they call HPL3, Amnesia: Rebirth is a horror game that focuses on the journey as much as the end. It's all about the narrative and sinking into the thick atmosphere, Frictional say to not go in aiming to beat it but rather to immerse yourself in the world. Rebirth has a direct connection to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, however it's a fully stand-alone experience so you don't actually need to have played any others.

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In short, what is it? Feature highlight:

  • Explore environments and uncover their histories. In this first-person narrative horror experience, no location is like the others, and each is filled with mysteries and secrets for players to explore.
  • Overcome challenges that stand in your way. You will encounter a wide and varied number of mysterious contraptions and physics-based puzzles. 
  • Carefully manage your limited resources, both physical and mental in order to stay in the light and keep your fear under control
  • Encounter horrific creatures and use your wits to escape them
  • Incredible cinematic sound design that will make you feel inside the game's world
  • Don't let your fear consume you. Stay out of the dark, avoid horrific sights and control your panic or suffer long-lasting consequences.

Unfortunately, my key came in only the night before release and i discovered severe graphical problems in the Linux build on my desktop so I have been unable to review it at this time. Our livestreamer has also verified many major graphical issues. Frictional Games are aware as we've messaged them over email. We will be livestreaming it on our Twitch Channel and reviewing it in our usual way as well as soon as we can. We're really excited to give it a proper go once it's fixed up. Will keep you posted on that.

The actual launch on Steam was a bit rough too, as they managed to miss giving everyone the correct files to actually play it, thankfully they managed to solve that relatively quickly. Somehow though, they then nuked their Steam page and it vanished. Steam's admin panel isn't exactly straightforward though, I don't blame developers for getting confused on it.

You can buy it now on GOG and Steam

If you missed it, the last two Amnesia games recently had their game engine open sourced!

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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35 comments
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stud68 Oct 21, 2020
The 4.2COMPAT command works fine here on 5700xt but can not get the task bar to go away.
I only play in full screen.
mos Oct 21, 2020
Frictional and their history of Linux support
their Linux support was always just a guy who does the porting.

Their Linux support was always working and playable on day 1, going all the way back. This is completely unplayable and I've seen better results when devs shrug and hit Unity's Export button and call it a day. Windows seems usable but with issues as well and I fear they rushed for a halloween season release; it's clear QA was lacking and at this point I doubt if anyone got around to firing up the Linux build.

I've always pointed to Frictional as a prime example as not only a great dev but one with top notch Linux support. This release has really soured me on them.
Sigh... Grow up. Read up.
mos Oct 21, 2020
The 4.2COMPAT command
Its called setting an environment variable. Aka envvar. Windoze has those too...
Anza Oct 21, 2020
Frictional and their history of Linux support
their Linux support was always just a guy who does the porting.
The engine probably was using OpenGL from the beginning, otherwise we woudln't have seen the support at all.
They've most likely tweaked and hacked on it but haven't fleshed out the bugs yet.

There was interview (spoiler heavy, especially for the older games) where it was mentioned that engine is inherited from SOMA. It was big benefit as they could do better reviews of things they were working on. They really care about that games that they develop are scary and that's harder to prove with few solid low polygon objects.
F.Ultra Oct 21, 2020
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Complete mess

It uses legacy OpenGL features, but seems to use a core context. Needs to be run with MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.6COMPAT, and even then you get errors like these:

Overriding using 4.2COMPAT does the trick too (this should probably be the option for r600 driver). Anyway, overriding the version definitely does the trick, the game seems to work fine using Ubuntu default Mesa version (20.0.8) and I didn't detect stuttering (but I didn't play a lot tbh).

Thanks, 4.2COMPAT seems to have fixed the game for me aswell (RC480 mesa 20.2.1) where 4.6COMPAT was just as broken as the original.
whizse Oct 21, 2020
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Thanks, 4.2COMPAT seems to have fixed the game for me aswell (RC480 mesa 20.2.1) where 4.6COMPAT was just as broken as the original.
Good catch! 4.2COMPAT seems to work better here too.
drlamb Oct 22, 2020
I can also confirm the 4.2COMPAT fixed the issues I was seeing.

Edit: Water still has some issues.


Last edited by drlamb on 23 October 2020 at 10:00 pm UTC
mos Oct 22, 2020
Frictional and their history of Linux support
their Linux support was always just a guy who does the porting.
The engine probably was using OpenGL from the beginning, otherwise we woudln't have seen the support at all.
They've most likely tweaked and hacked on it but haven't fleshed out the bugs yet.

There was interview (spoiler heavy, especially for the older games) where it was mentioned that engine is inherited from SOMA. It was big benefit as they could do better reviews of things they were working on. They really care about that games that they develop are scary and that's harder to prove with few solid low polygon objects.
All of their games 'inherit' the same engine AFAIU
F.Ultra Oct 23, 2020
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  • Supporter
Frictional and their history of Linux support
their Linux support was always just a guy who does the porting.
The engine probably was using OpenGL from the beginning, otherwise we woudln't have seen the support at all.
They've most likely tweaked and hacked on it but haven't fleshed out the bugs yet.

There was interview (spoiler heavy, especially for the older games) where it was mentioned that engine is inherited from SOMA. It was big benefit as they could do better reviews of things they were working on. They really care about that games that they develop are scary and that's harder to prove with few solid low polygon objects.
All of their games 'inherit' the same engine AFAIU

Depends on how you defined it, Penumbra was using the HL1 engine, Amnesia the HL2 and Soma the HL3 that Amnesia Rebirth also uses. Don't know how close the different versions are though, the code for HL1 and HL2 is available on their forum and github for anyone wanting to see the differences.
F.Ultra Oct 23, 2020
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New patch today with a notice that the Linux bugs will be fixed in a later patch so they are working on it. Meanwhile whatever you do don't ever go into the steam discussion pages for this game, it's full of vile and ignorant people for some reason (didn't know that there existed such a large group of Frictional Games haters out there).
whizse Oct 23, 2020
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New patch today with a notice that the Linux bugs will be fixed in a later patch so they are working on it. Meanwhile whatever you do don't ever go into the steam discussion pages for this game, it's full of vile and ignorant people for some reason (didn't know that there existed such a large group of Frictional Games haters out there).
Good to know! I've been checking my GOG account once every hour or so, waiting for an update. Guess I have to be patient for a bit longer.

I honestly don't know what it is about the Steam forums? They seem to turn even the most placid person into an enraged asshole?
nastys Oct 24, 2020
I've made a fix:

Open Amnesia2.bin.x86_64 in a hex editor.
Search for FF BF 15 00 00 00 BE 01
Replace with FF BF 15 00 00 00 BE 02

(I have GOG version 1.03, but hopefully the Steam executable is the same. I'll update the game later)

Basically, it replaces
SDL_GL_SetAttribute(SDL_GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_MASK, SDL_GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_CORE) with SDL_GL_SetAttribute(SDL_GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_MASK, SDL_GL_CONTEXT_PROFILE_COMPATIBILITY)which is necessary, since the game uses legacy code.


EDIT: Updated version below


Last edited by nastys on 25 October 2020 at 10:17 am UTC
nastys Oct 25, 2020
I've updated to version 1.06 and fixed some issues with the shadows and possibly other shaders. I hope it's fully fixed now. Almost fully fixed, but the
Spoiler, click me
crash site
still has some minor issues.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/999220/discussions/0/4227150602817771843/?ctp=6#c3012305144376948097


Last edited by nastys on 25 October 2020 at 11:54 am UTC
Eike Oct 29, 2020
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From their update news:

* Linux graphics glitch fixed.

[...]

For linux users we still have some known issues with fullscreen and exiting the game that won’t be fixed in this patch.

For our next update the main focus is:

Mod-support. We are almost there, but want to test it properly before launching it.
More linux fixes.


Last edited by Eike on 29 October 2020 at 4:38 pm UTC
drlamb Oct 29, 2020
I can confirm that the game launches and functions without forcing a COMPAT profile. I haven't tested outside of a brief play session as I'm currently stuck in a really scary spot.
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