Wasteland 3 from inXile Entertainment has a big new free update out with the Robots & Rangers" patch, and it's looking to be a good one for all players.
"In Wasteland 3 you take command of a squad of Desert Rangers, lawmen and women in a post-nuclear world, trying to rebuild society from the ashes. More than a century after the bombs fell, you’re fighting a losing battle to keep your beloved Arizona alive. Then the self-proclaimed Patriarch of Colorado radios, promising aid if you'll do a job he can only entrust to an outsider—rescue his land from the ambitions of his three bloodthirsty children."
Originally released in August 2020, the Linux version came just before the year was up in December and since then they've clearly been busy on fixing up bugs and expanding the game elsewhere. Here's what's new in 1.3.0 "Robots & Rangers":
- New difficulty mode: Tourist - Tourist mode is easier than Rookie, letting you enjoy Wasteland 3’s story, with combat difficulty taking a back seat.
- New cosmetics! New Hair, Beards, and Pants have been added to character creation.
- The Handmade Wizard and Knight costumes will let you roleplay all your Robots & Rangers fantasies. Once players in have completed the quest 'Cornered Rats' they will find that a lootable crate has been delivered to Ranger HQ, outside of the base structure, near the transition waypoint that leads to Downtown Colorado Springs. Equip the costumes at the wardrobe in Ranger HQ or the clothing shop in Downtown Colorado Springs ... and attack the darkness!
- Intelligence now gives +1 skill point for every point of Intelligence spent, up from +1 every other point. This change applies retroactively to existing save games.
- The Book Learnin’ and Answering Machine achievements are now achievable.
Note: The missing Book Learnin’ note becomes available after passing a Leadership skill check when first meeting the Patriarch and then speaking to Magistrate Silas Watkins in Downtown Colorado Springs.
The missing cassette tapes "Kidnappers in Trouble" is in the Gett Family Homestead in a new container. "A Proposal" is in the Machine Commune, just west of Vivisecto.- More actions are now able to be bound to keyboard and mouse, most notably camera panning. The game will also unmap double-bound keys to prevent input conflicts, and warn you about missing keybinds before you leave the menu.
There is quite a lot of additional bug fixes, a few improved animation and sound effects, a balancing pass, UI updates and the list of smaller details goes on that you can see in full here.
Note: for the Linux version, it's been reported that on AMD GPUs you may need to turn off Ambient Occlusion to prevent graphical glitches. Hopefully that will be solved in either a Wasteland 3 patch or a later Mesa driver update. There is an open bug report that needs more testing for AMD GPUs on the Mesa bug tracker.
You can buy Wasteland 3 from GOG, Steam or the Humble Store.
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10 comments
DaiKaiser93 Jan 28, 2021
This was already on the game was it not?
I finished the game 2 weeks ago and the GOG version is on 1.3.0.255570.
I finished the game 2 weeks ago and the GOG version is on 1.3.0.255570.
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TheRiddick Jan 29, 2021
PLEASE tell me their using unity's vulkan api for the linux port. If I see another company rolling back to outdated broken slow opengl for that engine, I'll scream, let it die already!
If you've played 'Pillars of Eternity 2' or 'Battletech' you understand the horrible woes of the OpenGL component, and yes at first glimpse it looks to work well, but as you play through those games (and many others) it gets real nasty, quick.
If you've played 'Pillars of Eternity 2' or 'Battletech' you understand the horrible woes of the OpenGL component, and yes at first glimpse it looks to work well, but as you play through those games (and many others) it gets real nasty, quick.
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Quoting: TheRiddickPLEASE tell me their using unity's vulkan api for the linux port. If I see another company rolling back to outdated broken slow opengl for that engine, I'll scream, let it die already!
If you've played 'Pillars of Eternity 2' or 'Battletech' you understand the horrible woes of the OpenGL component, and yes at first glimpse it looks to work well, but as you play through those games (and many others) it gets real nasty, quick.
I didn't look too much into what engine they were using but after an hour of gameplay where it would freeze for 30 seconds or lock constantly I switched to Proton and then finished the game without a single issue....
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Quoting: TheRiddickIf you've played 'Pillars of Eternity 2'I played Pillars of Eternity 2 a lot, and it worked well? (apart from the many and increasingly long loading screens)
I've not followed Wasteland 3, and was worried about the M$ acquisition. How has it turned out? Is it good? Works well on Linux?
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ripper81358 Jan 30, 2021
Unity 3D is a great engine as it allows for relatively easy cross-platform development. However running it natively on linux comes with some problems. I was involved in troubleshooting some Unity 3D games on linux. While i am not a developer i learned some things about Unity 3D on linux.
1.) There seems to be no support for running Unity 3D in exclusive-fullscreen mode which is problematic if you want to use VRR in form of AMD-Freesync or Nvidia G-Sync. Both technologies will only work if the OpenGL or Vulkangame runs in exclusive-fullscreen. The engine will always use borderless-window for fullscreen display regardless of the settings offered by each individual game.
2.) Unity 3D has performamce problems on linux. You'll get very low and unstable performance compared to windows especially with graphical more demanding games. With Vulkan the performance is higher compared to OpenGL. However fps are very unstable on both API's. I have one Uintygame that gives me between 120 and 55 fps running on Vulkan.
3.) Problems with the MESA Drivers.
Unity is bugged with the MESA RadeonSi OpenGL driver. This bug causes textureflickering if ambient occlusion is used by the game. The only way to prevent this is to turn ambient occlusion completely off. You can see this in Wasteland 3 but also in other games like Last Epoch.
Older Versions of Unity 3D will crash if you try to run them with Vulkan in combination with the MESA RADV Vulkandriver. This bug is not present in newer Versions. However many games are based on older Unity 3D Versions. So the problem will be there until the developers upgrade to a newer release of the engine.
1.) There seems to be no support for running Unity 3D in exclusive-fullscreen mode which is problematic if you want to use VRR in form of AMD-Freesync or Nvidia G-Sync. Both technologies will only work if the OpenGL or Vulkangame runs in exclusive-fullscreen. The engine will always use borderless-window for fullscreen display regardless of the settings offered by each individual game.
2.) Unity 3D has performamce problems on linux. You'll get very low and unstable performance compared to windows especially with graphical more demanding games. With Vulkan the performance is higher compared to OpenGL. However fps are very unstable on both API's. I have one Uintygame that gives me between 120 and 55 fps running on Vulkan.
3.) Problems with the MESA Drivers.
Unity is bugged with the MESA RadeonSi OpenGL driver. This bug causes textureflickering if ambient occlusion is used by the game. The only way to prevent this is to turn ambient occlusion completely off. You can see this in Wasteland 3 but also in other games like Last Epoch.
Older Versions of Unity 3D will crash if you try to run them with Vulkan in combination with the MESA RADV Vulkandriver. This bug is not present in newer Versions. However many games are based on older Unity 3D Versions. So the problem will be there until the developers upgrade to a newer release of the engine.
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Quoting: ripper81358Unity 3D is a great engine as it allows for relatively easy cross-platform development. However running it natively on linux comes with some problems. I was involved in troubleshooting some Unity 3D games on linux. While i am not a developer i learned some things about Unity 3D on linux.
The problem I saw the most is that Unity is not able to play back video formats that a) are working fine on Windows and b) are working fine outside of Unity on the same Linux system. And one developer struggled with setting the video settings even though we knew what we wanted (WebM if I remember correctly).
Last edited by Eike on 30 January 2021 at 6:47 pm UTC
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ripper81358 Jan 30, 2021
Using this startcommand in steam should fix the flickering in wasteland 3 and other Unity 3D based games with textureflickering on AMD GPU's.
AMD_DEBUG=nodcc %command%
AMD_DEBUG=nodcc %command%
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As I mentioned in the bug report, I tested the mesa branch that has a potential fix and it resolves the ambient occlusion flickering.
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I was playing through using Proton without any issues, but gave the native version a go when it was released.
It started to load and then eventually (just before the main menu) it thrashed the HDD a little, then crashed to desktop.
I can see some other Linux peeps with the same problem. I tried some of their suggested fixes, but they had no effect.
It started to load and then eventually (just before the main menu) it thrashed the HDD a little, then crashed to desktop.
I can see some other Linux peeps with the same problem. I tried some of their suggested fixes, but they had no effect.
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ripper81358 Jan 31, 2021
Quoting: uglyAs I mentioned in the bug report, I tested the mesa branch that has a potential fix and it resolves the ambient occlusion flickering.
I am only using stable MESA Releases. I don't want to deal with the regressions and bugs of development drivers. It will take sometime until this patch is merged into a stable MESA Release so for now i will go with the workaround for Unity 3D games that are affected by the flickering issue.
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