Arx Libertatis is an improved, cross-platform and open source engine for the 2002 game Arx Fatalis. After a long period of no updates a huge new release is out. Developed originally by Arkane Studios (Dishonored, Prey, Death Loop), the source code was released as open source in 2011 under the GPL.
Version 1.2 of Arx Libertatis follows eight years after the last release, and so of course there's plenty of big improvements. For starters, the HUD now nicely scales and the game supports high resolutions and frame rates. Arx Libertatis will now feel a bit more modern. This also includes the font size and weight for the text in the player book too. With separate options for the cursor, player book, and HUD.
The game is quite well known for its spell system, making you draw runes in the air to cast them. This was a bit unforgiving, which they've tuned to have a new more forgiving algorithm to detect what you're drawing and improved the detection for high frame rates. Bow aiming got improved too, so now the arrow orientation matches the direction it will launch in and a cross-hair will appear when the bow aim is fully charged. Both of those systems can be turned off too.
Lots more was improved including enhanced localization support for controlling and selection languages, along with new localized text for German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.
Item physics was also improved to prevent stuck items, inventory handling was tweaked to prevent some accidents and you can now even throw entire stacks of items out of your inventory. Combining items will also now no longer highlight invalid options.
They didn't stop there with new video, audio and input options too including the ability to disable some features like head bobbing movement or camera shaking from earthquakes and you can also increase the field of view. More objects in the game will also have outlines smoothened out to reduce aliasing, there's more audio configuration possible like selecting the output and OpenAL Soft's virtual surround (HRTF) mode from the settings. An upgrade to SDL2 was also done to improve video/windowing and this fixes some issues in the Linux version along with bringing Wayland support.
Additionally there's now an in-game script console, and their modding community has been busy with the AI-upscaled texture pack Arx Neuralis and also the ambitious Arx Insanity Overhaul mod is close to release now too.
Like other open source releases it does need the original game data from Arx Fatalis which you can buy on GOG.com or Steam.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
no_information_here Jul 14, 2021
Bethesda also gave this game for free through their launcher about a year back but I think that offer has expired. You only had to use the launcher to login and download the DRF-free game files.
Last edited by seamoose on 14 July 2021 at 8:16 pm UTC
Para-Gliding Jul 15, 2021
Avehicle7887 Jul 29, 2021
Nice. Saw it's on sale (-50%) on GOG, so just got it, as well as the precompiled version from their site. The included data-installer extracted all needed files from the GOG package - really well done!
Game starts up fine and plays the intro - but then I realize the HD530 graphics on my laptop obviously isn't enough to run this :(
But nevermind, I've got a 'real machine' at home :D
Your HD530 should handle it quite well. I started playing this game during my lunch break at work and I'm running it on an N2840 CPU with a weaker Intel GPU than yours (1366x768 - Antialiasing off). FPS would occasionally go as high as 42 fps but I limited to 30 for consistency.
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