Good news for the Steam Deck. IO Interactive have finally put HITMAN 3 on Steam, after the Epic exclusive period has finished and it works out of the box on Linux with Steam Play Proton. Note: personal purchase.
Concluding the Agent 47 saga, the Steam release of course had its own drama to deal with. While it has been out for a year already on the Epic Store (which doesn't support Linux at all), it arrived on Steam at full price which has rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Add to that the thoroughly confusing and long list of packages for HITMAN 3, plus Humble Store being required to separate between Epic / Steam (with the Epic version at 50% off but Steam is not) - the result added together was not a good one for IO.
They've made the same mistake as previous entries with overwhelming choice. Even I was confused by it. They don't even properly explain anywhere on the Steam store, that if you own either (or both) HITMAN 1 / HITMAN 2 on Steam, you don't actually need the DLC for their missions as you will get them automatically when you first properly load it up (as I confirmed myself). You only find that out if you go to the Steam forum.
If you don't want or don't care about the previous two games, there is a "story so far" cinematic to bring you up to speed.
For Linux fans the good news is that HITMAN 3 runs out of the box on Linux tested with Proton Experimental. Videos and all, everything just works. So, it may be late to Steam but it now makes it a click away to game on Linux and so for the Steam Deck too - which is fantastic news.
Considering the performance on my system, it should have no problem performing well on the Steam Deck. It's incredibly smooth, so it seems on the technical side IO actually did a genuinely good job at optimizing the game to begin with. I've not encountered any major stuttering, which I did see when testing HITMAN 2 with Proton originally. It also goes to show how far Proton has come in a couple years to be this good now.
If you've not played the series before it's actually thoroughly entertaining. Every level is a big sandbox for you to deal with this mission how you see fit. HITMAN is a game about stealth though, so going in hot with a big weapon is not something you're going to be doing often (or at all). Gain intel, listen in on conversations and gradually make your way towards targets to eventually take them down. Some missions can take hours to do depending on how elaborately you wish to take people down.
Something to note is that HITMAN 3, like the others before it, does need you to be online. There is a single-player offline mode but it's very limited.
If you're a Humble Choice subscriber, you can at least get 20% off on the Humble Store. Otherwise it's full price on Steam but there is a demo if you wish to give it a test.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: Liam DaweQuoting: F.UltraWhich could be either Feral not selling enough of HITMAN to make it interesting to also port 2 or that IO refused to sell the Linux rights to Feral (or they demanded a too high price for the license).Probably a mix of things. I saw a developer at IO tweet directly about HITMAN 2 running in Proton so they probably didn't see a need to partner with Feral on it.
That's something that must have happened with several developers and publishers when Proton came out.
Quoting: AnzaQuoting: Liam DaweQuoting: F.UltraWhich could be either Feral not selling enough of HITMAN to make it interesting to also port 2 or that IO refused to sell the Linux rights to Feral (or they demanded a too high price for the license).Probably a mix of things. I saw a developer at IO tweet directly about HITMAN 2 running in Proton so they probably didn't see a need to partner with Feral on it.
That's something that must have happened with several developers and publishers when Proton came out.
Terrible, really. Feral ports were great quality.
MasterSleort Jan 24, 2022
Quoting: RaabenQuoting: AnzaQuoting: Liam DaweQuoting: F.UltraWhich could be either Feral not selling enough of HITMAN to make it interesting to also port 2 or that IO refused to sell the Linux rights to Feral (or they demanded a too high price for the license).Probably a mix of things. I saw a developer at IO tweet directly about HITMAN 2 running in Proton so they probably didn't see a need to partner with Feral on it.
That's something that must have happened with several developers and publishers when Proton came out.
Terrible, really. Feral ports were great quality.
I have sometimes thought that Valve should buy Feral and use them as an in-house porting division. Then they could offer partnership with different publishers/developers to port the games to the Steam Deck / Linux.
Last edited by MasterSleort on 24 January 2022 at 2:42 pm UTC
Quoting: RaabenQuoting: AnzaThat's something that must have happened with several developers and publishers when Proton came out.
Terrible, really. Feral ports were great quality.
But if they run just as well or better under proton, what does it matter really.
It's not like the Feral ports were full ports of the source code. They utilised their own translational libraries instead.
Quoting: BeamboomQuoting: RaabenQuoting: AnzaThat's something that must have happened with several developers and publishers when Proton came out.
Terrible, really. Feral ports were great quality.
But if they run just as well or better under proton, what does it matter really.
It's not like the Feral ports were full ports of the source code. They utilised their own translational libraries instead.
Feral uses code level tools (indirectX I think they call it) vs runtime like WINE - you get a compiled native binary from that, like how Valve did it with TOGL and their native ports.
Quoting: RaabenFeral uses code level tools (indirectX I think they call it) vs runtime like WINE - you get a compiled native binary from that, like how Valve did it with TOGL and their native ports.
I don't really see the practical significance of making that distinction, to be honest. If a middle layer is compiled or applied runtime is rather of architectural difference. It doesn't necessarily provide any performance advantages - as clearly demonstrated when comparing these kind of "ports" with original game running on Proton.
Quoting: BeamboomQuoting: RaabenFeral uses code level tools (indirectX I think they call it) vs runtime like WINE - you get a compiled native binary from that, like how Valve did it with TOGL and their native ports.
I don't really see the practical significance of making that distinction, to be honest. If a middle layer is compiled or applied runtime is rather of architectural difference. It doesn't necessarily provide any performance advantages - as clearly demonstrated when comparing these kind of "ports" with original game running on Proton.
Because one comes out as a platform native/optimized binary and one has to be translated at runtime really.
I guess I see it from the point of having official support, showing a publisher/developer that was interested enough to go that far that there is a demand, and more importantly using and advancing open,non-MS technology so we aren't reliant on playing catch-up forever. Only one of the two will get developers used to the platform going forward.
I agree that around the Steam Machine era there were alot of lazy/bad ports both due to development and underlying tech, but compare those to how well the latest ports were doing and it's a clear improvement on both ends. Doomsaying that ports are forever destined to be inferior is silly. If it's all about that last bit of performance and not caring about the tech, then why not just use Windows for games and get the 100% experience?
Quoting: RaabenDoomsaying that ports are forever destined to be inferior is silly. If it's all about that last bit of performance and not caring about the tech, then why not just use Windows for games and get the 100% experience?My point was rather that I *only* care about the tech, and not the principles. The perspective is that *technically* it doesn't matter, because in essence the two approaches have more in common than what separates them.
That said, nowhere do I indicate that I think that ports (and I now talk about what I would call REAL ports - porting of the code rather than wrapping it) are forever destined to be inferior. That would indeed be silly. But as long as the market share is as it is today, it makes no business sense to put the resources into full ports. Especially when we add a continued support to the math:
That is one major advantage of using Proton. We are guaranteed to receive the future patches and updates because we are using the main branch. Look at the Rocket League story. At one point it makes no business sense to keep creating patches for a special version of the game for a platform that might at that point only have a good handful of active gamers. We are a tiny segment and must relate to that.
And just to be clear: I speak from a pure technical point of view. Emotionally it would be fantastic to receive the love of a real version built for our platform. But as long as the alternative is as good as it is - and it indeed is good now - I think that the primary driver for semi-optimal ports are more of emotional than rational reasons.
Last edited by Beamboom on 25 January 2022 at 8:50 am UTC
Quoting: BeamboomOf course, better, and probably less work technically than a wrapper let alone a port if it's done right, is to write the game to be cross-platform from the start. I guess that's still more work than trusting to Proton, though.Quoting: RaabenDoomsaying that ports are forever destined to be inferior is silly. If it's all about that last bit of performance and not caring about the tech, then why not just use Windows for games and get the 100% experience?My point was rather that I *only* care about the tech, and not the principles. The perspective is that *technically* it doesn't matter, because in essence the two approaches have more in common than what separates them.
That said, nowhere do I indicate that I think that ports (and I now talk about what I would call REAL ports - porting of the code rather than wrapping it) are forever destined to be inferior. That would indeed be silly. But as long as the market share is as it is today, it makes no business sense to put the resources into full ports. Especially when we add a continued support to the math:
That is one major advantage of using Proton. We are guaranteed to receive the future patches and updates because we are using the main branch. Look at the Rocket League story. At one point it makes no business sense to keep creating patches for a special version of the game for a platform that might at that point only have a good handful of active gamers. We are a tiny segment and must relate to that.
And just to be clear: I speak from a pure technical point of view. Emotionally it would be fantastic to receive the love of a real version built for our platform. But as long as the alternative is as good as it is - and it indeed is good now - I think that the primary driver for semi-optimal ports are more of emotional than rational reasons.
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