Hello!

I'm the lead developer of VoidExpanse. I want to clarify why the game is in such a bad shape (on Linux) currently and how we're working on fixing the issues.

The major issues on Linux was introduced after Unity 5.2 - which brings support for OpenGL Core (OpenGL 3+). Unfortunately, they've suddenly broken compatibility with old OpenGL renderer (OpenGL 2.1). The compatibility was restored only in Unity 5.3.4. The new renderer working fine on our testing configurations, but for some players it didn't work at all and we noticed that too late.

And in Unity 5.3.0 (5.3.1/5.3.2/5.3.3) the shader compiler has been broken on Linux - FastBloom shader was unable to compile in some cases (fixed in 5.3.4 as listed in release notes https://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/unity-5.3.4 ) and fullscreen post-effects shaders produced plain black screen in the game (UI renders on top of it). That's why turning off post-effects resolves the issue (however, some special shaders (like one used in Galaxy Map view generation) will still produce black texture).

The most issues are resolved now, but it takes a few months to reach right people from the Unity team and wait for the fixes. And now we found another major issue with Unity on Linux (Vertex Array Objects and Framebuffers are destroyed in windowed mode) which prevents us from releasing the final Linux patch. We've spent last week with the NoesisGUI (middleware UI library we're using) team developers investigating the issue.

I'm really hope we will finally ship polished version for Linux soon...

The lesson learned - we should not depend on an unreliable engine - we will not use Unity engine anymore for any complex projects like VoidExpanse (more in the interview for GamingOnLinux. By the way, it seems Unity team also understand that shipping new features should happen only after fixing all the bugs, but it's too late and it's still not give us any confidence that the situation with broken support will not happens again.

Regards!

Yeah I had figured it was with Unity 5. Thank you for the information.
you have done amazing work, and I highly respect your communication with the community.
I remember early on how great VoidExpanse ran on Linux, at least up until version 1.4.x which was the last time I played.
It's sad to see it like is now, but I'm looking forward to checking things out when it's working good again.

I really look forward to seeing other games you do in the future :)

The Linux compatibility issues should be fixed now with VoidExpanse v1.6.9.
If you have any problems please let me know here or on Official Forums http://forums.atomictorch.com
Regards!

yep, I check this yesterday when I seen the update, everything seems to be working. thanks for such a great effort :)

just figured out the space stations being invisible is part of the mod ( it's a custom mod of various mods put together) I'm using holy mucked up batman, I've got a bit of fixing to do myself :)