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VoidExpanse with some tweaking tips
neowiz73 Mar 28, 2016
In the more recent development I've noticed the black screen issues because of the Unity 5 updates have been slowly breaking the graphics quality on Linux. It is happening engine wide across a number of different games using Unity 5.

So I tried using the "legacy" 1.6.0 version of VoidExpanse (beta tab for steam) with slightly better video in the start screen but I would end up with almost all black screen when playing with some exceptions on certain objects within the game. Also the targeting reticle in the game was acting really odd.

After tweaking around with the settings it turns out that the culprit all along has been the post effects causing these black screen issues. So if you happen to be having similar issues, you might try just disabling the post effects in the video settings.
It looks like the space stations are completely invisible after doing this on the newest build and the legacy build. could be some other odd graphical bugs. but for the most part it is at least playable.

ai_enabled Mar 28, 2016
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!
neowiz73 Mar 28, 2016
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 :)
ai_enabled Mar 31, 2016
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!
neowiz73 Mar 31, 2016
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 :)
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