Linux fans rejoice

Unity (game engine) runs natively on many platforms, including linux.

 

Awesome thanks a lot Chris, Linux user here and I'm glad we're not being forgotten

 

They are talking about native binary! Ubuntu is explicitly stated as supported by Unity so I'm assuming it should work good as long as you make sure your actual video driver module is being loaded.

I'm not only excited to play SotA, but I'm excited to be able to have it run on my own GNU/Linux system. Wouldn't it be awesome if it not only runs on Linux but the performance turns out to be better on Linux?

 

Excellent news. I'm using manufacturer proprietary drivers on both machines, so I imagine it should run pretty well. I'm glad companies started putting out their own drivers for gnu/linux. It was hell during my first foray into the OS back in 2000, as there was not much there beyond some of the community authored drivers that sometimes had.... issues. Now that I'm getting back into the world of Linux (thanks to Windows 8), I've been pleasantly surprised by how much easier it is to setup and use. I pretty much only keep a copy of Win 7 around for gaming, but now that I'm helping Kickstart games with GNU/Linux support, I'm hoping to phase even that out eventually.

 

My test used a native Linux binary under Fedora 17.

Regarding Windows 8... there are some customizations you can make which will restore the Windows 7 look and feel. We are switching our lab to Windows 8, and I am not interested in that Windows 3.1 UI.

 

Indeed, MS (aka Monstersoft) is spawning one monstrosity after another. They even pushed forward the secure boot feature to hinder transition to linux by new people who decided to check out what linux is.

 

Are you into self flagellation? I understand that sometimes people feel like they need to punish themselves for their sins. You just don't have to. When you're done beating yourself up Linux Freedom is there for you.

************
Please don't take this personally, but
I personally would rather have my whole lab go OSX, because the learning curve much less in my opinion. Heck even Gnome 3 is less of a learning curve than Windows 8, and that says a lot.

Honestly I don't think Microsoft made a good decision going where they did with windows 8, ... and not restoring the start menu??? are they mental????

***Yes I do know there is a third party solution that restores a start menu.***

 

Didn't have any issues migrating my Win 8 laptop to Linux. Then again, I had gone in beforehand and had turned off secure boot when I had gone into the UEFI to make sure the system was set to boot from my Linux Live USB key I was installing from.

 

I think most games are still developed under Windows, using Windows-only tools. It makes sense for our lab to reflect the realities of
industry. The goal isn't to go with what it easy, but what will be the best preparation for industry.

Unity has the potential to change a lot of things. But it needs companies like Portalarium to use Unity and C# so that we can legitimately say that these skills are in demand.

 

When you said lab I some how interpret that as some type of school environment. It makes sense to test it on that, but keep your install media ready. Keep in mind people who own a desktop will be diminishing, and only gamers and enthusiasts will end up using these things. Gamers are always looking for a way to max out their performance. If it ever turns out that their games can run faster or more stable on GNU/Linux with a lightweight desktop environment, then there will be a lot more people dual booting their systems in the near future. If that continues then more and more games will begin having native Linux clients due to demand, and if the demand reaches critical mass watch out Windows (especially when people get a taste of Linux Freedom they have a hard time going back to being stuck with Windows again). Also without running an antivirus in the background will be a performance booster too.

The only downside to more gamers using Linux is that there will be more malware, but even then not all distros use the same desktop environments and utilities. Even if you do write malware for Linux it might not work from distro to distro or even spin to spin, and like OSX you would have to have elevated privileges in order to execute a truly devastating virus.

 

Our lab is at the University of North Texas, very much a school environment. I mention industry since our students hope to work in the game industry after graduation.

The technical merits of the platforms are not a big deal with us. We have courses which cover OpenGL and DirectX, and Unix is used for many courses. Students should be able to adapt to whatever environment they find themselves in. Our lab is the only place DirectX is used (to the best of my knowledge), so Windows it is.

 

Of course, if you know what you are doing there is no problem. My point is that someone who hasn't seen linux before probably won't know a thing about secure boot. Typical scenario: he or she will make live cd, try to boot from it, it will fail because of the secure boot. He/she will think "This OS is total crap, it won't even boot!" and never gets back to it.

I'm not worried about that at all, it's almost impossible to sneak anything into linux, with multiple user privileges, chroot / jail environments, complete system transparency, etc. Unless the user does something stupid of course

 

Say somebody writes a malicious application that is disguised as a third party helper program for SotA.

That's where the malware will come from. Gamers installing applications from untrusted sources.

 

Installing and running such app without ability to compile it yourself and not in a chrooted environment or under fake user or any kind of sandbox classifies as doing something stupid, obviously.

 

Great news, I read this post now XD, it's a amazing thing if we can play on Linux this game. I hope don'y need Steam, but is a less drawback

 

Salut,

I am also glad that you're going on with Linux!

This is the year of games for Linux ;-)

I got rid of microcrap for one year since I've been enrolled in the Steam for Linux beta. I am very pleased with it, I can play!
Actually, I've been playing on Debian from day one of my enrollement (Thanks to Kano ;-) ). Debian, wich is supposed not to be easy to use for that kind of stuff... but it is.

I can play with a Intel HD4000 and its open source driver and on my other PC with an ATI HD7850 + fglrx (last version).
Of course, the HD4000 is a lot less powerfull than the HD7850 but I can play DOTA2 properly with most of the graphics features activated.
With the ATI, I can play every games I have with barely most of the features at max (eg. Serious SAM3).

Now, about SoTA, I had two reason to contribute to this project:
1st: the game itself It will be amazing, I am sure of that.
2nd: playing on Debian/GNU Linux, of course!

I really looking forward to make the first tests and I expect a lot from Portalarium on this point.
I hope you'll continue to take care of the current minority we represents... that will change!
Actually, I am confident about that because, I am sure you've already known (when you started this project) that the face of the game world will be in mutation in the coming years...

For those, who are not conviced, just have a look at ValVe and their Steam projects with/for Linux. Particularely, the list of games(their company) wich are, will, porting their game(s) to Linux. Very interesting to see how Valve has pulled (directly or indirectly) a lot of company to follow the path...
They are also a lot of other projects, OpenSoure or propriatary, like this one (I mean via crowdfunding) to make multi-plateform game. (eg. M.O.R.E, 0 A.D, ...)

Thx for reading and enjoy your day ;-)

A+
Debcool

 

You using Debian Sid or Testing?

 

I use 64bit version + Multiarch. For 64bit system, it must be done this way beacause Steam is made for ubuntu 32bit.


You also need 2 packages from Ubuntu:
* jokey-common 0.9.7-0ubuntu7
* python-xkit 0.4.2.3build1

You'll find more informations and scripts wich helps a lot ;-) here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/882965118613928324/

Currently, with the HD7850, the best way I found is based on Wheezy + a bit of sid (xorg, dkms, kernel...) + fglrx-beta from experimental.
The most recent kernel in Debian repo (Jessie & SID) wich is working fine, is the 3.11.1 beacause it also has the linux-kbuilt package wich is mandatory for fglrx to be compiled properly with dkms.
I'll make some test with Jessie later.

With the HD4000, Jessie(testing) as base + some packages from SID & experimental. Jessie is really fine with the HD4000 beacause of the most recent intel drivers + mesa, xorg...
On top of that, I also use a re-compiled version of the Linux kernel 3.12.0 vanilla wich has a lot of improvements for graphics and ACPI stuff.

Both needs "preferences" pining configuration to maintain a certain stability... but could be tricky

Have fun!

A+

Debcool

 

This is terrible news. This means I can play it on my work computer, dangerous temptation.

 

If you're going to do all that why not try a distro like Arch or better yet gentoo like that SotA dev uses. You can basically build and configure your own custom installation and scripts, and decide how to compile the kernel and more. It will take about 5 hours, but with all the work you did above you could have this thing up and running exactly the way you want it. Nothing more nothing less. With rolling updates too. Why even bother modifying a debian install?