Linux Gaming

Steam Play Test Results 8/24/18 PLATINUM EDITION

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Oddly this all started when I tried to test Bayonetta via Steam Play, here are the results of that and some others:

  1. Bayonetta: Played perfectly fine until I quit and tried to restart, the window became unresponsive.
  2. NieR Automata: Despite being whitelisted by Steam this title will only load itself into memory and does fuck all on my distro.
  3. Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Almost perfect, with only a couple glitches like small bits of lag and lights appearing through solid objects and people (including me). Is actually running on a hacked executable to run at 1440p as well as some graphical modding. Can restart the game multiple times and it won’t puss out like Bayonetta. No I’m not picking up any Nirnroot for you.
  4. Okami HD: Loaded a window, but it was nothing but a short lived world of graphical terror that would eventually collapse into itself, not even Amaterasu could save this poor world…

So out of all of those games I could only get MGR to work, that would be my fucking luck… :melon:

Steam Play Test Results 8/22/18

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Now that I’ve had more time to play with the new Steam Play feature I’ve decided to make a list for what I tested last night and this afternoon:

  1. DOOM 2016: Default OpenGL version failed to load; had to rename DOOM64VK.exe to DOOM64.exe in order for it to launch. Everything but the mouse worked.
  2. Quake Champions: Locked up solid, had to reset.
  3. Hard Reset Redux: Worked perfectly.
  4. Obduction: Same result as Quake Champions.
  5. Blade Kitten: Didn’t even try to run.
  6. Tomb Raider Underworld: Keeps steady frame rate for the most part, but dislikes the Steam Overlay no matter which monitor I run it on (which it kept deciding for me). It also didn’t like me clicking mouse buttons during certain sessions.
  7. MGSV:TPP: Everything but the sky is black.
  8. Commander Keen, but that runs on the Windows version of DOSBox, so kinda hard to fuck up.

I don’t expect every game to work out of the box instantly considering this update only took place yesterday, and the fact we’re able to even attempt this at all is amazing. I feel like it’ll only get better from here. Like I said in my previous post, if anyone has a suggestion for what to test next feel free to let me know, you can have a look at my game library if you’re not sure. I think I’ll take a break from it today to focus on some other stuff. :happy:

Valve just made Linux Gaming a little more attractive

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If you’re on Linux this is an option now.

Good news everyone! Steam just rolled out an updated version of Steam Play for Linux users!

 

  • Windows games with no Linux version currently available can now be installed and run directly from the Linux Steam client, complete with native Steamworks and OpenVR support.
  • DirectX 11 and 12 implementations are now based on Vulkan, resulting in improved game compatibility and reduced performance impact.
  • Fullscreen support has been improved: fullscreen games will be seamlessly stretched to the desired display without interfering with the native monitor resolution or requiring the use of a virtual desktop.
  • Improved game controller support: games will automatically recognize all controllers supported by Steam. Expect more out-of-the-box controller compatibility than even the original version of the game.
  • Performance for multi-threaded games has been greatly improved compared to vanilla Wine.

At present I’m installing DOOM 2016 under Mint, that is actually one of the games that has been added to Valve’s whitelist of games that will work under Steam’s version of Wine: Proton. As a result you can now purchase any of these games under Linux if you don’t already own them:

Some of the titles can already run on Linux natively; such as early ID Software titles either in the Linux version of DOSBox or Sourceports of games that you can either download from a repo or compile from source. However, in order to even obtain the files to run them natively you had to either have a disk for your desired game or have the files already available in some other method. If you’re running a pure Linux system the only way to previously buy any of these games was to either run the Windows Steam client via Wine, run Windows in a VM, or do what I do and Dualboot. Seeing games like Tekken 7, DOOM 2016 and NieR Automata is already sounds impressive. Of course if you’re an enthusiast and want to try getting a game not listed on the whitelist running under Proton that is also a possibility with the built in compatibility tool.

Naturally I expect that these games won’t have the same level of performance as Windows, at the same time it shouldn’t matter if your game can run at your display refresh rate or above. I’ll be experimenting with games in my ridiculous library, if anyone here has any suggestions for what you want me to test under Linux feel free to float me a comment. I already have some ideas. :happy:

Testing both Tomb Raider Reboots under Mint 18.3

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I took the liberty of installing Tomb Raider and Rise Of The Tomb Raider under Mint to see how well they perform (if at all) on my hardware. The good news is that the programs actually run AND offer a nice framerate even with eyecandy turned up.

This is my overall score on ROTT with Ultra settings:

Now for the previous game:

There’s this weird glitch that won’t let me use TressFX even though it’s selected, but other than that I seem to be getting good performance on both games thus far. I’ll be trying other games too, but wanted to start with some of the most graphically demanding.I do say I also like the option of choosing which display that I want to play the game on before launching, that and the introduction of Vulkan as an optional mode to run ROTT in (what I used for the benchmark).

Getting these to run in Big Picture mode with the Steam Controller was also a therapeutic experience. It felt no different than when I played these titles in Windows while chilling in bed with my favorite controller.

Gaming under Linux still has some catching up to do, but every time I look into gaming under it the quality improves all the time. My library is definitely much larger than it used to be; I still remember when I only had a handful of Gold Source games and not much else, when TF2 introduced Tux, the first screenshots of Left 4 Dead 2 on a Linux desktop, and other companies like Croteam, 2K and others releasing their ports as well. It’s good to see more and more companies and indie developers look into different OS’s and bring some competition into the fray, and it’s amazing to see Open Source drivers arrive at a point where they are performing better than the proprietary ones thanks to AMD. Ever since reinstalling I’ve only gone over to Windows to play something that won’t run natively (usually of the Metal Gear or Platinum persuasion), but other than that my business has been conducted under Linux mostly during the week days.

If you have the Steam Controller and Linux you might want to check this out.

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Found a cool open source driver and UI for the Steam Controller.

1464027385screenshot1

They don’t have an rpm package for CentOS 7, but compiling it should be easy enough. This will be really nice for games that don’t cooperate with the Steam UI properly, IOW DOSBox which yes, I have installed under Linux. There are some old classics I’d like to play using the Steam Controller (like Jazz Jackrabbit) which gave me absolute hell under Windows.

Tomb Raider: Linux vs Windows

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Gaming On Linux did a benchmark comparison between Linux and Windows 10 showing off framerate differences.

It’s kind of depressing. Great that people on Linux have access to these titles, but sad that the OpenGL optimization can be flat out sucky. I have noticed this with most games on Linux. And it’s one of the reasons why I still keep Win 7 on my system, especially since I like to record my gameplays for video projects, and the better the framerate the better the video output… those numbers aren’t good. We need games to move over to Vulkan… badly. We don’t want Microsoft to control our PC gaming realm, and Linux needs to fight the good fight.

Tomb Raider 2013 finally hits Linux today

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Today is a good day to be a Linux user, well, everyday is… but it’s nice to see this game transition over to the open source side.

Now the question, how well will it perform under OpenGL? Tomb Raider was rather taxing on Windows, you needed REALLY good hardware to run it. I wonder how well it’ll handle TressFX.

What you’ll need to run Tomb Raider on Linux

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Minimum and Recommended specs were released for the Linux port of Tomb Raider, they are as follows:

Minimum
OS Ubuntu 14.04 or SteamOS 2.0 (64-bit)
Processor Intel i3 or AMD FX-6300
RAM 4GB
Graphics card 1GB
NVIDIA GeForce 640 (driver version 364.12) or 2GB AMD 5770 (driver version MESA 11.2)

Recommended
OS Ubuntu 14.04 or SteamOS 2.0 (64-bit)
Processor Intel i5
RAM 8GB
Graphics card 3GB
NVIDIA GeForce 760 (Driver version 364.12)

Of course just about any flavor of Linux will do, obviously. 😛

Linux reaches a two thousand game milestone

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SteamOnLinux

Over at Gaming On Linux they have determined that there are over 2,000 games that run natively on Linux! Things have come so far since the Steam beta, really great to see.

People (who use Windows exclusively) say that Linux isn’t great as a gaming platform, or it isn’t ready. Granted it does have a ways to go, but they forget that Windows had to grow too. In the realm of PC Gaming Linux is getting more attention, and Microsoft is just starting to come back to pretend that they always loved their PC Gamer base… right.