Folks have been asking about our early Linux efforts and support for Valve’s SteamOS and Steam Machines. We have good news for you! The 4.1 source code has initial support for running and packaging games for Linux and SteamOS. We love Linux!
And another major game engine adds Linux and SteamOS support (CryEngine did so as well).
UT2004 always ran great under Linux.
And, for that matter, FreeBSD’s Linux emulation. In those days, FreeBSD’s graphics performance was way better than Linux – 30-40% higher frame rates with a GeForce FX compared to Linux – and Epic considered any difficulty running UT2004 under FreeBSD a bug.
The only thing these annouoncements are lacking, though, is dev tools. Sure, the Crysis engine runs under Linux, but I’m sure the native dev tools are Windows only, just as the native tools for Doom3 were Windows only.
UnrealEd was Windows only, also. Unity also appears to have the tools Windows or OSX only.
Where’s the Linux love?
Dont get me wrong I really do like FreeBSD as well, but do you have any proof about the FreeBSD fps compared to Linux ? I remember Linux performed better than windows at lower resolutions – I’ve never seen FreeBSD outperform Linux esp when it comes to graphics. I might be wrong, but 30-40% I just don’t believe it, I played many of the earlier versions of UT on Linux and the fps was good on Linux – besting windows a lot of the time, for FreeBSD to have 30 – 40% higher frame rates, it just doesn’t add up sorry).
I agree the dev tools I wish they would port across, but Valve is actively working on the tool stack as well, they are building on top of LLDB and possibly building their own debugger – interesting article about it here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTUwODQ (not a massive fan of the site – but it gets interesting linux related games news). It will come though, give it time it will take a couple of years but I’m sure they will have native dev support under Linux as well.
Just my own benchmarks that I ran with UT2004.
With max detail settings at 1600×1200 resolution, the GeForce FX still pumped out really high framerates.
FreeBSD and Windows were within a couple FPS of each other with the NVidia proprietary driver, while Linux was about 35% slower, across all resolutions.
IIRC, this was a well understood problem – the Linux kernel utilized polling for many driver systems, including video, rather than letting things be IRQ driven. This meant the driver frequently had to wait for the kernel to get to it, hurting performance.
The Windows and FreeBSD kernels didn’t have this behavior, and it has since changed in Linux.
I’m not trolling. I agree, but in reality, who really cares? If you’re serious about being a game developer you’d at least have a copy of Windows (either in a VM) or own a Mac etc. I think the effort/cost the world editor developers would spend on making it run on Linux, is better spent on making a better editor!
Steam is porting or has already ported their development tooling to Linux and they are developing more Linux specific tools.
What if you’re not serious about being a game developer, but rather just want to make levels for your favorite FPS? Unless you’re still a fan of the Quake 3 engine, your options are pretty limited.
That kind of hobby development is right up the ally of a lot of Linux users.
The old unreal games (unreal tournament mainly) all had Linux support – everyone seems to be getting behind valve / steam os.
The funniest thing is I was reading the cryengine post:
http://www.osnews.com/story/27608/CryEngine_adds_full_native_Linux_…
I dont understand why everyone in that thread was going on about the source engine ??
CryEngine has been ported to Linux one of the most techinically advanced game engines and everyone is talking about source engine ?? , Not that UE4 isnt technically advanced they both are – but everyone in that thread was going on about the source engine wtf ?? Also Unigine works on Linux (Metro Last Light uses unigine and ported to Linux/steam already).
Dice are really interested in adding Linux support and are looking to port their Frostbite engine to Linux. I dont know if EA will allow it, Microsoft seem to be getting very cosy with EA and they are probably running as much interference in the background as possible, but time will tell if it takes off origin will be ported to Linux without hesitation, I can almost guarantee.
Also a lot of hot air about Titanfall and its modifications to the source engine, lets face it titanfall isnt really a looker even on pc on ultra settings (I haven’t played it just seen the vids aint impresses by the graphics at all, BF4 blows it away in terms of looks), I doubt they made many changes to the source engine, think portal 2 and left 4 dead 2 and their dynamics and compare to titanfall (all of them built on top of source)- Respawn are blowing a lot of hot smoke about this game to be expected new studio new game … Also only 792p and constant frame fluctuations on the xbox 1 using the source engine ugh just pure shite on an engine most already said is more that 8 – 9 years old, its just embarrassing.
On a side note have any of you actually used Steam OS yet ? It looks similar to PS4 I actually really like the menu system and the work valve have put into it is phenomenal. It controls the whole underlying linux sound subsystem all of the settings are just a few menu clicks, with really easy to use menus, I am actually genuinely blown away by it it has massive potential.
Loki even planned to release Deus Ex for Linux, but didn’t finish it and closed down (it was using Unreal Engine 1). It’s a pity they never open sourced their older engines.
Edited 2014-04-03 23:19 UTC
Every unreal engine has supported linux.
It was unreal 3 that annoyed everyone because they just never released a linux build of UT3
I thought SteamOS was going to be a hard sell to gamers but it really seems as though the gaming tech companies like CryTek and Epic are jumping on board in a very big way. I guess if anyone has the ability to pull gamers to a completely different OS, it would be Valve…
Our company recently released our in-house game engine (used to make dozens of games) as open source MIT, It’s by far the most advanced OSS game engine available, deploys to every platform and the UI/Editor works in Linux too.
http://www.godotengine.org/
We’re now working on a stable release in a few months, but given the huge community support it seems to be getting, and how much it actually works (despite lacking polish) I’m confindent that It will become a serious alternative to UE4 and Unity soon.
Truly great games release their sourcecode, and also release a level editor. Just look at Freespace 2… 12 years on, still has an active fan community. And of course Quake 1/2/3 still going strong with vibrant modding/editing groups. They succeed when most open source games have failed because they have easy to use toolkits and not just sourcecode available to make new content.