Total War: WARHAMMER II Now Available For Linux Gamers, Powered By Vulkan

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Total War: WARHAMMER II Now Available For Linux Gamers, Powered By Vulkan

Feral Interactive just lit up the Linux build of Total War: WARHAMMER II on Steam...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...er-II-Released

[torsionbar28]

Sweeeeeet!

[yurikoles]

Michael they gave you a free copy at least?

[oooverclocker]

Downloading... Can't wait to play this on Linux.

Edit: No Cross-Platform-Multiplayer? Or is there just something I did wrong?
When I like to join a friend's multiplayer game it just tells me that the host wasn't responding.
The same happens when he likes to join my game.

Edit2:

I’ve spoken to Feral Interactive, who confirmed that sadly again the online multiplayer is only for Linux and Mac, it will not work with Windows.

Edit3:@Feral Interactive
I have a huge respect for your work. Though, I have approximately 2 hours per month to play a game. (Ok, I would play 5 hours even though I shouldn't) Now I wasted more than one hour in the graphics settings, trying to join a multiplayer game and finding a concrete statement.

Of course I like to play with my friends when I take the short time. I can't speak for everyone but for me it is extremely sad that I don't have an option to play with my friends who use Windows. There are many tasks and now I also have to find out why it's broken with Proton for me.
I always preferred your native games but with the lack of this capabilities it's impossible to prefer the native version over the Proton one, at least for this game. I really hope you can clarify this better with your partners. It's not that helpful in the current state.

[R41N3R]

Great to see another Vulkan release. The game runs great, didn't see any issue.

[rhavenn]

Downloading... Can't wait to play this on Linux.

Edit: No Cross-Platform-Multiplayer? Or is there just something I did wrong?
When I like to join a friend's multiplayer game it just tells me that the host wasn't responding.
The same happens when he likes to join my game.

Edit2:


Edit3:@Feral Interactive
I have a huge respect for your work. Though, I have approximately 2 hours per month to play a game. (Ok, I would play 5 hours even though I shouldn't) Now I wasted more than one hour in the graphics settings, trying to join a multiplayer game and finding a concrete statement.

Of course I like to play with my friends when I take the short time. I can't speak for everyone but for me it is extremely sad that I don't have an option to play with my friends who use Windows. There are many tasks and now I also have to find out why it's broken with Proton for me.
I always preferred your native games but with the lack of this capabilities it's impossible to prefer the native version over the Proton one, at least for this game. I really hope you can clarify this better with your partners. It's not that helpful in the current state.

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous that many Linux ports do this. I get it Feral is constrained by the game owner and I'm guessing it's not Feral's choice, but it's still stupid. I highly doubt these game servers are optimized down to the level of only working with Windows network packets. They're all using engines, libraries and some sort of abstraction and Feral should be able to at a minimum emulate anything quirky, but really should just work at a basic level. Could there be a bit of jitter or latency differences? Sure, but nothing that TCP can't handle.

Are Windows gamers just scared of getting their ass kicked by Linux gamers?

[Ehvis]

I highly doubt these game servers are optimized down to the level of only working with Windows network packets.

It's even worse than you think. Feral explained it at some point. The Windows multiplayer doesn't actually synchronise the position of units over the network. It relies on both clients being able to calculate the same thing and reaching the same answer. Which works fine as long as you run the exact same code compiled with the exact same compiler. Obviously, this is not the case for Linux/Mac builds and the game de-syncs due very small differences that add up over time. Unless Creative Assembly change the way they do their network code (like Feral is changing it so Linux and Mac can play together), multiplayer with Windows will never happen for their titles.

[Almindor]

So given this it seems clear it might be in Feral's interest to simply make proton better. I think Linux is going to end up being a windows compatibility layer when it comes to games.

In the end tho it's probably best. Less broken stuff once things get stable in a year or so and devs can also just forget about the next platform. I wonder if Macs might follow suite as well given the mess there too.

[starshipeleven]

Are Windows gamers just scared of getting their ass kicked by Linux gamers?

They already explained the issue, which is beyond them.

The games affected by this thing have the game AI run in the clients with no coordination to keep it in sync (which dramatically reduces load on server and network, as now only player interactions need to be sent and relayed to clients), and rely on a specific pseudo-random engine implementation/library/thing so that they can be sure that the AI in all clients will react 100% the same to the same player commands.

Linux/OSX versions of the game can't use this pseudo-random engine thing for some technical or legal reason, both rely on a different one, so this trick can only work between them.

If they tried multiplayer with Windows the AI would act different (to some extent) so the game would lose sync and basically fall apart as each player sees a different game.

The fix for the issue would be to have the game developers coordinate with Feral and make a cross-platform component for this pseudo-random thing so it can be shared by Windows and Linux/OSX clients, but since 99% of their userbase is on Windows anyway, they have little incentive to invest in changing something that works perfectly fine for them.

[carewolf]

Pretty fast, crashy but fast.. Did anyone else get a 50% discount as a badge?

I never understood the discounts as badges thing, but this is first time it has been useful.