EA's Frostbite Engine Has Been Internally Up And Running On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 7 September 2017 at 12:50 PM EDT. 46 Comments
LINUX GAMING
While not for public consumption at least for now, the Electronic Arts' Frostbite game engine has seen internal Linux testing/development.

EA developer Johan Andersson was comparing the size of the Linux kernel source tree to that of their Frostbite game engine: there are more files, lines, comments, and code in Frostbite than in the Linux kernel. Johan has been a technical fellow and director at EA since 2000.

It's a fun metric on its own but then in response to a comment by Phoronix friend Charlie Demerjian about Linux support, Johan tweeted: "the Frostbite dedicated servers do run on Linux for MP games, and we've had the client up also but not fully or officially supported."

The Frostbite dedicated servers are no surprise as most game dedicated servers do have Linux binaries available. But the bit about the client up and running at least partially is an interesting public comment but not too surprising in reality as many different studios have commented over the years of at least having internal Linux client builds but not necessarily making them public due to the associated costs in support, Linux bugs, etc, and not necessarily being worthwhile given the current Linux marketshare. With having an internal Linux build they can at least judge the burden, ensure better code portability, any necessary middleware changes, etc, in deciding about Linux support in the future (or even just curiosity/fun by individual developers at said companies).

Frostbite is the engine used by EA DICE for various Windows/PlayStation/Xbox and its latest Frostbite 3.0 engine has powered games including Star Wars Battlefront II, Need for Speed Playback, Battlefield 1, FIFA 18, and many other titles.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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