Nuclear Dawn Seems To Run Fine On AMD Linux

Nuclear Dawn, the Source Engine game now with full Linux support after a major game update was rolled out on Steam this week, seems to be running fine on AMD Linux hardware.

When new/updated games are rolled out on Steam it's not too uncommon for the game developers to recommend using NVIDIA hardware on Linux or to have warnings about possible OpenGL issues with the Catalyst Linux graphics driver. Fortunately, from my initial testing of this Nuclear Dawn update that takes it out of beta, there doesn't seem to be any major issues.

Since the update, I spent some time yesterday and today trying out this Source Engine game using the R600 Gallium3D driver and also Catalyst. I only spent a few minutes trying out the R600g driver with Radeon HD 6000 series hardware and it seemed to work fine. Then I spent most of the time testing the Catalyst 14.3 driver on Radeon Rx 200 series hardware. I haven't run into any driver-related issues at all in my testing thus far.

Unfortunately, that's all about I can say since Nuclear Dawn doesn't work well for automated benchmarking. I was working on a Phoronix Test Suite test profile similar to Portal / Counter-Strike: Source / Half-Life 2: Lost Coast / Team Fortress 2, but the tight integration with Steamworks for this game was posing some even more difficult issues where the process would silently hang when launching the binary and Steam not being open (later resolved, after messing around further with the library paths, but still doesn't work too well for automation) and then later got it running in an automated manner but its log file handling doesn't seem to work properly. Thus without fully-automated benchmarking support, no benchmarks or any further testing of Nuclear Dawn until it's addressed. For those unfamiliar with my issues over running benchmarks of Steam on Linux, read the article entitled running benchmarks on other new Linux games.

But for AMD Linux users, at least it doesn't appear that there's any show-stopping issues when using R600g or Catalyst. I didn't bother testing RadeonSI Gallium3D, however, due to the lack of benchmarking support. In terms of the game itself, it seems like a quite nice FPS/RTS hybrid and with today/yesterday is likely the most minutes I have spent playing any game since Linux beta testing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars or the days of America's Army on Linux.

This week Nuclear Dawn is on sale for just $2.49 (75% off) compared to its usual Steam price of $9.99 USD via Steam for any interested Linux gamers.

For AMD Linux gamers, released yesterday was the Catalyst 14.4 RC for Linux that delivers full OpenGL 4.4 support. Phoronix readers have also been reporting positive experiences with this driver for their Steam Linux gaming, but Phoronix benchmarks of this new Catalyst Linux driver should be out within a few days.