Thank you for Linux support

[sirtaj]

Thanks for being one of the handful of recent game developers with Linux supported on launch day. You're not the first modern city builder to support Linux (I believe that honour goes to Tropico 5) but still, close enough. CiM's excellent Linux support was also a pleasant surprise the moment I picked it up.

I don't know if we Linux gamers are numerous enough to make the ports a financial win for you yet, but I hope we will be in the near future.

 

[Kanimir]

Yup, a big thanks for both, Linux and Mac versions!

 

[Teodosio7]

+1

 

[Hiroo Onoda]

Didn't know the game will be on Linux. That's great news and the devs and Paradox deserve praise for it.

Is it actually difficult to port a game to Linux?

 

[Svip]

Didn't know the game will be on Linux. That's great news and the devs and Paradox deserve praise for it.

Is it actually difficult to port a game to Linux?

Not really these days. Particularly considering this game is built on Unity3D which already contains the Linux support. If you avoid Direct3D and use OpenGL, you also lower the hassle of porting to Linux. But this is mostly relevant if you are building the engine yourself. Unity3D already takes care of this.

But once you've ported a game to OS X, the port to Linux is almost trivial. Both use OpenGL and share many Unix features. Not all of them, mind you, but enough. This is why Civilization V is available for Linux, because it has an OS X port.

 

[sirtaj]

It depends on the chosen engine, experience level of the developers, and whether or not it's a priority from the start. Late-stage ports written by devs who don't really use Linux, or ports done with wrappers, can be pretty nasty. I don't know how CO develops ports, but Cities in Motion's Linux support was solid by the time I started playing it (later in the game's lifecycle, admittedly).

 

[Svip]

It depends on the chosen engine, experience level of the developers, and whether or not it's a priority from the start. Late-stage ports written by devs who don't really use Linux, or ports done with wrappers, can be pretty nasty. I don't know how CO develops ports, but Cities in Motion's Linux support was solid by the time I started playing it (later in the game's lifecycle, admittedly).

Possibly, but Steam provides some libraries to interface with to avoid most of the hassles going from Windows to Linux. This is what PDS relies on with EU4 and CK2.

 

[sirtaj]

Valve's stuff is not magic though, and the quality of ports tend to be all over the map. For example, Aspyr's ports (Civ V, Borderlands 2) are just okay - they work with minor bugs and fairly significant performance loss compared to windows. Unity games tend to do better overall, but even there I had issues with one or two games where the devs were obviously inexperienced and had messed up the library dependencies for their game.

 

[Hiroo Onoda]

Thanks for your insights, guys. Linux gaming is something I'd really like to see succeeding. I had my hopes up for Mantle and SteamOS but now that the empire strikes back with an apparently solid DX12 and SteamOS is still in its infancy, if it ever gains traction, I'm not so sure anymore. I use linux on my notebook, but the gaming rig is still MS-territory and those games that have been ported are not enough to convince me to go through the hassle of installing it alongside Windows, let alone completely abandon the latter. Anyway, my attitude might change the more games I play that are also on linux, and it looks like CSL will be such a game.

 

[sirtaj]

Yes, I wouldn't have pre-ordered this if it hadn't been promised on Linux on release day. As I understand it, whichever OS you play on first (or perhaps for over half an hour, not 100% certain) is what is counted as your primary OS for that game for statistics purposes. So if I bought Skylines on launch day, played it first on Windows for a couple of hours and later played the Linux port for 100 hours, it would not count as a Linux sale. There are other games that are/were supposed to have Linux versions that I still haven't purchased because of this (Divinity: Original Sin, for one).

 

[Hiroo Onoda]

Yes, I wouldn't have pre-ordered this if it hadn't been promised on Linux on release day. As I understand it, whichever OS you play on first (or perhaps for over half an hour, not 100% certain) is what is counted as your primary OS for that game for statistics purposes. So if I bought Skylines on launch day, played it first on Windows for a couple of hours and later played the Linux port for 100 hours, it would not count as a Linux sale. There are other games that are/were supposed to have Linux versions that I still haven't purchased because of this (Divinity: Original Sin, for one).

Hm, so you are saying that if we were to first launch our Steam games under Linux, even though we might play them under Windows later for any reason, this would help push the awareness that there are more people willing to go the Linux route? Makes sense, I guess.

What is your experience with regard to game updates/patches and the like, are they released on the same day as for Windows?

 

[Gaute65]

Hm, so you are saying that if we were to first launch our Steam games under Linux, even though we might play them under Windows later for any reason, this would help push the awareness that there are more people willing to go the Linux route? Makes sense, I guess.

What is your experience with regard to game updates/patches and the like, are they released on the same day as for Windows?

Paradox games get updates/patches at the same day as windows version.