Links 7/4/2014: Games
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-07 08:47:26 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-07 08:47:26 UTC
The Linux land has a reputation, especially among developers used to Windows, of being – let's say – somewhat savage, uncivilized. We've all heard the ghost stories: things being downright broken, lack of documentation and general despair; people coming, exclaiming: "what the fuck?!" and going right back.
In little over a year since the first stable version of Steam for Linux emerged, the number of Linux-supported games continues to grow at a rapid pace. Valve's digital game distribution currently hosts 376 games for Linux, with many quality commercial titles such as Shadowrun: Dragonfall, System Shock 2, and Europa Universalis IV to name-drop just a few of our favorites. With more game engines being natively ported to Linux, this trend is going to continue. For example, the CryEngine technology has recently been natively ported to Linux, so we could see ports of games like Ryse: Son of Rome and Crysis 3.
Every month Valve publishes a comprehensive hardware and software survey that reflects what is being used to run the Steam client. It’s been pretty accurate until now, but a couple of months ago Valve made a few small modification and eliminated most of the inconsequential entries for various other distros.
In the past I had a look at 17 free games available for Linux, overviewed here and here. In this article I will have a look at five more completely free and open-source games available to install in any distribution out there.
Shipwrecked. Captured. Betrayed. Forced to perform for an audience of cats? Yes, all that and more when you unlock BattleBlock Theater! This game just sounds funny!
It has only been a week since we let you know about Icebound, but it's now been released! Icebound is a dark fantasy visual novel that takes place in a steampunk world locked in the depths of an ice age, where alchemists possess supernatural powers.
Star Gem and Gaijin Entertainment’s inter-galactic MMORPG, Star Conflict, is celebrating its two year anniversary with a pretty hefty update that will see it gain Oculus Rift and Linux support.
We're extremely excited that Epic is porting Unreal Engine 4 to Linux -- see the official announcement or some press here and here. Once we heard UE4 Linux was coming we pretty much dropped everything to ensure vogl can handle UE4 callstreams. The latest code on github now supports full-stream tracing/replaying and trimming of UE4 callstreams in either GL3 or GL4 mode. UI support for UE4 is still in the early stages, but now that we can snapshot/restore UE4 and continue to play back the callstream without diverging it's only matter of time before the UI comes up to speed.
FaeVerse Alchemy, a puzzle game developed and published by Subsoap, has been released on Steam for Linux with a small 9% discount.
Abyss: The Wraiths of Eden, a point and click adventure developed and published on Steam by Artifex Mundi sp. z o.o., has also received a Linux version and a sizable discount.
Harvester, a disturbing adventure video game developed by DigiFX Interactive and published by Night Dive Studios, is now available on Steam for Linux.
While the voglperf code has been public for some time within Git, the first initial release of Voglperf was tagged on Tuesday evening by a Valve developer.
Getting games to stream properly from Windows to Linux seems to be the main focus of the Valve developers and many of the patches deal strictly with this feature. It's unlikely that In-Home Streaming will exist the Beta stages too soon, but the developers might surprise us with the next stable release.
One month after releasing Unreal Engine 4 and talking about Unreal Engine 4 Linux support, Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4.1 preview today and it's paired with first-rate Linux support.
The Unreal developers from Epic Games have expressed their support before for the Linux platform, but now they actually made it possible with the latest update for the Unreal Engine 4.
Good news for gamers who've been eyeing Valve's upcoming Steam Machines: Unreal Engine 4.1 will support the Linux-based SteamOS after a pending update. In a blog post today, Epic Games' Mike Fricker announced that the source code now includes "initial support for running and packaging games for Linux and Steam OS." This means that upcoming UE4 titles like Daylight and Fortnite could be ported to the systems.
Unreal Engine 4, the newest version of the game engine that powers many a AAA gaming title, just got a feature that may prove quite important in the near feature: the ability to build games that run on Linux.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
- To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
-
- Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
- Links for the day
- Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
- Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
- The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
- “It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
- Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
- Links for the day
- Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
- Links for the day
- Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025
- Judges Would Never Rule for Men Who Strangle Women or Against Women Who Merely Wrote Articles About Abuse They Had Received From Men
- We don't intend to do "trial by media", so we won't be disclosing claims and defences until it's over
- Windows is an Unnatural Disaster, It is Also Avoidable
- there's a wide window of opportunity opening
- Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Less YouTube and More Station
- Links for the day
- In Some Countries, Such as Thailand, Firefox is Already Measured at Less Than 2% (One Day Firefox Will Get Blocked, Not Only Lack Support)
- Web consolidation around Chrom-isms will doom the Web as we know it
- Killing the News With Spam and Slop Benefits Those Whose Desire is an Uninformed Population
- adoption of Free software depends indirectly on political activities/activism
- Links 29/03/2025: Trademarks Battles, Fires Destroy More Than 3,000 South Korean Homes
- Links for the day
- Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: An Introduction
- Perhaps tomorrow or perhaps next week we'll share more information about what happened and what was reported to the California Privacy Protection Agency
- Links 29/03/2025: More Crackdowns on Science, "Hey Hi" Slopping is Flopping
- Links for the day
- IBM's BS (Bait, Switch) Regarding Ways to Stay Onboard
- PIPs, RTOs, and forced relocations are just an illusion of choice (or ability to recover)
- Costa Rica Almost Bankrupt Because of Microsoft
- the incidents in Costa Rica are Windows incidents
- Gemini Links 29/03/2025: Art of Looking, Wireguard, EMacs
- Links for the day
- Links 29/03/2025: Attacks on Social Security and War Updates
- Links for the day
- Banned evidence: Ars Technica forums censored email predicting DebConf23 death, Abraham Raji & Debian cover-up
- Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 28, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, March 28, 2025
- Intimidation, Threats, and Bullying Not Tolerated by Techrights
- When it comes to our reporting, safety always comes first
- A World Without Rules
- We're long insisted on better laws and actual enforcement of them (applicable to all, not selectively applied)
- statCounter Sees Microsoft Windows Falling to New, Unprecedented Lows in Palau
- Taking Android into account, Windows is now down to an all-time low of 14%
- Google News Lost the Fight to LLM Slop (While Google Itself Sells Slop, Nowadays Under the Name "Gemini")
- Many people say that "Google is getting worse"; that's almost an understatement
- Links 28/03/2025: AirAsia Trouble Again, UMich Culls All DEI Programs
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 28/03/2025: Alexa is for Gullible People, Rant About Feature Overload
- Links for the day
- The SLAPPs From the Microsoft Strangler (and Sidekick) No Better Than Patent Trolling
- one must never settle with trolls
- Something to Celebrate in Gemini Protocol
- More capsules and users join in
- Links 28/03/2025: Last Reminder "to Delete Your 23andMe Data", "UK's First Permanent Facial Recognition Cameras Installed"
- Links for the day
- Microsoft Canonical Continues Its FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) Campaign, Reveals Google Too Sponsored It
- They're paid-for lies from a Chinese company that takes GAFAM money to write puff pieces about them
- Android Rises Above 76% in Mozambique, Leaving Windows in the Dust
- Windows may soon be measured as smaller than Apple's iOS
- IBM, Red Hat and Microsoft Probably Also Manipulate Metrics (It Helps Con the Shareholders)
- Wall Street's credibility will depend on enforcement of "checks and balances"
- Slopwatch: trendhunter.com and Other Pure Junk From "Google News"
- The need to vet sources is hardly new; anyone can spew out anything, anywhere. There's a need for vetting.
- Gemini Links 28/03/2025: Rewatching The X-Files, Slop Concerns, and NOSTR Censorship
- Links for the day
- Links 28/03/2025: Australia at Risk, EPO Grants Illegal Patents With Illegal Effect
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 27, 2025
- IRC logs for Thursday, March 27, 2025