• chevron_right

      Dino MMO 'Path of Titans' has a new playable demo for PAX Online

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Saturday, 12 September, 2020 - 21:33 · 1 minute

    Ready for some dinosaur action? Path of Titans, the hugely successful crowdfunded indie MMO now has a demo you can download and try out.

    As a refresher - Path of Titans is a multiplayer dinosaur survival game, one where you're playing as an actual dino. With detailed environments and lots of different species to choose from spread across herbivores, carnivores, aquatic, terrestrial, gliding, and flying species. There's even so customization you can do. Servers will support up to 200 people playing and that's on top of AI creatures running around too.

    Their original IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign in 2019 pulled in nearly $100K AUD, and that amount has only continued to rise with over 25K backers given them over $640K!

    youtube video thumbnail
    Watch video on YouTube.com

    Just some of the features they're planning include:

    • Permanent characters with in-depth skin and trait customization
    • A complex questing system.
    • Group and Guild systems that allow for pack hunting and herd migration, with servers supporting up to 200 concurrent players.
    • Lush environment filled with AI dinosaurs and smaller prehistoric creatures
    • Swimming, diving, and fishing in both lakes and rivers.
    • Cross platform functionality, play the game from your PC with your friends on mobile and vice versa.
    • Powerful modding tools with extensive documentation, and a backend allowing modders to deliver their content to other players.

    It's still quite early on, clearly but it's also showing a lot of promise. The amount of effort Alderon Games have been putting into the models and animations of all the creatures is quite impressive. What they need to do though is ensure that the world and everything you do is as exciting as the creatures themselves.

    8536128151599945936gol1.png Pictured - Path of Titans on Linux.

    Want to grab a key and get demo access? Head over here . The demo will be online and available to play until the end of PAX Online on September 22.

    Article from GamingOnLinux.com - do not reproduce this article without permission. This RSS feed is intended for readers, not scrapers.
    • chevron_right

      Microsoft backs Epic against Apple in legal fight over Unreal Engine on iOS

      Kyle Orland · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 24 August, 2020 - 15:21

    <em>Fortnite</em> seen in the App Store on an iPhone on May 10, 2018.

    Enlarge / Fortnite seen in the App Store on an iPhone on May 10, 2018. (credit: Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images )

    In court documents that surfaced this weekend, Microsoft offered its support for Epic Games in the Unreal Engine-maker's quickly unfolding legal battle with Apple over access to the iOS app marketplace.

    The legal declaration from Microsoft Gaming Developer Experiences General Manager Kevin Gammill comes in response to Apple's threat to halt Epic's access to software development tools used to update its popular Unreal Engine for use on iOS. That threat itself came after Epic tried to use its own payment system in the iOS version of Fortnite to get around Apple's 30 percent platform fee. That move quickly got the game pulled from the Apple App Store and led Epic to file a lawsuit in response.

    Gammill says that any move harming development of Epic's Unreal Engine on iOS would hurt Microsoft's business, because "in Microsoft’s view there are very few other options available for creators to license with as many features and as much functionality as Unreal Engine across multiple platforms, including iOS."

    Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments

    index?i=snUce1uY5LY:IFigDg-7PiE:V_sGLiPBpWUindex?i=snUce1uY5LY:IFigDg-7PiE:F7zBnMyn0Loindex?d=qj6IDK7rITsindex?d=yIl2AUoC8zA
    • chevron_right

      Supernatural horror adventure ASYLUM is getting a demo

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Thursday, 21 May, 2020 - 13:02 · 1 minute

    Arriving next month for the Steam Games Festival, the upcoming supernatural horror adventure ASYLUM will give us a peak behind the door with a 2-hour long demo.

    From the creators of cult sleeper hit Scratches and the haunting Serena, comes a chilling journey into the darkest depths of your mind. ASYLUM is an ambitious and intricate horror adventure casting you into the hallucinatory setting of the Hanwell Mental Institute, a silent witness to unimaginable atrocities that transpired between its endless corridors.

    The Steam Games Festival will be live from June 9 - June 15, with many developers getting involved to show off their games and ASYLUM is one of the most exciting looking. Agustín Cordes, founder of the development team at Senscape confirmed this on Twitter, and that a Linux demo will also be available too.

    youtube video thumbnail
    Watch video on YouTube.com

    The full version should hopefully still make it out this year, after a ten-year long development cycle that has been full of ups and downs. It went through a crowdfunding campaign in 2013 but as things went on their funding got quite low, thankfully Epic Games helped out as late last year they announced they were approved for an Epic MegaGrant.

    Once the demo is out for the Steam festival, we will be taking a look.

    You can follow ASYLUM on Steam .

    Article from GamingOnLinux.com - do not reproduce this article without permission. This RSS feed is intended for readers, not scrapers.
    • chevron_right

      Unreal Engine 4.25 is up with tons of Linux improvements and Vulkan API fixes

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Tuesday, 5 May, 2020 - 20:03 · 5 minutes

    While the Epic Games Store may not support Linux, at least Unreal Engine does and it appears to have been given quite a lot of attention in the Unreal Engine 4.25 release that went out officially today.

    Apart from the usual SDK updates which you tend to see in each release, scrolling over the release notes was actually pretty damn interesting. It's not just a list of bug fixes either, there's plenty that's brand new on the Linux side and it really seems like a lot of attention has been given. Some of it includes: support for the MDL Importer on Linux for Unreal Datasmith, support for Linux offscreen Vulkan rendering, they moved to a newer llvm clang 9.0.1 v16 tool-chain and a lot more.

    It's also quite fun to see a rather large and clear Linux icon on their supported platforms image:

    14783952111588708951gol1.png

    Want to see the big list of Linux improvements in Unreal Engine 4.25? We've included it all below in a handy clickable spoiler for you.

    Click me for the full list

    1. Bug Fix: Fixed issue that prevented editor windows from restoring when minimized.

    2. Bug Fix: Added PLATFORM_LINUXAARCH64 to Platform.h

    3. Bug Fix: Set UserTempDir for Linux to $TMPDIR or fallback to /var/tmp

    4. Bug Fix: Added missing space to SanitizerInfo string.

    5. Bug Fix: Implemented module path name for Unix to avoid hard coded default path.

    6. Bug Fix: Disabled ispc for Linux AArch64 Currently using ispc v1.12 which has add "experimental AArch64" support.

    7. Bug Fix: Addref Vulkan memory allocation so it's released when not used by framebuffer and surface FrameBuffer ctor was creating a view directly onto a texture surface, but was not holding the allocated memory. If the texture was freed before the framebuffer was destroyed, we could run into use after free type issues.

    8. Bug Fix: Fixed Linux address sanitizer builds.

    9. Bug Fix: Reduced NullRHI static buffer size by using dynamic buffer Reduces allocation size & fixes potential silent buffer overrun.

    10. Bug Fix: Fixed issue with shell script not being able to handle quoted arguments.

    11. Bug Fix: Default LinuxAArch64 platform in binary now builds to the same default as Linux platform.

    12. Bug Fix: Don't add local launch device for Linux AArch64 platform Local device right now will never be an Arm64 device.

    13. Bug Fix: Set PrecompileForTargets to None for AArch64 builds of SoundVisualizations and Kiss_FFT.

    14. Bug Fix: Send 127.0.0.1 by default for Linux/Mac as well for UnrealInsights. Since there's no Event to close dont need to check for this.

    15. Bug Fix: Added win64 platform check for VisualStudioDTE.

    16. Bug fix: Fixed Linux build break with case sensitive headers.

    17. Bug Fix: FixedLinux build break (SEnumComboBox.h -> SEnumCombobox.h)

    18. Bug Fix: Fixed race when two threads are trying to create a folder on Linux.

    19. Bug Fix: Fixed command quoting in Linux chmod command.

    20. Bug Fix: Override GetPortableCallstack to avoid 1MB allocations in crash signal handler.

    21. Bug Fix: : Removed VulkanLinuxPlatform RenderOffScreen logging.

    22. Bug Fix: Fixed Linux build break (includes paths with backslashes)

    23. Bug Fix: Fixed UnrealBuildTool unused variable warnings.

    24. Bug Fix: Fix for ISPCTexComp dll not loading on projects on a different directory. Fixes this warning on UE4Editor startup: LogCore: Warning: dlopen failed: /epic/UE4.git/Engine/ThirdParty/IntelISPCTexComp/Linux64-Release/libispc_texcomp.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory LogTextureFormatIntelISPCTexComp: Warning: Unable to load ../../../Engine/ThirdParty/IntelISPCTexComp/Linux64-Release/libispc_texcomp.so

    25. Bug Fix: Ensures start time for events is now greater than last end time for all nodes.

    26. Bug Fix: GpuProfilerEvent times now clamp to valid values, SanitizeEventTree was not clamping start times to be >= to previous root start times, so we were hitting asserts in TraverseEventTree() for: lastStartTime >= GpuProfilerEvents[Root].GetStartResultMicroseconds(). Also removed unused variables.

    27. Bug Fix: Now using secure_getenv() instead of getenv().

    28. New: Missing toolchain warning now only appears on Linux + Win64.

    29. New: Added linux sanitizer information to build details if set.

    30. New: Build nvTriStrip and ForsythTriOptimizer with UE clang toolchain (link with libstdc++) Removed stdc++ dependency for MeshBuilderCommon.

    31. New: Added LinuxAArch64Server and LinuxAArch64Client build targets.

    32. New: Added VULKAN_ENABLE_DUMP_LAYER to VulkanLinuxPlatform.h.

    33. New: System compiler is no longer the default fall-back on Linux. We now only check for and use the system compiler if " ForceUseSystemCompiler" command line is passed Also, no longer default to epic compiler if ForceUseSystemCompiler is specified and the system compiler can’t be found.

    34. New: Moved Linux architectures to Linux package project submenu. Added a PlatformSubMenu ini entry to DataDrivenPlatformInfo sections, and coalesced these in FPackageProjectMenu::MakeMenu().

    35. New: Added a more descriptive error messages for Linux SDK Toolchain Not Found for three cases:

      • .$ LINUX_MULTIARCH_ROOT=/tmp/foobar make BlankProgram bash "/epic/UE4-23.git/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Linux/Build.sh" BlankProgram Linux Development Fixing inconsistent case in filenames. Setting up Mono Building BlankProgram... Unable to locate Linux SDK toolchain at /tmp/foobar/x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu. ERROR: GetBuildPlatform: No BuildPlatform found for Linux make: *** [Makefile:183: BlankProgram] Error 5

      • make BlankProgram ARGS=" forceusesystemcompiler" bash "/epic/UE4-23.git/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Linux/Build.sh" BlankProgram Linux Development forceusesystemcompiler Fixing inconsistent case in filenames. Setting up Mono Building BlankProgram... Unable to locate system compiler (-ForceUseSystemCompiler specified). ERROR GetBuildPlatform: No BuildPlatform found for Linux make: *** [Makefile:183: BlankProgram] Error 5

      • LINUX_MULTIARCH_ROOT= make BlankProgram bash "/epic/UE4-23.git/Engine/Build/BatchFiles/Linux/Build.sh" BlankProgram Linux Development Fixing inconsistent case in filenames. Setting up Mono Building BlankProgram... Unable to locate Linux SDK toolchain. Please run Setup.sh. ERROR GetBuildPlatform: No BuildPlatform found for Linux make: *** [Makefile:183: BlankProgram] Error 5

    36. New: Added Linux AArch64 FreeType2 libraries.

    37. New: Added support for Linux offscreen Vulkan rendering, which is enabled with -RenderOffScreen flag. This fixes several Slate issues when rendering offscreen.

    38. New: Enabled Neon instrinsics for Linux AArch64.

    39. New: Moved to new llvm clang 9.0.1 v16 toolchain.

    40. New: Added bGdbIndexSection bool to LinuxToolChain.

    41. New: Added Linux AArch64 libs for FreeType2 v2.10.0, ICU 64.1, and HarfBuzz 2.4.0 Includes BuildForLinuxAArch64.sh cross compilation scripts Adds LinuxAArch64 back to installed engine builds.

    42. New: Linux now always uses lld linker with clang v9 and above.

    43. New: Can now generate .debug_pubnames and .debug_pubtypes sections in a format suitable for conversion into a GDB index. This option is only useful with a linker that can produce GDB index version 7.

    44. New: Added protected to bGdbIndexSection bool.

    45. New: New build of python2.7 for Linux now supports zlib, bz2, and ssl.

    46. New: Use msbuild in mono for Linux when using an installed copy and mono >= 5.0.

    47. New: Batch writing of ini files is now possible.

    As for Vulkan API support, looks like that saw huge improvements too across the board. There's 50+ improvements just for Vulkan including new features like DXC integration (DirectX Shader Compiler) into their Vulkan shader compiler, they added support for Virtual Texture Streaming for Vulkan Linux and there's even some Vulkan VR improvements

    It's interesting since there's more and more games coming to Stadia, which uses Debian Linux and Vulkan so it's probable a lot of the interest there is due to that and thanks to it Unreal Engine on Linux as a whole will get better. See the release announcement here .

    Article from GamingOnLinux.com - do not reproduce this article without permission. This RSS feed is intended for readers, not scrapers.
    • chevron_right

      Unreal Engine early access ARPG 'Malus' now has Linux support

      Liam Dawe · news.movim.eu / GamingOnLinux · Tuesday, 24 March, 2020 - 13:03 · 1 minute

    Malus, an action RPG that puts an emphasis on the quite different combat system, with a darker theme and horror elements plus it's also now available on Linux.

    This Unreal Engine powered game entered Early Access only this month, with a Linux build arriving shortly after. Combat is certainly…different. It has a slower pace to it, it feels a little more tactical as you lock onto enemies and do a weird dance around them to fight effectively and I actually quite liked it. A lot of ARPGs focus on speed and brute force, so it's interesting to see it slowed down like this.

    youtube video thumbnail
    Watch video on YouTube.com

    The developer is trying to create an ARPG that "isn't yet another hack and slash", and I can certainly appreciate where they're going with it. It's quite rough, there's no getting around that and it has at least a year to go in development from the what developer said but it's quite promising with it already having a good atmosphere. Rahman Abdul said their aim it to create "an immersive, believable atmospheric environment to allow players to engage in the story we wish to tell" with a minimal UI and the horror elements that aren't like you would find in other similar games in the genre.

    Once it's progressed some more, this could be a pretty good action RPG if they manage to get it polished enough. The English text needs work, the introduction needs big improvements and so on. Since it's only just come out, I'll be following along the development since it's promising.

    You can find Malus on Steam .

    Article from GamingOnLinux.com - do not reproduce this article without permission. This RSS feed is intended for readers, not scrapers.