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4A Games has ported the 4A Engine to Linux - Metro: Last Light on Steam for Linux

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OMGUbuntu Article

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Metro: Last Light is now available to buy on Steam for Linux, priced at £24.99/$39.99.

Original August OMGUbuntu Article

Popular FPS game ‘Metro: Last Light’ is on its way to Linux ‘later this year’ its developers
have confirmed.

Metro is built on the 4A Engine, something that 4A Games’ CTO, Oles Shishkovstov, describes as being ‘testimony to the power flexibility of the engine’.

“Development was handled in house by 4A games, and we are very happy with the results. We hope that Mac & Linux gamers will appreciate our efforts to create the best possible version for their machines.”
 

dmix90

Member
There is no tessellation and other DX11 like features... right?I know that OGL had tessellation even before DX11 but i think there is DX9 level graphics in this Linux\Mac port. I hope i am wrong.
 

Qassim

Member
22803.png


Not completely worth investing stock in, but there's no reason to believe OGL will suddenly pull ahead.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux version runs faster than the Windows version (270.6) seems a little counter-intuitive, given the greater amount of time we have spent on the Windows version. However, it does speak to the underlying efficiency of the kernel and OpenGL. Interestingly, in the process of working with hardware vendors we also sped up the OpenGL implementation on Windows. Left 4 Dead 2 is now running at 303.4 FPS with that configuration.

Some up to date numbers and taking out the fact you posted Mac benchscores. Apple screw with OGL and have been known to be the source of gaming performance issues in the past, so much so that Steam actually posted a news item warning all those logging in on OSX about it.
 

aeolist

Banned
No, but OpenGL is being used which was sort of the point.

Mac is a completely different problem because Apple dictates the level of OpenGL support (always extremely out of date) and GPU driver updates (likewise)

Valve said Source OpenGL performance on Linux beats out Windows DirectX handily, that's what he was referring to
 

undu

Member
There is no tessellation and other DX11 like features... right?I know that OGL had tessellation even before DX11 but i think there is DX9 level graphics in this Linux\Mac port. I hope i am wrong.

Depends on the OpenGL implementation, Mesa (the one used in open-source drivers) doesn't and it won't for months, as work hasn't even started. (Check here in the GL 4.0 section)

Supposedly the proprietary one do as they support OpenGL 4.0.
 
I didn't know Apple messed with OGL so much. I wonder if, or how quickly, Valve may sod OSX development off and focus on Linux/Windows should their Linux offering gain traction?

Interesting they also suggest they're going to bring the Windows version up a few notches if possible.
 

Qassim

Member
I didn't know Apple messed with OGL so much. I wonder if, or how quickly, Valve may sod OSX development off and focus on Linux/Windows should their Linux offering gain traction?

Interesting they also suggest they're going to bring the Windows version up a few notches if possible.

There is no reason for them to drop OSX development. They weren't planning on making it a primary platform or anything, they were just expanding the Steam ecosystem and the amount of people who can play Valve games.

They did that. They did it because OSX, even if dwarfed by Windows, still has significant marketshare.
 

aeolist

Banned
I didn't know Apple messed with OGL so much. I wonder if, or how quickly, Valve may sod OSX development off and focus on Linux/Windows should their Linux offering gain traction?

Interesting they also suggest they're going to bring the Windows version up a few notches if possible.

they've caught up a tiny bit, i think 10.9 supports opengl 4.1 but 4.4 came out this summer and since apple is part of the organization that determines opengl standards there's no excuse for not having immediately up-to-date support

before mavericks i think they were stuck on 3.2 which came out in 2009
 

No_Style

Member
OS X Mavericks updated to Open GL 4.1, so performance should have improved a bit on that front.

Was it the case of Apple messing with OGL or just the fact that they were on an old version for a long time?
 

aeolist

Banned
OS X Mavericks updated to Open GL 4.1, so performance should have improved a bit on that front.

Was it the case of Apple messing with OGL or just the fact that they were on an old version for a long time?

apple manages all video driver updates on os x, it's not something that amd/nvidia can push out on their own for the end users to install

i don't think there's ever been a good explanation as to why, they've just refused to implement modern standards support into their operating system
 

Portal doesn't even run on the same engine version it did when this image was posted. Completely irrelevant today.

http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/

Some up to date numbers and taking out the fact you posted Mac benchscores. Apple screw with OGL and have been known to be the source of gaming performance issues in the past, so much so that Steam actually posted a news item warning all those logging in on OSX about it.

This isn't much relevant either. It is comparing DX9.0b/c to OpenGL2. Metro uses DirectX 11.

Both DX11 and OpenGL4 are way more optimized than the DX9 / OGL2 APIs that Valve is comparing there.

It *can* be, given the right conditions, but it's not really an automated gain.

:thumbsup
 

dmix90

Member
Depends on the OpenGL implementation, Mesa (the one used in open-source drivers) doesn't and it won't for months, as work hasn't even started. (Check here in the GL 4.0 section)

Supposedly the proprietary one do as they support OpenGL 4.0.
Thanks, but question is does their game engine (which i believe was ported with proprietary drivers in mind) support these OpenGL4.x features ( which will give you DX11-level effects )? We need at least some in-game and settings menu screenshots :)
 

pmj

Member
There's no demo. nvidia-settings tells me I have something called a GeForce GTX 550 Ti. Should I bother with this game?
 
This is fascinating. In my mind, Metro: Last Light might be the best looking game i've ever seen, maxed out, and unmodded, and already ran shockingly well in relation to how impressive it looked.

This is a feather-in-the-cap kinda tech demo for Steambox.
 

pmj

Member
Sorry for the double post, but a warning if anyone else was curious about the Linux port: it doesn't have any graphical settings aside from a single slider. Not even resolution can be changed.

Supposedly tweakable by editing config files, but still.
 
Sorry for the double post, but a warning if anyone else was curious about the Linux port: it doesn't have any graphical settings aside from a single slider. Not even resolution can be changed.

Supposedly tweakable by editing config files, but still.

Not being able to change the resolution is incredibly surprising And stupid. Not having many graphics options is also stupid but it's similar to the Windows build so kind of normal.
 

Durante

Member
I really hope some publication does an in-depth performance analysis of this, on multiple cards and also compared to Windows.

Of course, probably the biggest factor in erformance is how much time 4A spent optimizing the OpenGL renderer compared to DirectX.

Sorry for the double post, but a warning if anyone else was curious about the Linux port: it doesn't have any graphical settings aside from a single slider. Not even resolution can be changed.

Supposedly tweakable by editing config files, but still.
They probably thought Linux users would rather edit a config file than use a GUI :p
 

FyreWulff

Member
apple manages all video driver updates on os x, it's not something that amd/nvidia can push out on their own for the end users to install

i don't think there's ever been a good explanation as to why, they've just refused to implement modern standards support into their operating system

Aren't they still dicking around with maintaining their own (outdated) Java branch on OSX?
 
I thought OpenGL was more performant than DirectX. Or Linux would be more performant than Windows for that matter.

I've posted this video before, but this is a really good OpenGL comparison using the Unigine Heaven Benchmark. One is using Windows 8 while the other is using Ubuntu 13.04, but are running on the same PC with a Geforce 680 using the latest drivers for their respective platforms:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGZ6Bc-eoos&list=TLzQn3escIMlQ52Lj9m0dZdnDLBBi0hk6M

The end results are very similar with Windows 8 getting a very minor edge.

here's another comparison using Left4Dead 2.on the same setups:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgfCjvPSmVI

Though in this comparison The Windows version is using DirectX, while the Linux version uses OpenGL. The Windows version generally does get a higher frame rate overall, but the Linux version sees less drops below 100FPS. Though the Linux version uses an extra layer that translates DirectX draw calls to OpenGL which is used for shader/ lighting effects. This actually hinders performance a bit under Linux.

Here's another one showing a Dota2 comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iih211kgwaI
 

pmj

Member
I've put a little bit of time into the game now, just arrived at the nazi compound or whatever it is. It's playable on my GTX 550 Ti but if that first fight with the rat people is any indication, it'll get rough when multiple enemies are around.

I strongly doubt that the more advanced graphical bells and whistles that this game has on Windows are in the Linux version, because the difference in visuals and framerate I get on my shitty, years old computer aren't dramatically different no matter what the graphics slider is set at, aside from the very bottom where it cuts resolution and heavily blurs the image. Also, the way people praise the visuals in this game I think I should probably be a lot more impressed by the highest setting than I am. It looks good, but not mindblowingly so.

I'm not sure how much a comparison between the Windows and Linux versions would be worth if they're not doing the same things.

One thing that's weird is that the game actually seems to runs smoother on my machine when I move the graphics quality slider up a bit from the absolute bottom, and that bit makes a huge difference for the better in quality.
 

Nymerio

Member
Mac is a completely different problem because Apple dictates the level of OpenGL support (always extremely out of date) and GPU driver updates (likewise)

Valve said Source OpenGL performance on Linux beats out Windows DirectX handily, that's what he was referring to
Chart should be updated for Mavericks which is now on OGL 4.0, someone do it! :D
 
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