Thoughts on Linux and Gamedev

Like everything it depends what you're doing, I compiled down the UE editor and that seems to be absolutely fine so far.. Although they did specify they weren't going to treat the Linux editor like a "second class citizen". Shame about the lack of launcher though, Mac's another story..

With the amount of diagnostics tools you can really make sure it's stable and efficient, I've not had a single issue in terms of the OS (after installation) bar the mesa pointers overwriting when installing some software.

It's as stable and fast as Windows when playing games etc. (if we were to use OpenGL on both). As for tools again Houdini, SD, SP, Blender is all you really need to create a fantastic game from end to end. I'd probably run illustrator in a VM for UI's.

My two issues with it are: If you were to release a game on Linux it could be a mare to support.. I mean Linux is an OS where you have to know what you're doing, also the lack of games.. Probably because of the first issue ..!

 

As a one man studio, if I do anything that's beyond the available Linux tools there's a good chance I'm over reaching. I've seen the difference in stability between my systems and friends on Windows over the past 10 years, and I've never been tempted to switch back (I've spent more time fixing their systems than mine).

 

@ShadowK when you say UE are you meaning unreal engine or unity engine?

I never tested unreal in linux but wondered how it was, mac wasn't a great experience.

 

Which game devs seriously support linux? The trouble with linux is there are way too many flavours and different package managers, rpms, debs, solus packages, arch compile builds.

Some of the games I wanted to play 'cuphead' and 'inside' was only available on windows, luckily bootcamp came to the rescue there.

 

I think of myself more as a tool chain guy, but going full game developer gets more tempting by the day. I'd probably target Android initially if I did.

 

Unreal Engine yeah, on Mac I had a platitude of issues but luckily it was nothing more than a curiosity.. Issue with Unity is I don't have any "major" projects to thoroughly test out the engine, I have a small 3D side scroller I made but all the RPG stuff got deleted.

For UE I have some rather large projects I can try out to see if there's any issues, most of the pain came from using a different version to the one the game was made in.. After sorting through that it was happy as Larry.!

I was recently playing some paradox interactive games on Linux which run great and Bioshock runs like a dream on Linux so there are a few major players who actively support it.

Personally I don't see it as a "hopeless" platform not made in any respect for game dev, although as some have stated what's the point? Which I get it, I mean I can see both sides of the coin here.. Once it's set up right I've little to complain about, but I think most of it's a matter of preference.

I'm not even sure I'll keep it on my desktop, but I've enjoyed having a proper go at it.

 

Just want to give an update and say that Unity 2018.1.0b8 makes a lot of difference for me on Linux Mint. Previously I experienced crashes caused by so many silly small things, and I couldn't even make builds. Now I'm finally able to create something and make builds as well. There's still things like not being able to resize windows like the console, if I would maximize it, it says maximized. I just have to remember not to maximize it and I'm fine. Also noticed that having a lot of trees on the terrain makes the editor lag heavily, which wasn't the case at all with the same scene on Windows. Another thing is having lag/framedrops while being in playmode. This is not constantly nor a deal breaker for me personally. When I make a build this isn't happening, haven't tried it with trees in the build since I just removed them. Despite this I feel like I'm able to work on something and finish it without feeling frustrated all the time. Thanks Unity keep this up!