Hi all,
My game, Defend the Highlands is going on Steam next month. I’d love to be able to offer Linux compatibility, but unfortunately I don’t have a Linux machine to test on. If someone with Steam for Linux could test that it installs and runs properly, I’d greatly appreciate it. I don’t need you to test the whole game, just see that it starts up and you can start a game, save and load.
Let me know if you can help out and I’ll send you a beta key to download it.
Thanks.
It’s worthwhile to install Linux in a VM. I use VirtualBox, so it’s all free (and you don’t need to repartition your hard drive). Then you can do all testing yourself, which tends to be a lot easier and more effective than going through a third party.
–Eric
VMs are okay, but their performance leaves something to be desired. Ubuntu 15.04 installs next to Win 8.1 pretty nicely anymore.
The performance hit is meaningless in this context; I get maybe a 25% or so speed reduction, which is still far more than fast enough, and being able to run Linux in a window is maybe 250000% more convenient than constantly rebooting while testing and making changes (speaking from direct experience). It’s actually kind of even better than having a separate dedicated machine.
–Eric
The convenience is definitely nice, but depending on your system and Linux distro, the performance hit can be a lot more than that 25%. If your system is playing nice with it, then a VM is better for convenience…my system (which had a hybrid gfx card going on) just never seemed to want to -.-
I think the more important thing is to just test that does the game run and work ok. Performance is only an issue if someone of your testers report it’s slow. Even without VM you could just boot up some distro from usb and try your game and takes max 30min.
Thanks guys, I think I’ll go the VM route. Performance isn’t that important, I just need to see that it works.
If you do have performance issues with a VM, you could also a bootable Linux USB - plug it in, restart your PC into a (temporary) Linux install, copy the game files from your main HDD to the RAM disk, and then run.
i currently have installed linux mint 17.1(based on ubuntu 14.04) on a laptop of mine as the main operating system on that system, send me a message if you want me to test it, however that machine is fairly low end so if its too heavy im out of luck, i would also recommend the live usb option
Yeah, this. Testing compatibility and testing performance can be two different tasks. To test that a build works you don’t need performance, so don’t waste time with a more lengthy workflow for the sake of that. Separately, when it’s time to test performance on different platforms, then you can do something a bit more tine consuming to get a more useful result.
For what it’s worth, though, from people who’ve done it: on equivalent hardware does a Linux build perform significantly differently to a Windows or Mac build? I’d personally hope it’d be pretty similar to the Mac build.
Try this forum: Forum | GamingOnLinux
They helped me with my Alpha Demo.
That is now what I am seeing - I see significantly (60fps windows, 15fps linux) worse performance on Linux. Anyone else see differently?
Is that in a VM or native without running Linux inside a VM?
When Steam makes you a millionaire, then buy yourself a computer that meets your minimum requirements and try it there. Otherwise you have to use a VM. Also, I don’t think you will find many Linux users here since Unity doesn’t support it. Still possible though.
Native - using a USB bootable version of Ubuntu. http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
Check the shaders. They probably weren’t tested on OpenGL.
//edit: Also check what kind of drivers you’re using there. Probably open-source, community ones that are meh. Get real, vendor-provided (directly from amd or nVidia) Linux drivers. Not that nouveau bullshit that comes by default with *buntu.