Linux Support and Alternative Gaming

[tetra]

So I've recently run into problems with Trine/Shadowgrounds, just buying them from the Humble Bundle, and I've contacted Frozenbyte, who were great, got me to who I needed to talk to about the support, and wished me well on my way.

That's where it got a little weird.

I'm currently running Archlinux i686, with an ATi card and OSS. I've made changes to my system to accomodate the games after finding out they only work with the catalyst drivers, and not xf86-video-ati or radeonhd. On top of that, Alsa being the only sound architecture that works. After installing/re-enabling/configuring both of these, that brings me to where we are now:

Alternative Gaming.

I got an email from them talking about catalyst was the only driver supported. I had talked to AlternativeGaming just before I got the radeon drivers installed, and ALSA not spewing errors when launching Trine anymore, and I got this nice email back.

tetra:Like I said, ALSA thing has been sorted out, now I just need to figure out what the hell is going on with the binaries
Turo:And like I said:
>> > > non-Catalyst drivers are not currently supported because they don't
>> > > support all of the necessary features. The driver developers are
>> > > working on it though so you might see support eventually.
We can't do anything about this, you'll just have to wait. Please don't
bug us about this. Thanks.

Turo Lamminen
Alternative Games

Please don't bug us about this? Really? That's the support I get? Not even any other questions regarding my setup, or any other information that he could get out of me? I went through hours of work to get everything up and running all replace, and I get this email that just puts me in such a shitty mood. He could have said, "we're working on it, please bare with us", or something to that effect, but this has honestly made me want a refund. Both email correspondances have been like this, just flat out rejection.

Either way, I've replied to Mr. Lamminen, and CC'd it to Frozenbyte themselves, because for support to tell me to "go away", I think it's completely unprofessional, and I feel like I've wasted my money as a consumer, as I've purchased GAMES I cannot play, and support refuses to even get the rest of my updates.

Bullshit honestly, I had great interactions with Frozenbyte, you guys rule, but AlternativeGaming has completely soured my experience SO much, that I just want my money back, I don't even care if the games would work in the future, I don't want to support a company that tells their customers 'not to bug them', even if things are busy.

[philh]

I've had much the same experience, the FB guys are extremely helpful and friendly, AG, not so much...

Still, i've mentioned this to FB and they seem very keen to sort out the issue, let's give them a chance.

[tetra]

The FB guys were sad that it wasn't working for me, then offered to refund my money, which I turned down because I'll play them eventually.

Then I got those nice emails from AG. Totally thrown everything out of whack for me.

[alt_tuomas]

Your problem is the old R500-series graphics card which is not supported. New driver versions when they eventually come out might fix this and Turo is actually working with the people at FreeDesktop to help fix this. I admit the reply could have been worded better but that does not change the fact that we really cannot help you in any way right now.

We basically have just one person working mainly on Linux support (on emails, here and several other forums) so things can get a bit stressful for everyone at times. I apologise on behalf of Alternative Games for anyone feeling offended. English is not our native language which may cause some cultural differences in interpreting the tone of posts. We will pay more attention to this and hope that those contacting us do the same.

I've had much the same experience, the FB guys are extremely helpful and friendly, AG, not so much...

Still, i've mentioned this to FB and they seem very keen to sort out the issue, let's give them a chance.

Your issue was that the game does not look exactly the same on Windows and Linux. This is known and we are not expecting it to. Making the graphics exactly similar pixel to pixel is not our aim and not something worth the effort it would require.

Yours,

[philh]

Your issue was that the game does not look exactly the same on Windows and Linux. This is known and we are not expecting it to. Making the graphics exactly similar pixel to pixel is not our aim and not something worth the effort it would require.

Not really, my issue is that the game looks shit, there isn't a single recognisable pixel being churned out by the renderer, i've heard that shadowgrounds looks a lot less impressive on linux than its windows counterpart, but it looks perfectly acceptable, trine does not. Do the mac and ps3 ports also fail to hit their target resolutions?

The following screenshots are taken with close to identical settings on each version, first's blown up to 200%



If you're struggling to see the problem maybe FB can put some of their humble bundle earnings towards a nice pair of glasses for you...

[FB_Lauri]

We're extremely sorry for the unpolite manners you have encountered. I must admit that this is partly our fault, as it was never planned nor agreed with Alternative Games that they handle support to this extent (and we were really unprepared for such high number of linux problems we will encounter). I can understand their frustration with the situation as well, but of course it's no excuse for rudeness. I'm also sorry for Humble Bundle, as this mess is completely our fault and they have nothing to do with it.

On behalf of Frozenbyte please accept my deepest apologies.

Lauri Hyvärinen
CEO, Frozenbyte

[Xpander]

the game itself works fine. i had no issues installing it and all worked out of the box.
some people ofc had some problems, but thats common. i have also pulseaudio distro, but never encountered any sound issues like many somehow do. People who have most problems are using opensource drivers(which imo aint in good shape for gaming).

The problem with the texture quality how it looks on linux compared to windows is still strange and needs a look at it. Its just looking blurry and not sharp at all.

thx for good games for linux
and sry for my bad english

[tetra]

Your problem is the old R500-series graphics card which is not supported. New driver versions when they eventually come out might fix this and Turo is actually working with the people at FreeDesktop to help fix this. I admit the reply could have been worded better but that does not change the fact that we really cannot help you in any way right now.

We basically have just one person working mainly on Linux support (on emails, here and several other forums) so things can get a bit stressful for everyone at times. I apologise on behalf of Alternative Games for anyone feeling offended. English is not our native language which may cause some cultural differences in interpreting the tone of posts. We will pay more attention to this and hope that those contacting us do the same.

Thank you for your reply, this was all I was looking for! I know there's a large string of problems with the R500 cards, but the Catalyst drivers don't support anything older than the R500 series (Like my Radeon X1550 is R505), so if you don't have one of those cards, you're SOL for all of these games it seems. Kinda sucks, but this is Linux. I appreciate the apology, and didn't know that you guys had English as your second language. Guess most people assume that the internet is all English (me too!)

I hope that something comes in the future, and either way, I appreciate your reply. I feel like I may have over-reacted a little myself, and apologize for that myself too.

We're extremely sorry for the unpolite manners you have encountered. I must admit that this is partly our fault, as it was never planned nor agreed with Alternative Games that they handle support to this extent (and we were really unprepared for such high number of linux problems we will encounter). I can understand their frustration with the situation as well, but of course it's no excuse for rudeness. I'm also sorry for Humble Bundle, as this mess is completely our fault and they have nothing to do with it.

On behalf of Frozenbyte please accept my deepest apologies.

Lauri Hyvärinen
CEO, Frozenbyte

I had assumed they would have gotten swamped with the replies and everything. I know things never go to plan, and I'm sure they're just as frustrated as I am. Thanks for your reply Lauri (a CEO reply? :O!), I'll just sit until I hear some news!

Or install Windows. Who knows.

Thanks everyone.

(You guys can probably close this now.)

[Xpander]

ok some comparsion
all settings max, AF 8x and AA4x
Ubuntu 11.04 with catalyst 11.4 (ubuntu preview driver)
Friends picture in Windows 7 nvidia drivers (dont know exact driver numbers)
Linux:


Windows:


we can clearly see that something is wrong with the textures in linux.

[philh]

we can clearly see that something is wrong with the textures in linux.

I'm not so sure that it is just the textures, yes they're poor but the whole scene, with the exception of HUD and cursor, looks very soft, there aren't any of the properly sharp jaggies you'd expect(even if your screenshot has AA enabled, mine doesn't)

[fb_jpk2]

Note, I just posted a quick and really hacky explanation on how to fix the screen blurriness to a new thread (under this Trine technical support forum).

It should fix the issue with the blurry screen on the native linux version - at least to some extent. It is quite hacky though, and requires manual tweaking of the game shader files, so some people may rather wish to wait for a proper update on that.

I'm also pretty sure that Frozenbyte will release a proper update to fix the blurriness issue quite soon (I'd expect it could get properly fixed by monday on earliest, but I guess it might take a bit longer too, since there are probably some other issues to be fixed in the same update). But I don't want to go guessing about the exact update schedules and such, since I'm not officially working on the linux port, I just happened to try a quick fix on the blurry rendering issue at my home linux and luckily it seemed to work - at least in my case - I hope it works for others as well.

[Michael_Collins]

HI !
(sorry for my bad english)

Just a quick reply to say that support Linux by Alternative Gaming was for me : fast, usefull, courteous...


I think the Humble Bundle pack brings them thousands of new Linux gamers : it will helpful to check and solve bugs, but it will take a few weeks.


Best regards,