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Hooray for Linux! But there's something that has been bothering me for a while about games for Linux compiled with the Unity SDK. Does anybody know what kind

Hooray for Linux! But there's something that has been bothering me for a while about games for Linux compiled with the Unity SDK. Does anybody know what kind of dependencies a game written with the Unity SDK has? I'm pretty clueless about that stuff but I'd still like to know what it would take to get a game running on a minimal Linux install (like a naked Arch or Gentoo). Ubuntu obviously comes well equipped for the task but I don't really care about that. So where do the graphics come from? Does it need some special libraries apart from OpenGL? Where do fonts come from? How does it interface with hardware, i.e. does it need X, or does it come with its own drivers for keyboard, mouse, gamepad? I fear that it is necessary to install half of Ubuntu to get the games running but - as I said - I don't really know anything about that.

beberlei 11y ago
I am not sure this is the solution, but you could call "ldd <file>" on a unity generated binary to see system dependencies. If they statically compile stuff into the game, that's another question.
- QuantumRoar 11y ago
  Good point. Though, I don't have such a binary.
  - azernik 11y ago
    Get Kerbal Space Program! And then play it after checking its library dependencies!
    - yellowapple 11y ago
      Or Cities: Skylines, another excellent game that uses Unity. Between those two, I've probably sunk whole weeks of my lifetime. If someone were to make a game that combined the two into some kind of orbital city builder, I'd be set.
      - azernik 11y ago
        Make KSC into a project your city can build, and all the money it spends goes into your city's economy.
  - yaur 11y ago
    From KSP (unity via steam) linux-gate libdl libpthread librt libGLU libGL libX11 libXcursor libstdc++ libm libgcc_s libc libnvidia-tls libnvidia-glcore libXext libxcb libXrender libXfixes libXau libXdmcp
    - QuantumRoar 11y ago
      Thanks a lot. I know that steam has some 32Bit dependencies even on a 64Bit OS. I thought it might have only been the steam client's dependency. Unless you're using a 32Bit OS, it seems that Steam, or maybe even Unity3D, enforces the use of those 32Bit libs. I wonder why. Edit: I seems that you removed the references to lib32 and i386.
      - yaur 11y ago
        I think its a red herring. KSP (and unity games in general) ship as either x86 or x86 and x64. Full output for ldd of both of them is here http://pastebin.com/KAYF4TFw http://pastebin.com/KAYF4TFw
c0nfused 11y ago
So, having tried to offer support for a game on linux before it's a giant nightmare. If you don't want to open source you end up with a never ending support task. Unity should solve that now. Maybe. To answer a few specifics with out getting too ragey: To get real usable 3d you need to be running the proprietary drivers. The opensource ones at least a year or so ago when I was paying close attention were uniformly too slow and supported such a limited subset of the specs that the were usually pointless. The take away for me was to always assume that the user system is completely dumb and to ship EVERYTHING. We ended up packaging the kitchen sink to get rid of the majority of the "I installed this on <nightly build of obscure distro> and it says it can't find libc" issues.
- mikepavone 11y ago
  Two of the open source drivers (radeonsi and nvc0) support OpenGL 4.1 now (though only if you've got a bleeding edge build of Mesa, built against bleeding edge LLVM). This is obviously still pretty far behind, but at least it's caught up to OS X. The performance of radeonsi isn't terrible (though that's partly because the proprietary AMD driver sets the bar kind of low), though still generally slower than the proprietary one. There are some experimental instruction scheduling changes in an LLVM branch that appear to give better performance than the proprietary drivers for at least some benchmarks. On the Nvidia side it's pretty much proprietary or bust though. Featurewise it tends to be in good shape (at least in comparison to the other open source drivers anyway), but there's no support for changing the GPU clock so performance is terrible.
- pekk 11y ago
  Offering support for a game is a never ending support task. If you aren't willing to support your users, you aren't ready to publish games. Don't blame Linux users.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    You're basically saying "don't support Linux unless you're prepared to spend 50% of your support budget on 5% of your customer base." And then people wonder why so few devs support Linux.
solidpy 11y ago
> I fear that it is necessary to install half of Ubuntu to get the games running This could be a good use case for Docker containers. I remember they showed Quake running on Docker at a convention so it should be possible.

beberlei 11y ago

I am not sure this is the solution, but you could call "ldd <file>" on a unity generated binary to see system dependencies. If they statically compile stuff into the game, that's another question.

QuantumRoar 11y ago
Good point. Though, I don't have such a binary.
- azernik 11y ago
  Get Kerbal Space Program! And then play it after checking its library dependencies!
  - yellowapple 11y ago
    Or Cities: Skylines, another excellent game that uses Unity. Between those two, I've probably sunk whole weeks of my lifetime. If someone were to make a game that combined the two into some kind of orbital city builder, I'd be set.
    - azernik 11y ago
      Make KSC into a project your city can build, and all the money it spends goes into your city's economy.
- yaur 11y ago
  From KSP (unity via steam) linux-gate libdl libpthread librt libGLU libGL libX11 libXcursor libstdc++ libm libgcc_s libc libnvidia-tls libnvidia-glcore libXext libxcb libXrender libXfixes libXau libXdmcp
  - QuantumRoar 11y ago
    Thanks a lot. I know that steam has some 32Bit dependencies even on a 64Bit OS. I thought it might have only been the steam client's dependency. Unless you're using a 32Bit OS, it seems that Steam, or maybe even Unity3D, enforces the use of those 32Bit libs. I wonder why. Edit: I seems that you removed the references to lib32 and i386.
    - yaur 11y ago
      I think its a red herring. KSP (and unity games in general) ship as either x86 or x86 and x64. Full output for ldd of both of them is here http://pastebin.com/KAYF4TFw http://pastebin.com/KAYF4TFw

c0nfused 11y ago

So, having tried to offer support for a game on linux before it's a giant nightmare. If you don't want to open source you end up with a never ending support task. Unity should solve that now. Maybe. To answer a few specifics with out getting too ragey: To get real usable 3d you need to be running the proprietary drivers. The opensource ones at least a year or so ago when I was paying close attention were uniformly too slow and supported such a limited subset of the specs that the were usually pointless. The take away for me was to always assume that the user system is completely dumb and to ship EVERYTHING. We ended up packaging the kitchen sink to get rid of the majority of the "I installed this on <nightly build of obscure distro> and it says it can't find libc" issues.

mikepavone 11y ago
Two of the open source drivers (radeonsi and nvc0) support OpenGL 4.1 now (though only if you've got a bleeding edge build of Mesa, built against bleeding edge LLVM). This is obviously still pretty far behind, but at least it's caught up to OS X. The performance of radeonsi isn't terrible (though that's partly because the proprietary AMD driver sets the bar kind of low), though still generally slower than the proprietary one. There are some experimental instruction scheduling changes in an LLVM branch that appear to give better performance than the proprietary drivers for at least some benchmarks. On the Nvidia side it's pretty much proprietary or bust though. Featurewise it tends to be in good shape (at least in comparison to the other open source drivers anyway), but there's no support for changing the GPU clock so performance is terrible.
pekk 11y ago
Offering support for a game is a never ending support task. If you aren't willing to support your users, you aren't ready to publish games. Don't blame Linux users.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  You're basically saying "don't support Linux unless you're prepared to spend 50% of your support budget on 5% of your customer base." And then people wonder why so few devs support Linux.

solidpy 11y ago

> I fear that it is necessary to install half of Ubuntu to get the games running This could be a good use case for Docker containers. I remember they showed Quake running on Docker at a convention so it should be possible.