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Unity Editor for Linux
- Mbaqanga 7y agoWell the question is if Blizzard ports Hearthstone to Linux as a “hey, we have a beta for you guys”, and bring some buzz. The annoying part is the battle.net launcher.
- dijit 7y agoThis comment brings to mind a discussion I was having in my current company. We produce our own game launcher (think: uplay or origin) and I asked if there were plans to produce a Linux version of the launcher. They replied “no because productions (games) [weren’t] asking for it.” Inversely, when I ask productions if they will support Linux they say that there’s no point because the launcher doesn't support it and the launcher is mandatory.
- kevingadd 7y agoTo a degree if demand for Linux support was loud enough, they could probably swing a mandate to add support to both. I'm not sure if it'll ever get there but one example is that Valve is now aggressively investing in tools to enable playing existing Windows games on Linux. This could result in more happy Linux users asking for improved compatibility or direct Linux ports (for a better experience), but we'll see...
- Liquid_Fire 7y agoThe Battle.net launcher uses Qt, and they already have a macOS version of it, so it shouldn't be too difficult to port. Edit: That said, it's not like the lack of Unity Editor on Linux was stopping them from having a Linux version of Hearthstone. It has been possible to target Linux for years.
- vbezhenar 7y agoOne simple example: battle.net installs its own root certificate to the OS trust store. How do you do that for Linux? There are plenty of distributions with different rules. That would be some work.
- seba_dos1 7y agoWhy would it do that in the first place?
- vbezhenar 7y agoI think that they're running webserver on localhost and they are connecting to it from their website opened in browser, probably for some integration.
- jandrese 7y agoHow is that going to work when most of the users are behind NAT/Firewalls? That's a connection model that just doesn't work well on the modern Internet. I'm also kind of baffled by the need to install a Blizzard root cert in the cert store. That's normally only necessary for people who are too cheap to get their certs signed (Blizzard makes enough money to do this) or who want to MitM encrypted traffic from your host.
- vbezhenar 7y agoYou're opening their website. JavaScript on their website connects to https://localhost:12345 https://localhost:12345 and uses that connection to interact with battle.net software that runs on your PC. NAT/Firewall is not an issue. But that client software have to present valid certificate for that localhost website. To do so, they generate that self-signed certificate at installation time and mark is as trusted, so browsers will accept it. There's no other way to do that, really (well, there's a way actually, but it requires to sign some very non-standard agreements with certificate authorities, I know that Plex does that). Blizzard does not use that certificate to MitM your connection, because they don't send it back, it's generated, stored and used locally. I don't like this practice too and I would opt-out of that "feature" having the choice. I just used to develop similar software, so I understand why they did that.
- rasjani 7y agoProblem so far has been that unity dev tools where windows only while Linux would still be a target.
- pjmlp 7y agoAnd macOS.
- Sahhaese 7y agoGiven there's an android version of Hearthstone, what would have stopped them having a generic linux client before?
- jayd16 7y agoBuilding to linux was already supported. This is support for the editor.
- mpartel 7y agoI've been using the "experimental" LTS 2017.4 Linux version at work for over a year and the only platform-specific issue has been broken .NET 4.6 support, which has long since been fixed in 2018.x. Other than that, I've found the Linux builds to be in good shape since the 5.x series (platform-independent Unity buggyness notwithstanding).
- vectorEQ 7y agohope it's better than UE4 support for it, which is basically 'here's a bunch of code, good luck'. it has such crippling bugs its utterly unusable. Good luck unity to do better! I hope they make it awsome.
- de_watcher 7y agoWell, the UE people don't support Linux in their own games...
- jchw 7y agoThey used to :( R.I.P. years of Unreal Tournament on Linux. I remember distinctly that 2004 ran faster when I booted into Linux.
- mont 7y agoThey even used to (somewhat) recently. Rocket League (UE3) ran in linux.
- jchw 7y agoI didn’t know this, I was hoping for it long ago when I used to play. Maybe worth installing to see if it’s good. If it stays on Steam, anyways. Epic’s store probably won’t ever support Linux I’d imagine :(
- blackbrokkoli 7y agoThis is great! I have high hopes for it, since the experimental version already worked quite well for some time. Still, Unity was one of the reasons I got Win10 on an external hard drive... It's quite a dead meme, but with things like photopea, Blender, smooth Linux VsCode version, stepping stone distros like Mint and now Unity the year of the Linux desktop might come!
- 734129837261 7y agoI am interested in a switch to Linux (web developer, I use OSX, I need the terminal for all my tasks) but had not looked at Mint yet. The website looks like it was made 15 years ago, are they more modern than the website seems?
- lichenwarp 7y agoI love mx-linux, it's debian without so much work, never crashes, stays out of the way.
- Nyrox 7y agoLack of website design skills is sadly a chronic illness of the FOSS community. Mint is super solid though and probably the most approachable beginner distro in 2019. Comes with an easy installer, a choice of desktop environments that are all pretty nice out of the box and familiar and the fact it's based on Ubuntu/Debian makes looking up any problems or looking to customize it a breeze. If you are looking for a Distro that works out of the box, Mint is pretty good.
- joshklein 7y agoFor "most MacOS-like experience" and "willing to compromise on FOSS philosophy for practical convenience in GPU-related work", I recommend taking a look at Pop!_OS. It's System76's take on Ubuntu with Mac-like UI tweaks and proprietary Nvidia drivers built in.
- ramensea 7y agoI've found Chrome OS to provide the most Mac like experience outside of Mac. Its Linux app support is still in development, but I successfully made a Unity game on my Chromebook!
- paulcarroty 7y agoLinux gaming on the rise now, thankfully mostly to DXVK and D9VK projects. Seems like one of big corporations funding the authors, probably Valve (old Microsoft kind-of-enemy).
- jandrese 7y agoSteamplay has been a huge influence in my household. Dunno about the bigger picture. It's much less hassle than the Wine wrappers of old and for the most part just works.
- zachruss92 7y agoI love it! This really shows that game devs are starting to treat Linux as a first-class citizen.
- naikrovek 7y agoI think this is more about making it easier to run the Unity editor headless in a docker container than it is about making lives easier for those extreme few who actually want to use the editor within Linux. Linux users often choose Linux because it is open. The Unity editor is definitely not open. That's an educated guess, not something I know for a fact, and it makes sense given what I know about how the tool has evolved. Unity has been able to produce games that run on Linux for a long, long time, so Linux is making some headway, you're right.
- yeoldeporkpie 7y agoThat is a good reaction to Godot's growing popularity.
- binthere 7y agoGodot has caught my eye a bunch of times but I'm still not quite convinced to use it yet. I guess I need to just try it.
- sempron64 7y agoIt is very intuitive! I picked it up in about 30 minutes, and I'm using it for a small project for a friend. I've previously written games in Python/Pygame, WebGL, and C++, and I've tried out Unity and was a bit overwhelmed. Godot is way faster, simpler, and friendlier. Try this tutorial: https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/getting_started/step_by_step/your_first_game.html https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.1/getting_started/step_by_... I recommend using GDScript instead of messing with C#, which is supported but much more difficult to set up. GDScript is really similar to Python, the editor has Intellisense/autocomplete (even for strings!) and all the documentation is built in under the Help menu. It's a very very pleasant experience overall. It's also the first time I've been able to work fully offline thanks to the extensive built in help, and this does wonders for productivity.
- sempron64 7y agoI'd also like to point out that Godot 3 has full 3d support with PBR support, custom shaders, skeleton animation, and basically everything you'd expect in a 3d engine. It's way more fleshed out than when I last looked at it in Godot 2, and ready for prime time.
- rijoja 7y agoThey have quite a good as on system as well don't they? A good ecosystem around a slick and open core might very well be a winning concept.
- 7y ago
- sabujp 7y agoDear Unity: please get a floating license server that runs on Linux!
- naikrovek 7y agoThey have the ability to sell floating licenses, but you must work with a sales rep to get them, and purchase through one of their resellers, if I recall. I do not know if they roll their own license server or if they can use commercial license servers that may already be in place in an organization.
- sabujp 7y agotheir license server is still under development
- naikrovek 7y agoThings like this make me scratch my head. License servers exist. Surely it is cheaper for them to license from someone who does license servers, or use a client's existing license servers than it is for them to develop and support their own server.