Unreal Engine 4.21 back in November was a big update for Linux gamers in that this game engine now defaults to the Vulkan renderer and also had various other fixes. With today's Unreal Engine 4.22 Preview 1 release, there are no Linux/Vulkan-specific changes mentioned, but some other interesting changes in general.
Marc Di Luzio continues working on interesting features for GameMode as the daemon to optimize Linux systems for gaming... The latest is integrating AMD and NVIDIA overclocking support within GameMode, which is now under review.
For those using the Lutris open-source gaming platform that aims to enhance the experience of managing games and better integration from Wine to Steam games, the huge 0.5 release is now available for upgrades.
Unity Tech has put out their first public beta of the upcoming Unity 2019.1 game engine update. There's some notable work on both the Linux and Vulkan fronts.
It's been nearly one year since Feral Interactive introduced GameMode for optimizing the Linux gaming experience/performance. With not hearing anything out of the project in a while, I decided to poke around its development code this weekend.
The developers behind Godot, one of the leading open-source game engines, have announced their second beta release for the upcoming Godot 3.1 feature release.
For those Linux gamers with a NVIDIA RTX "Turing" graphics card, there's finally an interesting open-source workload to enjoy that makes use of the RTX hardware and NVIDIA's VK_NV_ray_tracing extension... A real-time path tracing port of the legendary Quake 2 game.
While Godot 3.1 isn't even out yet, our eyes are already looking forward to Godot 4.0 for 2D and 3D rendering improvements, but most notably Vulkan API support.
The ET: Legacy open-source project derived from the id Tech 3 sources and letting Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory live on almost two decades later is out with their biggest release yet: version 2.76. ET: Legacy 2.76 itself is a big release but the developers involved still have more plans moving forward.
Helping to make the SDL cross-platform library more attractive for mobile/Android developers, the latest SDL2 code has an initial OpenSL ES implementation.
X-Plane 11.30 is now available as the latest feature update to this realistic, cross-platform, mature flight simulator system that has long provided native support for Linux.
The Tux-themed MarioKart-inspired SuperTuxKart animated racing game is out with its v0.10 Beta 1 release that delivers on initial LAN/Internet-based multiplayer support.
The developers behind the open-source, cross-platform 2D/3D Godot game engine have placed a release freeze on the upcoming Godot 3.1 with today's beta reveal.
This coming May will mark sixteen years already since the release of the legendary Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory game built atop the ioquake3 engine. Continuing to let this game live on and advance as open-source is ETLegacy, which continues work on its new renderer for this once popular first person shooter.
The high-end, Linux-friendly Unigine engine for powering games but seemingly more industrial/simulator applications these days is out with their last feature release of 2018.
Just in time for any family-friendly, holiday gaming, the Super Mario Bros inspired SuperTux game is out with their v0.6 update after being in development for about two years.
While there has long been the vkQuake hobbyist project that brought a Vulkan renderer to the original Quake game, there is now vkQuake2 for a Vulkan rendering of Quake II.
DXVK lead developer Philip Rebohle who is working under contract for Valve released a new version of this open-source layer for translating Direct3D 10/11 calls to Vulkan API for enhancing the experience for running Windows games on Linux.
Unity Tech is ending out the year with their Unity 2018.3 game engine update that brings a number of new features and improvements to its many supported platforms.
Unvanquished had been easily one of the most promising open-source games several years back with decent in-game visuals/art, a continually improving "Daemon" engine that was a distant mod of ioquake3 while leveraging ETXReaL components and more, and all-around a well-organized, advancing open-source game project. Their monthly alpha releases stopped almost three years ago while today that's changed just ahead of Christmas.
Another high profile Linux game port Feral Interactive is working on besides Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the DiRT 4 racing game!
After weeks of rumors, Epic Games today officially announced the Epic Games Store as their own electronic game store alternative to Steam.
While the long-term prospects of the project have yet to be determined, longtime Linux input expert Peter Hutterer of Red Hat has hacked together "GGKBDD" as the generic gaming keyboard daemon for Linux systems.
The SDL2 library commonly used by Linux/cross-platform games now has support for the Razer Raiju Mobile gaming controller.
For those doing some US holiday weekend gaming or testing out any new Steam Play games from the Steam Autumn Sale, DXVK 0.93 is out today as the project's latest feature release for mapping Direct3D 10/11 to Vulkan on Linux.
Unity Tech recently presented at their Unite LA conference about their 2019 road-map. There is a ton they are planning for both gamers and developers utilizing their cross-platform game engine over the next year.
Feral Interactive just lit up the Linux build of Total War: WARHAMMER II on Steam.
While waiting for the release of Warhammer II today, Feral Interactive just announced they will be releasing Shadow of the Tomb Raider for Linux (and macOS) in 2019.
Feral Interactive has just announced that Total War: WARHAMMER II will be released for Linux (and macOS) next week.
With Feral Interactive preparing to release Total War: WARHAMMER II for Linux and macOS later this month, today they announced the system requirements for this latest native game port.
1602 Linux Gaming news articles published on Phoronix.