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Crytek adds Linux support to its CryEngine

by Mark Tyson on 13 March 2014, 10:20

Tags: Crytek

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Germany-based games developer and publisher Crytek has announced that it will be showing off something to warm the cockles of Linux gamers' hearts at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco next week. The headlining announcement and perhaps most newsworthy demonstrations by Crytek will be of "full native Linux support in the new CryEngine". The developers also promise "a brand new mobile game, extra engine updates and much more".

Crytek will show the Linux native CryEngine at a special presentation at the GDC and also a demo will run at its booth for the duration of the conference. It says that the CryEngine has been updated with a new 'Physically Based Shading render pipeline' which helps create "amazingly realistic lighting and materials". Scheduled presentations at the GDC include; 'Moving to the Next Generation: the Rendering Technology of Ryse' and 'Agile Lessons from Ryse and Crysis 3'.

Crytek also says that it will be promoting its free online FPS Warface (Nvidia added this game to its F2P spring cash promo yesterday). Warface has just been updated with new 'Tower Raid' and 'Capture' modes, we are told. Also on show will be Crytek's upcoming military strategy game for iOS and Android called 'The Collectables'. This is said to bring "Crytek's trademark action onto the small screen".

Yesterday we reported on the release of ToGL by Valve which is translation layer code to convert Direct3D instructions to the OpenGL equivalent. That development offers the hope that many more PC games in the Steam library will be ported to Linux/SteamOS. The Crytek news may mean that Linux fans will, in the not-too-distant future be able to simply answer "yes" to the question "but can it run Crysis?" Things are looking up for Linux gamers.



HEXUS Forums :: 11 Comments

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This is good news, especially if Microsoft moves towards a subscription model for its operating system in the future.
I do like all this Linux action at the moment but I wish they wouldn't shout about it so much right now as the support just isn't there yet and “people” will be expecting things to work based on some of these headlines and news articles that seem to be quite rife at the moment.
shaithis
I do like all this Linux action at the moment but I wish they wouldn't shout about it so much right now as the support just isn't there yet
Announcements like this is kinda the point, that the support is there.
shaithis
I do like all this Linux action at the moment but I wish they wouldn't shout about it so much right now as the support just isn't there yet and “people” will be expecting things to work based on some of these headlines and news articles that seem to be quite rife at the moment.
I know what you're getting at, but we've heard so much of the “Linux isn't usable at all for gaming” that these kind of announcements are a nice antidote. You're maybe being a little unfair saying that the support “isn't there”, maybe more correct to say that it's at an early stage. We've certainly come on a good deal since this time last year.

For me, I'm more interesting in hearing that game engines have been ported (or are being ported) since they're obviously a pre-req to seeing some “A list” titles.

Now all we need is a decent AMD graphics driver for Linux and we can really start celebrating. As it is, I think the “big rig” will be remaining on Windows for a little while longer - although the chances of me installing a 250GB SSD for a Linux install, and dual booting, just went up.
This is fantastic!
I really hate windows but I must use it for gaming. I hope other devs follow in their footsteps. Especially with valves new Dx11 - OpenGL converter toll thing.