Guild Wars 2

I wasn’t sure whether to put this in Tech Support or general, but here goes.
So, like a sensible gamer, I suck it up and play on Windows. However, I know several people on Linux (mostly Ubuntu or Debian) who are really interested in GW2 but won’t fork out the cash out of principal without native support.
With the arrival of SteamOS and such, is any Linux client in the works after the Mac one? Linux gamers are infamously generous when it comes to paying for optional extras once support is given to them, so it kind of makes sense from a business perspective.
Just curious; I can’t be the only person with people looking at the game, forlornly asking “Ubuntu Client?” and then mooching off to something like Eternal Lands in ugly, pixelated misery.

(http://www.eternal-lands.com/ if you’re curious to see what GW2s competition over in Open Source Land would be)

+1 Would very much like to see it happen.

To be honest, the question of linux support has been posed multiple times in the past few years. Anet said in an interview a year ago that they were not looking into a linux client at that time.

There are, of course, quite a few obvious business advantages:

1. Linux users pay for their games quite generously and generate just as much as their Mac brethren.

2. Guild Wars 2 would be the first AAA MMO on linux (to my knowledge) and would certainly generate quite a bit of hype and support because of that.

3. Due to distribution fragmentation, linux communities are tight-knit. If Anet would not have to go out of their way to market the port. Linux users will likely do that on their own.

4. Many developers are now beginning to develop for linux too, creating less of an incentive for linux gamers to dual-boot with Windows. This means that some gamers (myself included) are not playing GW2 as often as they would like simply because there are options that play much smoother on our computers.

Of course, this comes with a major disadvantage:

Many linux users want a complete rewrite of GW2’s code for OpenGL. I do not think anyone has any idea how much work this may or may not require of Anet. Even for their mac client, they used Cider instead of doing it themselves. It’s quite likely that Anet looked into OpenGL at some point, realized it would take more time than necessary, and got another group to do it.

Simply put: Yes, a linux client makes sense. Unfortunately, it does not seem to make enough sense for Anet to develop it currently.

That said, I play GW2 through wine on Archlinux and would love to see a linux client so I can get greater than 15 FPS.

A clean OpenGL 3.3 or 4.x rewrite would probably run faster even on Windows, but I don’t think it’s very likely to happen soon. Porting the game’s graphics code, shaders, etc. is enough work by itself, and there’s no telling how messy the various third party libraries’ Linux compatibility is.

Even many console games are probably easier to port between platforms — since they get released for two or three platforms anyway, they tend to have at least some effort to abstract platform details away and compile against different APIs. And they don’t usually have integrated web browsers and other weird stuff.

Huge respect for any company that takes the leap, though.

Leios.8965:

1. Linux users pay for their games quite generously and generate just as much as their Mac brethren.

From the Humble Bundle statistics we know that Linux user are paying more than Mac users and that they are paying more than Windows users. But maybe an increased market share will reduce the average sum.

Leios.8965:

Many linux users want a complete rewrite of GW2’s code for OpenGL. I do not think anyone has any idea how much work this may or may not require of Anet. Even for their mac client, they used Cider instead of doing it themselves. It’s quite likely that Anet looked into OpenGL at some point, realized it would take more time than necessary, and got another group to do it.

Maybe ArenaNet could try to make a beta client with Wine or Crossover. But currently there are some problems with Wine:

- Raw input does not work (but it is already implemented in Wine, there is just a bug preventing it from correctly functioning).
- Wine cannot fully take advantage of multiple cores in relation with the graphic parts of DirectX (at least this will be fixed in Wine 1.8).

Or ArenaNet could make a beta client with Guild Wars 1 on Wine before this as an experiment as Guild Wars 1 runs currently much better than Guild Wars 2.

Leios.8965:

That said, I play GW2 through wine on Archlinux and would love to see a linux client so I can get greater than 15 FPS.

Just wait for Wine 1.8 as it is not unlikely that we will get a performance boost of ~100+% on multicore systems.

Sworddragon.8512:

Maybe ArenaNet could try to make a beta client with Wine or Crossover. But currently there are some problems with Wine:

- Raw input does not work (but it is already implemented in Wine, there is just a bug preventing it from correctly functioning).
- Wine cannot fully take advantage of multiple cores in relation with the graphic parts of DirectX (at least this will be fixed in Wine 1.8).

Or ArenaNet could make a beta client with Guild Wars 1 on Wine before this as an experiment as Guild Wars 1 runs currently much better than Guild Wars 2.

…

Just wait for Wine 1.8 as it is not unlikely that we will get a performance boost of ~100+% on multicore systems.

I’ve noticed some shader issues on my own machine, which makes dying armor a little difficult. I don’t know if this has been fixed.

Also, do you have any idea when 1.8 will be released? I’ve got 1.7.17 on my machine currently.

I was thinking that they could use the old Guild Wars 1 engine as a test for a number of compatibility issues, as most of the bugs in the Guild Wars 1 client carried over into the second game. The problem is that this will take much more time than Anet is probably willing to spend on it. I would love to help in any way I could, but I don’t think it’s very likely that Anet would allow the community to see source code (even of the Guild Wars 1).

I was also pretty sure that Cider (what Anet used to make the mac port) was Cedega’s younger brother. It’s not an ideal solution, but if Cider worked decently for mac, maybe Cedega would work decently for linux. That said, I’ve heard that the mac port has some bugs in it.

Leios.8965:

Also, do you have any idea when 1.8 will be released? I’ve got 1.7.17 on my machine currently.

Hints are given here: http://wiki.winehq.org/WineReleaseCriteria

It seems Wine 1.8 will be released if the CSMT patches are finished. If I remember correctly parts of it are already integrated in Wine 1.7.×.

tota.4893:

A clean OpenGL 3.3 or 4.x rewrite would probably run faster even on Windows, but I don’t think it’s very likely to happen soon. Porting the game’s graphics code, shaders, etc. is enough work by itself, and there’s no telling how messy the various third party libraries’ Linux compatibility is.

Even many console games are probably easier to port between platforms — since they get released for two or three platforms anyway, they tend to have at least some effort to abstract platform details away and compile against different APIs. And they don’t usually have integrated web browsers and other weird stuff.

Huge respect for any company that takes the leap, though.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

valve opensourced their directx to opengl compiler

loseridoit.2756:

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/ToGL

valve opensourced their directx to opengl compiler

Woah! I forgot about that! That makes everything so much easier on Anet. Maybe they will give thought to an OpenGL port, then.