Unity 4 Adds Linux Support

dartttt writes "After more than 14,000 votes by Linux users and efforts by Brian Fargo, Unity has added Linux support to their popular 3D game engine. Starting with Unity 4.0, Linux will be supported as a publishing platform allowing Unity games to be played natively on Linux. Only standalone desktop games will be supported initially. From the article: 'Unity Technologies, maker of a widely used video-game engine, today announced that its fourth-generation product will introduce new animation technology and extend its support for Adobe Systems' Flash Player, Linux, and Microsoft's DirectX 11.'"

How much effort is needed by the developer now?

[oakgrove]

Now that the engine is ported, how much additional effort is required by the developer to make their game run on Linux? A lot? A little? I'm readily curious.

Re:Fuck yeah!

[SJHillman]

Given the choice between having a proprietary option and having no options, I'll take the option to have proprietary software available every time.

Re:Fuck yeah!

[oakgrove]

If you want Linux to ever be a remotely viable third choice on the desktop then proprietary software will be a given. If Android eschewed the presence of closed source apps it would be a non starter. Personally I don't have a problem with proprietary applications as long as the underlying operating system is Free. If the open source community isn't delivering for a particular niche then let the closed source people step in and first class games is a perfect example of this dynamic. If the community then steps up like has happened in so many other areas of software then even better but until that happens, I'll happily use unity on my Linux box right alongside my nvidia driver.

Re:How much effort is needed by the developer now?

[gman003]

Depends. I've never used Unity, but I have used UnrealEngine, Source and idTech, and I've done some light reading on it before.

The most common scenario will probably be "needs some shaders re-written to work with Linux's outdated drivers", assuming, of course, that they'd already written GL shaders (and not just D3D). Best-case, all they need to do is check the "Export for Linux" box right next to the "Export for Android" and "Export for XBLA" boxes.

However, it should be *possible* to make a Unity game that requires a ton of work to port. Either because you actively tried, or because you didn't use the engine to it's full potential and instead re-implemented half the functionality in system-specific ways. Think of Android - you *can* write native apps that don't run on non-ARM (or even only specific ARM) processors, but that's not exactly common.

Of course, engine support historically hasn't translated into game support. UnrealEngine 2 supported Linux (think 3 does as well), as did several idTechs (even before being open-sourced), and yet we only rarely see games using those released for Linux. Although it may be a matter of how *good* the Linux support is - many of those may have required far more work than more modern engines.

Re:Fuck yeah!

[Microlith]

Well then he can weep, despite it moving one step closer to his goal. Actually, didn't he acknowledge that proprietary software on a Free platform was better than proprietary software on a proprietary platform?

Re:DirectX takes one in the nads

[flimflammer]

Are you being serious? Studios will continue to not target Linux for the foreseeable future and generally remain DirectX only. Unity of all things isn't going to change this. A DirectX only strategy is not "suicide" when the broad majority of your target user base uses DirectX. But really, you were probably just trolling or seriously delusional anyway.