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I am trying to run Natural Selection 2 under kubuntu 14.04. I have the latest version of steam. My system is completely up to date using the built-in application update software. I have verified the integrity of the game files, and it came up clean. However, flgrx (or whatever the proprietary drivers are called) refuse to let the game load past a certain point. I switched to the openGL libraries, and all I get is a black screen.

The game is notorious for longer load times (some are calling the game unplayable) but most of the topics I found on their official website relate to joining a server or switching between maps; these bugs only apply to the linux players, and they seem to be across all different flavors of linux. There does not seem to be an official fix for their problems, let alone mine.

Perhaps there is a different bottleneck somewhere else. Here are my system specs:

1TB sata HDD 8 gigs ram Intell 8-core, single thread per core processor Kubuntu 14.04 AMD 7770 HD graphics card

Here is what I've tried so far:

Switching between graphics drivers already on my system (for some reason, I have three - including the openGL ones? How does that even work?) Result - different graphics drivers gave different results. The open GL driver performed the worst, giving just a black screen. The updated flgrx proprietary driver was the slowest, stopping two seconds after the loading screen came up, and the -NOT- updated one stopped after five or six seconds.

purging the proprietary drivers for my graphics card, then re installing openGL libraries; Result - seemingly none. I am noticing absolutely NO change to my system or the game loading times. However, the proprietary drivers for my graphics card are still there; after this, I tried switching back and forth between drivers again and have the same thing going on as the first thing I tried!

I would like to try the Mesa driver, but I am unsure which packages to install. I had some weird issues with graphics when I first built my system and it took my fiance a good five hours just to get my GUI up and running - I don't want to put him through that again. "sudo apt search mesa" in Konsole returns a crap-storm of text. Which is the correct one(s)? Are there any other things I can try? (I'm not even sure how to pinpoint my bottleneck in kubuntu...)

There is one other thing I noticed: I am running a 64 bit os. I think my game might be a 32 bit piece of software. Does this matter? If so, how do I fix it?

Braiam
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SashaNT
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  • You are talking about running a Game made for Windows on Ubuntu. As this may often be possible with Wine/POL this game has not so good ratings in the Wine application database. It may work fine but it will likely need some tricks for it to run without issues. – Takkat Sep 14 '14 at 12:56
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    @neon_overload Am I overlooking something? The steam site says that the game is available for Linux and I don't see any mention of Wine in the question. – LiveWireBT Sep 14 '14 at 14:13
  • This sounds like a bug that needs to be addressed by the developers of the game and/or steam. If you have done everything you are supposed to do, put yourself in contact with them. Check this question for more information http://gaming.stackexchange.com/q/152022/58982 – Braiam Sep 14 '14 at 14:48
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    I'm up-voting this question as it shows research effort (while it might not have hit perfect tone for everyone immediately) and it shouldn't be closed with "Bug in Ubuntu" as it is rather a bug in the game. We probably need a canonical Q&A for reporting issues with commercial and non-commercial games if that doesn't exist, to make Ubuntu a reliable platform for gamers where issues are reported (and fixed by responsible maintainers/companies) instead of badmouthed. – LiveWireBT Sep 14 '14 at 15:54

1 Answers1

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I don't know if I got that right:

  • You are using Steam for Linux.
  • You bought Natural Selection 2 from the Steam store.
  • The game gets stuck at a certain point, not loading anymore levels/content/etc.
    • This is a bug in the game or some kind of copy protection (which we can rule out since you bought the game from the Steam store and you wouldn't get help here otherwise)
    • ⇨ Contact the game manufacturer.
  • The game shows poor performance where the hardware is usually capable of delivering playable performance (e.g. the same game with the same quality settings runs fine on Windows).
    • This is a bug in the game programming or the driver.
    • Switching to another driver will not improve performance. Generally if there are up to date proprietary drivers available, then these should achieve a performance similar to the Windows drivers and have all the fixes for stable gameplay.
    • ⇨ Contact the game or driver manufacturer.

… running flawed closed source program code on Linux instead of Windows doesn't magically make it better, but probably worse.

LiveWireBT
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