Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Baldur's Gate 3 for Linux?

Agreed, most of the code can likely, with some effort, remain platform-agnostic. These guys were able to port to XBox, PS and Switch after all.

I assume Google Stadia's multiprocessor structure is very similar to that of an ordinary pc, I know that experienced engine programmers can get that little extra performance for XBox and PS if they can map asses memory according to actual hardware layout.
Stadia might also provide an alternative for windowing system (e.g. X on Linux) so that frames are directly sent over ip, reducing the application to a console program, though that seems a bit unlikely. Even then that's only a small part of the entire engine.
Again, I haven't seen the API.

What interests me is this: will BG3 support Google Stadia controller? Cause that would surely imply a release for Xbox/PS later on.
Would be a shame to get the controls right and then not reuse it.

I'd be surprised if they didn't support the controller, since it is a core part of the Stadia API. Some PC players also like controllers, so I would expect support.

As I understand it, the Stadia hardware is pretty standard CPUs, but GPUs without output logic/hardware. The game's screen images are output to memory, and compressed to a stream to be sent over the Internet to the Stadia Client, which decompresses and displays the images.

It's all handled through Vulkan. Instead of display they select some other type of swapchain, that's used for video stream. It should be doable to make it configurable and output the same thing for normal display.

https://vulkan-tutorial.com/Drawing_a_triangle/Presentation/Swap_chain

Vulkan is used as the coding interface between CPU and GPU. Setting up a swap-chain in Stadia effectively gives you memory locations for framebuffer images instead of directing them to the output buffers of the GPU, which don't exist afaik on the Stadia custom GPUs.

The Stadia server code still needs to pass these memory images over the Internet to a Stadia client for display, which is more complex that just local display.

If the point you are trying to make is the ease or otherwise of converting a Stadia game to vanilla Linux, then the answer is "maybe". Vulkan is a low level API, meaning you directly query and control the resources on the GPU in a way that you do not under OpenGL or DX11. An application ( such as a game ) using Vulkan would need to build multiple processing paths and optimisations depending on the resources available, both in the GPU domain, and the CPU domain.

If Larian are not using Vulkan for the Windows version of the game, then the Stadia port will probably only take account of resources available in a Stadia server, which are all identical. This might not be a good enough approach to enable simple repurposing for a desktop Linux version.

Conversely, if Larian are also using Vulkan on Windows, then they will have already have a Vulkan implementation that understands how to deal with the wide variety of GPU and CPU resources they might find in player PCs, and the port for Stadia will be much more suitable as the base for a desktop Linux version.

All this is speculation, anyway; only the Larian dev team know enough about their game to tell us how easy or difficult a desktop Linux port would be.

Converting Stadia version to proper desktop Linux version is a lot easier than converting DX11 or DX12 version to Vulkan itself. Bethesda developers gave a few talks about Stadia development and pointed that out.

Dealing with specific memory issues and etc. could be needed to address wider variety of desktop use cases. But it's not super hard to do for those who are already familiar with Vulkan development.

Converting DX12 to Vulkan is relatively simple, since the call structures and intent of the APIs are similar; DX11 to Vulkan takes more effort. Whether that is easier or not than providing high quality of optimisation across diverse hardware *will* depend on the application involved and the level of performance you are prepared to accept across diverse hardware. Bethesda games actually have a higher degree of complexity at the data manipulation layer ( the world model ) than many RPGs.

Regardless of that, it still requires non-trivial effort to go from Stadia to a *good*, and supportable desktop Linux implementation that will not be complained about, and you should not pretend otherwise.

Anything requires work, point is it's doable. And won't require a lot of time.

It is Early Access release day. Neither GOG nor Steam sites state the game is available for GNU+Linux. I think the best hope at the moment is unfortunately to try and purchase it from Steam and see if Baldur's Gate 3 runs on GNU+Linux using Steam's Proton.

If anybody has success with that, please make a note here.

The game apparently will use Vulkan in the Windows version, which is good for Wine compatibility. But still, it would be a lot better to release a proper native Linux version, especially after all Stadia work will be done which will help that a lot.

I don't expect it to happen in the early access version obviously. But post Stadia release - it should be quite doable. Please make it happen, Larian!

As a side note, consider also that macOS today isn't even a gaming oriented system, with Apple doing all they can to drive gamers away from it. So why would you support macOS and not Linux, which is where non Windows gamers today are?

Stadia came out already at the same time, in fact you can play right away now (for those who may not know). Mac version didn't drop until the day before Early Access (5th of October) and I don't recall any mention of it being supported one way or another (other than people making unverifiable stuff up), so unless Larian specifically say something then the possibility is there. I do kind of wonder if how well or not it runs under Wine well have any impact too, I guess that's something we shall find out relatively soon.

I didn't know Staida version is out (I don't use it). Good to know, so it means Larian already have tested it and built the game for Linux. We need to show more demand from the Linux gamers. I really don't get when developers release for macOS (totally gaming hostile) but not for Linux these days.

Linux user here, is there any updates from the game devs?

I just tried to get the game to run by installing it using Steam and running it using Proton on GNU+Linux. It didn't work.

How exactly does it fail? I doubt I'll buy the game until actual release and then it would be GOG version. With Wine, you can check the logs to see any potential errors, it should be doable with Proton too.

The game works perfect for me on linux with wine version 5.18.
I'm using Lutris to install the game through GOG Galaxy and also to run the game.

+1 for native Linux support.

Larian should really say something about this - a "NO" should suffice, and we will not waste breath on this any longer. I am a big RPG fan, and an even bigger BG fan, but sometime along the years I also became a GNU/Linux user. Probably because of the datacenters I manage. As a gamer... I got tired of wine in the WoW Cataclysm era and I swore to the gods that I will not play a single damn game if it is not built for my OS. I still keep my promise: I didn't buy DOS2 and I will not buy or play for that matter BG3 if it is not natively on GNU/Linux. Pretty sure no one at Larian will cry over my 50 bucks; but to this day I still not played another single Blizzard game, though I certainly made sure to constantly bash a company that uses FOSS all over the place and has a Linux client that they won't release. And look what has become of them :-D See?

LoL never mind the rant. But sorry, too old to help increase the Win quota of games.

I'm actually happy AND (at the same time) disappointed that Larian was the company chosen for BG3. Sure, they are talented, skilled and know how to make awesome games but that also automatically means the same annoying silence we've experienced with DOS2. This is always so difficult. Why? Let me tell you a story. I learned about Larian and DOS just thanks to the native DOS:EE Linux port which I think is very good, I fell in love with the game, was looking forward to DOS2 and asked Larian a few times on Twitter whether or not are they going to release it for Linux, hoping that they will become THE RPG developers letting users of other platforms enjoy their beautiful games. Got no reply, completely ignored. But people told me it runs so well in Proton. So I bought it... had my experience completely ruined by Proton bugs (for example drops to 15 FPS after every single save), started hating the game, uninstalled it, took over a year until it became playable for me. Fell in love with it again, I think I managed to advertise it to tens if not hundreds of people on my Discord server, many bought it and loved it as well, many thanked me that I showed them the game because they didn't know about it. I started playing coop with 3 other people (Windows users) who would probably never know about it if I didn't tell them (and they all now have around 150 hours played). Of course Linux only has a few % marketshare on the desktop, but all this happened just because I, as a single Linux user, one day, a few years ago, read about DOS:EE on a site focused on Linux gaming.

And here I am today, not willing to do the same mistake I did with DOS2 (ruining the experience with Proton) and telling my Windows friends I play DOS2 with that I won't be playing BG3 with them because the company that's behind the game doesn't want me to... which of course means they won't buy it either because they would be missing 1 player. And guess what they did, bought DOS:EE instead because it has a Linux version and with the 4 player coop mode we will be able to play together just fine. What I'm trying to say is that supporting more platforms (in this case Linux) usually leads to more copies sold on the dominant platform (Windows in this case), might be something to consider because I'm for sure not the only one playing with Windows users. It's an example, in this case a Linux port would lead to 4 copies sold where 3 of them would be for Windows. Of course that's no loss for such a big company but as I said, it's an example of how it usually works and we are not the only people using more operating systems.

To summarize it: Larian is like the girl you love but can't be with and I really hate that a company I love (or used to love?) forces me to dislike it. What's even more important, they are not forcing me to dislike them byt not releasing a Linux port but by refusing to say anything official. If they at least said "No, we won't make money on it, sorry", I would respect them. But the silence makes me mad and disappointed especially because CDPR keeps doing exactly the same to us since 2016.

Regarding the port itself, considering that the game is already using Vulkan and runs on Stadia... it's even harder to understand the silence. This year is weird, we are getting Wasteland 3 for Linux from a studio owned by Microsoft but no BG3 from a company that has a Vulkan-capable engine and a working Stadia build of said game. Thanks for reading this rant, have a nice day, I just had to get it off my chest before I give up.

On the other hand, Larian has often responded, by email, to simple questions I sent them and bugs I reported.

It is therefore hit or miss, caused I believe by an overload of emails at some periods on some days.

nb : I will not compare those communication issues with people we may love, who can sometimes become permanently silent, passive-aggressive, and you will never know why. Unlike those silent people, you can write again to Larian.

Created my account to post in this thread.
As a Divinity Original Sin owner and exclusive Linux user I'd like to also put in my request for a native Linux version.
Not all Larian Games have Linux clients but Divinity Original Sin certainly does. As previously mentioned many of the games I play run *better* on Linux than their Windows counterparts. I feel bad when I look in community forums like this one and see all of the issues from my Windows bros.
I noticed there was a concern mentioned here that Linux is too varied, but Windows 10 =/= Windows 10 either.
Look at all of the M$ Win10 builds, that OS is far from monolithic: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-information/
I work for a software company myself and we deal with that nonsense every day.
So, to sum up: native Linux support please. If Stadia is supported then please take the leap to include Linux as well, this will be a strong determination if I purchase the game when it leaves Early Access. Thanks.