Linux and Steamdeck

[Minecraftchest1]

With the release of Valves steam deck, I am wondering if there is any plans for Giants to bring Linux support to Farming Simulator, either by as a game patch, work on a Dedicated release, or even in just future versions of the game. I know this has been asked for many times in the past with a No from Giants for reasons arising mostly from lack of a player base. I am not going to argue with Giants past reasoning, but with the new Steam Deck using Arch Linux, I wonder if Linux support is going to be reconsidered.

Having tried FS22 just now on Linux using Proton, the biggest issue I see is with issues with DX12 support in Vulkan and Proton. While I haven't played around very much trying to get it to work, providing an easy way to use DX11, with a note of it being unsupported, might be something Giants can do to make it easier for new users. I don't expect Giants to make a Linux version of FS22, but making it run as best as it can under Proton would be repatriated.

With future releases, I would like to see native Linux support. I do see that being a bit of a challenge as there is no official way of using DX on Linux. However, there is Vulkan, SDL, opengl, and a bunch of other tools that should bring many of the same functanility to Linux. As for the argument of not wanting to support multiple codebases, all of the tools I just mentioned do work on Windows (natively I believe) so a switch to a new cross-plaftorm should be possible. I do know it is harder then it may seem to make cross-platform apps, but I imagine it is getting easier all the time, and I hope that the effort will be worth it.

[Minecraftchest1]

Looking a bit more, I did find that Console support will be a challenge, but I would imagine Giants has some sort of abstraction layer with MacOS, Playstation, and Windows/Xbox one all using different graphics api's.

[Minecraftchest1]

One think I would like to add. I have Played 22 off and on using Proton on a Intel 12 gen Core i5 Framework 13, and besides one odd thing (the loading circle shows as a oval that expands and contracts as it rotates), which is in no way problematic, it runs amazingly. I have noticed a few hitches every once and a while, but I don't know if that is due to me playing multiplayer, my laptop, Proton, or a combination of the 3. Besides, they aren't very frequent and recover almost immediately.

[MrMarcel5]

Oval loading seems to be related with your Ingame Resolution (the aspect ratio) not matching the display aspect ratio.

[jimbleborg]

I find the circle on the loading screen stays as a circle on the Steamdeck but appears as a spinning oval when steaming to my deck from PC. A problem I have noticed on the deck is that some in game menu options don't appear. For example the advanced settings in Couresplay.