Mad Max (2015) Linux port adds new Vulkan beta in Steam

Gaming
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This might be interesting for those who own the game Mad Max. The game was originally released for Windows in 2015 by Avalanche games and Warner Bros. and was ported to Linux by Feral Interactive in 2016.

Feral Interactive just updated their Linux version of Mad Max with a Vulkan beta that can be enabled in "BETAS" tab under the game properties menu if you type in the access code:

livelongandprosper

Screenshot from 2017-03-31 10-11-48.png616x600 14.5 KB

And enabled with the Feral Interactive custom options loader:

Screenshot from 2017-03-31 10-59-00.png930x667 793 KB

Benchmark screenshots:

OPENGL:

VULKAN:

These screenshots are not mine, they came from GamingonLInux:

More benchmark's can be found in the above link.

Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/62e442/join_the_public_beta_for_mad_max_powered_by_vulkan/

Mad Max is a solid (but not spectacular) open world game in it's own right. This is very encouraging to see. Feral Interactive does handle a lot of AAA Linux ports from other game publishers and they have been experimenting with Vulkan and MESA support going forward.

2 Likes
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Cool. Shame it is only for linux though, great that linux is getting such support at the same time.

Maybe if Feral Interactive get good at this integrating Vulkan, they might get hired as the guys who do vulkan well in general. Hopefully.

1 Like
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Feral Interactive work's as a "middleman" for various publishers, and has ported many triple AAA games to Mac and Linux.

They have ported all of the following games to Linux:

  • Alien: Isolation
  • Company of Heroes 2
  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
  • Empire: Total War Collection
  • Dirt Rally
  • F1 2015
  • GRID Autosport
  • Hitman 2016
  • Life Is Strange
  • Mad Max
  • Medieval II: Total War
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
  • Tomb Raider
  • Total War: Warhammer
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Chaos Rising
  • Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown - The Complete Edition
  • XCOM 2

Mad Max is their first attempt at Vulkan implementation on Linux and it is being used as a test bed for the API. But going by the early benchmarks, the game is seeing some rather large improvements. Especially on AMD cards where OpenGL performance has always been garbage under Linux. Hopefully they start implementing Vulkan into some of their other ports, like Hitman 2016, XCOM 2, Dirt Rally and Mankind Divided.

2 Likes
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Vulkan is making me hard.

That FPS boost is mouthwatering.

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More triple a's releasing on linux means more traction for linux.

Vulkan is our savior.

it is right to give thanks and praise...

6

now to get a petition for the witcher to come across and use vulkan.

1 Like
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The only Witcher game that is available for Linux is The Witcher 2. It was ported by a group called Virtual Programming. Their Linux port is partially native but uses wrappers for the DX shadder protocols.

Sadly The Witcher and The Witcher 3 are not available on Linux, and there is no word on The Witcher 3.

1 Like
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Yeah I know.
They rumored w3 to be on steam box when it was released but I don't see that happening sadly.

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There was a regression bug in opengl, so keep that in mind.

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Yeah, I guess GamingOnLinux failed to mention that. Making the Vulkan benchmarks a little more impressive than they are. Apparently playing the game with OpenGL beta has some issues, and OpenGL 1.0 gets better performance. However, Vulkan still showing a nice 20-30FPS increase over OpenGL 1.0.

Here is their correction article on that:

I have been playing the game on an older i5 2500k with a Geforce 660TI and16GB of DDR3 1600 running Linux Mint 18 with the NVidia 375.39 driver and 4.4.0-21-generic Kernel. Here is a comparison I made:

OpenGL 1.0:

Vulkan Beta:

The game is running on older hardware, so it is using a mix of high and normal settings. This is not maxed out by any means. These images are not a perfect 1:1 either. But Vulkan does make a noticeable difference in the framerate. I am seeing 30-50FPS on Open GL while Vulkan gets about 60-75FPS.

There has been some reports that Vulkan is getting some huge gains on AMD cards like the R9 series. It apparently is benefiting AMD cards a lot, improvements from 20-30FPS to about 90.