Achron Alpha Build Now For GNU/Linux 64-Bit !

Posted: 17th March 2010 by Maxim Bardin in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

Several good months ago I’ve posted about the meta-time strategy game in development named Achron, that is being developed by a small indie company called Hazardous Software.

Two days ago they released a new build (0.2.2.0) that now has an experimental support for GNU/Linux 64-bit !
As with some other indie games, you can download and try the latest build if you preorder the game for about $30.

Achron will be released at 2011 ,without DRM.

The GNU/Linux 32-bit is NOT supported at this point, however they are planning to support it in the future :

32-bit support is planned for the future. We knew we wanted to only
support one architecture for Linux for now (just like we’re only
supporting 32-bit architecture for Windows for now), because each platform
adds many more hours to our build and testing process; because we’re such
a small team, this time takes its toll. Eventually, we may set up a first
round of testers if there’s interest, which would ease this process a
little.

The decision to initially only support 64-bit instead of 32-bit basically
came down to these main points:

1) Our local Linux installations are currently 64-bit (we mainly use
Ubuntu); compiling and linking all the libraries with 32-bit code instead
of 64-bit code proved to be a bit of extra work (not to mention support
for debuggers, etc.). Further, we had some library portability issues
getting a version of Achron built on a 64-bit system to run on someone’s
32-bit installation.

2) From the people we’ve talked to who are running Linux, most of those
who had computers fast enough to run Achron were running 64-bit.

3) 64-bit is “the future”. Despite the increased extra address size, the
increased number of registers and other ISA improvements help out a lot.

So, unless there’s a rapid migration to 64-bit Linux over the next year,
we’ll release it for 32-bit Linux at some point. Most likely this will be
after we have an automatic update system to make our lives simpler.

Also, Achron pretty much needs the Nvidia or ATI proprietary drivers to be
playable. The Mesa software OpenGL drivers work and render fine, but it’s
too slow to be playable. The only exception here is the
GL_ARB_draw_buffers extension, which isn’t critical now, but may be in the
future.

Links :
Achron
Preorder Achron
Hazardous Software
Achron at LGN

  1. Max says:

    So many sweet upcomming games for Linux. Achron, Tiny and Big, Primal Carnage, 0 A.D. and so on.

  2. Hamish Wilson says:

    Also Rage, Dark Salvation, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Postal III…

    It is a good day to be a Linux gamer… 😀

    If this game is any good I will be pleased. I would love a good RTS game on Linux.