On Linux

[DinoFan]

The recent ASE launch on mobile gave me the Ark itch again but mobile controls are very annoying.  I have always played on XBox.  But, I refuse to pay Microsoft $10 per month to let me play an offline game.  Due to lack of single-player save management in XBox ASE, and a previous corruption causing me to lose everything, I would also have to pay a service to host.  So, likely $20+ per month to play ASE on XBox!

I decided to install the ASE server (from Steam) on an old Linux machine.  It seems up and running.  I wanted to put the game on another Linux PC.  Steam lets me add it to my cart.  But, I noticed the listed system requirements don't mention Linux.  I know ASE ran on Linux at one time.  Does the latest ASE game client (not server) still run on Linux?

[Zonefive]

Hello @DinoFan. So, today I tried to fire up ASE for the first time since I transferred everything to Fedora from Win10 earlier this year. Steam would show it was launching ASE for a brief moment, then it would close the game. I did all the things: tried launching without BattleEye; tried lowest graphics settings; validated the game files, etc.

I was able to finally get the game running and joined my personal server running locally on a spare computer by changing the compatibility setting for ASE to force the use of the latest Proton version (currently 9.0-4.) Now it seems to be all good.

Hope this helps.

[DinoFan]

Thank your for giving it a try and replying!  I had a spare PC with 16 GB of RAM and a 1660 TI.  I installed KDE Neon on it and hoped to be able to play Ark.  I tried several versions of proton including 9.0.4, experimental, and a couple of older ones.  I could get into the game and choose Host/Local then choose to start a single player island game.  The loading screen would appear with the logo on the bottom right and the label for what is loading on the bottom left.  The background is kind of that animated red fog.  There is help text on the bottom center.  Anyway, that would progress until it got to underwater_south_02 seemed to finish.  Then, it would appear to freeze.  I waited up to 20 minutes twice.  I finally gave up and got a refund.

Then, I remembered my son had a Windows 10 license on that PC.  So, I installed Windows 10 and it activated.  I'm going to buy Ark again from Steam today.  If it doesn't run this time, I'm going to explode.

[DinoFan]

@Zonefive, do you know if you were using Wayland or X11?  The latest KDE Neon distro that I installed uses Wayland by default with its Plasma desktop.  So, that is what I was running when trying to play Ark.  I just installed it on another PC (old laptop) where I was running an older version of Neon.  The update caused a lot of graphical artifacts.  Switching it to X11 fixed them.  It made me wonder if Wayland is what was causing my issues with Ark on the other PC.  I don't know much about the difference between Wayland and X11 or if it could impact how Ark runs.