by Martin Brinkmann on July 14, 2018 in Linux – No comments
I’m a gamer. I’ve been playing PC games since DOS, and have no plan to ever stop, thankfully there are an increasing number of wicked games available on GNU/Linux systems, like Rocket League for example.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, and have no idea what Rocket League is, it’s basically Soccer/Football (other game modes have other sports, etc, but the primary focus is as mentioned) in super high powered, jet propulsed cars; it’s awesome. However, Rocket League is not very easily played via keyboard, and having some kind of controller is essential.
I use an Xbox 360 Wireless Controller as my primary controller when playing games that support one on Linux.
Setting things up
By default when plugging it in to my Ubuntu 18.04 system, it lacks the needed drivers to work. Thankfully in Ubuntu / Mint etc., it’s quite simple to fix this issue:
sudo apt install xboxdrv
I believe that xboxdrv is technically abandonded, as the official website hasn’t been updated since what appears to be 2015, however, it still appears at least with my test setup to function properly.
The driver works with Xbox 360 wireless gamepads, Xbox 360 USB gamepads, and Xbox1 gamepads.
Installation of Rocket League can be accomplished through Steam (after purchasing the game) so if you don’t have it installed, you’ll need Steam:
sudo apt install steam
Steam should install fairly quickly, and do its usual self updates. Games should pick up the controller automatically; you may need to select it as the primary means of controlling the game in the game options but some may select it automatically when it is detected.
Game Requirements, and performance
Steam lists the Recommended requirements for SteamOS/Linux systems as:
Recommended:
- Processor: 2.5+ GHz Quad core
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 660 or better, ATI 7950 or better
- Network: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 7 GB available space
My System:
- AMD A10-6700 3.7GHz Quad Core
- 8GB DDR3 RAM
- NVIDIA GTX 960 4GB VRAM (using proprietary drivers, not Nouveau)
- Ubuntu 18.04 Budgie
On my system I had no issues running the game in 1080P Resolution, max graphics, at nearly solid 60FPS and the occasional stutter that seemed random; I’ll say it runs nearly as smoothly as it does on my Windows partition, just not quite.
Well enough to win 2/3 test games I played, without any warmup, on competitive mode (Bronze rank for now, but working up!)
Last thoughts
Overall, here is a couple options that may at the least help you spark an interest in gaming on GNU/Linux systems, as the Steam library alone (not counting games available outside steam) contains over 3100 games, according to Steamdb, and this includes smash hits like Rocket League, Portal 2, Hotline Miami, or Pony Island.
It’s also a great example of how even MLG title games like Rocket League, have made their way to GNU/Linux, and natively at that. A good sign for the future!
Now You: Do you play games? If so which and on which system?