Greetings TUx Enthusiasts,

We are pleased to announce to our Linux users that we are releasing a beta version of the Linux client for Tower Unite! Users will need to opt-in to the beta branch on Steam to download the client and play it.

To opt-in to the beta, right click on Tower Unite in Steam, go to Properties, go to the Betas Tab, and select from the dropdown “linuxbeta - Linux Public Beta”.

First off, we want to stress that while we are providing this client to Linux users, we offer no guarantee at this time that everything will work. There will be issues, there will be crashes, there will be problems. This should be treated as a beta test. Due to this, we are not advertising on our store page that we have a Linux client until we bring it up to our standards.

While most functionality should work exactly how it does on Windows, there are many graphical issues in this release. These issues seem to be localized to our effects systems. Certain maps such as Alpine and Midori are affected more than the other maps due to this issue.

At this point in time, the Linux and Mac OS X clients are low priority. Closer to the end of the Early Access period we will shift our focus towards improving these clients. There are no planned dates for a Mac OS X beta at this time.

Now to get into the more technical details. The Tower Unite Linux client was tested on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS using a Nvidia GTX 980 with the proprietary Nvidia drivers version 367.57. Your results may vary. Running Tower Unite with the “-opengl4” flag may improve or degrade the visuals.

Due to some of the graphical issues in the Linux Client, we recommend the following settings to minimize visual artifacts in the game:

Screen Mode -> “Windowed”

Effects Quality -> “Low”

Ocean Quality -> “Potato”

Here is the list of things that we can confirm are broken in the current versions of the Linux client.

Effects . Some textures may be multicolored or just blacked out entirely. Some objects with glare don’t render correctly and can make some maps like Midori unplayable. Alpine also suffers from this with the snow particle issues. We recommend changing your “Effects Quality” to “Low” to mitigate this issue.

Ocean . The ocean shader we use for the Lobby, Condo, and the upcoming Treasure Cove minigolf map does not currently have OpenGL renderer support. Due to this, the water will have a grey default texture applied to it. We recommend changing your “Ocean Quality” to “Potato” as this shader does work with OpenGL.

Fullscreen and Borderless Fullscreen . While these settings are functional, there are issues that arise when alt-tabbing out of the game, which can even cause the game to crash. We recommend that you play in Windowed Mode if you alt-tab frequently.

VOIP . Voice chat is completely non functional in the Linux client. Linux clients will see that people are talking, but no audio will be transferred.

Midori . The Midori map for the Ball Race gamemode functions perfectly fine, but the glare and graphical issues, including blinding lights, may make the map impossible to play. Playing Tower Unite with the “-opengl4” flag may mitigate this issue, but only on this map alone.

Steam Cloud . Steam Cloud currently does not work with the Linux clients. Linux users will need to transfer and backup their condos and persona files manually at this time. We’d advise just to disable Steam Cloud in the game’s Properties -> Updates -> Steam Cloud settings on Steam.

Media Player. While playing back video, there will be a intense flicker from the screen, and some videos won’t play video at all, but they will have audio.

Understanding all this above, we invite our Linux fans to give the beta a try, and to enjoy Tower Unite on Linux.