Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.

Cossacks 3 was a bit of a surprise announcement to be coming to Linux, and it looks fantastic. I decided to send over a few burning questions.Modern remake of the best 2001 strategy, with armies numbering in thousands of warriors and reconciled game mechanics. It’s a genuine RTS classic, including construction and production of resources. A vast selection of unit types, cold steel and firearms, influence of the landscape, and the realistic physics provide the player with an unlimited number of tactical opportunities.That is right, Cossacks 3 will be our first cross platform project supporting Windows, Linux and Mac OS. In the Cossacks 3 engine we are using OpenGL API and it gives a bunch of advantages in porting the game. It gives advantages even for marketing as the main selling platform will be Steam which welcomes games supporting Linux.Traditionally we are using in-house built engine. We’ve managed to develop very lightweight and powerful engine for Cossacks 3. For 2015 it is unusually not system demanding and performs good on 3-5 year old computers.Cossacks 3 will be traditional mouse and keyboard strategy game. We really think that using any other input type will dramatically affect the classic RTS gameplay, will make it slower and simpler in negative meaning of the word.That is a common obstacle for the developers working on Linux, and we’ve probably faced this with a couple of the Intel chip models. As for now we’ve managed to fight through the main amount of Intel chips and have no problems at all with AMD graphics.Cossacks 3 will be released on Steam with the full version. Before the release there will be closed beta test.Players of all versions will be able to play together.We can’t tell any specific price right now, but it will be completely affordable.We’re still thinking about these platforms and the main issue for us is the Steam integration. We are going to significantly support mod-making and Steam Workshop is the best way of sharing mods, so everyone who bought Cossacks 3 can install any of the mods available. But GOG version, for example will need separate mods made for this very version. As a result there could be troubles with playing Steam version with GOG version in multiplayer, for example.There weren’t really any hurdles working on Linux version. Probably the only difficulty for us was finding time and resources in our tight development schedule.Actually we are not using anything specific, just common tools everyone uses.Linux is really not a big market, so there is no great financial purpose in supporting it. Its more a marketing expectations. Steam actively supports games that have Linux versionsIt’s a bit early to say. We will make large scale tests in the nearest future and base our decision on the results of them.Cossacks 3 contains classic RTS gameplay that tightly combine battles and economic part. So there will be 50\50 building and resource gathering and battles.Cossacks 3 has handy unit controls that allows easily group them, or join them in squads, so you can conveniently manage armies, groups or even give orders to a single soldier on the battlefield.You can learn more about Cossacks 3 on the official website , stay tuned.I think it’s fantastic to see another developer jumping in that knows they won’t strike it rich from Linux, but they’re doing it anyway!I would like to thank the developers for giving me some time. I am looking forward to the release, a lot!