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Rich Geldreich On The State Of Linux Gaming

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  • #21
    Originally posted by prodigy_ View Post
    See, kids? The great thing about being a software developer is that if your job sucks you can quit and then you'll get paychecks from MS just for posting nonsense in your blog.
    No paychecks from MS here kiddo. (MS carelessly laid off 110 of my coworkers and I at Ensemble Studios back in the day. So believe me when I say I have *zero incentive* to being pro-MS.) Public, hard facts are what count. Devs putting up with broken drivers, crappy (if any) debuggers, etc. for 1.5% (or whatever) of the market is just not sustainable. Steamboxes are MIA (at the moment) and hope can only last so long. It's likely not even 1.5% market share for devs that go NVidia-only.

    Valve does tend to take the long view for critical projects, and I wouldn't be surprised if the wizards over there figure out other ways to continue enticing devs over to Linux. Assuming GabeN still sees the thing as a critical project worthy of dumping funds into with no immediate/obvious returns. I'm hoping they keep the fire lit under MS personally.

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    • #22
      He's basically right here, though a bit too pessmistic in his outlook.

      Valve plays a long game.

      The impetus for SteamOS was not to take control over the platform, but exactly to make sure that nobody controls the platform: it's just a reference platform, around which any spins/forks can be created. The fear, as His Holiness Gaben has been saying, is of the "walled gardens" that Microsoft and Apple are moving to, whereby they simply won't allow "sideloading" games from independent sellers. Apple already does this on iOS, and MS has done this with Windows Mobile and RT, with indications that this might very well happen on the main OSes.

      Valve doesn't want to be the only store for games. His Holiness has again and again been stating his belief that competition is good for Valve. The idea is to make it technically impossible to create a monopoly by ensuring that the platform is free.

      Have you ever wondered why Steam has never created an Android store? It seems crazy: after all, so many companies and inviduals are making so much money on mobile games, wouldn't it make sense for Steam to join the fray? But again, Android is not a truly free platform due to its control by Google and the hardware vendors. Investing in Android is short sighted, even if it seems profitable right now. Steam is taking the long view, and focusing on the truly free platform of the future.

      We all know that technically we have a ways to go: he's totally right about the sorry state of GPU driver support. Still, despite these challenges, it ain't too bad! I've been doing most of my gaming on Ubuntu for a while now, with no serious problems. (I also play Windows games using WINE, some work perfectly fine.)

      So, thanks for the relevant criticism, but let's all keep our eyes focused on the real prize: "platform neutrality".

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      • #23
        Originally posted by blackout23 View Post
        That's a bit far fetched, but he does seem to be a bit bitter about Valve.
        It's probably that not everyone fits into Valves corporate cultue. They say they have a flat hierarchy, but that's just the formal hierarchy. The informal hierarchy is probably not flat, since humans are humans.

        https://twitter.com/richgel999/statu...22992704577538
        You've been babied by only working on the Linux team. I worked on most of the teams there. The "culture" there is going to eat you alive. I will congratulate you when you finally figure this out.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by richgel999 View Post
          Devs putting up with broken drivers, crappy (if any) debuggers,
          I think it is important to remember that this is all part of being a Developer, though. A dev's job is to get the artists' creative ideas to display on as many devices as possible, with the best fidelity possible. Alternatively we'll just go back to the "everyone buy a PS4" hardware model.

          In reality, no-one other than devs care about what devs have go through. To be fair - I don't care what the mechanic who fixed my car went through either!

          In any case, if all the Piglit tests are passing then driver writers can't really be blamed for bugs they don't know about... Submit more OpenGL test cases for OpenGL to improve.

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          • #25
            Originally posted by OneTimeShot View Post
            I think it is important to remember that this is all part of being a Developer, though. A dev's job is to get the artists' creative ideas to display on as many devices as possible, with the best fidelity possible. Alternatively we'll just go back to the "everyone buy a PS4" hardware model.

            In reality, no-one other than devs care about what devs have go through. To be fair - I don't care what the mechanic who fixed my car went through either!

            In any case, if all the Piglit tests are passing then driver writers can't really be blamed for bugs they don't know about... Submit more OpenGL test cases for OpenGL to improve.
            You sound like some of the driver writers I've interacted with. The phrase "I don't care" came up a lot. There's a huge cultural mismatch between driver developers and game developers. Most game developers don't do this purely for the paycheck. We are not all drones that sit and peck away for mere dollars. If you don't engage developers at a deeper level, and the bottom line doesn't make any sense to the suits and business types with the spreadsheets, then the effort is in trouble.

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            • #26
              Originally posted by richgel999 View Post
              MS carelessly laid off 110 of my coworkers and I at Ensemble Studios back in the day. So believe me when I say I have *zero incentive* to being pro-MS.
              OK, sorry. I can relate. We were all victims of that recession in one way or another.

              Still, what's your plan? That we all must bow to MS and come to believe in DirectX? That's hardly constructive. Linux gaming has a long way to go but at the same time things are better than ever. To be honest five years ago nobody believed we'd be where we are now.
              Last edited by prodigy_; 10 November 2014, 03:37 PM.

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              • #27
                lol

                W3Schools offers free online tutorials, references and exercises in all the major languages of the web. Covering popular subjects like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Java, and many, many more.


                this guys was fired and continue mad

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                • #28
                  Originally posted by prodigy_ View Post
                  Still, what's your plan? That we all must bow to MS and come to believe in DirectX? That's hardly constructive. Linux gaming has a long way to go - we know that - but at the same time things are better than ever. To be hones five years ago nobody believed we'd be where we are now.
                  I'm just keeping the fire lit. I worked on this effort for a couple years and I want it to continue. Individual devs at Valve don't always choose the right things to work on, especially during bonus season. Remember, there are really no bosses over there. The public and developers can directly make a big difference about what people work on at Valve by just publicly pointing stuff out (and backing it up with real data).

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                  • #29
                    Originally posted by rikkinho View Post
                    http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

                    this guys was fired and continue mad
                    Actually, Valve doesn't generally work that way. If they would have fired me it would have occurred around Feb./March (when they do their yearly mass "cleansings"). And nobody pressured me to leave, it was quite the opposite situation actually. I've been planning on leaving for years.

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                    • #30
                      Originally posted by richgel999 View Post
                      You sound like some of the driver writers I've interacted with.
                      I'm not a graphics driver developer You do have my sympathy, though, in so much as we all have to deal with broken stuff...

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