Valve-Sponsored Mesa Work Makes Games Load A Lot Faster

[chrisf]

Actually I wait for compile status like most tutorials out there do, pretty serial What about loading all shaders from disk at once, then rapidly issuing glCompileShader and waiting for their compile status? Ofcourse this can be further improved by having two feeder/consumer threads to minimize disk IO wait and/or let it do its business in a separate OGL context.

Thanks for hint!

Issuing all the glCompileShader(), then doing something else for a while, then looping over your shaders again to check their status ought to be pretty ideal. You'll have to experiment with how much extra work you need to schedule in the gap.

[mibo]

I remember Graham Sellers tweeting about this very issue (basically telling devs to defer querying shader/program state) many months ago, so yes, AMD definitely does it, and Nvidia most likely too.

Thanks for the info

[Luke_Wolf]

Unfortunately it's true and open source not work that well for game development. There is a lot of open source engines around that allow anybody to create great games, but still very few games which is better that can be compared with proprietary one.

Not exactly... there's actually plenty of games out there based upon open source engines that are comparable (See all the various freespace mods for instance), however open source really just isn't part of the culture of game development at this point even among modders who have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by opening their source, and so as a result we lose out on a significant number of the free fan-games/mods that otherwise really should be open-sourced.

[kpedersen]

however open source really just isn't part of the culture of game development at this point.

I find that there is an illogical dislike of open-source in the games industry. Many developers would prefer to use a proprietary tool over an open-source one or a proprietary library over an (i.e BSD) one.

Where I have worked, it seems like many are brainwashed into thinking that nothing that has been successful could ever have used open-source components. They dont realize that their proprietary tool they have bought is very likely to partly consist of open-source anyway.

I have only noticed this ignorant way of thinking since I joined the games industry. Is it because the average age of someone in this industry is quite young? Could this perhaps be the reason for their lack of experience in how software development actually works?

[_SXX_]

Is it because the average age of someone in this industry is quite young? Could this perhaps be the reason for their lack of experience in how software development actually works?

It's because most of game development companies don't use own engines. As result they usually only hire developers who can work with specific engines; they useful as code monkeys for gameplay programming.

Game middleware it's usually tools/components for audio, lighting, path finding, AI, post processing, GPU effects, vegetation. Each of those areas require highly specialized programmers to work on them and usually there just no programmers at company who can go and fix bugs in such middleware. So obviously they prefer proprietary solutions with commercial support over open source solutions that require highly-skilled programmers to adopt them.

[Del_]

I find that there is an illogical dislike of open-source in the games industry. Many developers would prefer to use a proprietary tool over an open-source one or a proprietary library over an (i.e BSD) one.

Where I have worked, it seems like many are brainwashed into thinking that nothing that has been successful could ever have used open-source components. They dont realize that their proprietary tool they have bought is very likely to partly consist of open-source anyway.

I have only noticed this ignorant way of thinking since I joined the games industry. Is it because the average age of someone in this industry is quite young? Could this perhaps be the reason for their lack of experience in how software development actually works?

Thanks for sharing your observations, the proprietary focus of game development is very interesting. From my observations (which are not first hand, but I have enjoyed discussions with at least one well-known gaming house that are all directx evangelists). My impression is similar to yours, they seem to have little knowledge (and hence appreciation) of open software or standards in general.

Personally I have come to the conclusion that the open development model is currently not able to compete on game development, and I fear this situation will not change in the near future. That is also why I welcome Valve's linux adventure. They keep the games proprietary (which I see as inevitable in the foreseeable future anyway), but contributes to make the underlying operating system competitive. I am convinced that it will be a huge success for Valve as long as they keep on going. The only question is how long it will take. In this industry things can change really fast though.

[dh04000]

For those that were afraid (or hysteric) about the proprietary "invasion" into Linux....

Makes me smile at least.

[stalkerg]

Only for Intel driver?

[gens]

if this wasn't mentioned already

-novid
for no valve intro

+mat_autoload_glshaders 0
so that shaders are compiled when needed (now in source games they are compiled at start)
can cause stutter the first time the shaders are needed but i don't notice it much on my computer

[Alejandro Nova]

Unfortunately it's true and open source not work that well for game development. There is a lot of open source engines around that allow anybody to create great games, but still very few games which is better that can be compared with proprietary one.

What has worked well in the past is: Open source game engine + closed source game. Do you want a free as in freedom gaming experience? Make your own open source game, but don't expect to monetize it or to avoid cheating with it...