Experimental Wayland Driver For Wine Now Supports Vulkan, Other Features

[oiaohm]

As I said, the Steam client will likely be ported to 64 bit when the dependencies are no longer available in 32bit. And since it is mostly a webapp in a webkit shell I wouldn't think it would be a larger task anyway.
32 bit steam client is perfectly able to run everything it needs to run. Simultaniously more than half of the steam game library is depending on 32 bit support and some are even run with 16bit support through dosbox. I imagine that steam could even support some 8 bit games through dosbox or other emulation layers. I don't see how 32bit is such a problem...

There is no such thing as a 8bit dos program. The 8086 is a 16 bit processor the 8088 was a 16 bit processor with a 8 bit data bus for transporting stuff around. 8 bit platforms get into different levels of horrible most don't have rewritten firmwares and these platforms are normally low clock speed so you have cpu time to waste.

dosbox has to use software emulation because v86 mode is not exposed any more.

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Performance

Dosbox is very cpu expensive. The reality with dosbox you get 1/8 of the clockspeed of your current cpu. This works because most dos games require bugger all in the CPU department compared to modern day CPUs. 32 emulated could hit exactly the same nightmare but being reduced to 1/8 of the current cpus will be game breaking. 32 bit x86 on a 64 bit only platform be it arm or x86 instructions is going to need some thing more advanced..

Yes it true that half the steam library is depending on 32 bit support. Its also true that operating systems that support 32 bit directly are starting to reduce.

Hangover with wine is to deal with MacOS no longer providing 32 bit support going forwards. At some point windows will want to as well.

More advanced methods of thunking to native platform code end up being cheaper long term than emulating the complete CPU all the time.

[oiaohm]

DOSBox and ScummVM work because they're trustworthy clones of everything they'd otherwise have to license.

...though Apple II games beyond those ScummVM now supports might be possible, given that Sierra trusted AppleWin's legal status enough to bundle it and their early games on various compilations through the years.

AppleWin does not use apple firmware. PCSX-reload has it own open firmware as well. Turns out the developers of PCSX found that the orginal playstation 1 firmwares it is dumb luck that you game loads. Yes I do mean dumb luck the cases where you put the game in and have to power cycle the console a few times so the game starts with a playstation 1 can be firmware bugs. Yes firmware bugs in the playstation 1 is if the CD is not aligned the right way the cd may not read and the firmware locks up. Yes default coding of the playstation 1 is as soon as you game starts disable the firmware if you don't the playstation firmware will absolutely sure crash the game. So every playstation 1 game turned out to be basically a total software platform on a disc.

So it is possible for Apple IIe and playstation 1 games to be legally released on steam and other places using AppleWin and PCSX-reload.

When the platform firmware is not ultra complex it was simpler to code a loader to bipass it for applications(this is the Apple IIe case with AppleWin this is why it does not have basic support so 99% of the firmware basically no there and programs don't care yes that 1 percent was simple to replace with a loader code ) or the platform firmware is nightmare buggy so has to be cloned (playstation 1 case) or platform firmware happens to be open source for other reasons other than emulation( dox box case) or the case the platform does not have firmware independent to the game(this you find with mame game consoles a lot) you only need license approval from the game developer and the game files and any right holders to content used in the game..

There are quite a few platforms with full firmware replacement. Like it would be possible if you could license amiga OS 3.1 needing games and use open source aros instead for the OS.

There are a lot more old games that could be up for sale but are not for 1 of the following reasons.
1) Rights holders issues yes there are quite a few games like this.
2) Current owner of the game does not want the legacy versions still on sale because this could under mine their new monetised versions.
3) No one knows where the current rights owner is or who is the current rights holder due to that changing hands so many times due to company merges and so on. Yes you need to know this to make a sales deal.
4) Unwilling to invest the time to get the stuff tested and working for a old game. With the amount games on the market getting return on investment can be hard.

[ssokolow]

PCSX-reload has it own open firmware as well. Turns out the developers of PCSX found that the orginal playstation 1 firmwares it is dumb luck that you game loads. Yes I do mean dumb luck the cases where you put the game in and have to power cycle the console a few times so the game starts with a playstation 1 can be firmware bugs. Yes firmware bugs in the playstation 1 is if the CD is not aligned the right way the cd may not read and the firmware locks up. Yes default coding of the playstation 1 is as soon as you game starts disable the firmware if you don't the playstation firmware will absolutely sure crash the game. So every playstation 1 game turned out to be basically a total software platform on a disc.

Huh. I knew the emulators offered some form of reverse-engineered BIOS that didn't work with all my games, but I hadn't realized why.

1) Rights holders issues yes there are quite a few games like this.
2) Current owner of the game does not want the legacy versions still on sale because this could under mine their new monetised versions.
3) No one knows where the current rights owner is or who is the current rights holder due to that changing hands so many times due to company merges and so on. Yes you need to know this to make a sales deal.

The Sad Story Behind A Dead PC Game That Can't Come Back by Kirk Hamilton

[pracedru]

There is no such thing as a 8bit dos program.
The 8086 is a 16 bit processor the 8088 was a 16 bit processor with a 8 bit data bus for transporting stuff around.

Yes my bad. But it could be done through other emulation layers.
The point is that Steam needs to support the platforms that games are made on.
Eventually 32bit games will be emulated im sure, but for now, the hardware support for 32bit runtime is used.

8 bit platforms get into different levels of horrible most don't have rewritten firmwares and these platforms are normally low clock speed so you have cpu time to waste.
dosbox has to use software emulation because v86 mode is not exposed any more.

But it doesn't matter. And it is besides the point

https://www.dosbox.com/wiki/Performance

Dosbox is very cpu expensive. The reality with dosbox you get 1/8 of the clockspeed of your current cpu. This works because most dos games require bugger all in the CPU department compared to modern day CPUs. 32 emulated could hit exactly the same nightmare but being reduced to 1/8 of the current cpus will be game breaking. 32 bit x86 on a 64 bit only platform be it arm or x86 instructions is going to need some thing more advanced..

As long as the games run its fine.
With the Apple A1 cpu, the new MacOS does x86 emulation for much of the software that isn't ported to Arm yet. It probably even has special hardware support for some of the instructions.

Yes it true that half the steam library is depending on 32 bit support. Its also true that operating systems that support 32 bit directly are starting to reduce.

Hangover with wine is to deal with MacOS no longer providing 32 bit support going forwards. At some point windows will want to as well.

More advanced methods of thunking to native platform code end up being cheaper long term than emulating the complete CPU all the time.

I don't think we disagree on a lot.
And I also think that it wont be long before a 64bit version of the Steam client is released.

[oiaohm]

As long as the games run its fine.

There is a little catch there. Game running fine is not a single question. Game can run fine but have horrible battery usage because of the emulation cost.

With the Apple A1 cpu, the new MacOS does x86 emulation for much of the software that isn't ported to Arm yet. It probably even has special hardware support for some of the instructions.

Yes the new MacOS x86 emulation gets inside 80% of native and the cpu does have extra instructions to help with x86 emulation. That still 20% cpu usage on emulation.. To put it power consume 1/5 of your battery when running x86 applications on the new MacOS systems is being consumed by the emulation. Yes that is a well optimised emulation.

Ideal world you want the least amount of emulation you can so you can get the best performance and best battery life you can. This is where thunking to host platform can be a very good thing.

[pracedru]

There is a little catch there. Game running fine is not a single question. Game can run fine but have horrible battery usage because of the emulation cost.

Yes but its better than not being able to run your favorite legacy game title.
And most games use more power on the GPU than the CPU.

[oiaohm]

Yes but its better than not being able to run your favorite legacy game title.
And most games use more power on the GPU than the CPU.

That the horrible part a lot of the older legacy titles use more CPU than GPU. Yes some of the cause can be converting old graphics interface methods for GPU to modern graphics interface methods.