Game Developer Who Ported To Linux: "I Don't Think It Was Worthwhile"

[speculatrix]

here's an example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_Vista#DirectX_features

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_XP

[Michael_S]

and what are they doing? they are paying LunarG to contribute to Mesa, develop Intel galium driver, Vulkan SDK, Vulkan Documentation and SPIR-V, while also working on Vulkan and working with NVidia/AMD on OpenGL. oss drivers are more in domain of other vendors like Redhat,... sheesh, from all Linux commercial vendors Redhat is I think only one that employs people working on open drivers.

you should maybe target these claims to companies like that. Valve is doing lions share here and what you're asking for Gabe to do is borderline insane.

Red Hat won't put serious money into OSS GPU drivers because they get almost all of their revenue supporting servers and workstations. Linux gaming isn't part of their business model.

I think if Gabe wants his company to be as big or bigger in 2025 than it is in 2015, that's the path forward. Every Windows 8.1 or newer PC comes with Windows Store preinstalled and visible in your start screen or start menu, and Microsoft is going to work hard to add more games to the store selection. That's going to gradually eat into Steam's market the same way IE still has a huge market presence - most users just go with the default.

[mr_tawan]

If I was a game developer, I'd certainly not want to be locked into the Windows platform. A fair few things get removed and killed between major windows releases. If your game runs on linux you can always produce a dedicated live CD with the entire OS and game ready to run, which you can't do with Windows.

I would go with 'cross-platform' code, which is actually feasible nowaday. It probably sounds silly but I could use MSYS2 as the development platform on Windows (with qtCreator as the IDE ... says goodbye to Visual C++). Then the code compiles in Linux without much hassles, and also cross compile to Android and iOS.

This is archivable, but the goal needs to be set at earlier stage. Code needs to be strict standard compliant. API has to be cross-platform (like SDL), or you would needs to write a shim code for specific platform. Testing has to be conducted in the targetting platforms. etc.

Downsides ? There are a lot of 'GOTCHA's in C++ especially dealing with multiple platform. `wchar_t`, for instances, is always 16 bit in Windows, and 32 bit in Linux (AFAIR). The standard just says this type should be 'at least' 16 bit, means the compiler/platform can use any size given it's larger than 16 bit. (the more precise types are available in C++11 though). If you write a lot of cross-platform you will encouter with quite a lot of 'GOTCHA's along the way.

Personally I find it easier to work with Linux than Windows, as in C++ there is almost zero dependency mangement available (esp. VC++) (I heard that there's a working group that's currently working on the spec, but I won't hold my breath). I have no idea about OS X though.

[profoundWHALE]

If I was a game developer, I'd certainly not want to be locked into the Windows platform. A fair few things get removed and killed between major windows releases. If your game runs on linux you can always produce a dedicated live CD with the entire OS and game ready to run, which you can't do with Windows.

This is like the Dreamcast. The 'main screen' was a bootloader, and when you put in a disc, it would boot to it. It was really smooth when I last played it, and I'm assuming it's because it was only running a game.

[Svartalf]

Their game list really isn't impressive. I don't think they've ever released a game that wasn't unplayably buggy at release. Bioware taught them well.

FOMHLMAO! No further comments on that subject. I have to still deal with this bunch in question as well as others. >:-D

[Svartalf]

and what are they doing? they are paying LunarG to contribute to Mesa, develop Intel galium driver, Vulkan SDK, Vulkan Documentation and SPIR-V, while also working on Vulkan and working with NVidia/AMD on OpenGL. oss drivers are more in domain of other vendors like Redhat,... sheesh, from all Linux commercial vendors Redhat is I think only one that employs people working on open drivers.

you should maybe target these claims to companies like that. Valve is doing lions share here and what you're asking for Gabe to do is borderline insane.

Gabe should be (and is) doing something in-between. RedHat's business is servers these days- they walked mostly away from the desktop/workstation space ages ago (Loki Games was a going concern and they were toying with subsidizing them just before that...) Unless you can convince them about the value of supporting GPGPU functionality in that space, you're going to find that this wasn't a thing they're interested in. Valve is because it's an escape plan for them to keep alive and profitable (MS is slowly cutting their air supply off, if you hadn't noticed...) and if the Graphics support sucks, you fix it. Seriously. If you've never been in the CxO level of a company, you wouldn't "get" this. I have. Now, what he's talking to is an extreme and would be insane (and I'd question Gabe's sanity at that point as well...) but what they're doing right now? Not so much so. Right now, you've got people like me that're happy to take "less" to get it up and going (Hint: I work with Indies and the like...I'm a Steamworks developer and I can help you get there if you've got titles to move to the world we're talking about.) and further some of the key FOSS pieces to make it less stressful for a studio to do this. I can't front the cost of LunarG's services, but I can pitch in MY abilities and make them these nifty cross-compilation environments that allow you to build for not just Ubuntu or SteamOS, but for all current major Linux distributions and know it will work right on all of them, and make it quite a bit easier for someone to get it on SteamOS (Pick just about any modern Linux you're comfortable with- target SteamOS.).

It's all out there. This is someone trying to make public something best left internal- because odds on, this person didn't think it was something they should be doing in the first place and they'd committed to it from the Kickstarter. All the "extra stuff" he's claiming is "fishy" because knowing what I know about all of this...it's largely a 1-10% difference between the OSX and Linux ports in most cases and if it's not, you very probably did something wrong in your code that needed to be re-worked for all platforms ANYWAY.

[Svartalf]

This is like the Dreamcast. The 'main screen' was a bootloader, and when you put in a disc, it would boot to it. It was really smooth when I last played it, and I'm assuming it's because it was only running a game.

At one point we'd bandied about something like that at LGP in the early days. It's certainly doable. Just don't know how well it'd work out. You'd need to get FOSS drivers, to be legal, out of the Big Three that were performant. But, ultimately, it doesn't help Valve's position, though- and we want both stories if possible.

[Zan Lynx]

If I was a game developer, I'd certainly not want to be locked into the Windows platform. A fair few things get removed and killed between major windows releases. If your game runs on linux you can always produce a dedicated live CD with the entire OS and game ready to run, which you can't do with Windows.

Well, you could. That live CD would fail to work with newer systems as time went on. It probably couldn't even boot a 2018 secure boot system, read the NVMe drive, manage the USB 4, or route the Wi-Di video output.

You'd end up in the Linux distro business, trying to keep your Live OS up to date enough to run your old game.

[profoundWHALE]

At one point we'd bandied about something like that at LGP in the early days. It's certainly doable. Just don't know how well it'd work out. You'd need to get FOSS drivers, to be legal, out of the Big Three that were performant. But, ultimately, it doesn't help Valve's position, though- and we want both stories if possible.

Now it shouldn't be as much of an issue simply due to us having much more powerful hardware. I'm just surprised that Valve didn't do with some sort of hypervisor like Microsoft did with the Xbox One.

[Svartalf]

Now it shouldn't be as much of an issue simply due to us having much more powerful hardware. I'm just surprised that Valve didn't do with some sort of hypervisor like Microsoft did with the Xbox One.

That's got performance and other issues with it. Microsoft went to a lot o' trouble for that and I question their sanity in doing it.