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A Lot Of Valve's Proton Work Is Landing Back In Upstream Wine

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  • #21
    Originally posted by tildearrow View Post
    Also, bitness?
    Yup, that's how some people call bytesex.

    Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
    It would be interesting to see if Google's new Stadia streaming service, which is based on Linux, would make use of Proton to increase the size of the game catalog.
    Originally posted by shmerl View Post
    Stadia is not using Wine, from what I've heard.
    It's a bit more complicated. From what I've understood, their edge datacenters will be running on Linux *but* the games themselves will be running inside virtual machines with pass-through to the physical GPU (one or two GPUs perVM).

    So, for the beginning, most of the Windows games will simply be running on windows VMs (if google can manage a non-insane licensing for that).
    No win involved (yet...)

    Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
    I'm hoping that Google would be able to use their clout to force more devs to target Linux directly. If you want to be on Stadia, it should be a requirement.
    That's the interesting part.
    And probably Goolge themselves would need to push anyone.
    If you look closely at details, even nowaday devs tend to support multiple platforms.
    The obviously make a Windows version of the game, yes.
    And also for the slightly different Windows version running on XBox (with slightly different cousins of Direct X 11 / 12).
    But often some part of the game mecanics is also make for GNU/Linux, typically for the servers for multiplayer. Okay that one is usually server code only (so only game logic, no graphics), but still.
    And for the NetBSD variant running on Sony Playstations (with optionnally their own proprietary take on GL and Vulkan).
    And sometimes for whatever the hell Nintendo is running on their stuff, for Android (Linux kernel is Google's own "I can't beleive it's not Java(tm)!" runtine), or eventually for Mac OS X and/or iOS (BSD service running on top of a mach micro-kernel, with weird Apple only APIs like Metal)

    The difficulty of bringin games to linux isn't as much the absence of willingness to port the engine to a non-microsoft OS.

    It's more the smaller market share not justifying the tremendous effort to an extremely vast and diverse ecosystem of distribution with enormous amounts of tiny differences everywhere (exact library versions and patches, etc.) - but not being able to count on distribution makers, unlike opensource software does.

    An opensource dev just targets SDL2 and GL and is more or less good to go. Distro might do patches and submit pull request if some weird versions there of isn't compatible with the game.

    Whereas the standard quality check process of a big studio would require testing probably a dozen of different combination of distro, configuration and hardware, for a very tiny gain in market.

    Originally posted by kenjitamura View Post
    The one principle that made console gaming so much more effective to program for, despite usually having lower specs than high end PC's, while still looking good was the fact that they all had the exact same hardware and underlying software. This is an advantage that google will be claiming for itself with Stadia and it will make working out the bugs and optimizing the games performance so much easier for developers than if they had to release a public linux client.
    Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
    For a long while now, consoles hav been devices with an OS and offering APIs just like a PC. The main reason they still exist is because of exclusives.

    Nowadays, the Xbox is literally a PC running a specialized Windows 10 offering DirectX API just like a PC.
    But every single Xbox One (with the exception of the recent "X" shenningans) is supposed to exactly the same (some space available being the only difference).
    A game working on one Xbox One, will work on every single other one.
    If you do special tricks to optimize your game engine for the specific combo of GPU and CPU, it's going to work everywhere (Be it hand optimized assembler for the shaders, etc.)
    That's not necessarily true for the PC where the optimization trick might not work because a different PC has a different amount of memorry/shader/Etc. or you couldn't hand optimise machine code, because different machine run different code.

    I also think that Stadia can give a single simple platform to target for optimisation.
    (A bit like steam, by offering a run time, has simplified the multiplicity of version and configuration).

    Developper will probably naturally choose to support linux, because supporting Stadia natively requires little effort (1 configuration to support - the type of VM offerend on Stadia, combined with the type of GPU that AMD will be equipping Google with) , while opening lots of market (the whole Stadia run on this configuration) and gaining performance (might eventually even evolve to light-weight container. Instead of needing to virtualize a full blown windows VM).

    Once *that* is a thing, it might happen that some devs might release their Linux clients (e.g.: provided that Stadia is compatible with the steam runtime offered on Linux gaming machines, or provided that steam and/or other distributor provide a Stadia runtime. Or provided that googles offers a StadiaOS that you can install locally). Once that happens, the Gentoo and ArchLinux crowd is going to find way to install games locally on non-Stadia linux runtime, followed by 3rd party repos on Debian and openSuSE Tumbleweed doing the same.

    Or Google might decide to go "Fuschia" instead ( <- though, don't believe there's a high chance Fuschia to actually be used successfully in the wild in any meaningful large deployment within the next decade. And I'm not that eager for it to happen enither. But it still stand a higher chance than Microsoft's Singularity project to see deployment ever)

    Originally posted by Lanz View Post
    This is why I won't buy games anywhere but Steam. Even GOG's client doesn't run on Linux and they don't give back like Valve does.
    Note that the only purpose of GOG is to provide DRM-less content at a reasonnable price. That's it.

    Whereas Valve and the Gabe have clearly stated why they have a vested interest in keeping Linux as a viable gaming platform in the near future :
    They *need* Linux to be a viable alternative platform in case Microsoft gets crazy and decides to go in full "Apple-walled-garden-only"-mode and only exclusively allow games distributed on their application store.
    For that the need Linux ecosystem to be in good shape and need to contribute as much as possible to it.

    Improving Wine is vital to Valve, in order to have an escape route against Microsoft.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by DrYak View Post
      Yup, that's how some people call bytesex.
      *bytegender

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      • #23
        Originally posted by DrYak View Post
        A game working on one Xbox One, will work on every single other one.
        Just as PC games will work on every single other PC above the minimum specs. A console is more convenient as it removes the "minimum specs" from the picture, but that's hardly a requirement to make software that is guaranteed to work the same on every PC.

        If you do special tricks to optimize your game engine for the specific combo of GPU and CPU, it's going to work everywhere (Be it hand optimized assembler for the shaders, etc.)
        Yes, but the hardware is much more limited so you will be optimizing to not suck, not optimizing to run better. Very important point.

        Even the best optimized game for console will still not perform anywhere as well as the same game with no optimizations (or even a decent port) on a normal sub-600$ gaming PC.

        Remember that the time and skill spent optimizing a modern good-looking game to get crappy hardware to run it at 30fps/720p is not free, and may or may not be the best way to allocate your resources.

        But console producers don't care if the console it's not anymore a good thing for developers. If you want to sell your game in the very big pond of console userbase you will have to do what THEY say. As simple as that.

        I also think that Stadia can give a single simple platform to target for optimisation.
        That's basically a "cloud console" from what they say, so the same applies, it will be optimization to squeeze out performance levels that any sub-600$ gaming PC can easily surpass.

        Once that happens, the Gentoo and ArchLinux crowd is going to find way to install games locally on non-Stadia linux runtime, followed by 3rd party repos on Debian and openSuSE Tumbleweed doing the same.
        This assumes you can find the game Google runs on Stadia to begin with, and it's a very big assumption.

        Also note that any "optimization" or "corners cut" since the game is running on a cloud console with whatever API/runtime Google provides might very well make the game incompatible with desktop Linux.

        Similar to how Android applications can't run on Desktop Linux.

        Or Google might decide to go "Fuschia" instead
        Yes. My body is ready.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by DrYak View Post
          It's a bit more complicated. From what I've understood, their edge datacenters will be running on Linux *but* the games themselves will be running inside virtual machines with pass-through to the physical GPU (one or two GPUs perVM).
          Google very clearly said it's going to be native Linux, no VMs. What is the source for your info?

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          • #25
            I love people saying stuff like "optimize" and talking about stuff they have no clue about.

            Some game devs optimize. It means it runs well on everything. E.g., Doom 2016. Runs great, on basically anything half competent.

            Most games run like shit today, console or $2500 PC be damned. There's no optimization. The driver optimizes the hardware, not the game to the hardware. It's absolutely moronic to think anything different. The only "optimization" consoles get are "What's the highest settings can we do without breaking any one thing?"

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            • #26
              Originally posted by abott View Post
              I love people saying stuff like "optimize" and talking about stuff they have no clue about.

              Some game devs optimize. It means it runs well on everything. E.g., Doom 2016. Runs great, on basically anything half competent.

              Most games run like shit today, console or $2500 PC be damned. There's no optimization. The driver optimizes the hardware, not the game to the hardware. It's absolutely moronic to think anything different. The only "optimization" consoles get are "What's the highest settings can we do without breaking any one thing?"
              This generation of consoles are the worst piece of entertainment I have ever seen. Seriously bloated (100GB for a console game!?) bug-ridden crap that requires always network on nature requiring system and game updates nightly in many cases. And those patches, what if you were a single mummy on a packet-data only connection who just wanted their kids to play.

              Days like this I really love my 'classics'.
              Hi

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