CodeWeavers Reflects On The Wild Year Since Valve Introduced Steam Play / Proton

[skeevy420]

Think! I now it's difficult but try!

1) Most developers are taught Direct3D
2) Most games are still developed using D3D11 because it's a whole lot easier to code for and the net result won't necessarily run faster when being rewritten using D3D12/Vulkan.

Still, we've already got several exclusive Vulkan titles like Rage 2 and Wolfenstein.

LOL. Tells someone to think and has typos and grammatical errors

[jojo7887]

I started using Linux and Wine since the version 1.6 days (around 2014), the improvements since then have been massive. I never imagined that I would be playing games with close to native performance. Nowadays I'm happily enjoying my favorite games, both old and new without too much trouble.

For all those involved, thank you for your work.

[birdie]

LOL. Tells someone to think and has typos and grammatical errors

Typos? Not sure about that. Grammatical errors? That's possible - English is not my native language. Then you're trying to look smart, yet instead of providing arguments you're attacking the way I'm speaking. A pure failure in argumentation.

[dkasak]

Ah yes, CodeWeavers. The company who decided, instead of taking the ethical route by selling support for a foss project they own, they're going to hold back improvements to the FOSS version for x amount of time and keep them in the closed source version so anybody who really needs something to work has to pay for it.

Oh dear! You have no right, god-given or otherwise, to everything that you desire, just because you exist. Codeweavers has a long history of tackling monumental challenges and releasing the fruits of their work ( whether it was paid work or not ) to the community, one way or another, in their own time. What commercial code have YOU released to the open source community?

Someone who 'really needs something to work' ( and I'm guessing that 'something' is a game ... deary me you must be burning up ) would run the software under Windows, and realistically, 99% of the time they'll have a Windows license, but they're stubborn, and want to run everything under Linux. I get that desire, but I don't jump up and down and bitch about Codeweavers having the audacity to ... wait for it ... take on some paid work ... instead of just work for free and hand everything to me. That's ridiculously unrealistic and selfish.

[theriddick]

Big ticket items still missing are: Windows Easy Anti-Cheat and Battleye support.

BE actually sort of works already, with ARMA3 if you install/activate BE correctly then you can join BE servers, however there is a bug that causes a game freeze/crash after 15minutes for most people.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

if you install/activate BE correctly then you can join BE servers

How to install BE correctly?

[theriddick]

How to install BE correctly?

Well for ARMA3 it has a process where you load into game, select a mp server (that uses BE), it prompts to quit and install driver itself, then you reload ARMA3 and bang, its done. NOW you could copy the ARMA3 preset over another game requiring BattlEye to get BE functionality for other games. However keep in mind it might crash after 15mins of gameplay.

This is assuming other BE using games don't have a working driver install system like ARMA3 (which is built into arma3).

[andy22]

Why don't developers use Vulkan instead?

Mainly because it's only viable for PC only titles and even than does not provide any real benefits over Dx12. So dev's use what they know and worked with the last 5-15 years. The main selling point of Vulkan is better cross-platform support, yet this gets undermined by either none existing support on Xbox, so you have to build a Directx version anyway. Than again even on PS4/Switch Vulkan support is in a experimental state and the native API's is what you have to use for big titles.

So yes Vulkan is used by enthusiast GPU programmers for PC only titles, but otherwise is a rather hard argument to switch the API. The only silver lining might be stuff like Stadia, since native linux/Vulkan versions should run best on those.

My prediction is that nothing will really change in the next years and Vulkan games will remain rare, if Sony/Nintendo actually add first class Vulkan support for there next consoles/SDK's, than maybe Vulkan will become the default and the DirectX version becomes the outlier.

[theriddick]

Mainly because it's only viable for PC only titles

Switch / Android / PS4 I believe use vulkan or can run vulkan if the developer wishes (and Mac via MoltenVK). The only console I know that blacklists vulkan as far as I know is Xbox.

[andy22]

Switch / Android / PS4 I believe use vulkan or can run vulkan if the developer wishes (and Mac via MoltenVK). The only console I know that blacklists vulkan as far as I know is Xbox.

As noted Vulkan support on Switch/PS4 is experimental atm, so if you want to actually ship a commercial title you use there native API's. I also don't think this will change with better Vulkan support, since historically using there native API's you get full access to all the platform specific tricks and workarounds.

Ah yes i did forget about mobile, there Vulkan might be viable, if MoltenVK works good enough.

PS: To-be clear its not Vulkans fault, the API is really well designed and compared to openGL moves forward at a good speed. Its not that GPU programmers don't want to use/learn just one API, compared to juggling 2-4 different ones. The platforms just need to adapt Vulkan as there primary first class API, not as a option or afterthought.