Steam, Source Engine Get First-Rate Love On Mac OS X

[curaga]

Let's see, I think Jobs has lately said that Google is evil and that Flash sucks. Actually both things I can agree with

[xav1r]

I don't hate Apple so much as I hate what Jobs has been on about lately...

And what has Jobs been about lately?

[Svartalf]

unless... there is plans for linux and it is to come as "tier-2"

There's a hint for you there...

[Svartalf]

Common, OS X also uses the "binary nvidia drivers", Apple doesn't create it's own version of Nvidia drivers, are you trying to inject some dichotomy between open source as a movement and the quality of the binary drivers on linux and os x.

Apple actually works pretty closely with their ISV's, based on what I saw when I worked for one of the big two.

[Svartalf]

See? OS X *is* good for Linux Take that, Apple haters!

I don't hate Apple so much as I hate what Jobs has been on about lately...

[SunnyDrake]

Yeah, but from what I saw, many good game engine don't come with networking code beyond connecting to a server and offering a reactor/proactor or stuff like that. Many developers hit a brick wall wit some rather widely used SDKs when they built, 1/2 from scratch, 1/2 from purchased 3rd party libs their networking code, especially modern 'mmo' type and such.

x)MMO type must write own networking code(especially server) and it's not uncommon to run server(internet) on *nix systems(CS,BattleField,Unreal,LineAge,Wow etc) as M$ servers is PIA generally.
x)'AAA' titles need to be heavily customized it's not like grab Doom3 engine + buy stock 3d models + 2pages of new text dialogs.. but where money flows there is support from GSDK developers.
x) from GE site @Unreal Engine 3 is the current technology, aimed at next-gen consoles such as Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, as well as DirectX 10-based PCs. UE3 powered Epic’s Gears of War, as well as Unreal Tournament 3. @

We had OpenGL/SL conformance and performance test batches and they workd fine on the 'pro' drivers on 'pro' cards but failed there and there on gaming cards and since all the additional costs from a radeon to a firegl or geforce to quadro is in the drivers (hardware is identical) that tells me that their 'consumer' blobs are badly designed and implemented, at least on Linux.
... Sound rant...

Current drivers for my GF488Go/ATI 4870/ATI 4650/Intel GMA just suit my needs for OpenGL Mono.C# multiplatform free-time project.
Same crap going on windows platform too.Who provide extended sound support for Windows platform? EAX(3rd party,well this where dropped), DSound(bye bye Vista don't support hardware sound accel now),Miles(3rdparty),DoulbyD(3rdparty). Linux now have pulseaudio(which can be a good business product for windows) and for legacy support ALSA.
Generally on windows platform GOOD SOUND=support of one specific hw vendor(say Creative Inc. in past days).

I'd rather see them contributing to wine and making their games work. For example, I can almost play Civ4 in wine. I actually played for 2 hours mp until it crashed, even longer in sp.

I finished a couple modern games in wine. Btw FreeCiv for linux is better as it support MP. Check out Open Transport Tycoon Deluxe (openTTD)

[CNCFarraday]

1st)'AAA' titles GDevelopers usually don't mess with low system programming.
2nd) Usually it's Game Engine SDK task to support multi-platform(there is plenty cross platform engines/toolchains(PC&XBOX&PS) at 100k$+ cost but each platform add additional cost)
3rd) Again there very few companies that develop&maintain own large scale game engines.

Yeah, but from what I saw, many good game engine don't come with networking code beyond connecting to a server and offering a reactor/proactor or stuff like that. Many developers hit a brick wall wit some rather widely used SDKs when they built, 1/2 from scratch, 1/2 from purchased 3rd party libs their networking code, especially modern 'mmo' type and such.

The point was that Linux is very dynamic and 'multicultural'. Most companies get a GSDK that works on Win/Xbox (pretty much the same sing, from the M$ provided APIs) and PS3 and, maybe Wii. The thing is there is ONE standard API per platform. You won't test with a gazillion sound systems. The state of ATI's and NVidia's binary blobs leaves much to be desired, compared to their 'professional' cousins (firegl and quadro). We had OpenGL/SL conformance and performance test batches and they workd fine on the 'pro' drivers on 'pro' cards but failed there and there on gaming cards and since all the additional costs from a radeon to a firegl or geforce to quadro is in the drivers (hardware is identical) that tells me that their 'consumer' blobs are badly designed and implemented, at least on Linux.

I mean, I don't want to make a big deal out of it, no show-stoppers, products work fine and we always had fixes, but it shows the weaknes of the platform. NVidia provides fairly stable drivers, and we can expect that with ATI and Creative open sourcing their stuff, we'll have non-binary, quality drivers for audio and video. But then, what about ALSA, Jack, Pulse and the myriad of other sound systems? I don't think any major developer will support all, or at least the hand full of the most important ones.

Again, I'm not arguing against it, I'm just saying that it will be quite a while until both the software (drivers and such) and the mentality (on part of the big names in the gaming industry) will catch up.

I'd rather see them contributing to wine and making their games work. For example, I can almost play Civ4 in wine. I actually played for 2 hours mp until it crashed, even longer in sp.

[DMJC]

My promise to Valve.

If Valve release Linux Steam. I will drop $1000 on games the day it's announced. (Or the next payday after.)

[SunnyDrake]

Also regarding consoles i little displeased with my PS3 console and one of reasons why i turned down offer to buy XBOX360. All i see a few console specific titles and a lot of clones or PC sequels. Console disk cost very high is look like major companies try to raise profit in game industry, but without innovations.

[SunnyDrake]

I'm sorry to say, but 99% of the stuff the gaming 'industry' puts out is utter rubbish and it continues to degrade. The only thing they are doing better is graphics, and that isn't even their doing. If you really want to know how good 3d engines developers are, freeze the graphics cards for 3 years and tell them to make better engines on the same hardware. Every developer is shifting to consoles, almost all "triple a" titles (whatever that means today) for the last two or three years were designed and developed for consoles and ported to PC as an afterthought and it shows badly. The more they move to a locked mono-culture ecosystem like the xbox or ps3 or wii the harder it is for them to build generic engines for the PC market where you don't have the same, identical, locked in configuration. From this perspective, Valve's move to Mac makes perfect sense. They'll work on another tightly controlled hardware/software ecosystem where they can minimize their costs. Moving to the wild world of Linux where there is a plethora of hardware, kernels, libraries, GUIs and so on doesn't sit well with ANY product manager that I know. I love the freedom of Linux/Free Software but I understand that it comes at a price.

1st)'AAA' titles GDevelopers usually don't mess with low system programming.
2nd) Usually it's Game Engine SDK task to support multi-platform(there is plenty cross platform engines/toolchains(PC&XBOX&PS) at 100k$+ cost but each platform add additional cost)
3rd) Again there very few companies that develop&maintain own large scale game engines.

I assure you legal people know the ins and outs of *GPL and the like far better than you or me. They usually advise against it. Remember that most of what makes Google 'Google' is closed source.

4th) That's one more reason to use 3rd party GE to not mess with licenses.

Again, I'm not ranting out of my arse, I'm talking from experience.

Very interesting.

I mean it's really cool on slashdot and phoronix, and it may seem crowded now and then, but the 'real world out there' isn't an inch friendlier to foss. Yeah, if they can take it for free and wash their hands, but otherwise...

Party agree, but this is lazy talks. What missing is profitable time proven business model for Linux games(developers ain't have first/final world in companies you know that). When you see that you can make on product +$ more by paying license and hiring developer to make install this starting to make sense.