A Developer's Perspective On Porting Games To Linux

[ChrisXY]

Deadfall Adventures actually causes me to have to hard reset at least somewhere in just about every level. Step in the wrong place and blammo. It completely locks up a rock solid Linux system... that's pathetic. (but possible due to direct rendering) You can't even ssh in. Turning the graphics settings down to ugly levels does not help.

Sorry, that's not acceptable by any stretch. Games have to work on AMD graphics hardware as well.

Sorry, but this lockups are driver bugs and not the game's fault. The unfortunate truth is that the linux graphics drivers just haven't been stress tested enough by countless demanding games. Try it for yourself: Use the latest mesa code and get some alpha and beta games like upvoid, overgrowth, etc.. You'll probably be able to hit a few bugs with hyperz or the shader compilers. Even supertuxkart git with mesa git has bugs (but they're not in a stable release of mesa so there's that).

Try to get a log if the lockup e.g. with netconsole and submit it to bugs.freedesktop.org

[Azrael5]

I think he meant the more recent ones.

I mean the entire serie before the latest one I don't like (I prefer alone in the dark the new nightmare because of the better grafic). Someone was making reboot... as shown in the video I issued 2 posts ago.

[Hamish Wilson]

I vote for Alone in the dark. I remember playing it on my 386 SX (no coprocessor) back in the day.

I think he meant the more recent ones.

[Grogan]

Too bad Painkiller and Deadfall Adventures don't actually work correctly. Pretty hard to take them seriously... that's some of the worst rubbish I've ever seen.

It's probably OK if you have Nvidia (so I've heard), but performance, stability and load times (shader compiling) are ridiculous on AMD (fglrx or radeon + Mesa 10.x). Deadfall Adventures actually causes me to have to hard reset at least somewhere in just about every level. Step in the wrong place and blammo. It completely locks up a rock solid Linux system... that's pathetic. (but possible due to direct rendering) You can't even ssh in. Turning the graphics settings down to ugly levels does not help.

Sorry, that's not acceptable by any stretch. Games have to work on AMD graphics hardware as well.

I'm trying to get away from Windows and not buying any more games that require it. That said, Deadfall Adventures is a very enjoyable game, too good to waste on rubbish performance on Linux. So I have to play it in Windows. (It's 100% in Windows... graphics settings at their highest and I have not experienced any problems or performance issues.

[Azrael5]

I vote for Alone in the dark. I remember playing it on my 386 SX (no coprocessor) back in the day.

Look at this: http://youtu.be/WWS9cATCSEo

[wargames]

Excellent... It would be good porting of major titles of the recent past of whom I prefer: Splinter Cell, Tomb Raider (trilogy), Dawn of War (collection of the first serie), Alone in the Dark, Max Payne, Homeworld and Joint Task Force.. in modern grafical way.

I vote for Alone in the dark. I remember playing it on my 386 SX (no coprocessor) back in the day.

[M@yeulC]

@turol : http://slideshare.net/LeszekGodlewski/lg-dd20141yop

Thank you for these useful tips!

[borsook]

While a presentation can be useful addition to a talk, reading one without audio is like reading a bridge building manual written by a troll... you know, a full sentence is an abomination. BTW I remember somebody related to porting games to Linux saying that he would never use a presentation as they make people stop listening, sadly can't match the situation with the name.

[turol]

Anyone have non-embedded link so I can use deslide?

[e8hffff]

Thanks Leszek for some great ground tips that will help many if they are porting games to even making games coming from a DirectX win32/64 background.

The time is now to for Linux to be the game central since not only will you get Linux Users but you are making code that is near ready, or visa versa, for Mobile and Apple Computers.