A Radical Idea For More Linux Game Ports

[sarmad]

I think what Valve is doing is more effective, which is getting the popular engines to support Linux so that future games do. Porting older games help, but it's not as important as getting future games to release on Linux on time with good quality. Valve is also providing a standard distro for gaming (SteamOS) so game developers know what to target in their testing.

[Svartalf]

That article has some misconceptions...

Thank you for saving me a step there. Well put, indeed.

[Svartalf]

I think what Valve is doing is more effective, which is getting the popular engines to support Linux so that future games do. Porting older games help, but it's not as important as getting future games to release on Linux on time with good quality. Valve is also providing a standard distro for gaming (SteamOS) so game developers know what to target in their testing.

Actually, you don't need that as much as you'd think. (If it were a problem, I'd have NEVER got Caster 3D or Cortex Command out the door...)

What you need is insulation from versioned API edge conflicts breaking your code. There's several ways to doing that, but mine leads to being able to target ARM machines, or even NDK level work, in theory (Magic words there- I've not tried this yet...there might be a ton of gotchas for it that I've not accounted for yet...), for Android. Having SteamOS only helps you if you're USING SteamOS since the API edge is only consistent for that purpose for THAT distribution.

[Svartalf]

Porting is one thing, maintaining forever (since API/ABI compatibility in Linux is a joke, whereas in Windows you compile once and then run for years, or even decades) is another.

No, RedHat and Ubuntu don't have resources for that.

Basically the guy is asking game studios to open source their games for selected RH/Ubuntu developers - nah, it's not gonna happen.

Heh... If it's a joke, how is it that there's many titles that run fine for the last 6-12 years now? It's in how you do your .so linkages, etc. Those that have issues, just simply don't know what they need to do.

[Kelsier]

I don't see why this is a good idea if the problem is not porting the game. Do you really think Riot or Blizz Activision have problems with money? Blizz has ports of their games for linux closed doors (not sure but I think this was even said here in phoronix) and Riot has a mac port. The reason is simply support and quality. These companies can not accept one small problem because kids will rage quit the game and go to the competitor in a second. There was a time even the osx port of LoL was taken out because of support and demand. Later they changed their mind and put it back on.

What needs to be done to help this companies, is to find a way to show them the number of users that would start playing their games and show them that the cost of supporting it is worth it.

[Kemosabe]

Is gaming that important for an successful OS?
I can imagine the effect could be much bigger if the effort would be spent somewhere else.
For example try politics to prohibit the usage and acceptance of properitary formats like *.doc(x).
Make public authorities use Linux and teach a less Windows bound programming style at Universities.

[dh04000]

Can I get some of the Pot that this guy is smoking?

[schmidtbag]

I don't see why this is a good idea if the problem is not porting the game. Do you really think Riot or Blizz Activision have problems with money? Blizz has ports of their games for linux closed doors (not sure but I think this was even said here in phoronix) and Riot has a mac port. The reason is simply support and quality. These companies can not accept one small problem because kids will rage quit the game and go to the competitor in a second. There was a time even the osx port of LoL was taken out because of support and demand. Later they changed their mind and put it back on.

What needs to be done to help this companies, is to find a way to show them the number of users that would start playing their games and show them that the cost of supporting it is worth it.

I was getting ready to disagree, but you made some very valid points. I suppose companies like Blizzard are a bad example because they don't NEED a linux userbase. They already have a linux userbase through wine, which from what I heard is more or less a good experience. So in Blizzard's eyes, it's easier to let the wine devs deal with linux-specific issues. Since wine is technically an unsupported platform, Blizzard isn't obligated to help wine users.

I still think this idea is a very good one though, for smaller companies. It could be good for companies where seeking out linux COULD be a substantial increase in profits. To Blizzard, linux might be a 1% revenue increase, but the amount of developers and support they need to fund might not pay off (if the port is sloppy). However, I think if Blizzard released the linux client for an old game like WoW, that could be a great way for them to figure out what issues they need to fix for future games. I'm sure senior WoW players nerdy enough to use linux on a regular basis would be a little patient and willing to help.

I know a lot of major companies are deterred by the vast variety of distros of linux, but I think if they just focus on 1 distro and simply disgregard supporting others, they don't have much to worry about.

[gnufreex]

Red Hat would not be interested in that. Shame. Canonical would make it ubuntu-only somehow, probably with Mir dependancy.

I have a better idea. Red Hat could woo Valve to port over to CentOS from Debian. They could jointly work on RHEL... to make all stuff work and backport stuff.

[d2kx]

Riot Games is so rich, they would buy Canonical if they were interested. They don't care about a few thousand euros for some guy porting the game initially. They have other reasons for not supporting a platform, e.g. support, QA, etc.

Also, "porting" a game like League of Legends is useless per se, because the game gets updated like 10 times a day, so just porting it over doesn't cut it, you need developers who are committed all year long.

This idea makes no sense whatsoever.