Some Linux Game Developers Don't Even Have Contacts At AMD

[marek]

Heck, it took a year for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to have an AMD Catalyst application/game profile.

So the article is basically saying that CS:GO is broken and Catalyst needs a profile to be able to run it flawlessly. How sad.

Profiles are bad. If you need a profile, the game developer didn't do his job very well.

[kalasa]

I only know how it works on windows, but there you send nvidia the game, they analyze it and then constantly nag you (in a good way) about changing stuff to improve performance. Everything from "don't do this" to "we rewrote one of your shaders, use that instead". That's the level of support you expect as a professional developer.

[timon37]

Wow, that's lame. Now I've suffered a lot of "argh why doesn't this work" and in most cases it was my fault. AMD drivers are generally a lot more stringent, e.g. nvidia will accept glDrawBuffers being partially incorrect (when setting up FBOs with multiple attachements), amd won't and the result will most likely be that nothings rendered.
There's of course a lot more that can get in the way, and it often is really hard to figure out why, but still this to me sounds like the typical:
1. dev only buys and develops on nvidia gpus, because "they're the best",
2. dev makes a bunch of not-quite-to-spec code, sometimes even ignoring opengl errors because "hey it seems to work",
3. at some point someone points out that everything's broken on other drivers and or gpus,
4. dev tries to figure out what's happening but by now too many issues are piled-up on top of each other,
5. dev whines that it has to be a driver bug

I've got 3 PCs on my desk and a macbook, I share the source code over the network and always compile and test concurrently on at least two.
And honestly if I didn't I'd probably be stuck whining as well;p

Now that's not to say that amd drivers don't have issues, they most definitely do (same for nvidia and intel), but that's not an excuse for "uhh we got a black screen, and we don't have anyone to figure out the problem for us".

@kalasa
I disagree, that's pathological.
Any vendor:
1. best case - will not give a damn about other vendors
2. typical case - will try to find solutions that benefit them more than competition
3. worst case - will find solutions that hurt the competition more than them (e.g. nvidia urging devs to constantly abuse tessellation)

Now admittedly the relationship between an engine and a driver is quite complex, and you can't think of making either without taking into account what the other is doing.
But that kind of relationship can be healthy only with free software, where you can actually see and verify what's really happening and why some behavior is good/bad.

[kalasa]

1. dev only buys and develops on nvidia gpus, because "they're the best",
2. dev makes a bunch of not-quite-to-spec code, sometimes even ignoring opengl errors because "hey it seems to work",
3. at some point someone points out that everything's broken on other drivers and or gpus,
4. dev tries to figure out what's happening but by now too many issues are piled-up on top of each other,
5. dev whines that it has to be a driver bug

Graphics programmers that have written shaders and directx/opengl 8 hrs/day the last 5-10 years are skilled enough to find those silly mistakes. Usually you find real bugs. Another issue is that the hardware companies don't always fix the bugs, they add hacks for games instead since fixing the bug might cause all kinds of other problems on already released games.

@kalasa
I disagree, that's pathological.
Any vendor:
1. best case - will not give a damn about other vendors
2. typical case - will try to find solutions that benefit them more than competition
3. worst case - will find solutions that hurt the competition more than them (e.g. nvidia urging devs to constantly abuse tessellation)

Both nvidia and AMD are intelligent enough to understand that the likelihood of a developer accepting a change that lowers the performance on other hardware is very very small. Then they, of course, have a check-list of stuff where their card is strong and encourages the developer to use that. E.g. AMD generally like instancing, so they will push for that. But still, few developers will do changes that lowers the performance on other cards. If that's the case you add a special path for that vendor's cards.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

I'm crying for them. It's called social networking. Go to the Game Dev Conferences, get yourself known to AMD Devs, create a relationship at the conferences and follow up. Duh.

[bug77]

I'm crying for them. It's called social networking. Go to the Game Dev Conferences, get yourself known to AMD Devs, create a relationship at the conferences and follow up. Duh.

I think the question is if it's worth doing all the above. Because at the end of the day, Catalyst still doesn't cut it on Linux.

[Svartalf]

Phoronix: Some Linux Game Developers Don't Even Have Contacts At AMD

It's sad right now that we're going through a time where many new Linux game releases only work with NVIDIA graphics and flat out fail with AMD's Catalyst driver. While AMD is known to deliver game fixes several months late, making matters worse, it seems some game developers don't even know who to contact at AMD about Linux driver issues...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...e-No-AMD-Linux

MOST studios, unfortunately, don't have contacts within AMD, even within their devrel group- doesn't matter if you're talking Windows, Linux, or OSX. It's embarassing, to be honest- and nothing at-all new, to many's chagrin, myself included. If they were a little more accessible, they'd have most everyone actually straightened out and have it rock on their hardware and others. They're really keen on you doing OpenGL and D3D right because when you do that, it typically sings on their hardware.

Having said this, at least *SOME* of the studios could fix their woes in this space by reading the OpenGL Red Book, amongst other things, a bit more closely. At least one fairly major studio's sequel to a major franchise title has a piece of abjectly BAD code in it. And I know NVidia and AMD have workarounds for this boo-boo. (Don't know if the FOSS drivers (which should play this game...) have the workaround in the mix or not...) I've prattled on about it on an off and on basis in the forums here, in fact.

And...it's not like NVidia's even perfect, though. The Bard's Tale has some screw-ups in vertex order specification that on NVidia screw up in certain places within the game, screw up on Intel in OTHER places. All compliance fails that the drivers compensate for. Why does it take "time" to come up with the driver "fixes"? Because it takes someone finding whether it's actually a driver fail, and if it's not, what root cause FUBAR to compensate for in the game and how to do it without breaking the hell out of the drivers in the process. Doesn't matter which driver you're talking about. And it's not that OpenGL's hard to code for (it's not...)- it's that people aren't paying close attention to detail and then blaming drivers for the problems.

[Svartalf]

I only know how it works on windows, but there you send nvidia the game, they analyze it and then constantly nag you (in a good way) about changing stuff to improve performance. Everything from "don't do this" to "we rewrote one of your shaders, use that instead". That's the level of support you expect as a professional developer.

Yeah. Shame that AMD only typically does it with places like Epic, Id, etc.

[Svartalf]

So the article is basically saying that CS:GO is broken and Catalyst needs a profile to be able to run it flawlessly. How sad.

Profiles are bad. If you need a profile, the game developer didn't do his job very well.

PRECISELY.

[Svartalf]

Larabel shitting on AMD again, classy!

It is of course AMDs fault that some random devs cant be arsed (or are too stupid?) to contact AMD (forum, mail, fscking twitter) when running into issues.

LMAO

Actually, if you knew how hard it was to get in touch with a dev in the driver team through the Devrel chain in AMD, you'd be dialing that back a bit.