Steam's Top Grossing Games Of 2016

[funfunctor]

No one is going to use RHEL/CentOS to play games lol ?! wtf gave you that idea? Those are for corporate usage.

Ubuntu (or a derivative), Arch & Fedora are the top distros people use for gaming for obvious reasons. They have frequently updated kern/mesa/llvm and libdrm packages that make up the graphics critical path so they can get their perf and GL version or use radv for open radeon/vulkan support.

Vulkan doesn't make it easier for games to port to Linux at all, not directly at least. In fact Vulkan is *far* more work initially than GL is to get something rendering. *However*, Vulkan leaves the developer with far more consistent performance and render correctness results across supported platforms. The Vulkan API also allows for the drivers in the different platforms to have more consistent drivers due to their far great simplicity compared to GL.

Regarding games and getting them ported - what the main issue is for game studio's is introducing Linux into their development *process* and that means getting some of their developers using Linux as their desktop environment for game development over the Windows+Visual Studio IDE combo. That is going to be a tough sell because the tooling on Windows allows the developers to focus on their application (game) without worrying about anything regarding platform specifics at all. The price of that convenience is ports become harder and developers end up lacking skills because they have no idea what happens behind the "Compile" button of the IDE.

If you want to help game developers, better write blogs/docs that are blindly clear on how to get a typical Windows/Visual Studio game developer workstation going on Linux and how to use the tooling around on Linux. e.g., cmake, gdb, how shared libraries work properly and so on..

[funfunctor]

Michael ^ you should write a article about the above, so much misinformation on the subject..

[Geopirate]

Geopirate Does "code to the standard and not for the browser" ring any bells? Things are never as pretty as depicted in the incubating/development/standardization stage. I'm with you that with Vulkan porting will be easier (possibly significantly so), but porting a game in a few days is not going to happen. What could happen, is developers can run their tests on all target platforms during development and release for all at the same time. Unfortunately, Khronos does not offer any tools (like Microsoft does), so this won't happen.

Once again, OpenGL was supposed to do exactly that: code once, write anywhere.

And the point of the file copy example, was that even for trivial applications, there are simply too many variables to take into account to make porting "in a few days" feasible. Yes, I know dev and QA are different teams, but simply the fact that you need an approved test plan ensures anything will take more than those few days.

Even the browser situation is better now that it was even a year or two ago. This is a much better comparison to make if you are at all familiar with the standardization of HTML 3+ vs HTML5 today. If you are uncomfortable with "a few days", would you be more comfortable with 20-30% of the time for a comparable OpenGL port? They actually do have a suite of tools and test cases comparable to Microsoft's offering. This was one of the major features of this that everyone agreed was needed when they designed Vulkan. Keep in mind the working group consisted of mostly software and driver engineers. Most notable the people from Valve who did the Vulkan port of DotA2 as part of the process, it works quite well.

[Geopirate]

No one is going to use RHEL/CentOS to play games lol ?! wtf gave you that idea? Those are for corporate usage.

Ubuntu (or a derivative), Arch & Fedora are the top distros people use for gaming for obvious reasons. They have frequently updated kern/mesa/llvm and libdrm packages that make up the graphics critical path so they can get their perf and GL version or use radv for open radeon/vulkan support.

Vulkan doesn't make it easier for games to port to Linux at all, not directly at least. In fact Vulkan is *far* more work initially than GL is to get something rendering. *However*, Vulkan leaves the developer with far more consistent performance and render correctness results across supported platforms. The Vulkan API also allows for the drivers in the different platforms to have more consistent drivers due to their far great simplicity compared to GL.

Regarding games and getting them ported - what the main issue is for game studio's is introducing Linux into their development *process* and that means getting some of their developers using Linux as their desktop environment for game development over the Windows+Visual Studio IDE combo. That is going to be a tough sell because the tooling on Windows allows the developers to focus on their application (game) without worrying about anything regarding platform specifics at all. The price of that convenience is ports become harder and developers end up lacking skills because they have no idea what happens behind the "Compile" button of the IDE.

If you want to help game developers, better write blogs/docs that are blindly clear on how to get a typical Windows/Visual Studio game developer workstation going on Linux and how to use the tooling around on Linux. e.g., cmake, gdb, how shared libraries work properly and so on..

Wow, so much misinformation in such a package. You refuted my statement in the first paragraph then contradicted yourself to agree with me in the second.

Your third paragraph mostly supports what I said. You added that it's more work initially, which I agree with, but that isn't really the scenario we're talking about. Once a game is made and close to or already shipped on Windows or console and they are debating a Linux port or not, this is already done, they have a completed game and are months or years after getting something rendered initially.

I'm not sure what planet you live on where C/C++ developers don't know what happens when they compile. If you're talking about an Indie studio with 2 programmers, maybe? If you're talking about people working on the Source engine, Unity or UE4 or something similar like the games here, yes they know. Windows as a development platform is in third place for usability for anything outside of .NET. Why do you think so many developers are on Mac/Linux/BSD???? It's not about the development environment so much as it is about the target platform and the differences for a different target platform. Studios that use DirectX exclusively will largely continue to do so but others are overwhelmingly positive about Vulkan and it's potential.

I would really suggest you don't write these blogs you mention because you don't seem to understand a lot of things. There are tons and tons of resources to set up a development workstation.....

[sbolokanov]

Again that "majority", OK I dunno from where these majorties came in... on steam survey i see "Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS 64 bit" on first place

Here i counted 5 out of 12 for Platinum or 43 out Top 100 available for Linux, but Michael like to missuse word majority... i mean it is fine to be optimistic, but it is good to be real sometimes

You know that Steam's statistic isn't really a good source for information, right?
It just dumps some stats, that was collected from some steam users. I wonder if it's even from 10% of the users…

But I agree on the use of „majority“.

[Kemosabe]

I am interessted in 0 titles of the "majority". Maybe I will grab Rocket League but it will take some time until I am that desparate. DarkSoulsX for Linux isn't going to happen either. No bright Linux gaming future at least for me.

[funfunctor]

Wow, so much misinformation in such a package. You refuted my statement in the first paragraph then contradicted yourself to agree with me in the second.

Your third paragraph mostly supports what I said. You added that it's more work initially, which I agree with, but that isn't really the scenario we're talking about. Once a game is made and close to or already shipped on Windows or console and they are debating a Linux port or not, this is already done, they have a completed game and are months or years after getting something rendered initially.

I'm not sure what planet you live on where C/C++ developers don't know what happens when they compile. If you're talking about an Indie studio with 2 programmers, maybe? If you're talking about people working on the Source engine, Unity or UE4 or something similar like the games here, yes they know. Windows as a development platform is in third place for usability for anything outside of .NET. Why do you think so many developers are on Mac/Linux/BSD???? It's not about the development environment so much as it is about the target platform and the differences for a different target platform. Studios that use DirectX exclusively will largely continue to do so but others are overwhelmingly positive about Vulkan and it's potential.

I would really suggest you don't write these blogs you mention because you don't seem to understand a lot of things. There are tons and tons of resources to set up a development workstation.....

Funny guy, I am pretty darn sure I know what I am talking about, I wonder how many contributions you have made to the graphics critical path. But perhaps I should then add arrogant idiot to the list of why the community does not see more ports..

*Game developers* don't use Linux/BSD, if you think they do then you know nothing about the industry.

[dungeon]

You know that Steam's statistic isn't really a good source for information, right?
It just dumps some stats, that was collected from some steam users. I wonder if it's even from 10% of the users…

Well which other one would be good or better source for this info? I believe those are Top 100 games, because for sure does not looks like to me that those are Bottom 100 So does not looks like something nowhere near total incorrect, as of course you have couple error potentional in every statistic, in statictics it is normaly like that... you take part of audience, as never all is active everytime, and draw some average results, etc... but picture in large is there and when it is on larger amount of time, it really prove some movments that happened, etc...

But I agree on the use of „majority“.

Cool

[pal666]

After all, games using OpenGL weren't ported overnight and OpenGL is also cross platform, isn't it?

what makes you think glx is cross platform?

[pal666]

porting a game in a few days is not going to happen.

games should not be ported at all. they should use any major engine, all of which are already ported

Khronos does not offer any tools

false statement