An Ex-Porter of AAA Games to Linux Talks about the Future of Linux Gaming
boilingsteam.com
boilingsteam.com
They shipped SteamVR with HTC, which is cool! But you need a powerful PC, $800, and plenty of free space. There's no competition to the $200 Oculus Go.
I guess the flat management structure isn't all that its cracked up to be.
The Lab was released in 2016, Artifact recently went to beta.
I guess it's also because they feel absolutely no pressure to do anything. As things are right now, Steam generates massive revenues for them (and profits since they remain a fairly small organization) so everything else looks like pocket money in comparison, especially anything hardware related.
Now they have no pockets to put todays money into for tomorrow.
What's a competitor store that's caught up with Steam?
That said I think the Valve hating in this thread is... overblown? DOTA2 and CS:GO are some of the most played games period outside of Fortnite, LOL and PUBG. HN has been complaining about Valve not releasing a new game for years but why release a new game when you have multiple, popular, heavily played titles? All the complaints seem strange coming from a site where many of the users work for SaaS companies that don't follow a business model that requires releasing an entirely new product every year or two.
You heard right. They have quite a good setup: the Steam-style GOG Galaxy client is entirely optional, you can also download, install and run your games manually without hindrance.
Well done web site with lots of user reviews. They also have very cheap older games and regular freebies - they're such a nice seller that you feel like buying something more expensive (Witcher 3 at half-price was a good deal ;-)
Edit: they also have a 'connect your Steam account' feature that allows you to have some of your Steam library games added to you GOG library.
Without SteamOS and Steam Machines we wouldn't have 3100 games with linux compatibility on steam so I would consider that a moderate success. For the remaining unsupported games using the windows steam client via wine works reasonably well because the client installs the missing libraries automatically.
But you're right they are certainly lacking in focus.
I don't think so. DXVK is extremely promising, as a way for running DX11's crap API on Vulkan.
Crap is having a 3D API and respective shader language stuck in a C world in 2018.
Instead of having to play "go fish" for libraries of various quality and support levels.
By the way, this applies to same productivity offered by Apple, Sony and Nintendo 3D APIs as well.
If you read the article properly, the only place where Vulkan is getting traction is on Linux.
Even on mobile space, Samsung and Google keep trying to advocate it, because being optional and with only Pixel and Samsung S devices having good support for Vulkan, no one is really bothering to use it, when considering targeting the widest user base.
https://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/vulkansupport.php#android_devices
The Tyranny of Structurelessness
I could see it being useful like, on airplanes or something, but I don't think we're at a place yet socially where someone could wear a VR headset on a plane and not look like a weirdo/pervert.
To jump to "weirdo/pervert" is quite a leap. Consuming 2D video in a headset that fits correctly (the Go is not adjustable in width) is much more relaxing and reduces eye strain in my experience.
As another commenter posted this has a lot of potential as a media consumption device (movies, moving comic books, spatial data) outside of the immersion or 3D gimmicks.
Also watching / listening to ASMR on the Oculus Go in bed is a very relaxing almost therapeutic experience.
While I will concede VR is still, at it's best, in to it's toddler years you should still give credit where credit is due.
The form factor and experience for the first standalone, wireless VR device is above par and raised the bar. The price point is, IMO, still too high for fast adoption but the experience is unparalleled and, dare I say, revolutionary in its space and makes me very excited to see where VR is going to _go_ (pun intended).
Do they, or we, even want a single company to run the most popular game distribution service, the most popular gaming chat service, the most popular game streaming service, the most popular VR platform and the most popular gaming OS?
That sounds awful to me.
Witcher 2 did indeed run bad on Linux the last time I looked at it, and that was many months after its release. It wasn't at 2 FPS anymore, but still only barely playable. I bet it still runs badly, I think my last test wasn't that long ago, but given the driver improvements since then I might be wrong. All that on a system where the game ran fine on Windows.
I know nothing about whether the criticism was too heated, but if a linux port is released and does not run properly on user's systems, then complaints are to be expected.
But I definitely played it again not too long ago (trying to get all the achievements) and I stand to the statement that performance was bad, but I did not write down when that was exactly. But didn't I make some screenshots? Yes, with Steam, and the details reveal that playthrough was in 2017! But that was also with a Radeon (but a stronger one than the first try, I upgraded in the meantime).
To be fair, I will download now and check the current FPS, but even it worked great now, the bad performance in 2017 makes clear that the vitriol expressed in the interview is wrong. They never made the game run great, at least not with AMD, and from what I read also Nvidia performance remained bad when compared to the Windows version.
This phrase made me sad, but it's an understandable statement. The article mentions several times that the Linux community in general was very toxic when it didn't get its way, and this isn't the first time I've heard the sentiment. It seems to me that the sense of elitism that Linux-users (including myself) generally carry can be enough to turn people off from trying to assist us from outside the community, and I don't think I'm the only one who has come to that conclusion.
If the developer offers that support, should I not report issues with the port? I don't follow that logic. I didn't pass any judgement on the game itself, but couldn't really give a positive recommendation.
For now, I value the lack of Linux ports for some items because I know the barrier to get it working on Wine (not always doable) will limit me and force me to get back to other, more valuable pursuits. Can't just game all the time as much as I'd like to at times.
As a mac user I'll agree with the statement "mac users are happy to pay for their port". I'm perfectly happy to pay for whatever is coming to mac, it just needs to work properly. When I do pay and the performance is crap I don't want to spend hours digging through forums while people point fingers at each other.
However, most AAA games are made with consoles in mind, so if i do want to play one, i'll get it for my PS4. It happens pretty rarely lately, though. Huge backlog of Mac indies to play, sorry AAA companies.
About the Witcher 2, the performance on Mac (and I guess on Linux too) was crap on launch. And that's what most people who bought the game saw, because they didn't expect the ports and bought when the Windows version launched and dual booted. Whatever they improved, it was too late, everyone had finished the game by now.
As for Witcher 3, I bought it but I only got like 1/3 of the way through it. Why? Because it only runs on Windows (I haven't tried Wine lately, so this may have changed) and rebooting to play a game is disruptive to all the stuff I run on the Mac OS side of things.
That doesn't bode well for my chances of rushing in and preordering Cyberpunk, sorry CD PROJEKT.
Edit: please no one explain to me how Macs don't have the hardware to run games, I hackintosh, have a proper video card and stuff like the ports of the Metro games work just fine(tm).
I finished Witcher 3 on Linux using DXVK. Not sure if it works on Mac (probably not), and it's not 100% perfect yet, but it is pretty good performance wise already.
Problem is: out of sight, out of mind. I've kinda lost interest. Pretty sad, considering how enthusiastic I was on launch.
Don't look at "mac gaming" sites. Look on the mainstream sites that favor indies (i read rockpapershotgun regularly, for example) and check if they have mac versions on Steam and GoG.
Do not bother with the Mac app store, it's worthless for gaming.
Is there any practical difference for applications whether GPU is outside or on the CPU chip? Any major difference in drivers?
For example, dedicated GPUs usually can't make use of shared memory.
On the other hand, shared memory has slower access rate, meaning integrated GPU with it cannot be as faster.
This is just one difference, there are others.