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Rocket League left behind on macOS and Linux due to DirectX 11 shift

145 points by Impossible 7y ago

cycloptic 7y ago
It's because of things like this that I won't play closed-source games anymore. The modding community has demonstrated repeatedly that they are willing to maintain ports of these things, but only as long as the source code is open so they can actually, you know, do the port properly. And before someone rails on me about anti-cheat, or about reduced profits because of the whole game showing up on torrent sites, I'm not talking about that stuff -- I'm talking about the bare minimum client code that is required to run the game.
- penagwin 7y ago
  Serious question - What open source games do you play? I'd consider myself a "gamer" and I can't think of many recent successful games that are open source. Indie games sure, modding support sure, games without any DRM sure. But very few are "open source".
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    I don't really have much to say here, if your definition of "successful" means giant console release with a multi-million dollar budget, then obviously I can't say anything because the console manufacturers all ban open source on their platforms. And making a giant list of every small open source game I've ever played is not something I have time to do right now. There are a lot of them. Many of them I've found just because they are side projects that people post on HN.
  - mrec 7y ago
    I think there used to be an informal expectation that games in the Humble Bundle would be open-sourced if they did well there. (Just the code, not the art assets etc.) https://indiegamebundle.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Humble_Bundle_open_source_games https://indiegamebundle.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Humble_Bundl...
  - antepodius 7y ago
    Nethack's still being developed. You could say it's 'early access'. Probably my favourite game ever. Of more recent origin, Space station 13 is great. It's a tile-based multiplayer (up to about a hundred) in-depth space station disaster simulator. A stable community of servers and players, innovating and sharing patches among the various major code branches. (The codebase is a nightmare because the game's written in an ancient engine from the 90's, but that just makes what they've managed more impressive.) It's been over 10 years of intermittent, branching, and re-merging development.
  - kaibee 7y ago
    Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is probably the best example of a "community driven" open-source game. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA
    - kgwxd 7y ago
      I absolutely love that game. I'd really like to see people play it live on Twitch, I think it'd go really well with the live chatting dynamic. There has been very few, but they always use tiles and I don't want tiles overwriting my imaginary version of objects.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    freespace 2 is open source. not exactly modern, but the source code was released a few years after the game launched.
- rapsey 7y ago
  So you’re just going to play tux racer forever?
  - drewbug 7y ago
    don't forget Pingus! https://pingus.seul.org https://pingus.seul.org
  - cycloptic 7y ago
    There is a slow trickle of open source games coming out, but you have to actually look to find them. Github does contests for it every year: https://gameoff.github.com https://gameoff.github.com
  - antepodius 7y ago
    Nethack et al. and a giant legion of other roguelikes, SS13, some space sim knockoffs... I'm sure there's more.
- catalogia 7y ago
  Some closed source games get open source engines, if the game was good enough in the first place to motivate a team of open source developers. Morrowind (OpenMW), Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (OpenRCT2) and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (OpenTTD) are three very nice examples. All three engines are much better than the originals.
- vernie 7y ago
  Linux users' idea of fun is building from source.
kyriakos 7y ago
If user base on those platforms is very small then it makes no sense for the developers to spend resources to keep it updated. At the end of the day its about demand and supply.
- flatiron 7y ago
  What about switch and ps4? Are they being dropped? They don’t support direct x 11.
  - ssully 7y ago
    Switch and PS4 players make up more then 0.3% of their playerbase, unlike Linux and Mac Users, so they will be supported.
    - Crisco 7y ago
      So I have no experience in 3D graphics and very little experience in game design (I wrote a 2D game in high school but that's it), but if they are already going from DX9 to DX11 why don't they go to another library that supports all the platforms they already develop for such as Vulkan? I'd imagine that would better future-proof their game to make adapting to other platforms that are released in the future easier. So how hard would it be to go from DX to something else? As stated before, I have no experience in this area so I'm being completely sincere with my question.
      - ssully 7y ago
        The developer has come out and said that as of the announcement of them dropping support for Mac/Linux, the two platforms combine make up 0.6% of their active player base [1]. I am guessing they just did the math and decided the cost of switching APIs to something like Vulkan is not worth it when such a small portion of their users would benefit from it. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/rocket-league-will-drop-support-for-mac-linux-versions-in-march/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/rocket-league-will-dr...
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Well… Linux and macOS users can try it under WINE, perhaps?
- kgwxd 7y ago
  For how long? People train for this game like any real-world sport. Imagine if a bill to make football illegal within a year seemed very likely to pass, do you keep practicing?
  - xboxnolifes 7y ago
    If I played RL at a professional level (I do at a collegiate one), I would make sure I have a windows partition. It's not a massive issue for this scenario.
    - kgwxd 7y ago
      Most people don't play and practice sports truly expecting to become a paid professional.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Until EAC fucks up again in WINE.
- briffle 7y ago
  not if it has any epic owned anit-cheat software.
ben1040 7y ago
The refund process is a mess. I followed the directions on the Reddit page last night and got an email from Steam saying they’re refusing the refund because it’s been more than two weeks. Other people on the comments have said similar things.
notinventedhear 7y ago
I was _so_ excited when Rocket League first came to Linux, but that was several years before Proton[1] was released. But according to [2] the game runs really well on Linux via Proton. Personally, I don't see any problem using Proton to play the game on my Linux gaming-rig. [1]: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton [2]: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950 https://www.protondb.com/app/252950
- MFogleman 7y ago
  Proton is pretty great, but there are hardware limitations. Im running a pretty old video card. I can run games like Deep Rock Galactic on Windows, but it wont work on Linux as Proton needs newer linux drivers, which don't support my card, in order to run that game.
- protanopia 7y ago
  Proton works great for single player games but isn't that great of an idea for multiplayer games. Their anti-cheat system could end up banning proton users. I believe this has happened to Destiny 2 and GTA:O players.
- kgwxd 7y ago
  The concern is that Epic will add EAC and that Proton is going to cause you to get banned or they pull the game from Steam and move it to EGS which doesn't run on Linux, and likely never will. So the question becomes why should I put more effort into a game that's likely not going to be available to me in the very near future?
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  Epic acquired Kamu, makers of Easy Anti Cheat, for use in Fortnite. EAC is known to block Linux players using Proton, and there's decent odds Epic adds EAC to Rocket League.
Operyl 7y ago
I’d be normally more upset about this, but the last sentence is a biggie in this situation. Psyonix is offering full refunds for the base game (which is better than nothing, although I wish it included DLC etc) to anyone, even outside of the two week window.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- thethrowboat 7y ago
  Atleast I got dlc refunded. I had to make manual refund ticket, automatic one was rejected because I had few hundred hours of game time.
jannes 7y ago
Does anyone know why DirectX 11 is so much better than DirectX 9? Looks like they were using some kind of translation layer that was translating DX9 calls to OpenGL.
- monocasa 7y ago
  DirectX9 is ancient, like somewhere between an original Xbox and an Xbox 360 in features. It's very difficult to use any modern graphics techniques with it. DirectX 11 is the most recent version of that classic style of graphics APIs, with DX12 being to DX11 sort of what Vulkan is to OpenGL. If I had a legacy DX9 codebase and I wanted to use some features of newer GPUs than what existed in 2002, I would convert over to DX11.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  More modern programming interface that matches the hardware better. Newer shader model support + newer shader compiler Newer/more powerful debugging tools Access to large new features like compute shaders, texture arrays, uniform buffers, etc Access to new surface formats to enable features like VR and HDR Better API performance + access to performance-enabling features like multi-threading Direct3D 9 is nearly 20 years old. OpenGL has at least been receiving new extensions on a regular basis (though people are finally shifting to Vulkan) - with the exception of a few things shoved in by driver vendors via back doors, D3D9 has not changed at all. Driver compatibility for D3D9 is also very bad at this point - the driver vendors don't give a shit about breaking existing software that uses it. I still occasionally hit driver bugs when working on old code that targets 9. Code targeting 11 will have fewer problems.
MFogleman 7y ago
Rocket League's creator, Psyonix, was bought by Epic last year. The is concern/belief that this move is a precursor to making Rocket League an Epic Store exclusive, as the Epic store is Windows only. Psyonix stated that they would offer refunds for Linux/ macOS users. In the first few days post announcement, everyones' refund was being denied. It appears that this has since been resolved. I received my refund yesterday.
- globalproctd 7y ago
  The Epic Store is not Windows only. I run it, and games from the Epic Store on my Macbook Pro.
  - jovial_cavalier 7y ago
    But Steam as a platform pushes linux, because the Steam box is linux-based.
    - LemonAndroid 7y ago
      [Whataboutism?]
    - penagwin 7y ago
      They do what now? AFAIK steam itself doesn't care of your game or application is windows only, I don't beleive they incentivize multiplatform support. They do push for making more games easily playable on Linux, but they aren't pushing the game developers to release for it.
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      Sadly, SteamOS is so dead that they quietly removed their catalog links to the OEMs supporting it.
      - jamesgeck0 7y ago
        If SteamOS is dead, why are they hiring engineers for it? https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=36 https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=36
ch_123 7y ago
Maybe I am missing some context here, but why would a game studio make a backwards-compatibility-breaking change to the engine a five year old game? I know that it's a popular game, but this sounds like an excuse to me.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  It's backwards compatible for 99.4% of their users. Maybe there is future feature work they want to do, but are limited by DirectX9. Maybe they got tired of working with a 20 year graphics library and it's cheaper in the long term for them to update to the latest.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    As someone currently maintaining code that targets Direct3D 9, it's really not worth living with the constraints if the vast majority of your users can run stuff targeted at newer APIs like D3D11. I don't blame them. Newer APIs deliver better performance and useful features, and there are great new debugging tools that don't work with D3D9.
- Kapura 7y ago
  Rocket league is an active multiplayer game that falls under the "Games as a Service" umbrella. There are limited time events, and new aesthetic upgrades being added to the game at a regular clip. Because of that, it's not a "five year old game" but rather a "game in active development." Think about it like a game like World of Warcraft. It wasn't built once and then released, but rather new content is being produced for it constantly, so the game engine itself needs to be improved at every level as consumer hardware changes and improves.
cwt137 7y ago
The article makes it sound like they were running DX9 in Linux and MacOS. If true, how is this so? Is there some type of X11 extension that implements DX9 or something?
- ubercow13 7y ago
  It's called wine. But I have no idea if they were using it.
  - cwt137 7y ago
    Wine implements DX11. So that is not the issue why the company is dropping support for Linux and Mac.
- gpderetta 7y ago
  They probably have their own abstarction layer that implements the subset of DX9 they are using on top of opengl. This is very common on linux ports as it is hard to justify the cost of a full rewrite of the graphic engine.
  - protanopia 7y ago
    Feral Interactive has managed to port many games to Vulkan. They even updated their port of Mad Max to Vulkan after release.
    - gpderetta 7y ago
      Yes, and I own copies of many of their ports :)
- iuweriopu 7y ago
  Not really, if you read carefully they are saying that their OpenGL renderer is very similar to the DirectX 9 one (probably because feature parity between these two APIs), but they have difficulty matching DirectX 11 features with OpenGL. Like a database ORM which can have Postgres/MySQL as the backend, but then you want to replace Postgres with BigTable. It will be very hard to keep the MySQL support.
threatripper 7y ago
SuperTuxKart (https://supertuxkart.net https://supertuxkart.net) is a free racing game similar to Mario Kart and it also has a "Soccer" mode where you play in an arena with a ball and two goals like in Rocket League.
- csande17 7y ago
  I love SuperTuxKart. It's the first game I install on any new computer, and I've beaten the story mode several times. I usually focus on the racing modes, but I've tried Soccer as well. SuperTuxKart is not an alternative to Rocket League! If you go into it expecting anything Rocket League has -- polished realistic-looking graphics, physics that let you jump and tilt and drive up the walls of the stadium, a thriving online play community, a matchmaking system -- you're going to be disappointed.
  - threatripper 7y ago
    Your criticism is correct. It is similar in the gaming principle but way way behind in user friendliness and polishing. That said, as far as I know, this is the best alternative that we have right now on Linux. Having played it with kids (who never played Rocket League before) I can say that it can be a fun activity.
- lullibrulli 7y ago
  While true in theory, the gameplay vastly differs to say the least.
- vernie 7y ago
  This is the "just use GIMP" of games.
aaron-santos 7y ago
> Unfortunately, our macOS and Linux native clients depend on our DX9 implementation for their OpenGL renderer to function. I'm not a gamedev and just have some hobby xp in DX and OpenGL, but I don't begin to understand why an OpenGL renderer would in any way depend on DX. Is this just code for "we have such few Mac and Linux users that it isn't worth our time to support OpenGL"?
- plopz 7y ago
  I would imagine the game is using dx9 and for linux/macos it would run through a dx9 -> opengl translation layer.
- ilikehurdles 7y ago
  They probably use some outdated translation layer that converts DX9 calls to OpenGL ones so that they didn't have to maintain two renderers or use a higher level 3rd-party engine that abstracts over those calls. Newer games using Steam's Proton, like Sekiro, look and perform nearly equivalently to their Windows DX11 counterparts. I know Proton isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's an example off the top of my head. I guess CS:GO is another more apt one.
- larkost 7y ago
  They wrote the game targeting DX9, and then wrote a custom shim to translate from DX9 to OpenGL calls. Now they are transitioning to DX11 to get some newer features, and have evaluated the amount of work that it would take to either update that shim layer for DX11 -> OpenGL/Vulcan for Linux, or DX11 -> Metal for MacOS (remember, Apple is depreciating OpenGL on their platforms). If linux and MacOS combine account for less than 0.3 percent of their revenues... then even as a MacOS guy I have to see their logic... there is little chance of recouping the heavy lift that they would have.
- Rannath 7y ago
  AFAIK: The way DX9 works for Windows software running under Wine, is that wine has a layer that intercepts all DX9 calls and retranslates them into OpenGL. There is no equivalent for DX11.
Jerry2 7y ago
Epic is probably one of the biggest enemies of Linux since they're killing Linux support of every game/product they buy [1]. And while games aren't as important as some business/productivity applications, people do get lots of enjoyment from playing an occasional game. It's a great stress relief. And now even those little indulgences are being taken away. Epic's CEO, Tim Sweeney, is extremely negative on Linux if you check out his Twitter feed [2] and I get a feeling from reading his comments that he despises Linux with passion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241 [2] https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698...
- m4rtink 7y ago
  Oh, wow, I was not aware it is this bad! I kinda expected they just don't care but not they are actively sabotaging Linux compatibility...
- bob1029 7y ago
  I honestly cannot blame someone in that business for hating linux. The number of variables to test for if you only care about windows gamers is staggering. Linux is 10x harder than windows if you care about supporting any arbitrary distribution and driver stack. I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. I understand SDL2 exists. I understand that Valve has "mostly" pulled off linux/macos support. But, is it really worth it from a business perspective for all game developers to support linux? How big and wide do your margins need to be before it makes financial sense to fully support both operating systems? How many features (or even titles) will stay in the backlog because your developers are busy chasing down the 5000th weird linux network/GPU/sound bug that only occurs on this one kinda-old version of Ubuntu?
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
    > I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. As I understand it, this is the direction Steam is heading by running games in containers.
kgwxd 7y ago
This is what I hate about ever-changing games. If it's such a big change, just make a new game, Rocket League 2. I'm sure people will still complain for some other reason, but no one looses what they paid for.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  These days even if it's a sequel it might just be a repackaged update. Overwatch 2 is just Overwatch with additional stuff on top, for example - supposedly they both can play in the same matches on the same servers.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  They'll still not want to kill the servers for the old game and the net result is the same - users stuck with an old game that can't go online.
  - nybble41 7y ago
    There's no reason they can't just let users run their own servers for older games. We're not talking about a MMORPG here, where centralizing the servers might make sense in order to give everyone a shared experience.
therealmarv 7y ago
Wow, in the past it was 1 or 2 different 3D architectures. Now we have 3 of them: DirectX on Windows, Metal on macOS, Vulkan/OpenGL4 on Linux
- carlosdp 7y ago
  Vulkan/OpenGL are multiplatform
  - mroche 7y ago
    And with the use of Vulkan, you get the modern improvements (and technical complexity that comes with it) on both Windows and Linux through hardware vendors' drivers, and MoltenVK for bridging that code to macOS and iOS. I don't have a comparison chart between DX12, Vulkan, and Metal but if engine authors can standardize on the open standard of Vulkan, it could have huge effects on creating cross-platform games and applications. A big push for this wouldn't be having authors like Epic, Unity, or CryEngine do this, but all the private publishers investing the time to learn and switch their next-gen engines over to Vulkan.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      Another problem with OS X support is that there are no modern nVidia cards for modern OS X machines as there are no drivers (Apple refuses to sign them, and nVidia refuses to release unsigned drivers that people could install with SIP disabled)... but many PC games advertise for nVidia.
      - mroche 7y ago
        > but many PC games advertise for nVidia. This is another issue unto itself. This often stems not from a CUDA/OpenCL debate, but rather how well a particular development group may be supported by either vendor in terms of tech and driver support. NVIDIA is usually pretty good at supporting game makers, and getting support for their GameWorks libraries added. GW for a long time was a weak spot for AMD as they couldn’t add proper driver support, crippling performance and limiting feature sets. A good amount of GW is OSS now, so getting those features and support in is up to AMD. I haven’t read the EULAs though. https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-source-github https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-source-github
thrower123 7y ago
I'm always amazed by the longevity of DirectX 9. It was a truly excellent graphics API. DirectX 11 had more features, and was in some ways better designed, but it was always really painful to have to reimplement some of the things that were stripped out of the D3DX utility libraries that formerly were part of the SDK.
ErneX 7y ago
The game ran pretty bad on macOS though. Same computer with a GTX 1080 runs the game on win10 at hundreds of FPS with everything maxed vs barely able to run the game on macOS with all the detail on minimum.
dang 7y ago
The previous thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133431.
a13n 7y ago
Honestly the game was not playable on macOS. If you wanted to play on your MacBook you had to run Windows with bootcamp, which you can still do. So I doubt this change will really impact anyone. Can anyone talk about how it plays on Linux? I can’t imagine a huge playerbase there.
- thethrowboat 7y ago
  60 fps@1440p with gtx 1060 on linux, can't remember if it was limited to 60 fps, but that was good enough for me. Never tried in windows.
neura 7y ago
It's both surprising and unsurprising to me how many comments here are focused on EGS (which is not what the article is about) and almost nobody is talking about how Rocket League's macOs and Linux players make up less than 0.3% of the players, combined. SMH
- user_50123890 7y ago
  ^ developer time is worth crazy much, it's just irresponsible to waste lots on it on a 0.3% of the users. just go ask the actual playerbase if they'd prefer the devs working on linux/macos ports or actual gameplay/issues affecting the average player and see the answer.
  - isbjorn16 7y ago
    Seems more irresponsible to not refund the game and DLCs, though. What refunds are happening seem sporadic and limited to base game only, which is pretty reprehensible.
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
What I find a bit odd about this is the existence of the Switch version. Surely the Switch's graphical power, presumably it's not going to get a bunch of fancy new DX11-esque features. I imagine they'll do the minimum to keep the Switch compatible with other clients in multiplayer. But if they're keeping multiplayer compatible with an older Switch codebase, why not keep it compatible with older Mac and Linux branches?

145 points by Impossible 7y ago

It's because of things like this that I won't play closed-source games anymore. The modding community has demonstrated repeatedly that they are willing to maintain ports of these things, but only as long as the source code is open so they can actually, you know, do the port properly. And before someone rails on me about anti-cheat, or about reduced profits because of the whole game showing up on torrent sites, I'm not talking about that stuff -- I'm talking about the bare minimum client code that is required to run the game.

penagwin 7y ago
Serious question - What open source games do you play? I'd consider myself a "gamer" and I can't think of many recent successful games that are open source. Indie games sure, modding support sure, games without any DRM sure. But very few are "open source".
- cycloptic 7y ago
  I don't really have much to say here, if your definition of "successful" means giant console release with a multi-million dollar budget, then obviously I can't say anything because the console manufacturers all ban open source on their platforms. And making a giant list of every small open source game I've ever played is not something I have time to do right now. There are a lot of them. Many of them I've found just because they are side projects that people post on HN.
- mrec 7y ago
  I think there used to be an informal expectation that games in the Humble Bundle would be open-sourced if they did well there. (Just the code, not the art assets etc.) https://indiegamebundle.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Humble_Bundle_open_source_games https://indiegamebundle.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Humble_Bundl...
- antepodius 7y ago
  Nethack's still being developed. You could say it's 'early access'. Probably my favourite game ever. Of more recent origin, Space station 13 is great. It's a tile-based multiplayer (up to about a hundred) in-depth space station disaster simulator. A stable community of servers and players, innovating and sharing patches among the various major code branches. (The codebase is a nightmare because the game's written in an ancient engine from the 90's, but that just makes what they've managed more impressive.) It's been over 10 years of intermittent, branching, and re-merging development.
- kaibee 7y ago
  Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is probably the best example of a "community driven" open-source game. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA
  - kgwxd 7y ago
    I absolutely love that game. I'd really like to see people play it live on Twitch, I think it'd go really well with the live chatting dynamic. There has been very few, but they always use tiles and I don't want tiles overwriting my imaginary version of objects.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  freespace 2 is open source. not exactly modern, but the source code was released a few years after the game launched.
rapsey 7y ago
So you’re just going to play tux racer forever?
- drewbug 7y ago
  don't forget Pingus! https://pingus.seul.org https://pingus.seul.org
- cycloptic 7y ago
  There is a slow trickle of open source games coming out, but you have to actually look to find them. Github does contests for it every year: https://gameoff.github.com https://gameoff.github.com
- antepodius 7y ago
  Nethack et al. and a giant legion of other roguelikes, SS13, some space sim knockoffs... I'm sure there's more.
catalogia 7y ago
Some closed source games get open source engines, if the game was good enough in the first place to motivate a team of open source developers. Morrowind (OpenMW), Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 (OpenRCT2) and Transport Tycoon Deluxe (OpenTTD) are three very nice examples. All three engines are much better than the originals.
vernie 7y ago
Linux users' idea of fun is building from source.

kyriakos 7y ago

If user base on those platforms is very small then it makes no sense for the developers to spend resources to keep it updated. At the end of the day its about demand and supply.

flatiron 7y ago
What about switch and ps4? Are they being dropped? They don’t support direct x 11.
- ssully 7y ago
  Switch and PS4 players make up more then 0.3% of their playerbase, unlike Linux and Mac Users, so they will be supported.
  - Crisco 7y ago
    So I have no experience in 3D graphics and very little experience in game design (I wrote a 2D game in high school but that's it), but if they are already going from DX9 to DX11 why don't they go to another library that supports all the platforms they already develop for such as Vulkan? I'd imagine that would better future-proof their game to make adapting to other platforms that are released in the future easier. So how hard would it be to go from DX to something else? As stated before, I have no experience in this area so I'm being completely sincere with my question.
    - ssully 7y ago
      The developer has come out and said that as of the announcement of them dropping support for Mac/Linux, the two platforms combine make up 0.6% of their active player base [1]. I am guessing they just did the math and decided the cost of switching APIs to something like Vulkan is not worth it when such a small portion of their users would benefit from it. [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/rocket-league-will-drop-support-for-mac-linux-versions-in-march/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/rocket-league-will-dr...

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago

Well… Linux and macOS users can try it under WINE, perhaps?

kgwxd 7y ago
For how long? People train for this game like any real-world sport. Imagine if a bill to make football illegal within a year seemed very likely to pass, do you keep practicing?
- xboxnolifes 7y ago
  If I played RL at a professional level (I do at a collegiate one), I would make sure I have a windows partition. It's not a massive issue for this scenario.
  - kgwxd 7y ago
    Most people don't play and practice sports truly expecting to become a paid professional.
m-p-3 7y ago
Until EAC fucks up again in WINE.
briffle 7y ago
not if it has any epic owned anit-cheat software.

ben1040 7y ago

The refund process is a mess. I followed the directions on the Reddit page last night and got an email from Steam saying they’re refusing the refund because it’s been more than two weeks. Other people on the comments have said similar things.

notinventedhear 7y ago

I was _so_ excited when Rocket League first came to Linux, but that was several years before Proton[1] was released. But according to [2] the game runs really well on Linux via Proton. Personally, I don't see any problem using Proton to play the game on my Linux gaming-rig. [1]: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton [2]: https://www.protondb.com/app/252950 https://www.protondb.com/app/252950

MFogleman 7y ago
Proton is pretty great, but there are hardware limitations. Im running a pretty old video card. I can run games like Deep Rock Galactic on Windows, but it wont work on Linux as Proton needs newer linux drivers, which don't support my card, in order to run that game.
protanopia 7y ago
Proton works great for single player games but isn't that great of an idea for multiplayer games. Their anti-cheat system could end up banning proton users. I believe this has happened to Destiny 2 and GTA:O players.
kgwxd 7y ago
The concern is that Epic will add EAC and that Proton is going to cause you to get banned or they pull the game from Steam and move it to EGS which doesn't run on Linux, and likely never will. So the question becomes why should I put more effort into a game that's likely not going to be available to me in the very near future?
wlesieutre 7y ago
Epic acquired Kamu, makers of Easy Anti Cheat, for use in Fortnite. EAC is known to block Linux players using Proton, and there's decent odds Epic adds EAC to Rocket League.

Operyl 7y ago

I’d be normally more upset about this, but the last sentence is a biggie in this situation. Psyonix is offering full refunds for the base game (which is better than nothing, although I wish it included DLC etc) to anyone, even outside of the two week window.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thethrowboat 7y ago
Atleast I got dlc refunded. I had to make manual refund ticket, automatic one was rejected because I had few hundred hours of game time.

jannes 7y ago

Does anyone know why DirectX 11 is so much better than DirectX 9? Looks like they were using some kind of translation layer that was translating DX9 calls to OpenGL.

monocasa 7y ago
DirectX9 is ancient, like somewhere between an original Xbox and an Xbox 360 in features. It's very difficult to use any modern graphics techniques with it. DirectX 11 is the most recent version of that classic style of graphics APIs, with DX12 being to DX11 sort of what Vulkan is to OpenGL. If I had a legacy DX9 codebase and I wanted to use some features of newer GPUs than what existed in 2002, I would convert over to DX11.
kevingadd 7y ago
More modern programming interface that matches the hardware better. Newer shader model support + newer shader compiler Newer/more powerful debugging tools Access to large new features like compute shaders, texture arrays, uniform buffers, etc Access to new surface formats to enable features like VR and HDR Better API performance + access to performance-enabling features like multi-threading Direct3D 9 is nearly 20 years old. OpenGL has at least been receiving new extensions on a regular basis (though people are finally shifting to Vulkan) - with the exception of a few things shoved in by driver vendors via back doors, D3D9 has not changed at all. Driver compatibility for D3D9 is also very bad at this point - the driver vendors don't give a shit about breaking existing software that uses it. I still occasionally hit driver bugs when working on old code that targets 9. Code targeting 11 will have fewer problems.

MFogleman 7y ago

Rocket League's creator, Psyonix, was bought by Epic last year. The is concern/belief that this move is a precursor to making Rocket League an Epic Store exclusive, as the Epic store is Windows only. Psyonix stated that they would offer refunds for Linux/ macOS users. In the first few days post announcement, everyones' refund was being denied. It appears that this has since been resolved. I received my refund yesterday.

globalproctd 7y ago
The Epic Store is not Windows only. I run it, and games from the Epic Store on my Macbook Pro.
- jovial_cavalier 7y ago
  But Steam as a platform pushes linux, because the Steam box is linux-based.
  - LemonAndroid 7y ago
    [Whataboutism?]
  - penagwin 7y ago
    They do what now? AFAIK steam itself doesn't care of your game or application is windows only, I don't beleive they incentivize multiplatform support. They do push for making more games easily playable on Linux, but they aren't pushing the game developers to release for it.
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    Sadly, SteamOS is so dead that they quietly removed their catalog links to the OEMs supporting it.
    - jamesgeck0 7y ago
      If SteamOS is dead, why are they hiring engineers for it? https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=36 https://www.valvesoftware.com/en/jobs?job_id=36

ch_123 7y ago

Maybe I am missing some context here, but why would a game studio make a backwards-compatibility-breaking change to the engine a five year old game? I know that it's a popular game, but this sounds like an excuse to me.

Pfhreak 7y ago
It's backwards compatible for 99.4% of their users. Maybe there is future feature work they want to do, but are limited by DirectX9. Maybe they got tired of working with a 20 year graphics library and it's cheaper in the long term for them to update to the latest.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  As someone currently maintaining code that targets Direct3D 9, it's really not worth living with the constraints if the vast majority of your users can run stuff targeted at newer APIs like D3D11. I don't blame them. Newer APIs deliver better performance and useful features, and there are great new debugging tools that don't work with D3D9.
Kapura 7y ago
Rocket league is an active multiplayer game that falls under the "Games as a Service" umbrella. There are limited time events, and new aesthetic upgrades being added to the game at a regular clip. Because of that, it's not a "five year old game" but rather a "game in active development." Think about it like a game like World of Warcraft. It wasn't built once and then released, but rather new content is being produced for it constantly, so the game engine itself needs to be improved at every level as consumer hardware changes and improves.

cwt137 7y ago

The article makes it sound like they were running DX9 in Linux and MacOS. If true, how is this so? Is there some type of X11 extension that implements DX9 or something?

ubercow13 7y ago
It's called wine. But I have no idea if they were using it.
- cwt137 7y ago
  Wine implements DX11. So that is not the issue why the company is dropping support for Linux and Mac.
gpderetta 7y ago
They probably have their own abstarction layer that implements the subset of DX9 they are using on top of opengl. This is very common on linux ports as it is hard to justify the cost of a full rewrite of the graphic engine.
- protanopia 7y ago
  Feral Interactive has managed to port many games to Vulkan. They even updated their port of Mad Max to Vulkan after release.
  - gpderetta 7y ago
    Yes, and I own copies of many of their ports :)
iuweriopu 7y ago
Not really, if you read carefully they are saying that their OpenGL renderer is very similar to the DirectX 9 one (probably because feature parity between these two APIs), but they have difficulty matching DirectX 11 features with OpenGL. Like a database ORM which can have Postgres/MySQL as the backend, but then you want to replace Postgres with BigTable. It will be very hard to keep the MySQL support.

threatripper 7y ago

SuperTuxKart (https://supertuxkart.net https://supertuxkart.net) is a free racing game similar to Mario Kart and it also has a "Soccer" mode where you play in an arena with a ball and two goals like in Rocket League.

csande17 7y ago
I love SuperTuxKart. It's the first game I install on any new computer, and I've beaten the story mode several times. I usually focus on the racing modes, but I've tried Soccer as well. SuperTuxKart is not an alternative to Rocket League! If you go into it expecting anything Rocket League has -- polished realistic-looking graphics, physics that let you jump and tilt and drive up the walls of the stadium, a thriving online play community, a matchmaking system -- you're going to be disappointed.
- threatripper 7y ago
  Your criticism is correct. It is similar in the gaming principle but way way behind in user friendliness and polishing. That said, as far as I know, this is the best alternative that we have right now on Linux. Having played it with kids (who never played Rocket League before) I can say that it can be a fun activity.
lullibrulli 7y ago
While true in theory, the gameplay vastly differs to say the least.
vernie 7y ago
This is the "just use GIMP" of games.

aaron-santos 7y ago

> Unfortunately, our macOS and Linux native clients depend on our DX9 implementation for their OpenGL renderer to function. I'm not a gamedev and just have some hobby xp in DX and OpenGL, but I don't begin to understand why an OpenGL renderer would in any way depend on DX. Is this just code for "we have such few Mac and Linux users that it isn't worth our time to support OpenGL"?

plopz 7y ago
I would imagine the game is using dx9 and for linux/macos it would run through a dx9 -> opengl translation layer.
ilikehurdles 7y ago
They probably use some outdated translation layer that converts DX9 calls to OpenGL ones so that they didn't have to maintain two renderers or use a higher level 3rd-party engine that abstracts over those calls. Newer games using Steam's Proton, like Sekiro, look and perform nearly equivalently to their Windows DX11 counterparts. I know Proton isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's an example off the top of my head. I guess CS:GO is another more apt one.
larkost 7y ago
They wrote the game targeting DX9, and then wrote a custom shim to translate from DX9 to OpenGL calls. Now they are transitioning to DX11 to get some newer features, and have evaluated the amount of work that it would take to either update that shim layer for DX11 -> OpenGL/Vulcan for Linux, or DX11 -> Metal for MacOS (remember, Apple is depreciating OpenGL on their platforms). If linux and MacOS combine account for less than 0.3 percent of their revenues... then even as a MacOS guy I have to see their logic... there is little chance of recouping the heavy lift that they would have.
Rannath 7y ago
AFAIK: The way DX9 works for Windows software running under Wine, is that wine has a layer that intercepts all DX9 calls and retranslates them into OpenGL. There is no equivalent for DX11.

Jerry2 7y ago

Epic is probably one of the biggest enemies of Linux since they're killing Linux support of every game/product they buy [1]. And while games aren't as important as some business/productivity applications, people do get lots of enjoyment from playing an occasional game. It's a great stress relief. And now even those little indulgences are being taken away. Epic's CEO, Tim Sweeney, is extremely negative on Linux if you check out his Twitter feed [2] and I get a feeling from reading his comments that he despises Linux with passion. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844241 [2] https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698?lang=en https://twitter.com/timsweeneyepic/status/964284402741149698...

m4rtink 7y ago
Oh, wow, I was not aware it is this bad! I kinda expected they just don't care but not they are actively sabotaging Linux compatibility...
bob1029 7y ago
I honestly cannot blame someone in that business for hating linux. The number of variables to test for if you only care about windows gamers is staggering. Linux is 10x harder than windows if you care about supporting any arbitrary distribution and driver stack. I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. I understand SDL2 exists. I understand that Valve has "mostly" pulled off linux/macos support. But, is it really worth it from a business perspective for all game developers to support linux? How big and wide do your margins need to be before it makes financial sense to fully support both operating systems? How many features (or even titles) will stay in the backlog because your developers are busy chasing down the 5000th weird linux network/GPU/sound bug that only occurs on this one kinda-old version of Ubuntu?
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  > I think if users were willing to load a linux VM for each game they'd like to play, this would be more manageable from a game developer's perspective. As I understand it, this is the direction Steam is heading by running games in containers.

kgwxd 7y ago

This is what I hate about ever-changing games. If it's such a big change, just make a new game, Rocket League 2. I'm sure people will still complain for some other reason, but no one looses what they paid for.

kevingadd 7y ago
These days even if it's a sequel it might just be a repackaged update. Overwatch 2 is just Overwatch with additional stuff on top, for example - supposedly they both can play in the same matches on the same servers.
sangnoir 7y ago
They'll still not want to kill the servers for the old game and the net result is the same - users stuck with an old game that can't go online.
- nybble41 7y ago
  There's no reason they can't just let users run their own servers for older games. We're not talking about a MMORPG here, where centralizing the servers might make sense in order to give everyone a shared experience.

therealmarv 7y ago

Wow, in the past it was 1 or 2 different 3D architectures. Now we have 3 of them: DirectX on Windows, Metal on macOS, Vulkan/OpenGL4 on Linux

carlosdp 7y ago
Vulkan/OpenGL are multiplatform
- mroche 7y ago
  And with the use of Vulkan, you get the modern improvements (and technical complexity that comes with it) on both Windows and Linux through hardware vendors' drivers, and MoltenVK for bridging that code to macOS and iOS. I don't have a comparison chart between DX12, Vulkan, and Metal but if engine authors can standardize on the open standard of Vulkan, it could have huge effects on creating cross-platform games and applications. A big push for this wouldn't be having authors like Epic, Unity, or CryEngine do this, but all the private publishers investing the time to learn and switch their next-gen engines over to Vulkan.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Another problem with OS X support is that there are no modern nVidia cards for modern OS X machines as there are no drivers (Apple refuses to sign them, and nVidia refuses to release unsigned drivers that people could install with SIP disabled)... but many PC games advertise for nVidia.
    - mroche 7y ago
      > but many PC games advertise for nVidia. This is another issue unto itself. This often stems not from a CUDA/OpenCL debate, but rather how well a particular development group may be supported by either vendor in terms of tech and driver support. NVIDIA is usually pretty good at supporting game makers, and getting support for their GameWorks libraries added. GW for a long time was a weak spot for AMD as they couldn’t add proper driver support, crippling performance and limiting feature sets. A good amount of GW is OSS now, so getting those features and support in is up to AMD. I haven’t read the EULAs though. https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-source-github https://developer.nvidia.com/gameworks-source-github

thrower123 7y ago

I'm always amazed by the longevity of DirectX 9. It was a truly excellent graphics API. DirectX 11 had more features, and was in some ways better designed, but it was always really painful to have to reimplement some of the things that were stripped out of the D3DX utility libraries that formerly were part of the SDK.

ErneX 7y ago

The game ran pretty bad on macOS though. Same computer with a GTX 1080 runs the game on win10 at hundreds of FPS with everything maxed vs barely able to run the game on macOS with all the detail on minimum.

dang 7y ago

The previous thread was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22133431.

a13n 7y ago

Honestly the game was not playable on macOS. If you wanted to play on your MacBook you had to run Windows with bootcamp, which you can still do. So I doubt this change will really impact anyone. Can anyone talk about how it plays on Linux? I can’t imagine a huge playerbase there.

thethrowboat 7y ago
60 fps@1440p with gtx 1060 on linux, can't remember if it was limited to 60 fps, but that was good enough for me. Never tried in windows.

neura 7y ago

It's both surprising and unsurprising to me how many comments here are focused on EGS (which is not what the article is about) and almost nobody is talking about how Rocket League's macOs and Linux players make up less than 0.3% of the players, combined. SMH

user_50123890 7y ago
^ developer time is worth crazy much, it's just irresponsible to waste lots on it on a 0.3% of the users. just go ask the actual playerbase if they'd prefer the devs working on linux/macos ports or actual gameplay/issues affecting the average player and see the answer.
- isbjorn16 7y ago
  Seems more irresponsible to not refund the game and DLCs, though. What refunds are happening seem sporadic and limited to base game only, which is pretty reprehensible.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

What I find a bit odd about this is the existence of the Switch version. Surely the Switch's graphical power, presumably it's not going to get a bunch of fancy new DX11-esque features. I imagine they'll do the minimum to keep the Switch compatible with other clients in multiplayer. But if they're keeping multiplayer compatible with an older Switch codebase, why not keep it compatible with older Mac and Linux branches?