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koderski on the details (1): > There are not so much low-level details, really. I got a bunch of reports ("game is crashing when I have geologists, here are lo

by 0x38B 3y ago

koderski on the details (1): > There are not so much low-level details, really. I got a bunch of reports ("game is crashing when I have geologists, here are logs/versions/cores"), I send out huge binaries with debug symbols with them, got a core back that pointed exactly to the problem. > Fixed that and added a debug log there to just make sure it worked well, and after reviewing unrelated reports from windows I found that it would hit these players too, they just didn't report that. What stood out to me is that the Windows players often encountered the same bugs, but didn't report them, or were vague to the point of uselessness (e.g. "Game crashes after a couple hours"), in contrast to players on Linux. 1: https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/hhv4uec/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_hav... --- Perhaps a more descriptive title would be that "Linux players are 6x more likely to report bugs than Windows players" or something of that nature.

tester457 3y ago
The author considers the bug reporting to be a benefit, it's a contrast from this post last month "One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly" [0]. > The Ugly > Linux accounts for less than 1% of the total players, so from a business perspective, it is not worth it. And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues - the time used for customer support only makes the economy worse. Also, I don’t own a Steam Deck, so adding support is not always easy: Valve does not provide a SteamOS image to test. So Steam Deck-specific code (like controller support, starting the game in full-screen, making the UI bigger, etc) is not tested end-to-end. I’ve used HoloISO with limited success. > TL;DR: Even worse economy than Mac but less annoyance perhaps [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37862606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37862606
- dangus 3y ago
  I believe Valve is working on a SteamOS 3 image for general purpose PCs and confirmed it publicly, but we don’t know the release date.
  - lawlessone 3y ago
    This is great news, have to say i love they keep taking whacks at it.
    - dimitrios1 3y ago
      Just remember its not out of altruism. It's very beneficial to Valve to be able to eliminate their Windows dependency. I will say, it is good when incentives align for the benefit of the consumer.
      - r3trohack3r 3y ago
        That’s the point of markets. Three ways to get someone to do something: * make them love you * pay them * make them fear you Markets incentivize behavior that would otherwise require altruism or fear.
      - stavros 3y ago
        I don't think many people expect companies to do things out of altruism, but, as you say, we are happy when our interests and theirs align.
      - abtinf 3y ago
        > Just remember its not out of altruism. I’ve always been curious what point is being made when people say this. Care to expand on it?
        dimitrios1 3y ago
        At least in my case, the point being made when I say "Just remember it's not out of altruism" is to remember that it's not out of altruism.
        abtinf 3y ago
        Why is it important to be reminded of that?
- lawlessone 3y ago
  It's almost self defeating. Seems like developing games for linux is harder. less people play games on it, so it get's less dev attention.. so quality suffers.. so less people play games on it. I'm not blaming game devs, linux devs or users for this nor am i blaming Microsoft etc. It just is. Efforts like Wine and Steamdeck go above and beyond to maybe changing this.
  - treyd 3y ago
    > Seems like developing games for linux is harder. This is not because of some property of Linux, but mostly because of game developers' unfamiliarity with it. Sure there's some issues with window servers but if you're building a game using any mainstream engine or even simpler frameworks like SDL that shouldn't be much of an actual issue.
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - deleted 3y ago
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  - throw555chip 3y ago
    > It's almost self defeating. Seems like developing games for linux is harder. Except that the parent's point is refuted by the OP's article (that brought us all here to discuss): "Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux."
  - fanatic2pope 3y ago
    Developing ANY user-facing application for Linux is harder. Linus himself explained why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc
    - MaxBarraclough 3y ago
      TLDW: Linus speaking in 2014, lamenting that there isn't binary compatibility between distros, or even between major releases of a given distro. This was before the Snap project though. (Somewhat related: I hadn't realised until today that Snap isn't fully Free and Open Source.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)
- lallysingh 3y ago
  I don't think that they should release for a platform they can't test.
  - rat9988 3y ago
    So no one should release on linux? Because no one can test every linux distribution.
    - Aachen 3y ago
      There's a difference between - marking it as officially supported and asking the full price when it has never been run on a special hardware device running a custom OS (the steam deck that the person you're responding to mentioned) and - saying "we've tried on Ubuntu 24.04 default install with AMD drivers as well as Fedora 82, but ymmv obviously we know you love to tweak your setups just like us <3"
      - rat9988 3y ago
        They probably never said they explicitely support steam deck. It's probably steam deck users that are interested in it, and valve doesn't provide a testing platform.
- ben0x539 3y ago
  Sounds like the difference is whether it's about platform-specific issues. > Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone vs > And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues - the time used for customer support only makes the economy worse.
  - Izkata 3y ago
    Also: > Fixed that and added a debug log there to just make sure it worked well, and after reviewing unrelated reports from windows I found that it would hit these players too, they just didn't report that. Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the unreported bugs were Windows-specific and they're just not seeing reports of them, or not managing to find the cause because the reports are so nonspecific.
- throw555chip 3y ago
  > And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues Except that in the case of the OP's posted article, their Linux bugs were few: "Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux."
- FoodWThrow 3y ago
  One is built with webgl and typescript, the other with Godot. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a tech built for a specific purpose (video games) with Linux as the first class platform, performs better and is more stable than arguably the second most complicated piece of software engineering the humanity has ever devised - the browser. The more complicated your stack is, the more problems you will have. The Linux specific bugs also tend to increase (and become nigh unsolvable) with Unity. Godot is much leaner, and tends to wield this fact as its strength. As an unrelated example, there are multiple community plugins for implementing different physics engines in Godot, when such a thing is an exercise in frustration in Unity or Unreal, for varying reasons.
- godelski 3y ago
  > The author considers the bug reporting to be a benefit, it's a contrast from this post last month >> Linux accounts for less than 1% of the total players, so from a business perspective, it is not worth it. These actually don't need to contradict. The current post specifically suggests that at a cursory glance it looks like a bad decision to support linux users and instead triage those bugs but that in reality the bugs they report are more universal. We can call this a colloquial paradox because the simple reasonable assumption is in direct opposition to the nuanced one. Let's call it Koderski's paradox since that's the Reddit user's name.
  - tester457 3y ago
    > Let's call it Koderski's paradox since that's the Reddit user's name. I'm in favor of this name.
    - godelski 3y ago
      Now we just gotta make a wikipedia article lol
tensor 3y ago
Or "Linux users are mostly developers and thus are more capable of filing good bug reports."
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  or “more vocal” / more inclined to “burn/invest/spend/waste” time tinkering
  - jowea 3y ago
    I would also add that that the FOSS bug report experience is in some ways better. And in FOSS, reporting a bug is more worth it since without a QA department it probably won't be fixed unless it's reported.
    - 0x38B 3y ago
      Definitely! Case in point, I reported a bug in the iOS ePub reader I was using (crashing on the iOS beta I was running), and the developer responded to say they were working on it. Contrast that with the little bugs I’ve reported to Apple; they’ve not been fixed, and I don’t know if they ever will be. It’s disheartening and has undermined my trust in my phone’s OS and the company behind it. What I know from years of dealing with customers is that listening to their problems and acknowledging them, even if you can’t fix anything, works wonders (1). I once talked with a man who’d been utterly let down by our phone system as he waited outside to get his groceries: we’d told him he could come in early as we had his order done, but the system didn’t know that. When I went outside he was super frustrated, and rightly so. I heard him out and acknowledged that we’d dropped the ball, then asked him if he still wanted his groceries. It’s amazing how just being willing to listen can turn a situation from one where no one is happy to one that you can laugh about together (at how stupid software can be!). 1: part of listening and acknowledging is becoming the customer’s advocate and elevating as needed; this was something I did. Sometimes the answer was still “we can’t help”, but seeing that you did your best might be all they need.
- bhhaskin 3y ago
  It's sad that bug reports are considered a developer thing instead of a user/power user thing. I think the big issue is that most people have no idea how anything actually works. They aren't really users. At least not like users of old. They are just consumers that don't use the OS, just consume it.
deleted 3y ago
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Seanambers 3y ago
Windows users have been sending crash reports for decades and nothing happened.

by 0x38B 3y ago

tester457 3y ago

The author considers the bug reporting to be a benefit, it's a contrast from this post last month "One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly" [0]. > The Ugly > Linux accounts for less than 1% of the total players, so from a business perspective, it is not worth it. And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues - the time used for customer support only makes the economy worse. Also, I don’t own a Steam Deck, so adding support is not always easy: Valve does not provide a SteamOS image to test. So Steam Deck-specific code (like controller support, starting the game in full-screen, making the UI bigger, etc) is not tested end-to-end. I’ve used HoloISO with limited success. > TL;DR: Even worse economy than Mac but less annoyance perhaps [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37862606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37862606

dangus 3y ago
I believe Valve is working on a SteamOS 3 image for general purpose PCs and confirmed it publicly, but we don’t know the release date.
- lawlessone 3y ago
  This is great news, have to say i love they keep taking whacks at it.
  - dimitrios1 3y ago
    Just remember its not out of altruism. It's very beneficial to Valve to be able to eliminate their Windows dependency. I will say, it is good when incentives align for the benefit of the consumer.
    - r3trohack3r 3y ago
      That’s the point of markets. Three ways to get someone to do something: * make them love you * pay them * make them fear you Markets incentivize behavior that would otherwise require altruism or fear.
    - stavros 3y ago
      I don't think many people expect companies to do things out of altruism, but, as you say, we are happy when our interests and theirs align.
    - abtinf 3y ago
      > Just remember its not out of altruism. I’ve always been curious what point is being made when people say this. Care to expand on it?
      - dimitrios1 3y ago
        At least in my case, the point being made when I say "Just remember it's not out of altruism" is to remember that it's not out of altruism.
        abtinf 3y ago
        Why is it important to be reminded of that?
lawlessone 3y ago
It's almost self defeating. Seems like developing games for linux is harder. less people play games on it, so it get's less dev attention.. so quality suffers.. so less people play games on it. I'm not blaming game devs, linux devs or users for this nor am i blaming Microsoft etc. It just is. Efforts like Wine and Steamdeck go above and beyond to maybe changing this.
- treyd 3y ago
  > Seems like developing games for linux is harder. This is not because of some property of Linux, but mostly because of game developers' unfamiliarity with it. Sure there's some issues with window servers but if you're building a game using any mainstream engine or even simpler frameworks like SDL that shouldn't be much of an actual issue.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- throw555chip 3y ago
  > It's almost self defeating. Seems like developing games for linux is harder. Except that the parent's point is refuted by the OP's article (that brought us all here to discuss): "Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux."
- fanatic2pope 3y ago
  Developing ANY user-facing application for Linux is harder. Linus himself explained why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzl1B7nB9Kc
  - MaxBarraclough 3y ago
    TLDW: Linus speaking in 2014, lamenting that there isn't binary compatibility between distros, or even between major releases of a given distro. This was before the Snap project though. (Somewhat related: I hadn't realised until today that Snap isn't fully Free and Open Source.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_(software)
lallysingh 3y ago
I don't think that they should release for a platform they can't test.
- rat9988 3y ago
  So no one should release on linux? Because no one can test every linux distribution.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    There's a difference between - marking it as officially supported and asking the full price when it has never been run on a special hardware device running a custom OS (the steam deck that the person you're responding to mentioned) and - saying "we've tried on Ubuntu 24.04 default install with AMD drivers as well as Fedora 82, but ymmv obviously we know you love to tweak your setups just like us <3"
    - rat9988 3y ago
      They probably never said they explicitely support steam deck. It's probably steam deck users that are interested in it, and valve doesn't provide a testing platform.
ben0x539 3y ago
Sounds like the difference is whether it's about platform-specific issues. > Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone vs > And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues - the time used for customer support only makes the economy worse.
- Izkata 3y ago
  Also: > Fixed that and added a debug log there to just make sure it worked well, and after reviewing unrelated reports from windows I found that it would hit these players too, they just didn't report that. Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of the unreported bugs were Windows-specific and they're just not seeing reports of them, or not managing to find the cause because the reports are so nonspecific.
throw555chip 3y ago
> And the platform has the highest percentage of players who run into platform-specific issues Except that in the case of the OP's posted article, their Linux bugs were few: "Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux."
FoodWThrow 3y ago
One is built with webgl and typescript, the other with Godot. It shouldn't surprise anyone that a tech built for a specific purpose (video games) with Linux as the first class platform, performs better and is more stable than arguably the second most complicated piece of software engineering the humanity has ever devised - the browser. The more complicated your stack is, the more problems you will have. The Linux specific bugs also tend to increase (and become nigh unsolvable) with Unity. Godot is much leaner, and tends to wield this fact as its strength. As an unrelated example, there are multiple community plugins for implementing different physics engines in Godot, when such a thing is an exercise in frustration in Unity or Unreal, for varying reasons.
godelski 3y ago
> The author considers the bug reporting to be a benefit, it's a contrast from this post last month >> Linux accounts for less than 1% of the total players, so from a business perspective, it is not worth it. These actually don't need to contradict. The current post specifically suggests that at a cursory glance it looks like a bad decision to support linux users and instead triage those bugs but that in reality the bugs they report are more universal. We can call this a colloquial paradox because the simple reasonable assumption is in direct opposition to the nuanced one. Let's call it Koderski's paradox since that's the Reddit user's name.
- tester457 3y ago
  > Let's call it Koderski's paradox since that's the Reddit user's name. I'm in favor of this name.
  - godelski 3y ago
    Now we just gotta make a wikipedia article lol

tensor 3y ago

Or "Linux users are mostly developers and thus are more capable of filing good bug reports."

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
or “more vocal” / more inclined to “burn/invest/spend/waste” time tinkering
- jowea 3y ago
  I would also add that that the FOSS bug report experience is in some ways better. And in FOSS, reporting a bug is more worth it since without a QA department it probably won't be fixed unless it's reported.
  - 0x38B 3y ago
    Definitely! Case in point, I reported a bug in the iOS ePub reader I was using (crashing on the iOS beta I was running), and the developer responded to say they were working on it. Contrast that with the little bugs I’ve reported to Apple; they’ve not been fixed, and I don’t know if they ever will be. It’s disheartening and has undermined my trust in my phone’s OS and the company behind it. What I know from years of dealing with customers is that listening to their problems and acknowledging them, even if you can’t fix anything, works wonders (1). I once talked with a man who’d been utterly let down by our phone system as he waited outside to get his groceries: we’d told him he could come in early as we had his order done, but the system didn’t know that. When I went outside he was super frustrated, and rightly so. I heard him out and acknowledged that we’d dropped the ball, then asked him if he still wanted his groceries. It’s amazing how just being willing to listen can turn a situation from one where no one is happy to one that you can laugh about together (at how stupid software can be!). 1: part of listening and acknowledging is becoming the customer’s advocate and elevating as needed; this was something I did. Sometimes the answer was still “we can’t help”, but seeing that you did your best might be all they need.
bhhaskin 3y ago
It's sad that bug reports are considered a developer thing instead of a user/power user thing. I think the big issue is that most people have no idea how anything actually works. They aren't really users. At least not like users of old. They are just consumers that don't use the OS, just consume it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Seanambers 3y ago

Windows users have been sending crash reports for decades and nothing happened.