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As an actual dyed in the wool game developer. There’s no such thing as “native”, all the things you’re talking about are translation layers for hardware instru

by dijit 2y ago

As an actual dyed in the wool game developer. There’s no such thing as “native”, all the things you’re talking about are translation layers for hardware instructions themselves, and the overhead for doing software based translation is significantly less than hardware accelerated virtual machines- and we as an industry love those. The reason for this is because the translations are very cache friendly and happen in userland, so the performance impact is negligible, and the scheduler on Windows is so poor compared to Linux ones that it’s even common for games to perform better on Linux than on Windows.. Which is crazy when you consider the difference in quality of the GPU drivers. I understand that you want it to “just work”, but that tends to be the experience anyway. You can do what you want, it’s your life, but this is not a terribly good excuse. Valves “failure” is essentially rectified. I will add though, that it’s actually Stadia that made linux gaming the most feasible, many game engines (all of the ones I worked on) were ported to Linux to run Stadia, those ports changed essential elements of the engine that would have been slow or difficult to translate; so when Proton came around quite a lot of heavy lifting had gone away. I only say this because Valve gets some credit for a lot of work our Engine programmers did to make Linux viable.

pjmlp 2y ago
So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? There is certainly such thing as native, one thing is the platform where the APIs were originally designed for and battled tested, and the other is other platform emulating / translating them, by reverse engineering their behaviours with various degrees of success. Valve's luck is that so far Microsoft/XBox Gaming has decided to close an eye on Proton, and it will run out when Microsoft decides it has gone long enough.
- dijit 2y ago
  > So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? Not sure, Unreal Engine is pretty popular though and Snowdrop is increasingly common for Ubisoft titles. https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 https://www.protondb.com/app/365590
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    Yet most games don't make use of Unreal targeting capabilities of GNU/Linux, rather Proton.
    - dijit 2y ago
      Unreal can target Linux, sure, but not all of the plugins you might use will, nor any of your own plugins. Unreal is almost worse because their first party tools (UGS, Horde) will not work on Linux, so you have to treat linux as a console, and honestly the market share isn't there to justify it.
      - pjmlp 2y ago
        Which kind of validates the point of Valve's "success" in a Linux ecosystem.
  - troupo 2y ago
    > https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 Star Wars Outlaws Natively Supports: Windows only > https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Natively Supports: Windows only > https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 Tom Clancy’s The Division Natively Supports: Windows only ---- You were saying?
    - dijit 2y ago
      I know, I worked on those games. Specifically, I worked on those games so I know what they natively support and how things transpired behind the scenes. Proton has absolutely no hope of working without the changes we made because of stadia, the code we wrote was deeply hooked into Windows and we made more generic variants of many things. The Division 1 PS4 release was significantly shimmed underneath compared to the win32 and xbox releases: this became much less true over time as porting the renderer to linux (specifically debian) made us genericise issues across the OS’s and when Div2 shipped we had a lot more in common across the releases; we didn’t rely on deep hooks into Microsoft APIs as much
- Yasuraka 2y ago
  Speaking from experience, Helldivers 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds both ran better on Linux from day one before any special fixes and still do - I'm not sure what "original design and battled testing" is worth or good for if the underlying Kernel and/or OS is a mess.
nottorp 2y ago
> and the scheduler on Windows is so poor compared to Linux ones that it’s even common for games to perform better on Linux than on Windows.. I play most of my games in a window and switch away a lot. A million years ago when I was still playing world of warcraft, the system overall was much more responsive on the same hardware with wow on wine on linux than with wow natively running on windows :) > it’s actually Stadia that made linux gaming the most feasible Stadia was the most predatory gaming offering aside from IAP games, sorry. Buy your games again on top of the subscription? Lose them when Google cancels the service? No thanks. Nvidia's GeForce Now was a lot more honest. Pay for the GPU and streaming, access your owned games from Steam. I'm not using it any more so I don't know how honest they still are, but I did for like a year and it was fine(tm). The fact that Stadia advanced wine compatibility is great, but technical reasons aren't the only reasons that make a service useful to your customers.
- gessha 2y ago
  OP is talking about Google (Stadia) throwing money at the problem and incentivizing game engine companies to better support Linux. They’re not talking about pro or anticonsumer the tech was.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    I know and even agree with them. I'm also surprised that Stadia was useful for something...
troupo 2y ago
Stadia's impact on gaming in general is next to zero. And given that the vast majority of gaming on Linux is happening via Proton, its impact on gaming on Linux is similarly next to zero.
- dijit 2y ago
  What games have you made to justify this statement? I worked closely with productions using proprietary game engines, I feel qualified in stating that Stadia had an outsized impact on our development process in a way that helped proton succeed. That you don’t see it as an end user, is exactly my point.
  - troupo 2y ago
    > What games have you made? You don't have to be a chef to judge what's coming out of the kitchen. What is the objective impact of Stadia which at its height had a whopping 307 titles [1]? At the time of writing ProtonDB lists 6806 titles as "platinum, works perfectly out of the box" and 4839 games as "gold, works perfectly after tweaks". Steam Deck alone has almost 5x the number of games with "verified" status [2]. What games are being made for Linux thanks to Stadia, and don't just target DirectX and run through Proton? How many Stadia games were ported to Linux thanks to Stadia? Also, to put things into perspective. Proton was launched in 2018. Stadia was launched in 2019. In 2019 there were already over 5000 games that worked on Proton. [3] In 2022 there already were more games with verified status for Steam Deck than there were games for Stadia, and 8 times more games verified to work by users [4]. Stadia shutdown was announced half a year after the article at [4]. Stadia had zero impact on gaming in general and on gaming on Linux in particular as judged by the results and objective reality. Even the games you showed as examples don't support Linux, only target Windows, and are only playable on Linux through Proton [5] > I feel qualified in stating that Stadia had an outsized impact on our development process in a way that helped proton succeed. > That you don’t see it as an end user, is exactly my point. It's strange to claim things like "when Proton came along" when Proton was there before Stadia and already had over 5k games working in the year when Stadia only just launched. It's strange to claim outsized impact on development process when there are no outcomes targeting anything even remotely close to Linux development, with studios targeting Windows as they have always done. It's strange to claim Stadia had outsized impact when none of the work translated into any games outside Stadia. When Stadia did not contribute any significant work to the tech that is running Proton. In 2022 they even started work on their own emulation layer that went nowhere and AFAIK never contributed to anything [6] It's strange to claim that "it's actually Stadia that made Linux gaming feasible" when there's literally no visible or measurable impact anywhere for any claim you make. Beyond "just trust me". [1] According to https://www.mobygames.com/platform/stadia/ https://www.mobygames.com/platform/stadia/ According to wikipedia, at the time of shutting down it had 280 games, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stadia_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stadia_games [2] https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard [3] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2019/07/a-look-over-the-protondb-reports-for-june-2019-over-55k-games-reported-to-work-with-steam-play/page=3 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2019/07/a-look-over-the-proton... [4] https://www.protondb.com/news/how-many-games-work-on-linux-and-steam-deck-dashboard https://www.protondb.com/news/how-many-games-work-on-linux-a... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43503018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43503018 [6] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/03/google-talk-about-their-windows-emulator-for-stadia-and-they-use-dxvk-already/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/03/google-talk-about-thei...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

by dijit 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago

So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? There is certainly such thing as native, one thing is the platform where the APIs were originally designed for and battled tested, and the other is other platform emulating / translating them, by reverse engineering their behaviours with various degrees of success. Valve's luck is that so far Microsoft/XBox Gaming has decided to close an eye on Proton, and it will run out when Microsoft decides it has gone long enough.

dijit 2y ago
> So how many of those ported game engines are actually making a different on GNU/Linux gaming today? Not sure, Unreal Engine is pretty popular though and Snowdrop is increasingly common for Ubisoft titles. https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 https://www.protondb.com/app/365590
- pjmlp 2y ago
  Yet most games don't make use of Unreal targeting capabilities of GNU/Linux, rather Proton.
  - dijit 2y ago
    Unreal can target Linux, sure, but not all of the plugins you might use will, nor any of your own plugins. Unreal is almost worse because their first party tools (UGS, Horde) will not work on Linux, so you have to treat linux as a console, and honestly the market share isn't there to justify it.
    - pjmlp 2y ago
      Which kind of validates the point of Valve's "success" in a Linux ecosystem.
- troupo 2y ago
  > https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 https://www.protondb.com/app/2842040 Star Wars Outlaws Natively Supports: Windows only > https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ https://www.protondb.com/app/2840770/ Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Natively Supports: Windows only > https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 https://www.protondb.com/app/365590 Tom Clancy’s The Division Natively Supports: Windows only ---- You were saying?
  - dijit 2y ago
    I know, I worked on those games. Specifically, I worked on those games so I know what they natively support and how things transpired behind the scenes. Proton has absolutely no hope of working without the changes we made because of stadia, the code we wrote was deeply hooked into Windows and we made more generic variants of many things. The Division 1 PS4 release was significantly shimmed underneath compared to the win32 and xbox releases: this became much less true over time as porting the renderer to linux (specifically debian) made us genericise issues across the OS’s and when Div2 shipped we had a lot more in common across the releases; we didn’t rely on deep hooks into Microsoft APIs as much
Yasuraka 2y ago
Speaking from experience, Helldivers 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds both ran better on Linux from day one before any special fixes and still do - I'm not sure what "original design and battled testing" is worth or good for if the underlying Kernel and/or OS is a mess.

nottorp 2y ago

> and the scheduler on Windows is so poor compared to Linux ones that it’s even common for games to perform better on Linux than on Windows.. I play most of my games in a window and switch away a lot. A million years ago when I was still playing world of warcraft, the system overall was much more responsive on the same hardware with wow on wine on linux than with wow natively running on windows :) > it’s actually Stadia that made linux gaming the most feasible Stadia was the most predatory gaming offering aside from IAP games, sorry. Buy your games again on top of the subscription? Lose them when Google cancels the service? No thanks. Nvidia's GeForce Now was a lot more honest. Pay for the GPU and streaming, access your owned games from Steam. I'm not using it any more so I don't know how honest they still are, but I did for like a year and it was fine(tm). The fact that Stadia advanced wine compatibility is great, but technical reasons aren't the only reasons that make a service useful to your customers.

gessha 2y ago
OP is talking about Google (Stadia) throwing money at the problem and incentivizing game engine companies to better support Linux. They’re not talking about pro or anticonsumer the tech was.
- nottorp 2y ago
  I know and even agree with them. I'm also surprised that Stadia was useful for something...

troupo 2y ago

Stadia's impact on gaming in general is next to zero. And given that the vast majority of gaming on Linux is happening via Proton, its impact on gaming on Linux is similarly next to zero.

dijit 2y ago
What games have you made to justify this statement? I worked closely with productions using proprietary game engines, I feel qualified in stating that Stadia had an outsized impact on our development process in a way that helped proton succeed. That you don’t see it as an end user, is exactly my point.
- troupo 2y ago
  > What games have you made? You don't have to be a chef to judge what's coming out of the kitchen. What is the objective impact of Stadia which at its height had a whopping 307 titles [1]? At the time of writing ProtonDB lists 6806 titles as "platinum, works perfectly out of the box" and 4839 games as "gold, works perfectly after tweaks". Steam Deck alone has almost 5x the number of games with "verified" status [2]. What games are being made for Linux thanks to Stadia, and don't just target DirectX and run through Proton? How many Stadia games were ported to Linux thanks to Stadia? Also, to put things into perspective. Proton was launched in 2018. Stadia was launched in 2019. In 2019 there were already over 5000 games that worked on Proton. [3] In 2022 there already were more games with verified status for Steam Deck than there were games for Stadia, and 8 times more games verified to work by users [4]. Stadia shutdown was announced half a year after the article at [4]. Stadia had zero impact on gaming in general and on gaming on Linux in particular as judged by the results and objective reality. Even the games you showed as examples don't support Linux, only target Windows, and are only playable on Linux through Proton [5] > I feel qualified in stating that Stadia had an outsized impact on our development process in a way that helped proton succeed. > That you don’t see it as an end user, is exactly my point. It's strange to claim things like "when Proton came along" when Proton was there before Stadia and already had over 5k games working in the year when Stadia only just launched. It's strange to claim outsized impact on development process when there are no outcomes targeting anything even remotely close to Linux development, with studios targeting Windows as they have always done. It's strange to claim Stadia had outsized impact when none of the work translated into any games outside Stadia. When Stadia did not contribute any significant work to the tech that is running Proton. In 2022 they even started work on their own emulation layer that went nowhere and AFAIK never contributed to anything [6] It's strange to claim that "it's actually Stadia that made Linux gaming feasible" when there's literally no visible or measurable impact anywhere for any claim you make. Beyond "just trust me". [1] According to https://www.mobygames.com/platform/stadia/ https://www.mobygames.com/platform/stadia/ According to wikipedia, at the time of shutting down it had 280 games, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stadia_games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Stadia_games [2] https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard [3] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2019/07/a-look-over-the-protondb-reports-for-june-2019-over-55k-games-reported-to-work-with-steam-play/page=3 https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2019/07/a-look-over-the-proton... [4] https://www.protondb.com/news/how-many-games-work-on-linux-and-steam-deck-dashboard https://www.protondb.com/news/how-many-games-work-on-linux-a... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43503018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43503018 [6] https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/03/google-talk-about-their-windows-emulator-for-stadia-and-they-use-dxvk-already/ https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2022/03/google-talk-about-thei...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]