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Crytek jumps on Steam Machine hype train, announces Linux support
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- wlesieutre 13y agoGreat news for Steam OS and Linux in general. It's not as popular as UDK or Unity (especially at small studios), but this definitely opens the doors to getting games on Linux that wouldn't have been otherwise. Off the top of my head, Star Citizen is using the next gen CryEngine. Along with the next Crysis game and who knows what else.
- skrowl 13y agoI haven't seen ANY Unity devs commit to making native linux ports rather than just using Unity. Until SteamOS can make it as simple as Unity, it's going to be a tough sell to anyone who is already using Unity.
- wlesieutre 13y agoI'm not sure what you're getting at with Unity devs not committing to Linux ports except using Unity. They're Unity devs, of course that's how they do their Linux versions. It's also how they do their Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and console versions. If you mean devs in general, then sure. People writing their own engines aren't necessarily supporting Linux. But games in Unreal Engine, Unity, and CryEngine are a huge chunk of the market, and all three now play nice with Linux.
- lucian1900 13y agoUnity produces native Linux games. What are you on about?
- ChrisClark 13y agoWhy would I rewrite my game from scratch if I was using Unity? I just compile it to a native Linux binary, tada! Native Linux support. I think you might be misunderstanding what Unity is. Unity doesn't take some game and wrap it like Wine. Unity is a full game engine like UDK or Crysis. It compiles to Native Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, XBOX, Playstation, Wii, and many more I can't think of right now. Nothing is a wrapper or emulated/simulated/whatever-ulated. It's all compiled natively for each platform.
- Crito 13y agoI don't know what "native linux ports" is exactly, but Kerbal Space Program uses Unity and has a very nice Linux build. It even has an x86_64 build, which isn't available for Windows or Mac.
- eropple 13y agoI was surprised to read that Unity emitted i386 assemblies on MacOS, but so it does. Odd.
- nknighthb 13y agoNot anymore, 4.2 added 64-bit support on OS X in September. The difference was probably hysterical reasons. OS X was their first platform and it was released in 2005. I'm guessing the code supporting Macs was exactly what you'd expect for a first iteration.
- eropple 13y agoKSP is still i386. I checked before posting. Unity has a lot of old stuff lying around (they only very recently dropped DirectX7), so I'm not really shocked, but I was surprised it was still i386 because the upgrade should (well, okay, "should") be pretty trivial and i386 Macs have been out of support for a while.
- Crito 13y agoMy understanding is that the KSP devs have experienced instability and bugs with the x64 builds for Windows/OSX which they attribute to Unity. In my experience (a few months out of date now) the x64 builds for Linux are not terribly stable, but perhaps the devs think they are more stable, or think that linux users are better equipped to deal with questionable stability and released that version despite the stability issues.
- JelteF 13y agoThe only thing that sucks is that they don't have a Linux webplayer. You can just compile to native Linux though.
- lucian1900 13y agoI have on occasion missed having one. However, it's a pretty bad plugin, so it's no great loss. I think they may also be deprecating it.
- JelteF 13y agoI liked the plugin for in browser demo's of a game and I doubt they're deprecating it. A lot of Unity games are browser games.
- jjoonathan 13y agoFor those about to jump on the downvote bandwagon, I think the argument here was poorly phrased but might actually makes sense: > [Despite the fact that Unity supports building native linux binaries] I haven't seen ANY Unity devs commit to making native linux ports rather than just using Unity [to build binaries for the usual platforms]. Until SteamOS can make it as simple [to build native linux binaries] as Unity [already does], it's going to be a tough sell to [, at the very least,] anyone who is already using Unity [and doesn't build linux binaries, since this sizable population has already been given the choice to "check a box and build for linux" and declined].
- DrStalker 13y agoAssuming that is the argument my counter argument would be that making a Linux version involves more than a checkbox; you now have extra platforms you need to test on and extra complexity in supporting your game in return for very little benefit. If there are issues on the new platform you then need dev time to address them; Unity might support multiple platforms but that doesn't guarantee your code will 100% work everywhere. If steambox provides a known Linux environment with users wanting games it becomes a much better proposition to make a Linux version, even if official support is only for Steam Linux and not Linux in general.
- jjoonathan 13y ago> my counter argument would be that making a Linux version involves more than a checkbox; you now have extra platforms you need to test on and extra complexity in supporting your game in return for very little benefit. I don't think that's a counterargument, I think you're agreeing with what he said ;) > If steambox provides a known Linux environment with users wanting games it becomes a much better proposition to make a Linux version That is a counterargument. I tend to agree. I hope you're right!
- drawkbox 13y agoThere hasn't been a large reason to until SteamOS. SteamOS is the best thing to happen to linux since Mac OSX/iPhone surge. Lots of people export to Mac which is unix.
- ekianjo 13y ago> Along with the next Crysis game and who knows what else. I know almost nobody has done that yet, but it would be great to make the previous games in their catalog available (Crysis 1 and 2 for example) on Linux. I'd buy that.
- lucian1900 13y agoThey ported Crysis 1 to consoles using a later engine, they may choose to use that as a base.
- ekianjo 13y agoOh, i'm 100% sure it's easy for them to do it. I was not arguing on the feasibility, rather on the will to do it.
- baq 13y agomy guess it's not a hype train, it's a cash train with gaben as the conductor.
- higherpurpose 13y agoChoo choo, all aboard! From what I've seen in recent comparisons to other engines, Cryengine remains the best in "photorealism" and graphics quality, so this is great news. I hope that means they will offer great support for Oculus Rift, too, in the near future.
- SixSigma 13y agoSurely "hype" involves some sort of unrealised promise. As far as I can see, the SteamOS is going to be a success. As to whether it is a runaway success remains to be seen but you can't deny its potential. Cross platform dev is not so hard if you commit to it from the get go.
- kayoone 13y agoI think SteamOS is a very tough sell for gamers who run windows and steam anyway and mostly don't give a damn about linux. Even Steamboxes are much more useful if you just slap windows & steam on it.
- soperj 13y agoHow would it make them more useful? - legitimate question. Can you not run linux applications from SteamOS?
- the_ancient 13y agoS/He is probably referring to the lack of titles for Linux right now. S/He probably has an unrealistic expectation that valve should be able to snap their fingers and make a catalog they spent 10 years building all work on Linux automagically.
- cwyers 13y agoThat's completely unfair. It may not be realistic to expect Valve to get the same catalog for Linux gaming as is available on Windows, but Steam Boxes cost roughly the same as similarly-equipped Windows gaming PCs, so it's the same market. It's unrealistic to expect Valve to be able to deliver the full Steam catalog on Linux now, but it's equally unrealistic to expect potential users to not care about the number of games available, particularly AAA games.
- ekianjo 13y agoHey, the SteamMachines are not even out yet. Let's talk again in Late 2014 shall we?
- AnotherDesigner 13y agoThat's great news but I'd love some Mac support too.
- yulaow 13y agoThere is not mac support for the cryengine? This is really strange considering that apple has surely a bigger installed base in consumer computers compared to linux
- redthrowaway 13y agoMacs have sucked, do suck, and likely will suck for all time to come as far as gaming is concerned. They ship with shitty graphics cards, have bad cooling, and there's simply not much in the way of interest from Apple in supporting gaming.
- AnotherDesigner 13y agoIf enough large games were released for OS X, even as a port, Apple may put a little more effort in. And yes, the graphics cards are weak (mine is an Intel HD 4000.) But look at the Mac Pro. They invested a ton on engineering it for performance, including a lot of effort on the cooling. Apple can do it, they just need a little push. And now is a great time for it, they have no place else to go. They can't keep marketing the CPU speed or how thin the machines are for much longer. They need a new metric to push and gaming performance would be a great one.
- redthrowaway 13y agoThe only way Apple would become a good choice for PC gamers is if they started shipping computers that competed on price with gaming PCs while offering comparable performance. I could easily see "casual" PC gamers (people who play games casually, not who play casual games) buying a Mac for their general purpose PC and playing games on the side, iff the Mac offered decent gaming performance (they don't) and were priced around the same as a decent gaming PC (they aren't). It's a chicken-and-egg problem, though. Studios don't want to invest in making (or even porting) games for a non-gaming platform, gamers don't want to buy a computer they can't play games on, and Apple doesn't want to invest in pleasing a consumer segment that doesn't exist.
- pippy 13y agoI'm really hoping to see Linux become the go-to Operating System for gamers. The idealogical basis has little to do with it: it's mostly personal laziness, less hassle getting a pirated Windows install with spyware, hassles of installing legitimate copies across machines. But most importantly it we need competition on the desktop. Like it or not, Microsoft still has a monopoly in this market. This can only be good for people who like technology.
- ekianjo 13y agoThere is already competition on Desktop. I see more Macs nowadays (clear bias though, but the user base has definitely grown over the years), and the Linux user base is stable and slightly growing. Linux won't be the go-to operating system for gamers for a long time, though, unless publishers and indie game makers alike decide suddenly to drop windows and so Linux only from now on. It's not going to happen anytime soon.
- hrkristian 13y agoIt's all resting on Valve and their SteamOS. If they're able to make it a viable gaming alternative, we might just see a pretty significant change. The best part is, a game made for or ported to SteamOS (and Steam Machines) runs perfectly fine on my Arch install, played Portal 2 beta just yesterday. By contrast, a game made for X360/XOne (Steam Machine competitor) does not by default run on a desktop OS, even Windows. The same goes for PS3/4. You still have the fragmentation of the PC market, but much less so as optimization on the developer level can be reserved for Steam Machine hardware, I'm confident my GTX 660M will run stuff just fine even so. That's a potentially huge win for Linux as both a desktop OS and a platform. I can easily see it snowballing, with teenagers going "Yeah, I ditched Winlol and OS-SuX for Fedora, rippin' though Crysis 4. Yo have you tried extensions in GNOME Shell? Shit's so cash", that's a culture change in favor of Open Source. Might not happen, might just happen. /I obviously have no idea how teenagers talk these days
- zobzu 13y agoi don't care if its the hype train, i care that it runs linux :)
- 2mur 13y agoThat's exactly how I feel. These days all I'm playing is TF2, Minecraft and Starbound. All on Ubuntu.
- bstar77 13y agoMy god, I hope this leads to Star Citizen being released for linux. Maybe this'll be the $50 million stretch goal?
- wlesieutre 13y agoThat game has piles of stretch goals already. Maybe they'll just say "We're doing Linux because it's easy and will help us make money" instead of trying to juice more preorders out of it. Then again, whether it helps moves sales would depend on whether the Steam Machines get any sort of adoption and on RSI releasing the game before Linux has a lot of notable titles supporting it. Who knows?
- bstar77 13y agoThe stretch goal comment was meant to be sarcastic.
- wlesieutre 13y agoOh thank god. With all of their stretch goals and what they're charging for preorder ships that you can look at in a pretend hangar, it's awfully hard to tell. I'm looking forward to the game, but their crowdfunding is a kind of strange mess.
- sbarre 13y agoTheir crowdfunding is a hot mess, as they just passed $40M.. Hard to argue with their success there...
- wlesieutre 13y agoYeah, I'm just not a big fan of the endless stream of stretch goals. Some of them are notable things like an improved mission editor, but a lot of them are "not particularly remarkable star system" and "extra class of fighter that we hadn't mentioned before." As if they weren't going to have a huge pile of star systems and several types of fighters anyway. It comes across like they're trying to guilt people into upgrading to higher preorder tiers because otherwise there won't be any more ships or worlds. I backed it on Kickstarter for whatever tier buys the game, but I'll pass on the $275 in-game spaceship and spaceship shaped flash drive (plus a pile of other stuff). But hey, it's their money and if people want to invest it in this, that's up to them. Hell of a lot better than Candy Crush, if you ask me.
- Yuioup 13y agoWow I am amazed at the negative tone of this article, the author clearly being dismissive about Steam and Linux. I thought that Ars was supposed to be one of the better tech blogs out there but I think I need to reevaluate my opinion. This is pitiful journalism at best.
- the_ancient 13y agoI have always found Ars to be hostile to Linux in General. Really all things open source, which is funny given their coverage of patent and copyright law
- dublinben 13y agoI think this attitude stems from their lack of an editor dedicated to that subject. Their Android/Google reviewer, Ron Amadeo, is the farthest they stray from the dominant Microsoft/Apple ecosystem. If you've ever wondered why their coverage seems so slanted, just look at the overwhelming number of MacBooks in any of their "what's in my bag" posts. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/ars-ces-gear-its-totally-my-bag-baby/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/ars-ces-gear-its-tota...
- dottrap 13y agoHere's a positive article on SteamOS from InformationWeek. http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-applications/why-valves-steamos-could-be-revolutionary/d/d-id/899846 http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/mobile-applications/wh...
- eropple 13y agoWhat exactly is "dismissive" in this article?
- ddoolin 13y agoDitto. It's very short and I only barely managed to read the title as condescending at all, and it's a stretch.
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- dmix 13y agoGood news for Debian (base OS used by Steam). I hope this results in better video driver development and kernel contributions.
- X4 13y agoYeah =) That makes me so happy, finally it's coming. Op delivered! (=Gabe)