Note: This is a really old article, if you're here, I do suggest you read this article "Why The Porting Method Doesn't Matter For Linux Games".
Thanks to the recent fiasco of The Witcher 2 I wanted to write down some thoughts on why we shouldn't accept bad quality ports from developers.
Only in recent years have we had so many damned games in our Linux libraries that you now see comments from Linux gamers like "I've got too many games already!" which I imagine now sounds familiar to a lot of you. We have never before seen so much attention from developers thanks to Valve & Steam.
Also thanks to the push from developers we are seeing ports come along that are quite frankly lazy or just downright buggy to the point of being unplayable for a majority of people.
The problem is if we keep accepting ports at a sub-par quality then Linux will gain a reputation for having low quality games. Think about that big picture for a moment, seriously.
Imagine if you will that AAA developers started pushing out more games for Linux using technology like this "eON" that was used to port The Witcher 2. Let's say we have a lot of them and it suddenly looks like Linux has a lot of big-name games. You then have plenty of people trying out Linux, and seeing that their games run with terrible performance on the exact same hardware giving them the impression that Linux itself is bad for gaming. That's not good for anyone.
I've seen many people say "the toolkit used to port doesn't matter?". That in my eyes is a very naive statement to make. Of course it matters, it can mean the difference of light and day in the quality of a game on Linux. Which directly goes back to my point above about the perception of Linux gaming.
You can still say the toolkit doesn't matter and use whatever comparison/analogy you fancy, but if the toolkit is the root cause of the issue, like it will be 99% of the time when we are talking about computer software then yes, it does of course matter.
I've seen comments now from other major websites stating we should just accept them and be thankful we have them at all. That is an idiotic statement from people who don't look at the bigger picture.
Think about the developers and publishers who will see it as acceptable to push terrible Linux ports out the door and call it a day with only profits in mind. The consumer perception of Linux gaming would worsen yet again with even more bad quality ports.
I am all for ports from developers, of course I am I run this site after-all. I as a customer however do not want to pay for games that would work on Windows, but run like a snail on Linux, why should I? Why should you?
Final added point: You should never attack a developer when they reach out to the community having issues, that's not acceptable. Feedback is fine, but name calling is childish and makes Linux again look bad. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Thanks to the recent fiasco of The Witcher 2 I wanted to write down some thoughts on why we shouldn't accept bad quality ports from developers.
Only in recent years have we had so many damned games in our Linux libraries that you now see comments from Linux gamers like "I've got too many games already!" which I imagine now sounds familiar to a lot of you. We have never before seen so much attention from developers thanks to Valve & Steam.
Also thanks to the push from developers we are seeing ports come along that are quite frankly lazy or just downright buggy to the point of being unplayable for a majority of people.
The problem is if we keep accepting ports at a sub-par quality then Linux will gain a reputation for having low quality games. Think about that big picture for a moment, seriously.
Imagine if you will that AAA developers started pushing out more games for Linux using technology like this "eON" that was used to port The Witcher 2. Let's say we have a lot of them and it suddenly looks like Linux has a lot of big-name games. You then have plenty of people trying out Linux, and seeing that their games run with terrible performance on the exact same hardware giving them the impression that Linux itself is bad for gaming. That's not good for anyone.
I've seen many people say "the toolkit used to port doesn't matter?". That in my eyes is a very naive statement to make. Of course it matters, it can mean the difference of light and day in the quality of a game on Linux. Which directly goes back to my point above about the perception of Linux gaming.
You can still say the toolkit doesn't matter and use whatever comparison/analogy you fancy, but if the toolkit is the root cause of the issue, like it will be 99% of the time when we are talking about computer software then yes, it does of course matter.
I've seen comments now from other major websites stating we should just accept them and be thankful we have them at all. That is an idiotic statement from people who don't look at the bigger picture.
Think about the developers and publishers who will see it as acceptable to push terrible Linux ports out the door and call it a day with only profits in mind. The consumer perception of Linux gaming would worsen yet again with even more bad quality ports.
I am all for ports from developers, of course I am I run this site after-all. I as a customer however do not want to pay for games that would work on Windows, but run like a snail on Linux, why should I? Why should you?
Final added point: You should never attack a developer when they reach out to the community having issues, that's not acceptable. Feedback is fine, but name calling is childish and makes Linux again look bad. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
"reputation for having low quality games. Think about that big picture for a moment, seriously."
I never though about it this way, I always though 'It's better than nothing" but you're right, it can cause a lot more damage to Linux in the big picture!
I never though about it this way, I always though 'It's better than nothing" but you're right, it can cause a lot more damage to Linux in the big picture!
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I think that bigger problem is bad PC ports of console games.
If game is bad port from console, it will run badly on all platforms.
I think this is problem that should be dealt with first.
Didn't dudes on Windows also cry about bad Witcher 2 performance?
Or is it even worse on Linux?
If game is bad port from console, it will run badly on all platforms.
I think this is problem that should be dealt with first.
Didn't dudes on Windows also cry about bad Witcher 2 performance?
Or is it even worse on Linux?
1 Likes, Who?
Whilst I agree with the article. I don't necessarily believe that such emphasis should be put on porting old games, as long as they work with good performance, a wrapper should suffice. As far as newer games and going forward, wrappers are unacceptable. Newer games should be made with cross platform in mind. If they aren't, then we don't want them. But say if i wanted to play red faction 2 (random example from my steam library), it would be good to have it work with a wine wrapper so I don't have to run steam in WINE (I always get the stupid survey when i do this).
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Quoting: Jestis it even worse on Linux?
Yes it is.
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No worries folks. =) As a platform proliferates and matures there is this almost 'self correcting' element to its software. As titles multiply in numbers as well as quality, it is not unusual for a developer to feel embarrassed and release new compilations, re-masters, and outright remakes.
As proof that this is already happening on Linux (which is ridiculous as it took Windows 10 years to hit saturation) many of you are already seeing games with 'like this title' or 'like that title' descriptions. This usually starts an in-feeding process that always leads to improvement or replacement.
My advice to everyone is; sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. =)
BTW. If gamers are incensed enough, never underestimate their ability to take advantage of parody law to the fullest (hence improvement or replacement). lol
Just please don't interfere socially, vote with your dollars. The system works this I can promise you.
As proof that this is already happening on Linux (which is ridiculous as it took Windows 10 years to hit saturation) many of you are already seeing games with 'like this title' or 'like that title' descriptions. This usually starts an in-feeding process that always leads to improvement or replacement.
My advice to everyone is; sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. =)
BTW. If gamers are incensed enough, never underestimate their ability to take advantage of parody law to the fullest (hence improvement or replacement). lol
Just please don't interfere socially, vote with your dollars. The system works this I can promise you.
1 Likes, Who?
I will state it again: the toolkit does NOT matter.
The quality of the port DOES.
In the case of eON, they have a set of functions wrapping the D3D API, making OGL calls out of it. The question is, how TW2 / CDPR engine uses the D3D API, since there are several ways to do it (especially considering shaders / lightning), and not every implementation in OGL will give you the same performance depending on the implementation chosen in D3D. That's what was obviously missed out in some parts. You can see that perfectly well in Vergen in the inn, there you can clearly see the performance drop by the lightning.
This is about the same as an engine ported badly. Nothing more or less. It's nice they did and tried, even if the result is unpleasent. This is to judge like a bad engine port, it's not about choosing eON, since they DID change their code to work for TW2. They did not change enough for pleasent performance though.
The quality of the port DOES.
In the case of eON, they have a set of functions wrapping the D3D API, making OGL calls out of it. The question is, how TW2 / CDPR engine uses the D3D API, since there are several ways to do it (especially considering shaders / lightning), and not every implementation in OGL will give you the same performance depending on the implementation chosen in D3D. That's what was obviously missed out in some parts. You can see that perfectly well in Vergen in the inn, there you can clearly see the performance drop by the lightning.
This is about the same as an engine ported badly. Nothing more or less. It's nice they did and tried, even if the result is unpleasent. This is to judge like a bad engine port, it's not about choosing eON, since they DID change their code to work for TW2. They did not change enough for pleasent performance though.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: JestI think that bigger problem is bad PC ports of console games.
If game is bad port from console, it will run badly on all platforms.
I think this is problem that should be dealt with first.
Didn't dudes on Windows also cry about bad Witcher 2 performance?
Or is it even worse on Linux?
Thing is, that Steam is going to be a "console for PC", so we'll probably even see worse ports to linux ;-).
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Quoting: fedsoAccording to jaycee1980 from the Steam forum: "Actually, we've had plenty of help and feedback from Valve...". So it would seems Valve does consider eON a valid solution.Valve would definitely help VP or CDPR with porting their game to Linux because they're pushing their SteamOS. If you bought a SteamBox, fired up Witcher 2 and instantly crashed, how crappy and damaging to Valve/SteamOS/Linux would that be?
That doesn't mean Valve endorses eON or the implementation of eON for The Witcher 2. Because ultimately CDPR had the power to chose to go with VP and eON.
With toolkit not being the culprit - yeah, VP could have had eON perfected and screwed up big time with their implementation with eON on Witcher 2, but you don't have their source code so you don't know if eON is perfect or not; they might cause the usage of high-resource OGL calls when low-resource ones would suffice. With the apparent fails of their previous Mac OS X ports, either their toolkit or their implementing devs aren't up to par, or both. So you can't say for certain it's not eON/the toolkit, especially without a test case of eON running perfectly on Linux (as pointed out by Liam).
Edit: The assumption here was that you knew many players had reported Witcher 2 working better in WINE than through the eON wrapper. http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/why-we-shouldnt-accept-bad-linux-ports.3765/page=6#r17675
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Quoting: JestI think that bigger problem is bad PC ports of console games.bad performance on windows? I running witcher 2 on windows max-settings at 55FPS, and my GPU isnt a 780ti!
If game is bad port from console, it will run badly on all platforms.
I think this is problem that should be dealt with first.
Didn't dudes on Windows also cry about bad Witcher 2 performance?
Or is it even worse on Linux?
They better buy a good high-end PC. Linux will not always be a Indie nest.
Barbie PC will not do anymore!
As for Consoles, apart exclusive games(yet some of theirs) and so far GTAV, every damn game of their are bad otimized too!
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I don't believe the issue lies solely with eON. If it did, everyone would have terrible performance. Despite the noise of those who are having problems, I think the majority are not.
The problem is likely a lack of testing on the more obscure Linux breeds like Mint and Manjaro, etc. How many people are having problems with their NVIDIA cards on Ubuntu 12.04 or 14.04? Or, more importantly... SteamOS?
The problem is likely a lack of testing on the more obscure Linux breeds like Mint and Manjaro, etc. How many people are having problems with their NVIDIA cards on Ubuntu 12.04 or 14.04? Or, more importantly... SteamOS?
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