During the ongoing Google for Games Developer Summit 2022 Keynote, one of the Google team just did a talk on "How to write a Windows emulator for Linux from scratch" to help Stadia.
They already have some existing work available to developers who want it, including their "Stadia Porting Toolkit" which actually uses DXVK to translate Direct3D to Vulkan (since Stadia is a Linux system). However, this translator seems to be their newer approach to running Windows games on Stadia.
With only three people working on it, presenter Marcin Undak said they were able to get some games to run but it's still in the R&D phase and not production ready yet with it taking considerable time to work per-game. However, work is ongoing to hook it all up together with Wine and Proton (for 32-bit games specifically they said) which is one of the paths they will be considering going forwards.
There's already Wine and Proton, which are mentioned in the talk as well but it seems Google wanted something different. Why though? One major reason is how thin Stadia is as a platform. While it is Linux, it's stripped down to the core and doesn't have everything Wine needs to build. There's also a ton of things they don't have to care about that normal desktops do and so "90%" of Wine is simply not needed they said. Additionally, Wine is also apparently challenging when it comes to the build system and debugging.
Quite a technical talk but it's quite nicely presented, to give you a basic overview of what they're doing without going into super tech-heavy details to fry your brain if you're not a developer.
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They are also finally about to open the Stadia store without the need to be signed in, so you will be able to actually look around. Incredible it took them this long to do such a basic thing, I can't imagine how many people that put off. Just think if Steam didn't let you view store pages or anything without a login.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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no_information_here Mar 16, 2022
Quoting: ShmerlWhere is the source code for this? If it's not FOSS - it will be a waste of effort, especially if Google will decide to pull the plug on Stadia.
Google used to contribute to a lot of FOSS projects. They still do for some but it seems to be shrinking quickly.
This will die silently when one of the key devs gets a promotion to a different part of google.
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You know, it occurs to me that this compatibility layer at a stroke removes my main reason for kind of, up to a point, supporting Stadia. That is, my main reason for kind of liking Stadia was that, since it was Linux, what Google was doing to get games was paying game studios to develop native Linux versions of their games. Aside from the possibility that these native Linux games might be released for the normal desktop, which didn't seem that likely from the start and doesn't seem to have happened (maybe once?), the main point of the exercise for me was that it would result in a lot of game developers learning to develop on Linux. Secondarily, I thought Google might contribute to the Linux running-games-well ecosystem some, although I remember saying that if there was a way to do this without contributing back much, Google would probably find it.
But anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
It will still be possible to play the games on Linux . . . but that's true of any streaming platform, so there's nothing much making Stadia very special any more. In effect, the servers might as well be running Windows now. And I don't fundamentally like the whole idea of streamed games that you don't even get to have on your own computer. So yeah, Stadia suddenly no longer interests me.
Anyhow. Even if this thing they're doing works, so that in theory they could get a massive game library, I don't think Google is at this point going to suddenly put the resources, marketing and so on behind it that it would take to do a relaunch big enough to overcome existing perceptions of the platform. I don't think they have the institutional will to really go for it; it's gonna be too little too late.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 16 March 2022 at 4:02 am UTC
But anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
It will still be possible to play the games on Linux . . . but that's true of any streaming platform, so there's nothing much making Stadia very special any more. In effect, the servers might as well be running Windows now. And I don't fundamentally like the whole idea of streamed games that you don't even get to have on your own computer. So yeah, Stadia suddenly no longer interests me.
Anyhow. Even if this thing they're doing works, so that in theory they could get a massive game library, I don't think Google is at this point going to suddenly put the resources, marketing and so on behind it that it would take to do a relaunch big enough to overcome existing perceptions of the platform. I don't think they have the institutional will to really go for it; it's gonna be too little too late.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 16 March 2022 at 4:02 am UTC
11 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyBut anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
What feels even worse here, that they benefit from the work that already went into faudio, dxvk (I assume also vkd3d-proton, since I doubt they don't care about DX12 games) and other similar important projects. Yet they don't give their project back to FOSS at large and Linux gaming in particular. It's Google we are talking about with their money. When they act in parasitic manner while benefiting from open source projects, it just starts feeling disgusting.
Last edited by Shmerl on 16 March 2022 at 4:07 am UTC
5 Likes, Who?
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: Purple Library GuyBut anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
What feels even worse here, that they benefit from the work that already went into faudio, dxvk (I assume also vkd3d-proton, since I doubt they don't care about DX12 games) and other similar important projects. Yet they don't give their project back to FOSS at large and Linux gaming in particular. It's Google we are talking about with their money. When they act in parasitic manner while benefiting from open source projects, it just starts feeling disgusting.
Which is what really pisses me off here.. Anyone with more then two brain cells knows no matter their lie WINE is at this core of this project and it takes hundreds if not thousands of folks contributing to WINE to have WINE in the state it is in and here they are with a mere three devs are trying to claim they have done in months from the ground up outside of the DXVK and FAudio what it has taken WINE decades to do.. taking others work for their own at least Valve contributes back and doesn't claim the code in proton as their own
Yea I don't buy it and hope this blows up in their face in some manner and Stadia crashes and burns
Last edited by tohur on 16 March 2022 at 5:06 am UTC
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What a waste of resources.
They are targetting 2 engines that already provide Linux support.
They are targetting 2 engines that already provide Linux support.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: tohurQuoting: ShmerlQuoting: Purple Library GuyBut anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
What feels even worse here, that they benefit from the work that already went into faudio, dxvk (I assume also vkd3d-proton, since I doubt they don't care about DX12 games) and other similar important projects. Yet they don't give their project back to FOSS at large and Linux gaming in particular. It's Google we are talking about with their money. When they act in parasitic manner while benefiting from open source projects, it just starts feeling disgusting.
Which is what really pisses me off here.. Anyone with more then two brain cells knows no matter their lie WINE is at this core of this project and it takes hundreds if not thousands of folks contributing to WINE to have WINE in the state it is in and here they are with a mere three devs are trying to claim they have done in months from the ground up outside of the DXVK and FAudio what it has taken WINE decades to do.. taking others work for their own at least Valve contributes back and doesn't claim the code in proton as their own
Yea I don't buy it and hope this blows up in their face in some manner and Stadia crashes and burns
I'm not that sure.
If I were Mr. Google using wine to build Stadia, I'd certainly not published "hey, i'm not using wine, i'm doing from scratch!".
I'm not even sure why they are even talking about this project, now that i think of it.
Last edited by kokoko3k on 16 March 2022 at 5:23 am UTC
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: kokoko3kQuoting: tohurQuoting: ShmerlQuoting: Purple Library GuyBut anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
What feels even worse here, that they benefit from the work that already went into faudio, dxvk (I assume also vkd3d-proton, since I doubt they don't care about DX12 games) and other similar important projects. Yet they don't give their project back to FOSS at large and Linux gaming in particular. It's Google we are talking about with their money. When they act in parasitic manner while benefiting from open source projects, it just starts feeling disgusting.
Which is what really pisses me off here.. Anyone with more then two brain cells knows no matter their lie WINE is at this core of this project and it takes hundreds if not thousands of folks contributing to WINE to have WINE in the state it is in and here they are with a mere three devs are trying to claim they have done in months from the ground up outside of the DXVK and FAudio what it has taken WINE decades to do.. taking others work for their own at least Valve contributes back and doesn't claim the code in proton as their own
Yea I don't buy it and hope this blows up in their face in some manner and Stadia crashes and burns
I'm not that sure.
If I were Mr. Google using wine to build Stadia, I'd certainly not published "hey, i'm not using wine, i'm doing from scratch!".
I'm not even sure why they are even talking about this project, now that i think of it.
I can assure you they are using WINE code.. There is NO company outside Microsoft that can make a Windows compatibility layer in mere months I don't care how large Google is they are simply taking/modifying code and claiming it as 100% their own
Last edited by tohur on 16 March 2022 at 5:28 am UTC
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I don't think they'll lie about making something new. But may be they aren't telling all the details. They could surely analyze what Wine is doing instead of reverse engineering what Windows does.
I'm pretty sure they are using Wine in some ways, even if indirectly. The fact that they mentioned having troubles with debugging it shows that they looked at Wine closely.
Last edited by Shmerl on 16 March 2022 at 5:52 am UTC
I'm pretty sure they are using Wine in some ways, even if indirectly. The fact that they mentioned having troubles with debugging it shows that they looked at Wine closely.
Last edited by Shmerl on 16 March 2022 at 5:52 am UTC
0 Likes
Disappointed.
Stadia had two main things going for me:
- One was the prospect of building games specifically taking advantage of the cloud technology, which went away with SGE dissolution, and second:
- Pushing Linux game development, and this seems to be going away now.
I suppose this mirrors in a way Valve's efforts in trying to initially promote native Linux gaming, and when that didn't worked so well, resorting to Windows games running through Proton.
When it comes to gaming, is still pretty much a Windows world and they just had to adapt. Still, I just hope that these efforts will amount to something in the long run.
Stadia had two main things going for me:
- One was the prospect of building games specifically taking advantage of the cloud technology, which went away with SGE dissolution, and second:
- Pushing Linux game development, and this seems to be going away now.
I suppose this mirrors in a way Valve's efforts in trying to initially promote native Linux gaming, and when that didn't worked so well, resorting to Windows games running through Proton.
When it comes to gaming, is still pretty much a Windows world and they just had to adapt. Still, I just hope that these efforts will amount to something in the long run.
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: tohurQuoting: kokoko3kQuoting: tohurQuoting: ShmerlQuoting: Purple Library GuyBut anyway, now the only people learning anything about Linux will be three guys at Google developing a compatibility layer. Game developers will just be targeting Windows as usual. So who gives a damn? And since they're inventing their own little wheel (again), they won't be contributing much upstream . . . maybe a bit to DXVK.
What feels even worse here, that they benefit from the work that already went into faudio, dxvk (I assume also vkd3d-proton, since I doubt they don't care about DX12 games) and other similar important projects. Yet they don't give their project back to FOSS at large and Linux gaming in particular. It's Google we are talking about with their money. When they act in parasitic manner while benefiting from open source projects, it just starts feeling disgusting.
Which is what really pisses me off here.. Anyone with more then two brain cells knows no matter their lie WINE is at this core of this project and it takes hundreds if not thousands of folks contributing to WINE to have WINE in the state it is in and here they are with a mere three devs are trying to claim they have done in months from the ground up outside of the DXVK and FAudio what it has taken WINE decades to do.. taking others work for their own at least Valve contributes back and doesn't claim the code in proton as their own
Yea I don't buy it and hope this blows up in their face in some manner and Stadia crashes and burns
I'm not that sure.
If I were Mr. Google using wine to build Stadia, I'd certainly not published "hey, i'm not using wine, i'm doing from scratch!".
I'm not even sure why they are even talking about this project, now that i think of it.
I can assure you they are using WINE code.. There is NO company outside Microsoft that can make a Windows compatibility layer in mere months I don't care how large Google is they are simply taking/modifying code and claiming it as 100% their own
It is not a windows compatibilty layer.
It is just an unreal+unity for windows compatibility layer, with a lot of work already done by dxvk and Faudio.
Feral and others already did that without even using them.
3 Likes, Who?
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