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It seems Croteam will be doing a talk at GDC this year and it sounds like it's going to be quite interesting, with it being centred around getting games to perform smoothly. The talk will be presented by the Croteam CTO, Alen Ladavac.

For those not familiar, Croteam have been pretty great supporters of Linux gaming. Thanks to them we have The Talos Principle and multiple Serious Sam games. Not only that, they were one of the first developers to get their games on Steam when it initially released for Linux.

That wouldn't exactly be newsworthy by itself, sure, but Valve has actually been working directly with Croteam in order to find solutions to the issue of micro-stuttering in games. This is the issue of a game running at 60FPS, yet it might stutter and not be as smooth as you would want and expect it to be.

Valve's Pierre-Loup Griffais tweeted this out about it:

We've been helping @Croteam with their quest to resolve frame pacing and stuttering problems that have been affecting all gaming platforms for a long time; the Linux graphics stack lets us create solutions.[…]

With Croteam's CTO then thanking both Pierre-Loup and Keith Packard "for the driver that's able to finally pull this off!". It's very interesting to see Linux being mentioned liked this, exciting to see in fact.

Hopefully the GDC video of it will be online, even if it isn't it seems we're going to hear more about it in future:

[…]If you are not attending the GDC, do not despair. Croteam and Valve will be talking about this more in the future.[…]

You can see details of the talk here on the GDC site and it's scheduled for Monday next week.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Misc
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Leopard Mar 16, 2018
Quoting: poisond
Quoting: LeopardWell , with only one caveat. You keep feeding Windows gaming scene and make Linux native ports meaningless.

You bought it and play it with Wine anyway , why should dev port it? Dev don't have to provide support for you , because you're running it on an unsupported system so it is not his/ her problem.

You forget the other side: without being able to run that "one vital Windos application" fewer people would start using Linux and the potential future market for Linux applications/games would be smaller.

I personally couldn't have used Linux 16 years ago without wine because I needed access to a database system which was unsupported on Linux.
So there's at least one long term exclusive Linux user thanks to wine.

Sure , Wine is a useful tool but it starts to become a " You can play it on Wine anyway " kinda excuse.
Leopard Mar 16, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Leopard
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: LeopardYou bought it and play it with Wine anyway , why should dev port it? Dev don't have to provide support for you , because you're running it on an unsupported system so it is not his/ her problem.

I didn't think of that. It's not only as good - they're getting the money -, it's even better - they're getting the money without having to port plus they don't need to do support! So it's not only no incentive to port, it's actually an additional incentive not to port. (Still, everybody is free to do as he likes of course. For some, the alternative to using Linux and WINE for gaming might be to not use Linux for gaming at all...)

Well , i got sick of seeing so many threads on Steam titled as : Linux port.

They have their mouse icon ( ownership badge ) and asking for a Linux port. If you asking for a Linux port , why you purchased it at first place with knowing that game does not have Linux support.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/417290/discussions/0/352788917758965624/#c353915309340076815

Look at the reply of developer. Since it is a new game , there is not much people who owns game and asks for a port. Developer is not fully closed to Linux port but he is saying " We heard some ran it on Wine! "

So it is? How convincing for me to give you money until a patch broke it , nice.

i have around 3 times as many total games as i have Linux games on steam. im not about to give up on them. also, there are many developers that are in no position to make linux ports. In some cases i await for a port, Rise of the Tomb Raider for example, but for Japanese niche titles there is no point. Those developers barely know how to operate the engine in WindeX let alone make it run on multiple OS. Simply Locking yourself out of games just to be a purist is silly.

Nope , it is not a purism thing. I use Wine too but with an exception ( 4 titles ): My usage is not in a way that removes the meaning of having Linux port or NOT.
Adamfx990 Mar 16, 2018
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Adamfx990That's funny. I get pretty bad simulation sickness and I find the serious engine to be all right (with its option to make the crosshair static and increasing the FOV to around 91) compared to most first person games. I still struggle to play for more than half an hour though.

So, half an hour is on the good end for you? Wow, that's tough...
How do you cope with Source Engine (Half-Life 2 e.g.)?
It's my second worst...

If I take a break every 15-20 minutes to grab a drink or something, its not too bad.

Half Life 1 isn't too bad. Half Life 2 was tough but CS:GO I find I can play for a decent amount of time. Probably because I don't have to focus on the screen whenever I'm dead.

The absolute worst one I've ever experienced are Space Engineers & Minecraft.
tuubi Mar 16, 2018
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Quoting: lucifertdarkThe only reason I keep Windows around is for Lightroom as it sucks in Wine.
Have you tried Darktable? I've never used Lightroom so I can't say how well it compares, but for me it's more than enough.
TheRiddick Mar 16, 2018
DXVK could be a game changer if it keeps going the way it is now. I dual boot and atm I'm using Windows because 2 games I'm playing atm don't work under Linux, that's Kingdom Come, and sadly WarThunder (because v1.77 broke shit).

I play at 4k so things get real difficult because achieving 60fps at 4k through WINE is no small task! (plus dxvk atm isn't ready for prime time)


Last edited by TheRiddick on 16 March 2018 at 11:16 am UTC
lucifertdark Mar 16, 2018
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: lucifertdarkThe only reason I keep Windows around is for Lightroom as it sucks in Wine.
Have you tried Darktable? I've never used Lightroom so I can't say how well it compares, but for me it's more than enough.
Thanks for the reminder about Darktable, I tried it a couple of years ago & wasn't impressed at the time, I'll have to install it & see if things have improved since then.
Purple Library Guy Mar 17, 2018
Quoting: lucifertdark
Quoting: tuubi
Quoting: lucifertdarkThe only reason I keep Windows around is for Lightroom as it sucks in Wine.
Have you tried Darktable? I've never used Lightroom so I can't say how well it compares, but for me it's more than enough.
Thanks for the reminder about Darktable, I tried it a couple of years ago & wasn't impressed at the time, I'll have to install it & see if things have improved since then.
Always worth re-checking open source projects that aren't good enough for your purposes every 2-3 years; things do gradually change.
Leopard Mar 17, 2018
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: LeopardLet me remind you John Carmack's Wine Linux proposal:

His company did ports of Linux versions of their games in an era which slightly less people was on Linux and internet game stores wasn't a thing at all. It failed their hopes about selling.

Then he said Wine is way to go for Linux and native ports are just a waste of time.

According to him ; Linux users will eventually ran game via Wine by tinkering it by commiting and applying hacks. Because they're much more technical people than Windows users. Also there are only technical people out there using Linux , so they don't have to provide native , easy , one click versions. They will bought it even it is only Windows anyway , so they will find a way run it.

Easy money.

Probably there will be some people who are furious about me but ; if they don't care about a Linux port then that means they're clearly saying " We don't need your money at all ".

Do the math beyond there.

Was that John Carmack's statement prior to the release of Steam for Linux?

If yes, that is not applicable to our time anymore.

His statements belong to 5 February 2013. Steam for Linux released at 14 February 2013.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/298628243630723074

He later further replied that " Wine should be better statement " on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/17x0sh/john_carmack_asks_why_wine_isnt_good_enough/

As you can see he is saying ; his company tried twice and conventional wisdow showed that Linux market is not good. And from that point ; developing for Linux market seemed pointless to him and that is why he is asking " Why Wine is not good enough" .

He is not hostile to Linux but he is hostile to developing for less people.

http://rmitz.org/carmack.on.operating.systems.html

To sum it up ; so he was suggesting Wine should be better because he decided making native releases are just waste of time ( for Linux , not for others. )


Last edited by Leopard on 17 March 2018 at 6:55 am UTC
Leopard Mar 17, 2018
Quoting: GuestWhat John Carmack said 5 years ago is not applicable anymore.

The proof is the number of quality games we currently have on Linux. It is slowly but continuously growing. Add to that the relatively quick adoption of Vulkan.

As for id Software, their parent company, Zenimax, just seems to be anti-Linux. Doom 2016 runs great on WINE and have performance parity with Windows. If they are worried about having Linux customer support, they could have just hired Feral Interactive or Aspyr Media for porting the game to Linux. Even their latest Wolfenstein game runs on WINE already.

They both running well because of Vulkan. But these games still rely on DirectX. Input , sound etc. relies on DirectX.
mt7479 Mar 18, 2018
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: Adamfx990IMO the serious engine is the best engine in the world right now. It runs great on absolutely anything! I'd love to hear what they have to say on this matter.

Their engine is the one giving me most motion sickness (monitor, not VR!) I ever had with any engine... :-/
I was able to reduce it with the settings, but as they introduced special motion sickness settings later, I cannot be the only one...

Same for me. On top of my head I can't recall any other engine where I have that problem.
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