Quoting: michaeltoalDo you have a working installation?
If you do would you mind tarballing it up?
I would be in your debt.

My Vive has been packed away since I wrote this article and won't be pulled out again until after I'm done with the project I'm working on at the moment.

Since Linux support is not advertised as being ready for use, I'm wary of distributing builds of anything myself - especially if I'm not in a position to personally verify that it works with current versions of SteamVR/OpenVR.

Do you have any output beyond "VR_IsRuntimeInstalled returned false to indicate that the runtime is not installed." when running vrcmd?

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Quoting: michaeltoal

export steamvr=$steam/SteamApps/common/OpenVR

Should the OpenVR at the end not be SteamVR?
on my system that is
export steamvr=$steam/steamapps/common/SteamVR

Yes, as mentioned in the article, there are a bunch of different possible path/case combinations. You'll have to use whatever is appropriate for your system.

Quoting: michaeltoalHowever I also get

VR_IsRuntimeInstalled returned false to indicate that the runtime is not installed.

when running vrcmd

Thanks

That seems to suggest that your paths aren't set correctly (either the script is wrong, or some libs may be in the wrong place). I've not had a chance to come back to VR stuff since I wrote this article though, and I can't speak to the current state of things (OpenVR and SteamVR have both been updated since).

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Quoting: Mountain ManBut anyway, the point is this: does VR make games better? You could just as well ask if 3D makes movies better. I'm not convinced that it does.

I don't think that it can inherently make games better, but I do think it can open doors for different kinds of games that couldn't otherwise exist (unlike 3D movies, which don't offer fundamentally different ways of viewing/interacting with an film).

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Quoting: bubexel

Quoting: Mountain ManDoes VR make games more "immersive"? Possibly.

Saying that is obvious you have no idea what you talking. At moment you try VR you will understand the meaning of immersive.

Does VR make games more "immersive"? OMG YES! I'm inside the game!

I feel that the "immersion" you automatically get from VR hardware is more superficial and less meaningful than the kind of immersion you have can have from a non-VR experience that you are fully engaged with and captivated by.

VR does open a lot of doors for different kinds of immersion that are harder to achieve (or perhaps not even possible) without, but none of that is guaranteed. I'm sure we'll see many VR titles released in the future that don't provide meaningful immersion (and I'm sure that some of those will be intentional and valuable experiences in their own right).

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I think it's a little early to be making determinations about what VR will/won't be. We haven't seen a "typical" VR app and probably won't have things that will be meaningfully reflected on as "definitive experiences" for a couple of years.

I feel pretty confident that in the short term, we'll see prominent VR funtimes coming from unexpected angles. Some examples of current/upcoming VR titles that have potential, but might not be an obvious candidate: Super Mega Mega [External Link] is a 3D side-on platformer that's looking pretty good (last time I talked to the developer, Linux support was on the roadmap), Ron Gilbert has been considering VR support for Thimbleweed Park [External Link], and the Kentucky Route Zero spin-off The Entertainment [External Link] is one of my favourite VR experiences so far.

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Quoting: bubexel~/compilar/openvr/samples/hellovr_opengl/hellovr_opengl_main.cpp:459:47: error: invalid conversion from ‘void (*)(GLenum, GLenum, GLuint, GLenum, GLsizei, const char*, const void*) {aka void (*)(unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, int, const char*, const void*)}’ to ‘GLDEBUGPROC {aka void (*)(unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, unsigned int, int, const char*, void*)}’ [-fpermissive]
glDebugMessageCallback(DebugCallback, nullptr);

I can't compile it and i don't understand the error

It's probably quickest to just comment out that line. Others have made tweaks to get it to compile, but I didn't bother spending any time on it - it's to do with changes in glxext.h from what I understand. There's a relevant GitHub issue here [External Link].

Quoting: Hyperdrive"but can't happen until either official vendor support for the Vive on Linux is announced" => There are severe disagreement on whether or not there were official vendor support.

If the word from Valve is that it wasn't ready, then there's no disagreement about official support. The article demonstrates that there's a level of functionality exists (and has probably existed since day one), but without that support being advertised as stable and ready for use, it's not.

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Quoting: MGOid-The rendering freezing problem is a radeonsi driver problem no? I think is a bug in the drivers released in Ubuntu 16.04. Anybody using Nvidia proprietary drivers have the same problem?

Nope, this was a different problem (running nvidia here). It was related to the SDL2 lib that Steam ships with (the one that's outside of the Steam Runtime), and seems to have been present since October or November. Removing that was enough to get it behaving as normal for me, and people have since reported [External Link] that a Steam client beta update earlier this week resolved the issue for them.

I'll update the post to mention that.

Quoting: MGOid- In game game voice chat works for me, at least between Linux and Windows clients. Test your microphone in game (Shit+Tab, Configurations>voice), change the volume. If you change your speaker configuration (pressing Esc and going to the game's menu) during a match, voice chat stop work until the next map area is loaded.

Funnily enough, I had a game of L4D2 later in the week and voice chat was working for me and the other Linux users I was playing with. I guess it must've been working for me, but was borked up for the other podcast hosts when we tried.

Quoting: MGOid- In game text chat can be used by typing "Y".

Yep. This isn't very useful in a game like L4D where communication during tense situations is necessary though (even the Z menu is too cumbersome IMO).

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Quoting: DePingusThis is great! There's not a lot of info out there that covers gamedev on/for linux.

Thanks! If you're looking for more that sort of stuff, you might also appreciate some of my other example projects and game dev related stuff:

* Hover Drive [External Link] (an example OpenGL/SDL game)
* Robin's Rescue [External Link] (an example point and click game made with SLUDGE, along with an accompanying article [External Link] about the engine)
* Hidden Star [External Link] (an in-development open source 2D space exploration/trading/combat game that I'm making with SDL2)
* My game development YouTube playlist [External Link] (which includes dev streams for my in-development first person/text adventure hybrid Winter's Wake)

I also post a bunch of development related stuff on my Patreon page [External Link], although there's a lot to sift through. My 2015 recap [External Link] post is probably a good summary.

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Quoting: dean36963I was thinking of trying to learn to use a proper game engine. Previously I've made some (admittedly fairly rubbish) games, but always with C++ and SDL2, which is fine, but it's a lot of work!

I'm making two games at the moment (Winter's Wake [External Link] and Hidden Star [External Link] with SDL2 and C++, and I'm constantly surprised at how much easier it gets with practice. It takes a bit longer to get to the point where you can have stuff running and inform your design decisions with actual gameplay, but I still feel like it's far less effort than I assumed back when I felt like I was a game developer who didn't have time to also be an engine developer.

Quoting: dean36963Perhaps I'll checkout the Godot engine! The pythonic language looks easy to pickup as well.

The scripting language is fairly solid and pretty easy to learn (if you don't mind python style syntax - I hate it, myself :D ). The [url=docs.godotengine.org/]documentation[/url] is patchy in some places, but is getting better with time.

You can also work with Godot at the C++ level if you want. I haven't yet, but at some point I'm sure I will.

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Quoting: fagnerlnGodot is impressive, I've been doing some tests on it...
I don't know about those licenses and I have a question: can commercial games be developed in Godot?

The Godot engine itself is MIT licenced. You can do whatever you like, so long as your respect its minimal terms [External Link].

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