Quoting: BomyneQuestion: I know OSX is based on an Unix core... and I saw X11 installed on my Mac... How different is OSX from linux? More to the point, would it be difficult to port the OSX versions of the games to Linux?

Graphics whise, WoW on MacOSX uses OpenGL to my knowledge. The transition for the graphics engine shouldn't be too hard (except for porting the build to Linux, which often is one of the harder things to do).

A huge difference is the sound output in Linux, the keyboard/mouse input, the screen handling (resolutions, fullscreen/windowed, multiple monitors etc), networking code (a bit different in BSD/MacOSX). This can be solved today pretty easily since SDL2.0 was released, but would be certainly some porting effort.

As an outsider it's hard to tell how much effort this would require. Since it's known from sources who were at Blizzard that they did run their games on Linux already (at least WoW, they called it "internal testing only", though, we don't know how far this port went), I'd guess they could support it pretty easily but may not want to due to other reasons (another platform to officially support, investment costs and benefits out of it cash-whise - to put it simple, they doubt they'd benefit from this at the current stage).

We may not forget: They'd be in the need to port tools to (Battle.NET, Downloader, Anti-Cheat and what the heck else they do have we don't know yet).

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@Supay - Valve very well knows about the distribution of Windows and Linux users. What they don't know is our hardware, and that's basically what they're most interested in, since it's a baseline for developers on target audiences combined with "what games you have", "how long did you play them" and "how many similar games you own", what hardware specs they have to hit for maximum distribution range.

Within that said, it's clear that they are more interested in the major gaming party, even if linux is getting some tention and news lately, it's still a considerable small market to be not business critical for developers, maximum a "nice to know".

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I certainly have to agree with @through, I don't like the vendor specific DRM either. I'm pretty okay with Steam though, which I mainly consider a redistribution platform.

But we will have to agree to disaggree on that I think that having more games is always a benefit, even if it comes with a lock-in like Battle.NET or what ever it's called, since the people get their games on Linux and can play their favourite game.

Sill I agree that vendor specific DRM shouldn't exist at all, I think that "free gaming" on linux is okay, but the content creators are running a business and want our cash (it boils down to that, ain't it). I can live with being something-like-drm controled by Steam, even though, GoG is a cool option if available. They're doing million investments for our entertainment, and I can see the reason they want a distribution platform like Steam to take care of selling their copies and to a certain amount DRM as well (I still think that Steam is the "best" DRM you could get at the moment).

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I'm with Metallinatus here, Sataya may not give as much about DX as the CEOs before, and comparing DX12 and Vulkan, Vulkan clearly can have a huge benefit over DX12, considering mobile space.

We also have to take in account that DX12 and Vulkan work much more similar than other DX-Versions and OpenGL do, so porting won't be that huge anymore. If we don't have a huge downside on Vulkan, we may very well see a decline of DX in favour of Vulkan. That will very much be up to Microsoft and the driver developers (who basically crippled OpenGL in Windows), and very well will depend on the pressure of the industry.

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Quoting: sub

Quoting: STiATAs much as I'd like to see especially games like SC2 on Linux, I'm unsure this is to happen anytime soon. There is a petitition, there is this forum post - and I may even post there, but I don't think Blizzard will ever give us Linux support. I'd say the chance at the moment is 1 %.

It's up to them to prove me wrong.

Well, Newell said (see the GDC interview) Blizzard is a Vulkan supporter.
Why should they support it, if they're not aiming for SteamOS?
If they stick to Windows, they could just stay with Direct3D 12.

Sure, that's not a prove - but a very strong hint if you ask me.

Maybe we see SC2 - Legacy of the Void for SteamOS?
Beta starts in March and Blizzard betas usually take very long until the final release happens.
This could perfectly match the official SteamMachines/SteamOS launch in autumn
and sounds like a good time scale for the GPU vendors to get their first drivers out.

They do have a OpenGL port of their engine too, still they didn't bother supporting Linux. Vulkan won't make any difference there. It is even confirmed that they have their engine running in linux natively for internal tests, still they didn't bother bringing the games.

Vulkan is not only for SteamOS or those having intentions for SteamOS, could be that they just look for an easy way to support their games on Windows and MacOSX without needing to do the DX/OGL port. But that wouldn't bring us just one step closer to their games on Linux than we are now.

Certainly, I'd like to play SC2, but as I said, I don't see a chance any time soon.

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As much as I'd like to see especially games like SC2 on Linux, I'm unsure this is to happen anytime soon. There is a petitition, there is this forum post - and I may even post there, but I don't think Blizzard will ever give us Linux support. I'd say the chance at the moment is 1 %.

It's up to them to prove me wrong.

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Quoting: Bomyne

Quoting: XeekeiDoes this mean that there won't be any DirectX support in Source 2? Or did you just exclude that since Linux users wouldn't really care about that?

Hopefully no DirectX support.

If they focus their attention on OpenGL support, it'll work across all platforms, and not just Windows.

Sorry to get you out there, it has DirectX support, but will fully support Vulkan.

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This really doesn't look like a fake anymore....

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On my NV card after playing a while, the game sometimes stops responding for like 1-2 secs. Except for that it runs smooth.

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From the GDC15 Vulkan API-Talk:

"Device" is a logical representation of a GPU. It's how you talk to it. Each has a number of queues, you control which ones you want plus what extensions. You opt-in to extensions. Plus, what layers should be enabled (layers used for things like validation, debugging, logging, etc.)

and
Queues are things like compute queue, graphics queue. GPUs will have various numbers of each kind of queue. All queues scheduled independently and run async.

and
Batch up commands in command buffers. Each is thread local. You tell Vulkan what kind of queue each buffer will be sent to.

basically suggests a Mantle-Like design, in which case I'd have been wrong (oops! :D). Didn't watch the full video yet (I'm at work), but if you have time before I do:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUNMrU8uU5M [External Link]

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