Quoting: maodzedun

Quoting: omer666When you know that the vast majority of them wouldn't even spot the difference between the port and the original without an FPS counter...

Except for all people with lower and or older hardware. Why are all deniers acting like everybody has a 970 or better GPU. I've a pair of 290x - trust me, I notice the performance difference quite well. I'm pretty sure anybody with a 2 gig 960 would be like WTF when his game starts running at 40 instead of 60+ frames.

I've got a GTX 660 and I get steady 50 to 60FPS with everything maxed out on 1080p... I don't know how are things going with an older card, but I consider it's performance on my rig to be good enough.

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Quoting: BonsI am getting more and more the feeling that the porting of new games to Linux is getting slower and slower.
and more ports are getting canceled.

...and at the same time port quality is becoming a more important concern for both developers and users. We know some ports that were completely unplayable at launch, but now Linux users are paying more attention to performance and framerate than ever before. It is also true for reviewers, who keep looking at raw performance as an indicator of the potential interest of SteamOS, even if it is far from being meaningful to the end user.

Thus, extensively testing a game for an emerging market means it takes much more time to port and test it, and it could explain why it is taking developers quite more time to port games as the target audience is getting more and more difficult to satisfy. Honestly, on another site I won't name (cough cough) I saw countless negative reactions to the Linux port of Alien Isolation, stating Feral was doing an awful optimisation job, framerate was not good enough compared to Windows, bla bla bla. When you know that the vast majority of them wouldn't even spot the difference between the port and the original without an FPS counter...

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Quoting: miroNevertheless, things are way better than they used to be, say 2 years ago. When the only linux titles were sim city 3000 and a handful others.

3 years ago, even SimCity 3000 was not available anymore to Linux gamers! Back then, when I heard Valve was willing to push Linux forward, I decided to get a fuel-loaded Core i7 instead of my usual low-end PC + console combo. Never did I regret this decision, ever.

As to console exclusives, it is not that true anymore. Apart from HD remakes of Uncharted and The Last of Us on the Sony side of things, 1 or 2 Nintendo licences a year (true story) -- and almost nothing on Microsoft's part (Forza), people get mostly multi-platform titles to fulfil their gaming lust.
Look at this week's top sellers : Fallout 4, Call of Shitty, Tomb Raider, Need for Speed and FIFA. There's only Starcraft 2's latest full-priced extension which is a Windows exclusive.

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I would have hoped for a more traditional Wipeout/F-Zero kind of gameplay, but it's still great to have that game on Linux.

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[sarcasm]Come on guys, don't react negatively, people will say that Linux users always keep whining.[/sarcasm]

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It runs really great on my Core i7, GTX660 and 16Gb of RAM with everything maxed out and I am quite impressed with the graphics.

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Quoting: MaelraneSorry, but if I was about planning a port, why would I start an engine with DX9?

Quoting: Avehicle7887"why not start with OpenGL in the first place?"

Because it is much easier to do so.

It's no wonder Kronos started Vulkan from the ground up, as developers all around have been complaining about the numerous flaws that affect OpenGL.

Each time you see a port being criticized because of poor performance, remember that there are some things OpenGL handles very differently from DX9/10 and are a real mess to port or to code.

That's one of the reasons why having all the major engines already ported to Linux is a priority if we want Steam's venture to be a success -- something that's already in a very good shape.

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Quoting: wojtek88If the game would be 98% finished it would be already released. The problem is that it is 98% of state that they would consider acceptable, not 98% of golden game.
I have spent some time while playing Deadfull Adventures ported by Leszek Godlewski (former porting guy in Nordic games). Port is cool, respect to him, but load time of the game and menu behaviour are something that shouldn't be released. And I guess (assuming that Darksiders finds it's way to Linux) it won't be better here.

In fact he didn't get to finish the port before leaving Farm 51...

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Quoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyBut but but they promise. They promised nothing. Period.

If it can reassure your almighty businessman ego to think they didn't promise anything, fine.

So they just raised money using the argument of a Linux port.

Doesn't sound any better, to me...

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Quoting: Mblackwell

Quoting: omer666

Quoting: GuestThe Wii doesn't have all those AAA titles either, yet the Wii also lacks the 1500+ games that Linux has, many of which are other AAA titles.

You're talking about Wii U I guess ? Because not only did the Wii get a lot of games (1527 according to Wikipedia), but it also got a lot of big Japanese RPG titles, big platformers, all of the CoD shit and so on.

Wii U, is another matter...

Wii received Call of Duty games much later than every other console. It also never had any mainline Final Fantasy and never got Assassins Creed, Grand Theft Auto, Batman, Fallout, Skyrim, Crysis, Resident Evil (except a re-release of RE4), Tomb Raider 2013, etc.

You are right ;)
Though as far as JRPGs are concerned it got much better than a modern-days mainline Final Fantasy, and better platformers than any other console at the time (Rayman Origins - multiplatform, I know - Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, Donkey Kong Coutnry Returns, Sonic Colors, Kirby's Adventure, Klonoa, Epic Mickey, and I must forget some others).
I know, those are not really fashionable these days, but still they were really great titles that, apart from Rayman, you couldn't get elsewhere. [Edit] *and that sold very well

Of course we can be very satisfied to have 1500+ games on Steam Machines at launch, but let's make no misconceptions about other consoles. Wii had a strong catalogue, even if it was not the same as its opponents.

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