Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: const

Quoting: slaapliedjeOne thing I will go ahead point out. Native Linux games vs Proton ones usually have a better go out of the box for gamepad support to just work. I have had a few through Proton that were just not detecting the gamepad at all.

Definitely something that needs fixing for this!

One thing that Valve recommends for Proton compatibility is implementing SteamInput, which should be really good for gamepad support. It's not like all Ports magically have great gamepad support :)

SDL2 kind of makes it so they do. :)

Is it that really true? I've seen quite some SDL2 ports that wouldn't let me adjust controls in game (Though maybe mapping in Steam would have been an option). Also, not all ports utilize SDL2, do they? Afaik Unity is the only native engine utilizing it, for example.

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Quoting: BeamboomI played around with Pulseaudio some years ago, and that system actually is really sweet, so much more than just a layer for local playback. I'd say it's primarily designed for networked playback, you can route any source to any playback destination (or destinationS in plural) and have the livingroom stereo play from your basement PC etc. Or all the speakers in the house playing the same, for that matter. :) It's a cool solution!

Probably very old news for some, but I was amazed at the features when I discovered them. :)

Done all that and love it. By now, I personally prefer PipeWire, but PA certainly has stuff that is missing from PW for now. Interesting times.

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Quoting: elmapulonce we get the linux year, can we start fighting for the bsd year?

You already had that with PS4 and PS5. Wish you luck with games for BSD on PCs, but you'd need something like Amazon throwing all their might behind it, I fear.

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Quoting: slembckeSo I used to be a big Mac nerd until a few years ago, and even with several times the market share, the Mac never got a critical mass of games either. Ports of AAA games were rare and often delayed by years. Indie games were more likely to have day 1 support, but coverage was still really patchy. I jumped ship to Linux right before Proton, and I considered it to be about the same "fine, but not great" platform for games as the Mac. Even in the early days, Proton instantly made it a better gaming platform than the Mac I thought.

On the other hand, Proton is really running a fine line as Microsoft could really screw them over if they wanted to. They will also be playing catch up indefinitely. I just can't imagine the Steam Deck's initial price point being able to cover their ongoing costs to keep compatibility with new titles high. On the other hand, I'm baffled why they would want to discourage native ports as it would almost certainly improve battery life if not a small performance bump.

My guess is that it comes down to continuous support. During the SteamMachine hype, we got a big lot of (partly bad) ports, that hardly or never got updated or where the Linux port got ditched. The Linux guys at Valve were probably equally annoyed with this and can't really solve this with repressions.
If developers make their games fit for proton in their normal windows code, though, chances are those changes stay active and the game stays compatible.
On the other hand, developers deciding to put additional work into a port now are probably more trustable to continue support, especially as our market share hopefully grows.

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Quoting: slaapliedjeOne thing I will go ahead point out. Native Linux games vs Proton ones usually have a better go out of the box for gamepad support to just work. I have had a few through Proton that were just not detecting the gamepad at all.

Definitely something that needs fixing for this!

One thing that Valve recommends for Proton compatibility is implementing SteamInput, which should be really good for gamepad support. It's not like all Ports magically have great gamepad support :)

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Quoting: KuJoCheck out the releases from Feral Interactive. The number of ports has been drastically reduced. This is certainly also due to Proton ... because if it runs well with Proton, then you don't need a port to play a game on Linux anymore.

The number of ports and releases per year had already dramatically declined well before proton got released. Our community was very very worried where the trend led.

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Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: STiATBrowser support, .NET support, sound, cutscenes, etc. are still lacking in areas, as is anti cheat, and while we heared about anti cheat, we didn't hear about any of the others.

They addressed it in one of their FAQs and said that devs should use Vulkan in general, avoid .NET stuff and Media Foundation.

It was this one [External Link].

Which are quite good advises that will in most cases make the games run at very very good quality and speed. Chances are a developer exchanging .net and media-foundation stuff or implementing a vulkan renderer or doing whatever needed to get their game work well in proton will do that directly in their normal sources, so further support should be more or less a given. That indeed makes a big difference to the poor porting nightmare we regularly saw in the past. (Again, taking out Ethan and Ryan. They somehow managed to support the games they ported over time, while other porters didn't).

The final goal isn't every game getting ported to Linux, it's every new game project taking linux into consideration and using the tools that let them support us. Wine/Proton aren't without alternatives and weaknesses, yet they are a part of our (open source) ecosystem, without any doubt.

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It's not like there is some magical porting knowledge base valve could point a lazy developer to. They say games don't need to be ported, they don't say they shouldn't. But if a studio wants to create a native port, they should get past a marketing faq stating they don't need to, anyway. On the other hand, lazy devs would have found out about proton anyway and they need more reason then some marketing faq to do a native port.

In the end, it will all come down to dedication and demand. SteamDeck is a real platform with real limitations, so developers might very soon start making it a direct target to make their game appealing like they do on consoles. They won't do it until they checked their options and estimated demand, though.

Ethan Lee is a very special porter that can't be praised enough. I hope he'll find some projects to survive until hopefully demand will raise again. I can actually imagine him getting into consulting for a while, he could teach best practices to those who seriously want to get into native SteamDeck development.
Most bigger porting studios though used to use compatibility layers anyway, I really don't consider Aspyr a loss compared to what we gained with Proton. Feral pretty much gave up on Linux for ?years? now, there's hardly anyting to accelerate any more.

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Can't you actually undercut that rule by selling "GameX-Steam Edition" on Steam and "GameX-Vanilla Edition" on your other store? Add a hat here and a different one there, done. There are so many games with slightly different versions and different pricing everywhere. Even Open Source games often just go for the "Steam Edition" 'trick'
At first, I was kind of against Steams same-pricing rules but the more I think about it, different pricing would not be customer friendly, either. Imagine buying a game on Steam and finding out it would have been 90% cheaper on another store all the time. So maybe instead of going for same price, a little margin would be more friendly? Don't know what to think about it anymore.

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Quoting: theRealPadster

Quoting: dpanterWhile this is great, I'm just going to drop a casual reminder that their games do not work offline. :neutral:
Do with this information as you will.

That makes sense, considering that you play via the website on your phone.

Well, the could maybe add an option to host your own session server. I doubt many would actually use it now, but some might and it would make players independent of their service.
FWIW, I'm really thankful for those games. Meeting for online Jackbox Parties with my friends on a regular basis and those days are real highlights in these sad times. And It's great that they'll add translations for drawful. My family is totally interested, but the language gap makes it impossible to play it with them. :)

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