Quoting: cue58It does count though. Not supporting Linux because its market share is too low has always been a valid reason. The only thing I blame is occasional ignorance on some issues, and mostly I blame gamers themselves for not caring more about their computing environment enough to realize how absolutely garbage windows is.

Please give this man a cookie. Exactly what I'm thinking but we cannot blame the users aswell, Linux is not promoted by any company and in every Tech-store that I go into I see big banners with Windows 10 title on them. I have never seen an Ubuntu title or Tux symbol or anything like that in these kinds of stores, since they have no profit of preinstalling Linux-based OS but they do have some % of installing Windows 10 on these machines.

I also once fell into an argument with a retailer that wanted to convince me how Windows 10's user experience is much better than with Linux-based OS and how easy it is. He didn't know that I've been using linux for 2 years and that after you jump through the first wall and get a bit familiar with Linux you just never wish to go back to Windows despite the lack of proprietary software support. They are just payed to do so and to trick users into thinking that Windows 10 is any good because Microsoft is investing a ton of money into Win10's promotion since it's been such a fail with the free-upgrade trick they wanted to do. As I can see in marketshare they are still not much successful despite all the promotion's efforts and the Windows 7 that is the best and most complete Windows version of all times still dominates the market by a huge percent, and someone who doesn't need Dx12 support has no reason to switch to windows 10. And they are not planning to probably aswell since they didn't use the free upgrade option so they won't be paying for it now... The only thing you get with Windows 10 over 7 is problems and restrictions, privacy issues, you loose the ability to control your computer at least to some extent and updates that can break your machine but cannot be disabled.

Let's just hope that we get at least so much marketshare that people will at least hear for alternative before giving up into using Windows 10, we (users) are ones who must promote Linux to the biggest extent possible because the proprietary companies and people who have profit from selling Win10 copies won't...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Not a lifechanging feature, but my Controller started working properly when I switched to linux :D now I don't have to plug out and back in the dongle so that Winsh** can properly load drivers... and Linux seem to give me better experience in everything that it is capable of. I might even give this game a shot one day but currently I'm so busy that I cannot even finish few old ones that I'd bought but haven't finished yet!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

@h381661

Yes LoL has a HUGE community and a game that has great gameplay but they suck as developers. They still have shitty Adobe Air and old dx9 game engine that actually made them a lot of trouble when attempting to port the game on Mac. As they know how bad it was with Mac client and knowing their limitations because of the architecture they currently use they don't want to take risks before they include some cross-platform engine and client, and as I know it's happening atm, so probably we will get LoL native one day too, works on wine so we can play it. With all of that said Riot game(s) is a good company for making money, but a shitty one when it comes to PC gaming in general.

Valve on the other hand, has way biggest community of all the digital distributors and they also have a lot of their own e-sport games that are being played by huge amount of people (CS, Dota2 being the biggest ones). However they are having completely different approach, Valve as a company has a vision to unite all the gamers and make gaming availible on more than just exclusive platforms and they made their games Linux native and Dota2 for example even runs better on Linux than it does on Windows. So Valve is not here to be blamed, it's the other big publishers that ignore Linux as a platform completely. But either the Feral, Aspyr and other studios that make port for us are not to be blamed since they receive very small portion of money from us due to our small numbers and YES even though we pay for 100% of our games because we don't have piracy on Linux it's still a very small percentage of their income.

Eventhough Linux ports are not performing as well as their Windows versions do, they still do work and make gaming on linux possible at all and all the AAA games that I've played have been pretty playable and enjoyable. I suggest to just give this thing time, we have been on the gaming market for only 3-4 years and we already have 25% of steam library availible. So there is way bigger % of Linux native games than there is us (users) in the market, and I think that no other community ever achieved that...

As I see the future of Linux gaming: Just wait until huge number of titles are being "badly" ported to SteamOS and Linux and after 5 years when the difference will be unnoticable because we'll all have better hardware and hopefully some porters will start including vulkan when porting from dx12 which will have much more comparable experience to their Windows versions, it will probably come down to personal preference, people will get to choose which OS to use on a daily basis, and only then we will se completely Linux-planned games that come from official publishers and are targetet at linux users (of course IF some decent % of users choose Linux as their operating system, if they don't than we will always be struggling as we are now, but thanks to Valve's efforts and some companies we at least have gaming possible even though it's not on that scale as consoles or Windows is).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: rcritYou can play Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast on linux by building your own binaries:

https://github.com/xLAva/JediAcademyLinux [External Link]
https://github.com/xLAva/JediOutcastLinux [External Link]

I used wine for them and they worked flawlessly there, two of my favourite games ever :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Hm, great things, I bought Borderlands 2 bundle and starting to play the game, I'm not into shooters much but there is something special about the series, the things that distinct from other games.

I'm wondering does anyone know which games will Aspyre bring to Linux in the future? :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: maodzedun

Quoting: nocriI don't think that it'll use Vulkan -- feral main source of income is OSX, so it is obvious that they will put an effort to learn how to write performant apps using Metal, however, Linux userbase is too small, so I don't they will make an effort to learn Vulkan when openGL (at least for them) will make the trick. The only option is if there exists translation layer Metal->Vulkan (the other way around than MoltenVK).

Or maybe I am wrong ;-)

This is run so bad if they use OpenGL. It is way too heavy on DX as it is.

I think that Feral realizes that we would need at least gtx 1080 to run this game on OpenGL with reasonable framerates, at least I hope they do... I really hope that vulkan will be used but I am thankful for any kind of port, at least we will be able to play OpenGL version after few years when we all have bought better graphics cards :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: m2mg2I think they had to hype it at first whether they wanted to or not otherwise no one would have shown any interest. Whether they thought they could do it in two years who knows, maybe they did. They did port their whole catalog over pretty quick.

Exactly what I'm thinking, it is however nice that Valve is embracing cross-platform gaming, they are of course doing that for their long-term interest but they are being so nice not to lock down ported games to "SteamOS" only so that the whole open-source community can benefit from their efforts. And they really have no reason too since they have been doing very well for quite some time and they are the ones who can conquer the giants that are trying to lock everything to closed environments and make us slaves. Both gaming and computing need freedom in order to achieve innovation and originality. If all the ignorant people (including majority of windows gamers) realised how nice would it be to install free operating system and play all of our favourite games it would be nice... However anyone with common sense should embrace Linux gaming regardless of what they are using at this very moment...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

@dmantione

This is quite nice argument :) Yeah I think that they just backed up their hype now and are starting to work on it even harder... probably they don't want to remake the same mistake by giving too much hope to users and then disappointing them... They now probably want to make things working before they even announce anything, which in my opinion is exactly what needs to be done! Or maybe they did that big hype few years ago just to show developers and users that they are serious about the project. Maybe if they didn't start so hyped the developers and users would not even consider them seriously... who knows :) I only know that gaming on Linux is becoming greater with every new title and that probably pleases all of us here :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Yeah really great news that ports are being worked on! :D I think that people misinterpreted Valve's intention 3 years ago when they announced SteamOS... They did not mean to take over the Market with steam machines in 2 years which many people seem to be thinking. What they actually did is make their future as a company independent from third party companies and open a whole new market.

I don't think that SteamOS is was ever meant to be quick revolutionary thing (it was though for us - Linux users :D)

Great interview though! It's nice to hear things from the other side as well and such a positive attitude from developers about the whole SteamOS and linux thing!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: uraeusA completely different take is that they are playing on words here. And its a game from Massive Entertainment. So it could be Tom Clancys The Divison, Fra Cry 3 or Assasins Creed: Revelations.

Or just massively popular, a Lego game would be monumental for Linux.

True, eventhough I can set up majority of Lego titles through Wine, it would still be great to have fully native support for a huge LEGO title like The new Lego star wars! It would probably mean a lot for the SteamOS itself aswell since people who buy steam machines don't have Wine and desktop in mind... However it is very unlikely because the Mac already got their port and publishers who hired Feral for the Mac port seem to have ignored SteamOS and Linux as a platform completely!

But anyway, it is great that we get at least few AAA titles every year, and of course decent number of good mid-range titles and whole bunch of indies :D it's definitely nice getting more and more support, developers seem to have really started considering vulkan which is great news for the gaming industry! And honestly the only proper and reasonable one... I hope that after a few years we will speak on this forum on how the Directx12 was just a failed attempt to force people into using Windows10 and increase their monopoly on the gaming market :D

However being very hyped about the tomorrow's announcement! :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments