Quoting: skinnyrafNot only we are few, some of Linux users are so self righteous...

What do you propose? To "eat what has been served", ignore sub-par quality and be thankful?

If you are strongly against "parasites" you can call them "middlemen", "mediators", "agents", "port providers", as I proposed. This won't change their role in the ecosystem.

We are supporting Linux gaming however we see fit. There are no enemies here, no sense in rubbing your opinion into others' minds and call them "self-righteous".

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The big problem is that the number of Linux-aware developers is not growing as fast as the number of Linux-ported games.

Companies such as Feral and Aspyr are basically parasites. Or "middlemen" if that word is very strong for one's taste; it does not matter how to call them. The only thing that counts is what they do: they are flourishing on the current Windows/Linux disparity. They are not interested in increasing the number of Linux developers (why would they slay their "herd" ) and instead milking money from developers' foolishness and ignorance in tools selection and lack of Linux experience.

It was said multiple times that "Larian did a good port of Divinity: Original Sin". But that is untrue. Larian did not make it. Porters did. Larian itself did not acquire any Linux-related experience so their next installment in the series is again Windows-only.

That's just my opinion (as is this "editorial") ) but I think instead of praising porters for bringing half-working "last winter's snow" games which do not matter because everyone interested in them already played under Windows (or on YouTube :-) ), we should encourage actual developers to release games for Linux at launch day.

Sure, that would be near-impossible to convince AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-developers (sorry, always hated that "big bucks" euphemism) but it is certainly doable for indie devs.

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Hope the backers will get their pledges back from this scam project.

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Quoting: NelOh please stop this bullshit, this has been explained til death...

Are you trying to sell me that porters do not know how much RAM or how recent GPU their port will need?
Sorry, but I do not buy this piece of... smooth talking.

It could pass as truth for "minimum" system requirements but not for recommended. Their "minimum" specs for "SteamOS" far surpass those for "recommended" on Windows.

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Quoting: kalinStrange coz I have 231 games for linux and most of them are good and they are ported because valve initiative and the only shity games that I have was from humble bundle indie initiative. Don't get me wrong I'm very gratful to humble bundle but valve is the company with power to make the difference and yes valve make money as I and You there is nothing wrong with that

Sadly, since then Humble Inc. had strayed from the path. Yet, they port something from time to time (more correctly, they contract porters but...). Now their role is mostly over.

Quoting: GuestActually Valve never claimed any thing, it was their users/fanbase that did.
And to date, Valve have (tried to) do more than anyone else for "gaming" on Linux, and continue to do so slowly but surely.

True :)
Some guys just love to seek Messiah. When Valve finally had risen from its throne and descended upon Linux they saw this as a sign of the New Age. Yet, so far I myself did not see anything that great happening and it seems since then Valve lost interest (provided Valve had it in the first place and not just feigned retaliation move towards Microsoft's Windows Store). The only way to shift the balance in our favor is to work harder: reach developers, persuade them, provide them any help possible. Valve will not do this for us.

Quoting: EhvisBenchmark it. You'll see lower framerates on OpenGL. That's down one thing: DX11 came first and got the best optimisation, then came OpenGL layer that was suboptimal. You can call in anything you want, but the net effect is the same.

Sorry, can't do. I do not own a single Windows machine. But be assured, if the framerate is worse on Linux it is because of poor OpenGL implementation on the Unity3D side. There are (historical) reasons: before that my little fairy tale of "Wasteland 2" Unity3D crew just did not see any reason to support Linux. They only supported MacOS and since MacOS (at that time) was limited to OpenGL 2.0 they initially just slapped Linux support on top of their MacOS support. Hence, Linux OpenGL was equal to Mac's (read -- pretty poor). This has nothing to do with "ports": it's just the way Unity3D is (or was, as in their 5.0 version Unity3D devs introduced OpenGL 4.5 support).

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Quoting: kalinStop crying like a baby. Without valve and steam we probably will have nothing.

ORLY?
Valve is just another name for Microsoft for all I care. Valve did not do a thing for Linux.

The recent advances in Linux gaming have begun from "Humble Indie Bundles", the first of which began on the 4th of May, 2010. These events hightlighted the viability of the Linux market.

But the true impact for Linux gaming was "Wasteland 2". Remember, when Bryan Fargo launched the campaign, he seriously underestimated backer's interest and promised Linux version before he even decided on the game engine?

QuoteAt $1.5 million, the world gets even bigger. You’ll have more adventures to play, more challenges to deal with, and a greater level of complexity to the entire storyline. We’ll add more environments, story elements, and characters to make the rich world come alive even more. We will even be able to bring Wasteland 2 to OS X and Linux!

That was March of 2012. But what happened next? After the successful conclusion of the campaign Fargo began to look for the engine. It was then when Denis Shergin proposed to use UNIGINE engine (free of charge), but (as we know) Fargo decided to stop on the Unity3D engine which did not support Linux at the time. But in order to secure the deal Unity3D developers were obliged to add Linux support in the 4.0 version in November of 2012.

We all know how big role Unity3D support played in the case of Linux gaming development. There is no need to list all the great games made with Uinty3D.

But when did Steam store came to Linux? That's right: "Open Beta" on 22nd of December, 2012. Like a scavenger Valve just came to claim all the credit without any of the work.

And what exactly Valve did to promote Linux gaming? Steam machines flop? OpenVR without Linux support? Infamous "The Withcer III" ads or "SteamOS sales"? Changing Tux icon with it's own SteamOS icon for Linux (like Valve owns Linux, no less)? Or constant removals of said icons after preorders and just before launch?

Quoting: EhvisI don't think you quite understand what you're saying here. With the exception of OpenGL only stuff, EVERYTHING is a port with some sort of wrapping. Even Unreal Engine and Unity. As proven by the lower performance. Having an optimal solution would require a full blown rewrite, which is never going to happen for the Linux+Mac market share.

Objection!

If we look onto this game we will see that apart from the obvious OS difference its system requirements are identical. This alone proofs that Unity3D is not "port" or "wrapper". It's "*.dll"-s are managed bytecode and not wrapped Windows PE executables. But if it so not enougth to convince you than we can look into any Unity3D log file located in ~/.config/unity3d/<company_name>/<game_name>/Player.log:

Quoting: "Wasteland 2 DC Player.log"Selecting FBConfig
GLX_FBCONFIG_ID=263
GLX_BUFFER_SIZE=32
GLX_DOUBLEBUFFER=1
GLX_RED_SIZE=8
GLX_GREEN_SIZE=8
GLX_BLUE_SIZE=8
GLX_ALPHA_SIZE=8
GLX_DEPTH_SIZE=24
GLX_STENCIL_SIZE=8
GLX_SAMPLES_ARB=0
GLX_SAMPLE_BUFFERS_ARB=0
GLX_CONFIG_CAVEAT=NONE

Desktop is 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
Initialize engine version: 5.2.2p2 (67d68477bb52)
GfxDevice: creating device client; threaded=1
GPU_MEMORY_INFO_DEDICATED_VIDMEM_NVX: 1048576
OpenGL:
Version: OpenGL 4.5 [4.5.0 NVIDIA 352.63]
Renderer: GeForce GTX 650/PCIe/SSE2
Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
VRAM: 1024 MB
Extensions: <lots_of_OpenGL_extensions>

See? OpenGL all right. Right there, in the engine. Sure, Unity3D is a crappy engine per se, but it is crappy on all of the supported platforms.

And this is a completely different story. Surely, you can see a difference between

QuoteAMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 Ghz or ntel Core2 Duo 1.86 Ghz
1GB Memory (2GB on Vista)
DirectX 9 graphics card with 512Mb Video RAM: AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT, nVidia 8600

on Windows and

QuoteIntel i3 or AMD FX-6300
4GB Memory
Nvidia GeForce 640 with 1GB of Video Memory, AMD R7 260X

on "SteamOS".

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Quoting: Guest...you should care about the amount of crap games on Linux.

And currently Feral, Aspyr and Virtual Programming are doing exectly this: making ever-late wrapper-ports with bloated system requirements serving as the proof why Linux is inferior as a gaming platform.

This number inflation by "porters" will do no good. The only hope is direct personal work with (mostly indie) developers via Kickstarter or otherwise to persuade them in releasing day-1 versions and not "ports". And this will be way harder.

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Another worthless Steam-DRM "bundle". Truly, Humble Inc. had fallen too low. Just another Steam lackey.

On top of that: I'm Russian so... COH2... singleplayer campaign... How did they called thier "hero" "Abramovich Isacovich"? "All of those corpses... for a photograph!"

Yep, I have plenty of excuses not to give those "developers" a single cent.

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