Quoting: F.UltraIf only writers of shared libraries would think more about backwards compatibility...

It would suffice if they followed semantic versioning with regard to their libraries’ APIs – one would know which shared versions are compatible. Some libs would have a few hundred new major versions every year – but at least it’d be obvious that every game needs its own separate copy of it in its own version.

At least until we dive into compiled C++ libraries where the version of the compiler that compiled the library and a game binary matters, as C++ has no stable ABI (so library compiled with newer gcc might, and probably will, stop working with old executable).

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Quoting: kellerkindtWell, indirect it is. Targeting Vulkan alone can now be enough to support all three platforms and therefore increasing the chance of Linux support :P

I don’t really believe MoltenVk is going to actually make Vulkan popular choice for macOS versions… but the Vulkan Portability Initiative [External Link] might (and perhaps on top of what it achieves somebody makes an open-source full implementation of Vulkan on Metal in the future). Then, with the ability to easily create a Vulkan window and handle events using SDL, it might make it really reasonable to write one works-everywhere Vulkan version of a game. :)

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Quoting: roothorickSaid it before, will say it again. OpenGL will quickly go the way of FORTRAN: only good for legacy code (but still a valuable skill because of legacy code). Developers leaving their GL codepaths to rot as they focus on Vulkan is just a sign of the times, and I personally don't see any issue with it.

I actually expect some people will try to make new high-level APIs implemented on top of Vulkan¹ to be the next OpenGL-level API, but more modern and sensible, some others will actually try to implement OpenGL-over-Vulkan² (similarly to the project of D3D9 on top of Vulkan – VK9 [External Link] etc., and one of them will finally, after a dozen years or so, win and become the de-facto new standard with a reasonably large community.

But before that, I expect smaller teams to keep using OpenGL, and the bigger ones to sculpture their own things using Vulkan, D3D12 and Metal.

¹ Like nVidia’s VkHLF [External Link]…
² There are attempts [External Link], but with virtually no activity for some time.

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glslang actually currently can compile a lot of HLSL, at least modern one (D3D10 era and later), here is the github issue following the progress [External Link], and as I understand it, it is pretty usable right now and actually can compile a lot of DX shaders for Vulkan.

On the other hand, the work there does not focus on earlier D3D9 era HLSL, and cannot compile such old code. But the guy from VK9 (Vulkan implementation of D3D9 API) works on a D3D9 shaders → SPIR-V transpiler [External Link] – but he tries to compile from binary (not HLSL code), as his aim is to run D3D9 binaries.

EDIT: and following a link from the comments of the glslang issue – it seems Microsoft also works on their own open-source HLSL → SPIR-V compiler [External Link]. Interesting times we live in.

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If there’s no shader cache present, GPUs generally spend precious time compiling shaders which then results in jerkiness as things struggle to be rendered properly.

It’s the CPU which compiles the shaders (the compiler code is part of the graphics driver, but it is executed on the CPU, the GPU then only executes the compiled shader). True, though, that the compile time can be long and the game has to wait until the shader is compiled, ending with stutter (or can keep working while shader is being compiled asynchronously in the background – with ugly rendering artifacts).

The Dolphin team is confident that they’ve implemented a very “ridiculous” but good solution to this stuttering problem. They’ve written an interpretter that emulates the actual Gamecube/Wii rendering pipeline.

Writing an interpreter for the rendering pipeline is not ridiculous – that’s totally fine solution for an emulator. What is ridiculous is the fact that the interpreter is executed by the GPU, itself being a big shader, called by them ubershader (though IMO metashader would be better – shader interpreting other shaders). As far as I know, there was no other projects, at least in the FLOSS world, to write such a big piece of non-rendering logic in a shading language. That trully is ridiculous and pretty amazing.

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Quoting: KimyrielleThis is indeed the only commercial-quality open source game I am aware of. Apparently it's trivial to find talented programmers willing to contribute work to a community project, but not artists. Most OSS games really look as if a three year old having no artistic talent tried out random buttons in Photoshop, while this one is a very welcome exception. I don't know why this is. I guess artists are much more obsessed with getting paid for their work and retain all the rights, that's the only explanation I have.

Sure, FOSS community has hackers’ overrepresentation, which makes finding good artists for FOSS games harder – and programmers in general like to code game engines, and not worry about details related to game logic and gameplay… Which makes in the FOSS world game engines overrepresented too.

But still there are at least few more commercial-quality games than just 0AD. Look at The Dark Mod [External Link] (which, contrary to what name suggests, is a stand-alone game) or Battle for Wesnoth [External Link] (sure, it is a 2D turn based strategy with oldish looks, but commercial-quality nonetheless), then there are a few supposedly good shooters or MMORPGs (Xonotic? Ryzom? PlaneShift? the last one has proprietary art – didn’t try any of them myself though)…

And then there are games like SuperTuxKart [External Link] or MegaGlest [External Link] which, surely, won’t compete with AAA titles but still are well better than many commercially sold indies. Well, SuperTuxKart IMO actually might if it added a few more more interactive maps, remade its campaign mode and added online multiplayer.

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I wonder what gamedev kickstarters mean when they set Linux version stretch-goal – if their campaign does not meet the goal does it means they won’t bother with protability and Linux version at all?

What changes when the goal is met – do they now try to remake the game’s engine architectire to be portable? Will they still make it Windows-centric while hoping the additional funding will allow them to hire somebody to port it later? Do they plan to invest that money into more devs and tester time on Linux and on additional Linux hardware for testing?

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You’re right. I just checked, and got the same image instead of a X360 one, but the game still uses X360-like settings of the controller.

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Quoting: miro

Now that is something I've seen for the fist time, it is unexpected and very much appreciated ^_^

no joystick dead-zone overrides or the (X) in the middle, but a real steam controller setup, nice. if someone knows: did feral do this or the game devs?

Where’s this screen from? Did SoM added full true support for Steam Controller?

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Quoting: bubexelWestern Europe according to this definition is formed by countries with dominant Roman Catholic and Protestant churches, including countries which are considered part of Central Europe now:

Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

just google! it knows everything!

Could you specify what definition? Where exactly did you get that info from? There are many [External Link] different [External Link] definitions [External Link] of Western Europe [External Link], and I cannot find what definition does Valve use. Or what is their definition of “Russian Territory” for that matter (is that European Russia? Are those former Soviet Republics of USSR, including Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia?). Also I see they used to use the term ‘Eastern Europe’ in 2014 [External Link] which is not listed in the newer charts in the article we’re commenting under.

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