To be honest, I prefer original studios to do the porting, this way there are no gatekeepers who decide where something is released - original owners can decide.

Once Linux is treated as a normal platform, there is no need for porting houses.

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"We'll look into" sounds very much like CD Projekt Red answered about TW3 Linux support. It meant "we won't do it".

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I was wondering when AI finally will be used in games more creatively. A good example of what can be done given enough processing power. The likes of Google Stadia can differentiate not in graphics and pushing framerate to the limits, but actually in meaningful AI that's too computationally intense for regular PCs.

One thing though that's noticeable here is lack of progression. Hand crafted game usually handles it a lot better. But that can be combined. For example make a game that has defined progression, but make AI handle behavior of NPCs and the world, making it a lot more dynamic than any current crop of RPGs and adventure games.

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Quoting: BielFPsYes, which is why Phil Spencer is "right" in the business point of view for defending MS lock-in (even if it's bad for anyone else).

Now if we talk about Apple, I think they were stupid to come with an exclusive api without having a big base of developers already using it before.

Anti-competitive tricks is not the right way to do business. It's the dirty way. I.e. proper way is competition on merit. In fact, anti-competitive behavior should be prevented by proper anti-trust (competition laws), because it's damaging to the progress and market in general.

And yes, I agree Apple are even worse. They are one of the most disgusting examples of lock-in proponents today.

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Quoting: Liam DaweYes, we do need to care. Same as we need to care about any application/game a lot of people use, that isn't available easily on Linux. Every single one is a barrier that can prevent people from sticking with Linux. We can make as many big steps on performance, ease of install and updating and so on - all junk unless what people want and regularly use is on Linux. Steps like this are important. Anyone who disagrees, frankly has their head firmly in a bubble.

As a Linux user, I actually find such examples damaging. I look at the IM situation globally, and it's not a Linux specific issue. E-mail managed to push through the federated approach, and only because it happened years ago, we are now lucky we can send e-mail from any server to any server.

IM is a horror story in comparison. Walled garden servers and services grow like mushrooms, and almost none of them can talk to each other. Attempts to advance federated approaches (XMPP and now Matrix) are met with total indifference from the greedy owners of the walled options.

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Anyway, do we need to care about Teams? Just another proprietary, non federated, walled garden IM service, that's not solving but proliferating the problem of IM fragmentation. Matrix is much better approach.

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Quoting: BielFPsDirectX, Microsoft Office (and maybe a shady contract with Adobe) are still a great source of revenue for then. Opening any of this would be a great shoot in the foot for Windows and big loss of money from "gamers"/companies/designers, so don't expect then to support a multi platform project like Vulkan until DirectX (or Windows as we know today) become financially "irrelevant".

It's not really about the money (DirectX). It's about controlling the developers, i.e. mindshare. As long as developers are stuck with MS lock-in, it's costly for them to release anything for other platforms. I.e. it's not like MS will get less money if they would, but their competitors will get more benefits, and that they don't want. It's a dirty anti-competitive tactic.

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Quoting: KimyrielleIn the Steve Ballmer era, I'd have suggested someone to go check the temperature in hell, but these days, I am not even surprised anymore. The new management's strategy is a lot less Windows-centric.

Looks like Phil Spencer is still stuck in Ballmer's times though. He is your regular old nasty MS type, who sees lock-in as a glorified goal. Likely because of him, MS didn't support Vulkan initiative.

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Quoting: GuestSo no, it's not an easy task to switch to Wayland for Android.

Not very easy, but pretty doable for someone like Google. I.e. turn Surface Flinger into proper Wayland compositor, problem solved. All this is not about technical difficulties, but about general care to avoid creating rifts and rather aiming for synergy. Google are doing a very poor job at this, likely because they very rarely care.

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Quoting: GuestOh, and wayland + glibc, and a desktop interface in general, is really not designed for the requirements of mobile devices.

That's bunk. Sailfish uses it for mobile devices just fine. Wayland protocol is very explicitly designed to be versatile and allow any kind of interface interactions, from desktops to kiosks and transport cockpit interfaces. Android developers could adopt Wayland once it became well established, but they never cared about synergy with desktop Linux stack, so they never did anything about it. And that was my point above about Google in general.

Quoting: GuestThat aside, Google's work on Stadia does bring the massive benefit of game developer experience with Vulkan.

That's why Aaron's description fits here well. Best friend because it helps Vulkan adoption and Linux expertise. Worst enemy, because such developers still don't care about us, Linux users.

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