Quoting: mylkano one uses win8 and win7 support ends with 2019, so its pointless to make vulkan, because they have it on win7. no one will officially support win7 in 2020 because it is a security risk.
todays VULKAN in 2015, when win10 came out could have change developers minds, but now is too late

but VULKAN is still open source and the switch already has it. maybe the new playstation supports vulkan. that could make a difference. it should be easier to port games from PS to PC

I used WinXP until long after Win7 had become common. I NEVER upgraded to Win8 or Win10. I finally deleted my last Windows partition middle of 2017. As I am typing this I am tech supporting my brother's Win10 laptop over the phone. Auto-update borked his system and I just talked him through a graphics driver re-install. The point is that people will continue using Win7 after M$ stops issuing security patches because of crap like that.

Quoting: mylkathis game doesnt even have 200 players and is almost 3yrs old

https://steamdb.info/app/507490/graphs/ [External Link]

why are they making a linux port?

i just dont get it

Well, maybe they think there's a bunch of RTS players in the linux ecosystem and want to sell copies. The economics of different genres really are different. Stardock was one of the first devs to go DRM-free, and the reason they said that they did so is because no one steals RTS games. The pirates steal the hell out of shooters, but not strategy games.

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Quoting: Brisse

Quoting: pete910To be honest I hope they optimise the **** out of their Vulkan render to show DX12 up :D

No qualms in waiting for the Linux port if that's what they do!

Their Vulkan renderer has been available for a while on Windows as an alternative to d3d12, and IIRC performance is similar. Great for Windows 7 users who don't have access to d3d12.

And I think that's actually kind of the point. Microsoft will never backport DX12 to Win7/8 but the truth is with Vulkan it's not needed. As long as drivers keep showing up supporting Win7/8 Vulkan can keep people from having to switch to M$'s bloated spyware. Would obviously be better if they switched to say, Mint or something, but for the die hard gamers Vulkan at least gives them options within the Windows ecosystem.

I'm still on the RHCSA/RHCE track, but I am thinking of switching to C++/Vulkan because the next PeasantStation is going to use Vulkan, same with Android, same with Linux, and the same with Windows. Apple decided to lock their graphics API down instead of making it easy for game devs, so their loss, and the XBone will of course use DX12.

EPIC made $3billion dollars in 2018. I want to tear off a chunk of that.

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Quoting: SpykerI'm curious to see if a significant amount of players leave Steam this month in order to play some Epic's exclusives... What will be the effect on the Steam Linux share ?

EPIC won't syphon off any players. After all, you can't take your Steam games with you. But EPIC just might peel off a few game devs because money talks and they look and see Fortnite's fanbase within a few clicks of their own game.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: ChiKinWill this fix the sudden, terrible frame drops that make the game unplayable?

Possibly, if that was related to memory use then it might help quite a bit. Can't really test myself, as my main unit is NVIDIA and my laptop is Intel but a bit too low powered for such testing. I really need to get my hands on a nice AMD GPU next year...

I noticed the same issue. It's a Source engine game running on my 1060 6GB and it's dropping framerates down into what has to be the 20s or teens. Granted I'm running a TV as a monitor so I'm limited to 60FPS, but I quite literally never experienced this issue with DOOM(2016) on this exact rig running via SteamPlay, but a game running a ten year old engine is having this issue in a native build?

And no, the dev team stopped getting a pass the minute they started charging money. I'm all for them charging money, because this was a massive endeavor, after all, Valve itself couldn't be bothered, but the minute you switch over to being paid you become professionals and have to be judged accordingly.

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Quoting: kuhpunkt

Quoting: jarhead_h

Quoting: mao_dze_dunThere are tons of Steam only games. Why is all of a sudden Epic evil for having 3rd party esxclusives?

Exactly. Epic is just doing what Valve did way back when with the launch of Steam.

When did Valve EVER pay for 3rd Party exclusive games?

Okay, then EPIC is just doing what SONY and Microsoft did with the PeasantStation and the XBONE. K, great, whoopie-do. Big picture, that's a blip, barely worth noticing. EPIC isn't going to rival Steam anymore that EA rivals steam, or Battlenet rivals Steam, or GOG rivals Steam, or UPLAY rivals Steam. If Valve's gambit with Proton works then it's inevitable that all the AAA devs port their catalogs over, if only inside a WINE bottle which by then will be seamless, thanks to Valve.

The real thing we should be focusing on is the upcoming convergence of big tech around Linux. Take a look around, we're going to "win."

Windows is on it's way out and in ten years will be a legacy OS. Apple will continue on it's merry cultish way while slowly dying without Jobs to steer it, unless for whatever reason the Chinese government adopts it(as an example). Google's Java on top of the Linux kernel owns the mobile space. Even Microsoft's IoT OS is running the Linux kernel, and Windows 10 actually has a Linux subsystem. It's possible that the next PeasantStation ends up running BSD again, but the 3D API it will be using is Vulkan, and it and the new XBONE will running exclusively AMD hardware which will also guaranty Freesync(if we're very lucky AMD will bake multiGPU into both, forcing all future game devs to support sli/Xfire).

The problem with all of this is that Linux was supposed to free us from these corporations. Instead they are going to use it to chain us in.

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: jarhead_hQuite frankly I think that if I were Valve reading that I'd be pretty pissed.

Eh? Not sure why you came to that conclusion. I fully agree with BTRE here, especially the point on taking even a 1-2% cut if a developer does a multiplatform game. Not just to help foster Linux games, but to support a healthy developer community to give them just a little more support for branching out.

Have absolutely no clue why you would think Valve would be "pissed".

I was gonna say something about ingratitude or perhaps our being too greedy because we are less than 1% and do not justify the current level of support let alone that too, but I think my response up above gives a better representation of why I think Valve is doing all of this.

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Quoting: mao_dze_dunThere are tons of Steam only games. Why is all of a sudden Epic evil for having 3rd party esxclusives?

Exactly. Epic is just doing what Valve did way back when with the launch of Steam.

Quoting: sub

Quoting: LeopardThough ; i don't think Valve needs our suggestions at that point. They know what to do. Only need is time to see what will happen next.

Not necessarily our suggestions.

Yet, Valve seems to have developed a kind of hubris that does not make believe they "know what to do". At least not like the did 15 years ago.

I think at this point Valve is committed to keeping Linux alive and well on Steam. I DO NOT think that Valve is going to dump this many resources into it and then take a smaller percentage of revenue as the open letter suggests that they do. Quite frankly I think that if I were Valve reading that I'd be pretty pissed.The article itself points out that Linux is less than 1% of Steam, and that the resources Valve has poured into it are absolutely not justified when viewed in a short term context. We won't know if Valve was smart to bother with supporting Linux like this for ten years.

I think that with the moves Valve has made and the continuing abuse of users that Microsoft, Apple, and Google continue to perpetrate, I think that Linux has a chance of overtaking Apple in marketshare in the next ten years. In fact, I think that Linux is the only non-Microsoft OS that can do this, specifically because of the abuse by big-tech mirrored by the support from Valve. Which is why when Microsoft, Google, and IBM start buying into the Linux Foundation and buying up the large players in the Linux world I think we're in a great deal of trouble.

EPIC deciding to put Fortnite behind their own pay wall is a paltry concern next to all of that. In that context, it looks like Valve is doing all of this specifically because big tech has decided to standardize on Linux within those same ten years, which means that Linus's dream of taking over the computing world is about to become horribly true.

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And if they had done this five years ago PhysX might still be a common thing.

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Quoting: Termy

Quoting: MayeulCWhat would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

now that is one of the best ideas i've heard in a while to boost Linux-acceptance among the devs...too bad valve is not looking into this comments xD

I guaranty you that the conversation that we're having now is just a replay of the ones that already happened before this announcement.

Quoting: ageresSo, big AAA publishers will pay a lesser share than indie developers? Nice move, Volksvagen, very fair. Epic Games lowered their cut for selling UE4 assets from 30% to 12%.

Why, YES. If you can deliver a larger payday, you get to keep a greater percentage, because 25% of a much bigger pie is a much bigger payday than 30% of a smaller one. Not all game devs are equal, so they get paid accordingly. If you want a bigger share you have to EARN IT. You make a game that enough people actually WANT and then deliver it in a playable state so that it's not a headache for Valve, and you get a bigger cut.

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I haven't played the original Xen levels in twenty years. I played through them exactly once with my original copy. That's coming from someone that spent the day before bootcamp playing Half Life and the Day I got home from School of Infantry playing Half Life: Opposing Force.

This actually looks awesome. Dig the music. The visuals pop and are actually interesting. I liked what they did with Black Mesa, mostly. Looking forward to this.

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HL-VR is a PREQUEL? Oh, COME ON!

There is a ten-year old cliffhanger that needs to be resolved and instead we get to force fail through the Combine invasion?

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