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Steam-nix

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:09 pm
by Mik
I'm late to the party, but I just learn about this after hearing some fags moan about Windows 8.

after trying to get games to run on Linux and eventually getting fucked off with the poor performance I admit actual developer support has rekindled an interest, seeing as my two main games are DotA 2 and World of Warcraft atm, if steam release a working Dota 2 client I'm there.

what say you denizens of Aura!

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:19 pm
by Matt
Windows 8 is indeed quite faggy. But ClassicShell fixes that. I had a few issues with it but the developer got in touch and helped me iron them out.

Also, yes, if they release Steam for Linux, finally, then it'll be great for Valve games. IT just needs lots of people to take it up and let the numbers show people will use it and shit, then hopefully devs will start porting their titles to it. until most games are available on it, though, it's kind of going to not happen :(

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:48 pm
by Mik
Rob Pardo (Activision blizzard), was moaning about it too, as we learnt from XP, no-one gives a fuck if one windows version is shitty. But if 9 is also a dud we could see some traction.

There is a kind of 'if they build it' they will come element to linux.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 2:13 am
by kaos
Considering that most people don't even NEED a home PC now, the ruse of expensive OS's is starting to show.
sooner or later the only people who own a home PC will be professionals (who work from home) and gamers who want a full (if not micromanaged) experience.

for everything else...mobile devices.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Wed Aug 29, 2012 8:29 am
by Mik
Yeah the days of £200 license fees seem to be ending (upgrade to 8 is £39.99, obviously influenced by the cost of OSx Lion)

As for desktop, I think there is a market for both.

Don't get me wrong, mobile games is a profitable revenue stream and it's a growing market, but the amount of depth in a mobile game is pretty poor (at this stage), desktop gaming is a weird field, it seems to be the premier platform for MMO's, RTS and ARTS right now, but it's lost a lot of the traditional FPS market and most RPG's. This is a shame as I think the FPS genre has been declining in quality as a direct result of catering more to consoles, just recently a new Counterstrike was released about 5 years ago there would have been massive fanfare now, barely a whimper, we'll see if it takes off come tournament season though.

My brother is 16, he's a console fiend, was raised in the emergence, he's been playing them since he was about 5, and he didn't stop saving over my games till I moved out, but recently he's made the shift over to using the PC desktop a lot, mostly for video editing and whatnot but now he games on there too with some WoW and league of Legends.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 11:33 am
by kaos
I know the unreal engine which seems to be corporate standard can run on Linux now...though its not officially supported, and then alternative Indy standard does now as well.

wonder what the landscape will look like in 5yrs.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 12:43 pm
by Matt
That's only an introductory price, I believe it'll be $199 after Jaunuary 2013 so whatever that is in pounds as well.

There is some depth to the mobile market. Shadowgun is quite an interesting game that's been well developed. There's a few more I play as well that are pretty in deep.

That said, also, I don't see the PC market going anywhere. As long as there are people playing it'll be around. I don't own a single console and will keep it that way. I'll ignore exclusives entirely they don't swing my way.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 1:19 pm
by Mik
I've been surprised by the ARTS tourney's, $1mil+ 1st prize is not uncommon at the big ones, the invitional is on at the moment and I think that's something stupid like $5mil.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 8:59 pm
by Chewi
Phoronix claimed to have insider knowledge on this for years. Literally. Because Phoronix is actually written by just one guy who's journalistic integrity verges on that of a tabloid, many were saying he was full of shit. Even I was starting to believe that. It's possible that he was full of shit but then Valve went ahead with this plan in the end anyway. Regardless, he has been Valve's closest media contact on the story after having been invited to their offices and him giving them advice on who to hire to finish the job.

So far, L4D2 is the only game being openly talked about but it's looking fantastic. With NVIDIA's closed source driver, it actually runs faster than it does on Windows. After doing the necessary port to OpenGL, they even found that this version runs faster on Windows than the Direct3D version does - but not as fast as Linux. That really shows up Microsoft's DirectX propaganda for the bullshit it is. Today, it was revealed that the game is now successfully running on Intel's open source driver. That's really something given the bad things Linux's biggest game porter, Ryan "icculus" Gordon, had to say about the open source drivers a few months ago. This was no accident though. Valve invited the Intel developers to their office and even gave them access to the Source Engine code. It doesn't run quite as well as it does on Windows in this case and Intel's hardware obviously isn't as capable as NVIDIA's and AMD's but the fact that it works with an open source driver at all is remarkable.

There's long been a rumour, which has been all but officially confirmed, that there is a working Linux client for World of Warcraft, but for reasons unknown, Blizzard has never released it. It seems somewhat likely given that, until recently, one of their developers was Sam Lantinga, the main developer behind SDL, Linux's equivalent of DirectX.

Unreal Tournament 3 was a sore point. It was supposed to be ported by icculus. Given his experience of porting many games, including the original Unreal Tournament, this should have been little trouble for him. According to him, it was more or less working and there were just some final niggles to iron out. This dragged on for ages until it eventually became clear that it was just never going to see the light of day. The real reason for this was never revealed and there was much speculation. I suspect icculus fell out with Epic, perhaps over financial issues. In the end, people stopped giving a shit because the game wasn't so new any more and it wasn't even that good anyway. As for the Unreal Engine in general, I don't know. Maybe Johnny knows something I don't.

icculus has long been heralded as the saviour of Linux gaming but that title seems to have been taken by Gabe Newell, at least for the time being. I, for one, am very pleased with how things are progressing.

There has been some more bad news recently though. It used to be pretty much a given that every new id Software title would be ported to Linux. They've even open sourced all their engines up to and including id Tech 4 (Doom 3). However, despite initial assumptions that it would be ported, it was officially confirmed after its release that Rage wouldn't get a port. It now seems unlikely that we'll see any more ports for the foreseeable future, especially now that their main Linux guy, Timothée "TTimo" Besset, has left. I blame the Bethesda takeover but I also get the feeling that no one cares about id Software titles like they used to - I certainly don't.

As for me, I've chatted to Sam Lantinga and icculus regarding SDL a couple of times. A small chunk of the SDL_mixer code is mine but it's for playing MIDI using FluidSynth, not something commercial games tend to do these days! Still, it's heart warming to see other users around the web talking about this new feature and using it to make their retro games sound better, which is what I wrote it for.

Re: Steam-nix

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 2:05 pm
by kaos
I blame Bethesda as well
suddenly after aquiring id software 2 things happend.
1. the got real tight lipped on iDtech releases.
2. there games stopped like so shitty....(still played that way though)

as for Unreal on Linux

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/27/unrea ... Joystiq%29

After reading it again, its via middle man, chrome browser, but at least its something, right?
But better new than Unreal on Linux is Unity on Linux. I don't have access to the v4 Beta yet, so I don't know specifics. But I imagine its like everything else Unity outputs too...shit just strait up work yo.