Makes a lot of sense

Post #325,058 by jay 4/23/10 10:22:38 AM Reply	Makes a lot of sense They have already committed to doing Steam for the Mac. Getting Steam running on the current Mac OS puts them a good chunk of the way to Linux. They have to do a new interface, but most of the underlying engine would be the same. The real question will be, how many games can actually be played on Linux? I expect most will still be Windows only. Jay
Post #325,086 by folkert 4/23/10 4:33:48 PM Reply	... If Valve was putting the effort into getting Steam on Linux to run successfully... I'd imagine that they have a bunch of effort into games on Linux. If they don't have the games for Linux (and OSX) its just a play for more customers to pump up the numbers. I seriously doubt they'd put in the additional functionality without the games. What would be the real point? They have probably got so many people using Steam with Wine... they figured it was time to get it working natively.
Post #325,088 by jay 4/23/10 5:26:46 PM Reply	Linux servers Most shooters have Linux server binaries, but no client. I expect most of what starts on Steam will be those server only binaries. It will probably mostly depend on how much real game support the Mac gets. The same logic applies to the games there as it does to Steam itself. If your going to port your game to the Mac, you might as well go the whole way to Linux. Linux by itself isn't going to attract enough attention from most game developers, but the combined Mac + Linux market might be worth it. It may also depend on how much of a consistent platform Steam enforces. If it simplifies Linux game development by requiring a decent base platform, more games will go to Linux. Jay
Post #325,089 by folkert 4/23/10 6:03:53 PM Reply	If the are already... Linux Server Binaries... there is no point as most servers do not need a real license to run. Installation of said Linux Binaries vary widely. Therein lives the opportunity. But still client binaries need to be available. I want games on Linux and not just the "server binaries". I'm betting they have more already done than they are currently letting on with.
Post #325,114 by pwhysall 4/24/10 2:35:45 AM Reply	It'll be down to individual publishers. I expect that many will adopt the Cider technology, which basically wraps a Windows executable inside a Wine runtime. Performance is as pisspoor as you might expect.
Post #325,120 by Another Scott 4/24/10 7:57:10 AM 4/24/10 7:58:06 AM Reply	In that case, wouldn't VirtualBox make more sense? I assume what is keeping people from gaming inside virtual machines is graphics performance. In Olden Days there was a company that made "universal" accelerated graphics drivers for OS/2.... Ah, yes. Kendall Bennett's SciTech Display Doctor. http://www.theinquir...ideo-driver-blues The technology was bought by a company called Alt Richmond which seems to be going after graphics for "portable devices". http://www.altrichmond.ca/gav.html It's hard to tell if it's anything more than a patent bank at the moment, though. It's an old problem. Unless the manufacturer of the hardware supplies good drivers, most people and most system vendors aren't going to be interested. 3rd party drivers almost always take longer to deliver, are slower to be updated, and riskier (will it work or not? will it be fast enough?). Similarly for solutions involving Wine. One keeps hoping for a graphics "standard" that's fast enough, stable, open and inexpensive and/or free. But the market changes too quickly, and there's too much money to be made in keeping things proprietary (see ATI vs nVidia). DirectX zz, kernel changes, X changes, Quartz, etc., etc. If VMs with arbitrary OSes could push the hardware as hard as "native", then issues in porting games would go away. Or if someone would make a "good enough" console VM, that might be a decent solution to gaming on Linux and Mac - consoles don't change quickly. "I'm playing 12 simultaneous PS3 games on my Magny-Cours Hackintosh!" Someone needs to come up with a breakthrough product that makes people want to provide the best possible support for it. I'm not holding my breath, but eventually the hardware may be fast enough that it won't matter. Presumably above ~ 100 fps the eye doesn't care even if the display device can keep up. A me-too gaming box on MacOS and Linux probably isn't going to do it when the console and Windows markets are so big. Presumably Valve is doing the port to keep its options open in case Steve's new boxes really take off. And, as ~~static~~ Jay said, if you're doing a Mac port then a Linux port might not be that much more work. A universal system (run Windows, Linux, Mac, console games, and have a DVR all in the same box) might be a compelling solution but it's a long and difficult slog (not to mention the various license issues that would have to be solved and Apple and MS probably see little advantage in permitting such a thing). All of this is yet another argument against software patents and for reasonable copyright terms. These problems wouldn't be so daunting if software copyrights expired after 20 years or so, rather than 95 - http://www.copyright.../publicdomain.cfm ... Yeah, like that'll happen anytime soon. :-( Cheers, Scott. (Who imagines that a great way to lose millions would be to try to develop a fast virtual PS3 or XBox for Linux, and who isn't a gamer anyway...) Edited by Another Scott April 24, 2010, 07:58:06 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #325,140 by folkert 4/24/10 10:27:30 AM Reply	I hope not. If so, its pointless. It'd a sad state and a failure in class if that is the case.
Post #325,263 by SpiceWare 4/26/10 4:42:01 PM Reply	Don't know if this will be the same for Linux http://www.macrumors...ed-beta-underway/ Reports confirm previous claims that Steam and the Source gaming engine will run natively on Mac OS X using OpenGL instead of relying on a wrapper such as Cider to translate the Windows versions to Mac.
Post #325,264 by folkert 4/26/10 5:40:44 PM Reply	If that is true.. it'll be trivial to get it working on Linux.

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