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Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

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Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#301

Post by ajvs »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #244
ajvs wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to s…

You know WINE exists 25 years though. During this time, Windows still has 95% market share ( https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey ) You could also think that, because of WINE, Windows is first class and then they check Linux with Wine. Depends on the perspective. PS. Yes, steam detects Wine

Sure, my point is though that it's only in the past few months when Proton was released that the compatibility was good enough it actually mattered to game developers and players.

By making Linux compatible with Windows games it gets rid of that objection "I'd move to Linux if it weren't for my games" which was the remaining objection for a LOT of people.

Because Steam tracks WINE that's a very good thing, so they can detect players who bought their games to play it on Linux.

This helps encourage Linux native gaming growth, because developers can see the chunk of Linux players rising as more get rid of Windows because they no longer have that remaining obstacle.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#302

Post by cybersol »

schaefer wrote: post #136

The flip side of this is: I only game on Linux. If your game doesn't run well on Linux, chances are, I'll never play it. There's already a back-log of games on my wish list that I'll get to as soon as i find the time.

This! I've been gaming exclusively on Linux since 2009, though it was rough until 2013. I also quite a few Linux gamers are great at diagnosing their own problems. When we do report bugs, I bet the reports are more useful on average.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#303

Post by morio »

plq wrote: post #127
FigBug wrote: post #62

I work for a small company that produces a DAW and VST plugins. Supporting Linux is a huge amount of work compared to Windows and Mac. The main issue is that 'Linux' is not a thing you can support. You have to pick the distros you want to support, and then once you've picked a distro, what versions you want to support. And you need to use the C++ version that ships with that distro, so if you want to support old vers…

> And distos aren't backwards compatible. ie when libcurl4 is released, they remove libcurl3. So you can't have one binary for Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04. If you don't want to depend on the libcurl provided by the OS, ship your own. If you don't want to depend on the glibc provided by the OS, ship your own, with your own dynamic linker. readelf -n will tell you the oldest kernel that will run your stuff. Put that in the…

Great and now I have to also track security updates and ship those for all my dependencies. libcurl is a great example with a release cycle of 2(!) months and tons of vulnerabilities being fixed each time.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#304

Post by lj3 »

sneakernets wrote: post #237
EamonnMR wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Music software's dependance on Windows is such a mess. Tons of cool plugins are stuck as windows-only VSTs! I was really hoping that Propellerheads would use the fact that it can ship on any platform to ship Reason and all associated REs on linux or in-browser, but instead they gave in and added VST support.

A historical lack of low-latency audio is likely why you haven't seen many music software releases on Linux. For years, you had to have a custom kernel to get "decent" performance.

Can confirm. I fondly remember late nights hacking the Gentoo kernel so my college radio station could reliably live stream shows via icecast and darkice.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#305

Post by Spivak »

angry_octet wrote: post #138
FigBug wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Windows, I use the Windows API for downloading files. I don't need to worry about curl. On Linux, I could have statically linked curl, but didn't realize it was going to become an issue. Ubuntu 18.04 was released and curl3 was removed, so that means our software that was working was either automatically removed by the package manager or it started crashing.

You don't have to statically link, you can use LD_PRELOAD to point to local versions of all libraries. It isn't optimal, from space/security perspectives, but it works. You can use the local libs first or last in the path.

You don't even have to do that. When you compile your binary you just need to set the rpath to your own directory of libs and they will be search automatically and fall back to the system if missing.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#306

Post by kentonv »

_wmd wrote: post #300
kentonv wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

glibc is pretty good at ABI backwards-compatibility. The right thing to do would be to statically link libstdc++, libgcc, and extras like libcurl, but dynamically link libc, libX11, and libGL. Luckily libX11 and libGL are pure-C so you can get away with static-linking libstdc++, which means you can use whatever C++ version you like.

It's definitely technically possible to find a hacky combination that works today, but only by shouldering the cost of understanding all the possible deps and symbols and the structure of their underlying objects used by all possible e.g. graphics drivers and X11 libraries now and into the future. You can hack around it today, but it's a fool's game and absolutely not something that can be relied on to continue worki…

There's no other option, though. If you aren't integrated into the distros' builds, then you have no way of getting your binary updated when a dependency makes an ABI-incompatible change -- much less shipping a single binary that works across all distros. The only reasonable option is to determine a subset of your dependencies which offer long-term stable ABIs, dynamically link those, statically link the rest, and hope for the best.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#307

Post by CyberDildonics »

_wmd wrote: post #243
CyberDildonics wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is completely ridiculous. Pointing out that statically compiling dependencies or shipping them with a game can solve many so called compatibility problems is directly related to games working on linux.

It's a wonderful idea - on paper, but all that's needed is for one of the many mandatory deps for running a GL program to link against the system libcurl or any other replaced dep and you're back in Crashville again, population 1 - cloth-eared developer

Are there mandatory dependencies for running a GL program that can't work without using the system libcurl shared library? How does that make any sense?

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#308

Post by isugimpy »

astrodust wrote: post #164
jimmy1 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…

Literally nobody cares about Linux gaming. It's not even press-worthy because of SteamOS. Anyone who games on Linux does it for the adventure of the process, not because it's convenient. If you ported your game to the Atari ST or the Amiga you'd get more press and probably more sales.

There's nothing adventurous about using your preferred operating system and enjoying being able to have a working game experience. I've spent significant time in all 3 major OS options over the last few decades, and came to the conclusion that Linux is the one I prefer. A few years ago, I resigned myself to either rebooting to Windows or running Windows in a VM when I wanted to do any modern gaming. The significant advancements over the last year in terms of video driver functionality (both on Nvidia and AMD sides), binary compatibility (WINE/Proton), and more developers releasing native games have been a huge boon and very welcomed. I use Linux full time because it's what I enjoy and feel comfortable with as a primary OS, and I absolutely care about the gaming landscape improving. I'm only one person, but many others won't speak up.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#309

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

fixermark wrote: post #293
admax88q wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice it doesn't really matter though It does matter unless you just want linux to perfectly emulate windows APIs you will always have to do work to port to a different platform. Choosing the wrong tools for the job and then blaming the platform is just bad engineering. I don't bitch about how hard it is to assembly my desk because it requires a socket wrench when my last piece of furniture only required a sc…

Counterpoint: There's a reason IKEA packs Allen wrenches into everything it sells.

Shipping games as live DVDs is an elegant...ish... solution:)

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#310

Post by yellowapple »

selectodude wrote: post #218
ajvs wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen Steam Play these last few months? Because of Proton the majority of the top 250 highest rated games now run fine on Linux. I've been playing Skyrim, Witcher 3, Dark Souls 3, Castle Crashers, Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm, etc all of which are Windows-only but now WINE is so good it runs like it's native. Linux gaming doesn't suck anymore and it's coming to eat Windows lunch. Check out ProtonDB to s…

Why should I get excited about decent compatibility when I can stick with perfect compatibility? Linux gaming doesn't suck compared to linux gaming 5 years ago. It's still crap compared to Windows.

In my case, it's because it removes the one thing left that tempts me back toward Windows. I'm significantly more productive on a proper Unix-like OS (like Linux), and it's wonderful to not have to dual-boot or maintain a second PC if I want to take a break and fire up some game or other. Between the native ports and the growing library of reasonably-Proton-compatible games, I feel that pull less and less.
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