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

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

#391

Post by leereeves » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

ajvs wrote: post #182

simias wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they chan…

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…

> Check out ProtonDB

You almost convinced me so I checked out ProtonDB, and found out you're overstating things.

Only 50% of games are rated "gold+", and most of those are native Linux versions. Most Windows-only games have issues.

https://www.protondb.com/

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

#392

Post by Svoka » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Part of the problem in 2019 is that the vendor with the best drivers on Windows is the vendor with the worst drivers on Linux. (aka Nvidia).

and no drivers on macOS.

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

#393

Post by CJefferson » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 3:08 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #381

CJefferson wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've installed Ubuntu 18.10 on an XPS 13, which everyone tells me is well supported by Linux, Dell even sell it with Ubuntu. It won't come out of sleep. Googling suggests other have this problem.

XPS is a range of models and 13 is a size it doens't uniquely identify the model. Does it have the problem under the lts version that dell presumably ships?

I don't know, I just tried installing the latest Ubuntu. I could go and track the version Dell ships for my laptop, and make sure I never upgrade it, but surely that proves the point that Linux is a pain to run?

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

#394

Post by derefr » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #345

derefr wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"People who own a Linux workstation at home and just want to play a few games" make up a disproportionately large amount of the developer-base for pretty much any software, though, including games. It doesn't matter if none of your users care about a particular feature, if a fair number of your own devs do.

There are lots of developers pretty happy with macOS and Windows at home.

Yeah, but for a piece of software to acquire Linux support, you don’t need the majority of its developers to own a Linux workstation and want to use the software with it; you just need a non-negligible amount (i.e. enough developers with the spare man-hours to get the work done.)

Sometimes, in fact, it only takes one or two developers. I can’t think of a good Linux example here, but I know of a good few projects (Dolphin, for example) where the macOS target is supported entirely by the one or two developers on the team who use macOS.

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

#395

Post by detaro » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

antris wrote: post #110

zeroname wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sailfish has a crappy Android simulation layer. You don't really want that on the Desktop. Android and Desktop Linux are completely different platforms, except maybe for the graphics APIs (Vulkan/OpenGL).

I'm not saying I would want that. My original point was that the person I was replying to said that they won't believe Linux gaming would ever be predominant. I'm saying it already is.

Would you say the same about FreeBSD gaming then, given the PS4 runs FreeBSD?

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

#396

Post by pjmlp » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:44 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #394

pjmlp wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of developers pretty happy with macOS and Windows at home.

Yeah, but for a piece of software to acquire Linux support, you don’t need the majority of its developers to own a Linux workstation and want to use the software with it; you just need a non-negligible amount (i.e. enough developers with the spare man-hours to get the work done.) Sometimes, in fact, it only takes one or two developers. I can’t think of a good Linux example here, but I know of a good few projects (Dol…

Quite true, my comment was more against the typical HN remark that "developers" only use GNU/Linux, as if the software for the two biggest desktop environments would appear out of thin air.

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

#397

Post by jungler » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 6:58 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #354

stcredzero wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most games don't make these mistakes...it seems they weren't aware of some other best practices. I see this time and time again. Game developer runs into one of the difficult subjects in computer science/programming. Dismisses the difficulty. Gets themselves into trouble. Blames the library/product/platform. The last time I was at a game jam, I found myself explaining generational garbage collection to a game dev. He…

What on earth has a generational gc and can't handle a little bullet spam?

Nearly any per-frame instancing tends to hit generational boundary cases due to ambiguity over lifetimes that the VM can't account for. They usually don't result in GC pauses that are large enough or frequent enough to make the game unplayable, but they do prevent the desired "solid 60hz". It's actually a huge thorn in the side of fast gameplay code. Recommendations always turn towards engineering a static allocation(value types if you can do them, object pools if not). However it takes enough effort to build the latter that quite a few games running on GCs ship without doing it in all cases, and some runtimes make it borderline impossible(string processing).

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

#398

Post by yellowapple » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 7:09 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #383

yellowapple wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flipside, while Windows has a greater quantity of drivers available for devices on day 1 of release, Linux tends to have a greater quantity of drivers available for devices at time of install. With Linux, there's no separate step of having to wait for Windows Update to pull the driver, since all the drivers are included alongside the kernel (the exceptions being printer drivers - which aren't developed alongsi…

> Meanwhile, I "fondly" remember having to have a USB stick on hand for Windows 7 installs because the default install didn't include wired (let alone wireless) NIC drivers for 90% of the laptops and desktops on which I installed it. I worked in an IT support shop at the time windows 7 was released, and I imaged and installed hundreds of copies of windows 7 over the time I worked there. While you're right about wirel…

"I can not remember a single instance of missing wired NIC drivers on install"

Were you pre-installing NIC drivers with your images? That'd be a good reason for the high success rate.

It might also have to do with specific manufacturers/vendors. Most of my installations were on Dells; it's possible HP or Lenovo stuck with chipsets that Windows properly supported out-of-the-box. Linux worked fine in all cases.

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

#399

Post by michaelmrose » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

CJefferson wrote: post #393

michaelmrose wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XPS is a range of models and 13 is a size it doens't uniquely identify the model. Does it have the problem under the lts version that dell presumably ships?

I don't know, I just tried installing the latest Ubuntu. I could go and track the version Dell ships for my laptop, and make sure I never upgrade it, but surely that proves the point that Linux is a pain to run?

How did we get from run the latest long term service release which ships every 2 years like clockwork to never update?

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

#400

Post by yellowapple » Tue, Jan 08, 2019, 8:08 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #236

plq wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is added complexity that neither the Windows nor Macintosh runtimes demand of their developers.

Windows actually does require this, which is why applications tend to ship with (or otherwise require) some kind of C(++) runtime, like those provided by MSVC or MinGW. Some rely on these being installed separately, while others include them as part of the app's installation process. Same deal for .NET. I haven't done enough macOS development to confirm or deny, but I'd assume the situation is similar there, too.

The actual difference is that Visual C++ and XCode (presumably) automate most or all of this, since this is the standard way of compiling and distributing applications for those platforms. In contrast, Linux development tends to revolve around software that can be recompiled for each distribution, so the tooling is going to be optimized around a workflow of relying on system-wide libraries and binaries and other data managed by a package manager.