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Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

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Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#201

Post by hutzlibu »

lawl wrote: post #141
hutzlibu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your criticism, but just "Create a standard" is maybe a bit hard to do. Game devs need a market. The linux market is not really the biggest one, neither in numbers, nor in money. It only became a bit relevant, because Valve used linux, to threaten Microsoft, as they tried to get a big cut of game sales, with their own market. So good for linux, yes, but the normal linux game market is still quite uninterestin…

> I share your criticism, but just "Create a standard" is maybe a bit hard to do. The linux market is not really the biggest one, neither in numbers, nor in money. I know of at least one game that's regularly in the Steam top 10 (Path of Exile) that is doing a port from DirectX to such a standard, Vulkan. Not to support Linux, but because Vulkan is cross-platform, allowing them to reuse their code base for a mobile g…

Sure thing, and they are not the only one. And it is good thing. Star Citizen for example is a very big one, who will use vulkan (so probably around 2030+, when the game is finally somewhat finish ...)

But my criticism to the comment above was about "just create a standard" for the linux world, as it is something trivial to do. But yes, with vulkan there now exists a standard for graphics, that can compete with DirectX again. (even though linux-foundations are not really involved directly in the Vulkan standard)

But games are more about the graphic layer, because with OpenGL there was a graphic standard before, yet still allmost no one bothered to port to linux. That changed, for various reasons. (mainly Valve and Android, I think). Also it helps, that unity for example can target linux, and their editor also now runs on it (but I don't know, how well).

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#202

Post by Maken »

blaser-waffle wrote: post #142
runjake wrote: post #84

Now, the kickers behind the headlines (that nobody told me up front): 1. The majority of the games do not support multiplayer on Linux, due to dependency on Windows-specific anticheat software. 2. Many, many of the games themselves aren't totally stable on Linux. So, expect a crash or two at critical gameplay moments. That said, Proton is a great effort and it's great they're pushing Linux forward.

> 1. The majority of the games do not support multiplayer on Linux, due to dependency on Windows-specific anticheat software. Not even anti-cheat, just different implementations of things in the Linux and Windows versions. IIRC Paradox games don't have any strong anti-cheat, but Linux and Windows users can't play due to how their systems handle network time synchronization. > 2. Many, many of the games themselves are…

Modern Paradox games (see Stellaris and Crusaders Kings 2) do support cross-platform multiplayer^. Maybe you are confusing them with Civilization V/VI, which did launch without cross-platform support and it is broken periodically due to the Linux/Mac version lagging behind the Windows one after each major update.

^ Aside from the regular out-of-sync issues they suffer sporadically, no matter the platform.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#204

Post by 013a »

pmarreck wrote: post #123
m-p-3 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single-player games. With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sens…

Correct me if I'm wrong but anticheat engines, the way I believe they are currently designed, use their proximity to the actual hardware and OS to work, and the layer of abstraction introduced by Vulkan ruins this. What if the anticheat model was changed to one that detects statistically-improbable scoring (basically, a scientific model)? And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification, almost like…

Nearly every anticheat system already does this. The thing about anticheat teams is, they almost never talk about how their systems work, but I can practically guarantee to you one thing: There is no idea you could have which has not been tried in the war against cheaters.

CounterStrike has, in times past, probably also today, used where you're aiming as a signal for whether you're using wallhacks. Like, if you're aiming and trailing directly on top of another player, but through a wall, for extended periods of time. This is statistical modeling.

> And triggering that would require some sort of skill verification

How do you remotely validate the skill of someone who is possibly cheating? Why wouldn't they just cheat at the validation? Do you, maybe, accept that they may cheat, but then raise videos of their skill checks to an enforcement team for validation? CounterStrike also already does this! They have the Overwatch system which enables specially trusted players to review gameplay footage of other players which VAC suspects of cheating.

Now, Runescape is the most explicit example of these "skill checks" I've encountered. Certain undocumented behavior which resembled botting could trigger an in-game "captcha" where you had to prove you were human. If you were, you'd often get a prize. Simple. Somewhat effective (often, people would just get around this by paying cheap labor in third world countries to oversee a hundred bots per person, and solve the captcha events when they happened. they did not save Runescape's economy from being destroyed by bots, and eventually, the game began enforcing strict value-for-value trading rules between players).

What are CounterStrike and Runescape infamous for? Cheaters and botters, moreso than most other games.

Statistical methods are a tool in the toolbox of anti-cheat systems, but they're not enough alone. They're far, far too easy to defeat; when a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be an effective metric. If I keep a wallhack on for an entire game, it becomes very easy to detect; If I turn it on for just one kill, that one kill which puts us on the winning side of a tie, and I'm victorious, the outcome is similar, but I'm far harder for statistical modeling to catch.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#205

Post by alleyshack »

na85 wrote: post #190
farias0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be "games", but titles like Gone Home are still video games, they aren't about "beating" something, and they aren't simply toys either.

>They may not be "games", but titles like Gone Home are still video games They may not be games, but they're still games? I think whether or not Gone Home can be considered a game is highly debatable. I haven't tried it, but it seems that the elements that make a game a game are missing. That it's available on Steam is completely orthogonal to whether or not it's a game.

I'd strongly recommend looking into the Aesthetics of Play[1][2]. It's a framework that talks about eight primary reasons why people play video games, and only one of those reasons is "Challenge" (i.e., beating a goal). Games like Gone Home, Animal Crossing, The Sims, Minecraft, etc all reflect different play aesthetics, and are intended for people who enjoy different things than pure Challenge.

[1] https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA

[2] https://theangrygm.com/gaming-for-fun-part-1-eight-kinds-of-...

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#206

Post by blopp99 »

I was a ubuntu only user for the last 3 or 4 years. Even though part of what I did on my computer was gaming, there was a side of 3d design which I was put in a bad position when I started to get more hardcore. I decided to buy windows and try it. No regrets W10 is good and universal. I would consider going back if Linux has more cad programs compatibily. In the time being I'm just gonna miss Ubuntu remembering to mute if my earphones are plugged in.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#207

Post by cecja »

gpm wrote: post #52

Yesterday I played civ6 with 4 people on 3 operating systems. The Mac user couldn't fullscreen the game and had weird rendering artifacts. One of the windows users had the game take 10x as long to load as it should have (commparing to mac/Linux/windows on vaguely similar hardware) The other windows user kept dropping. Note that we were all sitting at the same kitchen table, with reasonably good wifi. Linux worked fla…

Yesterday when I arrived at work there was a car with the numberplate NSG 586, amazing.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#208

Post by iso1631 »

na85 wrote: post #191
iso1631 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said yourself, Cities Skylines

I've definitely seen it argued that SimCity-alikes (and The Sims) are not games. Whether nor not this is true is IMHO beyond the scope of HN comments. Suppose it's a game: Cities Skylines is open-ended and has no formal win condition, but you can certainly lose. Your city can go bankrupt, etc. You're playing against the simulator algorithms. If you succeed then you've beaten those algorithms.

> Your city can go bankrupt, etc.

I play city skylines (and sim airport) in sandbox mode, money is meaningless. The only way you lose is to define yourself as losing.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#209

Post by tvb12 »

himinlomax wrote: post #164
0xdeadbeee wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly Valve is working on this, but the lack of recent news is not promising: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/apparently-valve-are-...

The main company working on anti-cheat software was bough by Epic, and they dropped their Linux efforts as a result.

Epic is kind of a thorn in the side for me when gaming (on a Linux distribution). There are a few Epic exclusive games that I'd like to play (Arise: a simple story, Journey, etc.), but they don't even have entries in protondb.

That's probably due to Epic not having a launcher for Linux. A few months ago(?), I read it had become possible to run the launcher through Wine, but I don't think that's changed anything on the porting side.

I worry that games which are released as Epic exclusives may fall by the wayside when/if they eventually become nonexclusive.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#210

Post by jclos »

babuskov wrote: post #172
chungus wrote: post #28

Amazing, you can buy a triple A title and have it just work out of the box. I'm so happy with Valve's support for linux. And of course the thousands of hours of work that have gone into Wine. It's becoming a more reliable experience to play old windows games using wine than trying to run them on windows 10.

It sure is amazing currently, but I fear in the long run nobody would even bother to make native Linux versions anymore. It's such an easy out for developers. Why bother when people will make it work on Proton somehow and you don't have to promise anything nor do Linux support.

The other side of that debate is that Proton would bring more people to Linux, and therefore the incentives for a good native version of the game on Linux would be a lot higher.
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