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Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

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Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#231

Post by jay_kyburz »

giobox wrote: post #147
phone8675309 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in strides because they don't want to get shut out of the Windows market. Having a credible alternative stay's Microsoft's hand about going Apple and requiring apps only come from the store except for Enterprise editions.

Not trying to play devils advocate here, but who genuinely believes a Linux Steam client is a "credible alternative" to Steam on Windows? It's an alternative, I agree, but I can't imagine a world in which it makes a dent on their Windows revenues any time soon. If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get…

It's interesting you say that, because my response to Epic when they sued Apple was that their time would be better spent contributing to an open platform for phones.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#232

Post by jay_kyburz »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #155
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that games are one of the main reasons the market share is negligible. It used to be games and Office, but home users can increasingly get by with the web version or Google Docs or LibreOffice. But people still keep Windows on their PCs for games. If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows?

> If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows? Let me tell you a story: In the late 1940s the US airforce had a serious problem: many pilots were dying in incidents caused by apparent pilot error. At one point this number reached 17 pilots a day . After ruling out training as a cause, they turned their attention to ergonomics. In the 1920s, they had conducted a study to determine the ph…

I'm guessing you don't actually run a Linux Desktop. KDE is significantly more customizable than windows.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#233

Post by jay_kyburz »

rasz wrote: post #151
ianhawes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to any competitive multiplayer game in 2020. My favorite example is PUBG and their insecure netcode (for the first 2 years it was entirely unencrypted). At one point the cheating was so predominant that they banned anyone running VirtualBox and the game at the same time. I was swept up in that because I had a background dev VM running that I forgot about.

Kernel anti cheat rootkits meanwhile server doesnt even perform the most basic sanity checks, like is client entity running at the speed of light? is client entity teleporting all over the map? is client entity allowed to fly? or asking really "hard" questions, like should server really send detailed position and model data (animation frame, items equipped etc) of players not in a Potentially visible set to client en…

That last part is what really annoys me. Do visibility checks on the server not the client.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#234

Post by judge2020 »

pjmlp wrote: post #153
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You disagree that Steam is the market leader in PC game distribution?

I definitely do. Any independent market reports from IGDA or similar to prove otherwise? Valve own marketing material doesn't count.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-12-20-gamesindus...

The above article estimates the PC gaming industry sold around 32.3 billion in 2017, although from [0]:

> If you throw out revenue for packaged retail titles and browser games, that leaves the dedicated digital PC game business with a total value of $23.9 billion – and that number includes DLC, which the Steam estimate does not.

> If the numbers are right, that means Valve own at least 18% of their specific market

This is by no means exact, but 18% for PC gaming is huge and, given that these are global numbers, probably doesn't account for the PC games market in China.

0: https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-revenue-2017

1: https://galyonk.in/steam-in-2017-129c0e6be260

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#235

Post by eznzt »

kingaillas wrote: post #219
eznzt wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the last part. : is not a supported character on Windows at all. Windows games should not expect to be able to access file names that contain it.

Yes it is, the colon is NTFS syntax for alternate data streams. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/stre...

1) The colon is part of the syntax to access alternate data streams, i.e., it is not an actual part of the file name. In the same way that \ is not a valid character in file names, but it is used to delimit folders.

2) I seriously doubt any game uses alternate data streams for anything.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#236

Post by [deleted] »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #231
giobox wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to play devils advocate here, but who genuinely believes a Linux Steam client is a "credible alternative" to Steam on Windows? It's an alternative, I agree, but I can't imagine a world in which it makes a dent on their Windows revenues any time soon. If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get…

It's interesting you say that, because my response to Epic when they sued Apple was that their time would be better spent contributing to an open platform for phones.

[deleted]

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#237

Post by jay_kyburz »

mhh__ wrote: post #185
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely, and developing for Windows is much easier than Linux anyway because it doesn't suffer from the same "lets break userspace every 2 years" problem.

I know that games are hectic and everything but I am still genuinely confused that porting a game is this complicated. The main meat and potatoes of the game is either nearly platform agnostic (Vk, OpenGL, or emulation) or usually similar in principle (audio). Maybe I've been spoilt by only working on open source projects where people try to write good code because it's public.

We didn't port our game Void Bastards to Linux because the sales are _so_ low we won't see a return on investment. Yes its easy these days, but there is still a few days messing around with builds and a few days testing. There is a good chance we won't see a week of salary as a return.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#238

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #232
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows? Let me tell you a story: In the late 1940s the US airforce had a serious problem: many pilots were dying in incidents caused by apparent pilot error. At one point this number reached 17 pilots a day . After ruling out training as a cause, they turned their attention to ergonomics. In the 1920s, they had conducted a study to determine the ph…

I'm guessing you don't actually run a Linux Desktop. KDE is significantly more customizable than windows.

> I'm guessing you don't actually run a Linux Desktop.

Wrong. Until about 6 months ago the majority of PCs I owned ran Linux Desktop. Eventually I just got sick of dealing with its nightmarish tangle of half-thought-out systems and currently it only runs on one.

KDE is very configurable, but that's only one component of the entire system (and it still has some odd limitations in my opinon).

I've been running Linux Desktop (and Linux as a server for that matter) to varying degrees for 20 years now, have contributed to open source projects, and was once president of a LUG. I still think Linux Desktop has a ton of problems and would rather use Windows. I don't know if you're able to square that with your worldview or not, but that isn't my problem.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#239

Post by giobox »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #231
giobox wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to play devils advocate here, but who genuinely believes a Linux Steam client is a "credible alternative" to Steam on Windows? It's an alternative, I agree, but I can't imagine a world in which it makes a dent on their Windows revenues any time soon. If Microsoft try to really force Store only app distribution on all users, I think Valve's time would likely be better spent in the courts than trying to get…

It's interesting you say that, because my response to Epic when they sued Apple was that their time would be better spent contributing to an open platform for phones.

It's beyond scope of a hacker news comment for me, but Epic case against Apple/Google store distribution terms is sufficiently different IMO.

How exactly would Epic ship this open platform when Google and Apple expressly control what apps run and do not? From where I stand, without intervention their only option is inferior browser based streaming solutions like this:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/5/21551152/fortnite-nvidia-...

Courts are worth a gamble, worst case scenario Epic is back where it began (minus the legal fees of course), paying Apple/Google 30 percent and still selling plenty of software on the app stores. The Epic case also works to serve Epic's wider public agenda against app stores as litigation theatre too if nothing else.

Re: Valve Is Working on Another Extension to Help in Direct3D-over-Vulkan

#240

Post by sergeykish »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #155
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's interesting is that games are one of the main reasons the market share is negligible. It used to be games and Office, but home users can increasingly get by with the web version or Google Docs or LibreOffice. But people still keep Windows on their PCs for games. If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows?

> If the games start to run on Linux, what's still keeping people on Windows? Let me tell you a story: In the late 1940s the US airforce had a serious problem: many pilots were dying in incidents caused by apparent pilot error. At one point this number reached 17 pilots a day . After ruling out training as a cause, they turned their attention to ergonomics. In the 1920s, they had conducted a study to determine the ph…

There is commercial software on Linux - steam, opera, chrome, telegram, skype. I hope Flatpak and Wayland would provide secure way to run it, runtimes would solve compatibility issues — requisites for direct distribution. Distribution patches is choice of the user, for example Arch is upstream.

I do not think people switch to Linux because of love. They switch because they hate their OS. The question was about lowering yet another barrier.

> Linux Desktop is bad at all these things and though it is theoretically more adjustable, the reality is that trying to fit it to your usecases is an exercise in fighting this average user mentality and often involves dealing with a ludicrously complex intertwined system of mis-matched components at a very intimate level.

The reality is on Linux usually it is already done — someone wrote code, packaged it, wrote articles, posted on forums, made desktop or distribution around it. Something that's not possible on Windows.

Windows is monoculture, deployment platform but stay away from the system.

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