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Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

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Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#541

Post by anonymous908213 »

12_throw_away wrote: post #254
butz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, nowadays very few, if any, game developers care about performance or optimizations. Look at recent headline about "Helldivers 2 devs slash install size from 154GB to 23GB" and it was done by simply deduplicating assets. Gone are the days of finding inredible ways to use less opcodes that game would feel smoother.

But ... all that duplication was being _done on purpose to achieve better performance_ due to low-level concerns about access times on legacy HDDs?

As far as I can tell, there was no actual low-level optimization being done. In fact, it appears they did not even think to benchmark before committing to 130gb of bloat.

  Further good news: the change in the file size will result in minimal changes to load times - seconds at most. “Wait a minute,” I hear you ask - “didn’t you just tell us all that you duplicate data because the loading times on HDDs could be 10 times worse?”. I am pleased to say that our worst case projections did not come to pass. These loading time projections were based on industry data - comparing the loading times between SSD and HDD users where data duplication was and was not used. In the worst cases, a 5x difference was reported between instances that used duplication and those that did not. We were being very conservative and doubled that projection again to account for unknown unknowns.
This reads to me as "we did a google search about HDD loading times and built our game's infrastructure around some random Reddit post without reasoning about or benchmarking our own codebase at any point, ever".

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#542

Post by twoodfin »

faidit wrote: post #496
InvisibleUp wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and…

The wealthiest 10% of Americans own like 90% of stocks, and the top 1% own 50%. While the poorest 50% of the population own about 1% of the stock market. So "publicly" traded (the term public ownership can be confusing because it can also mean state control) just means it's open for the elite to invest in.

“Just”? As if there aren’t pension funds and 401(k)s and IRAs serving >100 million Americans via investment in public companies?

“Open for the elite” how?

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#543

Post by philip-b »

safety1st wrote: post #526
InvisibleUp wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it a touch strange, in the abstract, that a corporation being public is a bad thing. On paper it should be a good thing; being publicly owned should mean that your corporation has turned from a private business venture into effectively public infrastructure that's impossible to boycott and depended on to some extent by everybody. As a result, financial statements should be (and are) public and transparent, and…

"The major reason is they are a private company with good business..." This is unquestionably, undoubtedly incorrect. It is a really low information meme that's racing around the Internet right now. If you want a contemporary counterexample take a look at NASCAR. They're also not publicly traded, they're family owned, yet they are abusive toward drivers, teams and fans, and they're gradually ruining the sport that ma…

>The real reason Valve are being the "good guys" at the moment

Ok, but this “at the moment” has lasted at least since 2011. Basically my whole adult life Valve gas been a pretty great company delivering value and not being annoying.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#544

Post by Andrex »

torginus wrote: post #328
buildbot wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of Anti-Cheat and secure boot, you need SB for Battlefield 6. The game won't start without it. So it's happening! I don't hate the lack of cheating compared to older Battlefield games if I am going to be honest.

I remember reading that Microsoft is trying to crack down on kernel level anti-cheats. Just like anti-virus, they mess with the operating system on a deep level, redirecting/intercepting API calls, sometimes on undocumented and unstable internal APIs. Not only does this present a huge security risk, it can break existing software and the OS itself. These anti-cheats tend not to be written by people intimately familia…

If I remember right, it played a role in the Crowdstrike failures. So yeah wouldn't surprise me MS is hoping to get rid of it.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#545

Post by Andrex »

jchw wrote: post #11

> and modern multiplayer games with anti-cheat simply do not work through a translation layer, something Valve hopes will change in the future. Although this is true for most games it is worth noting that it isn't universally true. Usermode anti-cheat does sometimes work verbatim in Wine, and some anti-cheat software has Proton support, though not all developers elect to enable it.

Online cheaters are first against the wall when I become dictator...

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#546

Post by jack1243star »

KaiMagnus wrote: post #165
codeflo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the rumors still hinting at a VR-only experience as they did a couple of years ago when Half-Life: Alyx released, or is that no longer the speculation? Because that would be unfortunate for me, I'd have to play with a bucket in hand.

I believe for the next Half-Life, latest rumors indicate it is actually back to 2D. During the press event last month, they were also pretty clear that no VR game is currently in development at Valve. A huge missed opportunity imo, but maybe playing HL3 on a theater sized screen is nice enough.

Calling Half-Life 2D somehow feels right and wrong at the same time but I get what you mean.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#547

Post by johnnyanmac »

bigyabai wrote: post #525
johnnyanmac wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real shame, you should try Ghosts of Yotei. It's good. Astro Bot is a personal favorite too. That one would be tricky to get the true experience on in terms of PC platform.

I probably will play them, once they're ported to PC and sold for $10 like TLoU and Death Stranding were. I haven't even played Tsushima yet. Neither one of them is a system-seller though. I don't think anyone feels FOMO because they missed the Day 1 release of Gran Turismo, or didn't play Astro Bot with 7.1 Surround and HD haptics. Bloodborne was a magnum opus, Persona 5 had people lining up outside Best Buy to rese…

I don't really know if the concept of "system seller" is a thing anymore. Or at least, all those titles belong to Nintendo now. Sony's only had Gran Turismo and then made up for it with a consistent stream of first party titles. Not Nintendo level, but competitive. Xbox has 2 series and utterly bungled one of them. If you're not a racing sim fan, you're looking at the forest instead of the trees.

All those true "seller" series were always 3rd party and they've all pretty much abandoned console deals mid Gen 8. Bloodborne was truly the lasst of its kind.

The real "system seller" for the ps5 is a bunch of Japanese games that will never really be on Xbox and can't run on switch. So that depends on your taste. Japan's mostly come around on PC though, so it's not truly "exclusive" outside of the shaky optimization.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#548

Post by sipjca »

whazor wrote: post #330
nosrepa wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have `echo "$((( $(date +%Y) + 1 ))) will be the year of the linux desktop"` at the end of my .bashrc

Linux desktop is getting better every year, meanwhile Windows and arguably MacOS are getting worse every year.

this is true, but linux desktop is still fragmented hell and will be for at least a few more years

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#549

Post by dleslie »

sershe wrote: post #287
bee_rider wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve seems more like Apple than Google: a well-liked company that has an obvious and not inherently exploitive business model. Google as an ad company was always destined to go bad in a way that most non-ad companies are not. No company is your friend, and they are all fundamentally structures around making a profit. But providing goods and services in exchange for money is not inherently exploitive or evil.

Valve makes most of their money from Steam lock-in. Given these numbers and the pathetic state of all the alternative game stores, they are ONE company before Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. that richly deserves some antitrust enforcement https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/valves-reported-prof... Not to say they are not great for Linux gaming. But this should not be mistaken for some kind of idealistic position. Win…

There is no lock-in. It is normal to have accounts on multiple storefronts, and have multiple storefronts installed on your gaming PC; one can access multiple digital libraries on the same PC!

Steam wins because it provides a superior product for the end-user, not because of lock-in. Games purchased through Steam can be vetted with user reviews, supported with user-created guides and steam input configurations, streamed across devices, shared with family members, and even modded; all within the Steam experience.

Re: Valve reveals it’s the architect behind a push to bring Windows games to Arm

#550

Post by vablings »

dralley wrote: post #391
vablings wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor performance and not super advanced. There are better options on the market that have less performance impact and better obfuscation

I mean the performance of the game otherwise is pretty decent. Frankly better than average.

Could be better without Theia but yeah the developers have done a really good job with ARC Raiders
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