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SteamOS

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Re: SteamOS

#271

Post by devx »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #48
rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

Valve has three announcements this week: http://kotaku.com/looks-like-well-hear-about-valves-new-hard... One of the announcements is widely believe to be the long-rumored Steam Box hardware...

If I were them I'd make Half Life 3, Portal 3 and whatever next versions they have of their own games, exclusive to their own Steambox, at least first months or so.

They might not get as much money on the games themselves initially, but they'd make so much more on the hardware (they don't need to all Blu-ray and all the extra crap, so they could be profitable on it), and it would also be a great way to seed their console into the market, so developers target it.

Re: SteamOS

#272

Post by touristtam »

baldfat wrote: post #235
snotrockets wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS3 runs FreeBSD likes Android runs Linux. That is, they may share a kernel and some tools, but the user spaces are mostly alien.

PS3 ran on Cell CPU Architecture. Now PS4 run FreeBSD 9.0 modified BUT x86 architecture! Android = Linux Ubuntu = Linux they both run the same exact kernel! BSD != Linux because they are 2 different kernels. Why do people always try to say Android is not Linux?????

if you want to go down this road Android !== GNU Linux || Android !== Linux as the first compare two OS, and the second compare an OS and a kernel. Sure they share a lot of libraries that are in use in those sort of application (more so than GNU Linux and Windows variant) but still, those are not the same.

Mind this is begging a question: with all the TV box running Android, are manufacturer going to target Android or SteamOS (More and more so called smart TV are running some version of Android)? And what about indie developer? Right now you can pick up an Android TV Box for anything in between 50 and 100 GBP.

Re: SteamOS

#273

Post by devx »

bigdubs wrote: post #37
rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

Unity has made good strides in making developers think about linux as a viable target for development (and streamlining the process). I'd say there is hope. Especially as most (and I'm guessing here) PC revenue comes from Steam anyway.

There were some rumors about Crytek and Unreal guys wanting to support Linux, too. With these latest announcements, I'm sure they will now, if they weren't going to do it before.

Re: SteamOS

#274

Post by freehunter »

throwaway2048 wrote: post #160
ihsw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be ridiculous -- Canonical has taken control of Ubuntu development and now they have a reputation for being authoritarian and secretive. There are fewer ways to alienate the open-source community than that and yet Ubuntu's popularity soars. The more critical people are of Canonical, the more fervent Ubuntu supporters become. "How will they make money" will be parroted just as loudly, if not more-so.

Ubuntus popularity is anything but soaring these days, mint has more or less taken over its former crown.

I've yet to see this anywhere but numbers on the Internet. I hear people talking about Ubuntu, I see people using Ubuntu, and I see computers coming pre-loaded with Ubuntu. I've never seen anyone using Mint, heard anyone talking about Mint, or see machines pre-loaded with Mint.

Re: SteamOS

#275

Post by saraid216 »

pathy wrote: post #186
saraid216 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gaming is one of the last legitimate refuges of Windows dominance. There are a lot of us who wouldn't care about (read: would be willing to switch) their OS if not for PC gaming.

>Gaming is one of the last legitimate refuges of Windows dominance. What about pretty much all larger businesses in the world? Windows sure dominate the corporate space.

The corporate space isn't dominated by Windows because there are no other options. The main reason for that dominance is change aversion. I'll put it a different way:

When I buy a computer with an OS, I tend to pick Windows mainly because I intend to game on it. If I don't intend to game on it, then OS would stop being a major factor in my decision-making. I might spring for a Mac instead, or I might get a Linux box. It's no longer the point.

If I were buying a computer for surfing the web, I can get what I want. If I were buying it for word processing, I can get whatever. If I were buying it for photo manipulation, I can get whatever. For Door #1, I'd be looking at network connection options. For Door #2, I'd probably be looking for compactness. For Door #3, I'd want graphics and RAM, I think. For none of these is my primary consideration, "Well, the program I'm going to want to run isn't going to be available unless I get Windows."

That primary consideration exists for gaming. If I bought a replacement gaming rig today, I'd get a Windows box. Period.

Re: SteamOS

#276

Post by chadwickthebold »

sliverstorm wrote: post #244
skriticos2 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the iconography on the main page I'd guess the second announcement will be Steam hardware and the third one will be Half Life 3 (second circle indicates software product again?). Pure speculation on my side here. http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

We now know that the circle is SteamOS. Then, the second announcement would be "SteamOS in a box", and the iconography of the third announcement is "two SteamOS". This probably has something to do either with playing or sharing with friends, or more details on streaming games from another machine on the network. Come to think of it, Dota2 just mentioned recently an update that either just came out or is coming out in…

Back to the halcyon days of yore, when a single copy of Starcraft was all you needed for a great night of LAN gaming for a number of people. Allowing 'spawned' copies for friends to share for gaming would make co-op games so much more fiscally bearable.

Re: SteamOS

#277

Post by hadem »

rkalla wrote: post #26

This is effectively the software-only equivalent of a console launch. Is anyone else skeptical that they can motivate publishers to spend time/money porting their games to the Linux platform? Valve certainly has a better chance than most at pulling this off (and likely enough user/market data to make this seem like a valid investment) I am still super skeptical that these publishers are going to spend the time portin…

Isn't part of the reason there are not a lot of developers working with Linux because there isn't near as big of a demand from the Linux community? This, if it becomes a popular option, it would/could increase that demand.

Re: SteamOS

#278

Post by kllrnohj »

th0br0 wrote: post #109

As someone who's had a lot of fun writing game hacks for ET:QW and QuakeLive back in the days and while I greatly enjoy seeing this move to Linux, I'm quite worried about game hacks on SteamOS. There are so many attack vectors on Linux and, currently, VALVE's Anti Cheat (VAC v3) does not, as far as I know, cover any of those. You can still inject your hack via LD_PRELOAD + detouring dlsym/dlopen. Even were that not p…

> You can still inject your hack via LD_PRELOAD + detouring dlsym/dlopen. Even were that not possible, you could have fun with, e.g., ptrace.

This all works on Windows, too. It's what things like FRAPS use, or the half dozen game overlays that apps like Mumble offer (including Steam's for that matter)

Anti-cheat systems are just a constantly escalating game of cat & mouse like anti-virus systems where signatures and code patterns are recognized, game DLLs are hashed to see if they were modified, etc... There's zero, zilch, nada OS level support for these.

Re: SteamOS

#279

Post by clarry »

asdasf wrote: post #190
lnanek2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's latency for pings and latency for sending moves to a multiplayer server, those are going to be low on the LAN. Then there's user experienced latency for sending high frame rate HD graphics to another machine every frame and the input back from that other machine. That is not going to be without hiccups, even on a LAN. In reality, most consoles are hooked up by WiFi nowadays which will make things even worse.…

Latency is a measure of the time it takes for a packet to travel to its destination. No part of ethernet networks cares what the payload in those packets are. You don't magically get more latency because the data in them can be interpreted as frames of video.

You can look up latency and it has a more general meaning. We're talking about a time delay. In this context we're not concerned about the time it takes to tranfer a single TCP packet, we're concerned about the time it takes to transfer a complete frame of video (under the assumption that a complete frame is required before the receiving end can display it). So bandwidth plays a role, and if you're sending larger frames then the delay from source output to destination display will be larger. This is latency.

Re: SteamOS

#280

Post by sliverstorm »

Apocryphon wrote: post #269
sliverstorm wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve likes to escalate announcements. It would be very "Valve" to announce the OS, which can run anywhere, and then next announce the box they want you to run it on.

...and then announce the game that you'll be playing on the box?!?

No, it's not half life 3. The logo for the 3rd announcement wouldn't make any sense then.
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