41–50 of 88 posts
Worst for him. I personally feel that C & C++ develop on Windows is ANAL. Installing libs and detecting isntalled libs, it's very problematic, when on my GNU/Linux desktop I only need to do a : sudo apt-get XXX or git clone XXX & make & sudo make install
Worst for him. I personally feel that C & C++ develop on Windows is ANAL. Installing libs and detecting isntalled libs, it's very problematic, when on my GNU/Linux desktop I only need to do a : sudo apt-get XXX or git clone XXX & make & sudo make install
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well all of the 50+ people I know using linux everyday including myself, most of them as their major OS, have encountered these type of issues where you lose huge amounts of time trying to get something rather trivial to work. While your claim "It's between chair and keyboard" aka "yeah that's because they don't know how to do it" is of course perfectly valid, the reason the problem exists in the first place is usual…
While there can be some trivialities that waste huge amount of time on every OS, however, installing Linux and setting up dev environment is not one of them. Certainly not compared to Windows, where you must consider VS/msvcrt version, if you are using third party SDKs. It gets into "really not funny" territory when they have conflicting requirements. Compared to that, Linux development environment is a piece of cake…
But that doesn't mean they don't exist partly on Windows. "where you must consider VS/msvcrt version, if you are using third party SDKs." is a bit too narrow: that is (afaik) only the case if you use binary distributions of 3rd party libs and only for particular languages like C/C++ and if they make use of the standard libraries and force that upon the user by exporting instances of objects in it - and more often than not I've encountered all sorts of situation where that was not the case:
- it's OK to have e.g. a C lib linking against msvcrt x and use it in an application linked against msvcrt y, as long as the API is written properly and doesn't do insane things like trying to free what has been malloc'ed elsewhere
- if you have the source, you just build everything with the same VS version and that's it
- for C# etc there's a rather decent package manager so that's it as well usually
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The engine is proprietary, stefantalpalaru couldn't "take up the flag" even if (s)he wanted.
I understand that. But, say I propose to stefantalpalaru to write an engine supporting Linux from scratch. And if that's too hard, wouldn't it be fair to say, that it is also a problem between the chair and the keyboard?
A veritable shitfest of useless and downright poisonous changes that alienate users and non-core developers.
"Oh, you have this thing that works perfectly? Well, here's a shitty idea with a shoddy execution that is the new standard. It supports this feature that 1 percent of users like and no longer supports this other feature that 99 percent of users actually care about."
Whoa, blast from the past; I did a minor game design using this engine. I spent most of the time refactoring the demo game code to something a bit more OO / to my style though. I don't know if that was good for performance, but it pleased me. But yeah, as another commenter stated, it just doesn't have the leverage as the bigger engines have (U4, Unity, etc), and those have very competitive pricing for hobbyist develo…
From a consumer point of view, everything above the Linux Kernel is a mess. A mess means actually choice where the consumer doesn't need one. I had hopes that Steam Machines may leverage Linux to consumers but trying to configure my father's Linux machine to his needs brought me back to reality. I even think that the consumer perspective is the one that hinders Linux. Want to develop something for Linux? What's the d…
And the only salvation for the driver mess is that apart from Nvidia, Intel and ATI, every other manufacturer has left the picture. No more Tseng, S3, Matrox etc.
But Windows is immmensely popular. So you have to go through those problems. Linux isn't that hard, but it still might not be worth the effort. OS X does pretty well in that regard, not that popular, either, but very homogenous. At least since the days of RealBasic apps is finally over ;)
Maybe a possible alternative would be to focus on one particular linux distribution, like ubuntu or debian, with certain dirty intall scripts ?
Or go all the way and just deliver a bootable CD or USB drive that install the games somewhere, and then boots up a certain linux kernel configuration with specific, working nvidia or amd drivers.
Honestly if I had a successful game I could sell, I'd try to sell it at half the price by packaging it with some linux distribution the game works on, just for promoting linux to show the consumers that developers appreciate it.
Maybe another other alternative would be to offer games on certain hardware which is supported, and not to other types of hardware.
But obviously, as long as hardware vendors don't give a damn about linux, I won't be surprised reading those posts.
Game developers should not expect being able to use the latest graphics features on an open platform. It just won't happen. The 3D hardware industry always adds new things, it's impossible to keep up unless you had engineers working tightly with nvidia or AMD.
So drop the support of high end 3D features, only keep the core ones that have been working for a long time (do you really need that shader ?), focus on other basic things (like scriptability and other libraries, there is so much stuff to put in a game engine), and deliver a working 3D engine that is easy to use and program with. I don't think any small developer who wants to release on linux can really compete with AAA, high end graphics titles. The only possible way to compete is to bring something new in term of gameplay, stop focusing on the graphics and the bells and whistles, it just won't happen.
TLDR:
gaming is obviously anti competitive if you want to release on linux. what to do: don't try to compete with what other games have already done, and focus on things that are doable and have been done well for a long time. There are many existing game concept that could be improved if you stop wasting time on the graphics. Having basic 3D rendering is already awesome in itself.
"Linux has proven to be Frankenstein OS assembled from a disparate array of barely functioning parts with horrible reliability and little potential for future improvement."
The reason for this is that contributors to Linux are driven by ego and self-aggrandizement more than technical ability, and there is no benevolent dictator to say, "take your shitty code and shove it up your ass".
It is my fantasy to start an open-source company so I can spend all day yelling at developers. It would be a short term joy, since I would probably die of a brain hemorrhage in the first 24 hours, but somebody needs to do it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still haven't see any of the Steam machines on the wild. Frankly I doubt I will ever see them.
With Microsoft and Windows 10 having an App Store will certainly cause Steam OS to continue to Develop. The longer it is being baked the better it will be in the end. Certainly people still need the need for Linux as an alternative to Windows and I have so little hope that OS X users would also see the need. Looking at you HTF+.
Gnu HURD Forever!
My 3 cents: Maybe a possible alternative would be to focus on one particular linux distribution, like ubuntu or debian, with certain dirty intall scripts ? Or go all the way and just deliver a bootable CD or USB drive that install the games somewhere, and then boots up a certain linux kernel configuration with specific, working nvidia or amd drivers. Honestly if I had a successful game I could sell, I'd try to sell i…