Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets • Hacker News Board

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#141

Post by gnufied » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

FigBug wrote: post #114

chrisseaton wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So now the solution is AppImages where you bundle up your app with all dependencies like a container. But isn't this what you're doing with Windows? No version of Windows comes with libcurl (as far as I know) so you put the DLL in your application directory. It's no different.

On Windows, I use the Windows API for downloading files. I don't need to worry about curl. On Linux, I could have statically linked curl, but didn't realize it was going to become an issue. Ubuntu 18.04 was released and curl3 was removed, so that means our software that was working was either automatically removed by the package manager or it started crashing.

Can a installer prompt user to download missing libraries if needed? For example - Dota2 on Windows downloads bunch of C++ runtime libraries on first launch. Sharpkeys and bunch of other software do that (certain version of .net runtime).

libcurl may or may not be a good example but surely all software has dependencies that isn't shipped with OS. In Linux case the special pain is, library that is shipped with OS might be outdated but bundling compiled lib/o/so files should work.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#142

Post by Glyptodon » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

I don't think the Linux situation is good per se, but I haven't heard anything this negative from the devs of other multi-platform Kickstarter games, like Obsidian and their Pillars of Eternity games.

(Not that they were terribly positive about it.)

To paraphrase the Obsidian take:

Supporting Linux for the first time was much much more work than they expected, but it was mostly coming to grips with everything, learning all the gotchas, and integrating that into their build system and software dev practices. Once they got over that hump it was much easier/not so bad and worthwhile enough to continue. But at the same time, if they'd known what they were getting into the first time they think they'd probably not have promised Linux support. So first game it had a huge marginal cost to support, but once the tooling and experience was there that marginal cost to support was much much lower.

Of course Pillars was a Unity game and probably not as demanding performance-wise as PA.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#143

Post by angry_octet » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

gdy wrote: post #135

plq wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And distos aren't backwards compatible. ie when libcurl4 is released, they remove libcurl3. So you can't have one binary for Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04. If you don't want to depend on the libcurl provided by the OS, ship your own. If you don't want to depend on the glibc provided by the OS, ship your own, with your own dynamic linker. readelf -n will tell you the oldest kernel that will run your stuff. Put that in the…

Could someone explain why this is downvoted?

Self-important idea police?

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#144

Post by 21 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

erikb wrote: post #78

FigBug wrote: post #62

I work for a small company that produces a DAW and VST plugins. Supporting Linux is a huge amount of work compared to Windows and Mac. The main issue is that 'Linux' is not a thing you can support. You have to pick the distros you want to support, and then once you've picked a distro, what versions you want to support. And you need to use the C++ version that ships with that distro, so if you want to support old vers…

I don't know why people say that. You don't support Windows XP and Windows 10 either with the same binary. In contrast to Windows you can provide or pay someone to provide libcurl3 if you want to continue to use it. MS will just say you can go F yourself. In contrast to Windows you can study the source code and write a wrapper that provides a central API point that you can use in your single code base. In contrast to…

I use a Windows audio software binary last compiled in 1997, for Windows 95. It still works just fine on Windows 10 64 bit.

That's 20 years of backward compatibility.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#145

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

Considering my graphics driver is buggy enough to cause the KDE panel to crash, I'm not at all surprised games on linux have issues.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#146

Post by qudat » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

Anybody competent enough to use linux is competent enough to dual-boot into Windows. I would love first-class support for Linux gaming, but dual-booting is such an easy fix for me that I frankly don't care that much about linux support.

I totally get there are other potential issues revolving around having to use windows, but for me at least, I don't really have any issue with using windows for games.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#147

Post by madez » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #137

madez wrote: post #108

I'll take the step and say that most developers do the mistake to treat linux like any other proprietary system which they can target with stable interfaces and call it a day. Free software changes more often, but when it does, it is not that big of a problem because you have both control over code and the code that your code interacts with, because all code is accessible. If game developers opened up, and here I don…

> Free software changes more often, but when it does, it is not that big of a problem because you have both control over code and the code that your code interacts with, because all code is accessible. Except for video drivers. And, as the tweet notes, the bulk of their issues on Linux were related to graphics.

Why except video drivers? Both AMD's and Intel's drivers are free and open, as is mesa. The other closed drivers are alien to a free software system anyways.

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#148

Post by wtracy » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #45

Part of the problem in 2019 is that the vendor with the best drivers on Windows is the vendor with the worst drivers on Linux. (aka Nvidia).

Care to elaborate?

Nvidia used to be the only discrete GPU manufacturer that had Linux support worth mentioning. I know that AMD/ATi has made a lot of progress, but is Nvidia really the worst at this point?

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#149

Post by tcd » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #133

simias wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they chan…

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…

> would buy tremendous free publicity.

That would not buy food on the table. Most money comes from Windows and what games should be optimized for.

See r/choosingbeggars for more entertaining stories on the "value" of "publicity".

Re: Game dev: Linux users were only 0.1% of sales but 20% of crashes and tickets

#150

Post by dtech » Mon, Jan 07, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

jimmy1 wrote: post #133

simias wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically speaking I'm sure you're right. In practice it doesn't really matter though, if they did it that way it's either because it was easier or because that's the way they were used to doing it. The fact that "technically" it's not Linux's fault doesn't really matter, unless you're more interested in the moral concept of guilt rather that the practicalities of making a Linux port of a game. Why should they chan…

> Why should they change the way they develop games for 0.1% of their sales? Have you seen how tight the gaming market has become? You need a niche to get any attention. Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity. It would be on the front page here a lone, a site with an enormous audience at minimum once a quarter. It would appear in countle…

> Coming out with a truly cross platform game that has Linux as a first class citizen would buy tremendous free publicity

It does not. Take a look at the Steam games supporting Linux. There's thousands of them, it's not special.