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Valve joins the Linux Foundation

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Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#281

Post by derefr »

adamors wrote: post #235
Touche wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair you're not describing "people who play games", you're describing gaming enthusiasts.

I know, but IMO the bar is really low. If you have 10+ games in Steam you're pretty much an enthusiasts. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm mad about games ever since I played the first Doom on my father's 486. In my view you're either a layperson who plays Candy Crush or iOS games or you know about Steam and GOG and the sky is the limit.

I think the sticking point is assuming that "likes playing games" and "cares about super-amazing graphics" go hand-in-hand. You don't need a gaming rig for Dwarf Fortress. :)

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#282

Post by derefr »

archagon wrote: post #209
Mikeb85 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gaming doesn't work on OS X because it has too small a user base, but Linux's user base is much smaller. There's an estimated 20 million Ubuntu users worldwide, probably another 10 million or so of other Linux distros. Not to mention, Linux (and thus Steam OS) is easily installed. Adoption isn't a problem. Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware. > As an aside, Lin…

> Gaming on OSX doesn't work as well as on a PC because you can't put OSX on custom hardware. I'm sure most of those 20 million Ubuntu boxes have top-of-the-line CPUs and blazing fast GPUs, right? Fact of the matter is, the vast majority those machines won't be able to run anything other than 2D games. Also, before we start condemning OSX as a platform with no games, need I mention Borderlands 2? Metro: Last Light? A…

Pretty sure a large portion of those 20 million Ubuntu installations don't even have monitors. (Ubuntu is a pretty good server distro.)

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#283

Post by derefr »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #85
dimillian wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll be amazed on how it has changed. First, latest Macbook are kinda powerful on the GPU side, even with the integrated one, the Intel HD 5000 or Iris can run modern game at low/med settings. While it's shit for gamers who cares about graphics and performances, for any casual gamers it's sufficient. My Macbook is my work machine but also my gaming machine. The other things is about Wine, they're working on acceler…

You're not really playing BF4 on that Macbook. There are other non graphically challenging games you can play but not complex 3D games with decent graphic settings. I'm far from a graphics guy but things below a certain threshold just look bad and take away from the experience. I'd rather console game than deal with modern games on "low." Especially when you find yourself in situations where you get random frame drop…

For the mobile products? Number one consideration is battery life. Discrete GPUs are horrible battery drains that Apple wants to eliminate any way they can, so they can get the MBP to the same kind of 12-hour-life numbers the Air has.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#284

Post by anoncowherd »

stonith wrote: post #249
anoncowherd wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I apparently have 272 games on my Steam account, and of those 121 run on Mac. How many of those 121 are AAA-titles? I'd like to be a Mac gamer too, but it seems to me there are extremely few AAA grade games available for the Mac. What else is there besides Valve, Blizzard, and .. Borderlands 2 & Arkham City?

I dumped my gaming pc for an iMac a couple of months ago as I got sick of rebooting linux > windows and back to get shit done when I wasn't playing games, and figured OSX was a good middle ground. It really depends what you're interested in as to whether that's possible for you at the moment. The Blizzard titles all run, the Valve titles all run, LoL runs, and as mentioned in this thread a good portion of my steam li…

Well, I've been using a Mac exclusively for a few years now. I just think the gaming situation is still really sad, even if things may be gradually improving.

It's difficult to believe that even 25% of those 121 games you mentioned are AAA quality, and that's what I was curious about. What's your estimate? Could you list a few AAA games for the Mac?

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#285

Post by unsignedint »

stormbrew wrote: post #267
unsignedint wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Windows binaries WINE on 64-bit runs 16, 32, and 64-bit applications! :-)

Kind of. Turning on 64bit by default has resulted in a lot of problems for me, though. It doesn't do the search paths right, I often have 32bit things failing because they stumble on a 64bit dll while linking (or vice-versa).

I don't know if it will solve your particular problem, but I would suggest trying PlayOnLinux. It saved me from having a lot of hassle having different Wine configurations and versions side by side.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#286

Post by hatchoo »

Skoofoo wrote: post #125
kayoone wrote: post #7

While this is great, its a bit sad that Valve is mostly doing all of this now, because they fear losing their dominance on windows to the native Store in Win 8.x In the end its a win-win for everyone if it works out, just their motives are questionable.

Before Windows 8, Valve seemingly couldn't care less about Linux! It bothers me how Valve tries to make itself out to be Linux's best friend nowadays. They also talk about open source a lot despite them ever releasing only proprietary software.

If they have their own agenda, why should it matter? If this benefits them and Linux, why would this development be bad?

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#287

Post by srd »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #189
stock_toaster wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You need the correct libraries and versions, but that's not a difficult problem to solve Or just ship statically linked binaries. That seems like it would be a good solution for games.

> Or just ship statically linked binaries. That seems like it would be a good solution for games. Yup. That's what Steam does...

Not under linux. It does supply it's own set of .so libs though.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#288

Post by stonith »

anoncowherd wrote: post #284
stonith wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dumped my gaming pc for an iMac a couple of months ago as I got sick of rebooting linux > windows and back to get shit done when I wasn't playing games, and figured OSX was a good middle ground. It really depends what you're interested in as to whether that's possible for you at the moment. The Blizzard titles all run, the Valve titles all run, LoL runs, and as mentioned in this thread a good portion of my steam li…

Well, I've been using a Mac exclusively for a few years now. I just think the gaming situation is still really sad, even if things may be gradually improving. It's difficult to believe that even 25% of those 121 games you mentioned are AAA quality, and that's what I was curious about. What's your estimate? Could you list a few AAA games for the Mac?

I can't speak for nekro23's library, but mine is ~150 games with 50 available for Mac. I don't purchase a lot of AAA games, but I can go through and list the ones that are/aren't on mac that I would say are of significant quality and a clearly not small titles.

On Mac (49):

All the Valve games - CS/TF2/Portal/HL/L4D

- King's Bounty

- Psychonauts

- Civ 4

- Trine 2

- XCOM: Enemy Unknown

- Two Worlds 2

- The Witcher

- Borderlands 2

- Max Payne 3

Plus Starcraft, Diablo 3 and League of Legends not within steam.

Notable absentees on my full Steam list (152):

- Dragon Age

- Skyrim/Fallout: NV

- Far Cry 3

- Crysis

- Dead Island

- Bioshock

- Alpha Protocol

- Assassin's Creed

- Alan Wake

- Empire:Total War

- Mafia 2

- Mass Effect 1/2

- Stalker

- Supreme Commander 2

The general trend is that most new games are being built on frameworks like Unity and UE3 that are cross platform across the consoles, pc and mac. There's outliers like Battlefield where the Frostbite engine isn't going to get dumped anytime soon, but I think the effort required for cross platform release has gone down to the point where large studios releasing across console/pc will likely also release console/pc/mac/linux.

The fact that I can play the new XCOM game on an iPad is pretty cool as well.

I think the presence of both DotA 2 and LoL is absolutely massive, particularly given the player base of the latter. Serious Mac gaming is probably not an option yet for players who like to shop around and play a lot of single player games, but for people who like me who just grab an online strategy game and play the shit out of it, it's actually fine. I suspect the combination of a Mac + [Xbone|PS4] would get very good coverage at the moment as well.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#289

Post by drzaiusapelord »

derefr wrote: post #283
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really playing BF4 on that Macbook. There are other non graphically challenging games you can play but not complex 3D games with decent graphic settings. I'm far from a graphics guy but things below a certain threshold just look bad and take away from the experience. I'd rather console game than deal with modern games on "low." Especially when you find yourself in situations where you get random frame drop…

For the mobile products? Number one consideration is battery life. Discrete GPUs are horrible battery drains that Apple wants to eliminate any way they can, so they can get the MBP to the same kind of 12-hour-life numbers the Air has.

Well, that can be worked around. In the windows world there are lots of laptop models that switch between low power integrated graphics and a high power GPU for gaming. Its not either or anymore. Its not 1998 anymore.

Re: Valve joins the Linux Foundation

#290

Post by cLeEOGPw »

jebblue wrote: post #273
cLeEOGPw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they would know what to do, it would still be something you wouldn't have to do on Windows, so anyone who is agnostic to what OS he is using and chooses based on practical criteria and not ideology or philosophy, will most often choose Windows over Linux. Linux experience just isn't there (would like to add "yet", but I don't see it even moving in that direction). I said this before and I'm gonna say again -…

>> Linux forces user to learn about OS and computer in general, which is not needed for most of people. My wife switched in one summer night in 2007, she hasn't looked back, she's a casual user, her laptop came from Dell with Ubuntu pre-installed. I guarantee you, she is the typical, non-techie user.

Because it was pre-installed. Everything was already set up by an expert. Let her install a fresh copy and see how it goes. Then let her install windows on same machine and see the difference.
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