Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far • Hacker News Board

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#291

Post by sonko » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:29 AM UTC

syshum wrote: post #131

m-p-3 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly most games nowadays comes with multiplayer as the main product, so that anticheat engines are a necessity to make the game fair for everyone. Those aren't friendly to Wine/Proton, therefore I try to stick to mostly single-player games. With the kids of how life is going faster everyday, I cannot afford to play on long stretches of time, and being unable to pause on a multiplayer game on a whim (which makes sens…

One of my biggest frustrations with modern gaming is the lack of single payer games, everyone focuses on Multiplayer, I have zero interest in playing with others, I play games to escape from people.... People suck, I do not want them in my games

Hey, I have a project that might be of interest to you. It is called the StarCraft Human 'N' AI League, and it is a client that lets you play against custom AI written for the game. It is single player, and provides a challenge without the frustration of griefing idiots on the ladder. Here you can check it out(it's free) https://schnail.com/#/home

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#292

Post by badpun » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 8:42 AM UTC

linuxhansl wrote: post #152

syshum wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my biggest frustrations with modern gaming is the lack of single payer games, everyone focuses on Multiplayer, I have zero interest in playing with others, I play games to escape from people.... People suck, I do not want them in my games

Hear, hear. I feel exactly the same way. The cynic in me just thinks that it saves the game developers from the need to develop good AIs. Perhaps it's just my style of video gaming... I play games to relax, definitely not to compete. People sometimes get so wound up in these games, it's supposed to be fun ! So, yes, if a game is multiplayer only, it's a reason for me not to play.

> The cynic in me just thinks that it saves the game developers from the need to develop good AIs.

Balancing a multiplayer game is generally much more difficult than doing a single player game with AIs.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#293

Post by vetinari » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #262

jfkebwjsbx wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no, there are new APIs to support the same use cases, and none are standard/cross platform. Whether they are part of DirectX formally or not is not important.

Please let me know why I am being downvoted, don't just do so. XAudio2 among several other libraries are key, even if not "DirectX". Even Microsoft points you out to them in the docs for DirectX...

Sorry, I don't know, it certainly wasn't me...

While XAudio2 is a key library, it is not DirectX one, as we were talking about DirectX umbrella project. It is not as low-level library as other DirectX projects were anymore, it doesn't talk to the hardware directly. It is really just a user space library with convenient functions, made by Microsoft. It also has competition, there's OpenAL, which is similar - even if it doesn't have as nice API, it is cross-platform.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#294

Post by account42 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 10:02 AM UTC

the_pwner224 wrote: post #251

devcamcar wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got any suggestions?

Minecraft Terraria Stardew Valley Those three are great for relaxing after a long day FTL: Faster Than Light Zachtronics games (TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Exapunks) FEZ Portal / Portal 2 XCOM Deus Ex (Super old but quite good, I started it recently. I had best results in Proton selecting the software renderer in the first launch dialog instead of DX9) Grand Theft Auto Assassins Creed IV (I had trouble running this under…

> Deus Ex (Super old but quite good, I started it recently. I had best results in Proton selecting the software renderer in the first launch dialog instead of DX9)

I recommend Deus Exe [0] for playing Deus Ex. And yes, it's still an awesome game.

[0] https://kentie.net/article/dxguide/

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#295

Post by account42 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 10:06 AM UTC

jackewiehose wrote: post #232

syshum wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my biggest frustrations with modern gaming is the lack of single payer games, everyone focuses on Multiplayer, I have zero interest in playing with others, I play games to escape from people.... People suck, I do not want them in my games

I exclusively play single-player games (mostly AAA) and I still have more games than time to play. But I remember having your feelings when I only had a PC. Get additionally PlayStation+Switch!

Yeah nah I'm not going to support anyone that encourages exclusives.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#296

Post by hutzlibu » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 10:15 AM UTC

skohan wrote: post #289

hutzlibu wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Which platform specific code? With a compatibility layer and a cross-platform graphics API we're talking about a vanishingly small amount of code." Again, do you have really first hand experience, how "vanishingly small" that amount of code is? I have not much experience in that area, as I specialiced on the web years ago, BECAUSE I heard too much horror stories about the difference in "theoretically cross plattform…

I have not released a commercial product, but I have worked quite prolifically with these tools and the experience is very good. Web is an interesting value proposition because somebody else is worrying about portability, but it's quite limiting isn't it? I mean you're limited to webGL and a single-threaded host environment. It's certainly possible to make some nice experiences within those limitations, but you're no…

"I have not released a commercial product"

Good luck, if you do. I am serious. I also think the waste of the millions of layers of the web to the hardware disturbing, but it is the best compromise I see.

"but you're not getting anywhere close to the full capacity of a user's hardware. "

Certainly not. So no, doing a graphical bombastic AAA game is not possible, but the vast majority of games is today quite doable on the web.

"a single-threaded host environment"

And fortunately today this is not true anymore. With web workers and various other approaches, you can have costly calculations in the background, but sure, this is still not the same as real multi-threading.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#297

Post by account42 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 10:31 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #190

farias0 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may not be "games", but titles like Gone Home are still video games, they aren't about "beating" something, and they aren't simply toys either.

>They may not be "games", but titles like Gone Home are still video games They may not be games, but they're still games? I think whether or not Gone Home can be considered a game is highly debatable. I haven't tried it, but it seems that the elements that make a game a game are missing. That it's available on Steam is completely orthogonal to whether or not it's a game.

I'm curious what you are trying to get out of gatekeeping what a game is? Would you not consider children pretending to be someone else to be playing a game? What bout LARP [0]?

However Gone Home would even satisfy a definition of a "game" that requires there to be challenges. Much of the information is hidden throughout the house, requiring the player to find it and reconstruct the whole story. There are even locked off areas that you need to find keys for.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#298

Post by account42 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 10:42 AM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #253

srajabi wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that circumstance if we had really good auto match making, does it matter? In a competitive environment I don't care if I'm vs.'ing a bot or a human as long as I'm matched with the intent of 50% win rate. Of course with current cheating the issue is not deep learning based agents but seeing through walls or aim assisting. Those just ruin the enjoyment of the game. Similarly I loathe vs'ing an AI that uses the same…

Really, we should just get rid of the pesky cheating human players and pit them against variable strength AIs...

Hah, some games already pit cheaters against each other.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#299

Post by iso1631 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

liziwizi wrote: post #290

na85 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've definitely seen it argued that SimCity-alikes (and The Sims) are not games. Whether nor not this is true is IMHO beyond the scope of HN comments. Suppose it's a game: Cities Skylines is open-ended and has no formal win condition, but you can certainly lose. Your city can go bankrupt, etc. You're playing against the simulator algorithms. If you succeed then you've beaten those algorithms.

you are not playing "against" the simulator. you are playing "with" a simulator. the definition of game is "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun." => it does not require win-conditions. i prefer games that allow me to be creative. having lose-conditions interferes with that.

While games like Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island could be won, they couldn't be lost.

Re: Valve's Proton Has Brought 6000 Windows Games to Linux So Far

#300

Post by account42 » Tue, Apr 21, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #221

nwallin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is based on SDL (simple directmedia layer), which is based on porting windows code. Huh? Building on top of SDL is probably the easiest way to make a game native on all platforms. There's nothing Windows specific about it.

My "based on porting windows" comment was based on my understanding that SDL started with windows. Wikipedia says: "Sam Lantinga created the library, first releasing it in early 1998, while working for Loki Software. He got the idea while porting a Windows application to Macintosh." Even the naming of directmedia suggests microsoft roots to me: direct3d directplay directx, etc. But my larger point was that I don't kn…

At the end of the day anything that runs on Linux without needing additional compatibility tools is native.

You could make a distinction for Windows/whatever games bundled together without Wine/eON/whatever and depending what want to determine that might make sense but at that point you probably also want to exclude things like Unity that don't really do a great job at integreating into the Linux environment.

SDL can be used for porting games (ie, making them native) and that's what it was originally created for but it's not really comparable to bundling a Windows .exe with Wine, which would add a lot more complexity.