Wondering who will relase games to windows and linux first.

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Curtix2

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I know there are a few games that have done it.
But I am wondering and hoping who will be the first big game company to realease a major title to linux and windows at the same time.
Would like to see Blizzard do it myself.
But whoever does it will go down in history as "LEGEND".
 
Epic promised a Linux port of UT3... the game was released in 2007, it's now 2010 and no sign of said port.

The fact of the matter is that there are no compelling reasons for companies to concentrate on developing games for Linux. The miniscule user base (under 1% of all computers), coupled with the fact that the kernel devs can't be arsed to implement a stable API/ABI (see the blog linked in my sig), plus the fact that X simply isn't architected for gaming, means that developing a game for Linux is constantly a moving target - and that's something that no decent dev company cares for. Hell, even the developer of the awesome indie game Braid canned its Linux port because Linux lacks the features that he required to implement the game.

So don't hold your breath. Until the Linux devs decide to concentrate on stability as opposed to bleeding-edge, then we might start to see games released for Linux. But right now it's far easier to use Wine/Cedega.
 
You nailed it Assimilator. The moving target analogy seems spot on.
I guess the way we drive it forward is to get that 1% higher, but how do we do that without the apps! Its a catch 22.
 
1% is utter crap. That's according to Net Craplications.

Ask yourself this: According to their stats, between may 2009 and June 2009, Linux market share went from 1.17% to 1.00%. That's a 15% decrease in market share. IOW 1 in every 7 people stopped using linux in ONE MONTH.

Now ask yourself this:
Is this statistically likely? If not, what has happened. Has some event compelled Linux users to switch en masse, or is there likely to be something wrong with the methodology?

I am interested that no Linux hater ever quotes the W3 schools stats which puts linux at 4.6%.
 
Curtix2 said:
You nailed it Assimilator. The moving target analogy seems spot on.
I guess the way we drive it forward is to get that 1% higher, but how do we do that without the apps! Its a catch 22.
Click to expand...

What needs to happen is that the Linux devs need to lose their obsession with the bleeding edge and concentrate on fixing things that have been broken forever (like X's graphics stack and the whole ALSA/PulseAudio mess). As an example, USB3 support was in the kernel before any USB3 hardware was available... wouldn't that development effort have been better focused on improving the ABIs/APIs? Once the fundamentals like these are stabilised - and guaranteed not to change in a way that breaks apps that rely on them - the devs will come.

Tassidar said:
1% is utter crap. That's according to Net Craplications.

Ask yourself this: According to their stats, between may 2009 and June 2009, Linux market share went from 1.17% to 1.00%. That's a 15% decrease in market share. IOW 1 in every 7 people stopped using linux in ONE MONTH.

Now ask yourself this:
Is this statistically likely? If not, what has happened. Has some event compelled Linux users to switch en masse, or is there likely to be something wrong with the methodology?

I am interested that no Linux hater ever quotes the W3 schools stats which puts linux at 4.6%.
Click to expand...

1.17% -> 1.00% doesn't necessarily mean that Linux lost 17% marketshare; more likely it means that the majority of new computer owners during that period, chose to use non-Linux OSs (Windows/OS X). IOW, Linux may not be losing marketshare per se, but the market is growing and Linux is not growing with it.

As for W3 Schools, their percentage is higher because a higher percentage of visitors to their site use Linux as compared to other sites. I'd say that makes them a less reliable source than all the other major sites quoting the 1% figure.
 
I'm not truly qualified to comment on this, but I think a part also comes down to the fact that there are less and less devs interested in OpenGL programming. Direct3D has become almost the gold standard in gaming, whether by pressure from Microsoft, better features or whatever the case might be, but that is the reality. From what I understand, the Khronos group can't seem to push OpenGL hard enough in the games world, there just doesn't appear to be the needed tools and so on.

While I am a Windows man through and through, I would like more games to appear on Linux, so that some sort of competition can be revived amongst devs to write good cross platform PC engines. It seems bizarre to say it, but if Linux ever wants to truly grow, it needs to be able to play games well. Install easily, no technical hurdles for end users and so on. Put disk in, install and go.
 
Asha'man X said:
I'm not truly qualified to comment on this, but I think a part also comes down to the fact that there are less and less devs interested in OpenGL programming. Direct3D has become almost the gold standard in gaming, whether by pressure from Microsoft, better features or whatever the case might be, but that is the reality. From what I understand, the Khronos group can't seem to push OpenGL hard enough in the games world, there just doesn't appear to be the needed tools and so on.
Click to expand...

Well Steam is being released for Mac and it will be native ports which requires OpenGL. This imho is a start.
 
The_Assimilator said:
Epic promised a Linux port of UT3... the game was released in 2007, it's now 2010 and no sign of said port.

The fact of the matter is that there are no compelling reasons for companies to concentrate on developing games for Linux. The miniscule user base (under 1% of all computers), coupled with the fact that the kernel devs can't be arsed to implement a stable API/ABI (see the blog linked in my sig), plus the fact that X simply isn't architected for gaming, means that developing a game for Linux is constantly a moving target - and that's something that no decent dev company cares for. Hell, even the developer of the awesome indie game Braid canned its Linux port because Linux lacks the features that he required to implement the game.

So don't hold your breath. Until the Linux devs decide to concentrate on stability as opposed to bleeding-edge, then we might start to see games released for Linux. But right now it's far easier to use Wine/Cedega.
Click to expand...

Just looked at your signature. Um... so you cant play ogg in itunes... thats a point??!?! Really?!?! Did you try VLC player or Winamp.. or any other decent media playing product?

Blame Steve Jobs for not supporting ogg, not the format itself. Its like blaming Adobe cause you cant use flash on your iphone.
 
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I cannot make a truly educated reply now since I'm on the road and not at home to do some proper research, but I feel I have to step in and say that most of what Assimilator is stating as fact seems like only a pet grieve against something or someone.

If the API and ABI is so broken, why does the games I play never have a problem in Linux? I played UT2004 quite extensively in the past, tried Quake4 for a while and Doom3, none of them had any serious issues. At most you just had to update a lib, but that was that.
As for open source games, Nexuiz and a few others that I play now and then, why are they not broken? With them I had never ever had an issue, not even once.

I also had a look at your site and could find nothing of note, could you post some links as to showing how the current API and ABI is preventing games from being played in Linux?
I very highly doubt that this is the problem, it would say market share is the biggest reason people will not incur expenses to port to Linux or Mac.
 
Well I've accepted the fact that I need Windows to play my games and I no longer have a problem with that. Consider the license costs of a Windows OS is about R1500 spread over about 5yrs of use comes down to R300 per year - the same cost as new game.

For me, use the best tool on the market - the reason why I use Linux for my development :-)
 
With Steam coming to the Mac, that is a big boost for OpenGL, hopefully it will make things pick up again. The more I think about it, the more I wonder how much interest the Khronos Group have in pushing OpenGL for gaming. Seems they more interested in pushing it for CAD and other areas where OpenGL already perfoms very well.

I've been reading over on Phoronix that a really advanced game engine, UniEngine, was delayed for Linux for months because of poor OpenGL support in ATI's drivers under Linux. I think these are all things that will need to get sorted out as well before gaming can take off. True open source drivers for graphics cards are still struggling to get somewhere, and some users don't want binary blobs in their systems for whatever reasons.

I have no doubt that gaming on Linux can succeed, it is just going to take a lot of time still.
 
Noooo .... steam on Mac .... why ..... I'm torn between a Mac or something-intel for my next rig. The fact that The Sims 3 work on Mac (don't have daughters) was already swaying me to Mac, but that I can play my steam games on a Mac is really pushing me to the Mac-side.
 
Stick to intel, i had a mac, they are beautiful machines. But honestly not worth the money you pay for them. As for games on linux/mac. Having played around with alot of cross platform engines, opengl has been around for many years, it is powerful. Thou with the new release of the 4.0 specification a surge of better graphics engines should hit the market soon enough, we can only hope that the developers take full advantage of the processing power of the GPU's, because as it stands currently DirectX is far superior
 
 
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