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Vista Casts A Pall On PC Gaming?
simoniker writes "In an opinion piece, casual game publisher WildTangent's CEO Alex St. John (himself a Microsoft veteran and one of the DirectX creators) has sharply criticized some of Windows Vista's features as they related to video game creation, noting: 'We have found many of the security changes planned for Vista alarming and likely to present sweeping challenges for PC gaming, especially for online distributed games. The central change that impacts all downloadable applications in Vista is the introduction of Limited User Accounts. LUA's can already be found in Windows XP, but nobody uses them because of the onerous restrictions they place on usability. In Vista, LUA's are mandatory and inescapable.'" Meanwhile, the word has also come down that games will be on the Zune by Summer of next year.
He's just upset that his company's spyware and crap won't be able to be installed on people's computers without them knowing it anymore? Damn, this might just be an MS Vista advertisement in disguise.
...reasons for people running unsecure windows.
If WV makes it hard for the gaming industry then I'm all for Vista... and I usually are a MS-hater... If he got a problem he should move to Linux or xBSD, then he could distribute his fucking games as Live-CD's.
Seriously, I've owned at least one primary home machine that ran MS-DOS or Windows since the first version, and have a WinXP laptop at home, but I've just plain given up on Vista. I'm going to migrate to the Wii and maybe buy a Mac OS/X laptop if I can't get a decent Linux laptop.
My current plan is to buy a WinXP laptop right when they release Vista and the prices drop. Then I'm not going to upgrade - ever.
Been a long time coming, but I've pretty much had it, and with MySQL and Open Office, don't feel the need to fork over even more money to MSFT. Especially when I can get a laptop for $500 by not doing so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The only thing LUA is going to change on Vista is the user will have to type in a password for the equivalent of a sudo apt-get. Not a big deal.
only one everything
I think this guy is full of shit. When I go on the internet, if i know i'm going to download something, I'll be fine pressing "yes" as i'll soon be selecting where it goes so i'm ready for a prompt. If something is going to download without me saying it can, then it can very well get the hell out of my computer. The security dialogs in Vista dont require you to put in a username and password every time you try to acess a flash game on the web, and this article clearly is full of it. Wild Tangent games often appear on my computer when i did not ask for them, and i really hope that the vista security will help me keep their crap off my computer in the future.
The problem is consoles do not have high end hardware by the time they make it to the shelves, and sometimes don't even have high end hardware in design, depending on the market the manufacturer is after.
Put another way: Consoles are finally running close to the resolutions that I was on my PC in 1996, because of hardware limitations that they were not able to free themselves from (using a tv instead of a dedicated display, like a computer monitor).
The Cell CPU was great while the PS3 was still on paper. Now its being outdone by mid-range PCs.
Bleeding edge, high end gaming will be the PC for quite a while to come, because PCs are upgradeable without a 5+ year wait for the next "generation" of boxes.
It's perhaps ironic that I run my own online game publishing company now and have become a dependent customer of the platform and technologies I once worked to create. Some of you might call it "justice" -- if it is, I wish it for my successors working on Vista.
Yep, he helped Microsoft shove Directx down all our throats now hes complaining, and surprised, they're trying to shove something else down our throats.
The two big problems with LUAs have been that there was no way to perform super-user actions without logging out and logging back in, even if you the person have greater privileges than the account you have logged in with. I do believe Vista has fixed this. The other problem is that lazy application developers chronically write software that assumes unnecessary super-user privileges. Now Microsoft has (finally) chosen to curtail their reckless practices, and they would rather complain than get with the program.
I may be wrong, but doesn't Wild Tangent have a rep for being pseudo spyware? It certainly gets fladded on my system constantly. I know it comes bundled with AIM and some other applications, so I don't really consider it nefarious, but I still don't think highly of it.
It doesn't sound surprising to me that a company that sets of security flags as is, would be concerned about new security features. I'd be more interested in what the developers at ID, SOE, or EA have to say about how the features will affect the ability of them to develop games, in particular online offerings.
For example the Xbox 360 has unified architecture graphics processing that is just coming into the market through the gefoce 8800's which cost MORE than an entire 360.
The 360 has 3 cores, 48 unified pipelines, 512 megs of GDDR3 memory and an insane bus speed between them. Hardly "mid range" by any PC standards considering PC's are still fighting to catch up.
The problem with consoles most of the time isn't console power but demand to get games out the door before having a finished product. On pc's they just patch patch patch and eventually get it right - consoles are heading that way now though.
According to this article, though, it would seem that Microsoft is actually blocking games from running via any other means than the Game Explorer.
From what I've read in the past, this isn't the case. You will need to use GE to get the "Games for Windows" certification, but just as now, any app can be installed and run however you like. All your XP games for example, will still install and run, but they likely won't be in GE.
It would also seem to mean that installers will have to create special cases for Vista, which seems pointless to me.
Creating installers is a pretty automated process (the installer itself is part of windows, you just give it a set of files and a script). So yes, it will work differently for Vista, but XP vs 95 vs 2000 is already different, vendors are used to this kind of thing, and in most cases it's just setting some flags.
The obvious point is that Microsoft would seem to have a conflict of interest here; making PC gaming attractive may draw attention away from the X-box 360, something Microsoft would want to avoid at all costs. Are they making it difficult to run games in order to make the 360 seem much simpler by comparison?
Not at all. They're currently pushing Windows gaming very hard - look at the whole new "Games for Windows" brand (which now even includes an official magazine), the 360/Vista intagration (announced this week @ CES), and so on. Even all this gaming specific stuff in Vista proves they want people to run games - otherwise why bother?
The guy in this article is complaining that they're going to have to follow some rules now, and that's going to make them need to do a little more work. The end result's going to be better for the user though - better security, easier and neater installation, integration with 360 & Xbox Live, parental controls, etc. So I say to him - suck it up. It's STILL much easier and less "controlled" to develop for Vista than for any console.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Of course the performance allowed by vanilla X is so godawful, that to get any decent performance at all requires "extensions" to X that basically ignore X architecture and are essentially hacks to provide high performance that wasn't even considered in the decade X was invented.
And don't get me started on security in X, the whole thing has to be run suid root.
I think that this is a good read (written by a former developer of Xgl) on how X is currently nothing more than hack after hack:
http://jonsmirl.googlepages.com/graphics.html
E = m c^3 Don't drink and derive E = m c^3
I can play games on Linux with Cedega perfectly well. Right now I am playing WoW with no issues.
;)
So, if it works on Linux under a limited user account... why isn't it possible on Windows? Perhaps they need to start up some kind of emulation project... they would call it Beer since Cider and Wine are taken
Beep beep.
There are multiple customers at play here. Yes, Wild Tangent (and other developers) are in a sense a customer, since they develop on Windows/Vista/etc. However, don't forget that your end-user consumer is also a customer, and the extra security on Vista is targeted towards them.
I work with a lot of customers who NEED the extra security, because frankly, they don't really know how to properly secure their computer. They're the ones who install every toolbar/screensaver/gadget because it's cool, yet don't understand why their computer is so slow, and why all these windows keep popping up. On one hand, it's tempting to fault them, because they're making bad decisions. On the other hand, the OS can do a better job of hand-holding these consumers and making the right choices for them. (Does Grandma really need to learn how to secure her computer? She just wants to use the Internet to play Hearts and send e-mail to her grandkids)
Unfortunately, catering to one customer base (the enormously large novice user-base), tends to piss off a few others, most notably power users (who already know how to secure our systems, and don't need to be prompted every single time), and developers. Some of these developers, are the evil spyware/adware-writing kind, which are customers that we don't really want in the first place. Other developers do have legitimate needs, but will now need to do some extra work to get their applications to work on Vista in the first place.
I'm fine with that. At MS, our own developers have to conform to the extra security requirements in Vista. Yes, it means more work, but I see that as a good thing. Our hope is that FEWER of our end-user customers will come in with support problems, which are ultimately tied to not our code, but spyware on their machine.
Remember the days when it was dead-easy to get anyone to install an ActiveX control? That was the worst. Similar complaints were lodged against MS when WinXP SP2 came out, since in small ways, it limited how easy it was to install controls.
-- jchenx
OK...but are the restrictions on Vista's LUAs any more difficult to work with than using root privileges to install a game on Linux, or entering an administrative password to allow installation on OSX?
The artical's author was talking about downloading and installing a program requires a lot more hoops to just through in order to function.
Gee, that makes sense to me, especially since in the past, a lot of programs (adware/spyware) were somehow able to creep onto people's systems, causing huge amounts of grief.
His own argument works against him. He says that it's not a problem with boxed products, since users will trust them, know what they are, willing to go through the hoops, etc. So, what's the problem with having the same expectation for any downloaded program?
If you make your download product really compelling (including doing the "right things" when it comes to Vista security), then users will "go through hoops" to get it installed as well. If you're offering some crappy toolbar (with bundled spyware) and don't do the right things for security (don't sign your controls, etc.), then the user may not be so interested, which is probably a good thing.
-- jchenx
The Clueless pens, "Yep, he helped Microsoft shove Directx down all our throats now hes complaining, and surprised, they're trying to shove something else down our throats."
Remember Windows before DirectX? DirectX saved PC Gaming - It was hardly shoved down our throats.
Before that getting a game to run was almost as much work as writing one...
Why does it matter how 'high end' the hardware your game is running on is? Are PC games are just glorified benchmark demos? This is exactly the reason why I gave up on PC games. I don't want game developers deciding when I should upgrade my PC. Is that new graphics card going to make my wordprocessor process words faster?
Two of the real strengths of PC gaming are online play and user created content. We are going to start seeing that on consoles this generation. That's a far bigger threat to PC gaming than Vista.
So basically the qualty of the game is dependent upon the quality of the API that MS provides under Vista?
No thanks.
I like DirectX fine but this enables mediocrity at the OS level.
If there is a piece of the game that seems glitchy and the programmer spend 2 weeks trying to tweak it and to an avail, he will have to have a work around when in fact the issue is with the DX API.
Looks like vendor lock in deeper than just a simple Win32.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
The future isn't here until I can type "car keys" into Google and have it say "You left them in your pants last night."
The problem with consoles, as I see it, is the lack of a mouse and a keyboard. And the lack of a decent compiler. And the lack of a good monitor. etc.
Not to mention the fact that the whole 'Games for Windows' platform that microsoft is hyping so badly has a number of mandatory requirements, the FIRST of which is that the game MUST use DirectX as the default renderer for the game.
This excludes any OpenGL game from being able to get certified with the 'Games for Windows' program.
This is beyond Vendor Lockin, it's antitrust lawsuits begging to happen.
Forcing developers to use DirectX is HORRIBLE for games in general. I'm not arguing the 'DirectX versus OpenGL' featureset list - this is a matter of choice.
Any vendor that limits our choice as developers and your choice as game-consumers is BAD. This is a bad decision and a drastic situation for the gaming industry on PC, period.
Gekido's Lair
Hang on?!
... ADMINISTRATION .. not normal running of applications and games, once your product is installed, it's got NO REASON to leach for admin rights.
Having worked in a secure environment since NT4 and having to comprimise security for applications which thing that c:\program files\... should be a read/write directory... let me get this straight...
Games creators are complaining that they need to write responsible applications which obay basic security methodology?? SHOCK HORROR!!! THE INDUSTRY IS GOING TO FALL APART!!!
Sorry, the only sympathy you're going to get here is "About F*CKING TIME!!!"
The administrator account is for
Not mention the trouble developers are going to have trying to make games cross-platform. While programming with that end in mind must be difficult enough when using OpenGL, I can't imagine how much more difficult it'd end up being if MS forces DirectX upon the developers.
"Limited" accounts are NORMAL accounts.
Administrators/root-users need extra-ordinary access.
Userland software - including games - should work without requiring that extra access.
I was going to mod this discussion, but some of the comments here have just made me so fucking angry that I'm waiving my privileges for this one.
You fucking morons that are faulting Microsoft for this: How do you justify the bullshit that you're spouting? For almost ten years now, it's been, "Windows sucks because there's no security by default.", and, "Never hook an unpatched Windows box to the internet, because it's asking for trouble.". Lack of security was one of the main reasons given to switch to Linux (which, by the way, has required a user or root password to accomplish certain things for quite awhile, unlike Vista, which has just implemented it.) So, in actuality, you're just whining for the sake of whining. Microsoft, to you, can never do anything right, even when they do something right. I use Kubuntu and FreeBSD. I have exactly one 20g Windows partition on one computer, solely for the occasional college work that cannot be done in Linux without jumping through hoops with Wine or DosBox; so I have no disclaimer to give. It's simply common sense that the increased focus on security in Vista, while long overdue, is a Good Thing (TM). Those that want to bitch about having to enter a fucking password to install or run some things have no leg to stand on. Pure trolling, is what it is.
There. I feel better now.
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
$1500 monitor? Only if you are getting a 40+ inch HDTV. How about a $500 xbox360 + $300 20-22in widescreen monitor + xbox360 VGA/Optical cable. Let me know when you can build a PC that will play any of the premiere xbox360 titles for $500. Heck, you can build another PC with the money left over to use as a workstation and still not come close to the price you are paying for high end PC gaming. I got tired of paying out the ass to upgrade a PC just to play games when I can get a console. My PC still uses an AMD 1500+ CPU + radeon 8600 and it does everything I need it to do.
Went back and checked my old emails and took advantage of usenet as you suggested, and I did make three errors (not deliberately, I'll ask you to believe). The 15" monitor was a MAG DX15F (1) and cost me $325 used in 1993 (2). One year later, they were being sold new for $340.
The 17" monitor was a Viewsonic 17GS and in 1995 (3), cost me $350 + $50 shipping from an early auction site (that I can't remember the name of, it was similar to overstock.com in that they sold large quantities of items in mostly dutch auctions). In the email I was bragging to my roommate that I got quite a deal. I did find one online seller offering the 17GS for $770 in 1995, so my used (sight-unseen) monitor was about half price.
In 1997, there were a number of 19" monitors capable of 1600x1200. The only inexpensive Hitachi monitor that could do that was the 751, though I don't find it on the newsgroups for sale under $1000 in 1997 (mostly around $1100). Maybe if you're equipping a whole office you can get a discount...
An 800x600 monitor for $640? In 1995? I stand by my original statement. Anyone who bought that got ripped off.
Ross
This is FUD. Developing games cross-platform is a simple matter of choosing development libraries and APIs which respect (evil eye toward DirectX) cross-platform tenets. OpenGL, OpenAL, ENet, SDL, RakNet, CEGUI, Ogre, PhysFS, can all be used to develop a game, in a fraction of the time necessary to produce a DirectX game, because much of the dirty work (drawing sprites, making sounds, sending network packets, etc) is already done for you. DirectX does this for you, but it doesn't also include things like a simple-to-use resource file manager, game GUI system, or object-interaction engine. Boo to game developers who adhere to platform-depended design!
Take a look at my own game, Odyssey. It runs equally fine in Linux as Windows, and the code compiles without modifying a single line. This project has one programmer (me); if a single programmer with little financial backing can accomplish this, think of what an entire development house with millions of dollars can accomplish.