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Linux Port For id's Tech 5 Graphics Engine Unlikely

Posted by Soulskill on from the sounds-like-they-need-some-encouragement dept.

DesiVideoGamer writes "John Carmack, the lead developer for id's Tech 5 graphics engine, does not plan on making a Linux port for the new engine. From his e-mail: 'It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of Linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision.' One of the reasons for not making a Linux port was due to the fact that the new engine 'pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized' and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work."

37 of 461 comments (clear)

  1. Big news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Linux Gaming not a huge market...more at 11pm

    1. Re:Big news... by GameGod0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But it is a market with very little piracy of native games. Also, very little competition, so you have a better penetration rate. Not sure if it is enough, but it is substantial.

      100% of "very small" is still "very small"...

    2. Re:Big news... by houstonbofh · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But it is a market with very little piracy of native games. Also, very little competition, so you have a better penetration rate. Not sure if it is enough, but it is substantial.

      100% of "very small" is still "very small"...

      I guess we have different definitions of small. If half the Linux users would all send me a buck, I think you might consider that to be a bit of cash.

    3. Re:Big news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Linux users never pay for anything, so it doesn't even matter.

    4. Re:Big news... by wampus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      100% market penetration for yet another first person shooter. A cutting edge first person shooter. On an OS whose users like to brag about how shitty and old their PC is.

    5. Re:Big news... by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Linux users never pay for anything, so it doesn't even matter.

      Nope. I didn't buy all those iD games the day the Linux port came out. Never happened.

      And Red Hat and Crosover Office really don't make money at all... It is all a myth. ;)

    6. Re:Big news... by JohnBailey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Linux users never pay for anything, so it doesn't even matter.

      Do Windows users??

      --
      It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
    7. Re:Big news... by MWoody · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On what do you base that first assertion? Because you wish it were true, because Linux users are somehow better?

      I would have said a similar thing about indie games once, particularly those who support their fanbase well and opt for no-DRM releases. Then World of Goo, which calls home for one of the online features in the game, reported a near-90% piracy rate. They even gave out the first world as a free demo, for chrissakes.

      The fact is, there's nothing unique about Linux that's going to somehow reduce the piracy rate. I mean, let's face the facts: it's a group of users savvy enough to get their hands on a distributable (possibly via torrent), who have opted for a free OS with tons of free software, and who tend (if this very site is to be believed) statistically towards antiestablishmentarianism. We're hardly ideal customers for anything we can't recommend for purchase at work.

    8. Re:Big news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The plural of "anecdote" is not "proof".

    9. Re:Big news... by RobVB · · Score: 5, Funny

      Right, because Linux runs on air and penguin droppings.

      --
      I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
    10. Re:Big news... by xigxag · · Score: 5, Informative

      You don't need a "plural." A singular positive anecdote is enough to disprove a categorical negative assertion.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    11. Re:Big news... by xigxag · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure but the real issue is, not if the AC is full of crap, but is Carmack full of crap when he says that your purchases (and those of your fellow Linux game buyers) aren't themselves enough to justify the expense of porting this engine? Certainly he has access to id's sales stats. Why would he lie about such a thing? And furthermore, if the Linux game market is so fertile, yet underserved, someone such as yourself should be able to make a killing funding a Linux games startup.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    12. Re:Big news... by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So you're claiming all those phones, TiVo's, GPS's and other embedded machines ARE capable of running a cutting edge FPS?

      The question is; how many of those Linux systems are desktop PC's with powerful enough hardware to run the very latest in gaming technology?

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    13. Re:Big news... by hairyfeet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the bigger issues with Linux gaming, and this will probably get me modded down for daring to say this, is that MSFT is pretty much the only game in town thanks to DirectX. OpenGL just hasn't kept feature parity with DirectX in quite awhile, and last time i read anything about OpenGL development they seemed to care more about CAD than gaming.

      So when you talk about making a cutting edge DirectX FPS and making a native Linux port, you are really talking about taking a DirectX 9-11 level game and trying to make it work with a DirectX 7-8 level API, which is what OpenGL is about at last time I checked. They are simply more worried about the CAD sector than they are games, which leaves Linux out in the cold. maybe it is too late to start a new API, but short of simply having to run Wine constantly (which of course will always be behind because they are trying to reverse engineer a VERY complex API that is constantly improving and undergoing revision) I just don't see how the newer games won't be prohibitively expensive to port considering the state of OpenGL VS DirectX.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    14. Re:Big news... by Ihmhi · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If he really meant that, I'd put together a Linux box and play QL on it.

      I'm all for more companies actually making games working natively on Linux. Games are the only reason I use Windows at all.

      --
      Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
    15. Re:Big news... by moon3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is not about piracy, trust me, it is all about Linux not being viable as a platform. That is what TFA is about, they would do it, BUT Linux "pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized' and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work".

      Basically what they are saying here is that after over a ten years of Linux development they are unable to effortlessly and painlessly port the game to the platform, or without taking some hard measures that could backfire, being nasty or buggy.

      There is little criticism in the Linux community in general, so you would never really hear the X-windows system is probably the worst piece of software ever written or that Linux drivers do not really exist as the frequent kernel changes makes vendor software drivers invalid, lots of people got alienated over the years and even enthusiast now say something like that they've stopped worrying about Linux and love Windows. A sad story.

    16. Re:Big news... by Lotana · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Very little piracy for Linux games?

      That is absolutely false. The piracy even worse because the market is small enough as it is, a small percentage will push the product from barely profitable to absolute loss.

      The problem has got so bad that Linux Game Publishing (Major porter of games to Linux and a successor of Loki) were forced to implement DRM for their releases:

      http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=lgp_copy_protection&num=1

      And they didn't like doing it one bit. Here is a quote from the above linked article by LGP's CEO Michael Simms:

      When this game copy protection system became known with LGP's closed testing community, it had enraged some users. In response, the CEO of Linux Game Publishing, Michael Simms, had a few things to say. "Trust me, I don't like it, I'm not happy about it, but we HAVE to do this. I've fought for 6 years against the need for any kind of protection system and all that's happened is that for every legitimate copy of an LGP game out there, there are probably 3-4 pirated copies. That's the difference between success and failure."

      Now I know everyone here buys their Linux games, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of pirates out there that care not for it.

    17. Re:Big news... by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This will probably get me beaten down for say, but I doubt seriously you'd get the Windows gamers over with more Linux ports, and here is why-#1.-As a PC repairman i can tell you I haven't seen a crash that wasn't caused by the user installing malware since...oh lord, it has to be around XP Sp1.

      -#2- As someone who has built and sold many a custom gamer rig, I can tell you Windows gamers are the second most GUI centric bunch you will ever see, the "Sally home user" types being the only ones LESS likely to touch a CLI. They have GUI tweaker tools, the have GUI benchmark software, they used pre-tweaked GUI based drivers, etc. They simply have ZERO desire to ever see and use a CLI, and anyone that has used Linux for any length of time will admit there are still plenty of places where a CLI is required. Update bone your sound? CLI. Your new GPU (which WinGamers do change more than home users) doesn't get the monitor resolution correct? CLI. These guys want to frag, not learn Unix commands.

      -#3-From what I have been told (not a game developer, so I don't know how accurate it is) OpenGL is simply no where near parity with DirectX. This means the fanciest graphics, the biggest booms, all the bling bling that those that are willing to spend the crazy money on an uber-powerful GPU love, will always be for Windows, and will take a long time to port if it ever is at all. The odds of getting even half of the AAA rated games in any given year natively ported to Linux in a timely manner is virtually nil.

      So I'm sorry, while Linux does have some distinct advantages, servers, HPC, cell phones, PMPs, etc gaming just ain't one of them, and having one or two big name games ported over ain't gonna change that. I would say the much more important thing to worry about IMHO would be getting a stable ABI so that the local Walmart Supercenter will have nice little driver CDs included with their devices with a "Linux 32/64" driver, instead of the less than 25% support I see there now. There are plenty of folks that just use their PCs for email, web browsing, etc but until you can take the "research every single purchase" part out of the equation then the mom & pop stores like mine can't help Linux by offering your product.

      There are simply too many devices currently being sold at Staples, Best Buy, and the 800 pound gorilla known as Walmart that have zero support, which leaves the little shops like mine having to add the "MSFT Tax" to every sale because Linux support would eat away all my profits. But wasting time and effort on a niche like gaming that is so tied to Windows and DirectX just seems nuts and with the new Windows 7 gaming will be even easier with the centralized game explorer it just seems crazy to me to go for a market where you are already disadvantaged badly because of the reasons I listed above.

      --
      ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
    18. Re:Big news... by abigsmurf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Read Carmack's thoughts on OpenGL and why he's switched to DirectX. What you think is a strength is actually a huge weakness for developers.

      Say you've a feature that isn't part of the OpenGL spec and has been introduced into nVidia and ATI's latest cards. Both the companies will want an implementation of this feature optimised for their cards so as a coder, if you want to put this feature in your game, you're going to have to code it in twice and it's probably going to produce slightly different visuals for each manufacturer. It's a lot of extra coding and testing work.

      Then, when it comes up to drawing a new spec for the latest version, you'll have two of your most important contributors arguing over which implementation to use and the spec gets delayed.

      With D3D they talk to all the manufacturers and say "this is how the feature will work, design your card to use it". If they want their card to be DX18 or whatever, they've got to implement it that way. It can mean you have to wait between revisions for new features but it prevents the kind of divergence than a graphics API is supposed to prevent in the first place.

    19. Re:Big news... by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, Informative

      The big issue is the stability of the OpenGL 3.x codepaths on Linux. You'll need some relatively up to date drivers(binary blobs) to get all those new calls working. And no guarantees it won't break, later.

      Since OpenGL 3.x and DX10/11 share a lot, it should be more straightforward than it was in the past porting from one to the other. The major differences between OGL and DX have partially been eliminated. Thanks to The Khronos Group, they're both moving in the same direction.

    20. Re:Big news... by crossmr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      a few years ago I had to use project 2003 for a class. I was attempting to run only linux on my laptop at the time. It didn't support it.. I put down my pledge. 1.5 years later I get an email saying "This now works on crossover office, pay up!" I no longer needed it, but went over to check out its status. Their definition of "it works" was several users claiming "garbage won't even start" and one user claiming "I got it to run..but you can't open anything, save anything.. or pretty much do anything" and they considered that delivering on their end of the bargain.

      They want to make linux appealing, they need to work just a tad bit harder than that.

    21. Re:Big news... by Virak · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Basically what they are saying here is that after over a ten years of Linux development they are unable to effortlessly and painlessly port the game to the platform

      Gee, I wonder why? It's not like Linux is a different OS and id Tech 5 is a gigantic codebase or anything like that? Oh wait.

      Besides, he never said "OMG LUNIX IS THE WORST THING EVER GUYS I CAN'T PORT IT TO THIS PIECE OF SHIT LOL", he said "It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work." That's hardly the scathing criticism of Linux you so desperately try to make it out to be. Hell, it isn't even a criticism of Linux at all.

      or without taking some hard measures that could backfire, being nasty or buggy.

      He said nothing of the sort, you're just making shit up here. RTFA. What he said was that it'd probably only work on closed source drivers. Not that he can't get it running on Linux without accidentally opening a gateway far into the depths of hell.

      There is little criticism in the Linux community in general,

      No, not really.

      so you would never really hear the X-windows system is probably the worst piece of software ever written

      No, not even close. It's got a lot of cruft, but it's still managed to keep up with the times quite well. Furthermore, most of the complaints people make about are absurd, outdated, or just plain wrong. Like the ever classic "X uses a server and has network transparency so it uses the network for everything even locally so it's SLOW LOL". Which would be a fine complaint if it weren't for the fact that it is wrong. Locally it'd use Unix sockets, a very different thing from network sockets. Actually, it wouldn't even use that, it'd use shared memory, directly communicating with the server, and avoiding any overhead. So yes, you wouldn't hear that sort of complaint much except from idiots.

      or that Linux drivers do not really exist as the frequent kernel changes makes vendor software drivers invalid,

      It sure makes things easier when you completely redefine words to your liking, doesn't it? The lack of a stable driver API doesn't mean "drivers don't exist". People can either update their drivers themselves to keep up with the latest kernels, or get them in the kernel itself and not have to worry about such a thing anymore. However just because the driver might break on newer versions doesn't make it stop working on older versions and doesn't make it "not exist". In fact, quite a few of them exist; probably more than any other OS comes with out of the box, even Windows. (Certainly more than any OS that's not Windows comes with)

      lots of people got alienated over the years and even enthusiast now say something like that they've stopped worrying about Linux and love Windows.

      Oh hey that's funny because lots of people I know got alienated by Windows over the years and now say something like they've stopped worrying about Windows and love Linux! Clearly the year of the Linux desktop is finally at hand! (If you don't get what I'm going for here, "the plural of anecdote is not data", especially not anecdotes personally gathered from acquaintances, a, too put it lightly, rather biased group.)

      A sad story.

      The only thing sad is how your post consists entirely of bullshit, nonsense, and outright lies.

    22. Re:Big news... by Toonol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, but I think you're getting English confused with Math.

      "It never snows in August"

      "Categorically wrong. Your assertion is untrue. Study the 'little ice age' of the medieval period."

      "Uh.. anyway, since it never snows in August..." *rolls eyes*

      Natural languages would break if they were consistently held to mathematical and logical rigor. Your statement may be technically accurate, but the OP may still be 'right'.

    23. Re:Big news... by muckracer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      > The plural of "anecdote" is not "proof".

      Perhaps you accept as some sort of 'proof' a game developer's viewpoint....like Frictionalgames (Penumbra Series), who even wrote a big thank you note on their page after the Linux version deal got mentioned on Slashdot and people subsequently bought the games (I was one of them and I only ever buy games for Linux). In fact, from the note it appeared, that they teetered on the edge of development with a new version of Penumbra, but due to the sudden influx of cash they'll now happily go forward full steam.

    24. Re:Big news... by robthebloke · · Score: 3, Informative

      You've not developed for OpenGL3 have you?

      DX10 came out November 30, 2006 - which gave DX10 devs geometry shaders

      The OpenGL 3.2 spec was released 21 days ago (spec != drivers though!), which finally put Geometry shaders into the core specification. That's only, what, almost 3 years after DX developers got them.

      So... if you need to use geometry shaders in your game, what GL extension do you code against? GL_EXT_geometry_shader4? GL_ARB_geometry_shader4? NV_geometry_program? or the core spec? Chances are you'll end up coding against all 4, because you can be absolutely certain most cards will support 1 of those extensions, but each card will probably support a different one.

      If the Khronos group keep insisting that they must keep the OpenGL APi 3 years behind D3D10, it's not difficult to see why developers aren't all that keen to go with OpenGL. If the Khronos group continue to keep giving us information which they later back track on (like the entire OpenGL3 spec), it's not surprising to see game developers ditching OpenGL3 in droves. To see Carmack ditching OpenGL really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone working with OpenGL3. I've worked with OpenGL for the past ten years or so, and I'm sad to say that I'm currently stripping all OpenGL out of our codebase in favour of the 'other' API. Currently it seems to be what every developer is doing at the moment. OpenGL is just a royal pita these days. Let it die.

  2. Too bad by pwizard2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've come to count on id porting their games, so I'm disappointed over this bit of news.

    I use the proprietary Nvidia blob (version 180) for my Nvidia 8400 and I have no qualms about it. Windows users use proprietary drivers for practically every card that I've seen over the years, so how is it any different in principle if you replace Windows with Linux? While I take open stuff when I can get it, I would rather have a video card and wireless device that works on Linux. Not every Linux user sees things the same way that RMS does by insisting on a 100% FOSS operating system. While you can have that if you want it, I prefer the freedom of being able to mix and match as I see fit.

    --
    "It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
    1. Re:Too bad by PolyDwarf · · Score: 4, Funny

      You and your "freedom". When will you realize that RMS can do no wrong? Give up your quaint notions, your "thinking for yourself", and bask in the glory of his beard!

    2. Re:Too bad by nacturation · · Score: 5, Insightful

      First they implemented video card drivers as blobs, and I didn't speak up because I was happy playing games.
      Then they implemented the network drivers as blobs, and I didn't speak up because I enjoyed faster network connectivity.
      Then they implemented the storage drivers as blobs, and I didn't speak up because now the latest hardware ran in Linux.
      Then they implemented my kernel as a blob, and there was nobody left to speak up for me because their systems were causing kernel panics because of all the blobs that nobody could debug.

      --
      Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
  3. You heard the man by Spit · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Play Quake live and get some meaningful stats back to a major developer.

    --
    POKE 36879,8
  4. Binary blob ... eh? by Lemming+Mark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work"

    From TFA, it seems that Carmack believes it would be hard to get the necessary performance without using the NVidia drivers. It's somewhat surprising to me if it wouldn't be possible to get it running acceptably on anything else, even if the game does use a lot of advanced features - but if Carmack says so!

    However I'm not so keen on his assertion that if you're using the binary drivers you might as well run the code under Windows. I guess this probably *does* make sense for most people, since there are relatively few people who don't have a Windows license available somewhere. However, it would be *nicer* not to have to reboot into Windows for a specific app even if that were unnecessary.

    Unfortunately I saw a fair few quite negative reactions in the linked thread and I expect we'll see others here. Carmack has not ruled out a port for sure. But even if he does, that's not exactly evil or a betrayal of open source or anything else negative. Many gamers here will have benefited in some way from the GPLed code he's released to the OSS community in the past at some point, pretty much all gamers will have benefited from his position as a developer pushing the games industry forwards. He's not done anything *bad* here, he's just not necessarily doing something we'd hoped for.

    Hopefully the Rage code will - one day - be GPLed and get ported to Linux. I think that's a fair way down the road at this point, though.

    1. Re:Binary blob ... eh? by Hadlock · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Carmack stated at Quakecon that Betheseda has to sign off on the GPL'ing of any future code. The chances of that happening are slim to none. IdTech5 is a pretty impressive piece of technology; from what I can tell it's Fallout 3 graphics maxed out with about 50% less overhead.

      --
      moox. for a new generation.
    2. Re:Binary blob ... eh? by digitalunity · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I appreciate Carmack's pragmatic reasoning instead of legal bullshit or calling us all pirates.

      I have Windows and Linux available at home, so I don't really care. Yeah, it would be nice to not have to dual boot, but I see that as a necessary evil for the time being anyway, regardless of what games become available on Linux.

      --
      You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
    3. Re:Binary blob ... eh? by acidrainx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No, not Bethesda. They're owned by ZeniMax, who also owns Bethesda. It's ZeniMax that has to sign off on it.

      id Tech 5 is impressive right now, but so was Quake 3 back in the day. I wouldn't rule out id Tech 5 being open sourced when their next big game is about to be released on id Tech 7.

    4. Re:Binary blob ... eh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Carmack stated at Quakecon that Betheseda has to sign off on the GPL'ing of any future code. The chances of that happening are slim to none.

      Carmack also stated at Quakecon that he now has a pretty good business case for doing so. With the success of Wolfenstien 3D Classic on the iPhone, which uses an OpenGL port of Wolfenstien 3D, there is now a real business case where a contribution to the open source community can pay dividends in the future.

  5. A Linux port attracts attention. by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A while back Slashdot pointed us to this blog, in which the blogger pointed out how having Linux and Mac ports attracted a lot of attention and even boosted the sales of their Windows versions.

  6. Re:Linux and games still don't mix. by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nvidia didn't just write a regualr binary driver, they had to rewrite a large chunk of Xwindow and package the resulting mess in a large drop-in binary blob, unstable and heavily dependant on the kernel version.

    This part you got backwards. Because they did a pretty clear cut that depends little on kernel versions, they've constantly been much faster at supporting the latest kernels than AMD, like for example kernel 2.6.29 was released in March and supported only by Catalyst in the August release from a few days ago.

    (...) windows (non)emulation can not keep up with Microsofts technical progress on directx. So many recent AAA games in every genre are listed as 'bronze' or 'garbage'.

    Yes, they are. However, very few of these are related to the Direct3D part of WINE and if they are they're usually solved by installing the d3d dlls. However closed source is very prone to crashing if anything else isn't as it should, particularly Microsoft's Live services have been a big problem. Games that actually get past that like World In Conflict have quite decent performance on par with Windows, same with King's Bounty that's a fairly 3D intensive non-FPS.

    The PC gaming market is small enough to justify p[orting to a platform that is a tiny fraction (about 1%) of users.

    Yep, this is what it is about. Not just Linux users, but the intersection between those Linux users interested in a high-end FPS having the hardware and willingness to pay with the market that isn't already getting it somewhere on Windows. Don't get me wrong, I get what's native when I can, what's running in WINE when it works, but there's no competing with a Wintendo box...

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  7. Re:Impressive? Really...? by Turiko · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wow, sorry to say this, but you're a graphics whore. ID has always made great games, and will continue to. If they want to focus on making a good game rather then adding dynamic weather, then that is a good thing. And ID has always put out the SDK's for their games. On a pc, you can mod and change things - make your own part of the game. You can't do that on a console, and that's one of the major reasons i'll stick to PC gaming. That and the xbox/ps3 only have joysticks and i've used a pc mouse nearly all my life :D.