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Valve Confirms Mac Versions of Steam, Valve Games
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra:
"Valve will release a version of its Steam digital distribution service for Mac next month, along with Mac-native versions of its own games, the company confirmed today after days of hints — and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions. The Source engine, which Valve uses to develop all its internal titles and also licenses to third-party developers, will incorporate OpenGL in addition to DirectX, to allow Mac support for all Source developers. ... 'We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform, so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360,' said Cook. 'Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates.'"
I'm all for games being available to as many people as possible. This is awesome news for Apple fans...I hope it signals a shift towards more games being available on the OSX platform. Have fun :-)
Living With a Nerd
Why is valve ignoring ps3?
Part of the announcement was that, yes, you will be able to play online with PC users.
Countdown to the start of blaming the Mac porting effort for the delay of HL2Ep3 starts in 3..2..1..
I read the internet for the articles.
3 cheers for *native* Mac development, instead of just Cider builds!
I'm sure someone will rush in to point out how a PC is still superior as a gaming rig but, as a Mac owner, I still say NICE!!
It's nice to see other game publishers figure out what Blizzard has known for a very long time.
The first thing that came to your mind clearly wasn't RTFA.
Whale
Interesting.
Let's hope that they do actually properly go for native instead of the lameness that has been Cider wrappers around the windows version that we have seen in the past from some. EvE was interesting, and I can see the economy of scale issue (in writing a native client for a small platform) but the performance of the Cider wrapper really hurt.
The chicken and egg problem (no games, no dev support, thus no games...) has to be broken sooner or later - Blizzard certainly seems to be doing ok with a dual platform release format.
Linux support is coming when porting it to linux becomes profitable, stop asking.
Would be nice if they decided to release it for Linux as well, even though it might be a "tier-2" platform to them.
This is great for Mac users. But its also good movement for Linux users. An OpenGL based Source engine would be fairly trivial to port.
This is cool to hear. I don't use Macs, but hopefully any cross-platform implementation could eventually be extended to allow Linux support. That would be real news!
From the article:
"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Portal 2 lead developer Josh Weier. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
The article also mentions that Portal2 will be a day 1 release for the Mac alongside the PC.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If the source engine is going to be running with OpenGL too now I suspect that these games will suddenly be much easier to get working in Wine.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
"Windows". Try using that word when you refer to the OS, it's not difficult.
A big win for gaming on macs. Valve has a cannon of some of the best FPSs the PC has to offer. I've been exclusively buying and playing my titles through Steam for about 2 years now (the sales are spectacular). Hopefully with native Steam support, more developers will take time and expense to make their new offerings dual-platform.
And what does this mean for us Linux users? OSX and Linux are both Unix variants, a little difference in FreeBSD/Linux kernels, but not nearly the jump to port that it is for Windows. Discuss.
It might automate code generation but it doesn't automate debugging or QA testing which in my experience take significantly more effort then running the build system....
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I know, I know, in the foreseeable future Linux will not be an officially supported platform for Valve, but does this move have implications for (potential) Linux compatibility of Source games? OpenGL is readily available under any desktop oriented distro I have come across so far, and porting from OS X to Linux (or emulating needed parts of the former under the latter) should be easier and give much better results than dealing with Wine. Or am I missing something?
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
I don't own a Mac, but today seems like a good day if you do.
One of the things I don't like about Mac (and there are a few) is that many games are not released for Mac or if they are, they are released way after they are released for everything else.
This seems to be a nice step in the right direction, and I got to say so far as a fit goes, Valve and Steam seem to me a great fit for Macs. Makes me think of the App store on their iPhones.
As much as I like to bash Macs, this is a very astute move for Apple and for Valve. More competition the better I say, Windows has had much the world bent over a bench for long time now and pretty much a monopoly over the gaming market outside of consoles (and a big chunk of that also with the Xboxen). Next step, price Macs more competitively?
Can I assume that they will be porting games like Left 4 Dead, Halflife and Team Fortress to mac was well?
Will linux get any love as well? With an OpenGL implementation, most of the heavy lifting should hopefully be taken care of. If it does, I will go out of my way to buy each and every one of their games.
Although getting Source on Mac is fine, Steam is the much bigger deal. Although I don't expect PC game developers to shift their production away from PC as their "first target platform", it does make it easier if one is also interested in distributing games on Mac. It doesn't matter the size of game developer, the Mac platform is a tough nut to crack due to scales of market shifted so far to the PC where an online one can help equalize. For instance, [i]World of Goo[/i] is an excellent game that works great on Mac but it must be hell to sell to just Mac owners. Your best bet in this situation for many publishers is to "combine distribute" the PC and Mac version on one disk which isn't totally efficient and desirable.
With Steam this gets a lot simpler. You now have a marketplace that goes directly to Mac owners and they get a bunch of the bonus support of Steamworks like version updates and achievement systems. Source on Mac for some games but I really see Steam as the big deal here. Steam opens up a lot to game developers.
And as a side though: Did Apple dropped a ball here where they could have used their gigantic online store to sell MacOS games? iTunes works great for updating games on iPhone and iPod...would it be so difficult to do the same for desktop games?
The biggest objections to Apple's computers over the last few years have been a) The cost and b) no games available.
The cost issue has become pretty meaningless to anyone who is willing to compare oranges to oranges: the cost of a Mac laptop or desktop with X features is pretty comparable to a Windows laptop or desktop with the same feature set, its just that usually the PC side has lower features by default and you can buy the components to raise the level of functionality, whereas Apple doesn't operate in the low end of the computer spectrum and even their base systems have great features and very high quality.
With this change by Valve it will hopefully signify changes in the attitude of the rest of the games industry and Mac support will grow to the point that its treated as well as Microsoft's products with regards to gaming. I am perfectly content with my iMac 20" desktop for the gaming I am doing, and I would love to play more games under OS/X rather than dualbooting to XP.
Lastly, if the Mac gains in acceptance, perhaps Linux will follow down the road. Having implemented all of this stuff for OS/X it can't be as far a stretch to include Linux as it was to make the original jump from Windows to OS/X (being a kind of unix after all)?
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
and owners of Valve games will have access to both platform versions.
In an age where publishers are doing everything in their power to tie your hands when it comes to their software, this simply amazes me.
We've got publishers who user DRM that renders a game useless after a half-dozen installs... And valve is going to let you run your games on two entirely different platforms?! Not two different computers... But wholly different platforms. Amazing.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
OS X is UNIX, Linux is Unix "like".
And "A Little Difference" is huge, probably as large of a difference between them and the NT kernel. Not only that, OS X doesn't even use the FreeBSD kernel, they use the Darwin one.
Not much to discuss, really. These games probably will be built on something layered over Apple's Objective-C frameworks, not on X, and so porting this stuff to other Unices would take a lot of work.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
The way he describes it is Continuous Integration, not hybrid code generation..
Awesome. There will be an entire new population of n00bs for me to pwn. And these aren't just any noobs--they've never even been exposed to a real FPS experience of any sort. Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
Mwuhahahaha... Dominating!
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
And what does this mean for us Linux users? OSX and Linux are both Unix variants
Mac OS X native apps use a different toolkit from the vast majority of apps for Linux and the free BSDs. This toolkit is called Cocoa (formerly OpenStep). GNUstep is a Free clone of parts of Cocoa, intended for source compatibility, not binary compatibility like Wine.
Not likely, yet.
Game publishers still think no one wants linux games, despite that fact that me and my wife spent the weekend looking for good linux games for her, mumbling the whole time about how we would be happy to pay for such a thing...
Fail. I think part of the issue is it's very hard to target "linux" with any sort of reliable, always working game. Granted, games on windows aren't always reliable and always working either, but publishers have more experience with it, and limiting to "XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (or these days, just the latter 2) is a realistic move they can make and still sell games for windows. I don't know if this would be true for linux.
I used to own my PC-owning friends in Q3A, even with my one button mouse, which I used at their request to make it more fair to them :D
Been awhile since I played a great FPS on my Mac - the last three were Q3A, Halo and UT2k4 in that order. Played Half-Life way back in the day on a friend's machine - looking forward to picking it up natively.
You missed his point. It wasn't about code generation, it was about testing: You still need to test and debug on both platforms.
Let's see here.. My first FPS was Wolfenstein 3D, I've never owned a computer with a one button mouse and I'm a mac user since 2006, does this mean I've never played a "real" FPS and that I don't have more than one mouse button?
Also, what about all the old-school geeks who have switched to macs after the death of every other available UNIX workstation manufacturer (or the discontinuation of their workstations)?
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Unlike Ubisoft's system, Steam has an offline mode. Steam requires access to the DRM server when you install the game, not every time you play.
Probably not a lot.
Which Distro? What sound system? Lack of easy to install 3d drivers for nVidia and ATI. Actually the drivers for nVidia and ATI are pretty easy to install but probably beyond what some people will want to do.
I would love to see it but Linux and OSX are not that alike. on OSX you just target quicktime for audio and video playback. No need to worry what "legal" codecs are available.
Is Valve going to start targeting OpenGL? if so that part should be portable at least.
But the real issue is lack of customers. I just don't see that many Linux users that don't dual boot into Windows for gaming.
If you don't get new customers it doesn't pay off.
OSX offers a bigger pay off and fewer development issues.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
True, but in this case the relatively small subset of hardware supported by OSX makes things easier. Once they have it running at all it will only need to be tested against two or three OS revisions (10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard and possibly 10.4 Tiger) and a half dozen video cards. In many ways I suspect that the testing will be far easier than what is needed for a console. A few more hardware versions to deal with but at the same time there is so much higher margin in terms of RAM and processor power that there is a lot more room to play with.
Erm... Cocoa is for the UI layer, like toolbars, buttons etc., when did you ever see a standard toolbar in a game? Almost every game uses custom UI, so if steam games are using OpenGL(which is the only accelerated graphics API on the Mac), it should be easy to port it to Linux/BSD.
This space for rent.
Before anyone gets overly excited, please remind yourself of what video card your shiny $1k computer is running.
It's not stated, but I assume by "Mac" he means "Intel Mac" and not "Intel and PPC Macs". Anyone know any different? (I have a PPC mac and never intend to buy another.)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Actually, I can see a system where the Source engine isolates the game developers from the hardware completely, as such platform dependent QA & Testing is only done by the source engine developers and not the game developers. Abstraction is a great thing.
Waiting to see what the min sys requirements are -- I'd expect Intel only, no PPC.
The big question is on minimum requirements on the video side -- will early MacBooks and Minis be left in the cold? The wrappers used for Spore really screwed a lot of people by not supporting the early Intel video chipsets like the GMA950 on the old MacBook I'm using.
Might be time to upgrade to a newer MacBook Pro!
Eh, but userland is more or less the same. There are differences for IO drivers, and you can use Quartz Compositor instead of X, but the two are very similar.
Actually there's a much bigger jump.
Windows and OSX are fairly well-regulated monocultures: you have a consistent idea about how installation is supposed to work, you know where to put your config files, you know what permissions you need and how to get them. You rarely need to worry about broken dependencies: they happen, but the platform vendors usually provide an updater you can distribute with your application.
On the other hand, Linux is an undifferentiated mass. An application developer literally cannot make any useful predictions about the end user's configuration, which means it's almost impossible to provide support. The state of Linux is fine - it's even very strong - when you're only talking about FOSS. When you start asking for money, you need to make sure that your software is Suitable for a Particular Purpose. Installation needs to be easy and it needs to work everywhere.
I'm offering 10:1 I get modded flamebait for not drinking the Linux Kool-Aid.
It might automate code generation but it doesn't automate debugging or QA testing which in my experience take significantly more effort then running the build system....
They most likely use some kind of "compatibility layer" on which they develop the games. Something to handle the rendering, audio, input, networking, etc. (all interactions with the outside) in a cross-platform manner. It's also likely that most of the bugs in the compatibility layer are already fixed, because most of them will be pretty obvious (it's not very complex code, after all). The rest of the bugs, such as bugs in the game logic, will most likely have the same result on any platform.
Supporting Macs requires a big initial effort in building this compatibility layer and properly testing it, but once that's done, you can just have your coders use it transparently. As for your beta testers, just have some of them use macs, some of them use PCs, to be on the safe side, but they most likely all would experience the same bugs, because most of the code is the same on either platform. The more games you crank out using your cross-platform API, the better tested it is, the less likely it becomes for people to find flaws in the said API.
A few years ago, a friend an I coded a rendering API that could use either Direct3D or OpenGL as its target. It took us some effort to find clever tricks to keep the performance good. We had to find ways to have the GPU transform between coordinate systems as needed. For our modest 3D engine, it wasn't an impossible effort though. We did discover some cases where both targets didn't perform exactly the same down the road, but those bugs were easily fixed.
Well, we have photoshop...
I am pretty sure it will be way simpler and easier to test on a console since they said the primary console will be the 360. No variation in that.
I do hope that they test it more than a once over saying "well, it loaded find for me" and then just release it.
I think the person that was talking about testing was talking about a situation like this:
Example (No Spoilers, I am making up an example): You are at a boss fight where there are lighting effects, a bunch of stuff to shoot (like bats in the air). Think the final boss of Gears of War but you can shoot the bats.
They would need to not only test for just compatibility, but for the game not freezing or messing up based on the actions you choose (like shooting one bat while walking over a mine that you set that is right next to the boss) which would trigger you hitting the boss, you making a kill on a bat, and you getting blasted by your own mine. Crazy stuff like that to make sure that game triggers the correct enemy (or yourself) dying.
The same software based testing that is going to happen for Windows and 360 really should happen to Mac as well. It would be very unfortunate if a bunch of errors started coming up by assuming it works just fine.
The world is how you make it
Support Ubuntu 10.4. ALSA and pulse audio for audio. Other distros would probably work for free, even without an 'official' declaration of support. In terms of 'on what hardware?' the QA process is no more convoluted than Windows. Some bitching and moaning might be had for not explicitly embracing various pet distros, but ultimately the communities do a good job of covering any technical gaps between officially supported platforms and their own distribution.
FYI, quake3 binary from years ago still execs on modern distributions.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Making the games OpenGL instead of DirectX-only certainly makes linux more plausible. I agree it's unlikely that a native X11 app will appear in the near future, but it should be much easier to build a fake-Mac/fake-Win environment under linux given an OpenGL engine.
I'm making a note here: HUGE SUCCESS. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
two or three OS revisions (10.5 Leopard, 10.6 Snow Leopard and possibly 10.4 Tiger)
Someone mentioned below that they are planning to support OpenCL (assuming they didn't mean simply OpenGL). If that is the case, I wonder if they will only support Snow Leopard. This provides several benefits:
If that is true, they will probably disappoint quite a few Mac users, who haven't upgraded for one reason or another.
Of course, Apple will be happy about it... ;-)
This might be their first move into apple territory to eventually get into the app store like idSoftware
You're just missing the previous 200 comments.
Only one of your points have any merit at all. Distro? Sound? Try Quake 3, released 10 years ago for no distro in particular, supporting OSS sound. It still works today, on a current 64 bit AMD system using ALSA, since ALSA has OSS support. Installation of drivers isn't the game publisher's responsibility, just like under Windows. Legality of codecs? You can legally license codecs under any OS, you just have to pay for them, or use one of the free codecs. Non-issues, all of them. What made you come up with this nonsense?
The lack of a market is the only issue here, and it's a good enough reason not to port games to Linux: it's a waste of time and effort, for very little returns.
Mac users are very willing to open up their wallets and pay for nearly anything.
Linux users tend to rarely want to pay for anything. Even if install base may be similar (this ignore that most macs come equipped with above average graphic chips, while most Linux machines are cheap netbooks,) actual money market share is so insignificant for Linux that it's unlikely (albeit not impossible) anyone would spend much time porting commercial applications to the platform, specially software that must sell massive amount of copies at very low prices to actually make a profit. That's not to mention having to support software for so many different versions of Linux out there can be as taxing as porting for a whole new platform. A Linux steam would be forced to pick one Linux version to support and not spend resources on any other, limiting their market drastically.
The reason there are not mainstream games being developed for Linux is not the difficulty of the port, it's the non-existing profitability of the market.
Mac users are used to paying from regular to premium prices for software. Paying for games, however, is quite rare given the limited options. ;)
I do hope the games support intel GMA950 as a bare minimum, otherwise a lot of us won't be able to buy the games anyway. And that includes a lot of Mac mini and Macbook owners as well as some early entry-level iMacs.
Liar! Not having an Internet connection is never an issue! Ubisoft told me so!
Shh.
Erm... Cocoa is for the UI layer, like toolbars, buttons etc., when did you ever see a standard toolbar in a game? Almost every game uses custom UI, so if steam games are using OpenGL(which is the only accelerated graphics API on the Mac), it should be easy to port it to Linux/BSD.
It should be easier to port to Linux (et al.) than it was before they made a Mac version, but not easy exactly.
As noted before, basically every user-facing program on OS X uses a ton of Cocoa calls. Cocoa is used for more than just the UI layer: it provides a generous standard library of data types, os calls, and other useful things. Think of cocoa as an Objective C / OS X friendly libc. Objective C itself does not easily translate from the Mac to other systems, as well. Last I checked, GNUstep didn't have a working Objective C 2.0 runtime yet.
Uh? The only thing the two systems share that is relevant is support for OpenGL 2.1. They each have their own windowing systems as you mentioned, however, OS X also has CoreAudio while Linux has some stuff that may or may not work or play sound and varies across distributions. And if by userland, you mean in the sense that they both usually have bash and awk and sed. I'm sure those are all things that have tremendous utility in modern game programming. It doesn't help either that as far as I can tell, Linux programs tend to make extensive use of environmental variables while OS X essentially doesn't use them outside of bash sessions.I'm also curious if there are applications for GCD and OpenCL in the Source engine which are available on newer OS X but not so much on Linux. Still, the fact remains that pretty pictures are only a small part of the equation.
Eh, but userland is more or less the same. There are differences for IO drivers, and you can use Quartz Compositor instead of X, but the two are very similar.
Reread what you just wrote. X is primitive whereas Quartz is a compositor. You need to add a compositor on top of X to match functionality but games generally use OpenGL which is abstracted from the underlying drawing framework.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Apple hasn't sold a powerpc computer in roughly 4 years (2006). A decent number of programs no longer support powerpc at all (and this has been a growing problem for several years--I think it was the 2008 olympics that required Silverlight to stream, which didn't officially run on PowerPC). I think it's 100% safe to say there will be no powerpc support for Steam.
World of Warcraft ...
Most of those games came out years after their PC equivalent. Even in the case of Dragon Age (which was delayed by months), it is just the PC game wrapped in an emulator. And it does not support DLC.
These are the only two companies I currently still buy games for my computers from. This basically allows me to stop having to use Windows for anything but work. Anything else I want is generally out for the consoles I own. Thank you Valve! I've been waiting for this!
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
It's probably better you don't.
You might get your hair messed up and nice new Ed Hardy t-shirt un-tucked.
Team Fortress 2 isn't for sissies.
You are welcome on my lawn.
When was the LAST time you played a FPS. Thats more important in the newb equation. If it makes you feel better my first FPS was Wolf3d, and to say the least im a newb whenever i play any fps online. I just dont have the hours in the day to be any good.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
I really hope that this means it’s a small step towards getting it to run on Linux. Because then we have the 3 biggest gaming platforms on the PC running on Linux, and there finally is no excuse anymore. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
"I doubt most developers are going to do both Windows and OS X."
I generally agree, but, I seriously doubt the existence of a Mac version of Steam is going to *hurt* PC gaming. Developers that are only interested in Consoles will likely to continue to be. Developers that have decided to support both PC and Console probably won't suddenly be in a worse position than they currently were just because there is a Mac version of Steam and they aren't releasing for it. *But*, for developers who *are* interested in developing for Mac, anyhow, Steam now gives them another option for how to get distribution.
OS X is UNIX, Linux is Unix "like".
I love how people say this and presume they've just said something significant. Mac OS X's UNIX certification is not worth much more than the advertising bullet-point they us it for. Both Linux and Mac OS X are UNIX in every way that actually matters today, namely POSIX-compliance. It's not like UNIX certification grants Mac OS X special compatibility traits; it's still not binary compatible with any other UNIX, neither is it source compatible if you move beyond what's specified by POSIX and other common standards. So what do you think is the significance of your factually-based and pointless assertion?
It will probably eventually become easier to run Source games in Linux without all the hacking around in WINE. Not that there won't be hacking around where someone has to fool Steam into thinking your Linux machine is an Apple or some such (oh and other hacking around I haven't thought of yet, and hardware will have to be equivalent, obviously, etc...), but the stuff will probably run native once it is done. So, basically, Good News.
Hopefully, that will include Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, because otherwise what's the point?
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
The only real reason at this point to not be on SL is that your hardware doesn't support it (or you've got some odd software that still hasn't been updated for SL). Given that the upgrade to SL is dirt cheap, for those who actually want to game on their Macs, the hurdle is low.
I agree with you, but the way you said it wasn't very clear.
Darwin descended from the FreeBSD kernel, so they are more similar to each other than the NT kernel, but FreeBSD8.0 is quite a bit different from the FreeBSD 4.x Darwin is derived from.
But, as other commenters have noted, there is more than the kernel to consider.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The Marathon trilogy!
Circumcision is child abuse.
Initial titles on sale are Breakout ... Super Breakout ...
(and Photoshop)
That's what it says on the wikipedia page, and they provide sources that check out. Postal III is also on the source engine. The game doesn't excite me, but I'm assuming that means that a linux port is in the works as well (though it may be a bit behind), and that is exciting. Sometime this year, they say.
But then, I've been disappointed by "sometime this year" announcements before.
coughblackmesasourcecough
I wish the "iPhone is not OS X!" idiots and the "OS X apps can be recompiled for linux!" idiots would get together and have a great big gay orgy until they get their shit together.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I'm offering 10:1 I get modded flamebait for not drinking the Linux Kool-Aid.
Stating something like that almost guarantees it won't happen.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
World of goo is a good one, the penny arcade games are pretty good too.
It's not that they think no one wants them. It's that they know that not enough people want them for it to be profitable. You and your wife and the (relative) handful of other people who consist of the audience for Linux games aren't a significant market.
Hell, the PS3 and the Wii don't even make the cut in Valve's book.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
Here is one Linux user that will not boot windows for gaming. I pay for crossover instead.
You're half right.
I'd be trivial porting Steam to Linux.
But every single DirectX engine would have to be ported to OpenGL, which is not trivial. Source supporting OpenGL in the future is good news!
"But the real issue is lack of customers. I just don't see that many Linux users that don't dual boot into Windows for gaming."
Currently isn't the same applicable to Mac? They've been dual booting ever since Boot Camp and before that they just had another system for games.
I'm offering 10:1 I get modded flamebait for not drinking the Linux Kool-Aid.
You may be new here. You should know that Mac fanbois with modpoints outnumber Linux enthusiasts in articles from the Apple section. Either that, or at least you've been here long enough to have figured out that many moderators still fall for the classic reverse psychology "I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but..." routine.
As for me, I used the term "Mac fanbois" in an Apple article. There's no amount of reverse psychology that can help me now. I might as well go down in flames by pointing out that a surprising number of people with interesting and unique sexual preferences choose Apple products. Oh dear.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
On the other hand, if you assume there is any market for games on Linux at all, then it would be a very good idea for Valve to port Steam to Linux, as it would be the solution to everything you said - it would provide a consistent installer, updater, dependency manager, and DRM for the platform so the individual developers wouldn't have to.
The main problem with gaming on Linux is simply the small size of the market. Any other complaints are minor and solvable.
That's why they should develop exclusively for Debian. All its children will inherit compatibility (or else), and you have a standard Linux OS to develop for.
Speaking of Marathon, Bungie open-sourced that a while back. All three games are available for Windows, OSX and Linux for free from their site.
I played through the first one last year. Very fun game with an interesting setting.
Now I know for sure that breakout, and super breakout will live on in the finest of Mac traditions!
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Yeah, but how much effort did they expend to get their build process to that point, and how much of that could have been spent on HL2 Ep3 instead? My guess is "a hell of a lot of work", and "not much since Ep3 is mostly new content not new software".
Also that puzzle game with the Apple logo. I beat it, but it's still fun.
(i.e.: 64-bit support is required for Snow Leopard.)
I realize I'm nitpicking, but 64-bit support is not required for Snow Leopard. It runs just fine on my 2006-era 32-bit Core Duo MacBook.
64-bit is not required for snow-leopard. There are some Intels that were 32 bit and shipped with tiger initially. These machines are also capable of running snow leopard.
I could be wrong (i.e. I haven't checked too closely), but I am pretty sure there is Intel-only software that runs on 10.4. I will have to dig a bit and see if I can find an example, but I'm fairly sure many of the recent game releases (such as WoW and Plants vs. Zombies) can run on 10.4, but still require an intel Mac. My Mini came with an Intel proc, but is currently running 10.4...
{checks PopCap.com for PvZ info}
Yup. 10.4.11 and Intel proc combo required. It could be done. No PowerPC support required.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
I own a MacBook Alu with the new no-button-touchpad mouse. I'm using that one and it's working very well - in fact, I find trackpad/touchpad implementations on other laptops in comparison unusable. However, the acceleration of normal computer mice (which I would say are essential for gaming) is so bad on MacOSX, it's unbearable. I've also tried various software trying to correct that problem, but somehow I couldn't come close to the Windows mouse acceleration profile. For that reason I play all games on Windows, even those directly supported by MacOSX.
As in design an interface you don't have to be a kid with perfect vision to read?
(I don't care you can - I can't, and they don't give a shit. Great way to treat customers)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Lol@ it being a decade later and Marathon still comes up number 3 on the list of "games available for Mac"
Kudos to them for open sourcing it though...
I'm offering 10:1 I get modded flamebait for not drinking the Linux Kool-Aid.
You sneaky little reverse psychologist... BTW I'm offering 10:1 I get modded troll for using reverse psychology myself.
Hi, I'm a mac. And my mouse has 18 buttons.
Yeah, about that...
Apple has had multi-button mice for a while now. It was called the Mighty Mouse, but due to copyright issues, that particular mouse is now called the Apple Mouse, and there is now a new BlueTooth mouse with multi-sense and gesture capabilities called the Magic Mouse. Multi-button mice have been standard with Macs since 2005 at least, and are also now built in to the trackpad on all MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
Plus, many Mac gamers have a secondary Windows box for games that didn't make it over. I think you'll find some strong challengers from this side of the companion cube.
Mess not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
But it's a much easier demographic to target. Mac users overwhelmingly tend to run up-to-date versions of OSX (the uptake rates for Snow Leopard and Leopard are impressive), similar hardware (since it tends to be non-upgradeable and Apple pushes highly differentiated refreshes), and are all using compatible audio and video frameworks. It's frankly an easier platform to target than Windows from an objective standpoint, at least as far as configuration diversity.
Linux is a configuration hellhole, with no reliable codecs, configurations, drivers, etc. Yes, the community is more willing to work for it, but probably not enough would buy into it to make the time worthwhile. Valve is gambling (and I think rightly so) that the legions of University-aged Mac users and home Mac users will pick up Steam as a convenient one-stop-shop for casual gaming on their platform.
Remember, this demographic already buys most of their software online (via bundles like MacHeist and official channels like the App Store). I'd be surprised if this wasn't a rainmaker move from Valve, especially once stuff like Peggle gets ported (essentially zero work) to a community that will just love little bite-sized Cocoa-friendly games.
"doesn't even use the FreeBSD kernel". They also don't use the NetBSD or OpenBSD kernel. Or various other UNIX kernels. Including OpenGL support would have been one of the major hurdles, and since that's done, I think it's quite a stretch to say "probably as large a difference between them and the NT kernel." I could be wrong about this, but isn't the whole point about Linux being Unix-like that it was coded from scratch, not in any way a descendant of UNIX like OS X is? They are, ultimately, very similar platforms.
Actually, as of today (that is, Tuesday 09.03.2010), NVIDIA Linux drivers (195.36.03, 195.36.08) support OpenCL better than Windows ones (196.34), that is, they have less bugs. Not sure about Mac, as I don't have access to Mac with OpenCL-capable hardware.
Coding etudes
Actually MacOS X prior to 10.6 seems to lack posix_memalign() function in its libc. Well, their ABI mandates 16-byte stack and malloc() alignment, so they got away with that because alignment other than 16 bytes is rarely needed, but still... I wonder how can a system comply with Unix/POSIX specification and lack POSIX-mandated call.
Coding etudes
Here is one Linux user that will not boot windows for gaming. I pay for crossover instead.
Thereby increasing the idea that there is no market for commercial games in Linux. I, on the other hand, only purchase and play games with a native Linux client. This means largely supporting indies over big studios, but BioWare got an extra sale they wouldn't have otherwise when they released a Linux client for Neverwinter Nights.
In any case, the idea that there is no Linux market has been disproven on several occasions. 2DBoy reported 17% of purchasers during their birthday pay-what-you-want World of Goo sale were Linux users, vs. 18% Mac users and 65% Windows. Not only that, but we paid about a third more than Mac users and almost twice as much as Windows users.
As far as I know, Linux has Alsa, and the other sound servers can emulate it. And OpenAL works in every distro and also in Windows, MacOSX, XBox360, BSD, IPhone, Solaris...
Dilbert RSS feed
So they are supporting Windows, XBox and MacOSX, and they'll use Mac-only libraries and languages instead of using cross-platform ones? That doesn't make any sense.
Dilbert RSS feed
way too late?
...
I forgot to post this highly convenient page: The three games along with the three OS binaries.
Hmm, you *do* know there is something called Wine, right? Porting can sometimes be done by the users themselves.
The thing is, how much easier would be to write a wine-like compatibility layer for games which will probably use cross-platform libraries, instead of Direct3D, DirectSound, etc?
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Why would they pick the Windows version and totally rewrite the audio system to use CoreAudio, instead of using OpenAL which supports both? (And Linux!)
Dilbert RSS feed
technically I should have said an X-based Window Manager, since Quartz Compositor is the Apple Window manager, but I was referring specifically to displaying a window on a screen.
Where in my post did I mentioned Linux? He was talking about OS X's relationship to FreeBSD and the FreeBSD kernel. OS X is essentially BSD with a Mach kernel. The standard libraries are going to be the same (this is actually true of Linux too), independent of what kernel it's running on. If your game needs a kernel extension you're doing something wrong. Likewise, the OpenGL UI does away with a need for most of the UI libraries.
Awesome. There will be an entire new population of n00bs for me to pwn. And these aren't just any noobs--they've never even been exposed to a real FPS experience of any sort. Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
Mwuhahahaha... Dominating!
I was thinking just that... and I am that n00b. I'm looking forward to Team Fortress 2, but everyone has a couple years of head start on me. I'm pretty sure I'm about to die a lot.
(I've been using a normal mouse for some years now, though).
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
To begin with, Linux is not a platform. Ubuntu, Fedora, particular LSB release might be a platform, but still, it's too vague for games. There's enough incompatibilities between Windows versions and Windows drivers - actually, that's one of two major reasons why PC does not look specially attractive for large gamedev studios (the other reason is rampant piracy).
I work as a game developer and being a Linux enthusiast, I'd really love to support it natively, but the only realistic option for me is to make sure that the game runs in Wine (with binary NVIDIA drivers - there're no other options currently).
Games are (and always were) highly dependent on decent graphics drivers and predictable behavior of system components (yes, we need the ability to know what is in Video RAM and what isn't, use vendor-specific hacks to fine-tune application behavior, set "realtime" priority for our process and do other not-always-pleasant low-level stuff to solve real-world problems and get the game shipped on time), and Linux unfortunately cannot guarantee all that predictability and control over the system (for developers), as of today.
Coding etudes
It's easy to say that linux is impossible to target because of the fragmentation, but you draw out the situation in a very inflexible, pessimistic way. If a big publisher like Valve decided to pick just one flavour of linux to target, every other distribution would be bending over backwards to implement compatibility to whatever they target because it is in the nature of free software to gravitate towards whatever is the most useful for a purpose. Plus they would have the defense of being able to say 'our software is only designed for Platform X, and using it on other platforms may require some user assembly', which is a damn sight of an improvement on 'our software is only designed to run on windows, and if you dont like it, you can fuck off!'
So they wouldn't have to do all the work of testing every single distribution out there, and neither should anyone be expected to - otherwise, any large scale venture is doomed to be bogged down in useless pandering to each and every part of linux! Being able to reach a large audience easily is a serious issue, and it doesnt help the linux cause to be obstinately difficult to please. You can't have your cake and eat it, as the cliche goes.
IMHO, there is really only one linux anyway, it just happens to have lots of faces...
Ogre supports both on Windows and OpenGL in MacOSX and Linux. And OpenAL also supports the three OSes.
Dilbert RSS feed
Sure, the general mentality you almost have to have to even own a Mac is that the more you pay the better product you get. That mentality probably follows with most all of their other purchases (ie cars: BMW's, Toyota Prius, etc.). However, I think you should also throw in a dash of "trendy" purchasing (ie Kindle). Until Mac users can spend their money on something better and more expensive (ie iPad), they will use whatever is the "best." Now, to personally contrast your comparison of Linux users... that's a horrible statistic for you to state that Linux users tend to rarely pay for anything, simply because we did not pay for Linux. It's also a very blind lie, as I have used Linux for eight years, and I have paid for alot of software and devices in that time. Game software, gaming systems, computer systems, fancy graphics cards, cell phones, ebook readers, music, movie rental subscriptions (hey Netflix, I'll renew my account when you support online streaming for Linux). Think of some of the reasons why Linux users use their OS--what kind of qualities stand out? The strongest I think is the willingness to support good software that supports its audience, usually sacrificing some of the luxuries that other more expensive alternatives are made to provide. Linux users, whether they are willing to pay for it or not, will support a product if it supports them. The moment Valve releases Linux support, the Linux community will show their support by buying the games that are worth buying. Personally, I have some purchased some games from Steam that I no longer play anymore (go figure). Since we are on the topic of user profiling, I could go further and make some claims (similar to yours, both insulting and damaging) about how the Linux user and hardcore gamer demographics match up. But I'll let you all think about that.
"So don't get programmed by anybody but yourself" --Bill S. Preston, Esquire
Since the iPad is also marketed as a gaming device I wouldn't be surprised if this is the first step towards releasing games on the ipad.
"on OSX you just target quicktime for audio and video playback."
I hate to nitpick, but on OS X using QuickTime for audio got depreciated long ago. In fact, it's entirely gone in 64 bit. You're supposed to use CoreAudio or OpenAL now.
Sorry, I just didn't want people thinking that on the Mac we were still basing our audio code on a creaky ancient proprietary API. :)
(QuickTime X, on the other hand, is brand new, rebuilt from the ground up, and great at doing hardware accelerated video. But it doesn't include an audio API like the old QuickTime sound manager.)
Hell, they don't even have a secondary-fire button!
Sure we do, we just have to drop to DOS and edit config.sys to load rghtclck.tsr and off we go!
Both Red Alert 3 and Command & Conquer 3 exist on OSX. But both games are just the PC version running in an emulator. And neither game supports custom maps or mods (even though there is no reason they couldn't support such maps/mods)
OS X is UNIX, Linux is Unix "like".
I love how people say this and presume they've just said something significant. Mac OS X's UNIX certification is not worth much more than the advertising bullet-point they us it for. Both Linux and Mac OS X are UNIX in every way that actually matters today, namely POSIX-compliance.
POSIX compliance is what actually matters? So Windows NT and up can be UNIX - I did not know that.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Why would they pick the Windows version and totally rewrite the audio system to use CoreAudio, instead of using OpenAL which supports both? (And Linux!)
The short answer performance.
The long answer, you seem confused. CoreAudio includes OpenAL as one of the largest components, which is why Apple is a large OpenAL contributor.
Thanks for reminding me why online play with random strangers sucks.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Trouble there is that you then have to deal with the shortcomings of the X Window system (just try talking to Jonathan Blow about that one) and then anticipating anything the user might have activated on the other end that might conflict with it. In theory, it's easy: in practice, it's highly complex to get it working on all Linux/BSD systems due to fragmented and variable configuration.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
I think you're thinking of Aqua not Cocoa.. Cocoa is Objective C programming for the game engine which is a different ball of wax than what it would be like to port to linux. The graphics libraries being OpenGL - yeah that will help a move to linux, but it's obviously not 100% to the point of running a mac binary on a linux box.
I've always disliked the idea of steam, online login to validate, locking your games to an account so you can't resell, etc. But valve just keeps throwing in so many perks it's hard to fight all the great advantages Steam offers. It really is DRM done about as right as it can get.
Kudos to Valve!
now apple needs better hardware a $2500 tower with a weak video card does not cut it and a $200 upgrade for ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB is a joke on top of that also you only have 3gb ram with that.
The mini and under $1800 laptops are a joke as well 9400m at that price?
I've only been using an apple for a couple years, an old G4 iBook, and up until then it was Windows/Linux strictly on an Intel-esque processor. I love this iBook, but there are reasons I had a HUGE bias against Macs when I was younger, and it's still one of the reasons I'm not as happy as I could be with this thing: lack. of. games. Support has been poor, and while I won't be able to play Steam on PPC (I presume), it doesn't help ME, but it does HELP. I'm even more interested in a new MBP if I can play Half-Life and enjoy the user experience (and more!) that I enjoy with my current, very very very old, laptop.
Any of their retail games can be registered on Impulse (their service like Steam) and redownloaded as needed.
While there are some publishers being morons with DRM, there are other publishers that are being much more pragmatic.
You rarely need to worry about broken dependencies: they happen, but...
I don't want to hear no buts. I tried installing a nice piece of GIS software (QGIS) which is super easy to install on Ubuntu (apt) and windows (osgeo4w, which uses a cygwin style interface) but on OSX it is a paiin in the arse to get the full program with GRASS (kind of a dependency).
I wish OSX had bloody apt working, not port where you need to wait days for anything to bloody compile, but true package management. I use VLC, Thunderbird, FIrefox, GIMP and all the other FOSS software but it is all independently maneged. OSX is great and stable (compared to Ubuntu) and beautiful but the package management should be fixed.
like phosphorescent desert buttons singing one familiar song
The segment you see a lot of gamers in is totally missing. Most gamers go for a tower computer with separate monitor. There are various reasons for this, upgradilbility being one since games often like new hardware.
This is an area where you've got nothing from Apple. They go straight from all-in-ones up to workstations. Ok well their workstations are too expensive for most gamers. Gamers don't want to spend that kind of money on dual CPUs that games can't use. However their all-in-ones are not ideal either. As such there is a gap.
This doesn't mean all Steam games are coming over. This means that Valve's titles are coming over. Ok, Valve makes some cool games, however there are always a few games available for the Mac. It isn't as though the Mac has no games, it is that is has not near as many as the PC. While this is a few more, it is not the complete shift you are hoping for.
As for Linux? I'm kinda doubtful. Linux has two things working against it:
1) A lack of standards. Game developers want something standard they can develop to so that support is easy. They do not want to try and support all the random permutations out there.
2) A userbase that seems to think everything should be free. There is a definite attitude among many Linux users that information shouldn't cost money. That is not a market ripe for games.
I suppose that's why Google's server farms are built on Mac OS X Server and Windows 2008 Server?
Well, no, they aren't. I am a system administrator for a bunch of Mac clients and Mac servers. Mac OS X server is good at exactly one thing compared to Linux and that's the ease of shared SMB/NFS and AFP sharepoints, in other words File sharing. OSX server is simply not very good at anything else. It's extremely difficult to customize and God help you if you have problems because, as opposed to Linux the support is terrible. MacOSX is a fantastically robust OS for the client, but the server offerings are poor at best. Good luck customizing your OSX Email server (hint: There's a reason why the single most popular Email server software for Mac OSX Server is Kerio, a third party software), and good luck if you need a more comprehensive LDAP implementation than Open Directory provides. Not only this, but Apple's Server GUI is so braindead it overwrites any changes made in the server config files.
This is one of thereasons why many large shops run their Oracle and DB2 on Linux. The markets are different, but saying that Linux has no commercial uptake sounds to much to me like yet another clueless Mac user who heard some technical term somewhere and from thereon uses it as a mantra to ward off evil, very much like the same bunch of die-hard Mac users were going on about PCs being DOS based years after Win NT had come out and most companies were ditching Macs for Windows, because they were tired of the Classic Mac OS crashing on them numerous times a day.
Things have changed radically in the past 9 years of Mac OSX, but a lot of that Mac culture-with-blinders still lives on.
apple better not go back to i5 / i7 on board video in there new low end system as it IS Weaker then the 2 year old 9400m and is a joke at $800 , $1200 , $1500 , $1800 as well.
Well ok, not crap necessarily, but extremely different. The Cell processor is very unlike what you find in computers or the 360, so it takes a different set of skills to make good use of it.
The 360 and the PC are essentially an identical development environment, despite the different CPUs. You do everything in Visual Studio and MS makes it extremely easy to go cross platform. So, makes sense there. The Mac is a different platform with different tools, but fundamentally it is the same hardware as a PC and things work in the same way. There are also tools, like OpenGL, that work on both. So while it might be more effort to add support for it than to add 360 support (for a Windows developer), shouldn't be too terribly bad.
The PS3 though? Completely different dev tools AND a different architecture. Your programmers would have to learn a rather different way of doing things. Makes port costs higher. Couple that with the fact that the PS3 is the minority console and you can see why they might give it a miss.
One thing people have to remember is that Valve does their own game engine. Many other companies license an engine, and that engine already supports multiple platforms. Unreal Engine 3, which is extremely popular, runs on the PC, 360 and PS3. Gamebryo, another popular one, runs on all those and the Wii too. Well this means less time for the game developers in terms of porting since some of the heavy lifting has already been done.
Not so for Valve, Source is their own thing (well, it does have a bit of legacy form Quake 1 but not much). They have to do all the work in porting it. So, that means that all the problems with dealing with a PS3 fall on their shoulders.
This might be worth it, if they made a lot of money on engine sales. That's why Epic ported UE3 to the consoles. They make their money on all the licenses of their engine. However Valve doesn't. When you look UE3 has around 150 games out or in development using it, all of 3 of those are from Epic (UT3, GoW 1 and 2). Looking at Source, you see that there's maybe 30 games, and around half are Valve's own. They do license their engine out, but it doesn't happen all that much. As a practical matter, Epic has superior tools and that makes Source a hard sell to 3rd party developers.
I... I'm sorry, I started reading your post and started getting flashbacks to a third wave feminist blog I read once.
You're preaching to the choir, dude. Linux has a great server offering. OSX is a robust OS for the client. That's what we're talking about: client applications. Desktop applications. Games.
What did you think we were talking about?
POSIX compliance is what actually matters?
Correct.
So Windows NT and up can be UNIX - I did not know that.
No. Quoting MS themselves:
Windows NT 3.5 & 4 were (poorly) certified against an ancient POSIX spec to satisfy certain US govt procurement requirements.
If Windows 7 was POSIX:2008 certified, it would probably be more a capable unix than GNU/linux or OS X.... but it's not.
My pics.
If the iPhone is OS X then that means that only the kernel matters. In that case, I see no reason why OS X apps can't be recompiled for linux. Of course, the iPhone isn't OS X, a platform is more than just a kernel.
From what Valve has stated, most of their code is already cross platform anyway. They've simply written some shims for OpenGL and Core Audio for Mac support. Linux will be trickier as you really don't know what is installed, what package manager the user is running, what parts of the OS have been compiled from source by some over-zealous gentoo user (for example) with insane optimization flags, etc.
Baby steps. If the OS X port is successful maybe then they'll do linux in a year or two I would guess. OS X is going to be a lot easier for them.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
My problem with your statement is the fact that most distributions package software for the distribution. And for applications that aren't supported by the main distribution, there are also community packages that deal with the configuration issues.
Case in point is Adobe Reader.... Yes, you can go to Adobe's site and download adobe for Linux, or you can look at your distributions software channels and find Adobe Reader already packaged for the distribution in most cases with mainstream distros.
I'm sure if Steam were released for Linux, there would be a ton of community support to get it up and running on most linux systems.
In fact, Steam should be easier than most because it's acts a sandbox as it is, and would probably do well under Linux because of this.
It'd be nice if they'd implement the real time extensions, then. I like how clock_gettime() works on Linux and BSD and not OS X.
Well, okay, that last statement isn't entirely true.
In 3010, the potatoes triumphed
None of those hurdles are impossible to get over, but i'd say that you'll see Valve dipping their toes in the water with OS X first, and if things work out, they'll tackle Linux (which is likely to have more support issues) later.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Considering that id Software was able to successfully port every game from Doom 1 to Enemy Territories Quake Wars to Linux makes me call your bluff. I remember Quake 3 having a sticker mentioning it as able to be played on Linux as a selling point when it was released 10 years ago when the Linux market was much smaller then today. It might not be as simple as a Windows game, but it still is very doable with id Software being able to show this.
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,
Sadly, there's no indication that the original Half-Life engine will be ported as well. That's a shame, especially since the GoldSrc engine had a mature, Quake-derived OpenGL renderer that just screams to be taken cross platform.
Valve may not have any financial interest in furthering such an old codebase, but there's nothing stopping them from giving the community access to it. People are still working on Doom, Hexen, and Quake today because id and Raven were thoughtful enough to open up their code. Valve is one of the last PC developers of real import these days; it's sad to see them let their Microsoft roots hold them back.
Just the games I've played:
That's just off the top of my head. It's not terribly difficult -- just statically-compile, follow the FHS, ignore the distro, and give the full executables with the demo, with a license that allows redistribution.
End result: Even if you can't do that demo part, a tarball will work. But if you can, your demo will be included in every distro's repository. Worst case, people have to download other pieces of the full game (or buy it in a store, like with id games) and drop the files into place -- but it's not terribly difficult to automate that, either.
But really, I haven't seen any more problems than people have with Windows. If it's really that bad, say "Works with Ubuntu or Fedora" and let other distros work around it.
Also, open source your old games. There will be Linux ports, and people will likely buy the game to run it on Linux.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Which Distro?
Ubuntu. And which version of Windows?
XP? Then you don't have DirectX 10. Vista/7 Only? Then XP people hate you. And professional, business, personal, what?
What sound system?
OpenAL, which will run on anything, including Windows and OS X. That's about as retarded as asking what graphics library you should use.
Lack of easy to install 3d drivers for nVidia and ATI. Actually the drivers for nVidia and ATI are pretty easy to install but probably beyond what some people will want to do.
Same exact thing, word for word, applies to Windows. The only difference is whether or not the OS was preloaded -- so buy a Dell with Ubuntu, problem solved.
I would love to see it but Linux and OSX are not that alike.
They're both Unix. They both use OpenGL.
on OSX you just target quicktime for audio and video playback.
According to another poster, quicktime for audio is deprecated in favor of a few APIs, including OpenAL -- in other words, if they've done this right, it is exactly the same on Linux and OS X. What else you got?
No need to worry what "legal" codecs are available.
Two big duh moments here.
First, you're a game developer. You can include codecs with your game, and you can encode your audio however the fuck you want. There is nothing stopping you from using Vorbis and Theora, as other developers have in the past.
If you really need the superior quality-per-bit, and you don't want to rely on your customers having a certain codec installed -- might fly for OS X, certainly won't for Windows -- you license. And that same exact license will cover your use of that codec on any OS.
Is Valve going to start targeting OpenGL?
No, their OS X port runs on magical pixie dust. Of course they're targeting OpenGL!
So basically every technical argument of yours is pure, unadulturated FUD and BS. Why are you still at +5 insightful?
But the real issue is lack of customers. I just don't see that many Linux users that don't dual boot into Windows for gaming.
And Mac users don't? Given the demographic, I'd expect Mac users to be able to afford the extra Windows license, even Parallels so they don't have to reboot.
If you don't get new customers it doesn't pay off.
Bullshit.
OSX offers a bigger pay off
See above. Also, it seems to me that more Mac people would be willing to dual-boot and/or run Parallels, and would have the funds to do so.
and fewer development issues.
Nope, pretty much every development issue you raised is completely moot, especially if they already have an OS X port.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
An application developer literally cannot make any useful predictions about the end user's configuration,
Aside from just targeting Ubuntu, or Debian, there's the FHS.
And, as a counterexample, many binary-only games for Linux exist which continue to work on modern distros -- and there's even things like Flash. The argument that there are just too many distros of Linux is pure FUD.
When you start asking for money, you need to make sure that your software is Suitable for a Particular Purpose.
Or you can simply provide a disclaimer. I know many of the Linux ports of various games have basically said that there's no support for running the game on Linux -- though not all, so it apparently isn't such a huge problem. Keep in mind that most Linux people are going to have some idea what they're doing.
Installation needs to be easy and it needs to work everywhere.
That's easy -- rely on the package manager. Or, as another poster suggested, Steam should become that way -- they'd fill an (according to you) obvious niche, and instantly become dominant on Linux.
I'm offering 10:1 I get modded flamebait for not drinking the Linux Kool-Aid.
I wish you got modded flamebait for that. Just about every time someone says that, without fail, they get modded +5. It's disgusting.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Erm... no.
Wine runs Windows programs, not Mac programs. Suggesting what you're suggesting is about as intelligent as suggesting that you could just tweak a setting somewhere to make a Mac program run on Windows 7.
No, what I'd hope is that they'd expose the OpenGL functionality on their Windows port, thus making their Windows versions run faster under Wine -- though maybe not making it easier to run them.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Ubuntu, Fedora, particular LSB release might be a platform, but still, it's too vague for games.
Wait, what? Ubuntu is "too vague for games"?
WTF do you call "XP or newer" then?
And frankly, there seem to be plenty of games which work well across many platforms, even without relying on things like LSB. Games from years ago still work. Just what is it that's so different about desktop Linux distros?
with binary NVIDIA drivers - there're no other options currently
The binary ATI drivers don't work?
set "realtime" priority for our process
Do you actually need that? Or would it work to simply give you a non-bloated system with an intelligent scheduler? I run plenty of games without realtime that seem to work well, and it's nice to know that if they freeze, my system won't.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Linux users don't pay for games,
Numbers or it didn't happen.
I do pay for games. Plenty of games, especially those with Linux ports.
the userbase on the desktop is so small that it may as well be non-existent,
Possible, but that directly contradicts your "Linux users don't pay for games" argument.
the APIs are a disaster (e.g., sound).
OpenAL. Problem solved.
Don't like OpenAL? Need something lower-level? ALSA. Hell, even OSS. Both work on any Linux from the past five years or so.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
then you don't have to worry about offline mode again!
New Economic Perspectives
Have you seen the hardware survey Valve has? Most Mac users have higher end hardware than that. No go spout your bullshit somewhere else.
-- Linux user #369862
I used to play WoW on my PowerPC Mac Mini. It didn't exactly have superb performance but it did run.
Well, these days the only FPS I play regularly is Urban Terror but through the years I've played various incarnations of Quake, Q3A, HL, UT and others.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Back in the nineties and early 2000s, I was one of the few, the proud (the Mac gamers). In 2005 I broke down and built a WinTendo box for games, but Mac gamers do exist.
Every Mac that will be able to play a Steam game came with a multi-button mouse. And Mac users have played plenty of FPSs... Marathon, Halo, Quake, the Unreal series, BF1942, Medal of Honor to name just a few. The biggest gripe was always that there was no Half-Life. Oh, wait, they fixed that...
It seems this is just a matter of time.
The question is to know which kind of time scale we talking about...
Yes: "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward."
That depends. If they will be using CrossOver technology, the port to Linux is straightforward, provided you have the crossover runtime for Linux.
Ubuntu, Fedora, particular LSB release might be a platform, but still, it's too vague for games.
Wait, what? Ubuntu is "too vague for games"?
WTF do you call "XP or newer" then?
And frankly, there seem to be plenty of games which work well across many platforms, even without relying on things like LSB. Games from years ago still work. Just what is it that's so different about desktop Linux distros?
Well, making something "work" and making something "work out-of-the box for dumb user" are pretty different things.
You can do compatibility testing with XP SP3, Vista SP1, Win7 to make sure that game runs on each of those (sometimes you need hacks, too). With Ubuntu, you may make much less assumptions.
Realistic option is to stick to particular Ubuntu release (perhaps an LTS one) and only declare support for things installed from Canonical-supported repositories. The other option is just not to support anything at all and let user figure out things himself/herself.
What's so different about Linux distros? Well, weaker backward compatibility between releases (some distros have no well-defined release at all). You will have to link statically as much as possible (to minimize damage of incompatible or just newer libraries) and you are still facing problems like significant driver changes that break sound or video for you.
Those games that work between distros... well, good for them. But do they work right after unpacking/installing or do you need to find things like older libstdc++ yourself?
with binary NVIDIA drivers - there're no other options currently
The binary ATI drivers don't work?
May be, I haven't really tested (haven't used ATI with Linux for ages). I was making comparison mostly to that new "nouveau" thing which is gaining popularity.
set "realtime" priority for our process
Do you actually need that? Or would it work to simply give you a non-bloated system with an intelligent scheduler? I run plenty of games without realtime that seem to work well, and it's nice to know that if they freeze, my system won't.
Well, this was just an example. Actually, setting realtime priority is discouraged by Microsoft as well, but I wanted to show that developers need much more control over the system than traditional Linux/Unix program is allowed to have.
Not only because of copy protection (though this is also a strong reason), but because of games trying to provide smooth, "console"-like experience on the PC. We want sustainable FPS rate and go to great lengths to fight occasional FPS hitches which usually happen because of resource streaming. Sure, if one just wants to get the game working under Linux, one may lower his/her quality standards, and most Linux games I have tried actually do exactly that...
Coding etudes
and doubles as a telephone!
You know no gamers with a Mac, but claim to know that Mac owners pirate games. How do you know?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Simply sell me a bootable CD, that boots the game on the PC in its own environment. Release a supported hardware list and I will simply buy from that. Do that anyway for linux. I have no particular need to run games on my linux desktop, just on the same hardware.
I have hopes that Valve might one day do something for Linux. If they get good experiences with this, then they might just do a cost analysis "how much does it really cost to make our build system do a linux version" and see where it leads. Don't forget that game servers are often linux based, so the FPS market is not entirely unfamiliar with coding for Linux.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Yes, because Valve are going to release the source so that the communities can compile their own distro-specific releases...
I'd love to see Steam become a truly cross-platform application, but until the Linux community can come up with a way of making something as simple as a CLI utility install and run the same on every distro without resorting to --with-obscure-option-to-fix-ui-glitch and --without-something-that-doesnt-come-with-this-distro then it's not going to happen.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
> they will probably disappoint quite a few Mac users, who haven't upgraded for one reason or another.
If you're buying $80 games you already bought a new $600-$1200 Mac within the last 4 years and can handle the $29 for Snow Leopard if you don't have it already. There really isn't anyone to disappoint. What few PowerPC machines are still out there are valued for running legacy software that won't run under Mac OS X for Intel, such as software that uses PowerPC plug-ins, not for running current software.
Snow Leopard is the 3rd Mac OS to run on Intel. The PowerPC train has sailed.
Also they hired a ton of Mac coders to do this. That was actually the first indication this was coming, quite a while ago. They aren't repurposing their existing coders for this.
Any Valve users who complain should remember that this is better for the whole Valve ecosystem. Even if they don't think they will ever run a Mac, in a few years they may run a Linux version that uses OpenGL and is based on work done to support the Mac. Or they may run a future version on PlayStation thanks to work done for the Mac. Windows is not going to be around forever. I give it maybe 5 more years. Maybe.
*mumble mumble* Fedora *mumble* CLOD! *mumble* seriously though, very interesting idea, just standardize on debian, ubuntu will work (my current main distro), or shuttleworth (or the new guy..) will get ripped a new one, and tons of people will migrate to debian, and all ubuntu-children (mint i think..) should work too. And im guessing that to the general Fedora/Suse/Gentoo/, dual booting to some debian flavor is much more acceptable then dual booting to windows.. (would be for me, i need to nuke my win 7 beta install one of these days..)
People, what a bunch of bastards
You only need to debug the libraries the game use ; presumably those are common to a lot of Valve games (Source...)
...mac user since 2006...
Dear Mr. Troll, please read before you reply.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Linux users tend to rarely want to pay for anything.
Wow, you couldn't be more wrong... "We were expecting the average price paid to be highest for Linux users and lowest for Windows users, but the gap was larger than we thought it would be..."
I really wonder how they addressed the mouse acceleration issue in OSX, it's impossible to disable, and is sucky for FPS games. There is a way to 'reduce' the mouse acceleration, but it's not 100% perfect - and relies on a deprecated API that could be removed in future OSX versions...
Actually, there might be other reasons.
Personally, I've got my hard drive partitioned with a non-GUID partition scheme, meaning if I want to install Snow Leopard, I have to reformat my drive.
It's a big drive, so this is a major pain to get around to, and accounts for my not having upgraded yet.
There could be plenty of other little reasons like that. Frankly, I hope I can still run Steam without having to reformat my whole machine.
Mind you, I've already got it installed on my Windows partition and it runs just fine. Really, all this mac-specific business only saves me a reboot.
If they thought Sony would let them port Steam I expect they would hold their developers at gun point till everything they have ever written was ported to the PS3. In fact I expect the is a better business case for the OpenGL work in being ready to port to the PS3, then in releasing for the Mac.
What is interesting is that with Microsoft pushing back hard with Games for Windows - Live, Sony not letting them run Steam at all, and Apple ready and waiting with AppStore. It is just vaguely possible supporting a platform where they are not playing for second place would be appealing.
Valve games are already degrade better then most on weak hardware, the new generation of ARM+OpenGL netbooks/tablets due to compete with the iPad, might be a real opportunity for them.
That is what happens to you when you rush off to rescue your chocolate cake from burning while writing what you thought would be the first comment.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
as such platform dependent QA & Testing is only done by the source engine developers and not the game developers
It just doesn't work that way. If you want to develop for XBOX, PC, and PS2 you don't use a cross-platform library, then test it on your PC, then release it having never tested it on the XBOX or PS2. You still have to get the XBOX and PS2 dev kits, you still have to build and deploy to those platforms, you still have to test it, and you still have to submit it to Microsoft and Sony to do their testing and get their approvals.
I guess it depends on how long it takes before Steam's anti-cheat code starts stomping on other apps.
The "Apple users pay for their stuff" is getting tiring. I remember it 15-20 years ago, when game developers were supporting the niche Mac and dropping the Amiga (despite the latter still being more popular in the home, back then). We're now seeing it with phones ("But Iphone users pay for their stuff, so you're better off developing for that, despite having about a tenth of the share of Nokia").
Let's see some evidence for these claims?
Iphone runs (I presume you meant that, not "is") OS X? Wow, with this announcement, I'll look forward to Steam and Valve games on the Iphone.
Porting an app to a platform isn't such a big deal supporting it is. Its easy to support Windows and Mac because both platforms are the same - there's no forks, different distributions etc etc, and all the drivers are certified by Apple or Windows HQL.
On Linux you can say "we tested it on xyz distro's with this these displays", but then all you'll get is complaints from people who's distro you don't and can not support. And I do speak from first hand real experience on this - there really are Linux users who call in on how to get an app working, or when its not working properly - not all are uber hackers.
Subsequently I've seen a lot of well known apps ported internally to Linux at places I've worked and even places my friends have worked (and probably shouldn't have told me) that have never seen the light of day for this exact reason.
NT kernel when using Microsoft SFU 3.5 or SUA Windows 2000 Server or Professional with Service Pack 3 or later. To be POSIX compliant, one must activate optional features of Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server.[17] Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 1 or later Windows Server 2003 Windows Vista Windows 7
Mostly POSIX-compliant: GNU/Linux (most distributions — see LSB)
Looks like Windows and Linux are about equal, and OS X is actually Fully POSIX-compliant
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Well, making something "work" and making something "work out-of-the box for dumb user" are pretty different things.
Both of which have happened, for every Linux game I've tried in recent memory. Do you have a counterexample?
You can do compatibility testing with XP SP3, Vista SP1, Win7 to make sure that game runs on each of those (sometimes you need hacks, too). With Ubuntu, you may make much less assumptions.
How so?
Realistic option is to stick to particular Ubuntu release (perhaps an LTS one) and only declare support for things installed from Canonical-supported repositories.
Yeah, which kind of falls under a "duh" heading.
Of course, it's very likely that it will continue to work with future releases -- again, I cite pretty much every game released for Linux, ever.
weaker backward compatibility between releases (some distros have no well-defined release at all).
Weaker than Win7's "backwards compatibility" called "XP Mode"?
You will have to link statically as much as possible (to minimize damage of incompatible or just newer libraries)
...just like on Windows. Or include the libraries inside your installation directory, just like OS X -- I'd prefer that, actually, as it allows them to be patched individually, or by users -- but again, I cannot remember that ever being needed.
you are still facing problems like significant driver changes that break sound or video for you.
...just like on Windows. And again, a counterexample: Quake 3 still works. In case you've forgotten, Quake 3 was released in 1999.
Those games that work between distros... well, good for them. But do they work right after unpacking/installing or do you need to find things like older libstdc++ yourself?
Right after installing. Every time.
So yeah, your whole argument is based on FUD and completely imaginary scenarios, as in, things which do not actually happen in the real world. In the real world, people port to Linx as a platform, and it tends to work -- and other people don't even try, because of imagined problems.
May be, I haven't really tested (haven't used ATI with Linux for ages). I was making comparison mostly to that new "nouveau" thing which is gaining popularity.
Gaining popularity, but no one ever claimed it was ready for games yet.
Well, this was just an example.
In other words, a flawed one.
I wanted to show that developers need much more control over the system than traditional Linux/Unix program is allowed to have.
And you haven't. Please, find another example.
Not only because of copy protection (though this is also a strong reason),
Plenty of reasons not to do DRM on any platform, but if you're going to do it at a level that doesn't fuck with my drivers -- that is, at a level I'd actually permit you to do it (rather than downloading a crack instead) -- it's probably something you can do portably on Linux.
For example, there's no good reason Steam wouldn't work on Linux.
because of games trying to provide smooth, "console"-like experience on the PC. We want sustainable FPS rate and go to great lengths to fight occasional FPS hitches which usually happen because of resource streaming.
Because of resources being pulled from the disk, implying you need an understanding of the disk IO scheduler. Is that what you're saying?
I'm curious, what do you do to mitigate this that wouldn't also be portable? Seems the most obvious thing would be to change how the files are physically laid out on disk, but unless you're actually going under the hood to defrag things (and there are even portable ways to do that on Linux), you're talking about the internal format you store your game in, which is something I'd assume you'd be porting anyway.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Windows XP users who don't have directx 10 alone accounts for a higher number of potential customers than _all Linux users_.
Within that base, you're still going to have some variance. I wasn't attempting to counter the point that Linux has a smaller userbase -- that would just be ignoring reality -- though I did link to an article countering the claim that smaller userbases are not worth the effort.
even if one just targets a subset of Windows users and upset the other users, your target market is still greater than _all Linux users combined_.
Unlikely. Maybe I'm strange, but if I saw a new game that required XP (and refused to work on Vista/7), I'd be very wary, even though I have access to all of those versions. I want some guarantee that the game will work on a reasonable spectrum of OSes that I might want to use now, and that it will continue to work well into the future.
If that were reversed, I would again be wary. Yes, I have 7, and I'm happy with it, but do I really want to start playing a game that my friend running XP won't be able to? And do I really want to be supporting a studio that, in a few more years, won't support 7 when there's a shiny new OS that I don't like?
I mean, for all I know, the game that insists on Vista/7 now might decide to drop 7 support in the future, forcing me to downgrade to one of the worst OSes ever if I want to continue to play it.
That is why most games tend to list a reasonable minimum system requirement -- XP or greater, typically -- which means inevitably supporting at least three platforms within Windows.
So if you want to go for the size argument, go right ahead, but the post I was replying to was trying to claim (somehow) that the fact that more than one Linux distro exists is a reason Linux is hard/impossible/not worth supporting. That argument, in particular, is bullshit -- distros really aren't a factor, when you get right down to it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Mac users can Command-Click for secondary fire.
The market for Linux gaming is so small as to be laughable. I love the idea of open source, but please remain grounded in reality. In short, demanding linux games will only increase game costs to serve a very tiny market.
Good-bye
> Ask Transgaming about Cedega. As a former subscriber, I can say that while its better than nothing, the majority of games I want to play on Linux still do not work. So i found it kinda pointless.
I knew somebody would eventually make this type of argument, so as of late August last year I've been keeping score of the games I've *finished*. As you'll see, most of my gaming is done under WINE. I'm not talking Transgaming or CodeWeavers - I'm talking the official WINE, maybe with some patches, the odd registry tweak and winetricks.
2009-08-29: BlackSite (WINE + mousepatch)
2009-08-30: F.E.A.R. 2 Project Origin (WINE)
2009-09-11: Quake 4 (native GNU/Linux)
2009-09-13: Unreal (WINE)
2009-09-14: Frontlines: Fuel of War (WINE + mousepatch)
2009-12-12: Unreal II: The Awakening (WINE)
2009-12-13: Wolfenstein (WINE)
2009-12-20: Crysis (WINE + regression patch)
2009-12-25: Crysis Warhead (WINE + regression patch + crack)
2009-12-28: Red Faction (WINE 1.1.33)
2010-01-03: Red Alert 3 (WINE)
2010-01-08: Red Faction II (WINE 1.1.35)
2010-01-30: Half-Life (WINE 1.1.37)
2010-02-02: Half-Life 2 (WINE 1.1.37)
2010-02-02: Half-Life 2: Lost Coast (WINE 1.1.37)
2010-02-05: Half-Life 2: Episode 1 (WINE 1.1.37)
2010-02-06: Half-Life 2: Episode 2 (WINE 1.1.37)
Currently playing: WarCraft 2 Battle.Net edition. Also just brought Majesty 1 (native GNU/Linux version) and Majesty 2 (rated Gold under WINE's appdb).
Most of my PC games were brought when I had a Windows install kicking around. I spent a long time reinstalling all of my games under WINE, and found that around 60% of my collection worked. In the end, since most worked I simply deleted my Windows install altogether. I'm exclusively a GNU/Linux and console gamer now.
Lastly, Id Software, Linux Game Publishing and others seem to have no problems dealing with all the different GNU/Linux distros out there. I've still got the old GNU/Linux version of Quake II which was working fine last time I tried.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
Well, making something "work" and making something "work out-of-the box for dumb user" are pretty different things.
Both of which have happened, for every Linux game I've tried in recent memory. Do you have a counterexample?
With games, no - I don't really play Linux games. But I can complain on Linux demos - try downloading not-so-recent ones from Pouet and see for yourself. I have a recent counter-example with [recent] system software ;) NVidia-supplied OpenCL profiler (binary only, shipped with its own copy of Qt 4.6 libraries) crashes at start under my Kubuntu 9.10 ;) Okay, we were talking about slightly different problems, but see, that's also a compatibility issue and it does not work "out of the box" :)
You can do compatibility testing with XP SP3, Vista SP1, Win7 to make sure that game runs on each of those (sometimes you need hacks, too). With Ubuntu, you may make much less assumptions.
How so?
Because user is free to install different kernel? Or whatever else he wishes, even replacing GNOME with a later version? It isn't probably supported by Canonical (I hope so!) so that's why I stated that you should stick with Canonical-supported stuff... or you are going to bundle everything that your game relies on - and that's a problem if you want to integrate it with the rest of system (in more or less Games For Windows way).
Realistic option is to stick to particular Ubuntu release (perhaps an LTS one) and only declare support for things installed from Canonical-supported repositories.
Yeah, which kind of falls under a "duh" heading.
Of course, it's very likely that it will continue to work with future releases -- again, I cite pretty much every game released for Linux, ever.
See above why I mentioned Canonical-supported stuff only. As for "very likely that it will continue to work" it's probably not a good definition of a platform. Microsoft, security issues aside, goes to great lengths to ensure that their updates break minimum amount of software, sometimes even creating separate "hacked" system libraries for specific products. It also has a certification program which you can submit your application to (for money of course) and be sure that you are (and will stay) compatible. Why major distros (like Canonical) don't do these things? (sure, it's all about the money).
weaker backward compatibility between releases (some distros have no well-defined release at all).
Weaker than Win7's "backwards compatibility" called "XP Mode"?
You will have to link statically as much as possible (to minimize damage of incompatible or just newer libraries)
...just like on Windows. Or include the libraries inside your installation directory, just like OS X -- I'd prefer that, actually, as it allows them to be patched individually, or by users -- but again, I cannot remember that ever being needed.
Sure, but there's a clear border what you should bundle with your Windows game and what you shouldn't.
you are still facing problems like significant driver changes that break sound or video for you.
...just like on Windows. And again, a counterexample: Quake 3 still works. In case you've forgotten, Quake 3 was released in 1999.
Well, Quake is a C program which only depends on OpenGL - IIRC it has zip (for packages) and whatever they used for cinematics linked in.
Nowadays, games have grown a lot large... There's plenty of third-party software, like various voice-over-ip libraries, codecs, telemetry, physics, cus
Coding etudes
I can complain on Linux demos - try downloading not-so-recent ones from Pouet [pouet.net] and see for yourself.
Demoscene stuff... I wonder if Windows sees similar problems, but I'm going to guess that this isn't going to be the highest-quality, most-portable stuff -- rather, it's going to be a hobby project, tightly optimized for size, right?
Okay, we were talking about slightly different problems, but see, that's also a compatibility issue and it does not work "out of the box" :)
Fair enough -- except that, again, there are many examples of programs which work fine everywhere. Another example would be Flash -- worst case, it's slow, but Flash is always slow -- Adobe Reader, Google Chrome, and many others.
Because user is free to install different kernel?
Ubuntu only has a few supported kernels, only one of which is intended for their desktop OS (any 'buntu -- ubuntu, kubuntu, xubuntu, anything). On Windows, the user is free to install a different explorer.exe, or even run the programs under a different kernel (Wine, ReactOS), but anyone who does obviously accepts the consequences.
If you said "Linux" instead of "Ubuntu", you might have a point -- except, again, the number of kernels you're likely to see a user install are relatively small. Crazy Gentoo users can't really demand support, can they?
Or whatever else he wishes, even replacing GNOME with a later version?
Erm, WTF would GNOME have to do with a game -- or, really, with any app you're shipping?
so that's why I stated that you should stick with Canonical-supported stuff...
Right. But then, your complaint is no longer an issue, is it?
or you are going to bundle everything that your game relies on
Which is how it's generally done on every other OS, and how many Linux games do it. It's not necessarily the best way, but it'll work. One possible compromise is to bundle shared libraries (rather than statically-compiling), so that users can upgrade libstdc++ if they have a good reason to, but by default, it'll use what you ship, not what the host OS has.
that's a problem if you want to integrate it with the rest of system (in more or less Games For Windows way).
Maybe I've been out of touch, but what, exactly, do you need to do here? What does Games for Windows actually provide, and what are you actually trying to do that's going to depend on GNOME at all?
(I'll give you a hint: Most Debian packages seem to be able to automagically add a menu entry regardless of desktop environment -- they're intended for GNOME, but they show up just fine in my KDE menu, and under alt+f2.)
Well, Quake is a C program which only depends on OpenGL - IIRC it has zip (for packages) and whatever they used for cinematics linked in.
Yes -- and it depends on OSS, which is a fairly dumb sound API. These days, the smart bet would probably be ALSA or OpenAL, but my point here is that even though this is kernel-level integration, and even though it's been deprecated, it continues to work over ten years later.
Oh, and IP, and DNS, which of course still works.
Nowadays, games have grown a lot large... There's plenty of third-party software, like various voice-over-ip libraries, codecs, telemetry, physics, custom input devices support, some games even incorporate custom version of flash player etc.
Yeah, and?
The points of contact with the system should be exactly the same.
That stuff is much harder to keep working when you can have your default audio output changed to pulse audio without notice...
Erm, what?
I don't see how that's an issue -- as far as you're concerned, as a developer, all you need to do is pipe all that stuff's audio through something like OpenA
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
...now how about some love for #2: Linux?
Furries make the internet go.
Doom 3's console messages on startup note the amount of video RAM I have. Even moreso, Steam's hardware survey is also able to detect this while running under Wine!