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Ask Slashdot: What Video Games Keep You From Using Linux?
skade88 writes "Everyone knows content is king. Many of us use Windows or OS X at home instead of Linux because the games we love just are not available on Linux. With Steam moving forward for a Linux launch, I would like to hear from the Slashdot community on this topic. What are the game(s) you cannot live without? If they were available in Linux would you be happy to run Linux instead of Windows or OS X?"
I would love to be able to play GW2 on Linux, since it constitutes 99+% of the gaming that I do these days. Mass Effect 3 would be cool too, but I don't really play it much anymore. I'm looking forward to playing native versions of Portal and Left 4 Dead on Linux soon.
The real question should be... what games do you want now, and in the future. Just getting all games to work that I want now doesn't really help me when Awesome cool game 15 comes out and I really want it. This is coming from a person who has been using Linux for years.
Aside from a couple of great indie games, the majority of the games I've enjoyed in the past few months are not available for Linux.
The opposite question would have a much shorter answer.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Drivers, installed base, drivers, familiar windows interface, drivers, most users can barely power their machine on much less install linux, drivers, forget installing linux software...see comment before the last comment, drivers, lack of vendor support, and drivers.
Oh did I mention drivers?
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
To be honest - Microsoft Office. Most of the people I communicate with use MsOffice products, and yes, I have heard of OpenOffice and LibreOffice, however, their cross-compatibility is not perfect. This is a no-go - when I send a customer an important document - I have to be sure everything is looking good / professional and that the other side has no issues with what I sent them. When I receive a document from a client - I have to be sure I get exactly what the customer sent. Sometime PDF is not a valid solution. LibreOffice does not promise it to me, yet (in my current opinion).
What sound system fragmentation? There's ALSA and there's ... ALSA.
Even if you're stuck using pulseaudio, nowadays you just use ALSA and it magically routes through PA. And then most games are going to be using SDL (Valve did kind of hire one of the libsdl guys), it hides all of that anyway.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
I play a little (read: a lot of) Minecraft, which is available on Linux. The reason I started playing it in fact is because it was for Linux and that's all I had. I've also started accruing a library of games from Steam that I tend to not play, including a few games that I play online with friends. I suppose those games would keep me from switching back to Linux, all other things being equal.
But in all honesty, I haven't switched back to Linux since Windows 7 came out because I don't mind using Windows 7. If it sucked, I'd be on Linux and no game could pull me back. But, much to the chagrin of many, Windows 7 is a pretty good OS and I have no problem using it even though I almost never play really serious games on my computer.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
No attention span. I pick up a box in the store, feel the hours sucked vampirically from my body into the box. I put the box down.
Disclaimer: it's really all the fault of Sid Meier's Civilization series.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'm really done with computer gaming. Now if you want to talk about how Netflix keeps me from using Linux, I'll be glad to talk.
"Technology.....the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." Max Firsch
Hell, I like to make things run on WINE, that's a game in itself!, but untill Joe Sixpack can drop in DVD / Download-and-play-with-one-click, LINUX gaming will struggle. (Remember even WINDOWS gaming is too hard for a lot of people, with DX updates, various runtimes, licensing, etc,etc .. thus, IMHO, console sales)
My last 2 computers had the obligatory Linux partition on the HDD, yet I never loaded Linux on either. Why? Cygwin. I can work in a *nix environment and game in a Windows environment.
So even though I first used Unix in '84, Linux in '94, and have written a handful of Linux device drivers, I don't see the need to run Linux at home.
The only reason Windows still lurks in my computer is Photoshop. True, GIMP is good, but it just doesn't measure up in terms of features or speed of workflow.
By a curious coincidence, none at all is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claimed.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It already runs on Linux (Android), and in HTML 5 on G+ Games :-P
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Any of those will do.
Not sure if that was a joke or not, but Steam on Linux's beta already has 27 games, TF2 being one of them. Full list: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=linux#os=linux&advanced=0&sort_order=ASC&page=1
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I like having the option to play new games or whatever games I stumble upon.
I do not know "what games I cannot live without" but in the last few months I have been playing:
Borderlands2
Diablo3
League of Legends
Cockatrice (free online magic the gathering program)
Terraria
And I have FTL and XCOM Enemy Unkonwn installed and ready to check out when I have free time.
Yeah this doesn't exist anymore. As others have said, the ALSA PCM plugin layer is flexible enough to allow pure ALSA programs to work while PulseAudio is running. Even for older games which only support OSS (which often isn't available out of the box in Linux) can be supported with alsa-oss which provides a simple wrapper around the program to redirect OSS sound to ALSA.
The Halo series?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Instead of complaining about this and that, ill do as the summary asks and actually list the games I currently cant do without:
- EVE Online
- Most of the DCS series ( A-10 Warthog, Black Shark )
- MS Flight Sim X
- Civilization V
- ARMA II
- PKR
Torchlight had a Linux version in the last Humble Indie Bundle. Not sure if you can get the Linux installer for it elsewhere, though.
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Nonsense. What do you even mean? Who programs directly to the sound subsystem?
Using OpenAL goes a long way when it comes to support on Linux. We've managed to port our game to Linux with zero problems with sound. OpenAL is a requirement that Win, Mac, iOS, Android etc also support so this part of the porting process is bare minimum.
Video on the other hand, is a real bitch on Linux. Frameworks like Qt rely on platform specific backends (phonon) and there is no de facto standard of a video player on Linux, let alone that the phonon plugin is installed.
Setting aside technical issues, the real reason why Linux is not a target for game publishers, is that there is no market. People can rage all they want, but no...at the moment there is no market, at all. Kudos for Valve's efforts, but Linux adoption is non-existent, especially among gamers. Indie games might have a shot at Linux, but sadly it seems more of a donation driven effort to bring games to linux than a market demand.
yohan
I'm already running Linux instead of Windows or OS X, so I guess my answer is "none of them." Games aren't very high on my software priority list. That said, I'd probably buy some titles, if they were available on Linux.
Not everyone believes that their PC should turn into a Wii any time they want to play a game. See my previous rants regarding the complaints directed at Linux fullscreen support.
Most games aren't that good enough to overcome the bother of dealing with Windows assuming that they don't have a lot of bother of their own. DRM in Windows games probably drives a lot of console sales.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The only part that a came programmer would have to deal with is ALSA. Alternatively, they could use the sound API of their choice. The fact that they chose differently than someone else wouldn't impact a thing.
Game developers are already taking care of business in this area. Your trolling is irrelevant as are your "anececdotes".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Xcom 2012, Civ 5, Elemental Fallen Enchantress, Fallout New Vegas, Battlefield 3, and Medieval 2 Total War. Those are the games I've installed and play as the mood strikes me. However they aren't the only ones, I have a list of other games I own but haven't the time to play yet. More or less I want all of the games. I love games, and I own a ton.
Games aren't the only things though, I'd also need Cakewalk Sonar (and affiliated plugins), or something very much like it, Native Instruments Kontakt and EastWest Play.
I'd also need support for my hardware, some of which is a bit esoteric (like a MCU Pro).
If I had a good DAW, good VIs, and all the games, I suppose I could consider switching. Of course I'd still need to be sold on a reason as to why, since personally I find Linux more frustrating to use.
However it isn't as simple as one or two games. I want all of the games I have, and all the new ones that spark my fancy.
Out of business from lack of sales if I recall. I think the last I bought from them was quake 3 in the tin box.
We all vote for Civilization. Most people are holding back just because they realize lifetimes are finite.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
I mostly play indie games nowadays, and the ones I like tend to release Linux clients. Other games I really like (read Warsow) are already for Linux. On the RTS front, I really only play Supreme Commander, and with the success of the Planetary Annihilation Kickstarter, it won't be long until my RTS itch is taken care of. On the RPG front, there are rumors that The Witcher 2 is being considered for a Linux release, and if that's true, we can expect CDP's future games to be on Linux too. I do really like the Evochron series, but as much as I bug Starwraith about it, they just don't have the resources to port it over, so I guess that would be a major reason.
So right now is essentially a transition period to using Linux on my main, gaming desktop for good. All my other computers already run Linux.
but not b4 "your iPhone is a variant of BSD *nix"
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Can't speak for OP, but as someone in exactly the same situation, the answer is the same as "what do you do if a game isn't available for the particular console you own?" I don't play it. I can't even keep up with all the good games that are available for my console. I'm certainly not concerned about the ones that aren't.
Many years ago, I dual-booted Windows so I could play games there, but once I got my first console (a PS1), that became more effort than it was worth. I haven't used Windows since.
Of course, I do hear that its possible to play some PC games under Wine, but I really haven't bothered to try.
I spend a lot of time playing solitaire instead of doing something useful. Yeah, it's the Linux version but I don't consider playing Solitaire to be "using Linux."
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
To be honest, I'm relatively happy with the combination of FOSS games, indie games like in the Humble Bundles, and older commercial games like Doom 3 and Wolf-ET such that gaming solely in Linux wouldn't be an issue for me. The problem, however, is a question of effort. Let me list one example:
- Doom 3 -
Windows:
* Install game
* Patch
* Play
Linux: .pak files from the game's CDs to where the binary is installed, because the official installer won't do it automatically (though it's possible someone's written a script to do this by now).
* Install using the latest Linux installer using the text interface (which was only supposed to be a backup in case the GUI works, which it doesn't anymore because it was built to use the GTK1.2 libraries which don't work properly/aren't available with modern distributions).
* Copy the required
* Run, then find out there's no sound because OSS was deprecated in modern Linux distributions. Spend an hour googling and trying different options until you find out the correct method to launch D3 with sound:
doom3 +set s_alsa_pcm plughw:0 +set s_driver alsa
* Create a .desktop file/link because the installer fails to do so properly, otherwise you don't get a shortcut in your DE of choice.
* Play, then discover you have massively jerky framerates because the Linux kernel changed to use a different method of timing (too complicated for me to understand) which affected how Doom 3 determines timing. Fixed using this additional variable during launch
set com_fixedtic 1
* Play and enjoy the same game that worked with far less effort in Windows.
Sure, half the problem was in iD not giving a crap at producing a good installer that would do most of the work for you (like copying required files) and not using static GTK libraries that would survive changes to distros. But things like the removal of OSS within the default builds of distros as well as the change to kernel timings, kinda do make a few problems for older games.
Newer stuff tends to works better, but often there are quirks even in newer Linux ports (I won't keep listing stuff but there are a number of complaints about bad Linux ports of a number of Humble Bundle games - look them up). For gaming, I get tired of messing about when things just fucking WORK in Windows. It's suppose to be entertainment and escapism after all.
Dude...
Oh, come on, Gabe, we know it's you. ;)
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
Steam on Linux will be nice.
Mostly it's Battlefield 3 and the likes (new games with shiny graphics and DRM), they won't work well or at all.
If you can accomplish 100% of your task in Windows 7 and 80% in Linux, then why not just stay in Windows? **
**These numbers are from my own use. Debian partition on my own drive.
I don't know the demographics, but it's really not games that's keeping me personally on Winders. I want Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Creative Suite (not freeware "alternatives", not fiddling around with Wine but those specific applications running natively on, hell, any Linux distro) and something reasonably like the full version of Nero. Give me those working well on Linux, and I will gladly leave Windows and never look back.
If it's about content, let's port the prime content creators.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I have bought every blizzard game since warcraft 2 , so that would go a long way. battlefield 3 is pretty much the best FPS at the moment so you need that too.
There's nothing solid about it. The emulation is garbage compared to the native clients.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
At the moment that is what I'm playing the most. I also play Battlefield 3, Civilization 5, and its been a while but Team Fortress 2.
I welcome you to point out anything that is wrong or incorrect in my post. Anything that so many people who've failed to completely switch to Linux have encountered themselves.
Dude...
Tux Racer
Except, of course, none of it happened.
The configuration you are talking about, ALWAYS works in Ubuntu.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but the biggest impediment to my full-on adoption of linux is a lack of reliable color calibration. And, while capable, Gimp is a bear. Finally, I really like the ease of use of lightroom—not too many options there.
Not a game, but Microsoft OneNote. And it's not that it keeps me from using linux, but it does force me to keep a Windows partition that I'd rather do without.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Works great on macs. VMWare has gotten good enough to play Skyrim on a 3-year old mac config in a VM.
And this story demonstrates another problem: most Linux gamers dual-boot anyway, so most Linux sales a publisher could get would probably cause an equivalent drop on the Windows side.
Maybe the 30% tax on the upcoming "Windows Marketplace" - assuming it kills third-party platforms - can change this equation, but I doubt it.
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Vanilla NetHack hasn't had a release since 2003 but there have been several forks of it, one I did myself (look at my sig).
Considering the "far better roguelikes" that's something just asking for a flame war but I guess he thinks about ToME4 or Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
ToME4's root go back a long time, originally an Angband variant but the 4th version separated completely from that heritage and created vast amounts of original content that makes Skyrim look like a coffee-break activity.
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is sort of an Anti-NetHack, trying to avoid many of the design mistake NetHack had. Like the needs for spoilers, that different races play the same in the long run, grinding, or that the game doesn't stay challenging after a certain point.
DCSS and ToME4 are big games but in the last years there has been a trend to develop smaller roguelikes. Like DoomRL which is exactly what its title says or roguelikes for mobile devices like 100Rogues and POWDER.
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!