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eevee 🦊

ohhhhh sorry its too hard to release our game on linux, it uses advanced windows-only features such as "reading keyboard input" and "drawing to a graphics buffer"

72 comments
eevee 🦊

or in the case of bethesda, we bought a game that already ran on linux and only put the windows version on steam because fuck you

jberg

@eevee id didn’t even put those up on steam prior to their acquisition iirc.

eevee 🦊

@jberg well yes most of them were sold in a store

jaKa Močnik

@eevee id as in id software? do their recent games really run natively on linux? genuinely interested, because I vaguely remember this from the carmack days phoronix.com/news/MTI5NTA and not sure if played anything past quake II on linux. @jberg

jberg

@jkmcnk @eevee up until Doom 3, all their games had Linux builds.

SnoopJ

@jberg @jkmcnk @eevee idTech 4 ran on Linux as well, but only the games released before the acquisition got Linux releases (Doom 3, Quake 4, ET:QW, Prey). Even the later BFG edition of Doom 3 (which is a lot of the same code AFAIK) snubbed Linux.

Ted Mielczarek

@SnoopJ @jberg @jkmcnk @eevee I think all of the Linux ports of their early catalog were solely due to the efforts of @ddt .

Riedler

@eevee @jberg what, doom 2016 and eternal ran on Linux?

I mean, 2016 does, via wine, on my laptop even, but natively? that's the first time I've heard of that

eevee 🦊

i've been using linux for like 20 years, i can assure you i've heard of wine

demize

@eevee I am choosing to read this as the setup for a silly "I drink it all the time" joke rather than accept the reality that you have to say it because people are presenting it to you like the problem isn't that companies simply refuse to treat Linux as a valid target platform for literally anything

eevee 🦊

@demize it's great because the two main categories of offenders here are "companies with billions upon billions of dollars" and "indies making their game in a thing that literally has a button to click to make a linux build"

dprk_ebooks

@eevee
Haha using stall man's gnu userspace would drive anyone to drink 🤣

Nora Reed

@eevee me except for shopping at trader joes

GlaireDaggers

@eevee "just run it in Proton" cool suggestion, the cool indie game I just bought that literally runs on one of the Big Two engines just straight up won't boot through Proton! :)

eevee 🦊

@glairedaggers i bought a windows puzzle game from like 2001 and played it in wine and then it updated and stopped working and i was so mad i wrote an emulator for that specific game

Riedler

@eevee @glairedaggers wine is not- I mean scummvm is not an emulator

DELETED

@eevee lol i don't think i've ever run into a case where i *wanted* to use wine instead of being vaguely resigned to having no other option

Kawaoneechan

@eevee Yeah, if I'd been using Linux as my daily driver for 20 years I'd be an alcoholic too. /j

eevee 🦊

@benjistokman bethesda owns doom and quake. doom 1 2 3 and quake 1 2 3 4 all have id-supplied linux ports. bethesda put these games on steam for linux only

Lion abt not making pride puns

@eevee For DOOM I think they did some bizzare in-house remake in Unity or something. The giveaway was a few megabytes of game that was just the WAD files I needed for gzdoom et. al. suddenly balooning into a gig-plus of a port I will never use. Thanks Bethesda.

doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Classic

(Yes yes Unity has a Linux build and it might even work on one or two distributions if you're using Pulse but not Pipe and not raw ALSA and X and not Wayland and bluh bluh bluh.)

Ténno Seremélʹ

@LionsPhil Except that PipiWire supports ALSA and Pulse interfaces 🤔

@eevee

sirlan

@eevee@queer.party b-but, but our totally not rootkit drm/anti-cheat needs administrator access and be able exploit windows specific vulnerabilities to embed itself in the system, so we can guarantee you're playing fair!!

DELETED

@eevee honestly just make a game that is reasonable and normal for windows, leave the rest to proton

I have zero faith in game developers and I think proton is a single piece of software that did the most to make gaming in linux a real option in its entire history

eevee 🦊

@rail why not target linux and leave the rest up to WSL

i'm not paying money for something that i have to run using a best-effort target-chasing third-party gizmo

DELETED

@eevee because realistically native ports often end up just worse and outdated and more bugged than windows version ran via proton

I'm sorry

halva

@rail@bark.lgbt @eevee@queer.party because like 90% of the time they are windows versions with built-in wine and wined3d (not even dxvk)

like off the back of my head i can only remember a few indie games actually targeting linux (eg terraria) and not whatever the fuck AAA studios usually do

Mosheen :verified_enby: :nyanpuppu:

@rail@bark.lgbt @eevee@queer.party unfortunately, this is true, sometimes i have to switch games to the Windows version instead of the native one to get them to work. Valve also agrees with this and started telling devs to target windows and proton

m
@rail @eevee last time i bought a game that had a native linux port, it ran better than the windows version

people on the fan discord i'm on for it (until it stopped due to a recent remaster and other, different bugs appeared) complained about bugs and performance problems i'd never even thought possible from my experience with the game
Riedler

@rail @eevee idk my steam library so far runs fine. duck game runs better via proton than on actual windows, which is funny. most native games need XWayland because statically compiled SDL and stuff, but I don't see that as a major problem.

Riedler

@rail @eevee also, frozen bubble, which is an ancient Linux game (2008 I think), still runs fine on up-to-date arch, so you can't tell me that Linux doesn't support backwards compatibility.

✧✦✶✷Catherine✷✶✦✧

@eevee @rail don't do what

my actual literal job involves shipping binaries that have wide linux compatibility--that are simpler than games--and my solution to this ended up being "compile them to wasm and offload the problem to the developers of the wasm engine"

this isn't literally the same as "just tell them to use proton" because that's how it works elsewhere too, but it's kinda close

Rich Felker

@whitequark @eevee @rail Static link them? User-kernel interface is rock solid stable. It's DLL hell that's not.

Rich Felker

@whitequark @eevee @rail Unfortunately OpenGL/GPU usage depends on DLL hell because of bad architecture. I've beent trying to get this fixed for over a decade. But pretty much anything else is fine to static link.

✧✦✶✷Catherine✷✶✦✧

@dalias @eevee @rail what makes these two problems similar is that the core need is "build something for exactly one ABI/platform". I could statically link them which would reduce the amount of different builds to manage to something like... 6 or 7 depending on how i'm feeling (windows x86/x64, macos x64/arm64, linux x64/arm32/arm64); by shipping wasm i build exactly one artifact that runs on most of those

✧✦✶✷Catherine✷✶✦✧

@dalias a significant other reason why i used this is because autotools on windows is hell and yosys uses autotools instead of cmake, and this way i never have to use cygwin or some other cursed shit like that

Pär Björklund

@whitequark @dalias using autotools is basically saying "fuck windows". Sure you can get it to work but it's just not worth it, better to write a simple CMakeLists.txt and go on with your life 😀

Jernej Simončič �

@Paxxi @whitequark @dalias Huh? I've rarely had trouble compiling stuff that uses autotools on Windows, unlike most other build systems.

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO

@whitequark @eevee @rail my last job involved this as well, and my solution involved building a custom dynamic libc fork designed for the purpose

it wasn't actually hard to do, but the fact that nobody had done it before was pretty mind-boggling

still isn't in upstream because mailing-list-based development is an absolute joke

doll!

@whitequark @rail [-eevee since she doesn't seem to want to get into this]

the example that sticks out in my mind is this one

eevee 🦊

@hierarchon @whitequark @rail this is a whole constellation of tickets about game developers going out of their way to /violate/ the linux ABI and then multiple distributions going out of their way to keep those games working anyway

Ted Mielczarek

@whitequark @eevee @rail hey now, the Linux kernel syscall ABI is extremely stable. It just doesn't help you much if you're writing anything other than a text-based game.

Genders: ♾️, 🟪⬛🟩; Soni L.

@eevee @rail (because you can't ship/force-install WSL behind the user's back. use qemu or qemu-user or something instead, because those are redistributable.)

nimbius
@eevee @rail fully convinced wsl was made by punished Microsoft at their lowest point. They just released the openssh fork for Linux and were having a rough time with cloud being 99% not them. Now proton won't stop getting better and azure customers are either office/Xbox/windows in house services or big companies basically forced to use it for office or continued windows license discounts.

@eevee game that has a Mac version: sorry, it is too hard for us to port to Linux. too bad.

(I know it is no that simple but... damn)

foldr

@eevee Maybe it also uses Windows-only features such as "shipping shared objects with the executable and it can actually find them" and "well-designed and easy to use GPU API"

artemist

@foldr @eevee I thought most games now were using Vulkan anyway, and Vulkan+SDL2 doesn't need any changes to get a surface

Neko the gamer

@eevee@queer.party nah those are bullshit, the real excuse devs have is "there's proton anyway porting is not necessary"

yakkoj 🦊

@eevee so their game is "unknown" on Steam Deck instead of "Great on Steam Deck"

Fine with me; I think Deck is going to be moving the needle on compatibility with Linux via Deck compatibility. They're forced to care about it now.

Valve frequently gets accused of "doing nothing after The Orange Box", but turns out they've been doing an awful lot.

"Windows-only" games are still a pile of poo, though.

Kevin Karhan :verified:

@yakkoj @eevee espechally since #Proton & #DXVK make it trivial to get shit work on #Linux..

reaply Pop&NetBSD🚩

@eevee

My games are Linux Focused, as I dev in Linux and export to Linux first, besides my recent one that's mobile and web based. But even then, Godot, Unity and UE can export to Linux and doesn't really have a problem unless you end up using a plugin or extension that calls for W32 APIs. But these people aren't Linux focused anyways.

It's hard, but at least Linux gets more games every year and does have games. Better trend than a decade ago.

Salearlyman

@eevee

Them: "Windows has a more stable ABI"
Me: *laughs in having to download a new graphics driver specifically to run a specific game*

Velyn

@eevee college me would be very bummed out to learn that the future of linux and mac gaming ended up being wine after all

jneen collective

@eevee "linux build too hard" has the same flavour as "women are too difficult to animate"

mcgrew

@eevee while I agree it's ridiculous that we need it, I'm thankful for all of the work Valve has put into wine/proton. *Most* games are playable because of it. Some games even run better on Linux now.

Konomi Kitten

@eevee as someone who has used Linux for like 11 years now I find this so frustrating as well.

Gabbo the wafrn guy :neocat_floof_devil_256: (not a vampire)

@eevee@queer.partyI gotta say some engines sell to you is super easy and nope.

case in point: unity and rust game

Efi (nap pet) 🦊💤

@eevee "sorry, my game is linux only because I couldn't find an opensource implementation of any drivers for any video card for windows, so I couldn't even get a graphics context going"

Maddie (NEW! FUNKY MODE!) :verifiedtrans:
@eevee it wouldn't be feasible due to the security restrictions of wayland
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