A New Commercial Game For Linux That's Not An FPS

[GSVRasputin]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAxNjQ

Interesting wee article about a racing game, looks a little like wipeout.

[Plan9]

Cheers mate. I'll read this properly at the weekend :)

While were on the subject, here's an article (with game recommendations) about the state of gaming on Linux (for anyone that might be interested)

[GSVRasputin]

It's only short will only take 2 mins to read. Interesting through.

[waba]

i cant see the link to your article plan9...

that game looks pretty decent though http://forums.aria.co.uk/images/smilies/biggrin.gif will have a read through when i have the chance...

[Plan9]

i cant see the link to your article plan9...


hahahha oops *blush*

http://www.osnews.com/story/25328/The_State_of_Linux_Gaming_2011

:thumb:

[GSVRasputin]

Lol, That's one that will need more than two minutes, Cheers.

[waba]

didnt understand much of the article rasputin, but my big hopes for games on linux are good graphics....i hope this one delivers. games can often be fun but short (like the mario clone) but im a real sucker for games like battlefield, which are shiny! even though i heard the opengl (or whatever gfx system is used) is very powerful, it never seems to be taken advantage of...

[GSVRasputin]

The problem seems to be that the big software houses don't think that the money made from Linux gamers would make it worth while to employ the developers to port the game to linux, so it is left to the indy software houses who can't afford to employ the developers to create the blindingly good graphics. OpenGL yeah did blow DirectX away for a long time(Don't know about now though) but didn't have the backing of MicroSoft so fell by the wayside. I would like to see a mordern comparison between them using top developers just to see what could be done.

[waba]

im guessing its all about linux gaining 'critical mass' in order for it to be profitable for these companies. i dont know whether im more pessimistic or optimistic about that happening! i barely consider gaming on linux, i just dual boot...but then i am interested in devlopments.

on a side note, that link posted by plan9 quotes liam from gamingonlinux.com...a resident of this forum! he is famous! which makes us famous by association.

[GSVRasputin]

Very True, we can but hope.

[waba]

you were saying u dont know how opengl and directx compare now....isnt opengl constantly updated too?

[GSVRasputin]

I had heard that about the same time as DirectX 9 that openGL had fallen by the wayside or was no longer a contender and was becoming outdated, I really couldn't tell you though, you hear things from different sides and not all of it is objective. I know that people are using OpenCL a lot now for parallel computing across multiple GPUs so it could be that it has had a boost.

Quick Google got this (http://www.opengl.org/documentation/current_version/)

What's New in OpenGL 4.2OpenGL 4.2 at a glanceThe OpenGL 4.2 and OpenGL Shading Language 4.20 Specifications were released on August 8, 2011.
OpenGL 4.2 continues support for both the Core and Compatibility profiles first introduced with OpenGL 3.2, enabling developers to use a streamlined API or retain backwards compatibility for existing OpenGL code, depending on their market needs, as well as continued compatibility with OpenGL ES 2.0 for easier porting between mobile and desktop platforms
New features of OpenGL 4.2 include:
Enabling shaders with atomic counters and load/store/atomic read-modify-write operations to a single level of a texture. These capabilities can be combined, for example, to maintain a counter at each pixel in a buffer object for single-rendering-pass order-independent transparency. Capturing GPU-tessellated geometry and drawing multiple instances of the result of a transform feedback to enable complex objects to be efficiently repositioned and replicated. Modifying an arbitrary subset of a compressed texture, without having to re-download the whole texture to the GPU for significant performance improvements.
Packing multiple 8 and 16 bit values into a single 32-bit value for efficient shader processing with significantly reduced memory storage and bandwidth, especially useful when transferring data between shader stages.
The new features are also available individually as ARB extensions, making it possible to support them selectively on pre-OpenGL 4.2 implementations.


So it looks like it's still in developement.

[Plan9]

The problem with OpenGL is that it takes forever for extensions to get standardised (which I think is because the managing body is comity driven rather than "owned" like DirectX is). So it means that for new GFX features to be taken advantage of, manufacturers release their own proprietary OpenGL libraries*. This quickly becomes a complete nightmare for games developers - thankfully not to the extent that it becomes unusable, but enough that many developers are end up either catering for specific hardware or just dropping advanced features for sake of their own sanity. Thus most developers end up developing for Direct32 which, in comparison, is a clean set of APIs that are consistent across installs. Plus you have the added bonus of the entire DirectX stack (advanced audio APIs, input capture APIs, networking APIs, etc).

Sadly this isn't where the problems end as the competition between DirectX and OpenCL/GL would be a moot point if Linux made cross-platform game development more attractive. The problem is that Linux graphics drivers are still horrible. Open source drivers lack a lot of functionality (which is a major set back when you consider that OpenGL has a lot of proprietary extensions) and Linux's closed source drivers are notoriously unstable. Plus many graphics cards do not even work with the very drivers that are supposed to support that range.

The mess surrounding Linux graphics libraries and graphics device drivers becomes painfully obvious the moment you start trying to develop anything with a degree of sophistication. The KDE team constantly blamed KDE4s performance of :censored: drivers. In fact even Mozilla was forced to disable hardware acceleration in the Linux build of Firefox (http://www.osnews.com/story/24264/No_Hardware_Acceleration_Firefox_for_Linux_Due_to_ Buggy_X_Drivers) for this very reason.

So as much as OpenGL has it's issues, Linux just isn't "good enough" for commercial games developers yet - and sadly I sympathise with them :(. I mean, you can see just how powerful OpenGL is when used on a standard platform when you look at the number of successful games consoles have used it.


*is that even a valid sentence as I'm effectively saying "open graphics libraries libraries"? :lol:

[Mr Banana]

Just a quick gloat on my part, i am featured in that os news article for my site www.gamingolinux.com (http://www.gamingolinux.com) :D

[Jackster]

my site www.gamingolinux.com (http://www.gamingolinux.com) :D

FYI get your domain right....

[Mr Banana]

Poo its www.gamingonlinux.com :), the guy who did the article had a chat with me to help construct the article :)

Ps. Phoronix is for losers, the guy is a bit of an idiot when it comes to gaming news.