Gaming on Linux [news and developments]

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Speaking of Nouveau, how is it in terms of performance? Recently with the transition to GCC 5 Debian is a mess, and Nvidia drivers only complicate things further.

Nouveau is still not ready, namely re-clocking support. And situation with latest Maxwell cards is still stalled (which seems to me is caused by Nvidia on purpose). They now require some nasty closed firmware blob to be only signed by them, and they refuse to share it so far.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Unfriendly-OSS-Hardware

Anyway, with AMD moving towards open driver development for both OpenGL and Vulkan in the future, I'll contemplate switching to AMD GPU, if their performance / heating issues will improve.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Quite educational interview with a community developer who is porting Stalker: Clear Sky to OpenGL and Linux:
http://boilingsteam.com/s-t-a-l-k-e-r-how-the-opengl-port-is-shaping-up/

There he explains difficulties of porting DX to OpenGL and HLSL to GLSL in cases when original developers didn't think of portability much.

The port is using the leaked DX / Windows code of the original, so there are chances GSC might get mad at him, but he also hopes they might accept his port officially if they are smart.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Well, that's already very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fs2Yh1PFwM&t=42s

Looks like a demo of Witcher 3 running on Linux!

 

[Kinley]

What does the Steam Controller have to do with Linux?

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

What does the Steam Controller have to do with Linux?

It's demoed for SteamOS, so Linux is implied. Read the description for the ad:

The Steam Controller lets you play your entire collection of Steam games on your TV—even the ones designed without controller support in mind.

That's talking about Steam Machines. Of course, generally speaking controller shouldn't be tied to an OS, or even the service. Currently however it's not configurable without Valve's firmware and Steam tools (that's why I'm not going to buy this controller yet).

 

[Kinley]

It could have easily been demoed on the Steam Link (http://store.steampowered.com/universe/link) or just a PC hooked up to a big screen. No indication that it was on a Steam Machine.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

It could have easily been demoed on the Steam Link (http://store.steampowered.com/universe/link) or just a PC hooked up to a big screen. No indication that it was on a Steam Machine.

Could be, could be not. That's why I said it looks like such demo, it's not definitive.

 

[Kinley]

Well, to me it doesn't look like it.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Well, to me it doesn't look like it.

How exactly does it look? I'm not using SteamOS, so I'm not really familiar much with details of their UI, but from glancing at it, it looks like standard SteamOS big picture mode.

 

[Kinley]

How exactly does it look? I'm not using SteamOS, so I'm not really familiar much with details of their UI, but from glancing at it, it looks like standard SteamOS big picture mode.

You can run Big Picture mode on any version of Steam AFAIK

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

You can run Big Picture mode on any version of Steam AFAIK

Right, but is there any difference? You said it doesn't look like it, which implies you can see something distinctive there.

---------- Updated at 01:37 PM ----------

Alienware Steam Machine review:

 

[volsung]

I think functional Steam Machines running Steam OS and therefore featuring the Steam controller is a relevant topic for the Linux gaming community, so this is a good thread to post about it. We all know gamepad support is not great in Linux but it will probably be for this one.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Besides helping to boost Linux gaming in general, the positive effect of Steam Machines can be also eroding the current monoculture of console manufacturers. I.e. more competitive environment will reduce their release cycle (8 years is insane), which will alleviate some of the problems many blame consoles for, like holding games back performance wise and so on.

@volsung: Regarding the Steam controller - I'm pretty reserved at present, since in order to configure it, one is required to use Steam. Its firmware is not open source (yet?) so non Steam users wouldn't find it that functional. I'm surely not going to buy it until it will become customizable without being tied to Steam.

 

[volsung]

@volsung: Regarding the Steam controller - I'm pretty reserved at present, since in order to configure it, one is required to use Steam. Its firmware is not open source (yet?) so non Steam users wouldn't find it that functional. I'm surely not going to buy it until it will become customizable without being tied to Steam.

Oh I had no idea. I haven't followed any news related to Steam (OS, Machines, controller) in ages.

I would expect Valve to not be too stupid and release their controller as closed-source. The market for PC gamepads isn't exactly great, and they could sell a bunch of units even to non-Steam users if they open up. Maybe it is all closed for now, since technically it's not officially released. And maybe they will release specification sheets for community kernel modules, minus the support to download button configurations for specific games (through Steam client I suppose...?).

Anyway, we'll see. Good to know there might be alternatives though.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Yeah, someone said they actually promised to open the firmware in the past, but we'll have to see if they'll follow through with that. It might be also reverse engineered since it doesn't sound extremely complex.

The driver for controller will probably be open (it's pretty straightforward USB driver), but the main trick of the controller is its firmware. I.e. it runs its own internal mini-OS, which remaps various controller events into something that games perceive as mouse and keyboard events. I guess there is a default mode (standard mapping) which would work without Steam, but to change that behavior one has to know how to communicate with that firmware.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

X³ Reunion and X³ Terran War Pack are out on GOG at last:

https://www.gog.com/game/x3_reunion
https://www.gog.com/game/x3_terran_war_pack

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Interview with Alienware representative about Steam Machines:

Thoughts about SteamOS and Linux gaming from 17:00 and on.

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

A thorough review of Zotac Steam Machine: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/systems/zotac_steam_machine_zbox_nen_sn970_review

---------- Updated at 08:40 PM ----------

OpenMW got a huge performance improvement with switch to Open Scene Graph engine:

[video=youtube;_s2ooGned-Y]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s2ooGned-Y[/video]

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Both Mac & Linux [versions of Divinity: Original Sin] are ready but still being tested. When that's done we'll release them - definitely this month

https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/671651700810383360

 

[Gilrond-i-Virdan]

Building the Steam controller