I got the chance to have a little chat with Timothee Besset who helped bring us the recent Linux port of Rocket League [Official Site, Steam].
After waiting a while Rocket League finally launched on Linux in Beta form this month. It was fully worth the wait [my article here], but I wanted to speak to one of the main people behind the port itself.
I would like to thank Timothee "TTimo" for taking time out of his busy developer life to answer my questions.
Hopefully you will find this interesting.
GOL: If you don't mind, would you be able to tell us a little about yourself and how you got into programming and porting games?
TTimo: After Loki Software folded in the late nineties, id Software contracted me out to take over maintenance of idTech3 (e.g. Quake III Arena). It was a choice between that and an easy career doing IT for the Oil and Gas industry. So I picked games.
I was the Linux guy at id for several years. Back then it was pretty much just Ryan Gordon and me. I also worked on tools and multiplayer, eventually working as lead programmer on several projects at id.
Then I went back to freelancing. The last few years I've worked in tech for various startups, and I've continued to land game industry work through my contacts.
GOL: This I believe was your first Linux port in quite a long time! How the heck did you land the Rocket League porting job for Linux?
TTimo: Pierre-Loup Griffais at Valve approached me last year to see if I'd be available to help them bring more titles to SteamOS and I said yes!
GOL: I understand that Ryan "Icculus" Gordon also helped with the port, what role did you each play in bringing it to Linux?
TTimo: Ryan has in depth knowledge of Unreal engines (Rocket League is UE3) and had been working on the port for some time already when I took over. He needed to shift his focus to other things so that was a natural transition.
GOL: Was it mostly just the two of you, or were other people involved in the porting process as well?
TTimo: Psyonix had a huge impact on making this port happen and the game releasing at the level of quality that it did. They were there every step of the way to run QA, transfer knowledge about their engine and integrate my work into their release schedule.
GOL: The Linux port was delayed for a long time, care to shed any light on things that tripped it up? There's a lot of people who would be interested in a little history here.
TTimo: I don't know that it was necessarily delayed. The game has a large audience, is multiplayer, is in active development, supports cross platform play .. all these factors mean you have to follow a very controlled process when adding new platforms to the mix.
GOL: Now that the Linux version of Rocket League is available, how do you think the launch went, and how do you feel about the reception to the launch?
TTimo: I think the launch went really well. We rolled out a hotfix last Monday, but there haven't been any major fires.
GOL: Got any more ports lined up? ;)
TTimo: Yes! Although since we are pretty bad at estimating release schedules, I think we'll be a lot more conservative before we mention anything from now on ;-)
GOL: What are your personal thoughts on Valve's SteamOS and Steam Machine effort?
TTimo: I'm biased obviously. It's an ambitious, long term effort - so it's a good fit for Valve!
One key to success is to encourage the adoption of Steam Machines and SteamOS with developers, so they add another platform next to their PS4 and XBox One devkits.
That's where I come in - if you are a developer and you would like to extend your platform reach, but you lack internal resources and knowledge to get started with SteamOS, get in touch we're here to help.
GOL: Any words of wisdom to other developers looking to port their games to Linux? Any interesting lessons learnt from this latest porting effort?
TTimo: It's a very different environment for porting games than it was 6 years ago. I'm still taking it in. Larger developer community, more mature tools and compilers, a lot of great things. What surprised me most is that middleware companies have become a lot more open to Linux. In a lot of cases when they don't offer a Linux SDK officially, chances are they can still give you an unofficial one, which is a great sign for the future of the ecosystem.
Hopefully I will catch up with TTimo again when he does his next secret port, and we will see if his thoughts on anything has changed. It's always fun to see what developers think about Linux porting and especially SteamOS.
If anyone has any ideas on who I should interview, let me know any time. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
After waiting a while Rocket League finally launched on Linux in Beta form this month. It was fully worth the wait [my article here], but I wanted to speak to one of the main people behind the port itself.
I would like to thank Timothee "TTimo" for taking time out of his busy developer life to answer my questions.
Hopefully you will find this interesting.
GOL: If you don't mind, would you be able to tell us a little about yourself and how you got into programming and porting games?
TTimo: After Loki Software folded in the late nineties, id Software contracted me out to take over maintenance of idTech3 (e.g. Quake III Arena). It was a choice between that and an easy career doing IT for the Oil and Gas industry. So I picked games.
I was the Linux guy at id for several years. Back then it was pretty much just Ryan Gordon and me. I also worked on tools and multiplayer, eventually working as lead programmer on several projects at id.
Then I went back to freelancing. The last few years I've worked in tech for various startups, and I've continued to land game industry work through my contacts.
GOL: This I believe was your first Linux port in quite a long time! How the heck did you land the Rocket League porting job for Linux?
TTimo: Pierre-Loup Griffais at Valve approached me last year to see if I'd be available to help them bring more titles to SteamOS and I said yes!
GOL: I understand that Ryan "Icculus" Gordon also helped with the port, what role did you each play in bringing it to Linux?
TTimo: Ryan has in depth knowledge of Unreal engines (Rocket League is UE3) and had been working on the port for some time already when I took over. He needed to shift his focus to other things so that was a natural transition.
GOL: Was it mostly just the two of you, or were other people involved in the porting process as well?
TTimo: Psyonix had a huge impact on making this port happen and the game releasing at the level of quality that it did. They were there every step of the way to run QA, transfer knowledge about their engine and integrate my work into their release schedule.
GOL: The Linux port was delayed for a long time, care to shed any light on things that tripped it up? There's a lot of people who would be interested in a little history here.
TTimo: I don't know that it was necessarily delayed. The game has a large audience, is multiplayer, is in active development, supports cross platform play .. all these factors mean you have to follow a very controlled process when adding new platforms to the mix.
GOL: Now that the Linux version of Rocket League is available, how do you think the launch went, and how do you feel about the reception to the launch?
TTimo: I think the launch went really well. We rolled out a hotfix last Monday, but there haven't been any major fires.
GOL: Got any more ports lined up? ;)
TTimo: Yes! Although since we are pretty bad at estimating release schedules, I think we'll be a lot more conservative before we mention anything from now on ;-)
GOL: What are your personal thoughts on Valve's SteamOS and Steam Machine effort?
TTimo: I'm biased obviously. It's an ambitious, long term effort - so it's a good fit for Valve!
One key to success is to encourage the adoption of Steam Machines and SteamOS with developers, so they add another platform next to their PS4 and XBox One devkits.
That's where I come in - if you are a developer and you would like to extend your platform reach, but you lack internal resources and knowledge to get started with SteamOS, get in touch we're here to help.
GOL: Any words of wisdom to other developers looking to port their games to Linux? Any interesting lessons learnt from this latest porting effort?
TTimo: It's a very different environment for porting games than it was 6 years ago. I'm still taking it in. Larger developer community, more mature tools and compilers, a lot of great things. What surprised me most is that middleware companies have become a lot more open to Linux. In a lot of cases when they don't offer a Linux SDK officially, chances are they can still give you an unofficial one, which is a great sign for the future of the ecosystem.
Hopefully I will catch up with TTimo again when he does his next secret port, and we will see if his thoughts on anything has changed. It's always fun to see what developers think about Linux porting and especially SteamOS.
If anyone has any ideas on who I should interview, let me know any time. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Most interesting part for me was that middleware companies actually start to adopt. That's real news to me.
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Thanks Liam and TTimo! Lots of useful information in this post.
As for SteamOS, it is nice to hear that it's development is still underway, or at least that some people are still working on it ; but it has been stated multiple times that the SteamOS cabal at Valve was just around 5 people, with the majority of everyone else working on VR. So I wouldn't get my expectations too high, at least for now.
As for SteamOS, it is nice to hear that it's development is still underway, or at least that some people are still working on it ; but it has been stated multiple times that the SteamOS cabal at Valve was just around 5 people, with the majority of everyone else working on VR. So I wouldn't get my expectations too high, at least for now.
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I hadn't realized just how much anxiety I had about Valve's level of commitment to SteamOS/Linux until I felt it lift from my shoulders whilst reading this interview!
Although I've remained optimistic about Valve's Linux initiative, lately thoughts of HL3 have begun whispering doubts from the darker corners of my mind. Liam, your interview could not have been better timed for me. It banishes those doubts and reaffirms what I'd been hoping: SteamOS is being developed like Steam itself ... slow and steady, with an eye on the (ahem) big picture. :)
Well done.
Last edited by Nanobang on 16 September 2016 at 1:05 pm UTC
Although I've remained optimistic about Valve's Linux initiative, lately thoughts of HL3 have begun whispering doubts from the darker corners of my mind. Liam, your interview could not have been better timed for me. It banishes those doubts and reaffirms what I'd been hoping: SteamOS is being developed like Steam itself ... slow and steady, with an eye on the (ahem) big picture. :)
Well done.
Last edited by Nanobang on 16 September 2016 at 1:05 pm UTC
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Most interesting part for me was that middleware companies actually start to adopt. That's real news to me.
I was very pleased to hear this also, hopefully we will start seeing less canceled ports for this reason.
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Glad you guys enjoyed the interview, will try to do more in future. :)
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ProfessorKaos64 Sep 16, 2016
Great Interview.
Nice to see that SteamOS is not dead yet :D
Haha, good indeed. Maybe a bit underground for now :)
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Great interview Liam. You should interview Na'Tosha of Unity next.
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They did not mean to take over the Market with steam machines in 2 years which many people seem to be thinking.
I believe Valve did actually intend to takeover the market in two years. At least their behaviour was like it: They hyped SteamOS a lot, they announced many different Steam Machines. It all sounded like a "Windows 95" that was supposed to conquer the gaming market, as Gabe Newell did it back then.
However, I believe that at some point, Valve realised it is not possible to go this fast: They didn't enough support from third party game developers and hardware manufacturers. The fact that it was much harder to developer a good Steam Controller than they initially thpught may also have contributed to this.
The lack of hype around the Steam Machine launch was remarkable, and I think at that point Valve knew they couldn't conquer the world by storm.
It's kind of comforting that Timothee Besset states what many of us suspected, Valve still believe in Linux gaming, and are playing the long game. If Valve would have given up, Timothee would know it. This means that the lack of activity on SteamOS is not worrying at all.
The theory that Valve is internally developing on an unstable version of SteamOS and just releases small updates to the stable version is IMO also becoming more plausible.
I think you're missing the big picture here. Valve already dominates the market with Steam as a gaming platform. Creating their own OS is meant to secure its longevity, and it seems like it was the smart move considering how Microsoft is positioning the Windows Store with DirectX 12 and Windows 10/Xbone exclusives. SteamOS offers an alternative to those users who have already embraced Steam and are not willing to abandon it in favor of a Microsoft bundled "Xbox One for Windows" approach.
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Cheeseness 
Sep 17, 2016
I don't know that it was necessarily delayed.
How could it not be - wasn't originally the SteamOS version promised with the launch of the Steam controller? Then, wasn't it talk about a release around january this year, only to be postponed further?
I'm not sure if it was ever directly stated that it'd come out when Valve's controller arrived, only that anybody who pre-ordered the gamepad would get a copy of the game.
Sometimes ports just take a long time (just like any software development), and having the game be a moving target thanks to continued development for all platforms can slow things down in ways that aren't relevant to most post-release ports.
Sometimes you feel like you're close, and you think that maybe when you solve the current problem that you're on, the port will be done. You don't know what you haven't encountered yet though, and expectations around timeframes can change without there being an actual delay.
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I think you're missing the big picture here. Valve already dominates the market with Steam as a gaming platform. Creating their own OS is meant to secure its longevity, and it seems like it was the smart move considering how Microsoft is positioning the Windows Store with DirectX 12 and Windows 10/Xbone exclusives. SteamOS offers an alternative to those users who have already embraced Steam and are not willing to abandon it in favor of a Microsoft bundled "Xbox One for Windows" approach.
Valve does not know what it is doing, they do not dominate the market, mobile games and consoles dominate the market (Top 2-3 mobile games on iPhone make more money in 1 day then whole "Linux gaming" in last 10 years). All games in last 5-6 years are pure shit even on Windows because of bad console ports, console UI, DLC money grab etc (Funny thing is that shitty console ports to Windows are ported and made even more shitty on Linux and at the end they are praised at GoL, WTF?!?!). In top 10 PC games, only 2 are "made" by Valve other 8 are not even on Steam and the first one, LoL, has player base bigger then Steam, Origin, Uplay, PS & Xbox combined. If Vive is not big success Valve and Steam are FUBAR, Linux gaming failed because Valve do not understand Linux userland together with 90% of GoL/r/linux_gaming assholes. No one wants to buy Steam machines with SteamOS BECAUSE they are overpriced, badly optimized and full of bugs; just the opposite of the real consoles, Linux gaming is WORST option for gamers and Valve/Steam together with "Linux gaming hypetrain" a.k.a this site is to BLAME!
Wake the fuck up and force developers to OPTIMIZE Linux releases, force them to release STANDALONE games with no dependencies on Steam, force them to OPTIMIZE for PC experience (FOV options, raw mouse input, alt-tab, dedicated servers, server lists with comprehensive filters, bindable mouse buttons, LAN support etc.), force liamdawe and other Linux gaming journalists, who obviously are not hardcore gamers to find someone who is to write objective articles.
Steam/Valve is slowly becoming more and more irellevant, indirectly by mobile and console games and directly by uplay, origin, battle.net, apple store, windows store and standalone games; Steam is full of half-assed console ports and shitty indy unity/UE4 games 4-5 games in alpha/beta and overly relying on Steam services so when steam is down, everything is down (I know it because I bought bunch of them). Even if HTC Vive is next big thing it wont be big thing on Linux because we fucked that one by accepting badly optimized "ports" and for VR on todays hardware you need fucking perfection of code qualitiy on both game and driver/OS side, totally opposite of todays Linux ports and drivers. And, I will repeat again you can forget about Steam machines with Steam OS on them until Linux games are not optimized as PS/Xbox games, it is simple mathematics, when consumer has hard earned money, he wants best bang for the bucks and SteamOS with Linux ports at this sad state are worst bang for the bucks.
When devs want to make something for Apple they learn metal, obj-c, swift, pay for dev licences, pay for hardware, and for US they dont even write correct shell scripts, or try 2-3 different distributions, disgraceful...
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The drama is through the roof! The needle blew clear off the angst gauge! Captain, she can't hold it much longer! if we don't get it out quick, I'm afraid she's going to blow!
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@h381661
Yes LoL has a HUGE community and a game that has great gameplay but they suck as developers. They still have shitty Adobe Air and old dx9 game engine that actually made them a lot of trouble when attempting to port the game on Mac. As they know how bad it was with Mac client and knowing their limitations because of the architecture they currently use they don't want to take risks before they include some cross-platform engine and client, and as I know it's happening atm, so probably we will get LoL native one day too, works on wine so we can play it. With all of that said Riot game(s) is a good company for making money, but a shitty one when it comes to PC gaming in general.
Valve on the other hand, has way biggest community of all the digital distributors and they also have a lot of their own e-sport games that are being played by huge amount of people (CS, Dota2 being the biggest ones). However they are having completely different approach, Valve as a company has a vision to unite all the gamers and make gaming availible on more than just exclusive platforms and they made their games Linux native and Dota2 for example even runs better on Linux than it does on Windows. So Valve is not here to be blamed, it's the other big publishers that ignore Linux as a platform completely. But either the Feral, Aspyr and other studios that make port for us are not to be blamed since they receive very small portion of money from us due to our small numbers and YES even though we pay for 100% of our games because we don't have piracy on Linux it's still a very small percentage of their income.
Eventhough Linux ports are not performing as well as their Windows versions do, they still do work and make gaming on linux possible at all and all the AAA games that I've played have been pretty playable and enjoyable. I suggest to just give this thing time, we have been on the gaming market for only 3-4 years and we already have 25% of steam library availible. So there is way bigger % of Linux native games than there is us (users) in the market, and I think that no other community ever achieved that...
As I see the future of Linux gaming: Just wait until huge number of titles are being "badly" ported to SteamOS and Linux and after 5 years when the difference will be unnoticable because we'll all have better hardware and hopefully some porters will start including vulkan when porting from dx12 which will have much more comparable experience to their Windows versions, it will probably come down to personal preference, people will get to choose which OS to use on a daily basis, and only then we will se completely Linux-planned games that come from official publishers and are targetet at linux users (of course IF some decent % of users choose Linux as their operating system, if they don't than we will always be struggling as we are now, but thanks to Valve's efforts and some companies we at least have gaming possible even though it's not on that scale as consoles or Windows is).
Yes LoL has a HUGE community and a game that has great gameplay but they suck as developers. They still have shitty Adobe Air and old dx9 game engine that actually made them a lot of trouble when attempting to port the game on Mac. As they know how bad it was with Mac client and knowing their limitations because of the architecture they currently use they don't want to take risks before they include some cross-platform engine and client, and as I know it's happening atm, so probably we will get LoL native one day too, works on wine so we can play it. With all of that said Riot game(s) is a good company for making money, but a shitty one when it comes to PC gaming in general.
Valve on the other hand, has way biggest community of all the digital distributors and they also have a lot of their own e-sport games that are being played by huge amount of people (CS, Dota2 being the biggest ones). However they are having completely different approach, Valve as a company has a vision to unite all the gamers and make gaming availible on more than just exclusive platforms and they made their games Linux native and Dota2 for example even runs better on Linux than it does on Windows. So Valve is not here to be blamed, it's the other big publishers that ignore Linux as a platform completely. But either the Feral, Aspyr and other studios that make port for us are not to be blamed since they receive very small portion of money from us due to our small numbers and YES even though we pay for 100% of our games because we don't have piracy on Linux it's still a very small percentage of their income.
Eventhough Linux ports are not performing as well as their Windows versions do, they still do work and make gaming on linux possible at all and all the AAA games that I've played have been pretty playable and enjoyable. I suggest to just give this thing time, we have been on the gaming market for only 3-4 years and we already have 25% of steam library availible. So there is way bigger % of Linux native games than there is us (users) in the market, and I think that no other community ever achieved that...
As I see the future of Linux gaming: Just wait until huge number of titles are being "badly" ported to SteamOS and Linux and after 5 years when the difference will be unnoticable because we'll all have better hardware and hopefully some porters will start including vulkan when porting from dx12 which will have much more comparable experience to their Windows versions, it will probably come down to personal preference, people will get to choose which OS to use on a daily basis, and only then we will se completely Linux-planned games that come from official publishers and are targetet at linux users (of course IF some decent % of users choose Linux as their operating system, if they don't than we will always be struggling as we are now, but thanks to Valve's efforts and some companies we at least have gaming possible even though it's not on that scale as consoles or Windows is).
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Luke_Nukem Sep 18, 2016
Great interview Liam. You should interview Na'Tosha of Unity next.
I second this motion!
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Is the first time that I hear that Valve has supported a studio directly by porting a Game to SteamOS. Are there other examples of Games where Valve has helped directly with development power?
I think it's very clever what Valve and Psyonix have done together. With a fraction of the effort they have put a greater success than Overwatch. Blizzard copied now Rocket League.
It seems there is also a clever marketing now. My nephew asked for Rocket League a week after it was published for Linux. :) He actually plays otherwise only Minecraft.
I think it's very clever what Valve and Psyonix have done together. With a fraction of the effort they have put a greater success than Overwatch. Blizzard copied now Rocket League.
It seems there is also a clever marketing now. My nephew asked for Rocket League a week after it was published for Linux. :) He actually plays otherwise only Minecraft.
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Kuduzkehpan Sep 26, 2016
nice catch Liam. and its good to see icculus and ttimo fighting for linux still.
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Thanks for the interview. I was definitely interested in the discussion of SteamOS as a long term bet. This isn't news, but it's good to hear there's still some kind of plan in effect.
I see two major issues with the SteamOS/linux initiative right now:
#1: Major publishers are not onboard. EA, Activision, most regrettably Bethesda have released 0 games for Linux. Obviously EA and Blizzard favor their own distribution platforms on Windows, but neither shows any sign of bringing those platforms to Linux either as competition or in cooperation with Valve+Steam. Bethesda is alarming because they're really a PC-first company. All their games are best on Windows. They generally implement Steam's apis in their games. And in particular DOOM seems totally ready for a Linux port being OpenGL+Vulkan on Windows. It's unbelievable that there's no discussion of Linux or even Mac builds of Doom at the moment.
#2: HTC Vive is Windows only. VR is held back by Windows. Users want to turn the thing on and get into a game. Windows throws up too many hurdles to a smooth Vive experience. SteamOS could be the plug-and-play solution, but Valve hasn't made it a priority for some reason. VR developers aren't talking about SteamOS/Linux at all. To me this is the most worrying evidence against SteamOS right now.
I see two major issues with the SteamOS/linux initiative right now:
#1: Major publishers are not onboard. EA, Activision, most regrettably Bethesda have released 0 games for Linux. Obviously EA and Blizzard favor their own distribution platforms on Windows, but neither shows any sign of bringing those platforms to Linux either as competition or in cooperation with Valve+Steam. Bethesda is alarming because they're really a PC-first company. All their games are best on Windows. They generally implement Steam's apis in their games. And in particular DOOM seems totally ready for a Linux port being OpenGL+Vulkan on Windows. It's unbelievable that there's no discussion of Linux or even Mac builds of Doom at the moment.
#2: HTC Vive is Windows only. VR is held back by Windows. Users want to turn the thing on and get into a game. Windows throws up too many hurdles to a smooth Vive experience. SteamOS could be the plug-and-play solution, but Valve hasn't made it a priority for some reason. VR developers aren't talking about SteamOS/Linux at all. To me this is the most worrying evidence against SteamOS right now.
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