It's time to bug Feral Interactive about future port requests once again

Quoting: pageroundDCS World, please!

I just read earlier today that they are looking at Vulkan. First I thought, why, it's performing perfectly well after they implemented their new engine running on d3d11. Hmmm.... LINUX!? Then I realized it's probably to improve the VR experience, but one could only hope they are looking at us as well.

Haven't played with it in a few years though. I really liked it but at some point I got too fed up by the draconic DRM, increasingly large amount of smaller DLC's splitting the game to pieces, the never ending simultaneous dual branches (1.5|2.0), the promises of awesome modules which never came until years or even decades after their initial expectations. Ended up selling my flight sim hardware and a lot of DCS modules. Back then you could sell them second hand but they don't allow that now so I'm glad I jumped ship when I did actually.

I wish we could get Elite: Dangerous ported. It's about the only game I reboot into Windows for. I mean lately I decided to win the latest Doom, but other than that it's been all Elite.

Would like Bioshock + Bioshock 2. Remastered or not.
Also +1 for any LEGO games.

Is adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

Quoting: tpauIs adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

I don't like it either. Although Feral does seem to put quite a bit of work into their ports I would like more info on exactly how much wrapping vs porting they're doing.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: tpauIs adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

It's all just code being executed that is proprietary in nature, so if it runs perfectly well, does it matter?
It's not like any of these games are developed with GNU/Linux in mind. They're ported, after being made for Windows. If binaryA runs just as well as binaryB though, with all other things being effectively equal, it's still just a binary black "box" blob for reading user input and painting pixels on the screen.

I personally don't like the idea of Windows wrappers and compatibility layers. I've been hesitant to but feral games in the past because of this and I try to buy and play more indie games but when feral releases a game I've been really wanting to play I'll buy it and play it.

Quoting: ScooptaAlthough Feral does seem to put quite a bit of work into their ports I would like more info on exactly how much wrapping vs porting they're doing.

VP and WINE are doing binary wrapping, while Feral is doing source wrapping. The first runs Windows binaries in Linux, the second creates pure ("native" ) Linux binaries. Do we need way more information?


Last edited by Eike on 28 January 2018 at 12:53 pm UTC

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaAlthough Feral does seem to put quite a bit of work into their ports I would like more info on exactly how much wrapping vs porting they're doing.

VP and WINE are doing binary wrapping, while Feral is doing source wrapping. The first runs Windows binaries in Linux, the second creates pure ("native") Linux binaries. Do we need way more information?

Yeah I'm not a huge fan of wrapping in general but all the porting companies do it to a certain extent because it's the only economical way to do it. As a result I try to minimize the games I buy from them which isn't hard. Most of the games feral has ported recently aren't games I'm really into anyway.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: tpauIs adding a wine-like wrapper considered a port these days? still feels wrong to me

It's all just code being executed that is proprietary in nature, so if it runs perfectly well, does it matter?
It's not like any of these games are developed with GNU/Linux in mind. They're ported, after being made for Windows. If binaryA runs just as well as binaryB though, with all other things being effectively equal, it's still just a binary black "box" blob for reading user input and painting pixels on the screen.

I personally don't like the idea of Windows wrappers and compatibility layers. I've been hesitant to but feral games in the past because of this and I try to buy and play more indie games but when feral releases a game I've been really wanting to play I'll buy it and play it.

It is, unfortunately, a necessary evil if we want games that are primarily aimed at Windows. Replacing the entire engine and reworking it to fit with a graphics API it was never originally intended to target can be time consuming, error prone, and not really a viable business model.

Indie games of course are more flexible in this regard for a great variety of reasons (there's really too many to mention here), but sometimes it's nice to have something a little grander in scope (not that indie games can't be, but I hope you get the point).

Still hoping for game engines to gradually support GNU/Linux not only as a build target, but as a development platform as well. That will likely only happen once there's enough snowballing to challenge Windows as a gaming platform, and that's not going to happen overnight. Until then, basically have to put up with things as they are.

Besides which, most game engines have their own abstraction layer internally anyway to cover differences between, say, x86_64, playstation, xbox, etc. How much of that gets replaced by a porter depends how easily they can plug into it.

Yeah I get your point about the indie games and I know we don't really get to be picky about our ports right now. If only we had that luxury although there is a certain amount of crap I personally won't put up with. When VP shipped native windows dlls with their saints row port I just refunded it and won't buy their games anymore. The engine situation is getting better and better but the biggest problem I see is a lot of AAA studios either roll their own engine or heavily customize an existing one and generally when they do the customization they only mess with the Windows/D3D backend since that's the only platform they're targeting. That's a problem I'm not sure how to solve. That's what's holding up killing floor 2. They changed the D3D backend for unreal engine and now they have to find someone to port it.

Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaAlthough Feral does seem to put quite a bit of work into their ports I would like more info on exactly how much wrapping vs porting they're doing.

VP and WINE are doing binary wrapping, while Feral is doing source wrapping. The first runs Windows binaries in Linux, the second creates pure ("native") Linux binaries. Do we need way more information?

Exactly.

Quoting: ScooptaYeah I'm not a huge fan of wrapping in general but all the porting companies do it to a certain extent because it's the only economical way to do it. As a result I try to minimize the games I buy from them which isn't hard. Most of the games feral has ported recently aren't games I'm really into anyway.

Please also note that, in addition to Eike's statement, there are always several layers that wrap lower layers underneath until your call reaches the hardware. In the end the result is always a native Linux process, otherwise it wouldn't start.

I get you point, but in the end it just matters if the process is stable and performs. Give it some time, I guess we will see more projects with Linux in mind from the beginning on once publishers and studios got the idea that money can be earned on Linux. Currently it is simply financially not feasible to invest the time to get all out of Linux, the small performance penalty is the price for our small market share. A price I'm happy to pay for to have at least some very cool big titles on Linux and to have a chance to attract more people for gradually grow which will hopefully increase our market share. That in turn should make heavier investments into Linux feasible. I guess you get my idea :)


Last edited by jens on 28 January 2018 at 7:10 pm UTC