A nice way to end the week, Stardock have given some more updates on Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation for Linux and they said something rather interesting.
Firstly, Stardock gave an update at the end of December to mention how the game engine is now "compiling under Debian Linux and running via Vulkan" which was quite exciting to hear for those that missed it.
A few hours ago, they continued dishing out more information on Steam and it's sounding quite positive with this post:
I don't want to make any promises but...it's looking more and more like Linux will be arriving this year.
So here are some of the issues we have to deal with:
1. Performance. Vulkan on linux (driver wise) is...not very mature.
2. There are some differences in how memory management works that we're having to step through.
BTW, I want to send a shout out to AMD who helped us with the Vulkan Linux support.
But the good news is that it's compiling at least.
While that's interesting by itself, what they said next was even more interesting. When asked which AMD driver they were testing, they replied with:
No idea. I’ll try to find to find out. I’m a total Linux novice myself.
There is a lot of industry interest in Linux right now as a game platform. I am not at liberty to explain why but Vulkan is a real game changer.
I'm very curious what they mean by the "industry interest", especially since they're not giving out real details on that.
I'm personally excited. I'm a huge RTS fan and I've been itching to play Ashes for along time now. The fact that they're talking more about it and quite openly too is a very good sign.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Nevertheless Jan 6, 2019
Quoting: ShmerlQuoteI'm very curious what they mean by the "industry interest", especially since they're not giving out real details on that.
I suspect something like this: https://gpuopen.com/presentation-porting-engine-to-vulkan-dx12/
Certainly that ^, combined with that:
The nice thing about Linux is that it provides a fairly neutral platform from which you can then go to other platforms.
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/a-small-but-nice-update-on-ashes-of-the-singularity-escalation-and-linux-support.11990
I don't know if that explains industry interest in Linux, but for Stardock it seemed to be relevant.
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Quoting: TheRiddickIf games use vulkan then it kinda makes it real easy to port to Linux/Mac/Switch/PS4++ The only platform I know of atm that has a issue with vulkan is the xbox.... does it support vulkan? pretty sure they blacklisted it!
Only Switch has support to Vulkan. PS3 had support for something that was kinda similar to OpenGL, but it was removed.
PS4 has 2 graphical APIs, a low level API named GNM and a high level API named GNMX.
But still, Vulkan works on Switch, Windows 7, 8, 10, Linux, Android and MacOS/iOS with MoltenVK. It is a really valid choice because it would work already with a lot of systems.
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I do find that an interesting comment. It's not like Stardock have ever been Linux enthusiasts, so to get their attention and interest on Linux would take something fairly compelling.
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Maybe the industry is interested in Linux for streaming games (onlive style)?
I imagine it being much easier for a company to adopt a Linux that they can tweak, freely use and integrate into their architecture.
I imagine it being much easier for a company to adopt a Linux that they can tweak, freely use and integrate into their architecture.
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QuoteThere is a lot of industry interest in Linux right now as a game platform. I am not at liberty to explain why but Vulkan is a real game changer.So, industry interest in Linux and Vulkan (did he maybe mean also xBSD by that?) that is under NDA?
Only thing that comes to my mind is something like a new game console that uses Vulkan as it's main 3D API (or with Android as OS, which already uses Vulkan).
PS5? :O
Would Vulkan with some custom vendor extensions be low-level/efficient enough, so you really don't need/have any custom 3D API anymore for a new top-level game console?
Intel to enter the console-wars with it's new discrete/mightier GPU using Vulkan and Linux? -Probably way to bold move, they would first want to enter this new market (discrete GPUs) successfully!?
Just imagine all devs that want to be present on PS5 having to learn how to handle Vulkan right!
Last edited by Stebs on 8 January 2019 at 4:22 pm UTC
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From what Stardock said on Reddit:
QuoteI mentioned this in another thread but the reason I'm bullish on Linux game development these days is because of Vulkan.
Vulkan didn't exist during the PA dev cycle.
We're focusing on porting our engine to Linux because you take Linux + Vulkan and you can take your title to many different platforms.
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Nevertheless Jan 8, 2019
Quoting: liamdaweFrom what Stardock said on Reddit:
QuoteI mentioned this in another thread but the reason I'm bullish on Linux game development these days is because of Vulkan.
Vulkan didn't exist during the PA dev cycle.
We're focusing on porting our engine to Linux because you take Linux + Vulkan and you can take your title to many different platforms.
As if Valve had planned this.. :)
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Nevertheless Jan 8, 2019
Quoting: GuestQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: liamdaweFrom what Stardock said on Reddit:
QuoteI mentioned this in another thread but the reason I'm bullish on Linux game development these days is because of Vulkan.
Vulkan didn't exist during the PA dev cycle.
We're focusing on porting our engine to Linux because you take Linux + Vulkan and you can take your title to many different platforms.
As if Valve had planned this.. :)
Not Valve.
Khronos.
Specifically the Vulkan Working Group within Khronos. Even then there's one person in particular who worked very hard to make it possible (sadly, forget his name, so I should try find out again) by having the Vulkan design work across architecures and platforms.
Validation and SDK work was mostly LunarG, in cooperation with Valve. I would say that's just been naturally easier with GNU/Linux as a development environment.
ARM (now just arm) have their interests in *nix environments too, and have been heavily involved in getting Vulkan running on Linux platforms (GNU desktop and Android).
So it's been a massive effort from many companies to make Vulkan and associated developer tools really awesome.
Valve did not so much themselves of course, but the initiative came from them to a big part! They hosted most of the meetings where Khronos picked up the GL-Next thread again, and moved on to create Vulkan out of AMDs Mantle code.
Edit: Oh, I think you mean Graham Sellers from Nvidia?
Last edited by Nevertheless on 8 January 2019 at 7:47 pm UTC
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Nevertheless Jan 8, 2019
Quoting: GuestQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: GuestQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: liamdaweFrom what Stardock said on Reddit:
QuoteI mentioned this in another thread but the reason I'm bullish on Linux game development these days is because of Vulkan.
Vulkan didn't exist during the PA dev cycle.
We're focusing on porting our engine to Linux because you take Linux + Vulkan and you can take your title to many different platforms.
As if Valve had planned this.. :)
Not Valve.
Khronos.
Specifically the Vulkan Working Group within Khronos. Even then there's one person in particular who worked very hard to make it possible (sadly, forget his name, so I should try find out again) by having the Vulkan design work across architecures and platforms.
Validation and SDK work was mostly LunarG, in cooperation with Valve. I would say that's just been naturally easier with GNU/Linux as a development environment.
ARM (now just arm) have their interests in *nix environments too, and have been heavily involved in getting Vulkan running on Linux platforms (GNU desktop and Android).
So it's been a massive effort from many companies to make Vulkan and associated developer tools really awesome.
Valve did not so much themselves of course, but the initiative came from them to a big part! They hosted most of the meetings where Khronos picked up the GL-Next thread again, and moved on to create Vulkan out of AMDs Mantle code.
Edit: Oh, I think you mean Graham Sellers from Nvidia?
Sellers is AMD. Timothy Lottes, I think it was. Also AMD, if I'm not mistaken.
Vulkan (by whatever name) was in talks before Valve got involved. Valve did jump in really early to help out. So did others. Can't single out one company unless it's AMD for basically donating Mantle and kickstarting Vulkan.
Ohh yes, sorry, Sellers is AMD!
I remember it like you can read it on the Wikipedia pages history.. Don't have the time to find the announcement back then..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulkan_(API)
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A platform-neutral development base is a good reason to use Linux/Vulkan, as is the dominance of Android on end-user devices ( not the same as Linux, but the code can be easily converted ).
Mid-Long term many developers/publishers will want to control the revenue from their games through a streaming service, running the game on a server blade, compressing the I/O, player on any WebAssembly-enabled browser. It would be much cheaper and easier to produce licence-cost-free VMs using Linux than using Windows, so the games will need to run on Linux.
Google are experimenting with this in the US at the moment with Project Stream.
Mid-Long term many developers/publishers will want to control the revenue from their games through a streaming service, running the game on a server blade, compressing the I/O, player on any WebAssembly-enabled browser. It would be much cheaper and easier to produce licence-cost-free VMs using Linux than using Windows, so the games will need to run on Linux.
Google are experimenting with this in the US at the moment with Project Stream.
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