Thanks to a Twitter tip, I've watched over the video of id Software talking about Doom, Vulkan, Linux and Google's Stadia and it's really quite interesting. For those who don't know what Stadia is, you can see this previous article. In short, it's Google's game streaming platform powered by Linux and Vulkan.
The thing is, id Software actually talked about having a Linux version of DOOM back at GDC last year that was never released, at least now we know why.
You can see the video below, it's currently an unlisted on YouTube and towards the end it does have some footage of the new DOOM Eternal. Some quick thoughts and info below if you can't watch it.
Direct Link
They go over lots of technical details, which I'm sure some of our readers here will appreciate.
I did particularly enjoy the "Why Linux?" slide with an answer of "It's not Windows" which seemed to give the crowd (and me) a little chuckle. The developer then also touched on how Linux outside of servers has been largely ignored, with a joke of articles talking about how "Linux gaming doesn't suck now, very convincing…and even that small portion is subdivided along different distributions, so it's really no wonder that no one pays attention to poor Linux".
I won't get into a long debate about how Linux gaming doesn't actually suck, but I will most likely be preaching to the choir. Linux gaming certainly isn't perfect but it doesn't suck and that's about as far as I want to get into that directly right now. It's also a shame that multiple distributions is still a hassle and common problem for developers. Anyway…
As for the software stack on Stadia, that was also talked about. Apart from the game and Google's own "libGGP" everything else seems open. It's using Pulse Audio, Vulkan, libc++, glibc and of course the Linux Kernel. They're doing this in the hopes it speeds up adoption, since getting a game onto Stadia would involve prototyping it on a normal Linux distribution like Ubuntu (which is what id Software did) and then you're mostly done by the looks of it.
As for their own software, for idTech7 their latest game engine, they said "everything uses Vulkan now and by that I do mean everything—the engine, idStudio, even our helper tools". At least for future games released normally, they should perform well when using Steam Play.
I'm still torn on Stadia for the reasons I gave before. I personally still consider Stadia to be Linux gaming, to me basically anything done on a Linux box is Linux gaming. After all, if I'm playing on my Ubuntu PC, with Stadia which is also powered by Linux, what about that isn't Linux gaming? I'm sure some of you will have interesting answers to that in the comments (and feel free to debate it—politely please!).
However, there's tons of issues it has to overcome for me. There's a lack of ownership of the games so they could be taken away at any time, latency which even people checking out the demo at GDC this year said was an issue (PC Gamer: "latency is clearly present", "the delayed input to screen loop is very noticeable" and so on - many others said the same and worse), likely no modding support, massive bandwidth use and so on.
What are you current thoughts on Stadia streaming platform? Will you be using it?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
So no, I would not categorise streamed gaming as gaming on the client platform - its something else: It's streaming. I think we should make a distinction there.
But if the game is streamed from a Linux cluster I don't see why it couldn't run on a regular Linux workstation?
Apart from the game and Google's own "libGGP" everything else seems open.
They should have opened it as well, to allow making some SDL drop-in plugins that replace it.
We have now idea what this point what libGGP is though, probably not something they can just open up, as it's likely hooking into their Stadia API. I imagine that's what it would be for anyway.Apart from the game and Google's own "libGGP" everything else seems open.
They should have opened it as well, to allow making some SDL drop-in plugins that replace it.
According to you, what will be the price for a month membership for stadia ??They have yet to announce this.
Also, something I only really thought of until just now replying to HP on Twitter:
Not only does it lower the barrier to entry for Linux desktop gaming, since it's mostly the same. I do wonder if it becomes massive, how it might influence Linux adoption? You wouldn't need to pay for a Windows license so pick up a cheapo Linux laptop -> Stadia gaming -> more Linux users?
Stadia has problems, sure, typically from latency I would imagine.
...back to watching...
Of course, if you want to take advantage of stadia, you should have optical fiber or cable.
We have now idea what this point what libGGP is though, probably not something they can just open up, as it's likely hooking into their Stadia API. I imagine that's what it would be for anyway.
Still, I see no point in keeping it closed. I.e. for developers to develop for it quickly, SDL can make some shim that emulates Stadia API locally. That's the whole point. It can also allow porting games from Stadia to normal Linux easier.
Last edited by Shmerl on 13 May 2019 at 8:11 pm UTC
Mohandevir May 13, 2019
Couldn't find the answer, unless the answer is: "Because of Stadia." It sounds incomplete to me and it's still quite weird, considering the fact that the Windows version is on Steam.
idSoftware Stadia test machine:
CPU: 8 threads Intel;
GPU: AMD Vega with 8GB VRAM;
Mem: 8-16GB RAM;
Ubuntu 18.04.
It'all standard desktop parts.
Did they actually explained why they did not release the Linux version on Steam?
No normal reason. Usual stupid "legacy publishers don't get Linux" problem. Stadia's (potential) size is the only thing that can break through their backwards minds.
Last edited by Shmerl on 13 May 2019 at 8:13 pm UTC
Did they actually explained why they did not release the Linux version on Steam?Really, this was answered indirectly when they showed the market share charts and talked about Linux being ignored. Too small, same answer as always for the bigger publishers.
Mohandevir May 13, 2019
Did they actually explained why they did not release the Linux version on Steam?Really, this was answered indirectly when they showed the market share charts and talked about Linux being ignored. Too small, same answer as always for the bigger publishers.
#Facepalm
They did the build but won't publish it... They paid for the Linux development anyway, but won't start to make it profitable by taking profit from Linux customers... Just... doesn't... make... sense. 1-2% of marketshare is still better than 0$... Must have failed my maths courses.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 13 May 2019 at 8:28 pm UTC
They did the build but won't publish it... They paid for the Linux development anyway, but won't start to make it profitable by taking profit from Linux customers... Just... doesn't... make... sense. 1-2% of marketshare is still better than 0$... Must have failed my maths courses.Could be they're wary of support costs outweighing the sales.
Mohandevir May 13, 2019
They did the build but won't publish it... They paid for the Linux development anyway, but won't start to make it profitable by taking profit from Linux customers... Just... doesn't... make... sense. 1-2% of marketshare is still better than 0$... Must have failed my maths courses.Could be they're wary of support costs outweighing the sales.
Maybe, but it will serve the Stadia cause, considering the fact that it's all standard parts... Oh! With Stadia, they don't have to troubleshoot Linux with Nvidia hardware. That must be it.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 13 May 2019 at 8:37 pm UTC
Fibre connections are mostly about bandwidth - you'll get just as good speed for copper lines (actually you can strangely sometimes get better, depending on the equipment in use and intercepting nodes, but that's really not the point)
Fiber optics commonly has lower latency than copper connections (i.e. coaxial). If that's what you mean by speed.
Last edited by Shmerl on 13 May 2019 at 8:37 pm UTC
1-2% of marketshare is still better than 0$... Must have failed my maths courses.
In this case you did. First of all, it's 1-2% of PC users. Much less with consoles included. Second, it's not compared against $0, but against the potential profit of those people working on something for Windows+Console. And I can assure you that that is worth much more. The financial argument for supporting Linux only works if you don't have something else lined up to work on.
In this case you did. First of all, it's 1-2% of PC users. Much less with consoles included. Second, it's not compared against $0, but against the potential profit of those people working on something for Windows+Console. And I can assure you that that is worth much more. The financial argument for supporting Linux only works if you don't have something else lined up to work on.
Rather it's greed mentality in action. Linux market is profitable, but less profitable than Windows market. Addressing more users is a good thing, you still make profit. Greedy ones don't care about addressing more users, they are OK with addressing only Windows ones if they make more money in result. It's not about losing money mind you, it's about "moar $$$".
I.e. you get the point. It's about attitude towards your users.
Last edited by Shmerl on 13 May 2019 at 8:48 pm UTC
Stadia has problems, sure, typically from latency I would imagine.
...back to watching...
Of course, if you want to take advantage of stadia, you should have optical fiber or cable.
Fibre connections are mostly about bandwidth - you'll get just as good speed for copper lines (actually you can strangely sometimes get better, depending on the equipment in use and intercepting nodes, but that's really not the point). I differentiate between bandwidth and speed - you don't need high bandwidth upstream because input won't really be much data. You do need speed however - constant small amounts of data getting to the rendering backends as quickly as possible.
And then there's any sort of movement prediction that the server might be able to do, and possibly it could send a few frames at a time, and pick which one is most appropriate. There are tricks that can be done on the downstream, and they can adjust the resolution as necessary.
It all remains to be seen how well it turns out in practice of course, but I don't think Google are relying on everyone have optic fibre directly into their house. They wouldn't be gearing this up if that were the case - they obviously think connections are good enough now to get started with Stadia (and they would know, they've got the data from Youtube to analyse).
When they first presented Stadia, one of the slide showed the networking infrastructure required for their system and there was a direct link between your ISP gateway and their servers farm. So, I think that the trick to reduce the latency is more related with that big backbone they're building instead of the technology associated to the Internet at your home.
Having the enough bandwidth for the video stream (no matter if it comes from fiber or coax) and an ISP with special routes through Stadia backbone will probably give a good gaming experience.
Don't even ever redistribute *.so files from a certain distribution with your game because it will fail on any other distribution and newer version of that particular distro where you'd pick up the *.so's from.
Is it really that simple ;) ? While I agree that bundling any library is a bad idea I don't think so - first of all there's no guarantee that on end user system required library will be present.
So the whole thing is a bit more complex - Ethan Lee wrote this nice article about approaches you can take:
https://gist.github.com/flibitijibibo/b67910842ab95bb3decdf89d1502de88
There are also solutions ready - for example new universal packaging formats (Appimages, Flatpaks). Even if you don't use those you can at least have a clear guide howto do it. So yeah, all in all no reason for the devs to struggle with this problem on Linux nowadays, it has been largely solved and can only improve.
The difference is named all the time - Mac is a platform, Linux isn't. The funny thing is Stadia might actually help us to turn Linux into a platform. A problem Valve nearly solved, but still couldn't. The small size of the stadia platform and its virtualization aspect might just turn things around. It might also be the reason why AMD was chosen over Nvidia for Stadia.Did they actually explained why they did not release the Linux version on Steam?Really, this was answered indirectly when they showed the market share charts and talked about Linux being ignored. Too small, same answer as always for the bigger publishers.
But yet they will support the Mac which is not that much bigger than linux.there argument is invalid.just an excuse
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