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.
TheRiddick May 14, 2019
Sure they'll never be able to look at hundreds of boxed games on their shelves and reminiscence with rose tinted spectacles about the "good old days" ... But neither can I (even after ~34 years as a gamer); I wasn't a wealthy gamer and went straight from piracy to exchanging / selling games to be able to afford more and more recently on to Steam/Humble/Gog.
(Having said that I am very pro game-preservation, and realise Stadia exclusive titles would take a dump on that... And also not be available native on Linux)
Quoting: monyarmOne thing i'm still confused about, will the Devs who release Stadia versions release those version for the general Linux gaming public ? Or will they stat just on Stadia ?
I'd suspect, at least initially, it's not gonna be a matter of:
Quote"Well we have a Stadia build so just hit the 'ship Linux version' button!"
They'll be concerns about distro "fragmentation", support costs, etc.
And the community may have to do outreach work, develop tools, platforms, etc... Rather than the (usual?) entitled responses that expect companies with tight deadlines and budgets to cater to a % of the 1%.
Quoting: monyarmOne thing i'm still confused about, will the Devs who release Stadia versions release those version for the general Linux gaming public ? Or will they stat just on Stadia ?
The devs will probably only target the Stadia hardware and Ubuntu distribution and most of them will not release it on Linux, because of the fear of bad performance on other hardware, distributions (things, they need to pottentialy address).
But this is only my own opinion.
QuoteThe 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.
Erm, and... why?
(I'm probably missing something basic here?)
Quoting: Purple Library GuyI'd be amazed if this didn't have a tie-in with Chromebooks.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-chromebooks-will-also-be-linux-laptops-going-forward/
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: ShmerlWe 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.QuoteApart 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.
i dont see any quote of then using xorg.
"verything else seems open. It's using Pulse Audio, Vulkan, libc++, glibc and of course the Linux Kernel. "
xorg is obsolete, and wayland is not even close to be ready for the prime time, so...
looks like everything will be open, except the part that matter, the graphic output of it.
Quoting: elmapulFor all we know, that's part of what libGGP is doing. The point is, the majority of it is open. If id Software themselves first ported it to Ubuntu to get it working on Stadia, it can't be much trouble for a standard Linux build.Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: ShmerlWe 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.QuoteApart 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.
i dont see any quote of then using xorg.
"verything else seems open. It's using Pulse Audio, Vulkan, libc++, glibc and of course the Linux Kernel. "
xorg is obsolete, and wayland is not even close to be ready for the prime time, so...
looks like everything will be open, except the part that matter, the graphic output of it.
Quoting: elmapulxorg is obsolete, and wayland is not even close to be ready for the prime time, so...
They don't need any of that stuff. All they need to do compress the rendered frames of a single program into a video stream, combine it with audio and send it off to the great beyond. Plenty of open tools that can do that already.
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