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.
Quoting: GuestIt was somewhat easier for iD seeing as they already had Vulkan as a core engine target. It took, what, 3 weeks to get an initial Stadia test working? It took less to get a desktop GNU/Linux version working - but again, core engine support for much of it was already there (because of headless server support). So iD are perhaps an exception in ease of porting - not everyone else will have such an easy time of it if their code base is more Windows-centric.Keep in mind the vast majority of developers are using things like Unity and Unreal though, both have Vulkan support which is gradually getting into a better state. Both engines announced support for Stadia too...
Awesome news!
Re: Stadia
At&t DSL @ 600kb/s = Stadia? What stadia? And Google, being Google, can be expected to drop the whole thing in a few years anyway.
Last edited by Nanobang on 14 May 2019 at 12:07 pm UTC
Why should regular gnu/linux gamer care about what google made and whom pays to get games working on *their* machines? It's not my computer, it's google's.
Quoting: EhvisThe financial argument for supporting Linux only works if you don't have something else lined up to work on.
From a technical standpoint, it may be wise to do an official Linux port for Stadia. Many devs had trouble porting their game to Linux. It will be even harder to port to Stadia. So porting to Linux first may be a nice first step in process of targeting Stadia. I get that from in incompetent-manager point of view, only the size of the market share matters, but from a wise-manager perspective, optimizing the chance of success is also a strong point to address.
Many devs underestimated how hard it would be for windows-only-minded company to target a different platform. There are a lot of absent or broken Linux builds because this is a platform devs are not used to. They won't become magically experienced in targeting Linux because it is Stadia. Take Feral, they are now very experienced in targeting Linux. The quality of their port is excellent! But it did not come from free.
Linux gaming is indeed 1%-2% of market share, but strategically, we may worth it.
Mohandevir May 14, 2019
Quoting: GuestActually, some devs have explicitly said that MAC ports were not worth it because MAC users were making much more support requests. To the point half of their support costs were eaten up by roughly 5% of their market. So support costs matter. This is probably why the Linux builds of DOOM and WoW have been kept internal and not released to the public.
You would have to build another team of tech support, complete with low level people who answer trivial questions to full blown techies. And for a very small part of your public. Depending on the public you have it may not make sense economically.
As Linux users, we can help by helping each other trough sites/forums such as this one so as not to overburden the tech support teams of studios making Linux builds.
Still... The Stadia build will be a Linux build... id will have to build a Linux support department anyway.
The problem I see is the multiplication of hardware confgurations; the Stadia build is Intel CPU + Vega GPU. They only need to support that configuration to make it work on Stadia. "One hardware config to rule them all!"
As for the distro fragmentation, they only need to stick to the official Steam support page (Ubuntu/SteamOS). This argument has always been a really bad excuse to me.
Edit: What I'm personnally afraid of, on the long run, is that big AAA companies could decide to stop supporting PC gaming in general (not just Linux) in favor of Stadia. It will make it a lot more easier to support all paltforms with one Stadia build by making the OS/hardware, on the client side, irrelevent.
Edit2: Still on the long run, Valve might decide to take Stadia builds support on them if these AAA companies stop supporting PC gaming... Afterall, that's what they do with Steamplay, and we are not talking about Linux builds... Just speculating.
Last edited by Mohandevir on 14 May 2019 at 2:53 pm UTC
QuoteI 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.https://youtu.be/qdz4b5psrhE?t=974
Quoting: HoriLinux is unexplored territory for them. They don't know how to solve most problems. They don't know what problems to expect and prepare for.
srsly, everything is solved problem on linux, too. Ok windoze has directx for everything. Linux has vulkan (or opengl fallback) for gfx. For everything else there's SDL2. (sound, music, input and network)
If the said gamedev ever worked on mobile or console title then they can release on linux. If they use unity3d, unreal or godot then they can build for linux by pressing a button.
linux gamers usually don't need support. They can solve their own problem.
Quoting: Xakep_SDKIf they don't release gnu/linux version of game, there is actually zero profit for gnu/linux gaming.Actually, if this Stadia thing is successful, there is an advantage even if it doesn't (directly) lead to a single desktop Linux game release. The point is, it's a completely platform-agnostic source of games. If it's accepted as a normal adequate way to do gaming, that means Linux boxes (including piddly little ones like Chromebooks) are first class gaming citizens; that barrier to adoption is toast. That would make it easier for the Linux desktop share to grow, and if the Linux desktop share grows, more games will be made for Linux because it's a bigger market.
Why should regular gnu/linux gamer care about what google made and whom pays to get games working on *their* machines? It's not my computer, it's google's.
Stadia will also make more developers familiar and comfortable with both Linux and Vulkan. Those skills won't disappear when it comes time to make new projects; they are likely to make things more cross-platform from the get-go.
Quoting: Purple Library GuyThis, plus the "not a single one" scenario is totally unlikely. No, not every Stadia port will be released on Linux, but a certain percentage will.Quoting: Xakep_SDKIf they don't release gnu/linux version of game, there is actually zero profit for gnu/linux gaming.Actually, if this Stadia thing is successful, there is an advantage even if it doesn't (directly) lead to a single desktop Linux game release. The point is, it's a completely platform-agnostic source of games. If it's accepted as a normal adequate way to do gaming, that means Linux boxes (including piddly little ones like Chromebooks) are first class gaming citizens; that barrier to adoption is toast. That would make it easier for the Linux desktop share to grow, and if the Linux desktop share grows, more games will be made for Linux because it's a bigger market.
Why should regular gnu/linux gamer care about what google made and whom pays to get games working on *their* machines? It's not my computer, it's google's.
Stadia will also make more developers familiar and comfortable with both Linux and Vulkan. Those skills won't disappear when it comes time to make new projects; they are likely to make things more cross-platform from the get-go.
Last edited by const on 14 May 2019 at 4:00 pm UTC
Quoting: MohandevirIn that sense, Stadia is a lot like a console--one standard thing.Quoting: GuestActually, some devs have explicitly said that MAC ports were not worth it because MAC users were making much more support requests. To the point half of their support costs were eaten up by roughly 5% of their market. So support costs matter. This is probably why the Linux builds of DOOM and WoW have been kept internal and not released to the public.
You would have to build another team of tech support, complete with low level people who answer trivial questions to full blown techies. And for a very small part of your public. Depending on the public you have it may not make sense economically.
As Linux users, we can help by helping each other trough sites/forums such as this one so as not to overburden the tech support teams of studios making Linux builds.
Still... The Stadia build will be a Linux build... id will have to build a Linux support department anyway.
The problem I see is the multiplication of hardware confgurations; the Stadia build is Intel CPU + Vega GPU. They only need to support that configuration to make it work on Stadia. "One hardware config to rule them all!"
QuoteAs for the distro fragmentation, they only need to stick to the official Steam support page (Ubuntu/SteamOS). This argument has always been a really bad excuse to me.Yeah, I'd be unhappy if it goes that way. We'll see--Google Docs hasn't killed the desktop office suite yet.
Edit: What I'm personnally afraid of, on the long run, is that big AAA companies could decide to stop supporting PC gaming in general (not just Linux) in favor of Stadia. It will make it a lot more easier to support all paltforms with one Stadia build by making the OS/hardware, on the client side, irrelevent.
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