Quoting: TheSHEEEPWhen you officially support Proton, then yes, that means you'll have to figure out why something doesn't work in Proton and can't just say "screw those guys". Duh?

That's entirely the point. I'm glad you agree, despite your attitude.

So you need a Linux test machine, and you need to fix bugs in your game for running on Linux exactly as you would if you had a native build, except you don't get to pick your own cross-platform libraries, nor the environment it's running in: those are chosen by someone else.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPNot true.
For Proton, they just need something that can run their game via Proton. That is decently easy to find a guide for, set up and - more importantly - does not require any dev to have knowledge about the platform.
It's more or less a "run and test if it works" kind of deal.

Nonsense.

If it works, great; you're providing no more support than ProtonDB does. If it doesn't work then you're either saying "works on Windows, screw those guys", so no support, or you need to figure out why it doesn't work. And developers don't want to test in the first place.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEPDoes Proton lead to less native versions? Of course. Well, at least I'm fairly certain it does.

Not according to the data. I ran the numbers for a comment on a previous article, and the introduction of Proton had no significant effect on the number of native builds that are released. It provides a handy excuse for developers that weren't going to make a native build anyway, but they already had plenty of those (fragmentation! tiny market! hackers! Oh, hey, the Roblox devs used all of these as well).

Making a native build is trivial compared to literally everything else in game dev. That isn't the part that developers don't want to do. Testing and supporting the build are the time-consuming (and therefore expensive) parts that developers don't want to do. But if a developer is "supporting Proton" rather than "supporting Windows and hoping for extra money from Linux users" then they need a Linux testing pipeline anyway for their Windows build in Proton. Proton saves them hardly anything, and is just a mechanism to be able to say "Wine won’t ever be something that we guarantee will work" when they aren't doing that testing.

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Quoting: elmapulDXVK already exist, and supporting RayTracing on vulkan + using DXVK seems to be an better option for then than writing their own translation layer to translate to dx12.

They wouldn't need to write their own: Microsoft already translate lower versions into DX12, and Microsoft and Collabora made one to translate OpenGL into DX12.

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Quoting: Liam DaweI think perhaps it's more a case that DXVK was just there and ready for them, so it was far easier to do this way?

Forking an existing tool is much easier than creating your own from scratch, for sure; if they'd done the latter then it would be a much stronger signal that they don't like using DirectX. But they didn't need to use Vulkan at all: Direct3D can do ray tracing. So they've made a decision to use Vulkan.

It might be that they prefer the ins-and-outs of using Vulkan; it might be that they wanted it to be multiplatform (which a DirectX solution wouldn't be); it might be that they wanted it to be open source (which a DirectX solution wouldn't be). Any combination of those would be good things, I think.

But, yeah, maybe there were enough OpenGL games that they didn't want to leave behind, and maybe Collabora's OpenGL-to-DirectX translator just isn't as good as DXVK; but that's not as interesting.

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QuoteIt does this with thanks to the DXVK translation layer, which NVIDIA now have their own fork of just for this.

This suggests to me that Nvidia internally prioritise Vulkan over Direct3D. They could have just done it in DXR, and stayed in the DirectX realm, but they've chosen to translate all those DirectX games into Vulkan instead.

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QuoteDXVK translates Direct3D 9 / 10 and 11 into Vulkan for Proton and Wine, used on Linux desktop and Steam Deck for gaming.

It's also been used for some games on Windows, to improve performance there.

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Quoting: stormtuxI do not think Valve is preoccupied of this device, I think they are enthusiastic about it.

This is full of win for Valve. The biggest chunk of the games to be played on this device are going to be bought on Steam, which is money in Valve's pocket. Someone else is shouldering the logistics task of expanding the number of handheld gaming devices, which puts more pressure on game developers to address things like controller support and text size on a tiny screen. And even with direct support from Microsoft to hit this price point, all the reviews are saying, "you know what? Windows is kinda crap; Linux is way better." The only thing that could make Valve happier is if Asus release a subsequent version that comes with Linux instead.

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Quoting: EikeIs this sort of a counterstrike(*) by Microsoft as well? ASUS cannot hand out game passes without an agreement with Microsoft, and MS could be interested in fighting that the PC handheld market is Linux dominated at the moment...

(*) Is it a global offensive already? :-D

Microsoft are a strategic partner for this device - lots of cross-promotion and likely Microsoft paid them to have Windows on it rather than the other way round. So much so that Asus aren't sure they're contractually allowed to support the hardware after a user has installed Linux on it. Both parties appear to have assumed that everyone will simply fawn over Windows and ignore the reality of what it's like to use in comparison to Linux.

Edit: sauce

QuoteSpeaking of rivalries, Microsoft may have also precluded the ROG Ally’s SteamOS possibilities: “our partner for this device is Microsoft, it’s primarily made as a Windows device, and it’s made only as a Windows device,” says Krohn. But he’s not sure if the deal precludes Asus from supporting SteamOS if users install it themselves.

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Quoting: constDoes it even have gyro?

It has a gyro, but the Asus software doesn't let you use it. To be fair, the same was true of the Steam Controller at launch.

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