Quoting: DrMcCoyWell, that was to be expected, considering that they had added a lot of stretch goals, and then Wasteland 2 took longer than they thought it would be. As far as I know, no one who followed the development thought it would really come in 2015 (I myself said, on several occasions, that I expect that it'll be moved to a 2016 release).

So the only thing that does surprise me is that it took them that long to announce the changed release year. And that they are already this far along that they'll release a beta (to which I'll have access, thanks to my backing level) this year; I actually thought that would be moved to 2016 as well.

I don't have the backing level on this one, but I'd guess a release in Q2 2016, just considering how long it took PoE to get to a release, and those projects are pretty easy to compare.

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Quoting: Mountain Man"...the biggest part is to transition the engine from DX9 to OpenGL, and then changing from WinAPI to Linux/MacAPI..."

When will developers learn to make their software crossplatform from the start? Then they wouldn't have to deal with these kinds of problems.

Well, using SDL2 they could have saved themselves a lot of pain. X, Input and Screen handling really really sucks (even with XCB), and "it sucks" is just ... a very weak description for the actual pain. That's a fact. SDL2 solves a lot of those issues, and they'd have it cross platform as well. That's a design choice to do in the beginning, and if I was interested in this project, I'd probably offer help with that (since I implemented a few input-systems and screen handlings in SDL already).

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Ok, 25 for the 3-game-pack collection ... I guess I'll just try it myself. Last time I looked it was terribly more expensive, something about 40-50 for one game. 25 for all 3 is worth even to try and if I don't like them, well, I supported a dev bringing the games to Linux.

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Quoting: omer666

Quoting: MaelraneSorry, but if I was about planning a port, why would I start an engine with DX9?

Quoting: Avehicle7887"why not start with OpenGL in the first place?"

Because it is much easier to do so.

It's no wonder Kronos started Vulkan from the ground up, as developers all around have been complaining about the numerous flaws that affect OpenGL.

Each time you see a port being criticized because of poor performance, remember that there are some things OpenGL handles very differently from DX9/10 and are a real mess to port or to code.

That's one of the reasons why having all the major engines already ported to Linux is a priority if we want Steam's venture to be a success -- something that's already in a very good shape.

True, OpenGl has several flaws, starting at functions (several functions for the same usecase but to use differently with different performance outcomes for different use cases - hey, we know that from alsa already :D). The other bad thing is ressource optimization, it only uses a realy low part of the available ressources (CPU/GPU whise) and that's a design-based flaw (thread contexts / querying primarily), compared to DirectX/D3D < 12 is pretty much the same, if you know which functions to use in OpenGL. But there are not too many OpenGL experts out there, compared to D3D. I certainly know a bit, but I'm far from being good enough to port/write a whole 3D engine (as DrMacCoy is, kudus for that... my best effort for an engine yet was a iso/2d based engine years ago for a proof of concept).

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It looks so great... I'm still not sure if it's my kind of game or not and didn't buy it. I think I need an in-depth video of that game to make my mind up.

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Quoting: Guest

Quoting: MaelraneSorry, but if I was about planning a port, why would I start an engine with DX9?

Yeah, they should have used OpenGL or use an engine that they can update to Vulkan support, and use OpenGL/Vulkan for every platform. Pretty dumb to do anything besides that.

"updating" OpenGL with Vulkan is pretty much an own render path as well, that does not make a difference to DX9/D3D to OpenGL porting [at all]. It's still a fully own rendering path. Using an engine which will be capable of would have been possible, but I get the issue of why people often rather rely on their own engines than taking engines on the market.

An example would be Shroud of the Avatar: Going for the Unity engine being very limited in terms of Open World won't do the game any good, and is one of the reasons the game is really really annoying, despite their marketing you have a lot of zoning and a lot of waiting time.

If OpenGL was a viable choice on Windows, well, they could have started with OpenGL. There is a reason why most game devs don't and do take up the workload of going for a seperate OpenGL rendering path for Mac/Linux.

Vulkan isn't finished yet, and didn't have proper dev tools when they started, so it wasn't really a viable choice for an engine to start with. Now you probably could start, but still Vulkan is not done (yet).

As I see it, they got their priorities right. They didn't have the funding for a port, and concentrate on their Windows game. Maybe they'll have the money to do a port later, but at this time, they made the only right choice business whise and for their kickstarter badgers: Bring the game out for Windows before you can't afford the Office any longer, and don't dabble with side projects not funded.

It's not my kind of game, so I won't jump to support it - though, I still hope they can do it some day for all the users interested in the game.

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Ohhh :( ... that game was my plan for my christmas holidays ...

Though, as a supporter (and not actively taking part in the development feedback), I'm rather glad if they push out a good product later than a rushed and flawed one earlier. As long as it's not like Duke Nukem Forever :D. But that's a hard mark to beat.

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Proprietary Linux-Driver of NVidia is fine performance whise. That's really the ports having the issues ;-).

Even though, I have hopes of Vulkan will change it a big deal, since even the difference between Mantle / Metal / Vulkan / DX12 is not very much, it's basically not as hard to port a DX12 to Vulkan as it is to port D3D to OpenGL. Though, GNM (PS4) according to an engine-dev I talked seems to be a bit of a different story.

A good example of a well performing game (after the patch, before it had it's issues) is Shadow of Mordor. I was pretty impressed that a title like this would have that good performance on my 3 year old rig. The Metro-Series is a good example either, performance is pretty good.

We've had our fails, we've had our great ones. Let's see what's up for the future.

Anyway, for the guy telling he had a significant performance increase ditching KDE for Xfce. That's interesting, I've not had any significant performance increase ever switching a desktop environment. Just more RAM available ;-). Though, I'm using a .. very basic KDE setup here with a lot of stuff not being installed (the good part about the "minimum depends" depends in Arch philosophy).

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THAT looks like a game for me. Bought :D.

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It's a long-term attempt. The real attempt is not SteamOS / SteamBox but the SteamLink. They're trying to get into the living room market attrachting the Windows & XBox users. By streaming, not by SteamOS. SteamOS is just the playground for a bigger picture of them providing their own console. It's the playground to show off the market, before they go on their own. SteamBox has the same issue as PCs: Different specs. And that gap is gonna close some day if you ask me. They will allow others to produce, but sooner or later, we'll see a Valve SteamBox if the concept of SteamLink somehow shows off.

I guess this to happen a year after Vulkan. Let's see what Valve has in shelve.

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