The Direct3D 10/11 State Tracker Is Still Around

[ChrisXY]

You can't mix the d3d state tracker and a wine implementation that's using OpenGL ...

I meant taking input and sound stuff for directx from wine libs and only direct3d through this state tracker.

The status is that the D3D11 version of Unigine Heaven works via the d3d11 st's wine dlls (well, the lighting is a bit off) if:

Well, thanks for the info. That sounds much more mature than anything I have heard yet (which is not much).

[Nobu]

Bastion now has a NaCl port that should work in Linux (haven't tested it yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't).

It works--even better with nouveau than the nV driver--but it's a bit slow, and sometimes it hangs when loading an area; my GPU's a bit weak (7100GS), and I probably don't have enough RAM (1.5GiB). Surprisingly, CPU load is pretty low.

[Drago]

/me goes back to his current project and trying to get threaded GL texture uploading to even remotely work on Catalyst drivers

elanthis, I always read your posts with joy. They are way more informative than anything else on this site. Just keep them going.
I don't know much about other AAA titles, but recently Doom3(which I bought because it was opensourced) is one of the kick ass games I have ever seen. I enjoy it more than even HL2.
There is very little linux specific in its engine, so I really don't understand why other games don't have ports, even unsupported ones.
BTW, Doom3 looks good, even on r600g. The performance is higher than I expected.

[ChrisXY]

Thanks, for your very informative post, BUT

(it's still an utter pain in the ass to actually install a third-party commercial game on Linux due to the silo/appliance model of the most popular desktop Linux distros),

Really? The Loki installer that most of the games of the Humble Indie Bundles use seems to work pretty good. And why have it installed at all? Simply unpacking and putting a .desktop file somewhere ought to be enaugh...

[calim]

Brilliant!

What games?

Dragon Age 2:
crashes somewhere in game executable after logo videos (if only I had debug info ...)

Civilization 5:
crashes too, probably because it needs deferred contexts which aren't implemented yet,
doing that at API capture level should be rather simple, the fast version that records GPU command buffers will be a bit more challenging

Skyrim:
doesn't even want to use d3d11, maybe it doesn't actually support it ... works with mesa/OpenGL though (looks ok but is really slow)

[RussianNeuroMancer]

Thanks for answer
May you also try Deus Ex: Human Revolution later, while follow testing?

[ChrisXY]

Skyrim:
doesn't even want to use d3d11, maybe it doesn't actually support it ... works with mesa/OpenGL though (looks ok but is really slow)

I wasn't aware Skyrim used DirectX 9, but sure enough, it does, says HardOCP, adding that there's no DX10 or DX11 renderer, which probably sounds as strange to you, in 2011, as it does to me. Long story short, as wonderful as Skyrim's mountains can look crowned with wisps of fog or tufts of clouds, the underlying visual architecture's pretty dated, especially in terms of the way the Creation engine handles shadows. HardOCP also notes the textures tend to be more diffuse or low-res than they might have been had Bethesda designed the game with the PC in mind and not the space-limited Xbox 360 (the entire game fits, remarkably, on just one DVD).

Also, somebody name some Open Source directx games to help this project please!

[curaga]

I suppose the question is, is the DX11 Heaven any faster directly than via Wine or the native binary?

[elanthis]

There is very little linux specific in its engine, so I really don't understand why other games don't have ports, even unsupported ones.

Well, there's a couple reasons. First, "unsupported" does not mean "free to the publisher." There's still a ton of costs involved in a port, even if it's just things like double checking licensing and liability for posting binaries of a game using third-party paid-for libraries. A lot of engines require a licensing fee per platform the game is released on. Most games still also don't have (maintained) OpenGL renderers, and it takes time to write those. Lastly, few game developers really care; the Linux nerds I run into in the industry are much more of the "omg I just installed Ubuntu its neat talk to me about Linux" and they barely even understand the (rather vast) differences in basic dev tools on Linux compared to Windows.

On a related side note, I know a ton of hardcore bad-ass developer Linux nerds at Microsoft. Opposites attract or something, I guess.

Really? The Loki installer that most of the games of the Humble Indie Bundles use seems to work pretty good.

They work okay. They're fragile (try installing one of those games three years from now, let's see what happens). They have a much lower chance of working if you move off the main distros.

Windows installers can register the app with the system so it's available for uninstallation via the OS's software manager. Windows installers can use Windows snapshotting so failed installs can be rolled back. Windows installers are guaranteed that the base GUI library and other mandatory support libraries for the OS are always available with a standard ABI. Windows installers don't need users to set executable bits to run them. Windows installers can bundle optional system libraries so they get installed if they're not available**. Even little things matter, like how a Windows installer .exe can have an icon embedded in it that the desktop file-manager or browser can show, while the .sh/.bin packed installers on Linux cannot.

** Admittedly, doing things the Linux way and asking the OS to install them would be better, but last I checked MojoSetup/Loki_setup could not do that, and for good reason since not every distro is guaranteed to have every library the game might need, so Linux games take a step backward from even Windows' DLL hell and statically link or "locally bundle" libraries that otherwise have stable ABIs and belong on the system.

The Linux software installation scene is still just totally whacked. My particular favorite is when somebody follows a link to some clearly Linux-friendly FOSS software like the Gimp and then they go to download it for Linux and LOL! they just get a source .tar.gz and what the hell are they supposed to do with that? Nobody in Linux land seems to have realized yet that users find software by links in blog articles or Google or email and visiting the completely OS/distribution-agnostic homepage for said software. Not by opening "Applications -> System Tools -> Software Package Repository Viewer 2.14.3" and then browsing categories like "Application/Desktop/Graphics/Raster" and then wading through options like "gimp-docs", "gimp-libs", "gimp-common", "gimp-tools", "gimp-pulp-fiction", "gimp-desktop", "gimp-scripts", etc.

In the App Store scene, likewise users still aren't browsing around looking for specific apps. Angry Birds is not popular because users are hearing about it and then looking it up on their phone's app store. Angry Birds is popular because bored users open the app store games to see if anything there looks interesting, seeing Angry Birds at the top of the list with 5 stars after 450,000 reviews, and then installing it because it looks fun. Likewise on Steam, relatively few people hear about a game and then go look for it there. Most of the sales come from users opening Steam, seeing the giant banners in the main store page with the "75% off!" pricing and impulse buy. These companies _also_ sell in other channels so that TV advertising works (most TV advertising accounts for sales in brick-and-mortar stores) and Web advertising works (usually by linking directly to a product in an online store like Amazon or some such). Point is that the approach where Fedora is trying to build their own little distro-specific app store silo is not going to do any good at all for companies making games and trying to sell them because they aren't hitting any of the target demographics for app stores and also aren't hitting any of the target demographics for web stores or brick-and-mortar stores. The FOSS software that can ever end up in their silo are not things that people "impulse install." They're not solving the problems of finding and installing desktop software. The Ubuntu Store might work out since it allows proprietary software, and devs might start releasing into that, but then we're stuck in a world where the only distro that can play commercial games is Ubuntu because the other distros didn't want to play ball and build a larger, open, neutral platform to compete.

This is again one of the reasons why classically Flash and now HTML5 and NaCl are so appealing to developers: the app/game literally is a web page so there's no need to ever install anything or find an OS-specific icon to click or anything else. Follow link, app loads, done. On Windows, it's almost that easy for native apps, and is likely just going to get easier come Windows 8 and the new app store. Which I'd expect them to focus on, because the last thing the dominate OS vendor wants is for traditionally native-only apps to move to an OS-neutral platform like the Web.

I get so upset about the Linux installer topic in particular because it's (almost trivially) FIXABLE. It's just the distro engineers having their damn heads lodged so far up their asses that they can lick the lining of their own stomaches. Bunch of political shenanigans, intense NIH syndrome, and fear-induced bullcrap. I'm not even talking about just hitting parity with Windows, but it could be done so much _better_ than Windows if only the distros weren't in the way.

And why have it installed at all? Simply unpacking and putting a .desktop file somewhere ought to be enaugh...

You're right. That sounds so much easier than clicking an Install icon and having it Just Work all by itself. Why didn't I think of that?

I've spent the years using Linux-Fu to install apps and work around bad UIs and fix obvious bugs and make a server OS feel like a cheap desktop OS and generally get things working, and felt proud of myself on how skillful and awesome I was. After 10 years of that crap, eventually you realize you just don't care anymore and just want it to work when you click the icon, because given the choice between screwing around with installers or doing something actually fun, guess which one wins out once the novelty of Linux wears off?

Obligatory XKCD comic:

[Drago]

I am 200% with elanthis here. I think users allready have to do this Disctro-natural-selection, and Linux distributions ( at least desktop ones), should reduce to 3-4, with interoperatable package system. I like Ubuntu, but it as I am pedantic, I don't use it. I just don't get why there are so many unnescessary services running (like cups without a printer attached, bluez stack without blue-tooth device, even python is running. For that reason I use Arch, but eventually for the cause I can switch to Ubuntu

PS: I Ubuntu you can download a package file (.deb), and istall it with the installer. It will resolve all needed dependancies.