Gabe Talks More About Valve's Next-Gen Linux Console

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Gabe Talks More About Valve's Next-Gen Linux Console

The Video Game Awards happened on Friday night in California. During the event, Gabe Newell of Valve commented a bit more on their next-generation console / living room PC plans. To no surprise, Linux plays a big role...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI0Njk

[Detructor]

Phoronix: Gabe Talks More About Valve's Next-Gen Linux Console

The Video Game Awards happened on Friday night in California. During the event, Gabe Newell of Valve commented a bit more on their next-generation console / living room PC plans. To no surprise, Linux plays a big role...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI0Njk

that may be the very first game console I'll buy. But then again, there is nothing that beats playing a game with a keyboard and a mouse (or, in certain situations, a Joystick)

The moment I look at those controllers that are used on gaming consoles, my hands start to hurt.

[tomato]

Kotaku is not news, but then, it's not like we haven't been speculating that this is the real case why Valve is playing with Linux....

that may be the very first game console I'll buy. But then again, there is nothing that beats playing a game with a keyboard and a mouse (or, in certain situations, a Joystick)

The moment I look at those controllers that are used on gaming consoles, my hands start to hurt.

They may look weird, but seriously, they are very good and comfortable. In fact, I'd say the best controller you can buy for a PC is a Xbox 360 controller.

But if Gaben wants to put FPSes in the living room, I really do wonder how does he plan to bridge the chasm between PC and console FPS gaming (the amount of control you have over your character). Because it may end up as with all games that had such ideas first: separate servers for both platforms.

[alexThunder]

that may be the very first game console I'll buy. But then again, there is nothing that beats playing a game with a keyboard and a mouse (or, in certain situations, a Joystick)

The moment I look at those controllers that are used on gaming consoles, my hands start to hurt.

I think you can't determine, which control style is the best for gaming. I.e. for FPS and RTS, Mouse&Keyboard are best, for Beat 'em Ups, Action Adventures (especially the Hack 'n Slay-ish ones) or Racing Games, a Gamepad is preferable. There are also genres, where both controls work well, such as TPS.

They may look weird, but seriously, they are very good and comfortable. In fact, I'd say the best controller you can buy for a PC is a Xbox 360 controller

I can confirm that. The PS3 controller works pretty good as well, although it might need a bit more time to fine tune calibrations.

[jhansonxi]

I think you can't determine, which control style is the best for gaming. I.e. for FPS and RTS, Mouse&Keyboard are best, for Beat 'em Ups, Action Adventures (especially the Hack 'n Slay-ish ones) or Racing Games, a Gamepad is preferable. There are also genres, where both controls work well, such as TPS.

I've found joystick + mouse to be better, depending on the stick.

I can confirm that. The PS3 controller works pretty good as well, although it might need a bit more time to fine tune calibrations.

Unfortunately many Linux games don't support gamepads well. Analog devices were basically useless but even USB devices had broken functionality. I tried a USB gamepad in Trine but couldn't aim with the thief.

Then there is the general lack of configuration tools for programmable game controllers.

[JanC]

I'm sure Valve (and/or future console manufacturers) will work with the necessary upstreams (X, kernel, etc.) to get better drivers and configuration tools if they need them...

[F i L]

Extremely exciting news! This will surely change the Linux Gaming (and Linux Desktop) landscape.

[elanthis]

Unfortunately many Linux games don't support gamepads well.

This is largely because the Linux gamepad drivers are very lacking. You see a similar problem on OS X, which does not really have any proper dedicated gamepad services or quality drivers.

Take the Linux xbox driver, for example. The last time I looked at it, the driver doesn't support audio/headsets at all. It doesn't support battery lifetime notification at all. It has no notion of which controller is 1st player, 2nd player, etc.*, so each individual app has to redefine which is which. The driver does support the LEDs on the device, but it doesn't enforce any player-oriented friendly use of those lights, but rather just lets apps do whatever random confusing inconsistent useless crap it wants to with them. Well, sort of, since the LED device and the input device are completely separate devices in the device tree, and actually correlating them together is non-trivial, requires deep Linux kernel knowledge and some voodoo, and isn't wrapped by any existing developer-oriented library.

Many of the other gamepads are just supported by the generic joystick driver and hence are also missing all the advanced features and proper system-integration necessary for a quality gamepad gaming experience, as supported by the consoles and Windows.

* Some people don't believe me about this one because the Linux kernel driver will set the player-indicator lights on controllers when plugged in, so if you plug in two controllers, one is lit up as player 1 and the second as player 2. The problem is two-fold: first, there's no way to read the status of the lights nor does the Linux driver expose any property as to which number it assigned the controller, so apps have no way to know which controller is which. Second, Linux doesn't actually assign a player number, but rather fakes it with a cheap hack. The driver just does a "indicator_light = (global_controller_counter++) % 4" when a controller is plugged in. You can see this by unplugging a controller and plugging it back in (it'll go to the next player indicator, rather than remain the same number); more damning, plug in two controllers, then unplug and replug just one of them several times, and you'll quickly get both controllers to have the same player indicator lit up.

[89c51]

This is largely because the Linux gamepad drivers are very lacking. You see a similar problem on OS X, which does not really have any proper dedicated gamepad services or quality drivers.

Take the Linux xbox driver, for example. The last time I looked at it, the driver doesn't support audio/headsets at all. It doesn't support battery lifetime notification at all. It has no notion of which controller is 1st player, 2nd player, etc.*, so each individual app has to redefine which is which. The driver does support the LEDs on the device, but it doesn't enforce any player-oriented friendly use of those lights, but rather just lets apps do whatever random confusing inconsistent useless crap it wants to with them. Well, sort of, since the LED device and the input device are completely separate devices in the device tree, and actually correlating them together is non-trivial, requires deep Linux kernel knowledge and some voodoo, and isn't wrapped by any existing developer-oriented library.

Many of the other gamepads are just supported by the generic joystick driver and hence are also missing all the advanced features and proper system-integration necessary for a quality gamepad gaming experience, as supported by the consoles and Windows.

* Some people don't believe me about this one because the Linux kernel driver will set the player-indicator lights on controllers when plugged in, so if you plug in two controllers, one is lit up as player 1 and the second as player 2. The problem is two-fold: first, there's no way to read the status of the lights nor does the Linux driver expose any property as to which number it assigned the controller, so apps have no way to know which controller is which. Second, Linux doesn't actually assign a player number, but rather fakes it with a cheap hack. The driver just does a "indicator_light = (global_controller_counter++) % 4" when a controller is plugged in. You can see this by unplugging a controller and plugging it back in (it'll go to the next player indicator, rather than remain the same number); more damning, plug in two controllers, then unplug and replug just one of them several times, and you'll quickly get both controllers to have the same player indicator lit up.

I don't think anyone cared for linux gaming so far in order to solve these problems you describe. Audio is also an area that linux people don't care about.

[Sidicas]

Unfortunately many Linux games don't support gamepads well. Analog devices were basically useless but even USB devices had broken functionality. I tried a USB gamepad in Trine but couldn't aim with the thief.

The aim for the thief needs to be linked to an analog stick. That's the key there. If your analog stick isn't working as expected, look for a little switch on the controller that flips from digital to analog. My Logitech rumblepads have this.

No problems at all beating Trine and Trine 2, playing together with my sister using two gamepads.. Although I admit, I played it under Windows as my gaming PC with 2x Watercooled GTX 470s runs Windows.