Links 17/3/2014: Games
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-03-17 21:29:27 UTC
- Modified: 2014-03-17 21:34:09 UTC
- Valve is showing off new Steam Controller prototypes and we will likely hear more from Valve's hardware partners about forthcoming Steam Machines.
- Valve's VOGL debugger and how it will help out game developers in porting/debugging Linux OpenGL issues. The VOGL code was open-sourced just a few days ago.
- We should learn more about Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. Unreal Engine 4 has an OpenGL renderer and Android support and will most likely feature native Linux support. Hopefully there will be some interesting Linux-native games coming out powered by UE4 in the future.
- Crytek is finally showing off to the public their CryEngine Linux support.
For years, enterprises have been learning that open-source projects can solve the mundane issues that plague all businesses. It just pushes the innovation up the stack to a level where your company can get something done, instead of requiring everyone to reinvent the wheel at every roadblock.
But the world of video games has long lagged behind in its adoption and affection for open source. Games are generally valuable assets with a general mass-market appeal, so the tendency of businesses has been to protect those software development tools as jealously as a trade secret.
GameWorks, NVIDIA's umbrella of technologies for enhancing PC gaming, should be available for Linux before the summer.
Even though the request page for a Unity Editor on Linux has reached nearly 10,000 votes, Unity themselves have confirmed they have no plans for it.
Back during the Steam Dev Days, Valve made a mention of an OpenGL debugger that they were currently on. Now to follow up that news, they have released their debugger by putting up the Valve OpenGL Debugger, or VOGL Debugger up on github for all to try out and tinker about.
GLCS is a spin of the popular GLC OpenGL game recorder for Linux that adds in a few extra features.
Good Old Games or GoG is a well-known site to any gamer as a place where one can get games completely DRM free and almost always with additional goodies that they can’t find anywhere else. Now it seems that they will be adding to the good praises that they have been receiving by spear heading a DRM free revolution, by adding support for Linux games in their catalogues.
The possible rumour came into being following a forum post by a GoG team member on the official GoG boards. A user had commented that the user would like if they supported Linux, which was one of the only reason that they preferred to use other sellers like Humble Store which is known to sell games for Linux. To this comment, the community representative replied with “Linux you say … hmmm … let us chew on this … ;)”
Valve is leaving no stone unturned in their efforts to insure that Windows will no longer be the dominant platform for computer gaming, and this will be a good thing for gamers over the long haul.
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