Gamedev and linux
Gamedev and linux
I remember a gamedev complaining about this on Twitter but the outcome he came to was that he hated that Linux users submitted bug reports, stating the OS itself was broken and he refused to help any of them.
I remember threads like this from back when Valve was pushing Steam Machines. Won't name names, but there were very successful developers throwing tantrums once the bug reports started to flood in. Many weren't prepared to actually provide support and spent years regretting it (according to postmortems.) I managed to get a refund on one game after the developer's Twitter rant went completely off the rails re: Linux being unfit for desktop. Weird that they were 100% fine with Linux when it meant getting my $15, $20, or $30. Makes you think!
Good devs are good regardless of context, they may have their personal preferences but in the end welcome bug reports and feature requests, especially the helpful ones because it helps the project. Bad devs are dicks regardless of context as well, all they care about is review rate and other numbers appear in the scoreboard
Professionals have standards.
IIRC it was Planetary Annihilation and the guy ranting wasn't even a programmer.
Yeah this article is a nice juxtaposition to that deranged rant. Hopefully if more game devs see it they'll appreciate the Linux gaming community a bit more.
stating the OS itself was broken
A dependency was missing, betcha?
I've seen that several times. I expected that's where this post was going, nice to see that was wrong.
Reflecting on my first year running solely Linux (as opposed to dual-booting), I think that this culture comes from the fact that, on Linux, problems can more often than not be solved. If not solved, then at least understood. When you want to change something on Windows, or something breaks, you have far less room to maneuver.
When I was a Windows user, I'd barely ever submitted a bug report for anything, in spite of being very tech-literate. It felt hopeless, as my entire experience with the OS was that if a fix would come, it'd have to be done by someone else.
Linux treating its users like adults, produces users who are more confident and more willing to contribute.
This is true. I also dont even know how to report actual Android bugs. On Windows its true, its simply a big "f you"
Android bugs go to the maintainers of that specific device or of the custom ROM installed on it.
Using the unaltered version that was installed on the device when you bought it? Reports go to the manufacturer usually.
Unless it's a carrier branded version, like a Verizon or Tracfone provided phone, in which case bug reports go to them. But frankly, don't bother, and for the love of all things holy spend a little more money and stop buying carrier branded phones.
For custom ROMs, bug reports go to wherever the maintainers of that ROM ask bug reports be submitted. Usually Git, XDA forums, their website, or their Discord/Telegram channel. And fuck that last one, because hiding bug reports and other information in non-indexed places like Discord is making this more difficult for everyone.
You can do the exact same thing in Windows, just think of the SysInternals Suite and its power. It's just that people on Linux expect problems, while the overwhelming majority of people on Windows/MacOS is using their device expecting it to work and if it doesn't they go do something else or buy another device.
Also this completely untrue notion that you cannot fix Windows or play around with its internals is very prevalent, to the point that it's a meme, so people don't even try.
But I have to fight the stupid OS to give me useful information. I have to install 3^(rd) party stuff. By default you only get this useless error reporting tool. Even if you report an error your likely to never hear from anyone and the chance of the error being fixed is virtually nonexistent.
On Linux the necessary information is usually readily available. The worst offender in my experience is Steam itself. You can get logs from games fairy easily. But if Steam misbehaves things can get more complicated.
I found bugs in Windows server products all the time, and there was no way of reporting them. If you opened a ticket (by paying, of course), they would never admit it was a bug. Half the time I got the impression I was the only person in the world that every encountered said issue, and that what I was doing was complete edge-case. Which was bullshit, I would investigate and find dozens of references (which never got resolved) because it was pretty much the only way to use X product feature.
Microsoft QA and support is utter trash. You can get better support in Linux on damn near anything by some rando on IRC or the specific product forum, or, gods forbid, Reddit. There is an almost 100% chance you can fix anything on Linux if you look hard enough, even if you have to go dig through the code. Nothing like that happens in the Windows ecosystem.
Also, the types of information you find are very different. On windows, you’ll find various forum posts about your problem, and some proposed solutions. Usually, nobody seems to know exactly what’s causing the problem, and that’s why the solutions are a bit random. Same goes for iOS related problems too.
On Linux, you might not need forum posts, because sometimes the error messages tells you what’s wrong and how to fix it. If that’s not the case, you’ll find posts about your problem, and usually there’s someone who explains what’s broken and what are the commands to fix it.
There’s none of that guesswork about trying 7 unrelated things to see if any of them magically solve your problem. It’s straight to the point. Your problem is caused by that setting over there, and here’s how to change it.
When it comes to closed-source software developed opaquely by for-profit corporations, particularly the huge, monolithic ones like Microsoft, I generally have the attitude that, if I do discover a problem:
- They won't take my detailed report
- If they do take my report, it goes straight into a shredder bin (or a massive queue where low priority problems go to die, which may as well be the same thing)
- If they do read my report, then it's likely something they already are aware of
- If they don't know about it somehow, the issue is probably so low-priority and niche that it wouldn't escape the backlog anyway
Probably not nearly as bleak as I make it out. But when you can't see the process, how can you tell?
With open source projects, these things can all still happen, but at least the process is more transparent. You can see exactly where your issue is, and what's been done to it so far, if anything. Other users can discover and vouch for your problem. And if the dev team takes pull requests, and you are willing, able, and permitted to contribute, you can make the fix yourself.
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The Feedback Hub was introduced to fix this gap in user reports for Windows. Microsoft does actively monitor this. They respond when necessary, merge topics, deny or approve bugs/suggestions, etc. For their software, such as Terminal or VS Code, you can use GitHub issues.
Keep in mind, like most companies, Microsoft has guidelines on what employees can say when responding to any user feedback. This is why we typically see a lot of copy and paste. When it is more than that, wording is selective and you may not get more than one or two responses in total.
I know of at least one employee on Reddit who participates every so often. https://www.reddit.com/user/jenmsft/
This went in a different direction than I expected, in a good way.
Interesting take. I wonder if the amount of platform dependent bugs is generally that low for games. I'm a developer, but not a game developer. I would assume that platform dependent stuff comes into play a lot more, when using shiny new tech like direct storage, which is probably used more by AAA titles and less by indie games?
You don't get many platform-specific bugs if you use cross-platform libraries like SDL2 for OpenGL/Vulkan context creation and human interface.
With my limited experience with Vulkan and multiple targeted platforms, I can confirm that AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
In my somewhat limited but relevant experience, the amount of platform specific bugs is indeed that low. I mean, there’s of course a layer of platform-specific low level stuff which is highly subject to platform specific issues, but once you go above that layer and into game code proper, most bugs are just bugs.
I didn’t fix 400 “Linux-only” bugs, but I did fix dozens of “seems Linux specific” and “only happened when at least one Linux client was connected” bugs, and a grand total of 2 were caused by platform differences. And of those two, zero were Linux specific. The platform difference in this case was about how different compilers optimise non-crashy types of UB.
Of course, we don’t want UB at all so the fix is to remove it.
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The difference is money. Vulkan is an incredibly terse spec compared to dx12. You'd think that would make it much more consistent to work with, but really, it's all it can do to keep up with msft and IHVs who pour money into coaxing AAA devs to use dx12. Then, even when the app gets something wrong and causes issues for end users, the IHV just makes a special case in the driver to correct it, because having a big important dx12 title run correctly on their hw is important to sell units.
Meanwhile, the same IHVs barely bother to support anything beyond the basic vulkan requirements, because it doesn't gain them anything to do more. If a vulkan game experiences issues, IHVs don't care because it won't sell well anyway.
I made games primarily for Windows which we also compiled for Linux. It is mostly input/output stuff, aka hardware issues. That is, audio issues, input issues, storage issues, dependency issues. Modern game engine mostly handle the rest. It wasn't such a big deal to fix, but most gamedev lacked experience with Linux, and most projects are already over budget and late, so fixing Linux for an extra 2-5% of sales didn't make much sense at small scale. Proton kind off fixed all of this tho.
If you're an engine developer, it's a reasonably common problem.
If you're a game developer using a cross platform engine, it's pretty uncommon, as the engine developer has already accounted for most of it.
If you're somewhere in the middle, it's probably somewhere in the middle.
It surprises me how many indie devs avoid some of the higher level / more popular engines for this reason alone. But I assume they just must enjoy that sort of stuff much more than I.
It surprises me how many indie devs avoid some of the higher level / more popular engines for this reason alone. But I assume they just must enjoy that sort of stuff much more than I.
The problem with indie devs is purely a lack of knowledge and resources. They don't feel comfortable testing and packaging binaries for distribution on Linux. A decent number of them are also self-taught and actually have almost no exposure to desktop Linux at all. So it's actually a much higher hurdle than you think.
This game runs on the Godot engine, so it has a common base to work with.
Isn't this one pretty old already? I'm sure i saw this on Reddit when it was still usable.
I think the top metadata says 2 years (2a)
I saw it on Mastodon
remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did
cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes
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Maybe to reframe it, it's like job security?
A. If you haven't played ΔV, do it. One of the most amazing games out there imho. So good in fact that I just went to find a Δ on the internet so I could use it and not disrespect the dev and the game. B. He is such an amazing dude. I don't know him personally, but I do know that when Ukraine was invaded he made the game free for months on Steam so people in Ukraine could get it and have something too distract themselves from the conflict. A+ move in my book right there. I had already bought the game at that point, but I wish I could buy it again just to support him further. C. Reading this almost makes me think it would be a good tactical move to offer early access games at a steep discount on Linux if it has this great of an effect. Pay back the "free" QA kindness of the community.
Imagine saying all that and not linking it 😏
I got you fam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/846030/V_Rings_of_Saturn/
Lol, thanks. It was late.
You know what? I will buy it again for you right now!
Do y’all know how many times I got https://wiki.archlinux.org/ as an answer to my question? Used to piss me off but then I learned how to use the wiki. Lol. Thanks arch iRc!
Arch Wiki is invaluable at this point.
And I don't mean just Arch Linux (BtwOS), I mean countless amount of sysadmins, platforms engineers, developers, SREs and so on that uses it.
https://wiki.gentoo.org works too
Could we do crossposts? This one is in two of my communities. If it was a crosspost then it would be only one post. Less spam.
Image transcription. Pasted from source, Reddit Post
Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from the Linux community
Article
38% of my bug reports come from the Linux community My game - ΔV: Rings of Saturn (shameless plug) - is out in Early Access for two years now, and as you can expect, there are bugs. But I did find that a disproportionally big amount of these bugs was reported by players using Linux to play. I started to investigate, and my findings did surprise me.
Let’s talk numbers. Percentages are easy to talk about, but when I read just them, I always wonder - what is the sample size? Is it small enough for the percentage to be just noise? As of today, I sold a little over 12,000 units of ΔV in total. 700 of these units were bought by Linux players. That’s 5.8%. I got 1040 bug reports in total, out of which roughly 400 are made by Linux players. That’s one report per 11.5 users on average, and one report per 1.75 Linux players. That’s right, an average Linux player will get you 650% more bug reports.
A lot of extra work for just 5.8% of extra units, right?
Wrong. Bugs exist whenever you know about them, or not. Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone - the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs. That is just the open-source way. This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone. Just like having your own 700-person strong QA team. That was not 38% extra work for me, that was just free QA!
But that’s not all. The report quality is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: “it crashes for me after a few hours”. Do you know what a developer can do with such a report? Feel sorry at best. You can’t really fix any bug unless you can replicate it, see it with your own eyes, peek inside and finally see that it’s fixed.
And with bug reports from Linux players is just something else. You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem. You just don’t get that kind of engagement from anyone else.
Worth it? Oh, yes - at least for me. Not for the extra sales - although it’s nice. It’s worth it to get the massive feedback boost and free, hundred-people strong QA team on your side. An invaluable asset for an independent game studio.
Did you mean image transcription?
This made me so happy, you wouldn't imagine.
imagining right now really hard
Okay now how many of the other reports were windows specific problems?
I am guessing all of them is it was game running through protonEdit : the game seems to have a linux native version
Nice.
This is so true. You somehow learn to find and report bugs, also in a way that makes sense.
Great to see this perspective from a developer and it totally makes sense. I think the Firefox browser has encountered essentially the exact same thing. Linux support may be a strategic advantage for devs that embrace it.
That does not mean that every developer will find the same thing though. Proton and Unity have many, many Linux specific ( or at least non-Windows ) bugs I am sure. It would be easy to bemoan these. It takes a different kind of mind-set to see working around these kinds of issues as valuable. Even rarer are devs that take the opportunity to address bugs in the underlying tech ( outside the game - eg. in Proton ).
I suspect though that many non-Windows bugs are actually due to defects in the game. They are just not manifesting yet or in the same way. The fact that Linux exposes these is again an opportunity in the way the author of this post points out.
In other words, cross-platform deployment is an opportunity for a stronger product. Access to an engaged community with strong communication skills and technical chops is a bonus.
Hopefully more devs start to see the world this way. Great article.
Why post periodically disappears from active?
Maybe if you added more details to your bug report you get some answers.
It happens both with jerboa and default web client.
I'm no expert but i'd guess it is because most games are made for windows and then afterwards made linux compatible
That's true. But I won't hold my breath as the bar getting low to get a better&better out-of-the-box experience on linux (and it's good), it will bring its lot of smelly gamer on their racing chair which don't care usually, they don't mind to exec this fishy binary to get 5fps. They will come by simple fact that MS, eventually, would have been too far in BS in their Ai-Ads-OS.
Just check this community on YouTube, Twitch and forums. Shitting on AAA title which are a monstrosity of complexity but because it fails sometimes, those smelly, pretentious douche can get quite incendiary quickly.
That's why I wish that those tiktok games (apex, fortnite,) never ends on linux.