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AMD wants to improve gaming in Linux and Steam boxes

LtMatt

LtMatt

LtMatt

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Yes please!! :cool:

Around 50 games have been developed or will be released soon using Mantle tools, with more in the works. Beyond Windows, AMD sees a vast opportunity to “reveal the goodness of gaming” in Linux, said Richard Huddy, gaming scientist at AMD.

The company has received requests from developers to port Mantle to Linux, Huddy said. AMD over time will dedicate resources to the task, Huddy said. AMD hasn’t provided a time frame for when Mantle-based games for Linux will become available

Mantle could also come to Steam boxes, which are gaming consoles with PC hardware and Linux-based SteamOS. The highly anticipated Steam boxes were conceptualized by Valve, one of the world’s largest game sellers.

“It could provide some advantages on Steam boxes,” Huddy said. “We are getting requests to deliver this high-performance layer.”

With the help of Mantle, games on Steam consoles could take full advantage of hardware features on graphics cards. Windows currently offers a better gaming experience than Linux, but Steam could change that.
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Full Article
http://www.networkworld.com/article...ux-and-steam-boxes-with-its-mantle-tools.html
 
Interesting, but porting an entire API to Linux distributions is non-trivial and would require a lot of time and resources. There's a reason why many developers don't release their games on Linux and that's because it is no easy task to port their DX code to the OpenGL currently required by Linux.

However, if AMD stick to their word and manage to make Mantle compatible with Linux-based Operating Systems then that could be interesting - it would mean developers wouldn't need to mess around with OGL porting and instead port from their Windows based DX code to Mantle which is somewhat easier, or so I've heard.

It's early days yet though, and it will be interesting to see whether AMD stick to this path given the considerable hurdles along the way.
 
If mantle came to SteamOS and that ment every game released on the OS supported mantle I would switch now from Windows.

Dual boot SteamOS for gaming, windows for everything else in between.

Rocking :)
 
So, if AMD do port Mantle to Linux does that mean that any game made with Mantle is automatically compatible with both Windows AND Linux without any further tweaking??

If so, VERY interesting...
 
JediFragger said:
So, if AMD do port Mantle to Linux does that mean that any game made with Mantle is automatically compatible with both Windows AND Linux without any further tweaking??
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No, not without tweaking, the developer would still have to do some sort of porting between APIs and OSs, simply because it would require too much time and too many resources for any game development studio to work on coding their game for 3 different APIs at the same time (DX11/12, Mantle for Windows, Mantle for Linux).
 
AMD put up a massive blog post about Mantle and porting, which i covered in my Gamers Guide To Mantle thread. However they did not mention Linux porting at the time.

3NhKYRZ.png


Source
http://community.amd.com/community/amd-blogs/amd-gaming/blog/2014/05/28
 
PhysicsMan94 said:
No, not without tweaking, the developer would still have to do some sort of porting between APIs and OSs, simply because it would require too much time and too many resources for any game development studio to work on coding their game for 3 different APIs at the same time (DX11/12, Mantle for Windows, Mantle for Linux).
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But don't they already now? Ps4, xbox and Windows all use there own api so what's the difference?
 
shankly1985 said:
But don't they already now? Ps4, xbox and Windows all use there own api so what's the difference?
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I believe the APIs used in consoles (the "next-gen" ones at least) are very similar to DirectX, in-fact I think the Xbox One uses an API which is effectively the same as DX anyway. But, indeed, if they already develop for all these platforms then it's unlikely that they will want to develop for yet another one.
 
Ps4 and ps3 used there own api think it was close to openGL
Xbox one is using its own directx but not like pc directx dx12 is when it will be alike.

You them have say openGL, dx12, Mantle still only three.
 
PhysicsMan94 said:
Interesting, but porting an entire API to Linux distributions is non-trivial and would require a lot of time and resources. There's a reason why many developers don't release their games on Linux and that's because it is no easy task to port their DX code to the OpenGL currently required by Linux.

However, if AMD stick to their word and manage to make Mantle compatible with Linux-based Operating Systems then that could be interesting - it would mean developers wouldn't need to mess around with OGL porting and instead port from their Windows based DX code to Mantle which is somewhat easier, or so I've heard.

It's early days yet though, and it will be interesting to see whether AMD stick to this path given the considerable hurdles along the way.
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Nonsense, not least because the majority of major engines support openGL.

The reason most games don't get ported to Linux is there are very few gamers. If you pay a team of say 8 guys to port a game taking several months and likely requiring on going support, it can cost a fair whack, for windows with millions of gamers, it's a relatively easy choice. The main reason it is not done on those few occasions is because either Sony or MS are paying a dev extra to keep it more exclusive to help encourage console sales.

Paying potentially hundreds of thousands, when it could be a few thousand gamers rather than several million who actually want to buy the game makes it a very expensive process for very very little return.


Porting an entire API isn't trivial, but it's not incredibly difficult either. But there is no point porting a half finished project, then basically doing all the work over and over again. It will get done when the final release is out, maybe a small team starting closer to that time with a very close to final version.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Nonsense, not least because the majority of major engines support openGL.

The reason most games don't get ported to Linux is there are very few gamers. If you pay a team of say 8 guys to port a game taking several months and likely requiring on going support, it can cost a fair whack, for windows with millions of gamers, it's a relatively easy choice. The main reason it is not done on those few occasions is because either Sony or MS are paying a dev extra to keep it more exclusive to help encourage console sales.

Paying potentially hundreds of thousands, when it could be a few thousand gamers rather than several million who actually want to buy the game makes it a very expensive process for very very little return.


Porting an entire API isn't trivial, but it's not incredibly difficult either. But there is no point porting a half finished project, then basically doing all the work over and over again. It will get done when the final release is out, maybe a small team starting closer to that time with a very close to final version.
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You've taken what I said:

- "non-trivial"
- "no easy task"

and turned that into

- "nigh on impossible"
- "incredibly difficult".

What I said is accurate, it is non-trivial to port to OpenGL and that is part of the reason why the majority of developers don't do it.
 
PhysicsMan94 said:
You've taken what I said:

- "non-trivial"
- "no easy task"

and turned that into

- "nigh on impossible"
- "incredibly difficult".

What I said is accurate, it is non-trivial to port to OpenGL and that is part of the reason why the majority of developers don't do it.
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that is pretty funny - he said what you said was "nonsense" then went on to say exactly what you had said :D
 
ElliorR said:
Lt, you're such an AMD fanatic I truely believe you'd bleed red if cut :)
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My blood is red, of that there is no doubt. I'm very enthusiastic about Mantle though. It's hard not to be when i see first hand every day the performance it offers on my setup. :)
 
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