Idea #2248: Create a standard gaming platform for linux/ubuntu

This idea is a duplicate of idea #365: Compete with directx.

Written by Ansible the 1 Mar 08 at 18:06. Category: Gaming.
Related to: Nothing/Others. Status: New

Description

Part of the reason game consoles are so popular is that installation of game software is consistent and standard - it just works. Game developers know that when they write a game for a certain platform, they have guarantees about hardware performance, game controller availability, etc etc.

I propose making a similar standard for linux/ubuntu, both on the programming side and the user side.

On the user side, you have
- a standard way of installing software
- a way to evaluate system performance to know which games are compatable.

On the development side you have:
- a guaranteed level of performance
- a consistent set of apis and libs to use.

In addition to this base functionality, it would be good to have a standard way of buying/distributing commercial game software on linux, integrated with the above system. The games everyone complains about not having are commercial. To remedy this, we need to make life easy for commercial game developers on linux. A consistent distribution method and development environment would go a long way towards this goal.

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Comments

AndrewC wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 18:22

This partially includes the tired old request of a unified package management system, which just won't happen. Different distributions are independent entities and there is no way to get them all to agree on how to install software.

leptest wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 19:34

I thought synaptic deals with software installation?

And its up to the game developers to indicate what is needed for a game to run.

Ansible wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 20:02

leptest, that's the problem with game development on PCs. The game developers are forced to support a myriad of different computer hardware and software configurations. That means a lot of expensive testing and support. Each development shop must reinvent the wheel for all this stuff - if there was a way to minimize this pain and expense, that would make linux/ubuntu/whatever a more appealing platform for game developers. To me putting this kind of boilerplate code into an open source project makes a lot of sense. Plus it opens the door to developers that don't have the resources to do all the testing and etc.

I don't mean to imply replacing synaptic with something else; this could be just a front end which uses synaptic on the back end. On another distro with another package system, it could use that.

andrewfenn wrote on the 1 Mar 08 at 20:38

>> On the user side, you have
>> - a standard way of installing software
>> - a way to evaluate system performance to know which games are compatable.
>>
>> On the development side you have:
>> - a guaranteed level of performance
>> - a consistent set of apis and libs to use.

1) We already have a standard way of installing software.. in fact we have more then one.. apt-get, clicking on the deb file, make & install, .run

Installing the software isn't the problem. It's publishers risking to spend investment on embracing the platform.

2) guaranteed level of performance? Oh ok lets stop everyone under a certain hardware limit from using Ubuntu, just so we can have your level of performance. Does that make sense to you? Really?

3) We've already had these for years!

---

Commercial game publishers won't support Ubuntu because there is no profit in it. It has nothing to do with the tools available.

The only thing that would make Ubuntu more appealing is if they were guaranteed to make a profit, it's untested waters and no one is willing to make the first jump.

This is the kind of math a game publisher will do to evaluate a platform..

Possible Customer base = Ubuntu Desktop userbase / Users with usable hardware / users that are gamers / users that are interested in our game

It has nothing to do with the tools and a lot to do with numbers. Game publishers aren't going to invest in a game development company to make a game compatiable/targeted at Ubuntu because it doesn't make economical sense.

Ansible wrote on the 3 Mar 08 at 19:52

This idea disappeared from brainstorm for a while and I resubmitted with I hope a better description. Here's the new one:

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/2538/

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