Portal 2 Beta for Linux officially released(steamcommunity.com)
steamcommunity.com
Portal 2 Beta for Linux officially released
http://steamcommunity.com/games/221410/announcements/detail/1585569369676516320
16 comments
I would like to see the SDK and the 'Authoring Tools' working on Linux.
Has anyone tested to see if it would work with co-op with non-beta players?
Looks like I'm gonna buy a Steam game for the first time.
Reminds me of http://xkcd.com/606/ ... Clearly, there are no downsides!
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Better late than never I guess.
The Enrichment Center is required to remind you that you will be baked, and then there will be cake.
Memes and popular quotes as the top comments. I had to double check the page's URL to make sure I really was on HN.
Oh, man, I love seeing the typical uptight HNer in action. ONLY SERIOUS BUSINESS HERE, GUISE, PLEASE. cries and hides
There are plenty of places on the web to spout memes and references to popular games/movies/whatever, I don't see why we have to bring this over here. It's the very definition of "noise". I also fail to see how the parent's quote has anything to do with TFA, besides being from the Portal game. It offers no insight whatsoever.
I agree with simias. When I want to read memes, popular quotes, etc, I go to reddit or something. When I want to read potentially interesting technological discussions, I come to HN. These aren't the right words, but even if HN is "uptight" and "only serious business", that's pretty much why I come here.
I don't know, as long as it's just one thread I think it's ok to have some fun every now and then.
What's fun about it? It's not like it's an original witty thought. It's just regurgitation. And it's about as palatable to read.
Rest assured that there is absolutely no chance of a dangerous equipment malfunction prior to your victory candescence.
Ohhh goodie I love cake
The cake is a lie!
Misread that as Postal 2 beta (with an "s"), even though Postal 2 for Linux on Steam has been around for a while now. RWS is planning a big update this year, too.
This is good, too, though. I might consider checking it out, though I'm hardly a gamer.
This is good, too, though. I might consider checking it out, though I'm hardly a gamer.
Portal is quite low-stress. It's a really fun puzzle solving game set in a great environment.
I'm not sure Portal qualifies as low-stress.
Viewed just in terms of gameplay, it's low-stress. You can pretty much always stop and think, very few puzzles are timed, very few puzzles come down to "twitch".
On the other hand the antagonist of the game is an abuser, and directs a steadily increasing stream of gaslighting and verbal/emotional/physical abuse at you as the game proceeds. Personally I find it over-the-top enough to just be funny, but YMMV
On the other hand the antagonist of the game is an abuser, and directs a steadily increasing stream of gaslighting and verbal/emotional/physical abuse at you as the game proceeds. Personally I find it over-the-top enough to just be funny, but YMMV
Right, exactly. There are not bad guys running around and shooting at you. You don't have to watch your health bar or manage an inventory. You can save whenever you want. It's easy to play for a short time and come back to it when you feel like it.
Oddly enough I did the exact opposite when they released Postal 2 for Linux.
Awesome. I already played through on xbox, but I've been buying/playing the linux ports of the valve games as they come out to support them.
Got it working on my arch linux laptop with Intel HD 4000 it is super smooth.
This is great news.
This is great news.
Awesome.
I've already played through it on my Gentoo computer using wine but will enjoy playing through it again and doing the online co-op missions when this version is out of beta.
It's a great game, very worth playing if you haven't already.
Best news I got all day. Downloading now. It worked pretty good in wine (atop Arch) for a while, then developed keyboard issues. Hoping to say goodbye to those.
So there are github whiteknights.
The ridiculous thing here is that they're thinking that they're "protecting" github when github doesn't need at all. Valve is doing free publicity for github by doing that and as I said there, an issue tracker is taking negligible resource from the servers.
The ridiculous thing here is that they're thinking that they're "protecting" github when github doesn't need at all. Valve is doing free publicity for github by doing that and as I said there, an issue tracker is taking negligible resource from the servers.
OP (from github) here.
I apologize. I didn't understand Github welcomed this sort of use. Common cases of hosting other people's infrastructure (e.g. Sourceforge, freedesktop.org, Atlassian, ...):
That being said, I take issue with your assessment of the situation and the criticism. I object to the designation "whiteknight" — I believe I am actually acting quite selfishly. It is in my best interest for Github to continue to be in business as long as possible, to keep hosting open source software for my projects and projects I consume.
The net gains/costs of Github hosting Valve's issue tracker are pure speculation without an insider's view, and I can't pretend to have that. I'm guessing you don't either? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your claim is drawn out of thin air.
I apologize. I didn't understand Github welcomed this sort of use. Common cases of hosting other people's infrastructure (e.g. Sourceforge, freedesktop.org, Atlassian, ...):
* Charity (free) for open source
* Pay-for-use commercial users
That being said, I take issue with your assessment of the situation and the criticism. I object to the designation "whiteknight" — I believe I am actually acting quite selfishly. It is in my best interest for Github to continue to be in business as long as possible, to keep hosting open source software for my projects and projects I consume.
The net gains/costs of Github hosting Valve's issue tracker are pure speculation without an insider's view, and I can't pretend to have that. I'm guessing you don't either? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your claim is drawn out of thin air.
> I object to the designation "whiteknight"
You're behaving in the very definition of the term, no matter how much people might dislike its over-application, and how it's almost applied to anything one does online - you'll excuse my generalization about as easily as you'll accept the term, I'm sure.
You're behaving as if you know what's best for resources you don't even own, nor operate yourself. Why not just let Valve and Github work out policies between each other.
Your knee-jerk is the very essence of vigilantism, albeit online social justice: hence whiteknight. You might not like the pejorative, but it fits perfectly for the action.
Maybe think before you speak? Not everyone needs an activist. Valve and GitHub are big boys, they can fight with eachother - though by the sounds of it they're not fighting at all.
You're behaving in the very definition of the term, no matter how much people might dislike its over-application, and how it's almost applied to anything one does online - you'll excuse my generalization about as easily as you'll accept the term, I'm sure.
You're behaving as if you know what's best for resources you don't even own, nor operate yourself. Why not just let Valve and Github work out policies between each other.
Your knee-jerk is the very essence of vigilantism, albeit online social justice: hence whiteknight. You might not like the pejorative, but it fits perfectly for the action.
Maybe think before you speak? Not everyone needs an activist. Valve and GitHub are big boys, they can fight with eachother - though by the sounds of it they're not fighting at all.
I don't think my actions are as significant as you make them out to be.
> You're behaving as if you know what's best for resources you don't even own, nor operate yourself.
I don't know best — so I file an issue to start the question. This is how you start discussions. An issue/bug report does not always mean "this is a software bug, fix it now!"
> Your knee-jerk is the very essence of vigilantism
Really? Vigilantism is filing a github issue? Lollerskates. I see things that go against my intuition, I file bugs, this is how you make software better. Sometimes the bug reports are invalid shrug. My intuition is usually good. Sorry it was wrong in this case.
> Maybe think before you speak?
This phrase gets thrown around a lot but only when talking to other people. What makes you think that I didn't think before I wrote that? Or that somehow your snide suggestion is more likely to convince me to "think more" before I file future bugs than Github and Valve's professional responses ("we're cool with this, closing")?
> Not everyone needs an activist.
I still think you're making out filing a two-sentence GH issue as waaaaaay more involved or significant than it really is. I'm not a Github activist. I just write code.
> You're behaving as if you know what's best for resources you don't even own, nor operate yourself.
I don't know best — so I file an issue to start the question. This is how you start discussions. An issue/bug report does not always mean "this is a software bug, fix it now!"
> Your knee-jerk is the very essence of vigilantism
Really? Vigilantism is filing a github issue? Lollerskates. I see things that go against my intuition, I file bugs, this is how you make software better. Sometimes the bug reports are invalid shrug. My intuition is usually good. Sorry it was wrong in this case.
> Maybe think before you speak?
This phrase gets thrown around a lot but only when talking to other people. What makes you think that I didn't think before I wrote that? Or that somehow your snide suggestion is more likely to convince me to "think more" before I file future bugs than Github and Valve's professional responses ("we're cool with this, closing")?
> Not everyone needs an activist.
I still think you're making out filing a two-sentence GH issue as waaaaaay more involved or significant than it really is. I'm not a Github activist. I just write code.
Aside from the fact that whiteknight is a pretty stupid term, I think the point is exactly that you lack an insider's perspective. Github is perfectly capable of managing their own policies.
If you were really that worried about it, reporting it to github's CS more privately might have been a better way to go about it. After all, you're in no position to tell either valve or github what to do with each others' resources.
If you were really that worried about it, reporting it to github's CS more privately might have been a better way to go about it. After all, you're in no position to tell either valve or github what to do with each others' resources.
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It's not like github promotes creating issue only repositories. Actually, it is exactly like that. https://help.github.com/articles/issues-only-access-permissi...
I don't get what's the issue. People use github to host things other than code and no one doesn't seem to complain. Why not let them use it to track issues and whatever else? Github != open source. It is an important hub of the open source community, but is not the basis for it. Could you explain (facts, please) more about your take on this? I might be missing something.
What do you hope to achieve with this?
Great news, now just waiting for a Humble Bundle deal with Portal in it.
Curious: how is performance compared to the OSX port? All the Source games I've tried run horribly on OSX compared to Windows on the same machine. Strangely, they play just fine through a Parallels Windows VM running inside OSX, so it can't be the OSX graphics driver's fault. What's going on over there?
I believe OS X has graphics drivers provided by Apple, not by the hardware vendors, so that likely has something to do with it.
Yes — but as I said, running the game in a Parallels Windows VM results in 2x better performance than running the same game natively. The same OSX graphics driver is used in both cases, except the VM has to do extra work! How does that make any sense?
A wild guess would be that OS X drivers contain poor shader optimizer.
Parallels probably work by decompiling DirectX shader bytecode back into GLSL, which is already optimized for OS X shader compiler, therefore there is less burden on the optimizer.
Another example of poor drivers are various GLES drivers on mobile, mostly trivial optimizations can drastically increase the performance: http://aras-p.info/blog/2010/09/29/glsl-optimizer/ and https://github.com/aras-p/glsl-optimizer
Parallels probably work by decompiling DirectX shader bytecode back into GLSL, which is already optimized for OS X shader compiler, therefore there is less burden on the optimizer.
Another example of poor drivers are various GLES drivers on mobile, mostly trivial optimizations can drastically increase the performance: http://aras-p.info/blog/2010/09/29/glsl-optimizer/ and https://github.com/aras-p/glsl-optimizer
I was skeptical, but that first link speaks volumes. Interesting theory!
>The same OSX graphics driver is used in both cases
Are you sure? I'd think it isn't passing function calls, but rather direct hardware access. I might be wrong.
Are you sure? I'd think it isn't passing function calls, but rather direct hardware access. I might be wrong.
Not 100% sure, but I was under the impression that unlike Windows (?), OSX simply does not allow you to have direct hardware access. (Plus, if Parallels was accessing the hardware directly, how would you be able to run the VM in a window while still doing OSX stuff underneath?)
Either way, there's clearly a way to make the game run significantly faster on OSX, but Valve isn't doing it for some reason.
Either way, there's clearly a way to make the game run significantly faster on OSX, but Valve isn't doing it for some reason.
I can't speak to OSX, but on linux I know that virtualbox likes to install kernel modules into the host. If your VM does that, then it should be able to get direct hardware access.
VirtualBox on OS X uses an installer, instead of being a .app you can drag to your Applications folder, so I assume it does as much.
VM software will not ship with drivers for all potential GPUs.
They use the platform graphics APIs like any other app.
They use the platform graphics APIs like any other app.
i'm guessing you're talking about a discrete graphics card right?
i can't really give you an answer on this, but if i had to guess i'd say it works better on anything but radeon cards(but then again are radeon cards supported on macs nowadays?)
also, not exactly the same, but still interesting measurements.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu130...
valve worked closely with nvidia and intel to improve the performance and compliance of the drivers. check this out for example http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
i can't really give you an answer on this, but if i had to guess i'd say it works better on anything but radeon cards(but then again are radeon cards supported on macs nowadays?)
also, not exactly the same, but still interesting measurements.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu130...
valve worked closely with nvidia and intel to improve the performance and compliance of the drivers. check this out for example http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/faster-zombies/
I don't have a Mac so can't compare, but on my machine (xUbuntu 13.10, Intel Core i70470K (not overclocked), Asus NVidia GTX 770 2GB GDDR5, 32GB Corsair Vengeance CL10, Corsair M500 SSD 960GB) it runs buttery smooth at full settings.
I'm using the NVidia latest stable drivers (from the NVidia website), which were a pain to install under *buntu.
It actually seems a lot smoother running natively compared to running under Wine. I can't put my finger on it. The frame rate under Wine seems OK. The image looked fine. But it didn't "feel" right.
I'm using the NVidia latest stable drivers (from the NVidia website), which were a pain to install under *buntu.
It actually seems a lot smoother running natively compared to running under Wine. I can't put my finger on it. The frame rate under Wine seems OK. The image looked fine. But it didn't "feel" right.
It wasn't the case for me. Portal 2 worked fine on my Air with Intel HD 4000 graphics. Well, I didn't beef it up to maximum detail level, but it ran pretty smoothly.
nice, but i wonder why they took so long to release it after all the other source engine games.
Portal 2 runs a different branch of the source engine. Here is an (incomplete) list of the different branches.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Engine_bra...
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Category:Engine_bra...
Has got to be either low priority or technical limitations. I guess a Linux port of Portal 2 isn't likely to provide returns anywhere close to PC sales, so it may not have been approach furiously by Valve.
I also wouldn't be surprised if there were some DirectX specific stuff in there that wouldn't easily make the transition to OpenGL either. Not to mention all that driver testing they would have to do...
I also wouldn't be surprised if there were some DirectX specific stuff in there that wouldn't easily make the transition to OpenGL either. Not to mention all that driver testing they would have to do...
Likely technical; the last three major source games to be ported were Dota2, this and Counterstrike: Global Offensive (as yet not running on Linux), which were their three newest games, and presumably used their shiniest, glossiest versions of the Source Engine.
I'd imagine that CS:GO would have been prioritized much higher if it was purely a business decision, given it's still high up in their top-played games; Dota2, likewise, is their top played, flagship title, so if it was a pure business decision, that would surely be #1 instead of third-last.
I'd imagine that CS:GO would have been prioritized much higher if it was purely a business decision, given it's still high up in their top-played games; Dota2, likewise, is their top played, flagship title, so if it was a pure business decision, that would surely be #1 instead of third-last.
Since it had an OSX port already I don't think it would be anything DirectX left. I'm betting it was expected sales and/or driver issues on linux. I know it's been recent that some of the features I think they're using for portal 2 were supported in open source drivers.
> I guess a Linux port of Portal 2 isn't likely to provide returns anywhere close to PC sales, so it may not have been approach furiously by Valve.
The same can be said of Left 4 Dead 2 and Half Life 2... so why Portal 2 was released so late versus those 2 ?
The same can be said of Left 4 Dead 2 and Half Life 2... so why Portal 2 was released so late versus those 2 ?
It's hot to be the world portals, right? That's a fairly huge feature specific to that version of the engine.
Sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to say.
"It's got to be the world portals, right? That's a fairly huge feature specific to that version of the engine."
The keys are adjacent...
The keys are adjacent...