Moping Doesn't Lead to Games [LWN.net]

Moping Doesn't Lead to Games

Posted Aug 20, 2006 7:00 UTC (Sun) by piman (guest, #8957)
In reply to: Moping Doesn't Lead to Games by GreyWizard
Parent article: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

> five years ago you would have been moaning about how far behind free desktop systems are.

I've been running exclusively free desktops for the past five years (and I mean exclusively -- only recently did I install non-free firmware, still no Flash, Java, Real, etc). Guess what? I still moan. They're usable; that doesn't mean they're not behind, and certainly they were five years ago.

> Graphics chip sets from Intel (which is committed to free software drivers) are readily available

And useless for modern 3D games.

> But we have to start somewhere. Moping and exaggerating the difficulty of making games won't get us there either.

If you think I'm just moping, or I'm exaggerating, I'd suggest you take a look at http://pydance.org and http://www.sacredchao.net/~piman/angrydd. Now put your money where your mouth is: What experience do you have that justifies your opinion that free games are going to just magically get written without serious changes to how we approach the problem?

If you notice, I keep stating: Professional-quality free games are not impossible. However, they do not exist yet, and no one has any idea how to make them. The games industry has a decade head start on free gaming, and unlike Microsoft in 1995, they're not going to sit still for another decade.

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Moping + Boasting != Argument

Posted Aug 25, 2006 4:39 UTC (Fri) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

> [Free desktops are] usable; that doesn't mean they're not behind, and
> certainly they were five years ago.

Be specific. What can proprietary desktops do that free software desktops can't? Don't point to a lack of proprietary content or drivers. Those are social and poltical problems, not technical ones.

> [Graphics chip sets from Intel are] useless for modern 3D games.

I mentioned this in the context of advanced three dimensional desktop features, for which such chip sets are effective. You have also failed to address the availability of free software drivers for R200 cards which will support many but not all modern games, the promise of more competitive products of this kind from Intel in the near future and the likely convergence of CPU and GPU hardware.

> If you think I'm just moping, or I'm exaggerating, I'd suggest you take a
> look at http://pydance.org and http://www.sacredchao.net/~piman/angrydd.

Proving that game development is hard takes more than pointing to the inadequacy of your own efforts. Since we are discussing the relative difficulty of kernel, compiler and game development you would at least need to point to both games and kernel or compiler features you've implemented to make this relevant. Even if you could do so, that would not excuse dismissing the points I've made without an argument, as you have done.

Argue on the merits and spare me the boasting.

> What experience do you have that justifies your opinion that free games
> are going to just magically get written without serious changes to how we
> approach the problem?

Free software games do get written and some are quite good. I assume you intended to refer to free software games that can compete with the best proprietary games on their own terms. In that case, I never claimed that will happen without changes to how we approach the problem. Read the post you responded to and you'll discover that I said exactly the opposite. Approaching problems in a variety of ways is something the free software community is especially good at.

As for experience that justifies my opinion, I've done elementary graphic design, written OpenGL applications and worked on Linux kernel network card drivers. The first requires pointing, clicking and patience. The second requires a reference book and a reasonable grasp of simple math. The third requires mastery of concurrency, data structures, detailed hardware architecture and then some. A game is more than the first two but a kernel is much more than the third.

> The games industry has a decade head start on free gaming, and unlike
> Microsoft in 1995, they're not going to sit still for another decade.

They're not? That seems to be at odds with prevailing wisdom around the game industry these days. All the serious gamers I talk to say things like: "I think the industry is stuck in a loop. The same old crap keeps coming out." There are exceptions and interesting arguments against this as well, but it's far from clear that the proprietary games industry will be difficult to catch.

We don't disagree about whether current free software games can compete with the best proprietary games on their own terms today: they can't. Our difference seems to be in how we interpret that. Where you see overwhelming obstacles I see opportunity.