Haiku as a gaming OS?

Usually Wine really gets under my skin when it’s mentioned with commerical gaming because of Linux users constantly dogging on Microsoft while using their software and libraries to play games that already have Linux ports just because “it runs better!”, and it’s the main reason most games don’t have native Linux ports.

The last news I read about Linux users: Linux Users Better Than Windows Users At Reporting Bugs: Game Dev

So, it turns out, they report more bugs, but not because the system ahs more problems, just because Linux users are more willing to cooperate with developers to fix issues.

If I judge from the Haiku contributors (which I know a bit more), I would say this seems a reasonable claim.

Also, if Wine runs better, why not use it? Saves work for the developpers and it seems the users are happy about using it. So, what is there to complain about here?

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I don’t think there is much conceptual difference between using a linux compat layer or wine layer, many linux “native” ports use libwine under the hood too.

wine runs very well, and lets me play my games, so not really a reason to not use it in my opinion

We need to attract Developer not Gamer to work on Haiku success!

Developers for games = Gamers
Games = More extensive testing of graphics drivers, especially concerning 3D acceleration when we get to that
Testing = Bug reports & fixes
Bug fixes = Better system!

Being a professional developer who does stuff with graphics rendering and low powered devices that have a finite amount of resources…

Users whine and report that games X doesn’t run and go on to every related forum complaining. When asked to help/diagnose and report the issue, user mumbles about time and motivation and makes a vague promise. Nothing is ever filed.

This happens even with Haiku as it is today. What makes you believe adding games will change that? All you will find is a massive shift in the signal to noise ratio.

Users are not good at reporting bugs.

Game developers - time is money. Game developers are not motivated to waste a lot of time on an OS or platform that can’t support their game. Remember, most AAA games are ported, not written on, niche/alt OS. You are probably not going to get the next Far Cry or GTA game written exclusively on Haiku for example.

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Also, lots of game developers will lead to lots of bugreports to Haiku itself, and if the number of people working on the OS itself doesn’t grow, that will just make the time it takes to solve any problem even longer.

Just yesterday I fixed one ticket and discussed about another in the #5xxx range, opened 10 years ago.

If you want Haiku to move forward, we need people to work on the OS itself, not on games. This means finding more people who want to contribute for free (because they are retired and have nothing else to do, because they are super rich and don’t want to get paid, or, most often, because they are crazy like me and think it’s a fun thing to do on weekends in combination wiht another job). Or, we need more people to donate money to hire developers (there’s one being paid already, but we could add more if we were sure there is a sustainable income in the form of recurring donations allowing us to hire someone long term). At the moment, the paid contract we have is not sustainable (it costs more than the yearly donations). So if things stay as they are, it will only last for a couple years.

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Thanks!

yes thats it this will work out…

Many people donate to Haiku because we love it!

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Haiku has a Dolphin emulator for DreamCast games - as well as emulators for the Amiga, 3DO, Nintendo 64, Atari 2600/Jaguar/Lynx, Wii, GameCube and PlayStation 2.

If you played games just from the PlayStation 2 - that is around 10,035 games. Someone can spend months just reviewing, testing, and playing those games on Haiku.

Haiku now provides graphic libraries similar to the PlayStation 5.

Now, you even have a Vulkan 1.2 driver for Haiku.

I can already play almost any sound file on Haiku to listen to Tchaikovsky, Bach, Lang Lang, Mozart…,

Just so our kids can play arcade games like Bosconian and Pac-Man on Haiku…

Not true, or really idealised point.

No, you dont. Stop playing with carrots.

Lying is just wrong. Stop it. Please.

Sounds good, but how to config?

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Prove otherwise, if you know what you are talking about.

Prove Vulkan is available and usable for Haiku, because you stated this.

But let me extend before you state somebody got vulkan working: is it generally available?

I dont know much, i only know you are idealizing things way too much and you let too much space for imagination.But feel free to prove me wrong.

Ok. I accept that. I’ll be more specific.
Forum post:

Vulkan driver, demos, and Swiftshader work are shown on other forum threads…

I didn’t say or alluded to any availability of “3D accelerated graphics through hardware” yet. :grinning:

  1. Lavapipe is Mesa’s software-based Vulkan 1.2 implementation driver akin to LLVMpipe.
  2. The Gallium llvmpipe driver is a Mesa software rasterizer.
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Hi,

Do you encounter some lags in these games or that run fine? Morrowind have a heavy base engine.
What is your systeme configuration?

I think everything except the wip stuff from X512 is basically a wrapper around OGL.
But nevertheless, saying that Haiku have

Is just not true. Every 3D lib is similar in some extent to the one probided by PS, but what exactly do you try to say with that?

Also saying

Is wrong because Vulkan is not available for Haiku, not even in nightlys.

I dont understand why do you feel the urge to state non-existent features available, but your statements can cause misconceptions, and while Haiku needs more advertisements, the ads should not based on subjective opinions. At least the ads about the features.

Otherwise we could say: “Haiku have 3D and even 4D+ acceleration, just nobody wrote it yet.”

It is true, right?

It’s true that the plumbing under the hood has a lot to do with the performance of the system. Like it or not, a well-performing system will attract the type of users that you seem to be hoping to avoid.

My MorphOS box is a single-threaded PPC G4. That won’t hold me over forever. After overhauling an object-oriented framework in ECX (a version of AmigaE for PPC), it’s unlikely anyone will ever use it. I just uncovered a bug in the smallSet data structure that’s been there for about 10 years that prevented me from using a related piece of code and from releasing the whole thing. What was that piece of code? A text-adventure creation toolkit. If it were used by other people it might have been found sooner. It might not necessarily have been found by me either.

Regarding OS plumbing:
Sometimes all it takes is another set of eyes. Other times it takes years of being shelved. I’d prefer the former as well as you do but if code isn’t used, there won’t be motivation to find the bugs. Financial incentives would be nice too but if code is shelved and nobody uses it, it becomes bitrotted all too quickly.

Why do you use code in an operating system? It’s a shared resource used by applications, pure and simple.

I’m not trying to avoid users, I’m trying to avoid bringing them in too early and not being able to support them.

As for “shelved” code, currently a large part of the needed code (3d acceleration) does not exist at all, and the other parts already get a fair amount of use from our current users, for example through WebKit (what I see most) and I guess also through all other ongoing efforts: Qt port, new platforms, native apps like Medo, and so on.

I don’t feel the need for attracting users with different needs and desires right now, it seems we could attract more users who need what we already cover, first.

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