Direct Draw

[what_a_strange_man]

What do people think about the possibility of breaking out the wine D3D implementation into standard unix library's.
This would make it easyer to port D3D games directly to linux via steam.
I know the crysis trilogy runs fine with this implementation.

[olivierfrdierick]

It's easier for (windows) game developers to not worry about linux at all and leave the hard work to Wine developers, which is not that bad since it does a rather good job.
It would be better if game developers would use open software libraries like OpenGL that already exists in linux.

[what_a_strange_man]

I can sympathise with your deflated mode. But I think steam coming to linux changes things.
You would be surprised at just how many titles have been ported over. Most of the GL titles in steam have been ported. The inhibiting factor for many big titles is that they are already writen in direct draw, and naturally its hard to justify rewriting an entire game just to aquire a small market share.

Looking at the situation from a developers point of view.
OpenGL might lack some features but could expand my market share.
Direct draw has some extra features, and might limit my market share. But the publishers don't want to cover linux anyway,and refuse to cover the distribution costs.
Why would I sacrifice *any* feature to cater to a market I can't access?

I think steam changes a lot in this reagard.

[olivierfrdierick]

Whatever. Do you need any help using Wine? This is what this forum is about.