So is it another requirement for developers, Windows, Mac, and Steam? And more importantly will they continue to offer Steam, supporting Mac And Windows games in those OSS environments? Thanks!
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Linux First version of SteamOS to be released Friday
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So is it another requirement for developers, Windows, Mac, and Steam? And more importantly will they continue to offer Steam, supporting Mac And Windows games in those OSS environments? Thanks!
All I'm saying is don't try and install it on a Mac. 
They weren't joking when they said it'd wipe your entire hard drive. It took the entire recovery partition with it too! I had to use the network recovery to get everything back up.
I've never seen a Linux installer do that in my entire life.
It even put me all the way back to Lion, OS X Lion! Not Mountain Lion!
iCloud Keychain works like a charm though once I put back Mavericks, I am so speechless about how NICE that feature is, especially when stuff like this happens.
I would like to think that the benefits of SteamOS will be that it has less going on in the backend. More focus on making the gameplay smoother, keeping your hardware at safe temps, and not much else.
They weren't joking when they said it'd wipe your entire hard drive. It took the entire recovery partition with it too! I had to use the network recovery to get everything back up.I've never seen a Linux installer do that in my entire life.
It even put me all the way back to Lion, OS X Lion! Not Mountain Lion!
iCloud Keychain works like a charm though once I put back Mavericks, I am so speechless about how NICE that feature is, especially when stuff like this happens.
I would like to think that the benefits of SteamOS will be that it has less going on in the backend. More focus on making the gameplay smoother, keeping your hardware at safe temps, and not much else.
Another requirement? Not sure what you mean. it's another OS that developers can choose to port to.
And yes, Win and OS X support isn't going abywhere.
Yes, where a game was Windows and/or Mac before, now it will have to be Windows/Mac and SteamOS compatible too.
At a rough guess you haven't worked in games development
Sure don't. I'm going by what I've read over the years in regards to the porting process, so I'm not claiming any sort of expertise on this.
6. We don't rewrite games from the ground up for the Mac but the devil is in the details and the last 10% is where you fine all the performance and fix the annoying glitches and stability issues. This is the bit you have to do for each platform.
To summarise it's not all the work again by any stretch but it is still a large amount of work.
The way I understand it, APIs such as OpenGL, OpenAL, etc. are common across platforms. Linux OpenGL isn't any different from Mac OpenGL, or Windows OpenGL. So if an engine is written for a common codebase across all platforms, you don't have to port individual parts of the engine. That gives you more time to spend on the tweaking portion, that last 10%.
So while it doesn't make it easy, it does remove a goodly amount of the busywork. Like if you were porting a game from DirectX to OpenGL, you'd have to spend time futzing around with the renderer and audio portions of the engine. But if both are using OpenGL, then that's already done for you, and you can immediately start right on the nitty-gritty platform specific tweaking.
Am I right, wrong, or in-between on this?
Hope that helps explain a few of the fun things you get to deal with in development.
Hey, I'm always up for learning more interesting stuff.
I doubt that will happen for a while--OS X and Linux users make up a tiny fraction of overall Steam users, though as more people get Steam boxes and use SteamOS (or Linux in general) I'd not be surprised to see more games supporting all three major OSes with Steam Play.
The way I understand it, APIs such as OpenGL, OpenAL, etc. are common across platforms. Linux OpenGL isn't any different from Mac OpenGL, or Windows OpenGL. So if an engine is written for a common codebase across all platforms, you don't have to port individual parts of the engine. That gives you more time to spend on the tweaking portion, that last 10%.
So while it doesn't make it easy, it does remove a goodly amount of the busywork. Like if you were porting a game from DirectX to OpenGL, you'd have to spend time futzing around with the renderer and audio portions of the engine. But if both are using OpenGL, then that's already done for you, and you can immediately start right on the nitty-gritty platform specific tweaking.
Am I right, wrong, or in-between on this?
Hey, I'm always up for learning more interesting stuff.
Wrong to in-between.
The API might be the same but the implementation is different on all platforms. For example OpenGL on the PS3 is so slow no games use it at all, having the same API helps but it doesn't follow that the game will suddenly work or the API usage will be optimal for the platform. It does make things easier but the last 10% usually takes up 90% of the time.
Getting a game playable is usually easier if we have used the APIs before the real tricky work is optimising and fixing issues on all cards to get the game to release quality for all card and Macs.
That's why you can get a 90% Wine wrapper for many games that on some cards is mostly bug free but a port takes longer. This is because you need to have it work perfectly for all cards not just OK on one or two. high quality ports take time to do but it does mean you know if you meet the spec you will get a good experience.
Edwin