A separate ports tree for games? (GPorts)

[Espionage724]

Sony already did the heavy lifting, but I'm in no rush to buy a PS6. I don't have the money for a new toy like that, and I don't have political motivations to do that just because PlayStation is based on FreeBSD. Send me a PS6 for Christmas, buy me some sushi to snack on in between gaming sessions, teach me how to cheat their billing system, and then I'll think about joining the efforts to entertain the masses that can't pay upwards of $1,000 USD to be entertained for hours and days while waiting for the next handout from the rich and generous.

I know Orbit OS more for Playstation (still FreeBSD but even Sony obscures it). PC gaming is a way different vibe than console gaming, and what better OS to do it on than one you can understand like FreeBSD!

 

[astyle]

The idea here is to provide an autonomous distribution utility that's not entirely anchored to the system and/or the main ports tree. This frees up the ports committers from doing the heavy lifting; as I imaging this sort of thing would evolve and change rapidly. A community led effort with a separate medium of communication and advertising.

Yeah, every distro hopper says that. This is nothing new, just the next user trying to stir the pot using buzzwords and superficial impressions. If you're pissed at that, back up your words with relevant accomplishments that you know will impress anybody's socks off. As Linus once famously said, "Talk is cheap, show me the code!". As an example, on these Forums, there's someone who forked XLibre and has his own repo in an attempt to make it work on FreeBSD. Not only that, the guy actually put in some work to actually make it work on FreeBSD, like compile it, making it run, and fix a few bugs - all under his own steam. I did remark that I'm not a fan of XLibre, and that I don't see a future for it, and that I'm a Wayland proponent. Even with that, after I saw the efforts that the guy put into making XLibre work on FreeBSD - I have a ton of respect for the guy, and don't challenge him and his words any more.

Unless Beastie7 can show something similar for his proposal, a similar kind of effort, and have some results - unless we see that kind of thing in here, the proposal being discussed in this thread is gonna be buried.

I hadn't gone into implementation details yet but i'd like the tools to be a little more intuitive than poudriere. Tooling should be bundled in with the service. (ie. ravenports).

Yeah, words of someone who never played with Poudriere, just read random commentary and now pretending to be an expert. Show that you actually know something.

You've been living under a rock. Nobody uses mailing lists for anything gaming related.

I'd suggest dialing that back. I really look down my own nose at people who strike that tone in their commentary.

 

[Maturin]

Yeah, there is no lack of fancy ideas.
I almost daily stumble over some "I made a project about..." And all you get is just a raw sketch of a cover containing empty pages, probably never filled.

This thread started with its name "A separate ports tree for games"
Pointing out this already exists was wrong.
Then it was proposed to start a mailing-list.
Pointing out this also already exists rated me, not the one who proposed the mailing list, as some kind of a fossil. (While I was looking into it I found out that this mailing ain't not dead at all. Newest entry was two days ago. But maybe fossils don't know nothing about how gaming today works at all.)

So for sure it's also wrong to point out first to consider to contribute to what there already is being done, to get better gaming on FreeBSD, like for example: mizuma, which I personally rate as the most promising project to get non-native games running on FreeBSD, instead of discussing new vague ideas about starting the 17th sideshow.

 

[SirDice]

Steam is on a steady downhill

That's not what the graphs are telling me. The number of users has been growing quite steadily. It may have had some dips here or there, but overal the numbers are rising.

 

[cracauer@]

Steam is living on borrowed time. It is held together by a sane and relatively user-friendly owner.

The moment there is a leadership or ownership change the general enshittification of the Internet will cover Steam.

 

[Beastie7]

That's not what the graphs are telling me. The number of users has been growing quite steadily. It may have had some dips here or there, but overal the numbers are rising.

Not so much the numbers, but recent controversy and the reputation around the platform. It just doesn't make for a good user experience for game users/devs. That's on top of the DRM nonsense that it's plagued with. I'm not sure if you're aware of recent news, but here's a few examples;

The censorship on Steam is coming for everyone on the internet

Game developers are being denied early access, while others are struggling to get paid in the saga involving Steam, Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal

www.polygon.com

Payment Giants Force Steam to Remove Games, Sparking Censorship Concerns - Brave New Coin

Steam, the world's largest gaming platform, removed hundreds of games in July after credit card companies threatened to cut off payment services. The move has sparked a heated debate about who controls what people can buy online.

bravenewcoin.com

The antitrust lawsuit against Steam is now a class action, and that could have big repercussions for Valve

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2021, now encompasses "all persons or entities" who have sold games on Steam since 2017.

www.pcgamer.com

Naturally, when you're the ubiquitous distributor of games for PCs; your numbers can only go up. That's not really the point here though.

 

[zzfs6]

How would GPorts address paid games? I think even if you got/ported games to the tree many devs would be reluctant to give away their games, much less companies.

 

[Espionage724]

Naturally, when you're the ubiquitous distributor of games for PCs; your numbers can only go up. That's not really the point here though.

I'm wondering how a separate ports for games would be helpful:

How would GPorts address paid games?

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I run proprietary/paid games through Wine, and download Steam games through SteamCMD. I play more proprietary games (Xonotic's nice but UT99 is better ) Basically, I game on FreeBSD with Wine, but don't know if I can directly contribute anything with that with FOSS games on Ports.

 

[zzfs6]

I didn't know about SteamCMD, might need to try that out...

It sounded to me like GPorts would be a full replacement for Steam, but I fail to see how the "free" part of FreeBSD would mesh with the inherently not free nature of game markets. GPorts wouldn't get off the ground without a fundamental change in the gaming market (i.e. wayyyy less Windows, favor FOSS), which sad to say I don't think would come from the FreeBSD community.

However I think that maybe a Wiki similar to ProtonDB or WineDB with more detailed install and troubleshooting instructions could do a lot of good.