Game OS

Let's say someone decided to release an operating system for personal computers that was designed from the beginning with the primary purpose of playing video games.

What would it be like? What would you base it on?

Other urls found in this thread:

reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/1g09rb/golden_tee_2013_runs_linux/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BareMetal
github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal-OS/blob/master/os/syscalls/ethernet.asm
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

shut the fuck up and get off this board, a good thread dies for this

Steam OS

Windows

someone actually did, don't remember the name or features
it would just maximize resource availability.
ninty's done it.

>Windows for Games

This has existed a couple of times. With the Dreamcast and the Xbox.

A desktop version could be pretty cool, but right now it would just be Windows 10 with different window dressing.

You mean like console OSes? Because consoles are just PCs with standardized hardware and an OS designed for gaming. At least modern consoles are, my understanding is that older consoles actually ran the game as the OS.

>You mean like console OSes?

No. In this case I mean an OS that is designed to run on traditional PCs with interchangeable components.

But such an operating system would need a design that would lend itself to console style PCs built for the purpose of playing games like the steam boxes.

So a console OS, but it just has to cover more ground?

What's the fucking point then.

Steam OS?

Well then, the underlying OS would be like a console OS with more hardware support and a slightly different UI. The Xbox One OS actually runs the games in a virtual machine, which I assume is so that it's easier to maintain forwards compatibility with Xbox One games on future consoles. So maybe do something like that.

To capture the PC gaming market and expand it.

The whole reason why consoles exist is because there is no fuss about changeable hardware shit.

Your literally just asking for a shitty PC with a less versatile OS.

Which is what Steam Machines already do anyways.

But the PC gaming market is already great without the need for a dedicated gaming OS. Most people wouldn't want to turn their entire desktop into a big console, they want to be able to do other things such as send email and watch Youtube videos and write text files and such.

Most OSs have fairly low overhead that leave a lot of resources leftover to play games, especially if you run a Linux system with a lightweight desktop environment.

In order to capture and expand the PC gaming market it would be a better idea to build better tools for game development like Unity and UE4 and such and have them seamlessly support Windows, Linux and OSX (I know Unity somewhat does this already).

There are advantages to the PC over the console, which I shouldn't have to repeat here. That's what the Game OS will emphasize.

Do you even know what an operating system is? Or why they exist?

>they want to be able to do other things such as send email and watch Youtube videos and write text files and such.
You'd still be able to do those things.

I do and I don't see the need in this thread to say things everyone here already knows.

I don't think you do.

reddit.com/r/LinuxActionShow/comments/1g09rb/golden_tee_2013_runs_linux/

ok guy, I am not going to write a description of an operating system for you. If you don't like the thread just go to another.

>You'd still be able to do those things.
Then there is pretty much no difference between a typical desktop OS and what you're describing.

The only problem with PC gaming right now is retarded devs refuse to learn how to build portable games (it is NOT fucking difficult to create a game that runs on both Windows and Linux) or they refuse to open up their code for others to make portable for them.

You really don't know.

Steam OS is exactly what you described.

Steam OS goes too far in the direction of trying to emulate consoles, and is too concerned with being open source. If a video gaming OS could ever take off it would need to have proprietary elements.

steamOS does have proprietary elements.
They call it DRM.
ffs saged

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BareMetal

The difference would be aspects that are important to games would be integrated directly into OS instead of being layered on top of it. So you would not have different game services using different front-ends and networks like Steam vs Origin and the necessity to learn how to use each of them and apply different utilities for each, it will all be the same. And some things would get more attention and be easier to use, such as the equivalents of Nvidia control panel and Catalyst Control Center. In a typical OS these are clunky. There is much room for improvement there.

>dat dubdubtrip
>dat pun

what benefit would this have over a general operating system like windows 7. you have a much larger problem with software fitting the interfaces exposed by your OS than building the OS itself.

Those are part of the games and services, not the OS. No matter how much you parrot the idiotic "Sup Forums hates games" meme it won't do a thing to stop me from making threads here.

Shut up, r*ddt.

>concerned with being open source
>uses DRM

Xbox / PlayStation
Fucking illiterate prick

The main benefit would be the operating system would be designed for playing games to begin with, rather than as an afterthought which has been the stand up until now. SteamOS is a good try but I have issues with how it is trying too much to be an open console OS rather than an OS for personal computers.

The Xbox and PlayStation are not PCs. Not in the commonly understood sense.

Windows 7 embedded with all the vc++ redists and dx support. Remove unneeded shit like indexing, wbem.

>tfw hobbyist hand-written some assembly is more beautiful and well-documented than the linux kernel

github.com/ReturnInfinity/BareMetal-OS/blob/master/os/syscalls/ethernet.asm

FeeBSD kernel
Bionic lib C
No X11, instead libGL and custom display server compiled into game executable
Game itself would start from VT1 and take over framebuffer

much of what Namco has been doing for over 10 years...

people used to code to the ABI using assembly.C is not as fast but efficiency improved because of error rate decreases, architecture improvement and cross platform standardization.

I understand that video games are an interesting yard(meter?)stick in that they test input, audio, graphical and general processing in a single event loop but I don't feel like this is a particularly special problem beyond the concurrency. Designing an OS for gaymes would be like designing a gun for a special type of round or designing a car for a certain size of driver.

I think has the sanest answer here IMHO but it still feels like a... pursuit of questionable value, even at a hypothetical level.

It's pretty interesting. It would likely be a better candidate for creating a console that represents a technological leap forward than an OS for gaming PCs.

>Sup Forums hates games
Is this true? I'm new on Sup Forums.

they are and you are a retard.

you need proprietary gpu drivers to use steam.
part of the OS.
The OS is done, that you seek.

/thread

SteamOS installs proprietary Video drivers and the Steam client.

...

Os doesn't run programs. CPU runs programs. Optionally the OS provides a layer of abstraction for utilizing system resources (HAL etc) but if you're going to the lengths youre talking that just provide the hardware spec for your standard hardware and make each game boot and use it directly like some arcade games. Or heck make it single game hardware.

>I'll keep my general purpose computer.

Literally the OS of any gaming console.

Xbox is this

You're retarded. The advantage of a pc over a console IS a general purpose operating system. I'm not going to install some shitty os just to get 3% more performance in whatever game that actually taxes my computer. I spent more than $15 on my computer specifically so I wouldn't have to worry about that.

It's not a particularly special problem. It's a scenario where improvement is going to be picking a lot of low hanging fruit. Making an OS that seeks to correct a lot of the things that currently suck about PC gaming, such as finding and configuring the various tools you need to record and stream your games. The aim would be to make this as easy as uploading a video to youtube.

It doesn't but there is a vocal minority of autists who are triggered by the mention of them because they have insecurities.

I always understood the hostility as Sup Forums hating people who don't understand PCs beyond games. Who measure a PCs value correlated to how well it plays games and seem to extrapolate that their skill in using a computer can be measured based on how well they get games to run.

>my 2c

You actually do not. Your experience will suck, but if you really want to use the open source driver you can do it.

So basically you want a console that has an internet browser game, a word processor game, and an e-mail game?

There is more to an OS than performance numbers. There is the ease of use both for developers and users to consider.

ok but why not build a software suite to do this on existing OSes? They already provide the interfaces to do this and I would argue that current software demonstrates the tendency of the "low hanging fruit" is actually toward the tree of the software devs and less on the tree of the OS devs. What is Linux's gaming problem if not lack of software supporting a demonstrably viable platform?

>much of what Namco has been doing for over 10 years...
might surprise people how many modern arcade units are just plain pc hardware

How is uploading a video of yourself playing a game low hanging fruit?

Gentoo

This.

>What would it be like?
Gay. Faggot OS for faggot users.
>What would you base it on?
The most Jewish code possible. Because it's for people who love paying for timesucks like games.

No, because a console does not have much in the way of interchangeable components, specifically the CPU and GPUs (please do not make a list of exceptions to this idea, I am well aware of them).

There are 1000 things to do with such an OS that would appeal to video gamers. Even small things like integrating keyboard>joypad and joypad>keyboard mapping into the OS instead of needing to go find old third party programs like joy2key to do so. A lot of PC gaming's infrastructure of this type is rickety.

Wangblows 10 literally just added "beaming" to Twitch and YouTube, plus you can already do game DVR

it's called a console you fucking braindead shit-weasel

How are you this stupid

>Steam OS
That's not really a gaming OS more than lunix that boots in to a better UI than Big Picture Mode Steam...

>dreamcast
So the way this worked is the OS was part of your game. not part of the console (like earlier consoles except they weren't really called OSes). So if you were using the official sega kit and wanted best performance you'd use Sega's OS, if you wanted to port your shitty windows game or just felt comfortable in that environment then you'd use the Windows CE OS... If you're a legal homebrew guy, you use the homebrew OS.

>nobody said temple OS...
am i on Sup Forums rn?

>ok but why not build a software suite to do this on existing OSes?
Because then you would have Steam, which depends on working with a variety of other software. Steam has to deal with Nvidia gameworks and control panel. And a lot of people will overclock and run Afterburner too. I don't want all that crap running on top of an OS just to play a game. It would be simpler if it were all part of the OS instead of a collection of disparate software.

>Game itself would start from VT1 and take over framebuffer
Now this is very nice.

These days the assembly that C compilers generate is generally faster than a person's hand-written assembly.

Because even though it may seem very easy for you, it still isn't easy enough. And you don't want to just upload a video, you want to stream it and chat, trades, donations, and other interactivity integrated. It's all there in a dozen forms on the PC already, this would aim to unify it all.

That's pretty good but it's still Windows 10.

>no refutation
zero out of zero

i don't think streaming games is common enough a task for it to be integrated into an OS like this

So you want a PC with a general purpose operating system... with features that prevent it from being general purpose? You are literally asking for a contradiction here.

Wait, you can do stuff with Windows other than gaming?

It isn't popular enough yet. The aim would be to make it so. Aided by a game which has streaming as one of the primary features of playing the game.

Also, think about right now how video filters are becoming very popular. How apps like faceapp can convincingly warp your face into something else. Couldn't all this be integrated into video games where players in them see representations of each other based upon a steaming video feed?

>only runs on the best hardware
A cultured man would make a game that runs on anything.

This

>Also, think about right now how video filters are becoming very popular. How apps like faceapp can convincingly warp your face into something else. Couldn't all this be integrated into video games where players in them see representations of each other based upon a steaming video feed?
i'm not really sure what you're thinking here

It would have a primary goal of playing games, not the -only- goal of playing games. This is pretty simple language to understand, user.

Is the primary goal of Windows, macOS, or Linux to play games. No, it is not. But they can play games can't they? But not very well imo.

This OS would play games well and do other tasks like browsing the internet, watching movies, or organizing your porn well enough to get by.

Players have been making avatars in games for years which look like themselves, but they have to do it manually and there is no such thing as creating a character which has your own facial expressions.

With new technology you can play a character in a game which is much closer to being "you" even scanning your face in real time to make your character appear to other players much more like they are playing with real people.

a cultured man runs witcher 3 at 2 fps on his easy bake oven elitebook with all the settings on low blasting eurobeat in the background with norton high usage notfications.

Yeah I agree, that's what I meant by it not being low hanging fruit. That is just a niche activity, 99% valid humans wouldn't consider this worth spending any time doing/watching/building/buying. That's why it doesn't exist.

666
A cultured man.
All hail

>99% valid humans wouldn't consider this worth spending any time doing/watching/building/buying.

15 years ago people would have laughed at the concept of twitch. Watching other people you don't even know play video games? PAYING them REAL money? You're crazy.

i'm not sure how common that is, i've personally never thought about trying to make a character look like myself

right, so you reckon it would be more common, if it was easier to do. i suppose that's fair enough

No, I just have a job. Gamer culture is a meme, once you hit puberty, you'll realize what a dumb idea this was.

>unify it all.
Trust me, unifying doesn't work without a very real need and demand for unification. Proof: Linux
Linux is even fragmented in important things that affect everyone's life. Why do you think anyone would be able to unify niche things like this?

No I was saying nobody made it easier to do because there is no demand for it. That, plus the fact that if you are in any way technically inclined, it's already easy enough to do. If a gamer can't figure it out, they're probably retarted.

>If a gamer can't figure it out
are you suggesting a "gamer" is automatically above average intelligence?

I assume they'd be more familiar with how to navigate basic file manipulation and or networking concepts than the average person who doesn't spend their life playing games on a computer. In this case, familiarity is probably more important than intelligence.

good bait

Just read this whole thread, thanks OP I needed this. Was the USB shovel your idea too?

>What would it be like?
Windows.
What would you base it on?
Windows.

DirectX is too useful for video game development. Not that it's impossible without DirectX but it's just much easier and Windows already has it in a headlock

>leave thread for a few minutes
>this asshole is now pretending to be me

annoying

Gamer culture money ain't a meme.

Original OP here and I would not suggest any such thing. You have to make things very, very easy if you want them to catch on. Easier than Sup Forums thinks easy ought to be.

it's already easier than it ever used to be, but i don't believe it's "one click" (not that i've done streaming myself)

It has PCIE and an IOMMU sure, but there is a lot missing. There's no 8259 or 8253 emulation, no 3f8h IO, no ISA bus, and so on. It's a "PC" only to the layman's POV. Which brings us to your post: The less someone knows about something, the louder their opinions of it are.

This

If you understood what an OS was you would realize that modern gaming consoles are just computers that run a specialized type of OS that isn't open to everyone for development.

There is no need to create a 'new' console. It wouldn't revolutionize anything that we can't already do on Linux / Windows / OS X with existing APIs

>What would you base it on?
Windows obviously.