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Comment by dagmx

3 hours ago

For reference , Fex is a translation framework for x86 to ARM much like Apple’s Rosetta2 and Microsoft’s Prism.

Valve sponsor development as it’s also the way the new Steam Frame supports x86 games. It’s also being used (as a fork) in Crossover Beta to replace the use of Rosetta2.

11 comments

dagmx

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MiroslavPokorny  2 hours ago

Why doesnt Stream require their binaries to be compiled to some bytecode and transpiled during the install ?

THen they wouldnt require any emulator for any new compiles.

  • swiftcoder  2 hours ago

    > Why doesnt Stream require their binaries to be compiled to some bytecode and transpiled during the install ?

    They still have to support the entire back-catalog. It's not reasonable to expect thousands of existing games to port to ARM

    • DanielHB  1 hour ago

      This is what Android does with Dalvik/Android Runtime. Apps you download from the store are compiled to bytecode that is then compiled to native code at installation time.

      With the compilation making use of the native instruction set supported for your device, so it can make use of newer arm instructions on newer devices while still supporting older devices.

      This is the major reason app installation is so slow in Android compared to iOS (which pre-compiles everything). But it also greatly improves app compatibility with older versions.

      There is no way Valve would be able to convince all the myriad of game engine developers to support a proprietary (or even open source) bytecode format even in the future. Best they could do is make it an opt-in.

      Android only pulled it off because Google provides the "engine" (Android SDK) for all apps made for the platform and it did from the start.

      And even so, most Androids games actually bypass this system entirely and just hand-compile to native binaries anyway. Because, again, the game engines don't want to support this bytecode format and google doesn't offer a C++ toolchain themselves that the engine developers could integrate with.

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  • rwmj  2 hours ago

    I don't know, but assumed that Valve doesn't require studios to recompile their software or use any special tooling, it's basically just packaging of existing executables. This is also why they do Windows on Linux emulation.

  • account42  1 hour ago

    Because even with their effective monopoly they don't have the power to bully developers into doing whatever suits Valve. And it would be disastrous for the industry if they did.

  • cwillu  1 hour ago

    Several games in their library are actually just game updater/launcher binaries, which manage their associated game assets and binaries externally.

  • matheusmoreira  2 hours ago

    Existing games will not be recompiled for the new bytecode target, and they want all of those games to work regardless.