14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has just published as open source the “Direct3D to OpenGL abstraction layer,” which is the result of its work made for porting Dota 2 on the Linux platform.
Dota 2 has been in development for quite some time, and Valve probably didn't start thinking that it would make a Linux game eventually. The game was built using D3D technology, which is the basis for DirectX, in this case 9.0c, the one used in the old Windows XP.
While porting the Dota 2 game to Linux, the company had to develop a new technology that would enable it to make this particular task easier. This is how the Direct3D to OpenGL abstraction layer was born.
As any good Linux developer does, Valve released it as open source so that other developers get to use it and port their games.
According to the developers, the Direct3D to OpenGL abstraction layer is taken directly from the DOTA2 source tree and supports a limited subset of Direct3D 9.0c, a bytecode-level HLSL to GLSL translator, and partial SM3 support (shader model 3).
“This most likely won't build by itself and is provided as-is and completely unsupported. Feel free to use it for your reference, incorporate it into your projects or send us modifications,” reads the announcement on GitHub.
We can only hope that the technology will also help other developers bring even more titles to the Linux platform.