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Games Entertainment

Linux Games Come Of Age 135

Posted by emmett from the pong dept.
Giant Space Hamster writes "I don't know if you've seen this already, but Gamespot has an extensive article on Linux gaming." Well-written and informative. Click it, baby.
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Linux Games Come Of Age More

Linux Games Come Of Age

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  • One more point:

    I dunno about the rest of you, but it takes my system around 30 seconds to boot up. (Including BIOS, LILO timeout, etc.) It would get VERY annoying to think "hmm - I'll play some Quake right now" and then reboot, wait for the BIOS to boot, check memory, then start booting the game's OS, then play the game. Same time waiting while the game is going down, and back to the system.

    Besides, there are times when I'll be running Windows to do word processing (I wasn't thinking about Linux compatiblity when I bought my WinPrinter...), then I jump into a quick Counter-Strike game, then go back to actually doing work. If I had to reboot EVERY TIME I wanted to play a game, I would play games quite a lot less often.

    (Unless it's Counter-Strike, which I've proven that I am quite willing to boot into Windows to play - but then again, when you're at college, have a LAN, and can often get 20 players (the max allowed) going at once, life is good... And I know Counter-Strike CAN work under WINE, but it's not really playable, IMHO.)

    The bottom line is that it's annoying to have to reboot just to play a game. It's a lot nicer to just be able to jump into a game for a bit and then immediately return to your shell and continue doing whatever.

  • Don't get me wrong, Loki are doing a great job and their developers kick ass, but until their tech support actually goes out of their way to help with something other than just giving dumb answers which rank up with "are you sure the computer is switched on?", Linux gaming is going to be mired in the quicksand of the same kind of hardware problems that used to occur years ago in DOS.

    Are you sure you called the right number for Loki's tech support? :-) I've always found their tech support to be excellent. I'm not familiar with 3dfx cards at all, but when I was trying to set up Myth 2 on my roommate's computer (which has a Voodoo2), Loki's tech support helped tremendously - no hold times, they spent an hour on the phone with me, walking me through building new Glide drivers, troubleshooting stuff, etc. And when I called them asking about an OpenGL driver for Myth 2 (I have a TNT2), the guy said that he knew of a Glide wrapper for TNT2 cards and said he'd let me know. I gave him my email address, not really expecting a reply, and 2 days later he emailed me the URL for the Glide wrapper. They also helped me with a few other issues (relating to running the Quake 3 Arena tools under Linux.)

    They have very good tech support, in my experience. Maybe you got a chump when you called, but that doesn't mean they're all like that.
    --
  • "The day I can walk into a store in my town, and buy any piece of software for linux (besides the OS itself) I'll know linux has arrived. I think that's probably at least a year off though."

    If you mean ANY piece of software, Windows hasn't arrived by that measurement. There are still plenty of software packages that have chosen alternate distribution channels. If you just mean the main stuff, I can walk into Fry's electronics and get it all; Several flavors of Linux, a couple of office suites, games, development tools....

    You can't find a single Linux magazine there, however.

    carlos

  • But for a windows using person that wants to play an old Dos game.... more often than not they have to create a boot floppy that strips out all the windows drivers etc that load at boot time and then start the game. You would be amazed at the extent some people go through to get an old game working right..
  • Installing a Windows game is as easy as double-clicking the setup icon;

    Bet your pardon? While I know this is true of some games, a great deal of Windows games are quite a chore to get working properly. This can involve digging around for compatible (sometimes beta) sound and video drivers, making sure you've got the correct version of DirectX installed, making sure you don't have weird interfering programs running in the background, configuring various 3D graphics parameters either from within the game or from an external app, and downloading subsequent patches that inevitably follow due to the proprietary, buggy development environment that Win32 is loved for.

    It's not as bad as the days of MS-DOS games, but I know quite well that these kinds of problems are very frustrating for non-technical users. (Guess who gets asked to fix them!) It's a far cry from the plug and go simpicity of consoles.

    This sort of ties in with my belief that Linux isn't actually harder to use than Windows, it's merely unfamiliar to those accustomed to Windows.

  • With our desktop to Slashdot strategy, the transition phase has possibilities for future technical advances in generation. Having a verbal knowledge base that is low-risk high-yield, it follows that the alliances (and by the way this is all in my report) are not going to leverage generation resolution. A key driver in this process is horizontal processing, and is NOT going to encapsulate Slashdot, per se. First class catalysts for changes in generation will be fully customizable. The revolution has begun, my friend.
  • I agree about gaming being idiot-proof. Game installations should be quick and painless because the users who play the most games generally don't know the most about their systems. Setting up Quake 3 should not be on the same level as editing a text config file.

    Huh?
    The thing that first convinced me to open up my 286 was when I couldn't use my mouse and my BBS dialing software at the same time. The only reason I called BBS's was to play L.O.R.D. or any of the other games on them.
    Getting Doom II to dial up my buddy so we could play some deathmatch is one of my favorite memories, was such a hassle trying to get that freakin thing to work! But man was it satisfying getting it going.
    Point is, if not for gaming, I wouldn't know everything I do now.
    And think about it, how many gamers DON'T know exactly what mobo/vidcard/soundcard/meg of ram/chipset they have on their PC?
  • While high profile companies like Loki get a lot of press, I've found it pretty difficult for our company to get mentioned. Given the variety and scope of games listed on sites like linuxgames or happypenguin, I would have expected at least a blurb on either site. I even hoped to get a Slashdot posting. But no one seems to be interested.

    I wonder how many other game company startups are out there which make Linux games, that no one will ever hear about.

    Anyway, if you are interested visit us at phantomefx.com. tuxgames.com is accepting pre-orders. A demo version is available on our website as well.

    Jeremy Peterson
    Lead Programmer, Phantom EFX
    http://www.phantomefx.com
  • With the trend of game companies going towards making their products Linux compatible, what about Microsoft? Their Age Of Empires series is very good, but will they make the game Linux compatible?
  • Redhat 6.2 took care of most of it for me, except installing the 3dfx driver rpm. And that was just a download and a couple of rpm runs.
  • How about these reasons for the producer to port --

    All my programmers are more productive on an OS that doesn't crash every time they make a mistake.

    Using open libraries, I can pick up that geek market, which has extra cash and enough ethics to maybe not share my game with the neighborhood (since a bunch of them program for a living).

    I can isolate OS bugs from game bugs -- less test time!

    People who play my games don't like smacking into the blue screen, and I can't control the factors that cause it.

    Hey, look! I got free hype!

  • Have you tried Utah [sourceforge.net] or DRI [sourceforge.net]? Both of these projects appear to be moving right along. I have great 3d support through X 4.0 with a Matrox G400 Max. These both provide direct rendering while running X.
  • .. but they're good classic games like Nethack and Hunt. :)

    Azerov
  • What do you need the an OS running on the hard disk for anyway? There are already good graphical utilities for setting up most hardware. What would be the difference if the user wen't through driver configuration the first time they boot to the cd (or if the boot cd OS read the config files off the HD or a mix of either method). The OS running via the cd could then write/save the settings to the HD with the other datafiles. At that point the game would use whatever API(s) the game was written for.
  • I beta-tested and got the retail version of Heroes III, and I've recently finished all the campaigns: it's well worth the money!

    I'm probably going to get a Matrox G400 for my next computer, in anticipation of future Linux games, so keep porting them, Loki, and we'll keep buying them.

    Now if only I could get FF VII or VIII working, or Ultima IX...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • True. And I found the same with Civ:CTP. I think, however, that they are talking about the stuff that Carmack mentioned: getting a 3D card up and running. That is NOT a simple thing... well, it probably is for you and me and most of the others on /., but your average man on the street? Forget it.

    Usually on Windows games you don't even have to do what you showed. You drop the disc in and it starts going. Any 4 year old can do that. Granted, that makes for some really nasty security under Linux if you need to install something as root, but it would help matters a bit if you could do this. Hell, the Atari 2600, Sony Playstation, and all the other consoles do it. It just makes life easier for the folks who have no friggin' clue.

  • Please note that Windows actually does give a nicely vague message which says something along the lines of "If the problem continues, please contact the vendor" when it GPFs. Doesn't really hint what caused the problem, or tell you in nice term what went wrong.

    Which is lots of fun if you program and keep on GPFing your own programs - hmm, I guess I'd be the vendor. Now why the fsck doesn't this work?

  • I'm neither, and I can install most games given enough time. The problem is not that I'm stupid or clueless, it's that I watch my time and what I spend it on. And I don't want it spent on something the game companies should do for me.

    I'm really starting to hate people who think that if you're "smart" you shouldn't mind spending time on mundane things like setting up 3D. I can do it, I just think it's pointless! Give me back my hour I spent setting it up and let me use it to code something cool and make Linux better!

  • This is just what we need. (Score:4)

    by Signal 1| ( 196903 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @10:34AM (#1024313)
    Finally. I'm glad to hear that there's finally some recognition of the gaming software available for Linux. I can't believe we've gone so long without it. With such great games as Gnome Chess, Minefield, Mah johng, etc., how could this have stayed under the gaming radar for so long? Now, maybe we can finally have Gnome Checkers!

  • OpenAL Hardware Acceleration is the Missing Link (Score:3)

    by Somnus ( 46089 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @10:36AM (#1024314)
    It's simply a matter of time before XFree86 4.x becomes viable for use by everybody; what we need is a similar commitment by the hardware manufacturers (e.g. Creative, which is currently an OpenAL SIG member) to quickly produce OpenAL drivers so that the essential differences between Windows and Linux gaming are the essential differences between the two operating systems.


    *** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***

  • I thought I'd buy a book on "open-source gaming," but it turned out to be one of them books on "open-snatch gaming". So much better, it was.

  • When's the last time you saw a college student buying an operating system? About the last time you saw one purchasing mp3's off of Napster online? Hail Mary, are you off your rocker? Time to turn the computer off and open up the shades, silly boy!

  • IBM's Visual Age for Java came with a slick install that looks and acts very much like Install Shield. I don't think it's that big a deal to do. This is helped a lot by the fact that Linux environments are pretty consistent these days - you can pretty much count on glibc being available, and XFree 3.3.6. The task is made far, far simpler when programs are statically linked, like most of the "big" systems are. Still, that's kind of a cop-out. I'd rather put up with a bit more fiddling with libraries, and be able to install lighter, tighter dynamically linked programs. This imposes some interesting new user-interface requirements on install programs - how do you gently explain to dear user that such-and-such library needs to be updated? The best approach would be to follow up immediately with a "shall I find it on the web, download it, and install it for you now?".

    I have a couple of beefs with install programs in general, though. One thing: it would suck to have to download the entire install program with every package you install. (This is the status quo for Windows, and one of the reasons we get used to *every* program being multi-megabyte, even simple programs like email clients.) I guess what this means is: we need a standard library to support gui-style installing complete with the usual handholding, so the same code doesn't have to be bound redundantly into every package. The package itself should just contain some nice tight script, preferably compiled into bytecodes or some such.

    OK, while I'm getting warmed up to this topic, there really isn't any excuse for failing to compress these install packages. RPM's have some kind of compression, but it's hardly optimal (I just tried compressing a few rpms to verify that). Let's go for the gusto and rely on bzip2 being available - it zips *significantly* better than gzip and pkzip.

    My biggest beef with the glitzy installs I've seen is that they *don't* use the RPM (or any other) database, and so you lose all the nice query capabilities you have, and they don't show up in any of the graphical package management utilities.

    So who is going to be the first to hack up a nice installer that uses RPM (you'd have to do a DEB version as well to cover the bases) and hooks into some nice script engine like Python, and relies on GTK? Sure, it won't work on every system but it will work on *most* of them, and almost all the new ones. Who is going to be the one that builds the Linux installer that catches on?
    --
  • Not a bad idea.. but I got xbill, so I'm happy.
  • This is one of my favorite games right now. I tried playing it under WINE. But it complains that it requires DirectX 6.1a.
  • To an outsider whose eyes are clear of zealotry, the Linux game market looks like this:



    1. There are only a handful of commercial games.

    2. Those games are also available for Windows, so even if I decide to pick up Linux at Barnes & Noble I still have Windows around to play games with. Not sure why I would want to play the Linux version.

    3. The freebie games are pretty horrendously unexciting. Yay! Hundreds of Tetris and Asteroids variants! Does Open Source somehow imply a lack of creativity?

    4. All the nifty games like The Sims and FreeSpace 2 and Roller Coaster Tycoon aren't out for Linux.

    But this is almost identical to the situation we saw when the PC took the games market away from the Apple II, and again when Windows took it away from Dos. Some people see a half-empty glass, some see it half-full. You're right, the situation is exactly as you describe it, but to me that's nothing but good news for Linux.

    let's be honest about this. There are very few reasons to even consider using Linux for games...

    Ah... I beg to differ. The big reason to use Linux for games is because you use it for everything else. Why should I waste disk space (not to mention letting myself in for all that aggravation and possible virus invasions) by having Windows on my system?

    While I'm on the subject, by most accounts there are something like 10,000,000 Linux users already, and doubling every year. All well-educated, generally fun-loving, and generally possessing excellent earning power. That's a no-brainer as far as marketing goes.
    --
  • Good advice this fixed a error I kept getting thanks.
  • 3. The freebie games are pretty horrendously unexciting. Yay! Hundreds of Tetris and Asteroids variants! Does Open Source somehow imply a lack of creativity?

    This question begs for a six page answer - but briefly:

    I think Open Source encourages creativity in programmers by making source code accessible and providing great tools for zero cost.

    But creativity in programming and creativity in game design, artwork or sound work are completely different things.

    Building a quality game by today's standards is an immensley challenging task requiring a pool of multi-discipline resources - not just a talented programmer. There are very few graphic artists and sonic artists using the Linux platform today because there isn't the attraction of great (cheap) tools for them.

    There's also the issue of collaboration. There are now quite well established conventions (and tools) for a distributed team of programmers to work together - CVS, code commenting, etc. This infrastructure doesn't exist for graphic design, for example. As someone who's been the Art Director of a creative team I can tell you creative collaboration on a project is hard enough with your entire team in the same room!

    Anyway, I've only covered the tip of the iceberg here - but hopefully the point is made.

  • With our redeployment of the Linux platforms, redirection of gaming standards, and reduction in principle-centered legacies, Linux empowers the market. During this period of gaming transition, the prospective ongoing support for increased productivity continues to realize the benefits of the strategic turnkey games. For us to grow, we absolutely have to develop more MPOGs. When you're thinking bravely, a quality-assured MPOG interactively builds excellence. The Linux community in general must balance the scalable shared MPOGS in a number of areas in a way that maximizes the resources. The kick-off methods of gaming lead to the empowerment of the coordinate.
    Given current realities, the disclosures are going to raise a flag over the customer/gaming/linux partnership. If you have any questions or concerns, http://www.gamespot.com can hardly help but to bite the proverbial bullet. Now that the merger is complete, the games are going to enable the multimedia based Linux distribution.
  • On most newer games I've played I've rarely come across this problem but I agree that many older games suffered badly from this. Maybe I just don't play crappy games anymore. One of the biggest hassles was Quicktime 2.x. Everyone used it but they all used a slightly different version which had no idea you already had it installed.
  • I hope that the implentation by loki of OpenAL is better then it is for windows. I can't even use it on quake3, it drops the fps by 30-40.

    --
  • What RPMs specifically are you having problems with? Maybe I could give you some help.

    In my personal experience, if an RPM is built correctly, and installed with a simple "rpm -Uhv file.rpm", it will work just fine. Whenever an RPM hasn't worked "out of the box", the problem has always been in an error made by the RPM creator.

    RPM is a great system, but like with any system, if someone doesn't set it up right, it isn't going to work right.

  • I've always found their tech support to be excellent.

    I agree 100%!&nbsp I've purchased four of their games now and I haven't been disappointed by the support in the least.&nbsp I've never tried their phone support, since their NNTP servers or Fenris were sufficient for me.

    And when I called them asking about an OpenGL driver for Myth 2 (I have a TNT2), the guy said that he knew of a Glide wrapper for TNT2 cards and said he'd let me know. I gave him my email address, not really expecting a reply, and 2 days later he emailed me the URL for the Glide wrapper.

    What is that URL?&nbsp I'd love to have that!

  • Damn - what did you use to generate this???

    ---------------------------------
  • linux to overcome macs in the "size of the game catalog" category.

    tcd004

    Here's my Microsoft Parody [lostbrain.com], where's yours?

  • The author haven't said explicitely that the worst problem in Linux is sound not gfx. While X goes for The Great and Easy 3D Support (OpenGL + SDL) and even now it works quite fine in beta audio is more than a year behind. The OpenAl project doesn't have a good starting point. The OSS sound drivers are sluggish a crappy. OSS drivers won't do hardware (or even software!) mixing, it won't do full-duplex and won't provide special efects, terrible. ALSA is better but still suffers from unfinished API -- why do A. Cox let them waste their time -- merge ALSA with kernel!

    I have an alter-ego at Red Dwarf. Don't remind me that coward.

  • I'm looking to purchase a new video card for my Linux box. I'm looking for something not terribly expensive (say $50 - $100 U.S.) that offers excellent support under Linux (my current card is somewhat flaky under Linux) in terms of stability and performance. Any suggestions?
    ----
  • I think the last time I tried it was for a mysql JDBC driver. I'll try it again and see what happens.
  • Ten million Linux users? Where does that number come from. According to most things I've seen it says Linux numbers about 1% of the home market nowadays. That is one percent of about one hundred million which is smaller than your estimate by a factor of ten.

  • Because RPM only knows about other software that was installed through RPM. If you use non-RPM methods to install *anything* that another package might depend on, you'll get dependancy errors later. RPM is optimal for systems where *all* the software is installed through RPM.

  • For answers look to usenet, it has been around since before Rob and Jeff were wetting their diapers...well almost that long. Don't let Linux hype get to you either, the Windows/Intel "stranglehold" hasn't been entirely bad. Without Intel and AMD competing in their clock speed pissing contest we'd still be running around on 200mhz Pentium Pro boxes thinking we were l33t because we had 32 megs of RAM. A free developer-centric OS is probably not going to ever be a real desktop/home champion until someone stops releasing distrobutions of software and actually builds a whole environment around the kernel rather than repacking everyone else's software.

  • The last numbers that I saw for desktop OS's were as follows: (I think this was from IDC)
    Total desktop computers worldwide: ~200 million.

    • Windows 98/95/3.1 = 55%
    • Windows NT/2000 = 32%
    • Mac OS = 5%
    • Linux = 4%
    • Other = 4%

    That puts Linux at about 8 million users...

  • We haver this already, it's called console gaming. The problem with the idea, even though it's a decent idea, is that it requires the video game companies to do massive amounts of extra work in order to release a game. This costs them money that could be better spent on writers and artists. It also reduces the appeal of said game. If I have to reboot my system to play a game and then boot back I'm not going to be a happy person.
  • I'm not a big Microsoftie, but I have worked with Install Shield and there are a couple of points that should be brought up:

    - Install Shield consists of setup.exe (~384k) plus a dll or two, less than half a meg.

    - You can specify an internet location to update the library from in setup.ini. Below is a sample that likely has garbled syntax, as it's been a while.

    [msdao15.dll]
    file=%SYSTEMROOT%\system32\msdao15.dll
    version=1.5.0.1234
    codebase=http://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/msdao. cab


    This section in setup.ini would cause msdao15.dll to be downloaded and installed from the specified package if an up-to-date version were not available.
  • I never said I don't like convienence. I said I can't expect the average Joe User to do what Carmack mentioned. Hell, I know a lot of Linux folk who are scared to death to compile a kernal for themselves. I know even more who don't have sound on their machines because they did not know about the sndconfig program in RH. And these guys are anything but clueless.

    I myself can't wait for the day when USB works perfectly. Right now I have a bunch of USB devices sitting here not being used. Why? Cause I have not been able to get the blasted USB backport to work. I will rejoice and dance around my back yard naked singing "Linus and Alan are Gods!" the day it works.

    Why? Cause I hate doing "mundane things". That's why I use pico and not vi.

  • I think this story points out the real problem with Linux games without actually making the point: there is no significant native game development for the platform. Its all basically about porting games already developed for Windows, or clones of existing games. How can it be that a community which such a depth of talent can't inspire something orginal? Compare it to the Macintosh, which although dramatically reduced, still throws up an original game or two. What gives? What happened to all that creative energy that went into 'open' game environments like MUDs before they became glorified chat-rooms? I would have thought the Linux ethos would have picked up on it and moved it on, but frankly it all seems pretty stale now.
  • The nice thing about linux is the wide selection of most everything. Desktops, utilities, ect. But because of the wide selection of libraries how does a game company decied which ones to use?

    The concept of building one program off another programs code is great, but then someone has to have both to run one, and the correct version level. I am not against choice, but if there is to be a greater movement towards linux and games some solid standards have to be created.

    If all the distributions could have a commen set of core libs and maybe decide on an installation system that would be a start. I don't think installing in linux is open heart surgury, but it has on many occasions for me been a pain.

    I wonder if the people who make install shield has conciderd making a installer for linux?...
  • That's true, but how often have you had to install a new driver for windows in order to get the best resolution/speed etc.. people often forget that there are problems getting games going on Windows too in a lot of cases. I still can't play Quake III on my work machine - have GL drivers, should work, doesn't - I can't figure out why. I tried to install Chessmaster at work, again, does not work. Took me a bit of work to get X4.0 going with support for my Matrox on my home machine, but at least I can play Quake III on it. Of course, when you are looking at simple (non-3d) games - it's pretty darned easy to get it going on Windows, but it was pretty damned easy to install RR2 as well :-)

    Windows 2000 machine at work, someone had said that this was a good gaming platform. My experience says definately not.
  • Warning, OT:

    The real coming of age for linux on the game arena is probably not based on easy installation and configuration of the latest trend in game wizardry. Same goes for linux's coming of age as THE desktop platform requiring easier installation and configuration for office apps. For some reason linux lovers have deviated ourselves from the original path that took us where we are. blame it on CNN and IBM for liking us, but all the publicity and capital has made as much bad as it has made good.

    why is linux good? hmm let's see:
    it's rock solid, but so is solaris and AIX.
    It's free? nah, that's the downside (otherwise it would have been popular 3 years ago)
    It's the open source movement stupid!: Linux is great because people relate it to OSS. It's popular because of apache, sendmail, samba, gimp, slashcode, etc. But that has nothing to do with MS Office or running the latest windows game!!! (i'm I the only one that thinks this way?)

    my frustration level has been steadily increasing with the latest versions of everything that's been done for linux: New, the latest and greatest database system, made to look exactly like oracle!! New and improved desktop environment, it even smells like a window!. I've been sneaking out of meetings, leaving work early, investing precious time in learning everything i can about everything related to developing open source stuff, but every time i feel more and more alone. I don't want an open source powerpoint or an open source oracle, I want open souce AI.I want an open source desktop environment using an open source 3d rendering engine designed for 3d accelerators complete with mouselook and strafe. I want open source search server software that would learn from queries and would spend all day gathering relevant informaiton for me. I want a simple open source word processor that talks html natively to my web server so that i can write letters directly to a url. I want an open source spreadsheet program that is really an interface to a postgreSQL database and presentas and manipulates relationships intuitively (using the open source 3d environment).

    Games? well my point is it's not about doing what the others do. that's not what made linux great. it's about being innovative (copyright Microsoft, 1999). how great would a strategy or role playing game be if it was developed by the best players and hackers around on an open source environment? we're good at making new, innovative things, not at making carbon copies of other people's work. That's what's changed. was lotus123 on an IBM PC easy to use for the accountant upstairs? no! some sysadmins had to go around the office everyday turning computers on and running the programs so that people could use it, but they used it anyways. why? because it gave them something unique and valuable. what's so unique and valuable about kde or gnome? sure gnome is open source, but what does it do that you can't do on windows? re-configure everything? is that enough to turn people away from plug and play, ie, mediaplayer, directx and compatible(ubiquitous) file formats? didn't think so, so stop expecting gnome to make people switch from windows (i use both and i'm happy at it). I don't load my linux to do what i do on windows, otherwise i would do it on windows (which you end up having anyways). people install linux because it makes a heck of a server and is too fun to use. same people then go and install it on their home computers and laptops and expect it to do the same as other people's desktop. that's wrong! we need our own creative open way of doing things.

    oh well, I better stop or i'll be the first /. user be kicked out of /. for bitching.
    ========================
  • It's really great to see Linux finally getting some games. One step closer to ditching Windoze forever. I think I just read somewhere that XFree86 4.0 will allow better use of the hardware and makes games with similar performance to Windoze. But I also agree with those people who think PCs will have tough contenders with the new PS2, Nintendo's Dolphin, and other high-powered and relatively low-cost consoles. Granted, some games will never be as good on a console as a PC, but I think they are getting better. If someone ever manages to develop a mouse or trackball like device for their console, even strategy games may become available. Who knows, future consoles may even run Linux and chunks of X.

  • The difficult thing about making games (Score:3)

    by alriddoch ( 197022 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @04:32PM (#1024345) Homepage

    At the WorldForge [worldforge.org] project, a large MMORPG project with over 50 members, we have found that the biggest barrier to creating games with a competitive look and feel is creating the media. Getting coders is not too hard, though we are always on the lookout for new recruits, but finding talented artists, particularly animators, who have time to contribute to an Open Source project can be really tough.

    All are hopes are currently pinned on blender [blender.nl] becoming Open Source this summer.
  • I doubt we will EVER see a popular Open Source video game. Games may use open libraries and formats and such but we're not going to see an open game taking up space on pages of video game magazines or websites. Why? Most games start out as an engine and then someone is called in to write a story or something to use said engine. Engines will be all over the place because that is the work of programmers. The real meat of the game lies in the content creation. Would anyone play Quake 3 if there were no textures, just a bunch of surfaces and the occasional light? No. If Need for Speed was just boxes you steered around a track that you could add Object X, Y, and Z to would anyone have bought it? No. A good game most people can relate to is Diablo and Diablo 2. Both of these games were developed in studios which employ numerous graphic artists and sound dudes. These people can make a hundred thousand dollars on a contract with a real company or get their name of a "special thanks goes to:" mention on an open project. For those of you new to economics, the hundred thousand dollars is the payment that pays the rent. I see too many supposed Linux zealots calling for the source code to games. What good will it do the average Joe to have the source code for a game. I guess of course you could use it to build cheat-bots or make your own cheap knock-off version of the same game.
    I do have a suggestion for the XFree people in the matter of gaming. How about a windowing system that is non-networked but with many of the same function calls as the normal version of X so things don't have to be entirely rewritten. A speedy windoing system would go a really long way to making gaming on unix based system a viable prospect.
  • There's no reason that Open Source people can't create stories and graphics every bit as good as commercial people.

    Did you know Scott Adams (writes Dilbert) was a programmer? Yep - a hacker with creativity and artistic talent (note how every frame of a dilbert strip is drawn frmo a different angle). If there's one, there's probably more.

    As for why people would do this, well, your post is probably a troll, but I'll answer anyway. Real artists aren't motivated by money - they're motivated by a desire to share whatever ideas, thoughts, or feelings they have. There will be artists interested in sharing their ideas and energies, just like there are programmers interested in sharing their ideas and energies.

    We're working on a Free (Open Source) game at the Worldforge project (http://www.worldforge.org). Check us out, you might be surprised.

    Finally, there is a popular Free video game. It's called Nethack, and it's been around for a while. Lots of people get enjoyment out of it every day, and it's *verY* creative.


    -Dave Turner.
  • > Geeks who fixate on which operating system they use.

    What is that supposed to mean? If a consumer makes an informed choice, is that "fixating"?

    > 1. There are only a handful of commercial games.

    This is not as big a deal as it might seem. I'm sure there are lots of game addicts that run out and buy a new game every Friday night, but not all of us operate that way. Actually, it turns my stomach to walk in to a CompUSA and see three aisles of games, of which 98% can be summarized as "five titles plus a myriad lookalike wannabes". I'd much rather have a handful of good games than a closet full of trash.

    > 2. ... Not sure why I would want to play the Linux version.

    I was a dual booter for my first year on Linux. Let me tell you, it gets old sitting through a reboot to Windows wondering "What kind of Winsanity (TM) is it going to suffer when it comes up this time?" Nothing spoils gaming night worse than spending a couple of hours of preciously hoarded game time trying to get Windows to remember that it still has the same hardware it had last time you used it.

    > 3. ... Does Open Source somehow imply a lack of creativity?

    Perhaps it has in the past, at least to some extent. However, I think we're outgrowing it. For instance, the Freeciv developers are showing more and more interest in ditching strict Civ II compatibility and molding the game to their own notions of what a strategy game should be.

    On the other hands, games like Xconq seem to be sui generis.

    > 4. ... I don't see why I should paint myself into a corner just for the sake of supporting an operating system.

    If you own a computer solely for use as a game console, then sure, pick the OS [or console brand] that gives you the best gaming experience. If however you use your computer for lots of other things, you might naturally want to consider some of those other things when making your choice of OS, too.

    > unless you've decided to hold fast to OS-centric views.

    As with your "fixate" above, what the heck is that supposed to mean? My question about informed choice still arises.

    --
  • Uhm... Do you by chance work for the Gartner Group?

    --
  • > Getting coders is not too hard ... but finding talented artists, particularly animators, who have time to contribute to an Open Source project can be really tough.

    Which is really an odd thing, considering public perception of the demand for and value of IT skills vs artistic skills, right now. You don't see the US Congress authorizing temporary visas for 100K animators at a time, do you?


    --

  • Re:The difficult thing about making games (Score:3)

    by sdt ( 7606 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @06:08PM (#1024351) Homepage

    Which is really an odd thing, considering public perception of the demand for and value of IT skills vs artistic skills, right now. You don't see the US Congress authorizing temporary visas for 100K animators at a time, do you?

    Well, no, not really. The place we get our members from is the Internet, not Real Life. Now, most people coming to WorldForge stumble onto it through slashdot, freshmeat, happy penguin, Linux Weekly News, etc. Quite obviously these are much more populated by coders than artists.

    I'm sure there are masses of good artists out there, I'm just not quite sure how to reach them.

    However I must say that we have been lucky. People like Uta Szymanek (who has contributed literally tons of media) were a large reason that we still survive today - and that I believe we will continue to strive towards our goals in the future.

    That said, if there are any artists out there who are interested in contributing to something like this, whether with 2D, 3D or music, sound or any other kind of media, then please check us out! [worldforge.org].

  • come on now, wouldnt rebooting in order to play a game be a huge step backward???
    like back to the old 'i only have 640kb memory in dos, now i have to make a boot disk to run games' days???

    anyway, arent we all looking to brag about prolonged uptimes???



    ==
    It's bush league psyche-out stuff, man.
    Laughable, man.
  • I'm using a 3dfx Banshee (ELSA Victory II) which I picked up for $50 a long time ago. You probably could pick up a Voodoo 3 in your price range. 3dfx currently has the best driver support, but NVidia and Matrox are quickly catching up. You probably could also get a TNT2 for ~$100, but the driver support currently isn't as good as the 3dfx support.

  • Hey, FFVII and VIII both worked fine for me. I just stuck the CDs in and started playing.

    Oh. You must mean on a PC.

    Seriously, they're more fun on the PlayStation, esp. VIII with a DualShock. Don't bother with the PC versions (esp. if you don't have one of the three supported video cards).

  • I get depend errors all the time. Then I will install from the tarballs and it installs very well. Why is this.
  • I admit it, I haven't bought Quake 3 YET... I still plan to though. I still have a dual-boot, but when I really feel the need to play Sim City 3K I just type: "vmware /win/98/98.cfg" Best $100 I ever spent, somehow windows feels less dirty when it's on Linux :-)

    But the day when I can play Sim City 3K without 380M of ram is soon to come according to Loki. After that who knows what games I could be addicted to, all I know for sure is it will not be minesweeper.

    Devil Ducky
  • Currently there aren't that many non-proprietary options, so I can understand the drive to port games to linux. However, I think that the philosophy behind UNIX is somewhat incompatable with hardware intensive gaming. When one wishes to have their machine concentrate entirely on a single application, a timesharing kernel just gets in the way. Furthermore, UNIX greatly discourages direct access to hardware, creating headaches for both users and developers. What needs to be done for hardware intensive gaming is the creation of a good non-multitasking OS with optional networking modules and some fast OpenGL and OpenAL libs. In the absence of a kernel, the games will theoretically run much faster. (Kinda like DOS with some more advanced features) For simpler gaming, web surfing, etc, everything is so fast that OS does not matter much. For these kinds of tasks I dont really care if I am in win98 or gnome/X/linux. Development, modeling, or networking is a different matter. The idea that a single OS can be the best for every possible task is a bit flawed. Anyone who wants to turn their $2500 machine into a gaming console would probably not wish to run something as robust as *nix. This is the sort of avenue where simple and primitive may be better.
  • Why doesn't someone put together a package delivery system that will run the game regardless of the OS? We could have a kernel on the CD, with software that'll probe the system, config for the proper hardware and launch the game. Viola! No OS, no overhead from Windows (or X for that matter) and no setup problems. You wouldn't need to worry about reconfiguring your kernel to handle the latest 3d card because that'll already have been taken care of for you.

  • Two years (Score:3)

    by molog ( 110171 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @11:27AM (#1024359) Homepage Journal
    That is how long I believe it will take for Linux to really take off and get games released for it from the big companies either at the same time as the Windows launch or specifically for Linux. My reasoning is this. We have the beginning of the game market right now. 3D graphics have pretty much been made able to be used easier, sound is beginning to get better support. Next year more games will show up and the protocols that are being used as well as all the base software will mature and Linux will gain more users (for good or ill). Then the second year is when we will see the titles really start to show up rather then waiting for a year for a company to pick up the port. This is just an educated guess, and I am known to be wrong but I think this is how things may happen.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • These things need to be simplified. There shouldn't be ANY work to play your favorite game. There shouldn't be ANY work to use your desktop. Everything should be still accessible by experts if they prefer to do it the tedious way too. Do linux developers believe that simple is evil or something? There is some SERIOUS UI attention needed in the desktop.
    Assuming that World Domination is the ultimate goal for Linux development, I suppose you are correct.
    I figure Mandrake, Corel, Redhat, etc are leaning towards this route. Though they are becoming bloatware too.
    Well, you can't have your cake and eat it, too. If you try to replace Windows as the computing platform of choice for the unwashed masses, I'm afraid that a certain amount of 'bloat' will be unavoidable.
  • I feel your pain.
    You like Linux because its this nice OS OS with OS components that demystify (haha!) the parts of MS SW that don't work so well.

    Now along come some people dedicated to making Linux mainstream. Guess what mainstream is? BSD? VMS? Solaris? Mac? Hmm... I think it has MS in it :)

    Yes the Windows/Apple type UI badly needs innovation. But at least people are now working on a platform where innovation is still possible. Besdies, for an introduction to true innovation just turn your computer off (don't want it that badly do you? :) ).

    What you should be afraid of is standardization. You should be afraid of people being the same. People will not develop herd enterntainment until there is a sufficient herd and a nice fence and some spectators.

    Just like trolls won't graze on slashdot utill they have sufficient spectators.

    Personally I like games, and that is the only reason I currently have a MSputer. I spend an enormous amount of money on games. The people who are driving the speed increases in computers are gamers (at least up to like 400 MhZ, I think) IMHO. What we need is a DirectX equivalent API, and HW compatibility with the equivalent API/OS. The what we need is for gaming companies to take the great leap forward into making less profit. Sure they'll have to work harder at the games because the users will be more anal, but hey! It'll be for less money and their eIP will be less protected. $50 bucks for a game? Pah!
  • But the speed of the mouse was too low, and refresh was too high. So you get pains because if you move the mouse a cm, it doesn't go anywhere. Mouse support in XWindows needs to be improved. These things need to be simplified. There shouldn't be ANY work to play your favorite game.

    I hear lots of newbies always complaining that mouse control absolutely sucks in X. I've never had the problem, but you can adjust your mouse sensitivity and speed in the KDE Control Center (I think, I'm not a KDE fan) or changing some settings in XF86Setup usually fixes it. I agree about gaming being idiot-proof. Game installations should be quick and painless because the users who play the most games generally don't know the most about their systems. Setting up Quake 3 should not be on the same level as editing a text config file.

    There shouldn't be ANY work to use your desktop. Everything should be still accessible by experts if they prefer to do it the tedious way too. Do linux developers believe that simple is evil or something? There is some SERIOUS UI attention needed in the desktop. I could care less about KExplorer if the UI is still crappy.

     This is a good point. Joe Smith doesn't care if he's using Gnome or KDE or if he can get rid of all the annoying buttons in Netscape by editing his .Xdefaults, he just wants a button that says "Email", "Internet", and "Word Processing" to get stuff done. The fact is, the average user could care less about setting things up to their liking, they just want to use their computer. Does this mean we should abolish the text config files? Replace the command line with a happy UI with a nice button that says "Start"? The command line should be accessible to the people who want to use it (myself included) but to get a real foothold in Microsoft's desktop territory we have to cater to the average user, and that means making things simple, easy, and graphical. We need a GUI as simple to use as a Mac, with the solid foundation of Linux. Maybe Eazel will accomplish this.

    But as a desktop, and a gaming platform Windows 2000 is superior.

    To me, gaming and desktop are different. I use Linux on the desktop because it is superior in its speed, customization, and stability of which Windows has none of the three. The factors that determine a gaming platform are the availibility of games, performance, and the ease of installation. Windows has this advantage (well, maybe not in performance, but it's not too bad).

    I figure Mandrake, Corel, Redhat, etc are leaning towards this route. Though they are becoming bloatware too.(i'm a slack lover)

    The trend that I see with distros like Redhat and Corel is that they become more and more bloated with each new version. How many times have we seen newbies on IRC or in the newsgroups saying that Linux absolutely sucks because it is so slow? The people at fault for making them believe that is Redhat and the like, who by default on the desktop installation start Apache and many other servers that a desktop machine will never need. Another thing is KDE/Gnome have become such system resource hogs that they will make a Linux box run much slower than a Windows one. I know that KDE is supposed to be great for migrating Windows users, but it's still going to be different no matter how much they rip off the horrible Microsoft UI. Would it be traumatic for a new Linux user to see a Window Maker, IceWM, or Blackbox desktop when they first boot up? I'm in Blackbox as I type this on my P233 machine and it is performs better than my friends K6-400 with Gnome/E! We must stop bloating Linux and provide the tools that users will need on the desktop (hint: Apache isn't one of them).
    -Antipop
  • BeOS still beats all-comers in the error message department. I love them Haiku's. (Well, to a point, anyways.)

    Process halts
    As does the summer
    Soon comes snow

  • ...you never want to go back.

    Quake III may look better on linux, but until I get EAX linux support for my Soundblaster live, I really don't see myself using it for gaming.

  • So, where is the difficulty?

    It's the 3D stuff. Sure, linux.3dfx.com [3dfx.com] has a fairly easy step-by-step for the various Voodoo cards, and both nVidi a [nvidia.com] and the Utah-GLX [sourceforge.net] crew have come a loooong way towards making it easier.

    Still, they all practically require recompiles (kernel modules, or in the case of Utah-GLX -- grab the CVS copy and compile the whole thing, then patch your kernel, if you want decent performance). That is a little daunting to Joe average.

    Mind you, you only need the investment for Q3, HG2, Heretic2, SoF, and UT (or the older Q1, Q2, or Kingpin), but it's still significantly harder than the equivalent setup under Windows.

    Note: I really like Utah-GLX. It makes the G400 in my work box hum and do good things. I also think that the state of 3D hardware under Linux has come a REALLY LONG WAY in the past year. It's where Windows was the first time I tried to get a 3D app running hardware-accelerated (say, 1.5 years ago, or so). We have a ways to go. We have come a really long way. We're getting there.

    We will be there for John Q. Average. Just not right this minute.

    Also: there have been attempts to bundle known-good versions of Mesa (HG2, Q3A), but that has proben problematic -- after all, just 'cause it works for Q3A doesn't mean it really *is* a good version of Mesa for, say, HG2 which stresses Mesa quite differently.

    We've come a long way, baby, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement...

  • If you can't get help from the Tech Support folks via phone, e-mail support@lokigames.com [mailto].

    I haven't had any real problems with X 3.3.x and my Voodoo3 at home. In fact, Myth2, GLQuake, Q2, Q3, HG2, UT, Kingpin, and SoF all run just fine =)

  • SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) [libsdl.org] is an excellent API for the graphics and input portions. It's even cross-platform, using DirectX 7 under Win95/98 and GDI under WinNT 4. Not to mention Linux (X, X/MIT-SHM, SVGAlib, AAlib, fbcon, ggi), Be, Mac, etc.

    FWIW, it's what Loki [lokigames.com] uses for their ports.

    Coupled with OpenAL [openal.org] (used in HG2, SMAC, SC3K, SoF, and Descent3), it's solving real-world problems now.

    The API's are there, and maturing quickly. Feel free to use them :-)

  • Too many games for linux have different methods for installation and usage. there are RPMS tgzs bz2s, I think there is a STANDARDS problem. This hits especially the ones who want to just play games and keep away from install/compile stuff Also a simple svgalib/console version of the original civilization (with networking) would be terribly appreciated... Sid Meier, listeninig??
  • What gave you the impression that XFree is slow? I'm the main author on the Crystal Space 3D engine project. This engine runs on both Windows and Linux (and some others). With XFree 3.3 the window s version was faster (for software rendering) but this changed with XFree 4. When I benchmark now CS runs at about the same speed (in a window) on both Windows and XFree. Note that I'm talking about software rendering here.

    Greetings,
  • Just a little shameless plug here :-)

    Take a look at Crystal Space (http://crystal.linuxgames.com). It is an Open Source 3D engine that runs on Linux, Windows, BeOS, DOS, Macintosh, FreeBSD, SGI, Solaris, NextStep, OpenStep, ... It can use OpenGL, Glide, Direct3D, or software rendering. It supports volumetric fog, curved surfaces, halos, dynamic colored lights with soft shadows, lightmaps and gouraud shading, octrees, portals, BSP trees, terrain engine with dynamic LOD, 3D triangle mesh entities with LOD and skeletal and/or frame based animation, dynamic textures, mipmapping, ...

    The Crystal Space project is doing very well at the moment. We are the second most active project on SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net). More than 110 people already contributed.

    Greetings,

  • The lack of creativity comment is annoying. NetTrek was one of the early pioneers of realtime online gaming. A lot of the ideas now appearing in current online games started in NetTrek. This runs the gamut from networking tricks to how to deal with hostile clients. There have been other excellent, creative Open Source games. I remember xtank fondly, and xpilot is a lot of fun.

    Open Source games have typically lacked artists, which has made them look bad. This is starting to change.

    I don't see games as a 'killer app' that will draw people to the Linux platform, but it will help people who've decided to come to the Linux platform do away witht heir Windows installations. It will also help Linux be taken more seriously as a consumer level OS.

    I can't run anything but Linux now. My primary computer, and the only one fast enough for decent games, has been turned into a server. The only commercial quality games I can play on it are from Loki. I own practically every single one of their games. :-) If it isn't out for Linux, it doesn't exist for me.

  • ...is because such a high percentage of Linux users are gamers, not because there is particularly good reason for Linux games to be written.

    I know this will probably trash my Karma, but I would suggest that the one thing Windows is good at is games. I'll bet many /.ers are much like me: We have an Athlon at home which runs Win98SE which is essentially a dedicated game box, while at work we use a real operating system.

    I'm old enough to remember when IBM held back the technical development of the PC because they didn't want to be seen as a "game" machine and ruin their relationship with business. Unfortunately, this psychology would never occur to most Linux users, even though it might be a much better argument to use with suits: "Oh, sure, I use Windows for games because that's clearly what it was designed for. But for real computing on a network, I need an operating system which was designed for that environment, like Linux."

    Unfortunately, most Linux users are gamers. So this kind of thinking never occurs to them. But to the suits the idea they are using a toy really might affect their decision-making. Of course, to geeks like us a computer is a toy, even if the game we are playing is WebSite Tycoon ][, the game of getting up a high-volume site before the suits promise the customers something we can't deliver. ("Blast that marketing dude before he talks to the CEO!")

    I say this even though I spend my spare time working on an open-source game called FaerieMUD [faeriemud.org], which (like most MUDs) is fully Linux-compatible.

    On a couple of slightly off-topic notes: Am I the only one who has stopped reading Gamespot since they did that terrible makeover? And when are we going to have a smackdown between Robyn Limos and Robert Lemos over the trademark on their names?

  • The real issue behind the difficulties with installation appears to be a side effect of how open source works. There appears to be a good side and a bad side with this all.

    One one side, we have open source making these drivers and applications available to try out from day one. You try it in its development state, and you you get the drivers available almost as soon as someone starts working on them. This is great for someone wanting to use only the basic initial features of any code.

    On the bad side though, as any coder knows, the installation and aesthetic appearance of the finished product is something that only comes about after the core of the application/driver is complete. Aesthetics and installation is only a wrapper around the core code, and hence comes last.

    So although the installation of Linux ports of games is not an entirely painless process at the moment, we will have to wait until code devel of the various drivers are completed. As the article states, 3d drivers will be shortly integrated into the XFree86 codebase, once their primary functions have been written.
    It will be from this time that we will see all of the QuakeIII/HereticII installs being as simple as running one script from the CDROM. (I am not a fan of Windozes cd auto-run "feature" though, as it presents obvious security issues).

    3D video/audio development is currently in its peak (or about to reach it), so I think we will be seeing built in support for these in all the major distributions before the end of the year.

    Give the driver code base a chance to be developed first.

  • only one is a lesbian, of course...

    What a shame. I'm sure she's wishing the other one was too.

  • Damn, now when I ignore all linux news'n'stories, I usually get only 2-3 news about linux/day. Almost makes slashdot readable, but this again was definately a linux story, so please be stricter when you choose the story's type.
  • No doubt.

    I think most of that ease can be attributed to SDL. Just running the install script takes care of the SDL install for you, and the game just works. I wish more developers would use it.

    It's fast, easy, and best of all, portable.

  • Still no Solution for installing (Score:3)

    by BoLean ( 41374 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @09:53AM (#1024384) Homepage
    Does anyone know of a similar open standard for installing software that is not distribusion specific. I'm not terribly fond of RPMs. Half the time it seems to work but the program won't execute. At least if I compile it myself I see the problems firsthand. How about a special game distro for just running a game off of the boot CD? That way only the data files need to be written to the HD.

  • Not that hard (Score:3)

    by slycer ( 161341 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @09:53AM (#1024385) Homepage
    I disagree with the comment that installing games on Linux is like performing open-heart surgery.

    I bought RR II - ran the install file as root (install.sh?). 3 or 4 minutes later I was playing. No funky options to choose, ran great first try. Crashed a bit after that, but there were patches (same as Windows games). So, where is the difficulty?
  • Nethack is NOT Final Fantasy 7 or Resident Evil. I wasn't being a troll, I was being realistic and a reluctant capitalist. Money drives the world, the moral highground doesn't have nearly the same property value as the capitalistic pig slop around it.

  • Re:would have been 1st (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 05, 2000 @09:57AM (#1024393)
    you are mixing metaphors:

    win: This application has performed an illegal operation and will now shut down.

    mac: The application "Unknown" has unexpectedly quit because of an error of type x.

    unix: your process died. find worthless developer who apparently can't code his way out of a wet paper bag and kick his ass? (y/n)

    note that on OpenBSD, the default is 'y' :-]

  • Software rendering has always been a questionable benchmark between operating systems. One OS might allow more or less resources per process than another and some code simple runs better on one kernel than another. Windows actually has more layers of abstraction than a Unix with X on top of it. Windows runs all processes in a virtual machine whose overhead in some cases makes the app run really sluggishly. In Linux using X you've got the app running in a memory space talking to both the kernel and X directly with no virtual abstraction. This is just one possibility why X is faster or slower. X is a behemoth in many aspects compared to Windows or Be which combine the windowing system with the desktop and window manager. XFree 4.x looks like its making major headway in that department though, a rework of the process management and rasterizer looks like its helping a good deal.
  • ...for some people. ;) Myself included.

    Yes, you do not have access to the same number of titles as windows users. Know what? 98% of those Windows titles are crap I'd never touch anyway. So I can't play Daikatana, so I'll never be able to run Tomb Raider 5; I think I'll be able to cope with that. Loki has IMO been extremely smart in selling only *quality* titles that "Linux people" will be interested in (Civ:CTP, Q3A, SimCity2000, Alpha Centauri, etc, etc.)

    Yes, the hardware support is not as extensive as windows 98. People who complain about this really irritate me. If you want a 3D card and you run Linux, then take 30 freaking seconds and check if the card you're going to buy is going to work or not. Sheesh! I always research before a purchase to make sure a device is going to work well on my linux box and I have NEVER been DISAPPOINTED.

    Linux is also by far the most stable gaming platform. One of the reasons I switch to linux was cause TeamFortress didn't crash the system like it was prone to do under Win95. With linux, I can minimize all my work programs and fire up Q3Arena for a quick 10 minute frag-break. I don't have to worry about my box crashing, and my work apps are always there waiting for me when I exit, safe, sound and still executing.

    Bah!

  • If you don't mind me asking, who is the real 'Steve Woston'? I haven't heard of him before and I was just wondering if he is a well known game programmer or something?
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • Welll...

    The only problem with your scenario is that it would require common programs across all distros. Common window managers, common X versions, etc. Part of the beauty of Linus is the choice.

    I can install RedHat in 15 minutes on most any system, depending on CDROM speed. Then, just connect to helixcode, and get the latest gnome w/support programs. In all, this will take you a couple hours. At that point, you've got a nice capable system that your mom could figure out. It's got a graphical login, and it's close enough to windows so that she can find solitare, not to mention it looks better. Then add SDL, which Loki uses in most of it's games and which is installed automatically, and you've got a nice system. Even go with XFree 4.0 if you wish. The point is, you can do what you want, the way you want.

    btw, Windows isn't trouble free, especially when it comes to 3D. Most times you have to swap video drivers a few times before you can get playable, but still stable gameplay. Not to mention, 50% of the games out there don't work with Win2000. They can't get to the hardware. I've got a customer who can't even use their tape drive because they upgraded to 2000.

  • Consider how the rest of the world views us (Score:5)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @12:06PM (#1024405)
    I expect this to be moderated down. Sigh.

    Right now, there are three primary groups using Linux:

    1. ISP's and other businesses that need rock solid networking and file serving.
    2 .College students, because there's some benefit to using Linux if you're a comp sci major, and also because it's free (either "free as in beer" because students are generally cash short, or "free as in freedom" because it's easier to be idealistic when you're a student). High school students are included here, too, though maybe to a lesser degree.
    3. Geeks who fixate on which operating system they use. This overlaps somewhat with the previous item.

    Right now, Loki is selling mostly to number 3, and I suspect this is the smallest and most volatile group. Number 2 is where the users are, but that's a tough place to make money. It's the same place crazy Napster support is coming from, and for a very obvious reason.

    To an outsider whose eyes are clear of zealotry, the Linux game market looks like this:

    1. There are only a handful of commercial games.
    2. Those games are also available for Windows, so even if I decide to pick up Linux at Barnes & Noble I still have Windows around to play games with. Not sure why I would want to play the Linux version.
    3. The freebie games are pretty horrendously unexciting. Yay! Hundreds of Tetris and Asteroids variants! Does Open Source somehow imply a lack of creativity?
    4. All the nifty games like The Sims and FreeSpace 2 and Roller Coaster Tycoon aren't out for Linux. Maybe they'll get ported next year, but I don't see why I should paint myself into a corner just for the sake of supporting an operating system.

    Harsh? Maybe, but let's be honest about this. There are very few reasons to even consider using Linux for games, unless you've decided to hold fast to OS-centric views. If there were something really sweet that were available only for Linux, I could see _some_ people peering over the wall to see what all the fuss was about, and maybe setting up a partition to play. But we're a long way from seeing that happen.
  • Here is something from your user info.

    Lead programmer for J-J-J-Julius Games, a leading and cutting-edge game company based out of Baltimore, MD.

    Really? I don't see any thing on the web and your URL doesn't go anywhere.

    I have worked on many ground-breaking products within the industry, including Spork II, Star Trek: The Fillament Legacy, and Pitfall for Nokia 5125.

    I have done a search for these games and they just don't seem to come up on any search I do on the search engines or gaming sites. You claim to be a great game programmer but your titles are unknown and your company doesn't seem to exist. If you are not a troll then please explain.
    Molog

    So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

  • Re:Still no Solution for installing (Score:5)

    by mikpos ( 2397 ) on Monday June 05, 2000 @09:58AM (#1024413) Homepage
    There's a very good reason why game developers do not make self-booting games: they remember DOS. DOS was, effectively, exactly the same as having no operating system. This was bad enough when you only had four configurations: VGA and no sound, VGA and GUS, VGA and SB Pro, VGA and Adlib; but things have got a bit more complicated since then, and I don't think game developers would be too keen on going back to that.

    There is the idea of having DirectX by itself (with no operating system), which would be interesting, but in order to do it well, you'd have to have the co-operation of Microsoft, which seems unlikely. OpenGL + OpenAL + GII or something like that might be more practical.
  • If you're going to have to reboot anyway to start the game, what's the point in having them on *any* particular OS anyway? Old games like Kings Quest I and Billiard worked this way.
  • While Loki are doing a great job porting games to Linux, there are a few problems. For example, for reasons I can't figure out, my 3dfx card works just fine in the console under SVGALIB. GLQuake works, life is good, but it refuses to work under X. Anything that requires a 3dfx card, or can USE one (like Myth 2 for example), if it's X based, I'm screwed and I can't find the answer ANYWHERE. I have tried EVERYTHING I can think of to get it to find it, but still anything running under X simply cannot see the 3dfx card. Anyone got any ideas to WHY?

    What this leads me to is the various hardware problems. While processor speeds, ram etc... are all standard, I believe that hardcore Linux gaming, as in commercial games like Loki are porting, are going to have problems for a while yet. I mean I have this hardware problem which I can't find the answer to and their tech support seems unwilling to try and help with, plus there are innumerable other problems. Just go check out some of the groups on their news server [lokigames.com] and read about the various technical problems people are having.

    Don't get me wrong, Loki are doing a great job and their developers kick ass, but until their tech support actually goes out of their way to help with something other than just giving dumb answers which rank up with "are you sure the computer is switched on?", Linux gaming is going to be mired in the quicksand of the same kind of hardware problems that used to occur years ago in DOS.

  • "I'm not terribly fond of RPMs. Half the time it seems to work but the program won't execute."

    I'm willing to bet that this might be a problem with the system you are installing on, how you are installing the RPM, or the person making the RPM. I really don't think it's RPM. I have had very few (if any) problems with RPM. It's software and it tends to do its job very well as long as everyone along the way does theirs.


    Bad Mojo [rps.net]

  • Re:open al on linux games (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Quake III Arena does not currently use OpenAL. Not the Windows version, and not the Linux version.

    Heavy Gear II for Linux does use OpenAL. Check it out and see what you think. Then download the OpenAL source code and fix anything you don't like.

    Scott Draeker
  • Well, I download the RPM, follow the instructions for installing cookbook right out of the docs. 80-90% don't work. Of couse I could read more about RPS/RPM troubleshooting but then wouln't that defeat the purpose. Actually, at least a few years ago I got erros about not having the correct libs installed. Now I get nothing. Doing make from the prompt is much easier, unless there are a bunch of flags to set.
  • Where I work, I develop some of the internal applications, all of them web based. I do this by choice so the BeOS people and the Linux people, and even the windows people can use them from anywhere on any OS. Great, fine, good.

    But Gah! I have to boot into windows 98 to play EverQuest... (and don't try to tell me not to play EverQuest, it is an addiction and I'm not giving it up). There are some great advances here, but a lot of reluctance from some of the companies. I am tempted to buy copies of QuakeIII Linux, just to promote Linux ports (even though I already gave up my Quake addiction).

    What it comes down to is we are all dreaming of the day when we have no use for Windows. When we have a dual boot machine and we delete the wondows partition to fit StarCraft 2 on our hard drives. When we spend a weekend getting all of our code to compile on Kylix.

    So, what is missing? I guess we need every company everywhere in the world to jump at once.

    -Effendi
  • Every once in a while I try Linux to check out the desktop. See if I can play any games. But still for my main programs, most don't work or take hours to get running. ie: Quake3: setup with Nvidia accel, xfree86 4, and quake3 (all fine). I was sitting in #nvidia on irc.openprojects.net for like 3 hours to figure out why I was getting some retarded error. They have a nv_check.sh that checks for conflicting gl dlls. It missed two which was my problem. Load times were faster than Windows by the way. Probably 3-4 times faster. But the speed of the mouse was too low, and refresh was too high. So you get pains because if you move the mouse a cm, it doesn't go anywhere. Mouse support in XWindows needs to be improved. These things need to be simplified. There shouldn't be ANY work to play your favorite game. There shouldn't be ANY work to use your desktop. Everything should be still accessible by experts if they prefer to do it the tedious way too. Do linux developers believe that simple is evil or something? There is some SERIOUS UI attention needed in the desktop. I could care less about KExplorer if the UI is still crappy. Double clicking on a setup file and playing a game is great. Linux gaming will never be widely accepted until these things are fixed. If newbies can't do it, then you don't have an audience. I use linux for my server needs. But as a desktop, and a gaming platform Windows 2000 is superior. (98 sucks too) Vice versa Windows 2000 is a shitty bloated server. You guys wonder why Windows has a huge market? It's a segment that has a need and it fills it. If you want Linux to gain more acceptance, step up to the plate and fix these things. I figure Mandrake, Corel, Redhat, etc are leaning towards this route. Though they are becoming bloatware too.(i'm a slack lover)

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