Slashdot Mirror

Nearly anything is better than ribbon cables. aibrahim writes "In the recent /. article about Serial ATA some people wanted to know where SCSI was going, and if Serial ATA could deal with some higher end workstation and low end server requirements. Apparently it has been decided that Serial ATA 2 (pdf doc) and Serial Attached SCSI are the answers."

Because being an American is all about first-person shooters. and i starve writes: "For any of you FPS fans out there who have been champing at the bit to see the newest product of our very own government's attempt at a multiplayer video game since Marine Doom your day has final come. America's Army, which utilizes the Unreal Warfare engine was created and designed by the United States Army and is TOTALLY FREE! go grab it off of File Planet right now!"

Before you hit your "JINGO" button, though, An anonymous reader cautions "In typical Army fashion the release of America's Army is a bust. All the servers are either full or down and the way it's set up, you can't play past the basic training without completing some of the training online. Since you can't connect to any of the servers to complete that training you basically can't play the game at all. What a waste of taxpayer money."

Nobody needs to make any cracks about this. Anonymous Coward writes "According to this CNN Article, [some cracks were] found on Space Shuttle Columbia this week, possibly delaying missions for the remainder of the year. This crack is similar to the crack found on Columbia's sister ships, Atlantis and Discovery. "

Worst pun in relation to this gets no prize.

"I have assurances from ttimo at id that releasing q3lcc for Linux is 'on the todo list' (wether that means source or binary I'm not sure), but for the mean time does anyone have a copy of the Linux q3 sdk v1.17 (with q3lcc binary included) downloaded form Loki before they removed it? If there is a way for princeton standard lcc to compile Quake3 asm code that would be another option."

[Hi, I just posted this info in the Slashdot forum elaborating on why we didn't ship the Linux executables in the Unreal Tournament box.]

The UT Linux executables will be available for download rather than being included in the box.

We don't like this either. We REALLY, REALLY wanted the Linux executables to be on the CD, we reserved space for it, and actually had it there in the directory structure during beta.

GT asked us yank it, because they were worried about tech support issues: that thousands of Linux users would have questions about installation that GT reps (who are only familiar with Windows and consoles) wouldn't be able to answer.

We obliged with their request, because GT is responsible for performing (and paying for) UT tech support, and it didn't seem fair to put the burden on them.

Here is part of a message I sent to a GT exec, advocating putting Linux on the UT CD-Rom:

---begin---

Why Linux on the Unreal Tournament box is a very good move:

First, Red Hat Linux is selling very well in retail, and there's a good chance that by word of mouth, Linux users will pick up Unreal Tournament with their Linux purchase or afterwards. I'd be very surprised if we didn't gain over 3% more sales from Linux users. Now if UT sells a million units (Tim's wild guess), that's 30,000 additional units. If we make it *very* clear that the Linux version is unsupported (no tech support calls), then surely this is a profitable move.

Second, while Linux users are far outnumbered by Windows users, the statistics don't tell the whole story. Linux users are the hardest of the hardcore. They're among the movers and shakers who are serious deathmatchers (Quake 2 and Quake 3 are available for Linux); they run major community web sites; they run servers on T1 and T3 connections. These people have far more influence on gaming than their numbers indicate.

Third, Linux is gaining an incredible amount of momentum, and sticking the Linux penguin logo on the UT box would further the Unreal franchise's position as a leading-edge product that's not afraid to push into new territories. This has always been our hallmark -- Epic shipped the first-ever DirectX game (Fire Fight, published by Electronic Arts); now the Unreal Tournament demo is the first DirectX7 release; and now we have the chance to be the first game to ship simultaneous with Windows and Linux versions in the same box.

---end---

GT considered all of this and understood the issues, but still had overriding concerns about the cost.

I can't say I blame them; I sure wouldn't want to be responsible for supporting users with 10 different versions each of 10 different Linux distributions, each with a completely different set of video drivers, x-windows shells, permissions, and possibly even recompiled kernels. Linux's approach kicks ass on the Internet with its open, user-driven community. But it doesn't seem too compatible with the mass-market distribution model, where companies pay rooms full of people to answer phones and help customers, and where one tech support call wipes out all the profit from a box sold.

Emailing companies like GT *politely* to show your support for the Linux platform is a great idea. Just keep in mind that, to publishers, the Linux thing isn't simply a popularity contest; supporting Linux needs to make sense financially, and there are some serious issues with support and compatibility they need to consider.

Tim Sweeney
Epic Games
http://unreal.epicgames.com/