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To add to what you have said, a few good starting points are the Wintermute engine, the Torque 3D engine and ioquake3.

Torque 3D might be a bit too much for a child to jump right into, so I recommend learning how to work with ioquake3/id tech 3 first, then go from there. Wintermute is specifically for making point and click adventure games and is probably the easiest to get started with, both for game building and concept.

Huh, I posted as AC by accident. Well, to make up for it, here's the post where they officially gave Linux the finger: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/9244 . The post was titled "Linux Expectation Management"

From what I remember, I compiled the engine and then tried to tinker with it. I wanted to try to do things, like add a weapon bar or ammo counter, so I would search the forums and community resources http://www.garagegames.com/community/resources to find tutorials about how to modify the code. Most people on the forums were happy to chat about adding features and many of the resource tutorial developers would provide help with the code they provided.

Some of the tribes people did Planetside. When it first came out that FPS MMO was actually pretty decent. Not the same fun as a planting cameras and doing espionage raids in Tribes 2 but was close. But the continual tweaks of PS ending up killing the fun.

Of course the tribes engine is still out there with Torque, with updated enhancements.

I suggest picking up a copy of Torque Game Builder or TX2D from http://www.garagegames.com/ and start making 2d games like tetris. Then work your way up.

I wouldn't go so far as to say indie gaming is dead. Torque has ports to the Xbox, wii and iPhone. Sure it takes a whole lot more to get agreements with the content providers instead of just buying a development kit from GG but it is doable.

The days of a small group making a game without any real money involved are probably not so bright. We can hope that the iPhone and Android give us a new batch of indie developers with interesting ideas.

How, exactly, is D3D "better" than OGL? The language is obtuse (a COM interface versus a simple state machine), amongst other things.

It's not really obtuse, both APIs are functionally equivalent. The biggest difference between both is that D3D is object-oriented whereas OGL is just a C-style series of function calls(ie. the difference is direct3DDevice->Present() vs glSwap()).

Also, D3D does not have an immediate mode, which is why OGL "seems" easier when looking at simple programs(immediate mode allows passing a single vertex by a call to glVertex). However, immediate mode does not reasonably scale, because the overhead of function calls quickly becomes the bottleneck with larger geometries and so you have to move into using vertex arrays(called vertex buffers, in D3D-speak), thus making your program very similar to the D3D one.

As for which one is better, that's debatable. In the 90's, D3D was lagging behind with regards to newer functionality(there was a Carmack rant on how D3D didn't include some functionality and the OGL folks simply did an extension) but I believe the situation is reversed now. D3D does have the advantage of having PIX for free, which is a really nifty 3D debugging app(GarageGames wrote an article about it).

http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id=15

Because when the Wine people screw up, you get blamed.

Haha, no.

Care to explain your position? Or would you rather just troll?

Being featured on Slashdot won't get you added sales, sorry.

This guy got almost 400,000 hits -- for some christmas lights. Keep in mind, that's actual hits, as in actual click-throughs from Slashdot.

According to this page, cost per click is between 5 cents and $1. At 400,000 clicks, that's between $20k and $400k in free advertising -- from a demographic already predisposed to gaming and technology in general.

And that's ignoring any additional sales.

Put another way, why do you think Blizzard is letting Slashdot interview them? Out of the goodness of their heart?

Quake Wars is irrelevant in the grand scheme of the industry.

However, Id tech is not. Nor, for that matter, is Epic.

Popularity isn't a measure of technical difficulty, I never said it was.

Yet you continue to ignore how technically difficult it isn't to port to Linux, particularly a game.

What was the point of mentioning popularity, anyway? It has nothing to do with the technical difficulty, as you've just admitted, and the feasibility of any port is based on percentages, not popularity.

Putting something on Linux will get you about 17 extra sales.

Pulling a number out of your ass will get you nowhere.

Let's try some real numbers from a tiny indie game. Turns out the number is actually 333 -- out of 3635.

The breakdown was:

73% Windows
20% OSX
7% Linux

The math is very simple: If it takes less than 7% of their time to develop and maintain a Linux port, Linux is a profit.

Given how much effort goes into Warcraft, particularly the content, it would take significantly less time to develop a Linux port than goes into, well, any aspect of the game today. And I forget, but what's 7% of 10 million customers?

The only remaining question is support -- and Linux users would tend to be more self-sufficient, on average, meaning the support costs would be proportionately lower.

It is NOT worth the effort by any convoluted, exaggerated, emotionally charged measure.

Let's be blunt -- you've given me a single number, which you pulled out of your ass. I've given you actual statistics. If we are playing facts versus subjectivity and emotion, I think I win by default -- you haven't contributed a single fact.

Ha ha. Instantaction.com's Legions is apparently some kind of (SWF?) re-release or GarageGames Legions project (tech demo).

I was kind of confused looking at the screenshots of the "browser-based" game, because I've played it (and it wasn't in a browser).

Maybe someone's signed up (really, why make me create an account just to see your silly game?) can comment if the screens are from the in-browser game or just captures of the original stand-alone?

Anyone else miss Tribes before Sierra turned it into another version of Quake?

How about picking him up a copy of Torque Game Builder, or at least trying the demo. The scripting language is loosely typed and easy to pick up, with C-like syntax.
TGB

Minimizing it had no effect, and I waited long enough.

This seems to me utterly wrong. If you try to allocate some memory and then free it without more allocations in between, you probably will see the memory change immediately—and I tested and can confirm this behaviour. However, if you allocate in small chunks (< 4 KB), and do not release them in order, you'll probably end up in memory fragmentation, and no memory can be returned to the OS.

BTW, I do not remember the memory problem occurs only in Windows—another proof this is a problem of Firefox instead of the OS. It seems to me one of the following will hold:

• Firefox has memory leaks; or
• Firefox calls the memory routines (malloc/free or the likes) in a naïve way—totally on demand instead of something like per-page allocations—and has memory fragmentation problems

I do not believe the OS is here to blame.

Making it trim on minimize (something it should do by default) helped somewhat

What you're describing has nothing to do with Firefox. Even if Firefox frees it's memory, that freed memory doesn't get reflected in the Task Manager until the program is minimized or you wait long enough...

More info: http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/4517/11311

"The Windows OS employs something like a memory cache for each actively running program. This cache may grow as the needs of a particular program require using magical algorithms Microsoft developers have produced for determining the optimal size for that program. For instance a program over the course of it's life time may require 20 megs of memory but occasionally needs to load data requiring allocations of up to 10 additional megs which is released seconds after it is loaded and processed. The Windows OS may determine then, that the memory cache for this program must increase from the base 20 megs to 25 megs instead. Looking at the Windows Task Manager then, you may see that this program is now using 25 megs of memory, even though currently, it may only be using 20 megs.

That is, the Windows Task Manager is reporting the memory cache allotment and not the memory allocated and used by the program. This is not the same as a memory leak. The program has little to no control over the memory cache allotment the OS has given it."

Where are the commercial game ports for Linux? No one wants to make them, obviously, save for the FPS crowd (and there's only an Unreal Tournament for Linux because Epic passes the buck to Icculus to get the job done, not because they have the in-house talent to do it themselves). There are a few commercial games for Linux, yes, but only a few, and there's very little variety between them. In the open source world we have a few good games (the majority of them being FPS's, what a surprise), Battle for Wesnoth if you like strategy games (turn based ones, that is). Then we have the unfortunate, ugly ripoffs like "Secret Maryo Chronicles," and other games that look like they were developed for a C64. Plenty of selection, not a lot of quality.

The following publishers develop comemrcial linux games:

http://www.pompomgames.com/
http://www.garagegames.com/
http://www.introversion.co.uk/
http://frictionalgames.com/
http://sillysoft.net/
http://www.basiliskgames.com/
http://www.guildsoftware.com/
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/
http://www.rune-soft.com/
http://grubbygames.com/
http://www.caravelgames.com/
http://www.planewalkergames.com/
http://www.graalonline.com/

There are also the high profile ones such as neverwinter nights, the doom and quake series, unreal, etc.

There are many high quality independant titles such as neverball, you mentioned wesnoth, crimson fields, flight gear, torcs, the spring project, total annihilation 3d, tecnoballZ, powermanga, tile racer, pingus, clonk, freeciv, ultimate stunts, planeshift, scorched3d, VDrift, silvertree (not complete, but being created by the wesnoth guys so likely will not be vapor), ufo: alien invasion, scourge, etc.

http://spring.clan-sy.com/
http://www.wesnoth.org/
http://torcs.sourceforge.net/
http://www.flightgear.org/
https://icculus.org/neverball/
http://ta3d.darkstars.co.uk/
http://linux.tlk.fr/games/
http://tileracer.model-view.com/
http://pingus.seul.org/
http://www.clonk.de/
http://freeciv.wikia.com/
http://www.ultimatestunts.nl/
http://www.planeshift.it/
http://www.scorched3d.co.uk/
http://vdrift.net/
http://www.silvertreerpg.org/
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
http://scourge.sourceforge.net/

Many of these are very impressive independently made free games. Perhaps they lack the multi million dollar marketing budget and won't make your geofrce 8800 gtxz 45 x super elite ultra melt, but theya re *fun* games, and they are numerous. Also keep in mind this publisher and free game list is only what I could find in 1 hour of searching.

Then there are freed older commercial games such as warzone 2100, homeworld, descent 1 and 2, doom, quake, etc.

Lets not stop t

Not really...

Produce Panic was a game a few years back that was about Penny Arcade's character fruit fucker 2000, link: http://www.garagegames.com/products/35/
Not sure if it was the first game ever made about/related to penny arcade though.

I've looked at the blender environment for making games. However, it has poor network support for multiplayer games (last I checked), and is meant for smaller single person games. DirectX has had a bit better multiplayer support so far, so I imagine XNA has decent multiplayer support, or soon will. Blender is licensed under the GPL, but any scripts and artwork can be under any license you choose, and can be used commercially.

There's also OGRE3D. Although, I've had my share of tracing memory leaks and seg faults enough to know that as a development team of 1, there are much more interesting things I'd rather be doing (like adding content). Given I have been using Java a bit more lately, I've been leaning towards trying to use ogre4j, although progress with this has been relatively slow over the years. (Although their automated conversion of C++ hooks to Java seems interesting.) Also of note, OGRE3D is a graphic engine, not a game framework. However, other game related components exist based on this engine, although each has their own bit of requirements. For example, Yake will not compile without the latest and greatest Visual Studio. (The free Express version won't cut it, because it has dependencies on MFC, which the express version doesn't include.) This solution is the most attractive to me, nonetheless, because games can be made with minimal publishing/license constraints (most are licensed under LGPL).

There are other solutions, such as Garage Games, but they take a huge cut out of any money your game makes (used to be upwards of 80%). They also have mediocre network support, placing them as a poor choice in my opinion. Their claim is that they will, however, handle all of the marketing for your game and get others to play (& pay) for your game. Alternatively, you could pay a $15,000 license per game to remove royalty restrictions. There are also several OpenGL game frameworks, but they require all game releases to be under the GPL.

Does anyone else know of a similar solution that does not require a GPL license for the game, has good multiplayer (or massively multiplayer) network support, and a decent (or active) game development framework?

isn't xna EXACTLY (exactly as in microsoft payed money to sell it under a own name) the same product as the torque game builder ( http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/tgb/ ) which is available on linux for a long time? coming with full sourcecode and makefiles for gcc+linux, so it should be piece of cake to compile it on a ps3?

It's just hours old:
http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/x/

If you already have a Torque Game Builder license, you can also use Torque X to make games
for the Xbox 360. I just discovered the release, so I dunno how similar this will be to TGB,
but they use the same scripting language for all their products. I'm guessing only some minor
porting is needed, and that gives you four platforms to make games for (Mac, Linux, Windows, 360).

Torque

You might be interested in Torque. It is an open-source engine but not free.

There is a fair collection of how-to articles and one author has put together an "add-on" product for the engine.

I've played with the Torque engine a bit and it's interesting. The thing I like the most is the server-side can be linux and the client side can be both windows & linux. I haven't played with the MyDreamRPG products, so I can't comment on them but they look interesting.

You might be interested in Torque. It is an open-source engine but not free.

There is a fair collection of how-to articles and one author has put together an "add-on" product for the engine.

I've played with the Torque engine a bit and it's interesting. The thing I like the most is the server-side can be linux and the client side can be both windows & linux. I haven't played with the MyDreamRPG products, so I can't comment on them but they look interesting.

You might be interested in Torque. It is an open-source engine but not free.

There is a fair collection of how-to articles and one author has put together an "add-on" product for the engine.

I've played with the Torque engine a bit and it's interesting. The thing I like the most is the server-side can be linux and the client side can be both windows & linux. I haven't played with the MyDreamRPG products, so I can't comment on them but they look interesting.

Why do you think it's acceptable to start a question with "Because"? A question is not a reason. A logical, understandable form of what you're trying to say is, "Because I'm having difficulty finding an appropriate platform for my gay ass homebrew Super Smash Bros knockoff. Waaaah."

Your pointless repetition proves one thing, and only one thing over and over and over again... That consoles are an inferior platform for small developers. This is not a reason to be pissed off at PCs. That's like being angry at a toaster for being a shitty place to cook a steak. It is, however, a fine reason to be ticked off at the console market and its business model.

However, there are answers if you bothered to actually look for them, rather than whine, piss and moan on a forum that couldn't care less. For example, you could build or buy a small PC with 4 usb ports and a tv-out. Geez. That was fucking hard. If you're really that stuck on developing for a console, try TorqueX. http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque/x/

Now kindly fuck off.

it seems like the boys forgot about Produce Panic -- they announced and released it over two years ago!

http://www.penny-arcade.com/2004/05/26

http://www.garagegames.com/products/35

I just wanted to add that, ironically, if you want to do development using a very popular "indie-level" game engine you would choose the Torque engine. And to use it, you pay them $100. If you want their studio tools on top of that, it's another 100$.

The new MS-XNA Game Studio is based on this Torque engine. When you pay your $100, you also get additional content downloads, the studio package, listing on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), etc. etc. These are pretty decent extras, and it's cheaper than just using Torque!

There are obvious reasons Microsoft is doing this, but my feeling is that positives outweigh the negatives.

/K

I think geeks are killing gaming.

You think geeks are killing gaming? Well, excuse me, but fuck you. Geeks made gaming and are still making it. There wouldn't be computer games without geeks. And all those involved, 100 hour, 12 button mashfests you complain about? We wouldn't make them if they didn't sell. No, your gripe should be directed towards the two groups who ruin just about any type of media: apathetics and zealots.

The apathetics come in many forms: drunken frat boys who would be just as happy tipping cows as playing games, teenagers with too much time on their hands, etc. They actually have a lot in common with you, because they don't want to have to remember anything like 12 button combos to play a game. On the other hand, they don't want to have to remember complicated things such as plot or character. This results in dumbed down games with no substance and very pretty shiny graphics. The only reason they are a market force is because there are so many of them.

The zealots are what you are really complaining about. They aren't geeks (except in the loosest sense of the word), they aren't creators, they are consumers. They buy many games a month and probably spend as much time playing them as a full time job. They can finish games in incredibly short time spans and master even the most convoluted controls. Even though they are few, they drive the gaming industry because they spend so much on it.

What you may want to look at is the Nintendo Wii. From all accounts, it's geared toward the casual gamer, which is what you sound like. As for variety in games, stop shopping at Best Buy, dammit! Try looking online at independent developers, maybe even try some open source games.

Even today, there are so many good 3d game engines- but very few games. Probably because people don't find it appealing enough to make the content.

* lon3st4r *

comparing an orange to a Ferrari 911

A Ferrari 911? Did Ferrari buy Porsche and not tell anyone? :)

Great and lots of programmers (oh yeah sure, just 'buy the engine', don't give me that)

Why not go buy an engine? Get one or two good programmers, get a cheap engine from someone like Garage Games, and focus on your real assets. The market is going more and more towards splitting into "engine developers" and "game developers". Id rarely even builds games anymore, preferring to focus on their engine creation (they work with third parties like Grey Matter or Raven to build games like Enemy Territories and Quake IV). Epic focuses on building the Unreal technology while letting 2nd and 3rd parties like Digital Illusions and Ubisoft build games around them. There's nothing wrong with licensing technology, and you're probably better off for doing so (you can get more and better technology than what you would be able to develop while trying to make a game to make money at the same time).

Great script

Great gameplay (so difficult to pinpoint and define, isn't it?)

I would argue these are the same thing. If your gameplay is RPG-style, you need an excellent script. If your gameplay is something like Katamari, script doesn't really matter much.

Great music and sound effects

This really depends on your gameplay. One guy with a mic and the willingness to make stupid sounds with his mouth will get you all of the sound effects you need. Music is harder, and yet easier at the same time. Depending on your game, you may not even need music (I'd rather listen to the sound of the engine in a racing game) or you could allow the player to provide the music. Other games need good music, but that shouldn't be too hard to come by. There are starving musicians everywhere. You just need to find them. Put up posters around the local college campus. Troll the boards online at places like Song Fight or Overclocked Remix. For a minor outlay of cash ($500-$1000 is probably more than enough in most cases), you can get some pretty excellent music for your game.

Great voice actors

I'd really recommend indie developers stay away from voice acting. Nintendo rarely uses it, and everybody loves their games (in fact, when they do use voice acting it's usually annoying. Hey! Listen!). Skip the expense by skipping the voice actors. Of course, you could do it in a humorous way and use your developers as the actors. Don't do this if you're going for "serious"!

Great characters (Deus Ex)

Again, this goes back to script/gameplay. You may not need characters at all if you're building a puzzle game. If you can't come up with great characters while writing your script or designing your gameplay, then you failed on the script or gameplay.

Great graphics (these days... sigh)

Then why does everybody here always say they prefer gameplay to graphics? You really have to think about your target. You're probably not going to be able to compete with the big boys in terms of graphics goo-gawgery, so don't try. You'll need something better than developer art, but not by much.

Multiplayer functionality

Depends on your game. Stardock consciously decided against multiplayer for GalCiv2 and that game is doing very well.

The central theme I've noticed in my replies

Two, game engine licences still cost afr, far too much money.

How's a $100 dev license sound? $395 for indie licenses.

Games are a relatively new medium and so things will take some time to settle. Who knows how it'll all pan out? But there is GarageGames, an early entry in expanding the indie gaming market. They're still relatively small, but MarbleBlast just got ported to the xbox 360.

Cheers.

NOA has historically been a stickler about who can become a licensed developer, requiring a business and marketing plan and an approved title before developers can even begin to investigate the technical aspects of the platform.

With good reason, considering the commonly held belief that a key component of the 80s game crash was the glut of crap games due to unfettered console development access (no idea if it's true or not, but it's what people believe). Microsoft is also particular about who they license, but they're at least open to the idea of indies on XBLA. What the article said about companies having such a backlog of ideas that they can never get through holds just as true for XBLA game proposals.

However, all hope is not lost. You just need to be smart about how you go about it. For example, go get yourself a license to one of GarageGame's engines, build your game for PC, and it's a simple matter to get a 360 license for the engine (minimal to no porting required, though you'll probably still have work to do to integrate Live functionality) if you do happen to make it through the XBLA process. You're much better off going in with a completed game (or at least a very compelling demo). If all you have is an idea, or even a written down plan but no working demo, just forget about it.

• http://www.alice.org/
• http://www.ogre3d.org/
• http://www.yake.org/
• http://www.delta3d.org/
• http://www.panda3d.org/
• http://www.idsoftware.com/business/techdownloads/
• http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
• http://www.garagegames.com/products/1

http://www.garagegames.com/ It's $99, but a great engine and has some very good support from the company and community. If you're really serious about it, $99 is incredibly cheap for the value it offers.

I agree that they could/should include prices, but it wasn't hard to find. From the article, clicking on the 'website' link for TubeTwist takes you to http://www.21-6.com/news.asp, and the 'News' there talks about how it shipped, and is available from GarageGames.com, with a link. That link takes you directly to http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id= 57, which shows it is $19.99

GarageGames seems to be doing pretty good with their shareware downloads. Gish is amazing.

http://www.garagegames.com/ and there are many others out there already.

It'll be interesting to see how it turns out, but the competition is stiff, especially from gaming portal sites like Yahoo Games, Popcap, Pogo, etc, etc.

• Xbox 360 Live Arcade Mushroom Toaster Strudel - In theory, Arcade will allow more small-fry developers to create content for livingroom audiences. The greatest barrier to profitable indie development on the console at the moment seems to be that the only viable way to sell console games is through a retailer, (which often requires the clout and money of a big publisher). Remove that barrier, and -- for what it's worth -- smaller studios have a shot. I believe some indie games have already gone this route for Xbox Live Arcade. And MS has already courted one small studio to create content for X360LA.
• Windows 360 - The original Xbox was basically a stripped-down-Windows 2000 box running DirectX 8.1, making Windows desktop->Xbox console ports a relative snap. I've read that the 360 will function along the same lines, with XNA making that process even easier. This is great for small developers, because it means production for consoles will be within our reach.

The sheer price to enter the market for game developing is HUGE.

• American's McGee Alice - admitedly it's not more than a 3D Mario in terms of game play, but oh does it have style.
  
• Rez - abstract shooter with great soundtrack and original graphics.
  
• Tranquility - Abstract 3D flying game. Unlike anything else I've seen, has the simplicity of Tetris.
  
• Gish - 2D platformer with very original gameplay due to the lead character's physical properties

>> Anyway, good luck to him but I think $20 for a game is above a reasonable Linux price point

I believe you are right. these guys sell indie games based on the torque engine (which they license to hoddyists/indie devs). Many of the games are win/Mac/Linux, but they sell something like 5% to linux users The rest being Win/Mac with lots of MAC sales - they buy. Apparently we (linux users) are a cheap bunch of mofos...

... can't be THAT difficult: GarageGames.
Of course, it will take a few years and some buddies pithcing in at one time or the other, but in the end it isn't that much more difficult than building a good piece of software alltogether.

"You gotta be good at it, be patient and stick to it" - No, really?

If you wanna be a game designer, start now. Everything you need to build a game can be learned within a year by a skilled computer user and the tools nowadays cost a few hundred euros maximum. You won't build WoW of HalfLife3, because those need - most of all - huge man power. But you can build a good game. And have fun at it. You just have to do it.

• Torque2D - GarageGame's upcoming 2D tiling engine SDK. This looks promising, but is in its early-adopter release. Not yet ready for primetime, according to GarageGames.
• Pygame - Python-based 2D engine. My feeling is that Python is a great language to start game development in.
• Orbforms Designer - Why limit yourself to the PC? PDA games can give you a greater return on your time than Windows games do. (Per man-hour, our PDA titles bring us more revenue than our PC titles do.)
• Game Editor - For those who want to go even higher-level than an SDK.

• 3D Gamestudio - The engine of choice for our latest games. I love it, and hope they'll extend to the Xbox 360 platform when it comes out.
• Torque - Maybe the single most popular 3D engine among indies and hobbyists. Focuses, in part, on cross-platform compatibility (Windows/Linux/Mac).
• OGRE - An open-source package. Frequently updated. Some nice projects using the engine.
• DarkBASIC - A popular package among new developers and independents.

• Game Tunnel - Previews, articles, and reviews of indie games.
• DIY Games - Covering the latest independent/shareware titles.

• Torque2D - GarageGame's upcoming 2D tiling engine SDK. This looks promising, but is in its early-adopter release. Not yet ready for primetime, according to GarageGames.
• Pygame - Python-based 2D engine. My feeling is that Python is a great language to start game development in.
• Orbforms Designer - Why limit yourself to the PC? PDA games can give you a greater return on your time than Windows games do. (Per man-hour, our PDA titles bring us more revenue than our PC titles do.)
• Game Editor - For those who want to go even higher-level than an SDK.

• 3D Gamestudio - The engine of choice for our latest games. I love it, and hope they'll extend to the Xbox 360 platform when it comes out.
• Torque - Maybe the single most popular 3D engine among indies and hobbyists. Focuses, in part, on cross-platform compatibility (Windows/Linux/Mac).
• OGRE - An open-source package. Frequently updated. Some nice projects using the engine.
• DarkBASIC - A popular package among new developers and independents.

• Game Tunnel - Previews, articles, and reviews of indie games.
• DIY Games - Covering the latest independent/shareware titles.

If you're not already used to programming in 3D, it can take way too much time to ramp up, find an engine that works how you want, understand it, and so on and so forth. Writing a 3D engine is also a massive task, and will probably kill your interest before you get around to actually writing a game.

2D is a nice way to go: it's a lot more fun getting so much more bang for your buck, without nearly as many content hassles either.

One cheaply available 2D engine that comes with source is from the good people at garage games, called Torque 2D. It's got a decent scripting language, and nice enough C++ code. If you don't want to re-learn C++ right away, you can accomplish quite a bit with only the scripting language.

There are probably some other nice 2D engines out there as well, so you can look before you buy. However, I'd recommend picking one and starting from there: it'll save you a ton of work, and you're much more likely to actually get something done.

One other possibility: I made a funnish GBA game in my spare time a while back. It just took a few weekends (and a flash linker from Lik-Sang), and the help of a couple friends. I never finished it, but it was a reasonable demo. GBA dev is slightly tougher than 2D dev with an existing engine, but the libraries out there make it really not too much worse.

Why don't you, and this guy start talking about when the Linux userbase will be large enough for games to be directly ported.

It's not "pie-in-the-sky dreaming", and no it's not a gamer's paradise either, but for now, I have more games for native Linux than I have time to play, and more are being ported all the time.

Interesting. That must be why more games get ported to Linux than the Mac, because Linux has a bigger desktop share... Oh, wait...

This is a pititful excuse by game developers who don't want to change their attitudes or outlooks. All that make your game easily portable requires is dumping all the DirectBlah BS and using an API that doesn't make you Microsoft's whipping boy.

Heck, if the API is inadequate, you could even add a bit to it for whatever it is you needed and release the changes back. It might make it easier to make games, which would make a bigger market, which would probably make things better for everybody.

As it is, I tend to buy games from small independents (Garage Games, Guild Software, Introversion Software, the list goes on) instead of the big publishers because the game developers who work for them have minds of their own and tend to make Linux versions of stuff. As opposed to people like you who stick their fingers in their ears and chant 'Marketshare' over and over again.

>> and if Mac users steal 30% more

If the Mac users I have interacted with are a fair sample, I expect Mac users steal 30% less not 30% more. Further correlation (or coincidence?) go someplace like garage games where the majority of their sales are Mac versions..

FWIW, I don't own or use a Mac. I just think the demographic that purchases Macs are more likely to actually pay for their software as well.

It's reasonable for software companies to push for console-only releases - think of how much money they would save by closing off the open arena of PC hardware troubleshooting, and you get the idea. I might add that this action would choke off the DIY game-making crowd pretty well, and places like Garage Games would then expand to become a mindsharing portal for people to figure out how to port games to consoles on the cheap.

It depends what you want.

If you want to make it easy I'd recommend Torque from GarageGames. It has greate documentation, lots of premade widgets, it's also finished and being used for a number of games. Mainly it has the polish that makes working with it enjoyable. (Tutorials, prebuild samples, etc) Not open source but has a similar community
Someone else has already recommened Crystal Space. If your looking for an example of an MMORG check out PlaneShift.

Another engine that I've been impressed with is ORGE

Anyway as I stated at the begining if you are trying to get something done ASAP go with Torque it has a lot more support. On the other hand if you want something free try Crystal Space or ORGE. One last project you might find interesting is WorldForge they have been building MMORG for a while now. They still haven't finished anything but it's more like a backend and might be useful.