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You might want to give the torque (tribes2) engine a try, as it supports large environments, unmodified up to about 128 simultaneous players, has decent physics and is more mature in a lot of ways than anything in the F/OSS realm. and at $100 per developer seat, the cost of entry is really not that high.

> Not all upgrades are unexpected.

Was the GameShark an expected upgrade? It plugged into a standard control port and used the standard interfaces, but Sony eventually answered InterAct's continued refusal to "play ball" by removing the port.

> Is there a way for a startup video game
> development firm to break into the industry
> anymore?

Depends on the industry. If you just want to make games, http://www.garagegames.com/ is a decent place to start. If you want to make *console* games, or PC games that debut at E3, you will need someone willing to put up millions of dollars for the project.

In order to get those people interested in your project, you will of course need a game that looks like it will *make* millions of dollars in profit for those people.

I usually find that people wanting to get into the game industry are missing the single most important thing they need: a GAME. Go build a game. Without that, you're not going anywhere.

Torque Game Engine. Fascinating, if only to poke about in the code for a genuinely amazing game engine

Or donate it to a good cause such as a dog rescue group [which is what I did with my last 100 USD].

Gary (-;

The Nebula Device
Its license is as permissive as the MIT license.
Its not an engine per se; its a framework for programming your own engine. But that is what most things billed as "3D Engines" actually are.
There is also Nevrax/Nel technology, which shipped in The Saga of Ryzom MMORPG. The software license is GPL, and it is a competitive cross-platform engine, much like Nebula- however, like Nebula, it is much more of a toolkit, though to a lesser extent.
There are a variety of $100 RAD game tools out there, and it seems like they have always hovered at this price point- you get what you pay for; undocumented, buggy code that is ok for a quick prototype but unviable in the long run.
Excepting Torque. This is an excellent engine for $100 US. The engine shipped in Tribes and Tribes 2, is cross platform, and has a mature toolchain for developing anything that is Tribes-like (predominantly outdoor terrain with buildings and tunnels in it). In fact, if what your developing is basically a Tribes 2 total conversion, the only code you would need to write would be AI and other game-specific code.

Does anybody here have advice on game engines for hobbyists? I suppose the politically correct answer is Crystal Space because it is open source but I found it to be quite laggy. Torque seems nice but the demo is not very functional. Is it worth the $100?

I thought that I would point out that most of the Tribes developers have moved onto GarageGames and the independent game development scene with the Torque Game Engine.

If you haven't checked out GarageGames or the indie games tha they develop and publish then I highly recommend that you do. There are a variety of great games available to suit anyone's needs (from your puzzle games, to your more traditional FPS ones) and they run a bunch of different OSes such as Windows, OSX and Linux. I think you would be shocked at what has been done.

A better game for the "ball/tilting" genre might be Marble Blast Gold, which is different from Neverball in that the image does *not* tilt in response to input. Considering that the Powerbook is being physically tilted already, it would look much more like real-world forces are acting on the marble.

The article really should have mentioned Garage Games. Marble Blast and Gish are two of the funnest games I've ever played. If a good game to you is based on eye-candy, then this isn't the place for you. But if a good game is based on game-play, these were the best $20 I've ever spent.

While not open source, Garagegames recently released the Early Adoptors version of Torque 2D for which you get the source to.
(Torque is the engine used for Tribes 1/2)

It makes making cheap little (or large!) 2D games a snap.

While not open source, Garagegames recently released the Early Adoptors version of Torque 2D for which you get the source to.
(Torque is the engine used for Tribes 1/2)

It makes making cheap little (or large!) 2D games a snap.

The solution is to make Linux games ourselves, and to sell them. We don't need to wait for large game companies to start supporting Linux. We can also MOD existing games with Linux version. With games engines like Torque available, and with moddable games aroung like Quake3 and UT2004, there is really no excuse for not making good Linux games.

Mods are not new, people edited the hell out of the Dooms, I even had a kill barney(damn puple dinosaur) mod for wolf 3d. If your interested in a low cost high quality game engine you can make your own games with take a look at Garage Games You can license the Tribes 2 engine, known as Torque, for next to nothing and make commercial games with it even.

http://www.garagegames.com/

Since the Torque engine compiles and runs on the Mac already, this could definately be a possibility.

They also aren't fantastically hard to recreate. There are plenty of third-party cross platform sound, input and networking libraries.

Regardless, in this case we're discussing a graphical application.

When a DirectX game gets ported to OS X or any other platform you'll often find that the multiplayer is limited to the platform you're using.

Or not. World of Warcraft comes to mind, for instance.

Perhaps someone can suggest some other libraries/frameworks for input/sound/networking. There's GLUT for input, but it's pretty simple so it might not work for everyone.

OpenML and OpenAL are two possibilities. Another thought might be to use a modern programming environment like Java, and use its abstracted sound, input and networking along with OpenGL. You could always write your own wrapper library in your language of choice as well. You could also use a third-party cross platform game engine like the Torque engine that supports OpenGL.

Here's a good link for those that'd like to learn more about OpenGL in general.

Of course, if I don't get modded to hell, there will be a dozen replys from the Apple "amen corner" telling me that the Apple is a better deal, etc.

I won't tell you which system is the better value for you, but let's for the pure fun of things look at that Mac Mini's software, and then figure out from there what you're paying for the naked hardware, okay?

Let's see -- the Mac Mini comes with (with prices listed at Apple's Online Store in brackets (using all USD prices):

• Mac OS X v10.3 ($129)
• iLife 05 ($79)
• AppleWorks ($79)
• Quicken 2005 ($69.95)
• Nanosaur 2 ($24.95)
• Marrble Blast Gold ($19.95)

For a grand total of $401.85 if you were to just buy the software alone, leaving the hardware portion costing you only $97.15 . When you factor in the fact you don't need to outfit the system with firewall or anti-virus software, it looks like one damn fine deal to me.

Yaz.

I have to think the best way to ensure economic feasibility would be for games to ship with Windows, OS X and Linux support on the same disc.

Considering all the games which are built on OpenGL compatible engines (Q3 engine, Unreal engine, et al) there's no reason reason it couldn't be done. The majority of any game disc is comprised of platform neutral art assets and level logic. The platform specific binary of the game engine is seldom more than a very few MB. You could easily fit all three on the same disc.

Barring that, the package could specify that OS X and Linux binaries are available for download from the company website.

There are a number of very good cross platform compatible game engines out there already and it sickens me that more companies don't take the few moments to expand their market.

I understand exactly what the poster is saying, we Linux users are used to freeware, but those of us who play games do browse the store shelves. When titles start showing up which include support for our platform of choice, we'll buy 'em!

P.S. if you are curious about cross platform game development you might want to check out the Torque engine at Garage Games.

Non sequitur http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/non+sequ itur "A reply that has no relevance to what preceded it." Your reply neither refuted my position nor supported your's.

I don't see how. You claimed it was up to the people who sold the software to fix it, and I pointed out that much software was not written to be sold as a product. It was written by the people who had a problem to solve.

Given the number of zombie Windows machines, it seems that they're not applying them right now. But at least the option would be available to those who choose to.

Yes, and I just got back from the pub, where I was talking with a friend who claimed you don't need to bother applying security updates if you have a good firewall - in fact, he said, it's best not to because stuff might break. And this is with a huge amount of effort put into things like SP2 by Microsoft. He isn't the first person I've met with that attitude.

Look into a service contract from these people http://www.codeweavers.com/ they'd still be running that app, but they'd be on a modern, secured OS.

I work for Codeweavers and in fact this Windows 3.1 app (it was for a hospital) now runs quite well on Linux. We work hard to ensure Wine and CrossOver stay working on an incredibly unstable platform. Do you know that every single release from Red Hat 9 through to Fedora Core 3 has broken CrossOver/Wine in some way? Every single one? These typically weren't "bugs" and they weren't one line fixes. I myself put a lot of work into allowing Wine to run when exec-shield and prelink are active.

So, I'd like to think my opinion is an informed one because I work at the crossroads where Windows and Linux meet, and the differences in stability between them are like night and day.

Here's a posting about how to run ancient a.out binaries on an ELF-based version of Red Hat http://www.ofb.net/~jheiss/aout_redhat.shtml. Running ancient apps on Linux is simple. Everyone knows it is simple. Why do you try to claim that it is difficult?

Here's a simple experiment to try. Install IBM Domino Server and run it on any modern distribution. Any Fedora Core release will do. At least the release I have, won't run. It'll hang during startup in a way that looks like it's running, but actually it's not.

Now go to garagegames.com and download the Lore demo. Run it. It will fail to start with an error about libgcc_s.so. In fact most of the Loki games are now broken in some fashion.

Now try disabling NPTL, and they'll start working. Did you know about LD_ASSUME_KERNEL? Do you understand what it does?

Here's another experiment. Install a stock Red Hat 9 distribution and upgrade its copy of GTK+ to 2.4 - remember, this release is supposed to be backwards compatible. Observe that GNOME now hangs when it logs out due to a semantic change (bugfix) in GObject.

Final experiment. Write a program to create a menu heirarchy that works on every distribution out there. Actually, don't bother. The one that ships with CrossOver is over 3000 lines of Perl and covers the 6 or so different menu systems otu there as well as cases where a distro ships with more than one at once.

That's why Linux is the fastest growing server OS right now.

But which is dominant? I think you'll find it's Windows.

Sure. Stability and backwards compatibility don't matter much when you're selling a product that just has to serve web pages, or route mail. Everything you need comes out of the box. If stuff breaks it can be fixed by the distribution provider. The same is not true on the desktop which has a much less homogenous set of software in use.

Three recent trends lend credibility to the image of those modest studios (indies) developing games: 1) the fact that many such developers are are coming from industry proper; 2) the actual nomenclature "Indie" being a positive term; and 3) small studios' newfound ability to create games that are visually appealing.

First: An interesting but not-well-known fact is that many members of the indie gaming community come from a background of well-known companies. Take, for example, the Moonpod team, which had experience at Gremlin and Infogrames before starting out on their own. Monkeystone is headed by none other than id's John Romero. I would argue that games industry experience is not a prerequisite for the development of a good game; but the recent movement of folks from big gaming companies to their own studios makes independents more credible. Put simply: if folks who have worked on shipped, big-budget games are now part of the indie community, there must be something to the indie community.

Second: The actual term used for smaller studios (Independents or Indies) is an important one. You could call many of the products in this category "Shareware Games," but there's a horribly negative connotation to that term. "Indie Games" evokes the notion of a small, dedicated team of professionals crafting out something new and interesting. By contrast, the term "Shareware Games" evokes the notion of some dude in his basement churning out a buggy arcade clone that looks like it was written for the Intellivision. To parahrase someone, (I want to say Chris Barrie): A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but may be less appealing if it were called "sewage-weed." The adoption of the "Indie" label has helped legitimize games made by smaller studios.

Fifth (20 years from now, we'll be those old farts still making Python references to people born in twenty-oh-one): Independents can make games that look good. It may be because indies now have access to tools that would have made Pixar cry during its formative years. (Maya, for example, can be had for about $2k, and is even free for personal use.) It may also be because there's great talent now available. Either way, I think indie titles, taken as a whole, have become visually appealing. During the '90s, shareware titles had a bad reputation for being ugly, because they lagged so far behind the cutting-edge. These days, titles like Starscape, Dark Horizons: Lore, and Wik & The Fable of Souls are (IMO) looking pretty good. And, while indie titles may not be as spectacular as those developed by a major studio, (our own Inago Rage focuses on bright colors, but doesn't quite outdo Tron 2.0, for example), decent sales suggest that gamers like what Independents are doing.

However, given the dearth of posts in this thread, I still believe we have a long way to go. :) So, if you haven't already, check out the DIY and Game Tunnel coverage of the 81 IGF entrants. You may find that precious diamond in the rough.
_____________________

Torque from GarageGames also has some new SDK's out. Not free for but 100 bux for the engine and 50 for the RTS pack, you can make some cool freeware games. Unless I read it wrong, you only have to license if you make over 250K..

BTW, I didnt care for torque when it came out in Tribes2, buggy and early release. But they kept working on it, adding new features, and the new Beta engine they showed off even have really good plantlife, the grass was amazing. And the RTS kit and content packs make it easy to do some really cool FPS's.

But for Freya, I've always wonder why not as many Bardstale old style RPG's, easy to do, and looks like a good use of it. And I bet lot lighter than the torque engine.

(Also Torque engine compiles for linux/osx and windows, so you get cross platform games)

Been traveling a bit (just finishing up a Machinima workshop in Vienna at the Top Talent Festival), but came across this thread and thought to throw in some cents (Euro or US, you decide)...

Machinima development has come a long way in the last few years - fulfilling upon its expected promise - though it still has lots of room for maturing.

Fountainhead Entertainment's Machinimation program (which uses the Quake III Arena engine) is the definitive make-machinima-quick tool. Its the first real program for machinima production. In addition, it comes in Demo, Academic and Professional flavors depending on the projects you may have in mind (those interested should check out the Machinimation version differences and the Machinimation FAQ. Machinima filmmakers should stay tuned to the continual development of this program.

In the "promise on the horizon" dept., the afore-mentioned Half-Life2 has a number of tools that could make it the standout machinima production engine. With its internal character facial/gesture animation tool, Face Poser, the ever-so-missing dramatic expression of faces and lip-sync finally gets its due. While the Hammer editor doesn't get as much of an overhaul as I would have liked, this machinima filmmaker hopes there's scripting support in the full SDK to be released next week.

One of the most satisfying of current machinima production-ready engines is probably Unreal Tournament 2004. While even the Epic Games tech can use some help in the machinima department (its internal camera system, Matinee, only goes so far), it does have a large community for support as well as Epic's own Unreal Developer Network (which should be a model for any game developer looking to support their engine post-purchase). That said, the UT2004 tech has room for development and could be the platform for further Machinima development in the future (without spilling too many beans, interested parties should stay tuned). The Unreal 3 tech looks great too!

Other engines: The Sims2 is a good Machinima contender (and the engine behind Rooster Teeth's The Strangerhood) - one hopes that Maxis/EA will build up its Machinima use, either through internally developed tools, or supporting third-party/end-user development of such programs. Linden Lab's Second Life is also a good Machinima platform, although the control of characters and events through a remotely located server can impact production. Still, it allows the end-user to upload their own gestures as well as givens them IP ownership (big deal for those looking to profitize their work). A Machinima filmmaker may also want to consider the Torque engine from Garage Games with its low-cost ownership model and large community as well.

As mentioned in the original posting, Lionhead's The Movies looks promising - an application that blurs the line between game and productivity tool (as least from the Machinima filmmakers perspective). Lionhead unfortunately hasn't looked to the Machinima community for recommendations (which could have been a valuable resource, IMHO), but hopefully they will post-release.

Finally, I will do a selfish plug and make the recommendation to my book, The Art of Machinima, which I created with the beginning Machinima filmmaker in mind. The book covers using Fountainhead's Machinimation (a demo of which is included in the book's CD) as well as more advanced Machinima using UT2004.

The upcoming Machinima Film Festival (Spring 2005) will be showcasing the majority of these engines and developments - people should st

I think the big question is, how can we get small game studios back? Is it really not possible for a small team to make commercial games?

I believe that the problem smaller studios face can be overcome with some lateral thinking. The problem is two-fold: production costs and marketing costs are too high to allow indies to compete on equal footing with the big boys. The solution, then, is to not compete on equal footing.

Don't: Try to copy a game that took 60 people 3 years to create.
Do: Draw from an existing genre, but come up with a unique twist -- something meaty that doesn't exist elsewhere.

Don't: Compete with larger productions on the same style of graphics.
Do: Come up with a unique look; it's easier to wow people with a fresh style. (Though Monolith is not a small studio, Tron 2.0 was the opposite of the hyper-realism trend, and set itself apart on appearance, among other things.)

Don't: Try to out-advertise Activision, Microsoft, or Infogr- er- Atari. A small studio's meager advertising budget should be used towards development.
Do: Make as much use of word-of-mouth marketing as is humanly possible. It's easier to connect with your individual players because... well... there are fewer of them.

Don't: Re-invent the wheel. id Software must create its own 3D engine from scratch; you don't (necessarily) have to.
Do: Make as much use of middleware as possible. You don't need to be an artist to create skycubes. You don't need to know DirectX or OpenGL intimately to create an engine. You don't need to write your audio engine from scratch.

And I deeply believe better games would be coming out of a smaller and more laid back studio...

I like the cut of your jib. I hope you're right.

________________________
Inago Rage - A first-person shooter where you fight in arenas of your own creation.

It's about time to show these corporate bullies that we will not take this any more.

The problem is, as other people have pointed out, that hype sells. People get excited about hype, and unfortunately gamers don't cut through the bullshit very often. "FANTASTIC MULTIPLAYER!" is a check box that developers and publishers check in order to sell more units.

The problem is, if you don't hype you don't sell units. I run an independent online RPG, Meridian 59. We don't hype our product. What little advertising we've done has been focused on trying to get our name out. We have great PvP, an aspect which appeals to a niche. But, other PvP games have come out with giant hype and so our game gets lost in noise. It's hard to compete with "OMG 100% ORGASMS!" when you try to stick to honest advertising. (Of course, those other PvP games quickly prove to be overhyped and full of bugs. But, still, people buy into the hype.)

So, what can a game player do? As the parent suggests, start doing a bit of critical thinking about the game you want to buy. Unfortunately, it's really hard to find good information about games. The sad reality is that most reviews are forced to be good in order to guarantee advertising income and to meet a deadline. A few sites, such as GamersInfo.net try to give honest reviews of games. (Full disclosure: I've written reviews for the site.) But, how do you really find out how good multiplayer is in a game, or if it even exists?

My personal soapbox is to speak in favor of independent games. Garage Games has a good selection of indie games, including the quite original game Gish. Indie games tend to be more honest, because they often have to rely on great gameplay instead of super-spectacular graphics and production values. You won't see much hype for these games, because they can't afford the carpet-bombing advertising campaign in print magazines. Unfortunately, this means you'll have to work a bit harder to find out about them.

I'd recommend that instead of trying to "stick it to the man" in court, spend that energy in finding indie developers to support. Most of us just want to create cool games which people enjoy. We're not concerned with hype or lying about our product. We do the best we can, and try to get an honest word out about our games. We're not looking to sell millions of copies, just enough to feed ourselves. Honestly, I cared that much about money, I would have gone into some other line of work.

Some thoughts from an indie developer.

Have fun,

I wouldn't cry too much - piracy is going to hurt the publishers of weak games worst, 'cos everyone can find out that it sucks before it goes on sale ;-)

The problem is that this also hurts legitimate small, independent game developers as well. In non-game terms, every time someone gets the warez version of Photoshop, that's one less person buying the significantly cheaper yet high quality Paint Shop Pro.

There are a lot of great independent games out there that are really fun. (I highly recommend watching for the game "Zap" to come out soon, it was a real blast to play at the Indie Games Conference.) This is just one site out of many with quality indie games at a good price. Instead of spending time warezing a big-name commercial game, people should try looking into the alternatives. If people start supporting independent game developers, you'll start seeing a wider variety of games being developed independent of the restrictions imposed by publishers. It always boggles me how people can justify pirating games because "games suck these days" without putting any real effort into finding alternatives to play.

Have fun,

Thank Mr. Gilbert for observing that there are many other routes than his traditional approach. But this is the computer game industry, and tradition applies mostly to last week. The route we've taken is to design a game specifically for the women segment of the downloadable audience. They are largely unfamiliar with adventure games. For that reason, we hope to stand out among the billion puzzle games.

Building 'The Witch's Yarn' cost, out of pocket, $10,000, including legal fees for the distribution agreement. That does not cover the principal developer's salary, but it did pay for the art, animation, proofreading, testing, sound engineering, and music licenses. Guerrilla developers can make real products (mac, pc, linux simultaenous) on real tight budgets. (the trick was to build a text adventure game that looks like a 2D adventure game - think comix)

Now, $10,000 is all one should spend to build a game for the downloadable market. The biggest game portals charge the most money to sell your game, even more than the retail channel! Fortunately, you don't have manufacturing costs. A good selling game, might earn a developer $100,000, but less than $50,000 is more likely.

Of course, who knows what'll be true next week.

Maybe a lot of people don't care and aren't interested in these sort of games - but I always like to support the little guy, and I really hope this opens up the 'cash pot' for all those little indie developers out there. Of course, I suspect there will be an army of middle men in the way, as this article by one of the guys from garage games points the way of the future for indies. I also hope it opens up the market for some of the less casual indie games out there. All the stuff popcap does is pretty banal (but fun in a mindnumbing way). I've heard that hamsterball will be on there, which is a cool game I own and love. Maybe that will leave hope for some of the other good shareware games to end up on XBoxLive, not just the coloured block pushing clones. Crimsonland, SpaceTripper or Gish on Xbox? Yeah, I'd buy...

I wonder what percentage the little developer gets though? Maybe I'll hold off until I know - I can always buy direct from their website - I'd rather support them and their future endeavours than all the sharks in between.

But when it asserted that all interactive fiction was operated by verb/direct-objects controls, I had to put it down. There are other metaphors for controlling a branching narrative. Midnight Stranger let you control the main character's emotions, allowing him or her to react based on the player choice of emotion. Another game to break the verb/target type of adventure game is The Witch's yarn. Instead of controlling the character, the player controls the environment.

The indy game scene is definitely to be watched. Two main reasons why I believe that it won't be long before the next big things come from there instead of one of the big studios:

One: The studios are producing ever more sequels. It just is commercially safer. You know for a fact that BigTitle 2 or HugeSeller 4 will sell at least a few ten-thousand copies to people who buy it because they liked the first, second or third part.

Two: With stuff like Torque and others, the indies are closer to the pros than ever since C64 and Amiga days. The big shots have todays ubercool engine, but the indies already have access to yesterdays engine, which runs better on most users machines anyways.

The critical part in all indie games I've seen (and I've seen many, beta-tested quite a few, and had my hand in the development of one or two) is the artwork. Good coders are rare, but average coders are a dime a dozen. Even average artists, however, with all the skills required to create textures, 3D models, music or sound-effects ready for use in a game - those guys are not that easy to find.

You can download a unlimited time demo (some features are limited though) for Dark Horizons Lore for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Download demo from GarageGames.com.

In regards to Heavy Gear 2, it's been a while since I played it. From my recolection there are definately similarities between the two in the sense that they are very much FPS games more than Simulators. I feel that Lore plays a bit faster than Heavy Gear though.

There are quite a few 3d engines out there. The biggest I guess are Crystal Space 3D, Genesis3D, OGRE, Toque (Tribes2), Quake and Quake II. Of course there are others to fill certin niches like Yeti or ExoEngine and libraries like DevLib and G3D for those who want to write their own engine, but don't feel like they need to implement yet another file loader. I'm not sure why 0.7 of Irrlicht was worth mentioning on /. as it is isn't clear what its roll is compared to those other engines.

I was at Siggraph 2004 and attended a round table on "how will you (game developers) feed next generation games". The problem is going from a Playstation1 to Playstation2 many developers found games now took roughly 2 to 3x the man years to create. But profits didn't really go up that much to compensate. This has happened every console generation and will happen again with the up coming generation. PC games don't have clear generations, but the same concept applies.

The main ideas were to reuse content. For example if you're making a Matrix game, get the 3d models from the movie instead of making your own and start from there. Or if you're making a port try to reuse as much as possible. Future games will have a lot of computer generated stuff which is artist guided instead of artist created so that one artist creates a forest instead of creating a bunch of leafs on a single tree.

A big surprise to me was open source wasn't mentioned until somebody asked. A company like id will implement something cool like unified lighting for all objects first, but a year later everybody has their own implementation of it. Every year has something like this that gets the anual lens flare award; colour lighting, ground clutter, normal mapping, rag doll physics, etc. Yawn. Every company spends all this time re-implementing the exact same technology. All developers can read the same papers from Siggraph, Eurographics, or GDC and then discuss them on the same mailing lists so there is plenty of open sharing happening already. So I was surprised to hear none of the guys at the round table thought open source would really be useful to help save them money in the future other than for rather basic things like zlib, lua, etc.

It sure would be nice to see some engines reach commercial quality to used in some good games instead of getting more and more re-implementations of the foundation, which /. apparently is finds interesting. Once it happens there will be a huge snow ball effect where it picks up a LOT of developer attention. Maybe in five years one of the existing engines will reach a level of maturity that it can start to be really used and then in another ten we'll see it catching on like GNU/Linux is now?

The only other reasonable option is the Torque3D engine.

We've been looking at Crystal Space, as well as Irrlicht and others such as the Nebula Device. In the end, we ended up buying licenses for Torque from GarageGames, because it has been used to do several games and it has lots of integrated tools built right into the engine. You can move and reshape just about everything inside the running game. Now, it is a bit dated, but there will be a newer version out hopefully soon with all those shaders the kids like. For now, it is definitely good enough for most people. Most people couldn't produce content to match the newest engines anyways... ;-)

Really, Crystal Space or the Nebula Device may be better in themselves, but if we were to use them, we'd have to recreate all these tools ourselves. Hint: if you are gonna do a game of any serious magnitude, you will need tools, and lots of them. If Crystal Space wants to start seeing games built, they should include starter kits (as in something simple to start modding instead of starting from scratch) and more importantly tools. Tools for manipulating terrain, creating particle effects, placing objects and so on. Being able to import stuff from Quark or Maya is not enough. DO you as a level designer want to place everything in your game by entering numbers in a text file? I thought not... =)

As for Irrlicht, I really like it a lot. It is cool, it is really, really easy to get something up quickly in, it has good performance and plenty of good examples to get one started. However, it is nowhere finished enough (but I can wait) and it is not a game engine - it is a 3D rendering engine that could very well be used to power an awesome game engine. I think some people over there are working on such beasts, though I don't know the status... if any of them also read this, remember the tools boys! ;-)

Sorry the burst your bubble guys but no I do not work for Infinium Labs. I can see where you got that assumption though.

I am an independant game developer who makes games (such as Dark Horizons Lore, which is coming to Linux very soon) with the Torque Game Engine. As a game developer I see the Phantom as another potential market to move my products onto with the added benefit that I don't have to change much (if anything) from my WindowsPC build to get it working.

As for "defending" the Phantom Console... I guess you could look at it that way though I always felt that I was trying to give a more objective look at the issue (as opposed to the one-sided and shoddy reporting that most news sites have done). Call me a "fan boy" if you like, but the simple fact is that I am actually someone who has had a chance to sit down and play on the Phantom (at E3) and although I was very skeptical at first about it, what I demoed there was a very good product. So it really is a double win situation, once as a developer who can put my games onto this platform without many additional costs, and again if I was a consumer who was looking for something just like this.

any good game will get bought by a large percentage of that market due to the lack of titles

Don't bet on it... the Linux people might be just a bit too used to not paying for their software at all as it seems. When games appear for Linux, the Linux crowd is not buying. That is why Loki isn't around anymore. Look at a place like GarageGames, which actively supports and produces games for Linux: they have an engine (Torque) that runs almost exactly as good on Linux as on Windows (same fps etc on same machine) but performs poorer on Mac (due to lack of ppl writing optimized code). Still, according to their FAQ (entry #9), their sales are to 65% from Mac people, and 7% from Linux people.

Your argument does ring true for the Mac crowd - those are people prepared to pay for stuff for their computer (after all, they pay alot just to have the machine). Linux people really, really hate to open their wallets.

Ok, so that is just one example, but that is the general feel you get when you hang around Linux people - lot of wishes, as long as it doesn't cost money.

any good game will get bought by a large percentage of that market due to the lack of titles

Don't bet on it... the Linux people might be just a bit too used to not paying for their software at all as it seems. When games appear for Linux, the Linux crowd is not buying. That is why Loki isn't around anymore. Look at a place like GarageGames, which actively supports and produces games for Linux: they have an engine (Torque) that runs almost exactly as good on Linux as on Windows (same fps etc on same machine) but performs poorer on Mac (due to lack of ppl writing optimized code). Still, according to their FAQ (entry #9), their sales are to 65% from Mac people, and 7% from Linux people.

Your argument does ring true for the Mac crowd - those are people prepared to pay for stuff for their computer (after all, they pay alot just to have the machine). Linux people really, really hate to open their wallets.

Ok, so that is just one example, but that is the general feel you get when you hang around Linux people - lot of wishes, as long as it doesn't cost money.

Yes, but as you say they may have just simply created a kick-ass engine, in which case if you wanted to leverage OpenGL (cross-platform titles come to mind) there's less reason for others to create from scratch.

Combine that with the OpenGL-friendly Torque game engine and you've got a good pair of heavyweight tools.

From their site: "The Torque Game Engine started life as the technology behind Dynamix/Sierra/Vivendis products Tribes, Starsiege, and Tribes 2, and is an industry proven engine. It is currently being used by thousands of developers around the world with shipping titles such as Marble Blast, Orbz, Think Tanks, Tennis Critters, and the upcoming mecha game, Lore."

Not exactly a refinery, but a similar principle to what you are describing...

For a closed source project, the torque engine from garage games would be a good start (Tribes 2). At $100 for an indie license, you get 3D w/huge maps, smooth transitions to indoor maps, network code, and vehicle physics. Or you could pay $250,000 for an Unreals engine.

Well its not free, but $100-$395(depending on Liscense type) is about as good for any commercial game.

http://www.garagegames.com/pg/browse.php/

Another game that makes use of Torque and has recently been ported to the Mac is Bridge Construction Set from Chronic Logic. They have only just recently started porting their, Torque based, games to the Mac and Linux.

Torque, from Garage Games is great for anyone wanting to start getting into game development, since it is relatively affordable. There is a demo of what the engine can do on the web site.

I'll be downloading this when I escape from work this evening!

Those games look nice, I'm looking forward to checking out your stuff.

Ever hear of the Torque Engine? It is an open source game engine that Garage Games has available to license.

You can not release a game based on this engine unless you pay them for the license. It is possile

This is a good point and it leads to where open source is useful in games...game creation tools.

The article's main point was that creative art doesn't lend itself well to open source and that games don't have a long enough shelf life. But the tools that are used to make games, graphic libraries, networking libraries, sound libraries, UI libraries, etc. are re-usable from game to game. A good example is the Torque Game Engine put out by http://www.garagegames.com/. It's not free, but it's only $100 and the money gets you all of the source code and the ability to contribute patches to the engine. The community is constantly adding functionality and documentation and the open source collaboration makes the game development life cycle go much quicker.

Every game that is worth a crap needs to do something new and different that other games haven't done before. By using open source tools and engines programmers can concentrate their time on doing those new things and pushing the envelope.

Sorry for the anonymous post, I'm waiting to get my password back from /.

The title of the game is Marble Blast Gold, not Marble Blaster. Jay Moore is a GarageGame employee and head of marketing, but the company is run by Jeff Tunnell, former head of Dynamix, as noted by alabrat above. The game WAS at one point released under the title Marble Blaster in its windows-only retail boxed version by eGames, whose marketing department thought the "er" made it more appealing or somesuch. More info on this story and Marble Blast for Xbox available here.

That's just the source code for the rendering engine. Evenything that was originally in Unreal Tournament was cored out, leaving you with just the renderer and some netcode. It's also not very useful unless you pay a *very* large license fee, with a minimum price of $350,000.

Even so, the release of the code at that level isn't really significant - it still possible to do major changes to the gameplay with the engine to write things like "Red Orchestra", "Alien Blast", and even "Unreal Annihilation". All that's needed to do this sort of stuff is a license of UT2004 (as long as it is a free distribution that doesn't include the binary.)

A cheaper alternative would either be the Quake engines (GPL or pay $10,000), or the Tribes 2 engine ($100 per developer.)

No, not that sort of adult. Sorry to dissapoint.

Go to Garage Games and check out Bridge Construction Set, available both for Windows and Linux.

With many Linux distros that use KDE, you can get several "edutainment" games such as Kiten (Japanese), KVerbos, Klettres, Ktouch, KFlashcard, Kstars.... They are OK, but rather limited. I hope they will become better, one day perhaps KPercentage will have grown enough to teach (for instance) 9 years of basic school math to anyone.

The best educational game I have played though was back in Windows 95 days, a Swedish game developer from my home town Uppsala had made a geography game that fit on one floppy. You could learn names and locations of continents, countries, states, capitols etc, the quiz was usually by pointing and clicking on maps when presented by a name.

I believe they later went on to make the Backpacker series. I have never played any of them, but appearently they are great successes. The sort of game parents can pick up at any supermarket for their kids and not worry about voilent content and so on...

if I ever get the time I hope to do a similar geography game in Java on Sourceforge.

perhaps you should check out The Torque Engine. Non-free, but for $100 you get the source + tools to build whatever type of game you want.

All seven of them?!

Mod me offtopic if you want, but I'd like to point out that independent game developers have begun to realize the potential market for games on the Mac.

For example, GarageGames is an independent game publisher whose majority of titles are available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. From what I understand, the profits they make from Linux and Mac versions combined comes awfully close to the profits made from Windows versions.

Now, if only larger publishers would see this market, then... well... then I suppose the Mac gaming market would become just as saturated as the PC game market. This could be good or bad, depending on your point of view.

Don't fret. Version 2 will use Torque.

Independent studios want to create wonderful, experimental titles, but are, in part, held back by business requirements. As businesses, our first priority is to become profitable, and the least-risky way to do this is to create more traditional offerings. (The same is true for large development houses.) Fortunately for us, better middleware tools and increased publicity can free us of this constraint. The former will allow us to experiment and develop easier; the latter will allow us to reach an audience now reserved for the large publishers. As these conditions improve, you'll see independents take more risks.

Middleware comprises the audio libraries, AI plugins, and 3D engines such as Torque, Conitec A6, and FMOD. These tidbits are the lifeblood of independents. Without them, we'd have to code everything from scratch, and you'd see even more Tetris clones than you do now -- little innovation. With them, we're freed from the low-level stuff. We can create games that look and sound good enough to attract consumers. As middleware improves, it'll become even easier to experiment and innovate.

Publicity is trickier -- while events such as the Independent Games Festival allow us to bend the ears of larger publications, it's still the big studios that are going to command the previews and exclusives. Having approached a number of print publications, I've found that it can be difficult to secure a sizable preview for our game, even though I think folks might like to hear about where we're innovating. But even this is improving; sites like The Adrenaline Vault are particularly indie-friendly, often posting press releases from smaller development studios.

I think, then, that it's only a matter of time before the smaller studios attempt experimental titles in substantial numbers. Many will be terrible; some will be great fun. But as it becomes easier to experiment, you bet we'll be doing more of it, simply because we can.

Independent studios want to create wonderful, experimental titles, but are, in part, held back by business requirements. As businesses, our first priority is to become profitable, and the least-risky way to do this is to create more traditional offerings. (The same is true for large development houses.) Fortunately for us, better middleware tools and increased publicity can free us of this constraint. The former will allow us to experiment and develop easier; the latter will allow us to reach an audience now reserved for the large publishers. As these conditions improve, you'll see independents take more risks.

Middleware comprises the audio libraries, AI plugins, and 3D engines such as Torque, Conitec A6, and FMOD. These tidbits are the lifeblood of independents. Without them, we'd have to code everything from scratch, and you'd see even more Tetris clones than you do now -- little innovation. With them, we're freed from the low-level stuff. We can create games that look and sound good enough to attract consumers. As middleware improves, it'll become even easier to experiment and innovate.

Publicity is trickier -- while events such as the Independent Games Festival allow us to bend the ears of larger publications, it's still the big studios that are going to command the previews and exclusives. Having approached a number of print publications, I've found that it can be difficult to secure a sizable preview for our game, even though I think folks might like to hear about where we're innovating. But even this is improving; sites like The Adrenaline Vault are particularly indie-friendly, often posting press releases from smaller development studios.

I think, then, that it's only a matter of time before the smaller studios attempt experimental titles in substantial numbers. Many will be terrible; some will be great fun. But as it becomes easier to experiment, you bet we'll be doing more of it, simply because we can.