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Hi, from Brentwood! *wave!*

Anyway, I think it's Gathering of Developers and/or PopTop that are here. Take a look at this site -- I'm pretty sure that's them, although I haven't looked for a while.

GOD games - Gathering Of Developers. Joining a conglomeration of independent developers sounds like a good way to look after their interests. BTW, 3D Realms are part of GOD Games, as are small studios from smaller countries (Croteam, Remedy).

I may be wrong, GOD Games are part of Take2 Interactive so they probably aren't independent. Perhaps someone can enlighten us.

Space Empires IV Gold might be a game for you. The game is a customizable space conquest game that also allows for tactical, turn based resolution of space combat. Since you can design your own ships, you get to customize the ship design and tactics to suit your own style of fighting. There is also a substantial modding community coming up with customized race and technology sets.

Another game to look at is Age of Wonders 2. This game is a fantasy strategic game with tactical, turn based combat resolution. Cities can be upgraded ala Civ with different capabilities. Each city can produce a certain type of unit (or upgrade). Units are combined into armies and sent out to rampage.

Personally, I like FAKK2. My fiancee loves it too. And her kids think the character is her. "You gotta play mommy game today."

I'm surprised that no one here has mentioned some biggy indie developments. Granted, they are not necessarily full-fledged games within and of themselves, but the modding community does have the ability to crank out some great games, including the ability to make and/or break a game.

For instance, Half-Life. OK, it's a great game, good storyline, sold pretty decently. Then comes the Counter-Strike mod for it (created by an indie developer). Suddenly H/L explodes, and is still selling thousands of copies per year (don't forget that it came out many many years ago). From here, the CS team has since been "merged" into VALVe Software, and a new game (Counter-Strike: Condition Zero) is the result.

Other great examples of this are the original Team Fortress for QuakeWorld and Action Quake for both Quake I and Quake II. (Action Quake actually partially inspired Counter-Strike).

Independent developers are rampant in the RPG and War Simulation genres. Simple Google searches can reveal a surprising amount of good games out there, including ones that are sold on a per-download basis (thus eliminating the publisher altogether). Granted, they may not be making a tremendous amount of money, but almost no indie in any form of entertainment will make a lot of money ... that's just the way our current (crappy) system is set up.

For a more corporate aspect, I would recommend taking a look at GoD Games, which started out as a collection of developers joining together to form their own publishing group. (Publishing is where the actual game is made/broken. If you don't have a publisher, your game, however good it is, will not go very far) It's since been phenomenally successful.

I see no reason that indie developers can't stay together and functioning in the big world of mega-hits like EA's (well, Maxis') The Sims. The form of entertainment is simply too broad for the big wheels to cover everything.

It's surely looks like ONI to me. ONI was missing a lot of details and the 3d world was kind of block shaped, but i hope it will be the same 'genre'. Things i loved about were the anime style 3d, and the fact that it was running very nicely on my old laptop (a 333Mhz).

Well, StarCraft ghost looks far more beautiful, i hope they'll be a dozen of combo to do. Btw, a funny thing is that ONI means ghost or demon in Japanese... So, is this StarCraft - ONI? ;-)

Check the web for some shots, scripts and maps at ONI Central and ONI Res. Btw, you can download the demo it's not that big, and i guess i'll playing it in some minutes again.

freddo

It's surely looks like ONI to me. ONI was missing a lot of details and the 3d world was kind of block shaped, but i hope it will be the same 'genre'. Things i loved about were the anime style 3d, and the fact that it was running very nicely on my old laptop (a 333Mhz).

Well, StarCraft ghost looks far more beautiful, i hope they'll be a dozen of combo to do. Btw, a funny thing is that ONI means ghost or demon in Japanese... So, is this StarCraft - ONI? ;-)

Check the web for some shots, scripts and maps at ONI Central and ONI Res. Btw, you can download the demo it's not that big, and i guess i'll playing it in some minutes again.

freddo

It's surely looks like ONI to me. ONI was missing a lot of details and the 3d world was kind of block shaped, but i hope it will be the same 'genre'. Things i loved about were the anime style 3d, and the fact that it was running very nicely on my old laptop (a 333Mhz).

Well, StarCraft ghost looks far more beautiful, i hope they'll be a dozen of combo to do. Btw, a funny thing is that ONI means ghost or demon in Japanese... So, is this StarCraft - ONI? ;-)

Check the web for some shots, scripts and maps at ONI Central and ONI Res. Btw, you can download the demo it's not that big, and i guess i'll playing it in some minutes again.

freddo

• I strongly object towards your critique that it is 'only a 2D game'. Good games are NOT made by graphics.

As implied by my praise of Advance Wars for the GBA. Please do me the courtesy of reading the whole post before replying. Incidentally, I also nethack, but that doesn't mean that I'll kid myself that Joe Player will downgrade from decent 3D or even good isometric graphics to something that looks like a refugee from the Commodore 64.

Compare for example, Stronghold, a pure 2D/isometric RTS that nearly made me mess my pants when I realised that it could handle hundreds of units, with archery volleys that looked (to me, a reenactment combat archer) absolutely flawless. Contrast with Freecraft's "PointToPoint" missiles, and see how far they have to go to catch up with the commercial standard of six months ago.

Yes, I know that I'm praising graphics and not gameplay, but in this the two go hand in hand. The tiny and painfully obviously tiled and flat world of Freecraft looks painfully primitive in comparison. I'd play Freecraft, but only if I had no other choice. I'm not going to contribute to it, because I think that it's stuck in the past, and it can't be saved bar a major rewrite, which isn't going to happen now that it's been released as stable.

Actually, I think that would be a great idea. They could get multiplayer support finally! :)

Oni is owned by GOD Games now, though.

I am appalled. Is nothing sacred ?!

• Civilization III - I only mention this because so many others have. I have it already. Yes, it sucks away all my free time and half my sleep time like a giant vaccum cleaner. However, that isn't really a *good* thing; I'm not really having all that much *fun*. If you, like me, sucked all the marrow out of Civ II, then it doesn't really bring a lot of new fun to the table. If you don't have a CIV right now though, yes you need Civ III.
• Kohan: Ahriman's Gift - I really liked the first Kohan. Its sort of a RTS version of Heroes of Might and Magic. The new version doesn't sound like much of a change, but as my main problem with the first one was that the campaign was too short, that could be a very good thing.
• Empire Earth - Sort of like Age of Empires, but in 3D. It could be great, it could be a bit dull. I couldn't really tell from the demo.
• Myth III - Squad-level RTS game. I keep hearing great things about this series, but I have get to get a Myth game, so I'm about due.
• Stronghold - RTS where you build and defend your own castle. Somewhat mixed reviews, but it looks interesting.
• Trade Empires - RTS Where the object is to build a trade network, not to take over the world militarily.

Personally, I'm not too fond of consoles, but I've heard good things about GTA3. On the PC, the most obvious thing to mention would be Castle Wolfenstein, which I spotted in the stores the other day. Judging from the popularity of the multiplayer test, it's going to be ripped off the shelves. I've heard some people complain about the AI, but personally, I'd much rather play multiplayer anyway.

For strategy-lovers, there's always Stronghold.A realtively new game from firefly studios, stronghold mixes bits of the fighting from age of Empire with the resource management from the settlers and adds some spicy caste-building extras on top. It may not be everyones cup of tea, but I find it very enjoyable.

Women seem to like top-down games, such as War Craft (some network options), Pharoah (only single player though), etc. Generally the more colorful and the fewer explosions and bloodsplatters the better. But they also seem to love side scrollers. These aren't as popular on PCs these days, but Jazz Jackrabbit 2 allows network play. It came out a while ago and played beautifully on my sister's Pentium 60.

Ouch! This reminds me of Fileplanet. Who wants to see 'You are 3954 of 4132'?
I know it really peeves me when a company puts all their patches on Fileplanet so I have to wait _forever_ to get them.
OTOH, a queing system may be better than taking down the site -- I think.

Return faulty products for refund or exchange.

I don't disagree with this, however, I just bought a copy of Max Payne (a new 3D shooter game) only to discover that its SafeDisc copy protection didn't allow my CD-R to even READ the disc so I could PLAY the game!

The solution, apparently, is to purchase a new CD-R that doesn't have this problem. Seems unfair, huh? I mean, the game developers probably didn't choose to put the copy protection on, the publisher no doubt did.

I don't want to return the game and punish the developers, they did a great job! I suppose the same argument could be made for the musicians whose music is now copy protected.

How about flight simulators ?

Search And Rescue "changes the pace of recent sterotypical game themes and aims to create a plot based on positive goals such as saving victims in varying situations of distress. "

Flight Gear is also cool and has binaries for both linux and win32.

There is also Fly II.

And of course, there is also Microsoft's flight simulator product.

Does the no violence policy include abstracted violence? The Civilization series of games is great if the abstracted violence is okay. For pure non-violence, Railroad Tycoon II is great. I've played it quite a bit - the main downside is that it takes quite a while to get up to speed and it also takes quite a while to play a single game. Its main benefits for an educational setting include: history, geography, macro economics, and finance. It can also be multi-player over a network.

PC game development is a marginally profitable endeavor anyway. For every iD, there are lots of losers. Aside from Wal-Mart specials like Deer Hunter and Millionaire, PC game development is a risky proposition at best. Retail software in general is an incredibly competitive business; the retail game software business is brutal.

Linux gamers, as a group, are willing to pay for games, but only for mega-elite titles. These are games that are already successful on Windows. In particular, multiplayer games are only successful with a large gamer population, most of which will be running Windows.

Console gaming is the only profitable market for most game companies. The margins are higher, the technology is simpler due to uniform hardware, losses to piracy are low, and there is significant revenue from rental outlets.

To those of you unwilling to dual-boot to Windows, do what I did - buy a cheap second (3rd/4th/etc) machine and a KVM switch. Or get a game console and rent software. Don't let funky OS advocacy blind you to reasonable alternatives. Hey, I love my TiVo, but the fact it runs Linux means diddly to me.

They have It's called 3DMark.

The group who wrote the classics "Unreal" and "Second Reality" known as the Future Crew, started a little company back in '95 called Remedy. You may have heard of their game, "Max Payne". Well anyway when they first released a benchmarking tool called Final Reality (sounds like Second Reality, eh) it was such a success that Remedy spawned off the Mad Onion. Think of it as commercial demos.

The demoscene will never die. It just keeps changing. To an Amiga cracker/intro/demo coder the scene has been truly dead since the early 90's. Try telling that to the sceners of today.

a while ago

also sold the rights to oni, which is now out and kicks ass (not multiplayer unfortunately)

By that logic, Duke Forever's gonna flop bigtime!

Check out the Oracle at Gathering of Developers. It has many questions in a similar vein and answers from those actually in the industry, and it has a lot of good info. As they say, it is a "moderated public forum geared toward striving game developers".

Check out the Oracle at Gathering of Developers. It has many questions in a similar vein and answers from those actually in the industry, and it has a lot of good info. As they say, it is a "moderated public forum geared toward striving game developers".

IMHO its a total shame that the whole game market seems to be totally out of inspiration these days. Sometimes you come across a title which offers a complete new setup (based on something allready these I guess) but in most cases its just more of the same. The last game I've bought (Oni) is IMO a good example; its a 3rd person 'fight / shoot 'm up' but offers quite some new options. Ever fought 3 man at the same time by disarming one poor bastard and shooting the rest with his weapon? I've never seen Lara Croft do that, to name just another 3rd person game and perfect example. IMO another game which just kept on going adding basicly nothing to gameplay, just nicer landscapes and some new moves, in order to get gain more money.

As I said; the screenshots looked nice. The game itself is a shame IMVHO. Why not put the effort and money into something new?

It looks as if right before Microsoft acquired one of the top gaming companies of the time, Bungie ...

Well, if Microsoft bought out Bungie (and why? they don't normally buy games companies, unless they had a technology that M$ wanted) then what's the status of Oni? An exceptionally cool looking Anime game ... We'll never see a linux version.

Although it was developed in conjunction of Gathering of Developers, we'll just wait and see.

If it wasn't for HALO and Oni I'd probably be running Linux right now.

Which brings us to the point that Microsoft is also trying to hijack the gaming industry with the X-Box (which runs an ME Kernel). I bet the X-Box OS will be pirated onto PCs before we're done cracking Microsoft "Subscription OS" [MS: SOS].