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This article makes for interesting reading for developers and gamers alike.

On a more basic level, I can think of several games I have played that really impressed me graphicly. One that springs to mind (that got a mention in the article) was Quake III from id Software. Another game I remember being impressed with was WarCraft 3 from Blizzard (The way it let you angle the camara and sort of fly from an overhead view into tight third-person was awsome).

With all the cinimatics we're seeing in games (both for the computer and the console) I can only begin to imagine what the future holds for this industry, but I think gamers can be sure of one thing. They definatly have something to look forward to :)

This article makes for interesting reading for developers and gamers alike.

On a more basic level, I can think of several games I have played that really impressed me graphicly. One that springs to mind (that got a mention in the article) was Quake III from id Software. Another game I remember being impressed with was WarCraft 3 from Blizzard (The way it let you angle the camara and sort of fly from an overhead view into tight third-person was awsome).

With all the cinimatics we're seeing in games (both for the computer and the console) I can only begin to imagine what the future holds for this industry, but I think gamers can be sure of one thing. They definatly have something to look forward to :)

OBJ is a disaster. There are something like 30-odd vendor-specific flavors, each with their own quirks.

3DS isn't great either. It's binary and doesn't support vertex normals, which is a pretty big strike against it.

The most decent vendor formats in use today are ASE (3D Studio ASCII Scene Export) and Lightwave LWO[B].

PicoModel my BSD-licensed model reading library. </plug>

y

• UT2004 (Also Unreal - 2003 work as well)
• Neverwinter Nights
• SAVAGE: The Battle for Newerth
• Enemy Territory
• Quake3
• Americas Army

• Forzen Bubble
• Scorched3D
• Legends (Tribes2 Clone)
• Chromium (Space Invaders Clone)

everyone's bitching about how warcraft was based on something else, so wasn't revolutionary. what they forgot to realize is that neither was Doom... anyone remember Wolfenstein 3D (originally released May 5, 1992.)? I'm sure there might have been some predecessors to that as well

ID Software have for a while too for Enemy Territory etc. here

First of all, I am sure it was compiled in degug mode - resource hog.

Secondly, whenever ID Software claims:

-"Our next game, DoomQuad, will require that you travel forward in time and get yourself a system powerful enough to run it. Unless, naturally, you are content at playing the game at -2 FPS".

...everyone starts foaming at the mouth with excitement.

Now M$ has a product that requires you to have a somewhat beefy system and everyone starts bitching.

Why am I not surprised? This is slashdot after all.

Keen is not abandonware.

Keen is not abandonware.

So the appropriate answer to Mac Halo's problems is a free and open beta test and/or "shareware" release, ala Doom, Quake, etc. Give people the engine and a couple of levels, and maybe multiplayer play and see what happens?

Now that I think about it, I wonder if id will do that for Doom III.

<MINIRANT>
Also, I wouldn't have expected any laptop made a year ago to support games released recently. That's the nature of the machine, unfortunately, as far as laptops go, unless they're one of those hacked-together beasts that use desktop components.
</MINIRANT>

...DOOM.

With updated source code available, plenty of improvements, and lots of ways to create your own maps, there's plenty to do before HL2 comes out!

Quake 3 isn't open source but Quake 2 is (as well as Quake I think).

With the release of Savage 2.0 yesterday, I plan on wasting all my "TV time" playing.

This one is almost as time consuming as previous addictions, and shares many of the same traits of both!

If you get slaughtered by a rabbit or a penguin, you've probably 'seen' me!

I think it will be the private sector that will actually accomplish these things. Take a look at the X-Prize competition for an example. Several teams are ready for suborbital launch this year.
Personally, I can't wait for John Carmack (of id fame) to start working on a moon mission.
Looking at these private people and corporations' budgets, you can see that this sort of thing, if handeled properly, by skilled people, can cost far less than overpriced government programs.
So, I say "Yes, let's go to the moon, but let's fly Jet Blue!"

Nobody's mentioned Enemy Territory yet? This thing is fantastic. It's a special release of Return to Castle Wolfenstein (totally free, and legal) that allows network team play of Allies vs. Axis. Pretty realistic, and definitely runs on slower hardware (I have a 1.2 GHz Duron, and ancient Radeon card). Versions have been released for both Windows and Linux. Here is the distribution site with BitTorrents but the download is available from lots of other places too.

Download has been faster, for me at least, from the BitTorrent link @ idsoftware.com.

i think the game that really made me appreciate its soundtrack was "quake" with music entirely by "trent reznor" (well known for being "nine inch nails"). the best thing about it, was being able to take out of of your computer and play the audio tracks on any cd-player. old playstation games sometimes did this, and the modern equivalent is finding all the game tracks are stored as mp3s.

the article is a bit whingy and i think misses the point that it is a case of "right tool for the right job". sometimes existing tracks work better, sometimes something entirely new is what's needed. that's what makes it art.

More aggressively with game developers. I mean its sort of sad that even though there are a handful of active commercial (and non-commercial albeit high quality as in my sig) game developers who are supporting Linux there is still the perception that Linux doesn't have games.

Gentoo seems to get it, but I'd expect to see a more aggressive commercial distribution seriously pimping this and I believe in we really need some good exposure like this.

Bios changes to "trustworthy computing" make me just as scared as when my wife and I went car shopping at Gan Chev Olds and they said "Trust Me. This is a great deal!". Boy did I ever get screwed on that "deal". *sigh*

Since when does it make sense to switch the onus for security to hardware?

Oh I knew it was time to buy a Mac! With Doom 3 being fully supported on Mac on launch, it's going to be hard for people to criticize Mac for a lack of games. As soon as Uncle Sam rubs his greedy hands together, to try and get all our secrets, it's time for a switch, IMHO. I'm developing my open source Doom 3 project on a Mac, so I'll be playing on one too. Maybe once Doom 3 is on Mac, the next generation of Id-engine-spinoffs will make for a slaughterhouse of new games for Mac, too!

A pretty good book to read if you are interested in gaming professionally, is Monster Gaming, by Ben Sawyer. Not only does it outline the competitive online gaming community, it delves into mods and other cool stuff like customization & configuration. The book has a foreword by Angel Munoz, the founder of the CPL, and cover art by Id legend Paul Steed. While Monster Gaming is not about becoming a CPL athlete, it is about being a better gamer.

The number of wicked web links in there is enough for any gamer to drool over. I've been thinking of doing a Slashdot book review of it, too.

Well some companies sort of do this. Id Software usually releases their sourcecodes a little while after the games hit the shops so developers can look at the code and also use it to build own mods and things.

Still, the game is not distributed, so you still have to buy the box if you want to play the original game. Plus you need a key if you want to play online.

I'm considering getting a G5 for game development. I'm currently running a small dev team that is gearing up for work on a DooM 3 total conversion. My question is, Mac gamers, how hard is it going to be to compile DooM 3 on OS X 10.3 Panther, compared to PC? What are the roadblocks for PC-centric guys like myself? Are there any good tutorial sites for gamers like myself who want to switch ?

I figure, if John Carmack is coding DooM 3 on a Mac, then it must be all that, right?

So it's not really a fair example. Take a look at the harrowing tale. It would be a shame if we collectively forgot this early part of Linux (in business) history and wrote if off as an example of why Linux isn't ready for business. Loki, or more specifically, Scott Draeker wasn't ready for business.

Besides, lets not write off companies like Linux Game Publishing (or ID Software or Epic Games or ..).

Come on, it should be obvious! With his coding skills for 3D engines like Quake and Doom, plus his 1337 deathmatch skills...

Come on people! THINK ABOUT IT! He is the lead coder behind id Software and he works on rockets with Armadillo Aerospace.

Can't you people see the connection? Carmack is working to dominate space, any war fought in space will be dominated by Carmack! I strongly suspect that the real reason he is into rocket science is so that he can lauch missions to Mars for experiments on Phobos and Demios...

Sure, you are worrying about China or some other nation - but I tell you Texas is looking mighty scary right now... Mark my words - QUAKE IN SPACE!!!

(Note For the Humor Impaired: this is a joke.)

The "buzz" is that these days the Gaming Industry is a big money place to be. However, good games are also expensive to make, and you've got publishers and so on to worry about.

Unfortunately, Valve won't disclose sales figures or financials to the general public ( and as a privately held company, they have no reason to do so ), so it's hard to tell. I do recall a rumour a while back they were filing for Chapter 11 because of a royalties dispute - I think it ended up being an April Fools joke.

Yes, well, I'm sure id has seen proof of that. id's Technology Licensing page claims that just by themselves, Quake I, II & III have shifted four million copies, and I'd hope they're making more than a dollar net profit on each. This doesn't even include licensing revenue, arguably more important, and there are 22 licensed titles listed on the same page.

Frankly, I think they're going to beat out NAN on this one.

It is well known that the original Half-Life made heavy use of components of the original Quake and Quake II engines. It would logically follow that HL2 continues to incorporate Quake technology.

why bother writing either quake or quakeii? Get those 6 levels of high speed algorithms and computing tricks that have been drawn from a large code base from the source. Use the source luke!

Quake source

Quake2 source

And you can bet your dollar that once the DOOMIII engine comes out, that the Quake3 source will be made available.

why bother writing either quake or quakeii? Get those 6 levels of high speed algorithms and computing tricks that have been drawn from a large code base from the source. Use the source luke!

Quake source

Quake2 source

And you can bet your dollar that once the DOOMIII engine comes out, that the Quake3 source will be made available.

I'm fucking crying here. Reuters, CNN, and id's site are all talking about this explosion right now. John Carmack and Rob Spindler (a competing X prizer) were both on the pad with the brasillian engineers when this happened, and they as of yet can not find anything. They are 90% assumed everyone on the pad is now dead.

Catacomb 3D.

Guess not, but you can buy it from ID for $15 at id Software Online

Funny, I run Linux and seem to recall enjoying playing:
Neverwinter Nights,
Unreal Tournament 2003,
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,
America's Army,
Return To Castle Wolfenstein,
and Quake 3

None of which require WineX or VMWare to be installed.
Yes, there are some games that only run in Windows, but developers are starting to see how easy it is to make a Linux port and pick up some free advertising and some more sales simply for the fact that there's a native linux client.

Another game coming soon that will ship with a linux version included in the windows box is Savage.

(what was I saying about free advertising?)

Funny, I run Linux and seem to recall enjoying playing:
Neverwinter Nights,
Unreal Tournament 2003,
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory,
America's Army,
Return To Castle Wolfenstein,
and Quake 3

None of which require WineX or VMWare to be installed.
Yes, there are some games that only run in Windows, but developers are starting to see how easy it is to make a Linux port and pick up some free advertising and some more sales simply for the fact that there's a native linux client.

Another game coming soon that will ship with a linux version included in the windows box is Savage.

(what was I saying about free advertising?)

Well, some companies like 3D Realms and id Software are still independent. :) They employ publishers, but only for marketing, distribution, etc., not to to finance their development. If Duke Nukem Forever ever gets done, this will be an indie game. :)

Snake is a great character for a video game. Plus the gadgets in the movies would also be good to develop. I wonder what engine this will use, but I'm guessing it'll be akin to the Doom 3 engine.

The character art looks pretty darn cool too. If they do this right, it could generate the kind of popularity Vice City did, yet with a Fallout flavour.

Play Enemy Territory instead, OpenGL Linux native binaries. Gratis! (as in beer)

The embedded space varies widely, ranging from 400Mhz PDAs with 64MB RAM to 50MHz mobile phones with 1 MB RAM.

It constantly surprises me how powerful the systems are that are defined as 'embedded'. After all, the minimum spec for DOOM is a
386 processor operating at a minimum of 33MHz and for Quake it's an Intel Pentium(R) 75 MHz processor or better.

That's now in 'embedded systems' sizing easily.

The embedded space varies widely, ranging from 400Mhz PDAs with 64MB RAM to 50MHz mobile phones with 1 MB RAM.

It constantly surprises me how powerful the systems are that are defined as 'embedded'. After all, the minimum spec for DOOM is a
386 processor operating at a minimum of 33MHz and for Quake it's an Intel Pentium(R) 75 MHz processor or better.

That's now in 'embedded systems' sizing easily.

but Half-Life is based on the Quake 2 engine

Sorry, but no. Half-Life was based on the Quake 1 engine, though Valve did have access to the Quake 2 code and did port some Quake 2 concepts to Half-Life. They also did a major overhaul on the Quake 1 codebase, so much that Half-Life is hardly recognizeable as a Quake 1 game, but that still doesn't change the fact that it was ultimately based on Quake 1. But don't take my word for it. Find out from id directly.

so where's a bittorrent link to get the Quake 2 demo? ID is slashdotted.

ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake2/q2-314-dem o-x86.exe

arg.

1) Unreal Tournment 2003, Enemy Territory, Quake3, Neverwinter Nights, etc. And much, much more with Wine such as Soldier of Fortune 2.

2) Grip, VERY good CD Ripping app. Will auto download CDDB, run the encoder of your choice, etc. As for raytracing Povray can do a lot too, but you just need a good modeler, such as Kpovmodeler. As for a one click installer, check out RPMs or RedHat's Package Management System, looks just like Install Shield.

3) KDE,Gnome,etc. You DO know that they can be themed to look just like the crappy Windows GUI too don't you?

This is an oft-repeated falsehood. You can't have it both ways.

Nice troll AC, to which the answer is: bullshit, the whole frigging point of the GPL is that it works exactly like that.

You can't both give your work to anybody and everybody under terms that allow them (in fact REQUIRE them) to redistribute your work and yet still claim to hold an exclusive copyright on it.

The GPL does not REQUIRE you to redistribute your work at all. You are perfectly welcome to incorporate GPLed code into any product you want. If and only if you want to redistribute the code or a derivative of it does the license kick in. And yes you can have it both ways. If it's my code, I can license it how I want. I can either charge millions of dollars to any development team who wants a copy (see these guys for a good example) or I can release the code under a share and share alike license (again something that the same guys have done) or I can choose something in between. None of these choices in any way changes the fact that I was the creator of the work and hence by the Berne Convention have the copyright.

This is an oft-repeated falsehood. You can't have it both ways.

Nice troll AC, to which the answer is: bullshit, the whole frigging point of the GPL is that it works exactly like that.

You can't both give your work to anybody and everybody under terms that allow them (in fact REQUIRE them) to redistribute your work and yet still claim to hold an exclusive copyright on it.

The GPL does not REQUIRE you to redistribute your work at all. You are perfectly welcome to incorporate GPLed code into any product you want. If and only if you want to redistribute the code or a derivative of it does the license kick in. And yes you can have it both ways. If it's my code, I can license it how I want. I can either charge millions of dollars to any development team who wants a copy (see these guys for a good example) or I can release the code under a share and share alike license (again something that the same guys have done) or I can choose something in between. None of these choices in any way changes the fact that I was the creator of the work and hence by the Berne Convention have the copyright.

Glad to know I'm not the only person who hates Fileplanet. Just use BT

et-linux-2.55.x86.run.torrent

are here: http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/BT.html

Keep your shotgun handy though, as they are more than likely going to open up a portal into another dimension and all sorts of nasties are going to come pouring out.

dear lord, haven't we learned our lesson from Doom, Stargate and Half-Life ?!

science, it's done nothing but cause trouble.

Mike

Most 3D developers nowadays are still writting simplistic, low-poly, engines that don't work any worse on single-pass, single-texture cards. A lot of computer games have very high sounding system requirements, but play fine on older hardware. Similarly, a lot of multiplatform titles are written for the PS2 (the weakest of all consoles), and shoddily ported the GCN, Xbox, and PC (Enter the Matrix).

I only know of a few developrs who are targetting hardware that does single-pass, multitexturing, proper dynamic lighting, pixel shading, and so on. At least most of the games that come out that aren't super-awesome looking have good gameplay, unlike most of the worst LCD offenders.

Why would anyone hastle someone from the videogame industry.
I mean it's not like there are games that teach your to kill or games where you kill police officers. I don't see why the government would bother people in this industry.

• They wanted to optimize for the only the operations they use. Their renderer performs no lighting calculations, for instance.
• They can optimize for a specific operating system and processor. They use MMX instructions, for instance.