Slashdot Mirror

jvmatthe writes, "I've gotten confirmation from Loki that their latest game, Heavy Gear II has gone gold and will be in retail stores soon. You can read our preview of it here at LinuxGames. "

jvmatthe writes, "I've gotten confirmation from Loki that their latest game, Heavy Gear II has gone gold and will be in retail stores soon. You can read our preview of it here at LinuxGames. "

Straker Skunk writes, "Loki, in conjunction with Creative Labs, has announced OpenAL, an LGPL'ed audio library for 3D sound generation. It's aimed for use in games as a cross-platform, nonproprietary means of accessing the 3D sound features on many newer sound cards. What's especially cool about it is that the API is designed with the same style, philosophy, and polish as OpenGL. Given enough time, it might very well become just as popular. " I've always been a fan of Loki and it's great to see them supporting the community - someone also sent an interview with Michael Vance, one of the developers behind OpenAL, who talks about the development of OpenAL and how it compares to other sound offerings.

Saber Taylor writes "Loki President, Scott Draeker, issued a statement saying that e-mail floods to game companies asking for Linux ports may be counterproductive. Reasonable, although I think it's worthwhile to let vendors know I bought their product because they support Linux."

rmmeyer writes "Looks like Nvidia has finally released a GLX driver and XFree86 server for their high performance video board, the GeForce 256. I've been waiting with bated breath for this to come out since Linux support was announced WAY back before the chipset was released. Found the info on Linux Games "

The Dakota Kidd writes "Just saw this on Linuxgames today - Creative has released the drivers for their dxr2 DVD decoder card. It isn't listed yet on Creative's Open Source page but it is in the CVS repository. " Kinda lost in the excitment of their open sourcing the drivers for SB Live!, but yet more good news on the hardware support front.Credit where it's due: Andrew deQuincey and Lucien Murray-Pitts actually wrote the code - it's nice to be able to get it now.

dr bacardi writes "A link is up on the Linux Games page that is a request for mail-in petitions to get Command & Conquer II: Tiberian Sun ported over to Linux. The reason for mail-ins is to, "ensure that no 'slashdot effects' occur." Thanks to Kevin Scruggs, a Linux geek from Westwood for doing this. " Kevin e-mailed me as well-let's see if we can crash the mail server *grin*

dr bacardi writes "A link is up on the Linux Games page that is a request for mail-in petitions to get Command & Conquer II: Tiberian Sun ported over to Linux. The reason for mail-ins is to, "ensure that no 'slashdot effects' occur." Thanks to Kevin Scruggs, a Linux geek from Westwood for doing this. " Kevin e-mailed me as well-let's see if we can crash the mail server *grin*

shaggs writes "Time City is an open source, linux, 1st person action game, that will have time travel, network capabilities and more. We are currently looking for volunteers for all aspects of this project, and we need you the community to help. If you have any talents to offer us, visit Time City and sign up to volunteer today! " This looks pretty cool. It will use the Crystal Space engine and be openly developed. With all the positive exposure Linux has gotten, gaming is one of the areas where Linux is not well developed yet. Free, high quality games could easily turn this around.

eh writes "Sierra Studios, makers and distributors of such fine games as Kings Quest and more recently Half-Life, has a poll up on their main page asking where they should steer their attention. One of the options happens to be "Linux Games", which is sitting so very lonely at 11%. " I remember the sheer hours Rob whilled away at Leisure Suit Larry. Of course, I only got Outpost, which the first time around stunk.

Lakini writes "I'd just like everyone to know that LinuxGames has launched a new site design and some of the documentation has been updated also. " It's so excellent to see that Linux has enough news to support an active site like this. With Q3, Civ, and rumors of so much more, its great to see that Linux is almost a viable gaming platform.

Lakini writes "I'd just like everyone to know that LinuxGames has launched a new site design and some of the documentation has been updated also. " It's so excellent to see that Linux has enough news to support an active site like this. With Q3, Civ, and rumors of so much more, its great to see that Linux is almost a viable gaming platform.

linuxgames.com has a story involving the upcoming Linux server port of Unreal, as well as a possible client(!) port to Linux as well. You can also read the original post over at Epic MegaGames. Epic is now looking at more 3D APIs besides Glide, and hopes to use OpenGL for any Unreal ports.

rpete writes "LinuxGames is reporting that BFRIS, the new game from Aegis Simulation Technologies, has gone gold. Is this the first shrink-wrapped game for Linux? "

Christian Reiniger of the new Linux Game Development Project has written up a nice piece that you might want to read if you want to see more games on Linux, and how this new project will aid that. The way I see it, the apps are coming, and in many cases, already here. We just need the games. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Christian Reiniger The Linux Game Development Center Rationale

Linux is gaining much attention these days. People who were anti-Linux for a long time suddenly discover that it has changed much the past few years, ultraconservative magazines feature positive stories about Linux at prominent places and The Big Ones in the computer business are almost crowding to support the former "hacker OS".

Good press is always welcome - but can Linux live up to its new image? Can it avoid to dissapoint the people finally giving it a try?

Well, the "It doesn't have a nice, easy to use desktop" and "There are no applications for it" arguments are vanishing in a puff of colorful smoke and the "It's too hard to install" problem is quietly dissolving. But there's still that nasty "But I can't play my favourite games in Linux!" thing.

Linux has games. Linux has good games. But that other operating system has several orders of magnitude more good games than Linux. That's bad. And difficult to overcome, as it's not only because of technical reasons. But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving problems and shipping around obstacles. There is no reason why we should not be able to solve this issue, too.

So what's the current situation, what needs to be done and what can be done? Here is a short overview of the major issues:

• Despite Linux's rapid growth - both in terms of user base and existing software - it still is not generally perceived as viable platform for high quality games. Some of the often cited problems are without doubt true, but most of these are already at the verge of being solved and the others mainly need more public discussion.
• While many game-related SDKs and applications exist or are in the make, there is no comprehensive overview of them available.
• As all of these SDKs have their strengths and weaknesses, much can be gained by making them as modular and interoperable as possible, so that game developers can combine them to an almost optimal solution.
• For both commercial game developers wanting to port games to Linux and yet-inexperienced Open Source® developers aspiring to write free games, easy to read documentation and online help via mailing lists and/or irc are very valuable.

Quick Summary

In essence we are suggesting that this new Linux Game Development Center be a kind of meta-project. It would be dedicated to advocating Linux as gaming platform, collecting knowledge about Linux game development and using it to help all interested people, providing facilities for discussion to Linux game developers and, last but not least, encouraging and helping existing free (Open Source®) game SDK projects coordinate with one another.

Please note that this is not an attempt to impose standards or rules on anyone. We just want to do what we can to help everybody coordinate their project with the others and to encourage all game SDK developers to develop compatible libraries.

This is also a call for developers, users and game SDK projects to join our efforts.

History

In the beginning ... there were many unrelated games SDK projects started by many different groups with little or no inter-group communication or coordination.

The initial initiative of starting the Linux Game Development site came from Ian Crawford (you can read his announcement of the site here).

It was first meant as a meeting and coordination point for people developing native and free Linux games, but its scope was soon widened to support Linux game development in general - the phrase "This site aspires to be the headquarters for all Linux game development" is from that time.

Cut - Switch to the PenguinPlay mailing list. Shortly after Ian's announcement of the site, Sam Lantiga suggested on the PenguinPlay mailing list that people could get together on IRC to discuss the future of Linux game development. His idea was considered as "really good" and after the first meeting the thing was extended to all people involved in pushing game development for Linux. Here are the archives of past meetings and the plans for future ones.

Well, the irc meetings became a regular event (each Saturday) and the possibility to have a real-time discussion through irc gave a big push to our work. We started discussing on how we could coordinate our efforts better, how to make Linux more appealing to professional game developers etc. After a few meetings we came to the conclusion that it would be best to merge the SDK projects (ClanLib, CrystalSpace, GAMES and PenguinPlay) to one, giving it the full support. It seemed to be the right thing, but we were a bit uneasy with it, as merging projects is a very, very difficult task.

Then Charles Durst threw in an proposal for a clearing house project, i.e. a project that would give developers from different game SDK projects a good way to communicate with each other, remind these developers to keep the different SDKs compatible to each other etc. He first proposed that PenguinPlay could become this "meta-project", but we found Ian Crawford's "Linux Game Development Center" much more fitting.

We started working on the homepage for this and Charles wrote an announcement text we wanted to post on Slashdot or Freshmeat and several newsgroups. However, as we assembled material for the homepage, discussed its structure etc it slowly mutated from the "Linux Game SDK Coordination Center" to a site for Linux game development in general - the "Linux Game Development Center" or LGDC for short. Ian's original site laid the foundation for this (as it was aimed at helping people to develop actual games) and the transformation was completed when the "Linux Game Breeding (LGB)" (aimed at creation of new projects around Linux GameDev) and "Linux Gaming Awareness (LGA)" (aimed at advocating Linux to commercial game developers) projects joined in.

So here we are. The Linux Game Development Center is a project from Open Source® game developers, maintained by them and dedicated to all people interested in the subject. Located at www.linuxgames.org, it serves as a sister site to www.linuxgames.com, the already well-established site targeted towards game players.

The Proposal

The new Linux Game Development Center would:

• Maintain a collection of links to various game SDK projects and a "news page" of the current status and functionality of each.
• Help coordinate efforts to increase compatibility and perhaps create "glue" software between the libraries produced by different game SDK projects.
• Help game SDK developers coordinate with one another (via mailing lists and perhaps IRC get-togethers), and share algorithms and code. This could even help SDK developers abstract out new layers of common or overlapping functionality between projects.
• Help to fill the functionality gaps that are currently preventing any combination of game SDK libraries from being comprehensive enough for many professional game developers to use.
• Help to direct game developers to the right tools for their particular tasks. Making it easy to find software for a particular purpose, within certain platform, language or license requirements. We are considering using existing web-based knowledge base tools such as WikiWikiWeb or faq-o-matic, as well as tables of the features and limitations of each available package.
• Collect the general feedback that game developers might want to give the Linux community about any porting problems they might have. And helping to start, extend or fix projects to meet those needs.
• If neccessary initiate and host "please port this to Linux" petitions and mane the commercial game developers aware of the demand.
• Find volunteers willing to port commercial games to Linux and act as mediator between them and commercial game houses.
• Provide facilities for discussion between commercial game developers and Linux users on how support for Linux can be increased in the future.
• Help rally game SDK development efforts to port existing game libraries to needed, unsupported platforms.
• It could help direct interested people to other projects as needed to help with bugfixing, porting, and documentation (especially with respect to interoperability between projects).
• It could even have a relationship to game SDK projects and Open Source® games somewhat similar to the relationship Debian has with the packages that it collects. It could collect easy-to-find and easy-to-install packages of game SDKs and try to make it easy for a new developer to choose the one(s) that best meets their needs. It could even help develop policies to ensure clean interaction between libraries wanting to be added to the collection.

While game development for Linux would be an important goal of the web site, the most important goal would be the development of quality cross-platform game libraries. For that reason, developers of games and game SDKs for platforms other than Linux would be more than welcome to join us. Especially if they are interested in porting software to or from Linux.

In the end, there would still be multiple, competing game SDK packages, but that should be OK as long as at least one comprehensive open-source solution can be cobbled together from the pieces. As we have seen with multiple distributions, and even the KDE/GNOME projects, competition can sometimes be a very good thing ... if you can see past the flame wars.

The biggest problem with having multiple, competing projects is the resultant (developer and user) confusion. What we are proposing is a Linux Game Development Center that is aimed simply at reducing that confusion by helping people to find, evaluate, combine and use the available tools, or to develop new, missing ones.

Request

At this point, we are mainly looking for:

• More people to work on the web-site (in particular people who have ideas for ways we should do it with existing or new web server and/or database technologies).
• Other game SDK related projects that should be added, or who want to help, or who should at least join the linuxgames mailing list(s).
• Other Game or Game SDK developers who want to be in on the discussions, prioritizing, development, or who just want to influence the direction of the Linux Games project in one way or another.

All interested people are invited to join the linuxgames mailing list and participate in the discussions (send a blank message to linuxgames-subscribe@sunsite.auc.dk)

Current Linux Game Development Projects

These are the current Linux Game Development projects we have been able to locate and invite to participate. If your favorite project is not included, let us know and please join us.

• 3dfx HowTo
• ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
• ClanLib
• CrystalSpace
• Daryll Strauss' Linux 3D page
• DUMB
• GAMES - GNU Animation Multimedia Entertain ment System
• GGI - General Graphics Interface
• GSI - General Sound Interface
• Linux game development webring
• Linux Game Programming HowTo
• Linux Game Programming Megasite
• Linux Game Tome
• LinuxGames.Com
• Mesa
• MGL
• PenguinPlay
• SDL - Simple DirectMedia Layer

Charles Durst, Christian Reiniger

Christian Reiniger of the new Linux Game Development Project has written up a nice piece that you might want to read if you want to see more games on Linux, and how this new project will aid that. The way I see it, the apps are coming, and in many cases, already here. We just need the games. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Christian Reiniger The Linux Game Development Center Rationale

Linux is gaining much attention these days. People who were anti-Linux for a long time suddenly discover that it has changed much the past few years, ultraconservative magazines feature positive stories about Linux at prominent places and The Big Ones in the computer business are almost crowding to support the former "hacker OS".

Good press is always welcome - but can Linux live up to its new image? Can it avoid to dissapoint the people finally giving it a try?

Well, the "It doesn't have a nice, easy to use desktop" and "There are no applications for it" arguments are vanishing in a puff of colorful smoke and the "It's too hard to install" problem is quietly dissolving. But there's still that nasty "But I can't play my favourite games in Linux!" thing.

Linux has games. Linux has good games. But that other operating system has several orders of magnitude more good games than Linux. That's bad. And difficult to overcome, as it's not only because of technical reasons. But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving problems and shipping around obstacles. There is no reason why we should not be able to solve this issue, too.

So what's the current situation, what needs to be done and what can be done? Here is a short overview of the major issues:

• Despite Linux's rapid growth - both in terms of user base and existing software - it still is not generally perceived as viable platform for high quality games. Some of the often cited problems are without doubt true, but most of these are already at the verge of being solved and the others mainly need more public discussion.
• While many game-related SDKs and applications exist or are in the make, there is no comprehensive overview of them available.
• As all of these SDKs have their strengths and weaknesses, much can be gained by making them as modular and interoperable as possible, so that game developers can combine them to an almost optimal solution.
• For both commercial game developers wanting to port games to Linux and yet-inexperienced Open Source® developers aspiring to write free games, easy to read documentation and online help via mailing lists and/or irc are very valuable.

Quick Summary

In essence we are suggesting that this new Linux Game Development Center be a kind of meta-project. It would be dedicated to advocating Linux as gaming platform, collecting knowledge about Linux game development and using it to help all interested people, providing facilities for discussion to Linux game developers and, last but not least, encouraging and helping existing free (Open Source®) game SDK projects coordinate with one another.

Please note that this is not an attempt to impose standards or rules on anyone. We just want to do what we can to help everybody coordinate their project with the others and to encourage all game SDK developers to develop compatible libraries.

This is also a call for developers, users and game SDK projects to join our efforts.

History

In the beginning ... there were many unrelated games SDK projects started by many different groups with little or no inter-group communication or coordination.

The initial initiative of starting the Linux Game Development site came from Ian Crawford (you can read his announcement of the site here).

It was first meant as a meeting and coordination point for people developing native and free Linux games, but its scope was soon widened to support Linux game development in general - the phrase "This site aspires to be the headquarters for all Linux game development" is from that time.

Cut - Switch to the PenguinPlay mailing list. Shortly after Ian's announcement of the site, Sam Lantiga suggested on the PenguinPlay mailing list that people could get together on IRC to discuss the future of Linux game development. His idea was considered as "really good" and after the first meeting the thing was extended to all people involved in pushing game development for Linux. Here are the archives of past meetings and the plans for future ones.

Well, the irc meetings became a regular event (each Saturday) and the possibility to have a real-time discussion through irc gave a big push to our work. We started discussing on how we could coordinate our efforts better, how to make Linux more appealing to professional game developers etc. After a few meetings we came to the conclusion that it would be best to merge the SDK projects (ClanLib, CrystalSpace, GAMES and PenguinPlay) to one, giving it the full support. It seemed to be the right thing, but we were a bit uneasy with it, as merging projects is a very, very difficult task.

Then Charles Durst threw in an proposal for a clearing house project, i.e. a project that would give developers from different game SDK projects a good way to communicate with each other, remind these developers to keep the different SDKs compatible to each other etc. He first proposed that PenguinPlay could become this "meta-project", but we found Ian Crawford's "Linux Game Development Center" much more fitting.

We started working on the homepage for this and Charles wrote an announcement text we wanted to post on Slashdot or Freshmeat and several newsgroups. However, as we assembled material for the homepage, discussed its structure etc it slowly mutated from the "Linux Game SDK Coordination Center" to a site for Linux game development in general - the "Linux Game Development Center" or LGDC for short. Ian's original site laid the foundation for this (as it was aimed at helping people to develop actual games) and the transformation was completed when the "Linux Game Breeding (LGB)" (aimed at creation of new projects around Linux GameDev) and "Linux Gaming Awareness (LGA)" (aimed at advocating Linux to commercial game developers) projects joined in.

So here we are. The Linux Game Development Center is a project from Open Source® game developers, maintained by them and dedicated to all people interested in the subject. Located at www.linuxgames.org, it serves as a sister site to www.linuxgames.com, the already well-established site targeted towards game players.

The Proposal

The new Linux Game Development Center would:

• Maintain a collection of links to various game SDK projects and a "news page" of the current status and functionality of each.
• Help coordinate efforts to increase compatibility and perhaps create "glue" software between the libraries produced by different game SDK projects.
• Help game SDK developers coordinate with one another (via mailing lists and perhaps IRC get-togethers), and share algorithms and code. This could even help SDK developers abstract out new layers of common or overlapping functionality between projects.
• Help to fill the functionality gaps that are currently preventing any combination of game SDK libraries from being comprehensive enough for many professional game developers to use.
• Help to direct game developers to the right tools for their particular tasks. Making it easy to find software for a particular purpose, within certain platform, language or license requirements. We are considering using existing web-based knowledge base tools such as WikiWikiWeb or faq-o-matic, as well as tables of the features and limitations of each available package.
• Collect the general feedback that game developers might want to give the Linux community about any porting problems they might have. And helping to start, extend or fix projects to meet those needs.
• If neccessary initiate and host "please port this to Linux" petitions and mane the commercial game developers aware of the demand.
• Find volunteers willing to port commercial games to Linux and act as mediator between them and commercial game houses.
• Provide facilities for discussion between commercial game developers and Linux users on how support for Linux can be increased in the future.
• Help rally game SDK development efforts to port existing game libraries to needed, unsupported platforms.
• It could help direct interested people to other projects as needed to help with bugfixing, porting, and documentation (especially with respect to interoperability between projects).
• It could even have a relationship to game SDK projects and Open Source® games somewhat similar to the relationship Debian has with the packages that it collects. It could collect easy-to-find and easy-to-install packages of game SDKs and try to make it easy for a new developer to choose the one(s) that best meets their needs. It could even help develop policies to ensure clean interaction between libraries wanting to be added to the collection.

While game development for Linux would be an important goal of the web site, the most important goal would be the development of quality cross-platform game libraries. For that reason, developers of games and game SDKs for platforms other than Linux would be more than welcome to join us. Especially if they are interested in porting software to or from Linux.

In the end, there would still be multiple, competing game SDK packages, but that should be OK as long as at least one comprehensive open-source solution can be cobbled together from the pieces. As we have seen with multiple distributions, and even the KDE/GNOME projects, competition can sometimes be a very good thing ... if you can see past the flame wars.

The biggest problem with having multiple, competing projects is the resultant (developer and user) confusion. What we are proposing is a Linux Game Development Center that is aimed simply at reducing that confusion by helping people to find, evaluate, combine and use the available tools, or to develop new, missing ones.

Request

At this point, we are mainly looking for:

• More people to work on the web-site (in particular people who have ideas for ways we should do it with existing or new web server and/or database technologies).
• Other game SDK related projects that should be added, or who want to help, or who should at least join the linuxgames mailing list(s).
• Other Game or Game SDK developers who want to be in on the discussions, prioritizing, development, or who just want to influence the direction of the Linux Games project in one way or another.

All interested people are invited to join the linuxgames mailing list and participate in the discussions (send a blank message to linuxgames-subscribe@sunsite.auc.dk)

Current Linux Game Development Projects

These are the current Linux Game Development projects we have been able to locate and invite to participate. If your favorite project is not included, let us know and please join us.

• 3dfx HowTo
• ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
• ClanLib
• CrystalSpace
• Daryll Strauss' Linux 3D page
• DUMB
• GAMES - GNU Animation Multimedia Entertain ment System
• GGI - General Graphics Interface
• GSI - General Sound Interface
• Linux game development webring
• Linux Game Programming HowTo
• Linux Game Programming Megasite
• Linux Game Tome
• LinuxGames.Com
• Mesa
• MGL
• PenguinPlay
• SDL - Simple DirectMedia Layer

Charles Durst, Christian Reiniger

Christian Reiniger of the new Linux Game Development Project has written up a nice piece that you might want to read if you want to see more games on Linux, and how this new project will aid that. The way I see it, the apps are coming, and in many cases, already here. We just need the games. The following was written by Slashdot Reader Christian Reiniger The Linux Game Development Center Rationale

Linux is gaining much attention these days. People who were anti-Linux for a long time suddenly discover that it has changed much the past few years, ultraconservative magazines feature positive stories about Linux at prominent places and The Big Ones in the computer business are almost crowding to support the former "hacker OS".

Good press is always welcome - but can Linux live up to its new image? Can it avoid to dissapoint the people finally giving it a try?

Well, the "It doesn't have a nice, easy to use desktop" and "There are no applications for it" arguments are vanishing in a puff of colorful smoke and the "It's too hard to install" problem is quietly dissolving. But there's still that nasty "But I can't play my favourite games in Linux!" thing.

Linux has games. Linux has good games. But that other operating system has several orders of magnitude more good games than Linux. That's bad. And difficult to overcome, as it's not only because of technical reasons. But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving But we, the free software community, have have a long history of solving problems and shipping around obstacles. There is no reason why we should not be able to solve this issue, too.

So what's the current situation, what needs to be done and what can be done? Here is a short overview of the major issues:

• Despite Linux's rapid growth - both in terms of user base and existing software - it still is not generally perceived as viable platform for high quality games. Some of the often cited problems are without doubt true, but most of these are already at the verge of being solved and the others mainly need more public discussion.
• While many game-related SDKs and applications exist or are in the make, there is no comprehensive overview of them available.
• As all of these SDKs have their strengths and weaknesses, much can be gained by making them as modular and interoperable as possible, so that game developers can combine them to an almost optimal solution.
• For both commercial game developers wanting to port games to Linux and yet-inexperienced Open Source® developers aspiring to write free games, easy to read documentation and online help via mailing lists and/or irc are very valuable.

Quick Summary

In essence we are suggesting that this new Linux Game Development Center be a kind of meta-project. It would be dedicated to advocating Linux as gaming platform, collecting knowledge about Linux game development and using it to help all interested people, providing facilities for discussion to Linux game developers and, last but not least, encouraging and helping existing free (Open Source®) game SDK projects coordinate with one another.

Please note that this is not an attempt to impose standards or rules on anyone. We just want to do what we can to help everybody coordinate their project with the others and to encourage all game SDK developers to develop compatible libraries.

This is also a call for developers, users and game SDK projects to join our efforts.

History

In the beginning ... there were many unrelated games SDK projects started by many different groups with little or no inter-group communication or coordination.

The initial initiative of starting the Linux Game Development site came from Ian Crawford (you can read his announcement of the site here).

It was first meant as a meeting and coordination point for people developing native and free Linux games, but its scope was soon widened to support Linux game development in general - the phrase "This site aspires to be the headquarters for all Linux game development" is from that time.

Cut - Switch to the PenguinPlay mailing list. Shortly after Ian's announcement of the site, Sam Lantiga suggested on the PenguinPlay mailing list that people could get together on IRC to discuss the future of Linux game development. His idea was considered as "really good" and after the first meeting the thing was extended to all people involved in pushing game development for Linux. Here are the archives of past meetings and the plans for future ones.

Well, the irc meetings became a regular event (each Saturday) and the possibility to have a real-time discussion through irc gave a big push to our work. We started discussing on how we could coordinate our efforts better, how to make Linux more appealing to professional game developers etc. After a few meetings we came to the conclusion that it would be best to merge the SDK projects (ClanLib, CrystalSpace, GAMES and PenguinPlay) to one, giving it the full support. It seemed to be the right thing, but we were a bit uneasy with it, as merging projects is a very, very difficult task.

Then Charles Durst threw in an proposal for a clearing house project, i.e. a project that would give developers from different game SDK projects a good way to communicate with each other, remind these developers to keep the different SDKs compatible to each other etc. He first proposed that PenguinPlay could become this "meta-project", but we found Ian Crawford's "Linux Game Development Center" much more fitting.

We started working on the homepage for this and Charles wrote an announcement text we wanted to post on Slashdot or Freshmeat and several newsgroups. However, as we assembled material for the homepage, discussed its structure etc it slowly mutated from the "Linux Game SDK Coordination Center" to a site for Linux game development in general - the "Linux Game Development Center" or LGDC for short. Ian's original site laid the foundation for this (as it was aimed at helping people to develop actual games) and the transformation was completed when the "Linux Game Breeding (LGB)" (aimed at creation of new projects around Linux GameDev) and "Linux Gaming Awareness (LGA)" (aimed at advocating Linux to commercial game developers) projects joined in.

So here we are. The Linux Game Development Center is a project from Open Source® game developers, maintained by them and dedicated to all people interested in the subject. Located at www.linuxgames.org, it serves as a sister site to www.linuxgames.com, the already well-established site targeted towards game players.

The Proposal

The new Linux Game Development Center would:

• Maintain a collection of links to various game SDK projects and a "news page" of the current status and functionality of each.
• Help coordinate efforts to increase compatibility and perhaps create "glue" software between the libraries produced by different game SDK projects.
• Help game SDK developers coordinate with one another (via mailing lists and perhaps IRC get-togethers), and share algorithms and code. This could even help SDK developers abstract out new layers of common or overlapping functionality between projects.
• Help to fill the functionality gaps that are currently preventing any combination of game SDK libraries from being comprehensive enough for many professional game developers to use.
• Help to direct game developers to the right tools for their particular tasks. Making it easy to find software for a particular purpose, within certain platform, language or license requirements. We are considering using existing web-based knowledge base tools such as WikiWikiWeb or faq-o-matic, as well as tables of the features and limitations of each available package.
• Collect the general feedback that game developers might want to give the Linux community about any porting problems they might have. And helping to start, extend or fix projects to meet those needs.
• If neccessary initiate and host "please port this to Linux" petitions and mane the commercial game developers aware of the demand.
• Find volunteers willing to port commercial games to Linux and act as mediator between them and commercial game houses.
• Provide facilities for discussion between commercial game developers and Linux users on how support for Linux can be increased in the future.
• Help rally game SDK development efforts to port existing game libraries to needed, unsupported platforms.
• It could help direct interested people to other projects as needed to help with bugfixing, porting, and documentation (especially with respect to interoperability between projects).
• It could even have a relationship to game SDK projects and Open Source® games somewhat similar to the relationship Debian has with the packages that it collects. It could collect easy-to-find and easy-to-install packages of game SDKs and try to make it easy for a new developer to choose the one(s) that best meets their needs. It could even help develop policies to ensure clean interaction between libraries wanting to be added to the collection.

While game development for Linux would be an important goal of the web site, the most important goal would be the development of quality cross-platform game libraries. For that reason, developers of games and game SDKs for platforms other than Linux would be more than welcome to join us. Especially if they are interested in porting software to or from Linux.

In the end, there would still be multiple, competing game SDK packages, but that should be OK as long as at least one comprehensive open-source solution can be cobbled together from the pieces. As we have seen with multiple distributions, and even the KDE/GNOME projects, competition can sometimes be a very good thing ... if you can see past the flame wars.

The biggest problem with having multiple, competing projects is the resultant (developer and user) confusion. What we are proposing is a Linux Game Development Center that is aimed simply at reducing that confusion by helping people to find, evaluate, combine and use the available tools, or to develop new, missing ones.

Request

At this point, we are mainly looking for:

• More people to work on the web-site (in particular people who have ideas for ways we should do it with existing or new web server and/or database technologies).
• Other game SDK related projects that should be added, or who want to help, or who should at least join the linuxgames mailing list(s).
• Other Game or Game SDK developers who want to be in on the discussions, prioritizing, development, or who just want to influence the direction of the Linux Games project in one way or another.

All interested people are invited to join the linuxgames mailing list and participate in the discussions (send a blank message to linuxgames-subscribe@sunsite.auc.dk)

Current Linux Game Development Projects

These are the current Linux Game Development projects we have been able to locate and invite to participate. If your favorite project is not included, let us know and please join us.

• 3dfx HowTo
• ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
• ClanLib
• CrystalSpace
• Daryll Strauss' Linux 3D page
• DUMB
• GAMES - GNU Animation Multimedia Entertain ment System
• GGI - General Graphics Interface
• GSI - General Sound Interface
• Linux game development webring
• Linux Game Programming HowTo
• Linux Game Programming Megasite
• Linux Game Tome
• LinuxGames.Com
• Mesa
• MGL
• PenguinPlay
• SDL - Simple DirectMedia Layer

Charles Durst, Christian Reiniger

CrusadeR writes "The Star Wars official site posted that the trailer to Episode I: The Phantom Menace will be in theaters on Nov. 20th in the United States and Canada." Anyone know what flicks it'll be attached to? Does Bugs Life open that weekend?

CrusadeR writes "John Carmack, lead programmer at id Software, stated that user modifications to Quake 3 will no longer have to be compiled separately for each platform. Instead, Q3 will utilize a dynamic ANSI C interpreter similar to Quake 1's QuakeC system. In other words, the linux community will no longer have to wait on a mod to be ported to run a server (Carmack even pointed out that half of the current Q2 servers run linux). Furthermore, Zoid is working on the linux port in parallel with the rest of id's Win32 efforts, which means that the Linux version of Quake 3: Arena should be released simultaneously with the Windows one. Also, Carmack noted that id Software has contacted Red Hat Software with regards to a publishing deal for Linux versions of id Software titles. " Crusader is a LinuxGames.com regular contributor. Great site for Linux Games (duh!)

CrusadeR writes "John Carmack, lead programmer at id Software, stated that user modifications to Quake 3 will no longer have to be compiled separately for each platform. Instead, Q3 will utilize a dynamic ANSI C interpreter similar to Quake 1's QuakeC system. In other words, the linux community will no longer have to wait on a mod to be ported to run a server (Carmack even pointed out that half of the current Q2 servers run linux). Furthermore, Zoid is working on the linux port in parallel with the rest of id's Win32 efforts, which means that the Linux version of Quake 3: Arena should be released simultaneously with the Windows one. Also, Carmack noted that id Software has contacted Red Hat Software with regards to a publishing deal for Linux versions of id Software titles. " Crusader is a LinuxGames.com regular contributor. Great site for Linux Games (duh!)

levanti writes "I recently discovered using XQF that Linux holds a little less than half (43%) of the Quake servers around the world. Windows holds 52%. If anything would indicate that games (at least server-side) need to be ported to Linux, this would be it. Source: list of 1240 Quake II servers from master servers. (id, PlanetQuake, Telefragged, Minos, iNET, Australia) "

Samus writes "The Golotha source has been mirrored on several ftp and web sites. Goto the mirror listing. Also a team of people is being formed to finish Golgotha. See the news article at Linux Games to join the mailing list. "

A.C. writes "I guess somebody finally tried it - you can play Unreal in Linux via WINE! Posted on Linux Games with a screenshot to prove it! " So is this a hoax? I sure hope not.