Slashdot Mirror

01.30.02
We'd like to update our customers on a few items as we prepare to close down.

• ...
• Many of you have asked about support and maintenance for Loki products. We have taken the following steps:
• ...
• all source code has been returned to the respective licensors. Although we cannot guarantee that each licensor will continue to support the Linux versions of their titles, we have made certain that they have all the necessary tools to do so. Don't be shy about letting them know your thoughts on the matter.

...

Well Loki kind of had a good thing going until they went belly up.

What about postal?

I have a copy of Heroes3, best game for Linux I've seen.

Also, along the same lines, should Loki sue Mythic because their company name infringes on the name of their game, Myth? It's the same logic, as surely as if someone named a game Microsoftic. IANAL and I'm proud of that fact, because their lawyers obviously don't know the difference between dictionary words and trade names.

I hate to be obvious, but who names a game after Arthurian legend and then uses Norse mythology? That's just illiterate.

I suggest Unreal Tournament its a pretty good fps and it supports companies porting their software to linux, all you need is an installer that can be downloaded from here [lokigames.com]

Funny how this post gets a score of 2, but the response that shows that he's full of crap only gets a 0. The response is correct too; there are hundreds of games available for the Mac. Just go to Aspyr, Macplay, and Macsoft to see three companies that make most, if not all, of their income from selling Mac games. Even Age of Mythology and Dungeon Siege, which are produced by Microsoft, have Mac versions. I can name one company that tried the same approach to Linux. Loki, and they went bankrupt because no-one bought their Linux games.

Mandrake, Corel, and VA Software are all losing money. It's particularly impressive just how proud VA is that they've only lost 3.7 million in the first quarter this year, as opposed to the 9.8 million they lost first quarter last year. And you can't exactly claim it's starting losses either, all 3 have been around for years.

Transgaming doesn't have financial information on their site, but they're a tiny (20 employees according to this June article) private Canadian company. While that's great for those 20 people, I don't think selling access to freely distributable software and asking people not to distribute it is really a scalable business model. Lindows is apparently another small (they claim 50 employees when trying to explain why they charge for click-n-run, who knows if it's accurate or not.) private company.

And Loki... You know.

SUSE may be the only other major profitable company there, I can't really tell since they also don't list financial information. (At least, not on their English site, and not that I could find on their German site with Babelfish.)

So, out of 8 Linux companies, one is (maybe 2 are, if SUSE is good.) large and profitable, 2 are small and private, 3 are large and losing money, and one already went bankrupt. Still not enough to really mean anything, but not quite as happy a picture as just considering Red Hat.

This is an inexcusable insult on Valve's behalf.

Oh, how short the geek memory. Remember Loki? A company that tried to bring mainstream games to the Linux platform?

The problem is, while geeks talk the talk, they don't walk the walk with their wallets. There simply isn't a market for games on Linux. A few people might buy a Linux copy, sure, but the majority will buy the Windows version when it's released, then demand the Linux version for free when it's finished porting.

Games companies are in business to make money. They're not charities, and even if they were, even charities need money to operate. Valve is simply making what it believes to be the best decision based on its reading of the market.

It does exist. And no, it's still not any easier than 'apt-get install <program>'

Loki Setup is now maintained by icculus.org. However, I think that any good package scheme (read: RPM, DEB, Portage, or whatever) is better than this if the administrative tools are good.

There *WAS* a linux port of Myth II. It was done by Loki.

More info here.

people into retro gaming, or required to use other old software. I'm so glad we are slowly approaching this point. UT2K3 has Linux support out of the box. The demise of Loki is something that I initially thought was going to set back the Linux gaming community for years, but then I've seen games like UT2K3, Castle Wolfenstein, and if you want to count their late to the punch arrival Never Winter Nights come out native. If we could only get Blizzard on the bandwagon, and Maxis more firmly seated the other developers would have little choice but to jump onboard. gatesh8r is right. If Wine gets to good to fast not only will it slow some developers to adopt Linux natively, it may loose a couple that we already have. I'm counting Apple as our new Ace in the Hole. The Mac actually has the attention of the developers, and porting from BSD to Linux should be much easier than porting from Windows to Linux. Of course if everyone adopts and improves on SDL and OpenGL they will have little to worry about when porting anyways. Especially if OpenGL2 ever makes it way to daylight with all the Active X type replacements it's supposed to have available.

Didn't Loki write a graphical installer for Linux? I can't access the Loki site from work to check because it's blocked by websense (ha).

No, still "coming soon"...

http://www.lokigames.com/products/

Tux Games sells Linux games exclusively and provides packages with Linux binaries even when the developers choose not to. (Medal of Honor: Allied Assault has been added as a preorder item already after the icculus.org announcement)

Loki Games' has ceased to exist but their site still lists their resellers here, I'm sure many of them still stock Loki's old games and probably titles from other publishers too.

Linux Game Publishing lists their resellers here.

Why, I've even bought software for various platforms from other vendors that I've never even installed, just because I saw it for sale in a retail outlet and wanted to encourage them. (Someday I'll get around to trying them out, I suppose.)

Vote with your dollars, people. It's the only vote that matters these days. Sad but true.

BTW, are there any good games for Linux yet?

Why, I've even bought software for various platforms from other vendors that I've never even installed, just because I saw it for sale in a retail outlet and wanted to encourage them. (Someday I'll get around to trying them out, I suppose.)

Vote with your dollars, people. It's the only vote that matters these days. Sad but true.

BTW, are there any good games for Linux yet?

Why, I've even bought software for various platforms from other vendors that I've never even installed, just because I saw it for sale in a retail outlet and wanted to encourage them. (Someday I'll get around to trying them out, I suppose.)

Vote with your dollars, people. It's the only vote that matters these days. Sad but true.

BTW, are there any good games for Linux yet?

I wonder if it would be a good sub-project for Mozilla, to make a general-purpose hardware/software-installer wizard.

That's not necessary although the Mozilla installer is quite slick. Take a look at the Loki Setup Installer 1.5.8 by Sam Latinga and Stephane Peter. http://www.lokigames.com/development/setup.php3 Joe Average shouldn't need to read any how-to's as long as he sticks with prepackaged apps that have been blessed by his distribution, but when a developer wants to get software out without having to wait on a Redhat or Suse to package his stuff and bundle it with their next distribution then he can download the Loki Setup Installer edit some XML and voila!

Sierra did indeed neglect the game almost to its death and just recently "re-released" it. In my experience and the experience of friends, the Linux version worked better than the Win32 version! You're right, there were a lot of updates. In addition to Tribes 2's bugs, my Win32-using friends all had horrible problems with Sierra's update utility crashing. Imagine how insulting that would be--You have problems with an app and try to patch it only to find that you're having more difficulty applying the patch than coping with the original problems.

Didn't Loki close in January?

That indicates the direction *nix gaming is taking/has taken.

Loki Games Closing?
Last Word on Loki
More slashdot Loki stuff.

I welcome killer *nix games too.

Loki made cool games. Who else does? (not rhetorical)

I don't know about CounterStrike or Starcraft, but there is an Unreal Tournament installer which will install the Windows UT "Game Of The Year" edition onto Linux. Loki Software wrote it. And UT2003 comes as a hybrid disk with both the Linux and the Windows installs. So that crosses a couple of games off your list. BTW this also works with FreeBSD using the Linux compatibility layer.

It's Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It's part of the Civilization family of games. It's available for Windows and Linux, though the Linux port was done by the now bankrupt Loki Games which means locating a copy may prove difficult.

Does anyone have any links to other cool programming games?

You laugh at Microsoft because they have to fix security in their software all the time.

Well, I'm laughing at Linux because your line of supported applications and games is comparable to the Mac section in any general computer store on Earth.

Hopefully he doesn't waste any support money on frivolous expenses or personal gains...

unlike this place

OS/2 ran on any x86 platform and OS/2 Boxsets outsold Windows Box sets. Windows won because of the OEM preinstalls. OS/2 was also a more popular Desktop at the Time than Linux is today.

The first part would be correct, if you didn't omit the simple fact that you also need drivers to run an operating system. IBM only made drivers for their own hardware, and almost no other hardware had OS/2 drivers.
Sales of box sets are really irrelevant. Most people buy an OS with their computer.
Windows won because IBM totally farked up their marketing, and not because of anything else. IBM was, at that time, a disjointed company, where the computer division was competing with the OS division and other ridiculous things like that. It's a miracle they survived at all.
Besides, OS/2 is really irrelevant to the WINE argument. OS/2 could run Win16 apps better than Windows 3.1, because they used Microsoft's code (they had a cross-license agreement). Microsoft introduced Win32, and that killed the compatibility. WINE is different. First, it does not rely on M$ code, so the quality of the "emulation" is worse. That also ensures that they can freely implement any new APIs and developments, and that M$ can't choke them off by simply creating a new API.

Finally, what the hell makes you think that OS/2 would have become so popular if it didn't have Windows 3.1 support? WHO THE FUCK WOULD HAVE BOUGHT IT? WHAT FOR?

One final question: who would make software for an OS with almost no user base, such as Linux on the desktop? Just a few F***ed Companies. Do you still think we don't need Wine?

Has anyone that supports WINE actually given a thought to what happens if this is the way things go? Let me once again state the blindingly obvious timeline that WINE leads us to

1) WINE improves its windows emulation, more games work under Linux than ever before.
2) Development of native Linux games is pretty much destroyed by WINE emulation because the few porting companies struggling to survive at this early stage cannot hope to keep up with dozens of well funded windows development companies.
3) Emulated games become the norm. By definition they are slower than native, less reliable, but we can sacrifice reliability because we can play games NOW!
4) As Linux games are all now emulated, sales figures for Linux games are all showing up as Windows sales. Linux sales figures effectively become zero, giving no incentive for any software company to produce native ports.
5) Microsoft, who though evil are damned clever with their lawyers, finds a nice little legal way to kill WINE, through a patent issue, or some DMCA clone or who knows. WINE development stops.
6) New games stop running on Linux because WINE cant support DirectX 12 or whatever the latest version is. Nobody thinks to worry about it in the game development companies because Linux sales figures are zero (see 4).
7) Linux gets less games that will work. The companies that busted their balls trying to make native Linux gaming viable, companies like Tux Games, Loki and LGP have all long since gone.
8) With nobody left to support Linux gaming, Linux gaming dies.
9) With no new games, Linux desktop becomes less attractive and people happily move back to windows so they can play the latest games NOW (see 3)
10) Bill Gates sends thankyou letter to Transgaming and other WINE supporters.

Any questions?

Sure I am a biased party. That is because by founding Tux Games, I have put my money where my mouth is and bet the whole house on native Linux because unlike Transgaming, I BELIEVE THAT LINUX DOES NOT NEED TO USE WINDOWS AS A CRUTCH AND THAT LINUX IS A DAMNED FINE OS IN ITS OWN RIGHT..

Note: Tux Games has been offered time and again, the opportunity to carry Transgaming games. We are well aware that if we did so, we would make more money, but we STRONGLY believe in the above timeline threat, and so we put our morals where our mouth is and stand by Linux native. Want to do the same? Then dont inflate Windows sales figures, support those that are working all hours to bring YOU new products.

Note: Mindrover also available for Linux, originally via Loki and re-published by Linux Game Publishing. A demo is still available from Loki Demos, and it is still offered for sale at TuxGames.

Note: Mindrover also available for Linux, originally via Loki and re-published by Linux Game Publishing. A demo is still available from Loki Demos, and it is still offered for sale at TuxGames.

There's still a demo available through Loki which can still be downloaded.

It's a very, very fun game, and quite different from twitch-based or other reaction-driven games.

I brought my Redhat 7.3 CDs with me (burnt from ISOs) and went to work installing as minimal a workstation setup as I could. These baby boomers aren't going to break out gcc and go to hacking on CVS source any time soon. I left off as much as I could without running into RPM hell with dependencies. An hour later, we were up and running.

We subscribe to a local DSL provider, a telco, and the Internet is just a /usr/sbin/netconfig away.

Went online and downloaded OpenOffice 1.0 and Mozilla 1.0. All that was left was a decent personal finance package. Off we went to grab GnuCash.

Acclamating my folks to OpenOffice and Mozilla was easy, because after all, a web browser is a web browser and a office suite is an office suite (licensing aside, of course). GnuCash was a little tougher to sell to my dad who is a MS Money fanatic. Time will tell if he'll stick with GnuCash long enough for this experiment to pass muster, but I'm optimistic.

So the weekend over, I leave satisfied that I've freed two more human beings, my parents no less, from the confines of proprietary software. The drive home is a beautiful thing.

Then my mom calls. She wants to know if I can reinstall Monopoly (by Infogrames for Windows 95/98). And dad wants me to reinstall SimCity. These are their two favorite things to do with the PC. They've probably etched a couple of deep grooves in their hard drive where these these two programs reside. In short, we're fucked in full.

To make a long story short, I was able to satisfy my mom's Monopoly jones by installing Kapitalist, a free Monopoly type game. She missed the animations that the Infrogrames game provided, but she got by. My dad however was SOL. I was hoping to find a copy of SimCity 3000 Unlimited by Loki, but as most of you know Loki is no more. My dad took it in stride, and explained that he'll just find another game to get hooked on. As you can see my parents are gamers, and I do love them so for that.

Problem. Finding and installing a quality game for Linux that a Linux neophyte or general non-hacker can install is difficult. Remember, my folks were running with AOL before all of this. They don't want to worry about glibc versions and the like.

So my folks were happy that they could get online with one click to Mozilla, happy they could read and compose documents and spreadsheets, and curious about GnuCash's abilities, but they seriously doubted they could have any fun in between.

I would say that a Linux distro, if properly tamed, can be a quality desktop solution provided you're willing to bite the gaming bullet. How many of us dual-boot for this alone? Sorry to hear we lost one to the dark side, especially after 3.5 years of grinding it out.

Loki games did file for Ch.11 (it's mentioned on their website). I doubt id will out-source the linux conversion to anyone else, but to the best of my knowledge there's been no offical word on the matter. A sound bet would be that they'll go back to doing what they did in the past and just do it themselves and release it via the web after releasing the win32 version for retail.

I noticed that hte patch in question was being hosted by Loki. Given the high cost of bandwith (at least en masse) and the fact that theyre bankrupt, why are they still hosting patch downloads? Or did I miss something in this whole Loki debacle....

Anyways, Im glad that support for Tribes 2 has continued for Linux (Can you still buy it?)....But are there any other companies that are doing what Loki did?

I see Draeker was an IP lawyer. My prejudice against the breed is only comfirmed.

The screenshots look impressive. It would be cool if I could play that on my platform. And however I realize, that I belong to the minority of gamers (which is good, like Mark Twain has already said, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."), I still think that when they would wisely program this game for many different gaming platforms and few desktop ones, it'd be a piece of cake to release other version. But I'm affraid that they would prefer us to use other options, unfortunately...

Oh, well, I gues I'll just have to wait for Mason, or Warewolf, or Sands of Syllus, or Archipelago, or Catacombs, or Belchfire, or Acid Tempest, or Phoenix...

So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.

Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have SDL and OpenAL. We have a great book Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall. For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.

Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge.

So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.

Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have SDL and OpenAL. We have a great book Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall. For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.

Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge.

The installer, updater, demo launcher, etc. are all already GPL'd. http://cvs.lokigames.com The installer is called 'setup', the updater is 'updateit', and the rest are pretty obvious.

So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.

Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have SDL and OpenAL. We have a great book Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall. For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.

Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge. I'm not holding my breath for any commercial games for Linux anytime soon...

So yes, they proved that Linux is not only a toy OS for hackers. And this means a lot.

Loki has made Linux better, from technical point of view. We have SDL and OpenAL. We have a great book Programming Linux Games by Loki Software and John R. Hall. For all of these Loki deserves big thanks from all of us. We also owe them apology for not supporting them as we should. It's sad, but their economical failure is mostly our fault. We have to understand that.

Linux community is a pretty strange market. We're used to free speech and free beer. So I guess now we have to wait for WorldForge. I'm not holding my breath for any commercial games for Linux anytime soon...

Loki will be sorely missed.

-B

From loki "How to install umod files in linux

The one game that I've stumbled upon lately is Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. While not set in the world of aziroth its the type of game war3 should have been now. Not high on the graphic glitz but definately a great game to play. Heh the music kind of reminds me of the war2. Everything else is more or less a nice evolution of the war2 genre with a slightly different world. Download the demo from loki or from the kohan site itself. P.S. I'm not affiliated with either of the companies. I'm just someone who got his warcraft 3 fix from a different source early.

SimCity 3000 gets my vote.

• MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
• Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer

Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.

• MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
• Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer

Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.

• MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
• Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer

Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.

• MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
• Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
• Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
• Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer

Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.