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There's all kinds of other crap going on here that's offtopic-and I get modded down. Thanks, trollboy who had their 5 points of fame. I'll just post the link again, and again, and again until I have a score of 1 so that people will see that Loki is looking for Tribes 2 beta testers. You'll see this story posted by CmdrTaco in about a month, mark my words. And it'll be new news to him.

Look no further. And no, it's not goat sex. It's Tribes 2 beta testing. Yeah, some guy's Atari 2600 hybrid is TONS more interesting, and so's all the other crap posted today, but here's a story that got bitchslapped down.

submitted twice, rejected within a minute both times. Big news.

For playing mpeg, I highly recommend getting smpeg from loki. www.lokigames.com

It's much better than mpegtv, and it is GPLed.

MPEG is very well supported with the SMPEG library, thanks to loki. There's even a plugin for xmms that works quite well.

AVI's are _fully_ support with avifile. I mean fullscreen, full frame rate support of ever avi filetype, including the DivX ;-) codec. This is a jaw-dropping piece of software.

There's even a project called XMPS which takes smpeg, avifile, and a couple other programs and puts them into one great piece of software.

So why do we need xanim?

Indrema would need to establish a relationship with Loki Entertaiment for their Linux game porting. That'll probably give them a bit of a start, rather than go from scratch.

All the previous posts about Cost/Manufacturing are definitely issues. I'm curious to see screenshots too.... trying to combine all of these features (browser, DVD, MP3, Gaming... one wonders if they'll try to incorporate DVR too.) into one simple, seamless UI is EXTREMELY difficult... especially if you can only work on NTSC resolution (640x480). How many of us run on a screen at 640x480? Also buggy... the more that you support, the more buggy the system will likely be. Spring 2001 is extremely aggressive.

Unreal Tournament runs on Linux now. www.lokigames.com

Alright, you've said your peace, and I think you're a fool, so I will now say mine.

Office Suites: If WordPerfect Office 2000 is better in Windows than in Linux, why use Linux?

Because there's more to life than shrink-wrapped hundred dollar office suites. AbiWord, Gnumeric, KOffice, are all coming. Additionally, StarOffice is being drastically reworked into something that doesn't suck. :)

Games: Even QuakeIII get's boring eventually.

Meet the tip of the iceberg. What, did you expect Linux games to multiply overnight? These things take time. Frankly, I'm surprised Linux gaming has advanced as far as it has. My predictions that I made in 1998 didn't expect games to be commonly available for another year, but I can buy everything listed at lokigames.com at my local big computer store (Fry's)

2) Linux has no asthetics. Asthetics goes beyond pretty GUIs into the system itself. There is only so much KDE and GNOME do for you. Once you get into the system itself, its ugly. Initscripts are ugly (except in Slackware). Adding hardware is ugly. The config files are ugly. (My thinking is that the whole mess in /etc could be ondensed into a dozen well planned files.)

Once you get into the system itself, you're doing more than 80% of the Windows userbase will ever do. Let's draw some parallels. If /etc is essentially very similar to the Windows registry and .ini files, how many end users will ever touch their registry, or even realize a file called win.ini exists on their system?

If you believe /etc can be condensed into a dozen files and retain all their information and ease of access (An all-encompasing GUI is not easier to access than opening a text file.) then you either aren't familiar with the Unix way of thinking, or you aren't interested in retaining the configurability and flexibility that Unix offers. Of course, if Linux is to be this grand desktop OS that people want to be, I fear it may lose that anyway. And that would indeed be nothing less than a tragic loss. (Which is why I don't think Linux in its current state should be a desktop OS. At least, not the way you seem to think a desktop OS works)

3)

I'm going to be as brief as possible. First, have you ever even read about how Debian works as opposed to RedHat? There are distros besides RedHat, you know. Second, comparing BeOS to Linux doesn't work. BeOS is the project of a single development group lead by a single program management group. How can you seriously expect Linux to have the same goals? Now, if you want to compare a distro to BeOS, that's fine. Third, personal telnet server? Are you completely disconnected from reality? SSH, my friend. Telnet has no place in the hands of end users that don't know anything about security, nor should they be expected to. Fourth, your suggestion that Linux and Windows should be held to the same standard is a repeat of your faulty reasoning behind comparing it to BeOS. See above.

4) Linux isn't an OS.

Interesting, you've been judging and condemning it like one. And throughout this paragraph you expect it to be one. "Consistancy is a good thing for an OS" is irrelevant if Linux isn't an OS. "managerial problems an OS has" is meaningless, since Linux isn't an OS.

Now, to point out why none of this matters. Linux isn't a product. It's a kernel. Linux distributions are products, and I'm sick of people comparing this mythical thing that is Linux to operating systems. If you want to bitch about RedHat, call it RedHat Linux. Don't give the other distros crap for the product of one company. Further. Don't expect the contents of any distro to be perfect, flowing, and totally consistent until a company shows up that writes every single application in-house. Then, and only then, does it fit into your world of what an OS is. Then, and only then, may you compare it to Windows and BeOS.

When I look up my order on customer service (this link should be in your confirmation email, or lokigames.com or directly here, my order shows as being "completed", though I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean.

All in all, it seems a funny system, at least to me. and I would REALLY like my copy of SMAC to materialize right now :)

Lea

http://www.lokigames.com/products/ sc3k/demo.php3

http://www.lokigames.com/~yoda/random/

The first person shooter is taking over, yes. But variation on the FPS leaves us with RPG-FPS like UlitmaIX, and Everquest, Adventure-FPS like Deus Ex (if you haven't played Deus Ex yet, you are REALLY missing out)

Agreed - when I first looked at this game I thought 'another FPS'. But I load up the demo (both levels) to have a quick burn and quickly discover that this is a pretty well thought out game. The graphic technology may not include all the whizzy shaders of quake 3, but the mere existence of a plot and various hinted-at sub-plots is unusual in a game today. And even better, Loki Games is almost certainly working on a port of 'Deus Ex' for Linux - it was spotted at LinuxWorld in their booth on a Linux machine. Keep eyes peeled for announcements and don't buy that Windows version!

Cheers,

Toby Haynes

Also, Loki has Eric's Solitaire, which is the best solitaire game out there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that there are any patches to get q3 for linux running in windows. And THAT is another reason I use Windows at all on my comp...

Ok, I will correct you. Yes, it can be done, I've played Q3 for Linux on Linux twice, in Windows countless times. You might try *gasp* reading Loki's support page! Yes, that's right, they have instructions for using your Linux CD to get q3 in Windows right there in the support page! If you can't find it, here's a link:
Can I use the Linux CD to run Quake III under Windows and/or the Mac OS?
Mmmm, that was hard, it took 4 clicks. Why don't you actually try to figure things out before spouting off bullshit that others will read and take as fact, eh?

-Nathan

Loki Setup is doing much of what people are describing here, although it's not very good yet at dealing with all packaging systems.

Setup is GPL, features an easy-to-use GTK+ UI, relies on XML files to describe the packages (and also the UI via libglade), generates uninstall scripts, handles RPM files, pre and post install scripts, etc... I also happen to be its co-author ;-)

Most Loki products use it in conjunction with Makeself, which is included in setup, and enables programmers to make self-extractible program archives.

Stéphane Peter

Loki Setup is doing much of what people are describing here, although it's not very good yet at dealing with all packaging systems.

Setup is GPL, features an easy-to-use GTK+ UI, relies on XML files to describe the packages (and also the UI via libglade), generates uninstall scripts, handles RPM files, pre and post install scripts, etc... I also happen to be its co-author ;-)

Most Loki products use it in conjunction with Makeself, which is included in setup, and enables programmers to make self-extractible program archives.

Stéphane Peter

Loki Setup is doing much of what people are describing here, although it's not very good yet at dealing with all packaging systems.

Setup is GPL, features an easy-to-use GTK+ UI, relies on XML files to describe the packages (and also the UI via libglade), generates uninstall scripts, handles RPM files, pre and post install scripts, etc... I also happen to be its co-author ;-)

Most Loki products use it in conjunction with Makeself, which is included in setup, and enables programmers to make self-extractible program archives.

Stéphane Peter

but the market has to start somewhere.

There have been several simultaneous ports [Unreal Tournament, Quake III: Arena, Terminus, Theocracy, the next Doom game, Anarchy Online (a non-fantasy-based MMORPG), Neverwinter Nights (the multiplayer AD&D RPG), Tribes 2 (well, nigh-simultaneous), and probably some I'm not thinking of off-hand] shipped or announced in the last 12 months, and the only way to maintain momentum is if you, the community, vote with your dollars.

Moreover, one of Loki's more recent ports, Soldier of Fortune, shipped only 4 months after the original Windows version, so the lag time on porting should hopefully be decreasing as well.

The gaming industry is ruled to a large degree by inertia, so it'll take time and effort to ensure a viable and diverse Linux gaming library, but I intend to do what's necessary to ensure that for all of us :).

Just because you don't think Descent 3 is worthy of remark, does not mean that there are not other games out there or being planned that are good. Sim City 3000 is in the works for Linux, and Quake 3 Arena already is available for Linux. You say, "so little so late," but I say Linux gaming is off to a decent, realistic start fo an OS that's still in the early stages of gaining widespread mainstream adoption.

Just because you don't think Descent 3 is worthy of remark, does not mean that there are not other games out there or being planned that are good. Sim City 3000 is in the works for Linux, and Quake 3 Arena already is available for Linux. You say, "so little so late," but I say Linux gaming is off to a decent, realistic start fo an OS that's still in the early stages of gaining widespread mainstream adoption.

Minimum System Requirements
Hard drive : 500 MB uncompressed hard drive space

<SARCASM>Why yes, I _am_ made out of hard drive space, thank you very much.</sarcasm>

Seriously, someone needs to knock some sense into game designers - hell, all commercial programmers - and remind them that while _they_ may not have anything on their hard drives but the project they're working on, that's not what it's like out in the real world. I mean, you might want to have Star Office on there too...

Gladly. Loki Setup is here. I'm attempting to propose that vendors of Linux applications shouldn't make any claims whatsoever about distrobution support and simply distribute their product in a distro-independent manner, much like Loki does. Nobody ever question's Loki's support of all distros, because they're not written to a specific one.

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

Thank you for your interest, and apologies for the delay in responding to your inquiry.

Our company line now that Bungie has been purchased by Microsoft is as follows...

We are not aware of anything relating to Bungie's acquisition that would affect our rights to continue to sell and support the Linux version Myth II, and we fully intend to continue to do so.

Whether or not we'll have access to future Bungie titles is an open question. We just don't have enough information right now, so any comment would be mere speculation.

Sincerely,

Kayt Sorhaindo

Loki Entertainment Software

Strangely enough, one of their titles is available for Linux:

Heroes of Might and Magic III

http://www.lokigames.com/products/heroes 3/

I'm not exactly a big fan of turn-based fantasy strategy, but the Heroes series is generally acknowledged as the best of the breed, and having the latest in the series available on the Linux platform is a Good Thing in and of itself.

1. "Experience the ultimate of video gaming action in your own home, with genuine interactive motion for IBM, and two of the most popular gaming platforms. Rock-N-Ride moves you and your monitor up to 55 degrees of rock and roll for the hottest gaming experience available today. Action flying and driving games will never be the same as you twist and turn through the game with unbelievable realism. Take a seat in a Rock-N-Ride simulator and fly into the future of home video gaming, the feeling is OUT OF THIS WORLD!!

(On a serious note, good comments in this AskSlashdot.)

SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) is an excellent API for the graphics and input portions. It's even cross-platform, using DirectX 7 under Win95/98 and GDI under WinNT 4. Not to mention Linux (X, X/MIT-SHM, SVGAlib, AAlib, fbcon, ggi), Be, Mac, etc.

FWIW, it's what Loki uses for their ports.

Coupled with OpenAL (used in HG2, SMAC, SC3K, SoF, and Descent3), it's solving real-world problems now.

The API's are there, and maturing quickly. Feel free to use them :-)

If you can't get help from the Tech Support folks via phone, e-mail support@lokigames.com.

I haven't had any real problems with X 3.3.x and my Voodoo3 at home. In fact, Myth2, GLQuake, Q2, Q3, HG2, UT, Kingpin, and SoF all run just fine =)

The client (the graphical-fly-around-with-a-joystick-and-sound-and -motion-sickness) version is what Loki will be releasing. It even supports a gaming chair (The RockNRide).

I've got it all running here.

Screenshots are here.

My big white ass on the RockNRide.

--ryan. (icculus@lokiSPAMSUXgames.com)

The client (the graphical-fly-around-with-a-joystick-and-sound-and -motion-sickness) version is what Loki will be releasing. It even supports a gaming chair (The RockNRide).

I've got it all running here.

Screenshots are here.

My big white ass on the RockNRide.

--ryan. (icculus@lokiSPAMSUXgames.com)

87 Megs

Mirrors:
ftp://ftp.lokigames.com/pub/ demos/sof/sof-demo-x86.run

http://www.3ddownloads.com/s howfile.php3?file_id=87646

I believe the correct link is http://quake3.lokigames.com

Sure it does! We use it for most of the libraries on Linux, for gosh sake! It's because we explicitly want people to be able to create proprietary applications on their Linux systems.

Was anybody arguing with that?

Nope. Although there was a time that I would have argued against that.

What made me change my mind was a little company called Loki Games. Their products (a) make Linux more fun to play games on, and (b) increase the adoption rate of Linux among end-users. This in and of itself is a boon to the open source movement.

Now, what enamored me with the LGPL was something related, the Simple Directmedia Layer ( SDL ), by Sam Latinga, who just so happens to be the lead programmer at Loki Games.

But what I'm suggesting in the earlier post is to use the LGPL not as a Library GPL, but as a Lesser GPL, and in fact release actual non-library programs under its terms. It seems to me to be the ideal compromise between BSD-style licenses and a full GNU copyleft.

I mean, it is about freedom, isn't it?

First of all, the installed base is *maybe* 100,000-500,000. Most distributions sold are tried, then dumped.

Second of all, the number of Linux users that use it as a desktop system rather than a server (i.e., potentially for games) *might* be 10-50,000 -- if you're lucky. It takes a hard, hard, hard-core user to use Linux every day (without any Windows system) when they know the applications suck compared to the ones on Windows or the Mac.

Proof: How did the shrink-wrap linux Game experiments do? Don't hear too much about the stellar sales, do you?

Yeah, Linux is still a niche market, but Linux games are making money. Loki isn't going out of business any time soon.

There is only one thing Linux needs to start to get out of the niche gaming market and into the main stream, and that is a killer game app that every gamer wants but that doesn't have a Windows port. Heck, the game could be packaged with a Linux distribution and partitioning tools, I bet any gamer would love to try it. Gamers are not cowardly little computer users, they have no problem messing with their systems to get that little bit of extra performance out of them. I doubt a userfriendly Linux distribution would intimidate them. People who use their computer for fun are more likely to mess around with it than people who just use it to do work and surf the Web. Of course, you may be an arrogant Micros~1 employee who believes that no one knows about computers and nobody wants to. If that true, why are their even PC gamers at all why doesn't everone just get a Playstation, the epitome of the non-technical users game machine? Even with Playstations, how many people have modified them to play games from other regions (or had one of their tech savvy friends do it? The same guy they'll have set up their Linux partition?). Or maybe you think that the people who pay $60+ for a PC game are just "casual gamers?"

Here's hoping you end up in one of the unprofitable Baby Bills when the government breaks up your company.

Yes. OpenGL _IS_ cross platform, not _was_.
OpenGL runs on pretty much all desktop systems. (Can anyone think of a system that doesn't have OpenGL?)

At least Khronos is doing The Right Thing (tm) and using OpenGL as a base for OpenML. OpenGL is a nice clean, and othogonal API unlike that bastard child called Direct3D. (DX = 6 revisions in 4 years? Yeah, thats a good design! NOT.)

I'm kind of curious as to why OpenAL or SDL doesn't fit the bill here?
http://www.lokigames.com/development/

At least they have enough "big names" that this might actually take off.

&LTrant&GT
Unlike all the developers that SOLD OUT to M$ with Direct3D. As a 3D programmer I'm still upset that everyone let M$ shove down our game programmers throats wheter we wanted it or not.
&LT/rant&GT

• Beast Wars: Transformers - worthy heir to the Transformers throne, with a suspenseful story arc and unique characterizations for kid vid (particularly the brooding samurai Dinobot)
• Beast Machines: Transformers - the season currently airing in the US is pretty much crap, although its picked up in the season airing in Canada right now (realvideo encoded eps are available at TF Extreme)
• Starship Troopers - excellent CGI work (best I've seen for a fully computer-animated show), although it doesn't look like it'll be picked up for another year on the Sci-Fi channel unfortunately >:/
  However, the company who animated it (Foundation Imaging), is working on a Heavy Gear show set in the same HG universe as Loki's latest port, which should prove interesting...

Loki has a modified version of Bugzilla called Fenris which adds a little to Bugzilla. The code is available at http://fenris.lokigames.com/fenris-c ode.tar.gz, and it is running at http://fenris.lokigames.com/. It's pretty well suported and being actively developed by Michael Vance. darren
Cthulhu for President!

Loki has a modified version of Bugzilla called Fenris which adds a little to Bugzilla. The code is available at http://fenris.lokigames.com/fenris-c ode.tar.gz, and it is running at http://fenris.lokigames.com/. It's pretty well suported and being actively developed by Michael Vance. darren
Cthulhu for President!

Loki has a modified version of Bugzilla called Fenris which adds a little to Bugzilla. The code is available at http://fenris.lokigames.com/fenris-c ode.tar.gz, and it is running at http://fenris.lokigames.com/. It's pretty well suported and being actively developed by Michael Vance. darren
Cthulhu for President!

Loki has a modified version of Bugzilla called Fenris which adds a little to Bugzilla. The code is available at http://fenris.lokigames.com/fenris-c ode.tar.gz, and it is running at http://fenris.lokigames.com/. It's pretty well suported and being actively developed by Michael Vance. darren
Cthulhu for President!

Loki has a modified version of Bugzilla called Fenris which adds a little to Bugzilla. The code is available at http://fenris.lokigames.com/fenris-c ode.tar.gz, and it is running at http://fenris.lokigames.com/. It's pretty well suported and being actively developed by Michael Vance. darren
Cthulhu for President!

I, my mother, my sister, and my father all regularly put our laptops (unless my sister steals mine to play Civ:CTP or HoMM3 or dad and I use his to look up flight charts) in the nose storage of a plane that flies at about 30,000 feet. No pressurization, no heat. And my laptop still works fine, thankee very much, sir (actually I'm looking at selling one of em if someone wants a TP 570 -- works great, almost new). I believe that heat is another matter, but I've had some laptops that get hot enough that the manual specifically states that you should never, ever put it on your lap (which is where I have it), and the hard drive works just fine.

Another point is that this is self-assembling magnetic storage. I was at the last Foresight Convention on Nanotechnology, and for all the amazing and interesting things people had done or were trying to do, the real roadblock was self-assembly. building a motor with an AFM is not exactly practical.

Offtopic: why can't we make players that read/write MD media, and play MP3's? Now that is something I would buy instantly. (or when I have enough PointClick dollars to get one -- really offtopic: why doesn't PointClick let you use Mozilla, dammit?)

Lea

I, my mother, my sister, and my father all regularly put our laptops (unless my sister steals mine to play Civ:CTP or HoMM3 or dad and I use his to look up flight charts) in the nose storage of a plane that flies at about 30,000 feet. No pressurization, no heat. And my laptop still works fine, thankee very much, sir (actually I'm looking at selling one of em if someone wants a TP 570 -- works great, almost new). I believe that heat is another matter, but I've had some laptops that get hot enough that the manual specifically states that you should never, ever put it on your lap (which is where I have it), and the hard drive works just fine.

Another point is that this is self-assembling magnetic storage. I was at the last Foresight Convention on Nanotechnology, and for all the amazing and interesting things people had done or were trying to do, the real roadblock was self-assembly. building a motor with an AFM is not exactly practical.

Offtopic: why can't we make players that read/write MD media, and play MP3's? Now that is something I would buy instantly. (or when I have enough PointClick dollars to get one -- really offtopic: why doesn't PointClick let you use Mozilla, dammit?)

Lea

Short term solution could be that one of the companies releases their format to the public, we grab it, polish it where necessary, and develop all kind of players & stuff for it

I write code like a fifth grader so correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't this be done today with mpeg? I mean, we've got the source code, we've even got Loki's mpeg library. And I understand that this wouldn't be used by the big content providers as we would be able to save the downloads, but I want to be able to save downloads, and I want anyone to be able to publish their works without paying >$1000 for a codec I can't even view, let alone save. Those big content providers will eventually have to do something different, as some poster has already commented, their security through obscurity will, and on some occasions has, been compromised.

Feel free to slap me with a trout if I'm wrong.

Dave

Go here and you shall find the answers you seek.

The reason for this can be as simple as using a 3Dfx in a non-fullscreen mode, or it may be something more complex like a bad Mesa/GLX configuration.

You may want to check our GL drivers page for information on getting everything set up correctly.

If you're still stumped, send us an email with your system specs. While we don't technically support the demo, we do want you to have a good experience with it (how else are we going to sell anything?) and will gladly provide a few pointers to get you going.

The reason for this can be as simple as using a 3Dfx in a non-fullscreen mode, or it may be something more complex like a bad Mesa/GLX configuration.

You may want to check our GL drivers page for information on getting everything set up correctly.

If you're still stumped, send us an email with your system specs. While we don't technically support the demo, we do want you to have a good experience with it (how else are we going to sell anything?) and will gladly provide a few pointers to get you going.

Have you guys heard of makeself? It creates self extracting and installing files(tar.gz or tar.bz2). It just tacks on a 30 line BOURNE shell script to the specified archive, and viola.

Get it here http://www.lokigames.com/~megastep/mak eself/

Dom

Um, do you mean this Heroes of Might & Magic III? It's ported. It's available. It's on sale at EBWorld (search PC for Linux). Yeah, it's $30, but it's worth it! Oh, man is it worth it...

(BTW, there is a demo available of the Linux version. It's 93M, so hope you have time and/or bandwidth...)