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Jagged Alliance 2 for Linux
Vesper writes "Sir-Tech Canada announced that there will be a Linux port of the popular turn-based strategy game, Jagged Alliance 2, ported by Tribsoft. Saw a blurb on this over at AVault. The game will be bundled with the expansion, "Unfinished Business", and available in Spring 2000. The rate at which publishers are announcing games for Linux seems to be increasing.
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Didn't know they were still in business. Weren't they the ones that came up with the Wizardry series? Guess they couldn't really keep up with the state of the art. Wouldn't it be cool though if they released the entire wizardry series as open-source?
i think it's great that more and more games are being released for linux. I personally think it's something that is really needed. I mean, alot of people who run linux may not be interested in the gaming aspect, but with the recent rise in console and PC gaming, it's becoming a more and more important aspect. I mean, more games == more users == more support? At least, that's the way i'd like it to happen =).
When I choose games to buy/play for the PC, usually I choose them based on how they play, not based on the Operating System they run under.
That being said, Linux has a ways to go until games can be chosen before the platform becomes an issue.
Every little bit helps. Between JAL2 and Loki's latest additions, I could game my ass off all year if I purchased all those titles.
is usb mouse support. Every windoze game I play requires 3d (which I'm very impressed with for linux currently) and extremely high rates for my mouse. I can honestly tell the difference between ps/2 and usb performance under windows (even with ps2rate) and I've had really bad ps/2 problems. I haven't checked out the usb support in the 2.3 kernels, but from what I've heard, it uses ps/2 emulation for mice so that things like XF86 will be happy with it. I would think that would give me the performance problems I'm getting with real ps/2 devices, and I haven't been able to find any resources for setting the ps/2 mouse refresh rate under linux (apart from XF86's configuration, which didn't really work for me).
I know the article says its a port, but is "The rate at which publishers are announcing games for Linux seems to be increasing. " justified? This is just a Windows game put onto Linux hoping for more money.
prediction #10
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I'm very discouraged, however, by the fact that one very important game to me hasn't been ported or announced by Loki: Half-Life. Valve have to know that this'd kill, and that more people would buy that port than would buy Quake III, probably. I know I'd snap it up right away. And I've made it very clear to a number of companies, when inquiring as to their Linux port status, that I wouldn't buy their games if they weren't available for Linux.
It might sound a little crazy - support for only games for Linux - but, simply put, it needs support. I'm the biggest Free Software advocate out there. Hell, I don't even like the term "Open source." But games are sort of different - I'm not so sure that Free Software will work for all games.
And, in the end, by buying Linux-ported games the market itself is expanding, and more people will get into Linux - and isn't that what we all want?
I hope that the support is good for these games. I've been trying to get Quake III to run properly for days now. I just asked Loki support to help via email and they seem to have decent support services. I doubt that the average end-user would be able to trouble shoot anything with the sparse documentation that comes with the game, however.
Just the thoughts of a frustrated gamer
Although undeniably the rate of software being ported to Linux is increasing, it is still w_a_y t_o_o s_l_o_w by all account.
If we are to achieve the "world domination" status, in the current slow-pace of software porting to the Linux environment, by the time the existing crop of softwares are ported to Linux, newer and more useful software would have emerged.
That means, we in the Linux community will be always lagging behind the "you-know-who".
The only way to win the war is to concentrate on a totally new front - RESEARCHING AND DEVELOPING NEW GENERATIONS OF EXCITING KILLER-APPS for Linux.
I understand that there _are_ a lot of software projects being launched for Linux, but unfortunately, most of them are re-hash, or reverse-enginnering of old-softwares, such as word processing, spread-sheets, window-managers, graphic-manipulators, and so on.
There is a need to find out where the industry is heading, and there is an even more urgent need to FORESEE where the current horizon ends, so that we in the Linux community can GO BEYOND the current horizon and start charting NEW SOFTWARE TERRITORIES.
Only in that way can we create a whole new cropt of EXCITING KILLER-APPS for Linux, and only that will get Linux to have the too-long-denied respectability it deserves.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
This is a good step for Linux and gaming, but right now, it isn't the best. Linux gets games a good while after they are published for other platforms, with notable exceptions, and besides Quake 3, never gets them at the same time. Even Macs sometimes get this.
As an avid game player, I don't want to run a game months after it is out. I hope the best for Linux, it could and probably is our only hope for more competition in this world. It needs work, before it ever becomes an attractive market for game players.
Saw it written and I saw it say, pink moon is on its way. None of you will stand so tall, pink moon is gonna get ye al
The above post may be offtopic, yes, but I think that it is definitely of general interest and should be moderated up.
YMMV but that is my opinion.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
this was a really nice game for windows, i'll probably buy it (barring money supplies) after it comes out. i was obsessed with JA2 for the longest time, and I still am a little... with this and the other games now available/being ported, support should increase a lot, that's my justification for getting games :)
Well, I haven't resorted to a Windows partition on any of my Linux boxes -- but I do "borrow" my kids' Win98 box to play Quake ][ from time to time.
Has anyone here had the opportunity to compare the Windows version of Q2 with the Linux version on the same hardware? Assuming a decent port is available, just how well does Linux compare as a gaming platform?
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Depends highly on the video card/ driver set..
With my Voodoo 2, celeron 400 CPU, performance is about even with Windows 95, +-5%
One of the main advantages of quake2 under Linux has been lower memory footprint of the OS, especially with the server, or non-glx (doesn't require X to be running) 3d acceleration.
Also, the better drive caching helps lots too...
The only real things holding Linux back now are X overhead (xfree 4.* should relieve this) and no 3d sound (though this is being worked on.)
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Hey thanks for the links. Looks like the Moderator Man gave you a Score -1, Overrated, probably so he could not be meta-moderated. Why doesn't Rob and gang post stuff as it happens, rather than waiting for zdnet or whomever to write an article about it? Blech, I'll probably see it posted on the mainpage in about a week or so, after I already read about it.
I've noticed that a lot of people complain about the delay to bring games to Linux. The big delay for JA2 was more about starting our business...
In the future, we will try to release games more quickly on Linux (what about 2-3 months later). However, JA2 is more a game with deep game-play that you can play for months so I feel it's great to make it available for Linux.
Mathieu Pinard
Tribsoft Inc.
Mathieu Pinard
Tribsoft Inc.
Well if me rusty brain recollects correctly, it wasn't until DirectX became ubiquitous (sometime after DirectX 3) that gaming really took off on Windows 95. I remember just a few years ago, there were still lots of games being written for DOS and DOS extenders like those available from Rational. Then DirectX started to improve... and now almost all games are written for Windows. What Linux needs is a graphic/audio/3D standard that everyone agrees on. It looks like OpenGL will be the winner for 3D (judging on the number of windows developers adapting OpenGL, it seems migrating to Mesa would be easier). Still, there hasn't been any bright shining star in the form of a unified gaming services library. Not to say they don't exist, theres CGI, XFree86 v4, and plenty of others... but not clear winner yet.
Blender And Linux Fan
It's great to see all these game companies hopping on the Linux bandwagon. Loki is doing an excellent job with porting Win games to our platform and the announcement of JA2 for linux is awesome. However, I think Linux needs more simultaneously released games such as Q3 or UT.
Since more and more games are integrating multiplayer options, it'd be nice to actually have a linux game that still has an online following. I find it's easier to find online opponents following the initial release of a game as opposed to several months down the road when the hype has either died down or the game has been upgraded.
In summary, it's great that companies are porting to linux, but it'd be even better to get simultaneous releases. Please stop treating linux like the red-headed stepchild of gaming.
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Check out http://www.game sdomain.com/gdreview/zones/reviews/pc/aug99/ja2.ht ml for a thorough description and review of this title. The reviewer really liked it.
I can think of two reasons that these companies are willing to do the port. Unlike ports to MacOS, no Windows user is going to have to buy new hardware to play games under Linux. They won't have to get new hardware for their developers either. A new hard drive maybe. For the world to switch won't cost $1-3000 per desktop and more for servers. It'll cost for some CD ROMs and some good books.
The other reason is that there are lots of people who want to be here first. If the stampeed of gamers starts happening, the company with the hot games on Linux at the time it starts stands to make a bundle.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Its great Linux is getting more and more games, software etc... but what I would like to see is more flight sims. Its the only thing keeping me from dumping Windows altogether European Air War? Falcon4?
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
I'll buy it even though I already have the windoze version. Gives my custom merc's catchphrase :)
of 'Time to take out the trash' a whole new meaning.
I think there needs to be a page where one can go to get news on Linux games ... what games are currently available for Linux users, and what development is being done. Does such a thing exist? If not, let's make one!
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
Bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh, bwuckatah bwuckatah bahhh!
7th Design
How about some of the SSI games. Also the new version of Harpoon they are supposedly releasing late this year. Also how about Sierra's Frontpage Sports Football. Since it got kill by Sierra they might be interested in allowing a port. All of these games don't depend heavily on extreme video performance. Most would really be better on something like Linux. They just push Windows to hard.
I think a big thing holding back flight sims are te joysticks. I haven't tried getting mine to work with linux, but something tells me my Saitek USB X36 combo isn't gonna work. Not being able to program a stick because there is no Linux support sucks. I would imagine that most major HOTAS don't run well with Linux.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
yeah, its called www.linuxgames.com
I don't visit it too much but it seems pretty cool
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
Sir-Tech sort of went out of business....sort of :>
:> And its a great game!
In the past, there were two divisions to Sir-Tech, the development division and the publisher division. I'm pretty sure both were called Sir-Tech. One was based in the US, and the other in Canada (though, I don't know which was where).
Sometime within the last 2 years, the publisher division went under. This ended up making it really hard for the development Sir-Tech to get their long awaited Jagged Alliance 2 out the door. They claimed to have the game done for months while looking for a publisher.
Well, eventually they found one..thankfully
whm
Just did a followup to the Jagged Alliance site and the link to the Sir-Tech Canada site chokes and a Whois says that NSI owns the name in DNS.
Seems that someone at Sir-Tech might just want to check up with NSI on sir-tech.com and wizardry8.com (if they still want it...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I seem to remember a /. thread about that. Of course, Glide is still hardware dependent, so that would give OGL and edge, anyway.
/me liking OpenGL more and more since I got my Geforce...
Sure, I have a thankless job. That's okay. I have a lot of (non
but what you gave as a reason is also a problem. If I buy a mac I can't run windows so unless they bring the game to macos there's _no_ way i can play the game. If I buy a PC it already comes with windows. Why port to linux or any other OS on the PC if you could still play that game on Windows? Developers will be lazy and only do Windows because all PC's come with it.
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here's my take - the number of linux games seems to have doubled in these past few months. UT, Q3A, among others, and now JA2. What does this mean? The truly great games seem to be cross platform and transcend os boundaries ... who do we thank? I think John Carmack from id should get the big prize for this one. Years ago id said they ported to other os's because they thought it was just cool ... and now other companies have followed their lead. I've spent a week getting Q3A to run on my linux box with a voodoo3. I'm not experienced, so most of it was just me. But in a 6 months or less (hopefully), we'll have Xfree 4.0, new 3dfx drivers, and the whole process will just simplify (hell, we might even have mozilla) .. I think as a community, we need to recognize that the release of Q3A and UT for linux has really brought linux gaming out of the niche and into the mainstream, mainstream linux wise that is, is that mainstream or still niche? What am I talking about? :)
- jorge
This is pretty cool, all these games being produced for Linux. Just a reminder though: Make sure that you buy these games and not their counterpart windoze versions (if you haven't already). If these companies invest in Linux ports and then show a loss rather than a profit, that's not going to send the message we want. =)
The article lacked some URLs, so I thought I'd post them:
JA2/Linux page
The official JA2 page
Great to see new Linux titles. I'm looking forward to the day when I can drop the Windows-partition.
Don't do that ! I allready lost TOO MANY weeks playing that great game ! ... horror ... I think nobody can talk to me then for the next 2 weeks at last !
If you release it on linux
What are you talking about? Now the number of announced games increased from 5 to 6? Or what? Wow, major rate increase.
So it also looks like the rate of number of companies dropping Linux projects is increasing, too.
Once those companies that bought into the Linux hype see that those 250.000 users that have Linux desktops do not like to pay for their software, even those will make no more Linux games.
They published Wizardry, but hardly "came up with it." Its not that they couldn't keep up with the state of the art, its that they couldn't keep people with a clue -- some of the best craftsmen ever. First they screwed Robert Woodhead, and then they screwed Andrew Greenberg and then they screwed David Bradley. With a rep like that, is it any surprise that these guys had trouble keeping "technology" up to date?
Read it here: http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game =ja2&page=1
It was attempted to make a Mac port, but it was given up after several months of development. They said they couldn't make it as good as the windows version, so they gave up instead of putting out a shittier version for mac. If it would be the same for linux, I would rather just have a windows version that kicks ass rather than seeing how hurt it is under linux.
...at happypenguin.org.
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- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
I knew Robert and Andrew from Cornell, where Andrew wrote the first version of Wizardry. This story is for them to tell, but I hear that Andrew is still suing Sir-Tech for not paying royalties and Robert settled earlier for pennies on the dollar. IANAL, but that doesn't seem to me the ordinary way these things are supposed to end.
The proof is in the pudding. Why did all three out of three of the best game writers of their time leave Sir-Tech at the peak of their careers? Who develops anything at Sir-Tech's "development boutique" in Canada?
This will be the best game released for Linux yet.
Loki's stuff hasn't been that great so far ( not their fault,simply the games they ported weren't that thrilling )
Update: Thanks to efforts of the Loki Entertainment email tech-support staff, I can now frag in Q3 with the best of 'em. (To bad I'm not that good of a player ;))
It turns out that because I had installed Glide I was having a conflict problem. Also the version I bought was one of the first produced and had a small bug that messed up a config file. I was able to edit the file and run the game! Yay Loki, yay id!
Just the thoughts of a happy gamer