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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).
prediction #10
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Celebrate the finer things in life
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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