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Lithtech 3D Engine Coming to Linux
Phinn writes "Gamecenter is reporting that Monolith Productions is going to be bringing its Lithtech 3D graphics engine to Linux. Lithtech was closely developed with Microsoft and at one time was thought to become Microsoft's DirectEngine. You can get the complete story here."
Do a search on LithTech, comes up with a story from the 20th, and from last November.
Moderators are going to think you are a jerk. I don't think you are a jerk. Please do NOT be critical of slashdot. You WILL lose karma points!
"The LithTech engine was, at one time, developed "by Monolith under the supervision of Microsoft." According to Monolith CEO Jason Hall, Monolith is no longer officially associated with Microsoft, and the former alliance does not pose any potential problems now that LithTech is expanding to another operating system."
Funny that a company has to clarify that their former association with Microsoft will not post a threat. Big Brother Microsoft in action!
"The LithTech engine was, at one time, developed "by Monolith under the supervision of Microsoft." According to Monolith CEO Jason Hall, Monolith is no longer officially associated with Microsoft, and the former alliance does not pose any potential problems now that LithTech is expanding to another operating system."
Funny that a company has to clarify that their former association with Microsoft will not pose a threat. Big Brother Microsoft in action!
"As part of our business strategy, it is important for Monolith to make the LithTech development system available to as many developers and platforms as possible--so in that vein, we opted to support Linux. It is an interesting platform. We are excited about its future possibilities, with LithTech available as a development system for it."
The article also states that the Mac port is coming out after they complete the Linux support. This is great news, not being an "Oh yeah, we'll port to Linux also". I really liked the fact that they state clearly that the project was developed under supervision of MS but the ties with Redmond have been severed. I wonder if Ms contracted Monolith to do this, then for whatever reason fell out of favor and not Monolith is using Ms paid for development to support the Linux community. Ironic 'eh?
Never knock on Death's door:
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
He gains a point but loses it because slashdot is slow to respond sometimes. It isn't his fault, but he gets hit anyway.
To our programmer friends out there: How tough is this port going to be? If I remember correctly, Lithtech was originally called Direct Engine and was supposed to be 100% Direct X related/compatable. I'm not sure how much that changed before the final release of Shogo, but I don't remember a native glide version so I would assume that it's still very Direct X dependant. How tough would it be to retool the engine with the same functions/features for Linux is it was so Windows dependant? Chris
I have been monitoring the whole "open source" phenomenon since its very beginnings, almost 3 years ago, and I am constantly amazed at the lack of marketing-savvy demonstrated by the commercial entities behind the Linux operating system.
Spare a thought for how the poor consumer must be confused. Linux seems to market itself to what can only be described as the "Rocket Scientist" demographic.
When I first started dabbling with Linux, I was amazed to find that there was no DirectX compatibility. Instead I had to use something called OpenGL.
Now I am pretty technical, having installed NT and Windows98 on my PC at home (and am trusted to re-boot the Exchange server when our support guys are not around), but even I was at a loss when confronted with this techno-babble and garbled nonsense.
Don't the guys behind Linux realise that if they want it to succeed in the marketplace as a consumer platform, they must offer support for the "industry standard" for games (DirectX) rather than the proprietory (and according to many graphics industry experts, technically inferior) OpenGL ?
I have years of experience in marketing, but the message which comes across from Linux (and to a lesser extent from FreeBSD) seems to be screw the customer, if he can't figure it out.
Don't get me wrong, I think Linux has potential to equal Microsoft in terms of stability and ease-of-use, but until we get decent support, via Wizards or similar technology, naive consumers will be left, as I was, wondering how the hell they are supposed to modify the registry, and this is where a platform stands or falls. Not by being complex and unstable (like Linux) but rather by giving the consumer an enhanced out-of-the-box experience. Think AOL, or the old-style Microsoft Network
In conclusion, without DirectX support, Linux is going nowhere, fast.
Again I offer this "open-source" marketing advice for free.
I think we need a new section for companies coming out of the closet and seeing the light!?
Everyday, we get a few articles on so-and-so company is now porting to/supporting linux.
Don't get me wrong, it's very good news, but I think it's so common now that it deserves its own seciton.
What do you think?
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
Why are you responding to this obvious troll. Seriously. You know that it is a troll, right guys? Helloooo. Morons.
You have been trolled. Have a nice day.
okay. will do! tnx.
Just be glad Monolith themselves aren't making the port. They're a really unreliable company. I bought the game--Windows version--last year, and am still awaiting their AMD 3dNow! enhancements patch. They promised this back when they released the game. The latest patch available is v2.2 which states, in the readme:
.wav files, and named them randomly to keep people from enjoying it outside of the game. THEN they have the nerve to try and sell me a seperate audio cd with the exact same BGM on it..!!)
...
- Added support for AMD's 3DNow! technology (thanks to Jayeson Lee-Steere
at AMD for helping us implement support). If you have an AMD 3DNow!
compliant CPU, you can enable this feature by selecting d3d3dnow.ren
under the Display button in the Shogo launcher. Enabling this feature
should provide about a 5%-15% speed improvement. NOTE: Enabling this
feature on non-AMD hardware may cause unpredictable results.
NOTE: We will release the d3d3dnow.ren as a separate upgrade patch
shortly after the release of the 2.2 patch. Check the Shogo
website for the most recent info www.shogo-mad.com.
..the readme's dated 3-9-1999..
That was my first and last purchase of a Monolith product; they've proven to me that they don't take their userbase seriously.
(Another amusing fact about Shogo; the soundtrack is awesome..! But Monolith chopped up the bgm into little eencie weencie
*grumble* *grumble*
James
Okay, now to respond to the stuff I liked: You are absolutely right about Linux being next to impossible for the common user. It has improved greatly in the last year or so, but we still have a VERY long way to go.
:-) Anyway, the point is she doesn't need to read man pages, she just needs to know how to click icons. My friends kids use Linux - they know how to run games, get on the internet, mail messages to dad over the family network :-) I guess, soon they'll know how to get root... (suggestion: watch daddy's fingers carefully when he logs in)^H^H^H^H^H^H^H[CENSORED]
No, we're here now. My wife now uses Linux happily - she's pretty much technically clueless - doesn't even know how to copy a file - but she knows how to start ppp, she knows how to start netscape, kmail, etc, and she knows how to surf. Actually, she knows how to do electronic funds transfer using netscape
I'm a senior Computer Science major at a well known university (which probably means aproximately dick), so I'm pretty technically inclined. I've been using Linux since my freshman year. Usually when I want to learn something new about Linux I go to the man page or the HOWTO. Sometimes this helps me. Sometimes it's like another language. When somebody as technically inclined as I am can't even understand the documentation, we definately have a problem.
Not everybody has to read the man pages, but thank goodness they're their, so when I go to troubleshoot somebodies computer, I don't have to keep it all in my head.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Frank T. Clark
230 East 9th Street #3C
New York, NY 10029
212-831-0882
http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/delindex.htm
http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/index.htm
delchi@dorsai.org
Too easy
I met Jason Hall at a LAN party where he demo'd a beta of Shogo prior to its release. At that time he explained that Monolith and Microsoft had disolved their relationship over creative differences in the development of Shogo (originally titled "Riot: Mobile Armor"). Monolith paid a large sum of money to Microsoft in order to take full ownership of the game property, so there is definitely no residual MS funding of this port, as ironic and amusing as that might be.
I browse with my threshold at 2 so I can't read my own comments :-)
The founders at Monolith (before Monolith existed), did a demo CD, showcasing some of the things they could do. It found its way into the hands of Microsoft who hired them to make a game sampler. They invested the money and started Monolith Productions.
The engine, as far as I know, was jointly developed by Microsoft and Monolith at first. Then Monolith didn't agree with the direction Microsoft wanted to take it. So Monolith bought it back from Microsoft - one of the few times someone has bought out technology from MS and not the other way around.
I do work at Monolith, but not on the engine team. So this is my own understanding, and may not be the company line :)
Best regards,
SEAL
This engine handles soundfx, music, and networking, in addition to graphics. Porting it to Linux will involve some work, but as others have pointed out - it has already been ported to other platforms. The code, at least in its latest incarnation, is more-or-less written with portability in mind.
Best regards,
SEAL
This seems like a very reasonable comment. He says nothing that would make me doubt who he is and his comments make a lot of sense. Yo moderators, ACs have something to say too!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
hahahahahah. that is so cool! thanks. I will destroy this guy now.
are you talking about Signal 11 or me? You wil never find out my info!!! hehehehehehe !!!!
I was astonished by the lack of knowledge that
oozes from this posting, and it seems as if you
were in Microsoftmarketing. Were you?
You seem to have no knowledge of Linux whatsoever,
which makes me think that you haven't monitored
anything.
First of all, Linux is not unstable. Why do you
think it has a higher market share in webservers
than Windows NT-server, but not in places that doesn't need that much stability?
A well maintained Linuxbox can keep up for years without crashing, you can't say that about NT-server.
You were amazed to find "no DirectX compatibility". Have you seen any platforms apart
from windows using DirectX? No?
That's because it is DirectX that is proprietary.
It is Windows-only, and that is because Microsoft
doesn't want to release it for any other platform.
OpenGL however, is open, and ported to a great amount of platforms (Linux, Irix, Solaris, FreeBSD, BeOS, any other Unix..etc.).
Wizards is very possible, but there are plenty
of areas that need attention before they come along. I give you one point here. Newbies like wizards.
But why on earth are you bringing the registry into this? The registry is a very poor idea implemented by Microsoft. It is cryptic, and is impossible to read and understand by human eyes.
Linux however uses text-files for configuration.
I agree that graphical-frontends are necessary (and partly there already), but putting everything
in one big, enormous file, is not the way to go.
What happenes if a program screws up, and you can't repair the registry using a "wizard". (A wizard can only handly very typical situations).
You can't possibly edit the registry by hand, it's to cryptic. If the information had been stored in a text-file, readable by humans, you could have just located the file, and fixed it.
My last point is about DirectX being better than OpenGL. You say that "many experts think that OpenGL is technically inferior to DirectX".
You submit no proof whatsover. Submit a testimony,
and the opposite can always be found.
The truth is that the "experts" do not agree on
this matter, and hopefully, the open solution will win.
Your last remark: "without DirectX support, Linux is going nowhere, fast.". This of course translates into: "Linux is never going anywhere, period", because you will never see DirectX for Linux (you would have, but Microsoft cancelled all attemps at it being cross-plattform, when they bought it).
Does this mean that Linux is screwed?
Of course not. Linux is making progress both
in usability and usermass very quickly.
So I guess your argument must be wrong.
> you would have, but Microsoft cancelled all attemps at it being cross-plattform, when they bought it
:) to edit text files to set up his computer.
They bought it? Who made it originally?
>impossible to read and understand by human eyes
And you can set up linux? Wow, you're stupid and smart simultaneously! Regedit keys make perfect sense. A bit of help might... help (need a synonym!), but most people don't have to edit the registry to hange program setup values. Program setup values are done with nice "Control Panel" boxes (example, KDE's setup in Linux is similar).
The average joe shouldn't have to go and use... joe (running out of synonym jokes
The ability should be there but you shouldn't have to use it: read, manual-override if neccesary, auto-pilot for everybody else.
I know Linux pretty well, and I don't like editing text files. I would like nice graphical config just as much as a newbie. Of course, steps are being made in this direction: and to the authors of these programs, I say: keep at it!
--
Talon Karrde
also, if your uninstall information is deleted, corrupted, you are unable to uninstall the program completely unless you know exactly where all files are, whether they are shared files, and what registry keys the installer put in.
The way that Unix has accomplished the task of configuration for many years is the most logical way. It is certainly a bit more complex and having a graphical configuration utility that could assist with configuration of multiple applications from one gui is a good idea, but puttig all configation data into one file is twisted logic.
maybe the solution is to put all configuration files into one directory or as much as possible..
oh yeah.. they already do that.. its called /etc/ and anyone who has used unix/linux for mor than an hour can figure out how to cat/more any file in there, figure out where it belongs.. assuming the name of the file is not self explanatory.
LW
OpenGL's time has come. Originally, it was intended for expensive high-end graphics machines with exotic hardware like fast FPUs, 24-bit color, Z-buffers, and matrix multipliers. Now, everybody has that stuff. Direct-X started life as a scheme to export low-level hardware capabilities like page-flipping to Windows apps.
Other than as part of a compatibility package for Windows apps, why would you want something similar to Direct-X on Linux?
eh bitch, stop spamming this place, do something interesting, get attention to the non-release of code in a more interesting way!!!
They bought it? Who made it originally?
Actually, some team within Microsoft wrote the Games SDK, to get game developers away from using DOS. The MS Office team loved it and wanted to integrate some of its features into Office, and thus was born DirectX.
Also, remember, DirectX refers to all the modules, not just 3D. Compare OpenGL to Direct3D, not DirectX!
OpenGL is called "Open" GL because it's *not* proprietary. SGI released OpenGL many years ago to a standards committee. I really doubt there are any "graphics experts" out there who will agree that Direct3D is technically superior to OpenGL. What OpenGL accomplished in Terminator 2 still blows away anything the PC could hope to offer, now years later. That said, I do agree Linux needs some serious marketing help. But first, it needs some serious desktop help, in both stability and ease of use. SGI & nVIDIA have partnered to develop OpenGL on Linux. Let's just hope OpenGL, Mesa, and related hardware accelerated 3D and media API's remain open source and have some higher level interfaces so that game developers are really tempted to use them!
WARNING! Shameless plug ahead.
... It can use OpenGL, Direct3D, Glide, or software rendering.
...
I'd like to misuse this oportunity to point people to a 3D engine that is already available for Linux. This is Crystal Space. It is Open Source and very portable. It currently runs on Linux, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, Macintosh, DOS, FreeBSD, SGI, Solaris, NextStep, OpenStep, MacOS/X,
Some of the features are: volumetric fog, halos, 3D triangle mesh objects with dynamic LOD and frame based or skeletal animation, dynamic colored lights with soft shadows, ROAM landscape engine, portals, octree visibility, general scripting mechanism (Python scripting included), curved bezier surfaces,
URL: http://crystal.linuxgames.com
Note that Crystal Space is still work in progress. It works reasonably well already but some things are not implemented properly. We are working on it. There is a rather active developers team busy with Crystal Space. You can join too!
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
According to the Hacker lexicon
.oO0Oo.
Term coined in March 1998 following the Mozilla release to describe software distributed in source under licenses guaranteeing anybody rights to freely use, modify, and redistribute, the code.
As for the rest - the directx guy is a pretty lame. Strikes me as someone who's read too many PC magazines.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Aren't these 2 different products?
wolf31o2 Developer, Gentoo Linux Games Team
"'industry standard' for games (DirectX) rather than the proprietory (and according to many graphics industry experts, technically inferior) OpenGL"
Huh?? Sorry, but your sentence makes no sense, OpenGL is far more open than Direct3D. Completely open-source implementations exist for OpenGL (Mesa3D for example.) OpenGL also runs on a much wider variety of platforms than does DirectX.
I'm sure an 'industry expert' like John Carmack might be inclined to disagree with your assessment.
Comparing OpenGL to DirectX is like comparing apples to oranges. However, it does make a lot more sense to compare OpenGL to Direct3D. As someone with industry experience in both, OpenGL is in my opinion by far a more well designed API. It has been around much longer (since about 1992, IIRC) and has always been way ahead of Direct3D. Direct3D has only just begin to catch up to OpenGL (and may only now begin to overtake OpenGL if nobody starts working on an OpenGL 2.0.)
Moreover, the current trend in the games industry is towards OpenGL. Remind me again what Quake3 uses? Many of the newer games on the market support OpenGL. The only reason Direct3D spent a few years as the "industry standard" 3D API was not because Direct3D was better, but because very few cards had working accelerated drivers for OpenGL. This has changed.
I personally never want to see DirectX on Linux. I would rather see something like SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) become some sort of cross-platform games API standard (the latest development version of SDL has OpenGL support.)
As a marketing person, I suggest you learn at least a little bit about the technologies you market. At least that way you might sound like you know what you are talking about. And yes, I do have industry experience doing 3D graphics programming, both in Windows and Linux, and in OpenGL and Direct3D.
I offer this "open-source" technical advice for free.