Ask Loki Prez Scott Draeker about Linux Gaming

John Carmack of id wrote Quake III, but Loki distributed the Linux version. Loki Entertainment Software has been described by happy puppy as "...the most visible Linux gaming company," so who better to turn to than Loki President Scott Draeker for word about game development and porting for Linux? Scott's an extra-cool guy, so we expect extra-cool answers from him. We'll post them sometime within the next week, so please keep an eye out.

Comments

Loki

[Anonymous Coward]

Scott, I am a linux programmer doing active development for technology companies in Canada. My questions spawns more from a business side rather than a technology side. I've examined Lokis business model and have a two-fold question. #1: Do you think simply porting games is a viable business model for Loki games. As Linux acceptance picks up don't you fear that more gaming houses will start doing their own cross-platform development in house rather than relying upon Loki as a "port house". #2: Linked to #1, if you fear this trend, will we see any original titles coming from LokiSoft or do you plan on strictly remaining a port house.

Children's software for Linux

[Jonathan Blocksom]

Do you think there is a market for children's software that runs on Linux?

XFree 4.0

[Jestrzcap]

How will XFree 4.0 affect how loki ports games? Is it going to make things easier? Harder? I know you have problems with being compatible with the different video card types and GlideX.X or Mesa3.X but you have done a really great job so far (I own quake ]|[, heretic ][, and Homm ]|[).

~Jester

Gaming distribution?

[jeroenb]

Since Linux was originally much more geared towards and used for server-applications and has only been moving into the desktop-market for a relatively short period, I can imagine the operating system is not entirely optimized for playing games. Stability often comes at the cost of performance and features, so I was wondering, do you think it would be useful to create a Linux distribution that focusses mainly on gaming and other multimedia-related applications?

Porting apps other than games

[vor]

Given Loki's experience in porting applications, have you considered, or been offered to, port programs other than games to Linux?

Reject ratio

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

I'm assuming that your (current) modus operandi is to call up a company and say "Hey, can we port your game to Linux?" Given that assumption:

1) How many companies have you talked to?
2) What percentage of them rejected the request?
3) Of those that rejected, what were their reasons? (fear of "open source", lack of demand, etc)
--
Here is the result of your Slashdot Purity Test.

Lacking API's and other challenges

[toofast]

Currently, Linux is lacking the standardized interfaces and API's that WIndows has. What is the greatest challenge (that needn't be one) when porting a game to Linux?

I mean, what makes you swear at Linux and say, Damnit, why doesn't Linux have this yet???

Content creation

[Bert Peers]

When the topic of creating commercial games for Linux pops up, I'm always eager to point out that there is an important difference between making games available on a platform by porting an existing game (at which Linux is, thanks to Loki, becoming highly succesful), and actual creation, out of the blue on the target platform.

Porting "merely" requires technical skill at the engine level : know-how on how to port Win32 to X, getting DirectX to work with SDL, OpenGL cross-platform issues, etc. Creation, on the other hand, requires the full asset of content creation tools that are of vital importance in every software house, but remain hidden from the end user -- and the porter. I like to call those tools the "boring 50%" of game production, and they consist of level editors, model builders, conversion tools (eg 3DS Max to native format), sound editors, etc.

Since Loki has recently showed interest in developing, instead of porting, Linux games, I'd like to hear what your take is on the apparent lack of solid, existing authoring tools (other than the Gimp), and the lack of solid desktop development support (KDevelop et al are nice but no match for the MSVC/MFC combo) needed to write all those quick'n'dirty but ultra-vital editor tools.

Do you agree that this lack of Linux equivalents of 3DS Max, Soundforge and MSVC is currently a major hurdle for Linux-native development ? If you go for full Linux development, would you create authoring support all by yourself and release it (a la MPEG SDL), or rather sit back and wait until Codewarrior, Kinetix etc all get their Linux products up to par with Win32 ?

Thanks !

How To Show Support?

[jelwell]

Sadly enough I bought Quake 3 for Linux, not because I like Quake 3 - I don't - but because I'm hoping that my purchase will help show game companies that there is a market in developing and porting games to the Linux platform. I would like to be able to buy every game that comes out for Linux, but to tell the truth I don't have any interest in the games currently on Loki's product page. With this in mind, what would you think is the best way for me - as a consumer and a Linux user - to show game companies that I do want games ported to Linux?

Joseph Elwell.

Responses

[jd]

As best as you recall, what was the most -unusual- response you had, with regards to the idea of porting software to Linux?

What do we need to fix?

[xant]

Linux as a gaming platform suffers from several areas, most notably performance on some games (I haven't tried Q3A yet but UT is definitely slower), hardware support, and installers. You guys make the installers, but the Linux community pretty much handles everything else, so my question to you is:

What can we fix to make Linux a gaming platform? More specifically, what hardware drivers, APIs and libraries need to be improved to make Linux a better gaming platform than that other OS? As a coder, a gamer and a Linux afficionado I'm interested in this question, because once I know what needs to be fixed, I can roll up my sleeves and get to work. Unlike with that other OS.

Lack of Info on Website, or Just Rumors?

[HomerJ]

It's been reported on MANY sites, like slashdot and linuxgames.com that you are porting games such as Soilder of Forutne, Sim City 3000, among others. Tuxgames.com is even taking pre-orders for these games. Yet there is nothing on your website about relase dates, or even that you are doing anything with these games at all.

Are these just rumors that got out of hand? Or are you in fact porting these games? If so, why is there no mention on your website about release info, demos, screenshots, etc.?

I'm excited to see such games get ported to linux, but when in comes to facts, I like to hear it from the horse's mouth. It just seems kinda odd that many trustworty sites report this info, and no mention is mentioned on the one place it should be, lokigames.com

Making Linux commercially viable

[Foz]

I've been using Linux for many many years now, and one of my favorite rants (or discussions) is how to make Linux more commercially palatable. Invariably, I always end up holding forth on how linux will not be a force to be reckoned with until you can walk down the aisle at Fry's and see boxes and boxes of shrinkwrapped linux software.

Unfortunately, as we all know this is a two-way street. People don't want to port to linux because the base is so small, and people won't use a "niche" OS to raise the user base numbers until the apps are available. This is the classic catch-22 situation.

Well, now with companies like Loki you have managed to change the scene somewhat. I am delighted every time I walk down the aisle and see Loki software on the shelves, and consequently it seems like there are more and more companies coming to the table with linux ports or following a similar strategy as Loki.

It also seems to me that a critical mass point has been reached. Once you guys proved it was possible, lots of people started jumping on the bandwagon.

Now for my question(s). Did you set out on this path because you wanted to help kickstart this whole thing? Did you expect to be one of the major movers behind this sudden influx of commercial software for linux?

Also, the competition in your space seems to be heating up. You guys were the real "early adopters", meaning you were the first to market. However, now that you've proven it will work, I'm sure there are a lot of companies out there nipping at your heels, so how do you plan on staying ahead? How do you plan on keeping the forerunner position? Will you become a force for standardization among linux (with graphics API's, sound, etc) that will eventually trickle over into every other application space (besides just games?).

-- Gary F.

Manpower

[Fizgig]

I know this is going to vary with the project, but I'm wondering how much manpower it takes to port a "typical" game from Windows to Linux. I suspect it's somwhere greater than zero and less than the amount of effort it took to write the game in the first place, but I just wonder how the time for (re)programming and QA are distributed compared to writing the game in the first place and how you allocate your staff to this (do they each work on a single game or do they move from project to project).