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Heavy Gear II for Linux Goes Gold
jvmatthe writes, "I've gotten confirmation from Loki that their latest game, Heavy Gear II has gone gold and will be in retail stores soon. You can read our preview of it here at LinuxGames. "
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Homeworld is a 3d space strategy/action game in full 3D.
Check it out...
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
D00D, that is excellent, I completely agree.
:)
:)
:|
(especially since I couldn't get Wine to install FF7... blah. It isn't fair, I can play the other six under Linux!
Rumor has it that Starcraft is playable under Wine. If I had a copy, I'd try it out, but that's more than you're going to get from Blizzard anytime soon. Does WarCraft run under DOSEmu? (StarCon2 does, yeah!
Loki rulez. Except that I've been playing too much HOMM3 lately, instead of, say, sleeping.
Oh well, it's something to do, especially since Masters of Magic will probably never have a decent sequel...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Look closer. Yes, it's still first person aim and shoot. But it's a lot more tactical than id games. You are a mechanized warrior with all sorts of armorments and implements of mass distruction. It's more of a First Person Simulation than anything else.
As for a really new, innovative game... Don't hold your breath. Game companies don't want new, innovative, or different. They want proven money-makes that they can churn out in a few months (Why do you think they like using game engines made by other companies? Saves on the R&D cost.
The little companies that are operating on venture capital and dreams are the ones to watch out for. The problem with that is that the big companies do watch out for them. They snap them up when they have a promissing title, and they clamp their iron fists around it. They only allow it to go to markets that THEY deem worthy (Read: "Lucrative").
I'm not bitter. Honestly.
Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
After buying Civ CTP which is unplayably slow for me with on a 300MHz celery, 64 MB ram, and a G200 due to excessive redraws (Apparently the problem also shows up in the Windows to a lesser degree) I will need a lot more convincing before I buy a game to "support Linux".
I'd much rather show that Linux users are willing to pay for quality rather than show that Linux users are willing to buy substandard crap.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Seen much Linux software for sale at Staples and Best Buy. Staples even had Civ:CTP for Linux.
If this trend continues, we will get more games and even better support from major ISVs.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
to quote Loki president Scott Draeker from a recent slashdot interview:
5) Reject ratio
(Score:5, Interesting) by 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.)
Scott:
I'm going to respond in general terms, as many of your questions apply to ongoing negotiations.
We've spoken to the majority of game companies. When we complete a deal, we turn that into product fairly quickly. Other deal
negotiations are ongoing.
The single most important factor for getting a game ported is market size. Everything else is easy to address. If a company feels
that they will see sufficient unit sales, then they are quite happy to discuss having a port done.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
One line on the website made be laugh the power of the future with the power of the future's operating system. Now come on guys Linux is a good OS but the saddest thing about the rise of Linux is that the competition was so poor for an adaptation of a 1980s OS.
Some people have said here that Linux must be able to play games to compete with Windows, in part this is true, but when the PS2 and Dolphin come out it will change the perception of the home games machine. Why buy a Windows or a Linux box when your PS2/Dolphin plays DVDs on the TV and allows you to browse the web and send emails ?
The market is about to change and while a supply of games does give Linux some credibility it doesn't mark the OS out as happened with Windows v Mac 10 years or so ago. Linux is a long way from competing with Windows as a gaming station, and MS-Linked it may be but DirectX, Sound and Video are very powerful tool kits for the developer. Linux needs those sorts of kits and intercommnication in order to really push itself as a gaming platform.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Ive read a few (negative) comments here... I just dont agree.
LOKI are doing a sterling job... most people dont give a shite about the age of the title, but the quality of the title. And LOKI are pulling some great quality titles out of their bags.
Hell, I still play c64 games (on a real SX-64) on occasion... a good game is a good game...
Go for it LOKI!
Simon
The real linux_penguin has Slashdot ID 101961. Anyone else is an impostor. Including Bruce Perens.
Of when it came out for Windows...9 months ago.
Gameplayer.com
If Loki wants to start making significant headway for the future of Linux gaming, they're going to have to start cranking these things out faster.
Maybe it was because Heavy Gear II had a bunch of features that were shoddily implemented in the PC version, and hopefully the Loki guys fixed them...but I doubt it.
Maybe it was because they had bigger titles to port. That too is excusable for me...but it doesn't mean that I'm going to wait 9 months to play the new, big game. Linux gaming isn't going to be able to survive on pity purchasing for long. Either gaming companies have gotta start working with the Linux guys sooner, or Loki's got to get a bigger staff...but let's face it...neither seems very likely, eh?
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
From the Interview from the president of Loki:
:-)
Seriously, after lots of hard work things are really coming together for Linux gaming. Take, for example, Heavy Gear II, which has just gone gold. We ported the Direct3D rendering to OpenGL. We ported the inline assembly. We created a standard way to play 3D positional sound, OpenAL. We added joystick, gamepad and mouse wheel support. We hacked gcc, gdb, glibc, Mesa and Glide. If we can pull off a game like this, I figure we can pull off just about anything.
No I am not just jumping on the praise and promote all things linux Bandwagon. The efforts they had to make to port a game that was DirectX is impressive!!
I love how in one sentence he just says ported Direct3d Rendering to OpenGL. Wait a minute here? Heh Heh.
Okay what do ya do? Need 3D positional Sound System? Code one and release it. Not bad not bad.
Need Mouse wheel support? Hack it!!
Alright it just seems they have a team of rather talented programmers over there and that they are doin a good job. And on technical merit as a company they impress me.
I must say not many companies impress me now a days.
Jeremy
Ever notice an activision trend with the games they have ported? Well... thats because there is one! WHY ARENT THEY PORTING MORE POPULAR GAMES? If they were following how large games were, they would of ported Diablo, Baldurs Gate, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament... etc... games that have gotten ALOT more sales and that are ALOt more popular. The only reason I have windows on my computer is 1) Diablo. 2) Nox. 3) Baldurs Gate Really, we are finally realizing we need to compete with EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of windows to actually become successful! If we just make an OS that has excellent spreadsheet applications but everything else is nonexistent, uh, we have a problem. Right now, linux gaming is almost nonexistent. If it wasn't for companies like Noki we would be ever farther away from nonexistent, so don't take this as a flame towards Noki. If Noki started listening to people and poring better games.. then we'll have something to work with.
-- We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.
hmm, alrighty. I'd just like to quote from memory here, somthing i read in one of the old id finger files, went somthing along the lines of this:
"while we know it's entirely possible to port the win98 version of Q3 to linux using a tar ball or two, but if you linux users get out there and buy the linux distro instead of the win 98, that way we can flash the numbers of linux distros made/sold to other big wigs in the industry, and we can get linux even more mainstream"
ok, so that's probably biased a tad, but you get the gist of it, I think that going out and buying a great game from activison, and getting somthing out of the game, isn't half bad, even if the technology in the game is becoming a tad antiquited; plus you're still casting your vote for other makers to start putting out an entire library of (future) great games on linux. don't get me wrong, but minesweeper clones get old *real* fast.
~Hadlock
moox. for a new generation.
The above posted about the importance and relevance of this game. It has been deamed as one of the highest rated Mech games to date for the PC. It is also very fun to play...much better than the MechWarrior series so far (although MechWarrior 4 looked pretty promising). The relevance to this game and Linux is simple...more games on this OS would make it more suitable for the home user. Games help push technology to a new, higher level. They also allow for home users to be more comfortable with the OS. Two main issues I have heard of Linux (other than support of hardware) is the user-friendliness of it is still immature (although we can hope that RedHat stops with the Windows-like popup clouds and helpful hints) and the lack of game support. Quake III marked the first major, post-Quake II title to hit the Linux OS that was a hit...it was the first title to sell a distribution strictly for this OS, to be marketed towards this OS, and to actually do well in doing so. Applaud Loki and Activision for making this game possible and don't question the importance...this is just another stepping stone that Linux is conquering. Loki games is remarkably becoming a large company...their recent HOMM3 port is quite good. acidmax
Loki must have some deal going with Activision, most every title they've ported is an Activision one. Which is good, I like what they put out.
:-)
Of course, it's a little less cool that we're getting games way way past their release. They may still be fun now, but if a better game of the same genre has come out, buying an older one just isn't worthwhile. Unless it's the sort of timeless game that plays well a year or 3 later, like Civ:CTP
But as my subject says, we have to start somewhere. As more and more people realize Linux is gaming friendly (I have a neighbour in residence who asked to borrow my Civ:CTP.. his reaction to hearing it was the Linux version was 'They make it for Linux?!?!?') then the demand will be for games to be developed on both platforms for release.
Which is good, it promotes portable code and lets developers know that locking yourself into a proprietary API (DirectX) is not profitable if you can write, say, the graphics engine in OpenGL and have it port (and sell) to many many platforms.