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BioWare Porting to Linux?
infodragon wrote to us with the news that BioWare is going to be porting games to Linux. Linuxpower has an interview with them talking about porting Neverwinter Nights, and /possibly/ Baldur's Gate 2. I promise I'll be good if they port BG2. I promise.
When I started at BioWare they were just talking about MAYBE porting some of our titles to Linux. I was a big supporter of that move and am glad to see that we now consider it a viable OS for games. Dave Chan Sound Guy at BioWare
Ok, Hemos will be good...but will Rob ? Seriously, if there's a commitment for a timely porting of BG2 to Linux (and henceforth other games), Windows may be looking at a up and coming reformat at home. I currently have Debian and Win/98 (yes, I admit..I'm weak and like to play games sometimes). I seldom boot into Win98 (twice a month or so...and always to play like BG). This is VERY GOOD news to me....thanks for the person who submitted the article!
Will the linux versions come out at the same time or a year later when the game has allready been played out and shelved by me?
Hence I will not buy a seperate copy of a game later on that will play slower just because it is
in Linux.
A linux version for a dedicated server I can stick on the box in the datacenter possibly.
Beos/intel ports would be nice aswell.
Sure, it was popular, but if you were playing back then, you'd almost certainly agree, after contemplation, that many many many of the servers offered terrible performance. It was popular IN SPITE of the bad server performance, not because of it.
Why?
Do you put a footnote for every typo you correct?
There are more than several issues to consider here. The primary oen being that dedicated hardware always beats out nondedicated. The computer is designed to do several things, but we exchange speed for versibility. Also, keep in mind, because it is dedicated hardware, all of the chips and layouts are usually custom. That is, don't expect to be able to run these things natively. I would belive that many of the parts of the games are hardcoded for the hardware, hardcoded links for video ram, etc, which would not fly under the system at all. The only way to accomodate this would be to emulate the entire system, which connectix has already done with VGS. But, if we are emulating, then whats the point?
#Off Topic Rant Follows
/. editors et. al. make changes to the page and fail to make any note of it? The head line use to read Posting to Linux now reads Porting to Linux.....just an "Opps I made a mistake" update would be nice....ah well...
This will probably get moderated down...but...does it annoy anyone else when the
#Off Topic Rant Ends
I will buy it tell me where to sign up. PLEASE!! port BG2 to Linux!!! It would be neat to see a little competition and have Diablo II also.... Dave
Where are the naysayers now that a company is porting a game to linux (besides ID Software) simultaniously with windows?
I'm glad to see that games are being ported onto Linux. It's always good to see the market for something that interests me, being expanded.
But that "interview" had significantly less real information than the average corporate press release might have. There was no substance to it at all.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
I don't feel the need to explain myself to you.
(insert quote from some l33t orwell novel i read in high school hmm.. four legs good, two legs bad!)
Hear! Hear! Hurray for BioWare of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada! :-) I am really glad that they are doing so well, and indeed, the people there are really nice, and I am lucky to know one of them personally (John W.). Keep up the great work! :-)
Don't forget BeOS..
This has been known for awhile now.
It is my personal belief that BioWare rocks!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
What? are you saying that there are meaningful comments that stick to the point on slashdot? What website am I reading?
Duh! Where have you lived in the last three months? Tha neverwinternights is going to be released on Win, Linux and BeOS is widely known.
How about posting News when they are new?
Now maybe my memory is fault, but I'm pretty sure that Apple II's had color monitors available before DOS-based PCs. And there were plenty of games for them. Apple's biggest failure has always been the corporate workspace, not the home user.
I would argue that the average user will get a home computer based on what they have at work or school, because that is where most people learn to use computers. So, if they learned and have been primarily exposed to a Windows PC at work, then that is what they will probably get for home.
That's an oversimplification, but I think that it is largely true.
>>Let's face it, the measure of viability of an OS as an end-user client is the games it can play. Since the dawn of IBM PC-compatibles (measured by how well they could run MS
>> FlightSimulator), games have measured the success of the PC. Even before that, Commodore and Atari won the early markets for home PCs by offering games. Apple and TRS
>> never had a chance with their monochrome monitors.
Baldur's Gate is named after a famous pirate in the AD&D world. He was the founder of the city. It has nothing to do with the Asgardian gods.
I'm pretty sure that most Looking Glass studios games are heavily single player (like Thief and System Shock II). There was a rant about the whole multiplayer thing in Next Generation online before it got destroyed and absorbed by the vapid Daily Radar.
Anyway, check into the Looking Glass games, they are attractive and deep (and even though SS2 has a multiplayer mode, it is cooperative... what a concept!).
I've read about success using these with Wine, but I haven't seen it myself. I also signed a petition to get SS2 ported to Linux at Tux Games.
I find Heroes of Might and Magic III to be fun to play single player, too, and it's a native Linux app.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
The cake is a pie
NWN will be primarily a client/server game for totally different reasons than most FPS games. NWN will follow the old style, in person role-playing game format closer than any other game ever (unless you could DM Assistant and things like that as games :\). While computer AI is nice, it could never make a decent DM. So either it is you DMing a bunch of computer players (which would be odd...to say the least) or a human DMing more human players which incidently we are now set up very well for :)
Bah, call me redundant or whatever. But this isn't porting so the title of this newspost is way inaccurate.
Sigs are awesome huh?
I don't feel the need to explain myself to you.
Then your argument is not worthy or presentation. For an argument to be truely useful you have to have a good, solid, rigorous explanation of what it is that you are trying to say.
What logically dosn't make sence is saying that someone is greedy in wanting to dual boot something. If you have already bought a computer with windows on it why throw away money that you paid to get windows on it? (This is in the form of increased costs for windows. If you really don't believe me just check pricewatch or another wholesaler for prices on say a barebones OEM version of a computer and one with windows you will definately see a difference.
(insert quote from some l33t orwell novel i read in high school hmm.. four legs good, two legs bad!)
I have not idea what in the hell that's supposed to mean about wheather a person is bidedal or a quadraped I can only say that I choose things based on simplicity and beauty not on popularity.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
um, shouldn't be linux kept for sysadmin/networking issues? i mean, it is BUILT for them, right? doh...i just play games, and i am quite as happy doing it on a windoze maShine. my linux can (box, whatever) is for networking
only because it takes shitloads of time to set it up efficiently. do you agree?
Networking is boring and theoretically not terribly useful without applications to back it up. Who cares if you can transmit and receive data without being able to do anything useful to that data in the first place. This is why other things are important. Games have infultriated your "pure" OS already. Look at any mud and see what OS they are running most likely some unix dirivitave (ie. linux).
I for one would like some games on my machine because the computer that I have linux on is my one and only machine.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
...I'm right in the middle of playing the first Baldur's Gate myself, so I recognized the name immediately. Call me slow, but I knew I didn't have the time to engage in what I accurately predicted would be a obsessive game when I first received it for Christmas. You know, I was right. Problem is, I still really don't have the time, what with helping to organize North Carolina's biggest LAN party and all.
"Prejudice is wrong; you should hate everyone the same."
My wife is from a different country, we conference with her family there. They use Windows 98 and NetMeeting, and, for the time being, so do we. I can't ask them to change to suit me.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
For all that is sacred in the world of gaming,
bring BG2 to Linux, I will sell my soul to whoever
wants to buy it. I will cash in my college
education, I will sell my unborn children, well
ok, I probably won't have the chance, but I would
if a chick would just sleep with me.
PLEASE.
As the saying goes...In the poker game of life, Women are the rake, they are the F****** rake.
'Sometimes I think about killing myself, no, wait, that's you.' -- Jack Handy
While NWN is primarily a multiplayer game, the guys at Bioware have included a single player game. The purpose of this is to give prospective DM's an example on how to program your own games. This is because the aim NWN is not to create a big online world such as UO and Everquest. Rather, NWN is intended to be played by a small group of people (eg. 5-10) with one person taking the role of the DM, just like in paper and pen D&D. The DM has to create the maps and the entire adventure and program it. However, it is possible to create permenent online world with NWN.
not really my experience here in the UK.
.oO0Oo.
Mind you I did spend most of the time a 2Mbps link
Most of the main Uk servers - barrys, demon, evil.to, can't remeber more names but there were plenty offered great connectivity and were always full.
I used to run two servers on our 2M link. they were so popular I would ramp them up to 26 players each. Even though they would sometimes crawl there were always, always full. When TFC hit the stands we were overwhelmed. From 7pm to 5am they were full. For weeks. And one of them had friendly fire turned on! Sometimes I had to kick ppl just to get a 5ping game (slap my wrist!)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
yeah you're right. My 'nix box is for networking things - servers of all kinds.
.oO0Oo.
Maybe my client machine should be more streamlined.
It's the mainframe / terminal argument all over again. PC's brought power to the desktop.
The Web kind of put it back in the power of the server again.
Maybe what we need is a kind of thin client for games and the like. Just because it's a Turing machine doesn't mean it should try and do _everything_.
And we should call it the TuX-Box and get it out the door before the beast of Redmond make's theirs!
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Such utter rubbish. Multiplayer HL was mega popular for ages before the Linux server came out.
It's popular because it's a good game not because of server ability. It became a best seller partly due to the userID you needed to play online - unlike fps's before it so for the most part buying your own copy was easier than getting a pirate to keep working.
The probable reason the Linux servers became more popular was because when the Win version falls over it just gives a dirty error message box. There's no way to automate it restarting. (Well we did manage it with a hardware resetter polling the game for activity). On the Linux version crashed games don't tend to hang around in the process list so looking for their PID and spawning another copy if not present and writing fails to a log is a good way of maintaining server up time.
Well that and performance. The linux server responds quicker than the NT server and consumes less resources.
Whatever the reason you are still confusing the client with the server. I've not seen Half-life for Linux down at PC World.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Shameless plug: http://www.lostbrain.com
.. about 6 or so years ago, every kid was trying to get there parents to but the fastest computer they could for 'homework'(read as games). At that time I would of agrees with your comments about games being THE driveing force.
2 things have change since then:
1. you don't need to have a top of the line computer to run the newest game. Most Min. requirments these days is around 200-300 MHZ. every time a new game came out I used to have to upgrade to one of the faster cpu's and more RAM. I bought a 450 over a year ago, And I still don't need to upgrade just to make the min requirment.
2. The internet. A larger percentage of computer buyers today are more interested in the internet then games.
Remember, many people who buy computers today aren't "into them" or "geek". where as a few years ago, the only people who got them where because they where "geekish" in nature.
I remeber when every pc you saw was used for games to some extent, now I know people who own computers and Have no interest in games.
I would like to see the next super hot game be linux only.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Heh. There's this thing called "self-motivation" you might have heard about... it's where you go and do work even when you're distracted by something else.
---
I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Seems to me that the big holdup is the lack of good drivers for high end graphics. (NVIDIA?)
What are the chances that the average pc is going to have the magic combination of hardware they need to get hardware 3d in linux?
You either have to be pretty savvy with pc hardware or damn lucky to be able to play games in linux right now. (3d ones anyway)
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
posting? Articles? I'm just here for the CmdrTaco bar...
I wasn't referring to that message, I was referring to a reply to that message. I must have screwed up when I was replying. This is the last of the pointless, meaningless and off-topic posts I will ever make on Slashdot.
Wasnt the PSX based on a Linux kernal?? well the PSX was the equivilent of a p100 and the way PSX games run compared to a windows p100(or even a p200) is a LOT different maybye if some of the PSX were ported to linux.. well just a thought
Devilish
www.sci-fact.com - From Fiction to fact -
Your one stop science news and discusion site.
um, shouldn't be linux kept for sysadmin/networking issues? i mean, it is BUILT for them, right? doh...i just play games, and i am quite as happy doing it on a windoze maShine. my linux can (box, whatever) is for networking only because it takes shitloads of time to set it up efficiently. do you agree?
a signature
errrr.....make that BioWare *slapping hand* Next time use the preview button...I know, I know...
How many people first wondered who BioStar was, and then why it was newsworthy that they were posting? *LMFAO*
Seriously though, nice to see another one...maybe I can stop dual-booting one day if this keeps up...
Sgt Pepper
Baldur's Gate was the prototype of the engine. Torment was the game. I quit BG in disgust before even *getting to* Baldur's gate, because I got so SICK of hearing the same music and blurbs. I think I just went for the delete about the 10,000th time I heard "I need a SWIG of some STRONG, DWARVEN ale". And the narrator's voice, it just struck me as ... juvenile for some reason -- I think hearing a second-person narration helped that along. All in all it struck me as endless hack and slash with no hope for plot or even good character writing.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I wouldn't worry ... as long as there are people who want a well-crafted and immersive story, who are willing to give up a little control over their character (you look like this, your history is this) then games of that nature will be designed by anyone with the skills who wants the same thing.
... That's the time to wring your hands, when one can construct fully immersive fantasy and pick and choose the pieces of reality to enhance it with.... God banished us from Eden, we may well banish ourselves back into it.
The ultimate future of gaming, in say, 50 years, will be virtual worlds that will stand alone as well as come together to form a larger, more complex world
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I think it's cool for any company to port their games to multiple OSes. What I would like to see is a single CD with multiple binaries on it. Games could easily use the same media files and such and only need different binaries for each different OS. Take for example Quake 3, the three binaries are written specifically for each OS but the game's media files are all basically the same. CDs are pretty large things and could easily store the necessary files to have multiple binaries, if the game had a good deal of media developers could package an installation CD with all the binaries and then have different CDs with just media on them. I figure this would save game producers a penny or two as they would be only physically producing a single CD that would be purchased by everyone.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
This is great news, because BioWare doesn't just make games, they make the game engine as well. Planetscape: Torment (from Black Isle), another great RPG, used BioWare's Infinity Engine, and Black Isle is currently developing another game using it. With luck, Linux support for these games will "trickle down" just like many Quake licenses have made Linux versions of their games.
Mike
That just about does it for me. Baldur's Gate is the one remaining reason that I have for having winblows on my system (well and uploading to my rio, soon to be rectified with 2.4 kernel and usb support =). Quake III almost did it for me, but I just couldn't bring myself to get rid of Baldurs Gate. If they port baldur's gate 2, well, that just about does it. If they could port BG1 while they're at it, I would greatly appriciate it (just give the job to loki). Neverwinter Nights has been porting to linux since they started making the game, so that's no big suprise.
~Jester
Bye-bye winblows
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
Usually I don't get too fired up when stuff is ported to BeOS and ignored. Yet, this one pisses me off. The port of NeverWinter nights was announced for BeOS quite some time ago, and is pretty far along. Like I said I really could care less if /. put it up, but ignore the BeOS port and post the Linux port?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Porting? According to this link:
http://www.neverwinternights.com/about.html
Neverwinter Nights is be developed as a platform independent project for Linux/Mac/Windows. How does that require porting?
Sigs are awesome huh?
Then linux might be able to achieve some gaming capabilities on par with that of a circa-1996 windows box. If you want to serve web pages, run linux. If you want to play more than 2% of new pc games, run windows. Dual booters
are just greedy.
Explain exactly how a person is greedy in wanting to get something to work that they paid for?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Bioware has planned a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights right from day 1. NWN being primarily a client/server multiplayer game (and apparently a really interesting one too) I think it wasn't really an option not to support Linux.
:(
Why you ask? Because the platform statistics for FPS servers is currently something along the lines of 70% Linux, 30% Windows, the difference being even bigger in Europe (Can't remember an exact reference, but check the
Bluesnews archives). All the big known dedicated servers run on Linux. As an example, the server availability for Half-Life was abysmal until Sierra finally got the server port out, and now it's the most popular game online (mainly
because of the Counterstrike mod).
Where are these stats comming from? Where do these people get the time? Can this game be played by yourself without a network connection?
I get really scared of what the future of games might be like. Not everyone has a net connection at their home, and not everyone wants to have to play games with others. I made a feeble attempt to play things like starcraft multiplayer and got massacred each and every time
I would like the use of network play to be an option not the basis for the entire game. Multiplayer games introduce an ammount of shall we say unfair competition. When I play a game I expect to have a fun time and enjoy an experience that I can feel good about. Not like I was just humiliated by some 10 year old kid.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Games are good. It's one of the two things keeping Windows on my home computer.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
Interesting to note the positive tone of the reply when asked about open sourcing the older projects:
We haven't considered that yet - but it might be an interesting way to keep interest in our games high for future years.
Now, with several companies starting to put their older games out into the open source community (Descent 1 & 2, Doom, Quake I, Marathon 2 to name a few), how do we go about convincing some more of the software companies that releasing source code to old classics is a worthwhile thing to do? Which ones would people most like to see - I note several attempts at producing clones of games like Warcraft and Ultima 7, so there must still be interest in these games? Is it only multiplayer games that are worth upgrading or revising or are there some single player ones which would benefit from smarter AI or better collision detection?
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I have lunch with them occasionally at the Billiards Club across the street from their studios in Edmonton, and these guys are great. They put a tonne of work in. My favorite QA guy Carl came to lunch one day after a 30 hour shift, and he had been doing that all week. And you should have seen the grin of relief on the face of David when he came in last week (after MDK went gold).
You guys all know the drill. If you buy games for Linux, they will keep making games for Linux. And if you need additional motivation, I consider BioWare to be a personal friend of mine, in addition to being a Kick-Ass games shop.
And they're Canadian, and proud of it!
People (as in, most people who purchase home PCs from electronic superstores), do so not to have security, 99.9% reliability, high speed, cheap computers but to have one to that does extremely simple things (word processing, web surfing, _SIMPLE_ spreadsheets, etc.) and plays games. Lot's of games. The sheer size of games sections vs other sections of software at these superstores is a testament to that fact.
Picture your typical uninformed sales clerk at B*st B*y conversing with a typical computer purchaser at that store:
sales clerk: This is 600 MHz, with yada yada..
customer: (stupified) Can I download the internet with it
sales clerk: Yep.. 56k guarateed connection.. (insert more incorrect information..) AOL, MSN, your choice! The latest technology with Win2k.
customer: (hesitant) So, this will get me on the internet?
clerk: of course
customer: Does this have financial software? (*NOTE: Linux needs to make headway here. Been working on a package for myself, but have a long way to go to get anything useable by anyone else)
clerk: Free with this is MS M*ney, Qu*cken, etc.
customer: How fast is the computer (xlate: can it handle games, since the last several tasks can be performed by a 386SX with 2mb of RAM, need a 486DX & 20MB if you want Java* stuff. ActiveX is a way to let the M$-Intel Cartel control obsolescence of hardware WRT the internet.)
clerk: (continues spiel..)
So.. more games == more acceptance. Maybe a game-oriented distro needs to be put together. Small foot-print, no ports open under 1k without knowing how to turn them on, a 100% WM like KDE, plus OSS added in the purchased version.
Of course, there is a chicken-egg paradox here. Need install base to support games. Need more competent programmers to port successfully (xlates to more expensive in some cases), to handle security issues. etc.. In other words, need a large enough market to support a game that costs tens (hundreds?, thousands?) of thousands of dollars to produce that sells at US$50.
Sam Lantinga, Lead Programmer for Loki Entertainment Software has created a toolkit called the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL). This is open source (available under GNU LGPL) and provides an increasing amount of the functionality for DirectX style work.
As well as Linux it is currently on BeOS and Win32, with the potential for MacOS, IRIX, Solarix and FreeBSD (unofficial or in progress).
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
Folks, we have a problem. The companies which are porting their games to Linux are NOT your friends! They are working for MICROSOFT!
See, the REAL reason that Linux developers write so much code and find bugs so fast, is because they don't have any GAMES to hamper productivity!
By secretly financing the porting of these Windows-only games, with well-known addictive qualities, to Linux, Microsoft is hoping to destroy the productivity of all Linux developers.
No longer will the diehard Linux developer be able to boast that they commonly do the work of 10 Windows developers - between lack of focus & sleep, they'll be lucky if they can TALK intelligibly, much less write good code.
Save yourself, before it's too late!
Bioware has planned a Linux port of Neverwinter Nights right from day 1. NWN being primarily a client/server multiplayer game (and apparently a really interesting one too) I think it wasn't really an option not to support Linux. Why you ask? Because the platform statistics for FPS servers is currently something along the lines of 70% Linux, 30% Windows, the difference being even bigger in Europe (Can't remember an exact reference, but check the Bluesnews archives). All the big known dedicated servers run on Linux. As an example, the server availability for Half-Life was abysmal until Sierra finally got the server port out, and now it's the most popular game online (mainly because of the Counterstrike mod).