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.

Comments

It's a plot!

[mOdQuArK!]

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 is smart

[Majix]

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).

Re:Hemos being Good OR Major RPG porting to Linux

[IO ERROR]

I've known for some time, and I suspect most people reading this have as well, that Linux won't gain major acceptance in the home until there are some games for it.

So news like this is always welcome.

However, Linux as a gaming platform is only one piece of the pie. We also need to work on usability for new users. The GNOME and KDE projects are a very good start for this.

After many years of working with "clueless newbies," it's become my opinion that most of them are willing to learn only what they need to know to get done whatever it is they want to do. Sometimes even less.

What needs to happen is this: New users should be able to learn what they need to know as they go. For instance, you have to update a whole bunch of things to get Quake III Arena installed. It's my opinion that all these drivers should have been included on the CD and the installation process included them, and these presented in a manner that users would learn what a shared library is, what X is, what X toolkits are, what the kernel is, what kernel modules are, how all this ties together, and why they are all important, in a quick, easy to follow format.

If the collective knowledge of all of us UNIX people can be placed in the hands of newbies at just the point where they're most receptive to it (e.g. the installation process of a game they really want to play) then I believe the number of "clueless" newbies will drop.

Anybody who wants to work on systems to make this sort of thing possible, or knows of any in progress, can feel free to contact me.
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