Linux Games Come Of Age

Giant Space Hamster writes "I don't know if you've seen this already, but Gamespot has an extensive article on Linux gaming." Well-written and informative. Click it, baby.

Comments

Re:3dfx and other Hardware issues are a problem

[Dr. Sp0ng]

Don't get me wrong, Loki are doing a great job and their developers kick ass, but until their tech support actually goes out of their way to help with something other than just giving dumb answers which rank up with "are you sure the computer is switched on?", Linux gaming is going to be mired in the quicksand of the same kind of hardware problems that used to occur years ago in DOS.

Are you sure you called the right number for Loki's tech support? :-) I've always found their tech support to be excellent. I'm not familiar with 3dfx cards at all, but when I was trying to set up Myth 2 on my roommate's computer (which has a Voodoo2), Loki's tech support helped tremendously - no hold times, they spent an hour on the phone with me, walking me through building new Glide drivers, troubleshooting stuff, etc. And when I called them asking about an OpenGL driver for Myth 2 (I have a TNT2), the guy said that he knew of a Glide wrapper for TNT2 cards and said he'd let me know. I gave him my email address, not really expecting a reply, and 2 days later he emailed me the URL for the Glide wrapper. They also helped me with a few other issues (relating to running the Quake 3 Arena tools under Linux.)

They have very good tech support, in my experience. Maybe you got a chump when you called, but that doesn't mean they're all like that.
--

Re:Not that hard

[Randy Rathbun]

True. And I found the same with Civ:CTP. I think, however, that they are talking about the stuff that Carmack mentioned: getting a 3D card up and running. That is NOT a simple thing... well, it probably is for you and me and most of the others on /., but your average man on the street? Forget it.

Usually on Windows games you don't even have to do what you showed. You drop the disc in and it starts going. Any 4 year old can do that. Granted, that makes for some really nasty security under Linux if you need to install something as root, but it would help matters a bit if you could do this. Hell, the Atari 2600, Sony Playstation, and all the other consoles do it. It just makes life easier for the folks who have no friggin' clue.

This is just what we need.

[Signal 1|]

Finally. I'm glad to hear that there's finally some recognition of the gaming software available for Linux. I can't believe we've gone so long without it. With such great games as Gnome Chess, Minefield, Mah johng, etc., how could this have stayed under the gaming radar for so long? Now, maybe we can finally have Gnome Checkers!

OpenAL Hardware Acceleration is the Missing Link

[Somnus]

It's simply a matter of time before XFree86 4.x becomes viable for use by everybody; what we need is a similar commitment by the hardware manufacturers (e.g. Creative, which is currently an OpenAL SIG member) to quickly produce OpenAL drivers so that the essential differences between Windows and Linux gaming are the essential differences between the two operating systems.


*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***

The difficult thing about making games

[alriddoch]

At the WorldForge project, a large MMORPG project with over 50 members, we have found that the biggest barrier to creating games with a competitive look and feel is creating the media. Getting coders is not too hard, though we are always on the lookout for new recruits, but finding talented artists, particularly animators, who have time to contribute to an Open Source project can be really tough.

All are hopes are currently pinned on blender becoming Open Source this summer.

Re:The difficult thing about making games

[sdt]

Which is really an odd thing, considering public perception of the demand for and value of IT skills vs artistic skills, right now. You don't see the US Congress authorizing temporary visas for 100K animators at a time, do you?

Well, no, not really. The place we get our members from is the Internet, not Real Life. Now, most people coming to WorldForge stumble onto it through slashdot, freshmeat, happy penguin, Linux Weekly News, etc. Quite obviously these are much more populated by coders than artists.

I'm sure there are masses of good artists out there, I'm just not quite sure how to reach them.

However I must say that we have been lucky. People like Uta Szymanek (who has contributed literally tons of media) were a large reason that we still survive today - and that I believe we will continue to strive towards our goals in the future.

That said, if there are any artists out there who are interested in contributing to something like this, whether with 2D, 3D or music, sound or any other kind of media, then please check us out!.

Two years

[molog]

That is how long I believe it will take for Linux to really take off and get games released for it from the big companies either at the same time as the Windows launch or specifically for Linux. My reasoning is this. We have the beginning of the game market right now. 3D graphics have pretty much been made able to be used easier, sound is beginning to get better support. Next year more games will show up and the protocols that are being used as well as all the base software will mature and Linux will gain more users (for good or ill). Then the second year is when we will see the titles really start to show up rather then waiting for a year for a company to pick up the port. This is just an educated guess, and I am known to be wrong but I think this is how things may happen.
Molog

So Linus, what are we doing tonight?

Still no Solution for installing

[BoLean]

Does anyone know of a similar open standard for installing software that is not distribusion specific. I'm not terribly fond of RPMs. Half the time it seems to work but the program won't execute. At least if I compile it myself I see the problems firsthand. How about a special game distro for just running a game off of the boot CD? That way only the data files need to be written to the HD.

Re:Still no Solution for installing

[mikpos]

There's a very good reason why game developers do not make self-booting games: they remember DOS. DOS was, effectively, exactly the same as having no operating system. This was bad enough when you only had four configurations: VGA and no sound, VGA and GUS, VGA and SB Pro, VGA and Adlib; but things have got a bit more complicated since then, and I don't think game developers would be too keen on going back to that.

There is the idea of having DirectX by itself (with no operating system), which would be interesting, but in order to do it well, you'd have to have the co-operation of Microsoft, which seems unlikely. OpenGL + OpenAL + GII or something like that might be more practical.

Not that hard

[slycer]

I disagree with the comment that installing games on Linux is like performing open-heart surgery.

I bought RR II - ran the install file as root (install.sh?). 3 or 4 minutes later I was playing. No funky options to choose, ran great first try. Crashed a bit after that, but there were patches (same as Windows games). So, where is the difficulty?

Re:would have been 1st

[Anonymous Coward]

you are mixing metaphors:

win: This application has performed an illegal operation and will now shut down.

mac: The application "Unknown" has unexpectedly quit because of an error of type x.

unix: your process died. find worthless developer who apparently can't code his way out of a wet paper bag and kick his ass? (y/n)

note that on OpenBSD, the default is 'y' :-]

Consider how the rest of the world views us

[Junks Jerzey]

I expect this to be moderated down. Sigh.

Right now, there are three primary groups using Linux:

1. ISP's and other businesses that need rock solid networking and file serving.
2 .College students, because there's some benefit to using Linux if you're a comp sci major, and also because it's free (either "free as in beer" because students are generally cash short, or "free as in freedom" because it's easier to be idealistic when you're a student). High school students are included here, too, though maybe to a lesser degree.
3. Geeks who fixate on which operating system they use. This overlaps somewhat with the previous item.

Right now, Loki is selling mostly to number 3, and I suspect this is the smallest and most volatile group. Number 2 is where the users are, but that's a tough place to make money. It's the same place crazy Napster support is coming from, and for a very obvious reason.

To an outsider whose eyes are clear of zealotry, the Linux game market looks like this:

1. There are only a handful of commercial games.
2. Those games are also available for Windows, so even if I decide to pick up Linux at Barnes & Noble I still have Windows around to play games with. Not sure why I would want to play the Linux version.
3. The freebie games are pretty horrendously unexciting. Yay! Hundreds of Tetris and Asteroids variants! Does Open Source somehow imply a lack of creativity?
4. All the nifty games like The Sims and FreeSpace 2 and Roller Coaster Tycoon aren't out for Linux. Maybe they'll get ported next year, but I don't see why I should paint myself into a corner just for the sake of supporting an operating system.

Harsh? Maybe, but let's be honest about this. There are very few reasons to even consider using Linux for games, unless you've decided to hold fast to OS-centric views. If there were something really sweet that were available only for Linux, I could see _some_ people peering over the wall to see what all the fuss was about, and maybe setting up a partition to play. But we're a long way from seeing that happen.