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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.
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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.
:-) 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.)
Are you sure you called the right number for Loki's tech support?
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.
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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!
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' :-]
I expect this to be moderated down. Sigh.
.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.
Right now, there are three primary groups using Linux:
1. ISP's and other businesses that need rock solid networking and file serving.
2
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.
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.