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Linux Alpha Centauri Demo
Jacek Fedorynski writes "Loki has released a Linux demo of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It allows for 100 turns and weighs 25 MB." Yet another game I watched others play under Windows and wished I could participate in.
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I'm sure there'll be a lot of people who think or moderate this as a flamebait, but it irks me to hear "I wish I could have..." from OS-zealots.
Say I use Win2000. If a really cool game comes out for the Mac, and I want to play it, I am free (as in speech) to find somebody who has a Mac and wouldn't mind me trying out the game for a while. Personally, I don't think any game would be enticing enough to make me borrow a friend's Mac. But it's my choice.
Say I use Palm. If a really cool p.i.m. comes out for the PocketPC/WinCE that would make my work more productive, I am free (as in speech) to find the bucks to get a WinCE. Personally, I don't think any p.i.m. would affect productivity enough to make me switch model of alkaline-draining widget. But it's my choice.
Say I use a Ford. If a really cool dashboard accessory comes out for the Honda, ... But it's my choice.
If you're a bigo^H^H^H^H exclusive fan of a certain platform, then accept that you're shutting yourself off from nine tenths of all that is out there on other platforms. When you can, get things moved over to your platform, but don't whine about the things you choose not to use.
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C'mon, it's sure nice to see more games coming out for Linux, but at this delay, it should be considered worse than nothing.
Anyone who is into strategy games has already finished AC like 10 times, and unless you're a real Linux fanatic with lots of money to burn, no-one is gonna spend another 50$ for exactly the same game they already own.
And if AC for Linux sells a few thousand copies (perhaps even less) while the Windows version sold probably around a million, it won't give numbers you'd like to show to your investors when trying to bring them to produce a Linux port.
Just as I said, a one-year-late Linux port is probably worse than none at all...
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>until the games start coming out for it at the
>same time or sooner than they come out for
>windows.
Do you read John Carmack's
See, iD released the golden masters for the Linux, Macintosh, and windoze versions of Quake3 ON THE SAME DAY!!! That was Carmacks plan for many months prior to the release of Quake 3. But look closer at the
Loki and MacSoft do great work. But entire distrobution / production / retail chains they are not.
Particularly telling is the fack that Loki had the production CDs completed by their own supplier, but the company supplying the packaging was intentionally witholding, from Loki, all of the packageing materials (the box, manual, jewel case, etc.) Loki worked around this by shipping Quake 3 CDs alone to those who ordered directly from them, and sending the packageing materials later. But if you perfer to shop at a conventional store, you were SOL.
Now, an exercise for the reader:
Who, in the technoogy industry, has a vested intrest in making alternative operating systems look bad by delaying the Macintosh and Linux versions of software, as opposed to the windoze version? Who has the power to bully the distrobution chain into bending to his will? And who has shown absolutely no restraint in the abuse of that monopoly power?
john
Resistance is NOT futile!!!
Haiku:
I am not a drone.
Remove the collective if
Imagine all the people...
Hello everyone. My name is Andrew Henderson, and I have been the lead programmer on SMAC/SMACX at Loki. I've seen from many of the posts that there is some enthusiasm over the Loki port of Alpha Centauri, and I'm very glad to see it. This project has been stealing our evenings and weekends for quite some time now, and I'm glad to finally see it come to a close.
There are a few things that I think anyone interested in this port of Sid Meier's Planetary Pack should know:
1. A PPC port is very unlikely.
I'd like to apologize to all the PPC users out there. I'd love to see SMAC on the PPC platform, but there is just too much involved in moving our codebase from Intel to PPC. There are roughly 25,000 lines of Intel assembly in SMAC, making the convertion a major undertaking. SMAC has specialized asm blitters for sprites, self-modifying asm for rendering the voxel vehicle units, and a complete asm texture mapping engine for rendering the landscapes. The costs in terms of both manpower and time in doing a PPC port are very steep.
2. SMAC/SMACX will most likely run on FreeBSD.
While it is not officially supported, we have gotten beta versions of SMAC to run on a FreeBSD box that has the Linux compatibility kernel module installed. If you have a FreeBSD box and would like to try out the SMAC/SMACX demo, I encourage you to download it. There is a good possiblity it will run for you.
3. Many bugs in the Win32 version of SMAC and SMACX have been fixed in the Linux version.
Well over a hundred bugs that were in the Win32 version have been fixed in the Linux version. For those people that want justification for purchasing the Linux version if they already have the Win32 version, here it is. This leads me to my last point:
4. The Linux/*BSD communities have some of the best beta testers out there.
I have to admit that I'm very impressed with the quantity and quality of bug reports Loki has received during the beta process of porting the game. Our beta testers were very persistant in finding and reporting bugs. The beta folks were an invaluable help in porting the game, and I'd like to thank them for their incredible time and effort.
All in all, I'd judge the port of Sid Meier's Planetary Pack a success. The programmers had fun, the beta testers had fun, and I hope that whoever tries out the demo of the game will enjoy it.
After all, we're all in this for the fun, aren't we?
Andrew Henderson
Programmer
Loki Software