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Loki And BSDi Team Up For BSD Games
Loki and BSDI Partner for FreeBSD Games
Loki to Certify Games for Use with Linux Compatibility Features
San Jose, California -- August 15, 2000 -- Loki Software, Inc., the leading publisher of best-selling games for the Linux operating system, today announces a strategic alliance with Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI), the foremost supporter of the FreeBSD Project.
Loki introduced fully-supported, shrink-wrapped commercial games to the Linux community in 1999. While Loki has released Alpha and PPC versions of their games whenever technically feasible, FreeBSD users had been left to their own devices to make the games function on their open-source operating system of choice.
Through this new partnership, Loki and BSDI will work together to ensure Loki's gaming titles are compatible with FreeBSD using the Linux-compatibility features. Certified games on this configuration will be fully-supported by Loki.
"Many people do not take games seriously, and this is a mistake," said Jordan Hubbard, Vice President, Open Source Solutions. "Availability of Loki's industry leading line up of Linux games is a huge win for us, as we realize full well that games drive a large part of the overall acceptance of any operating system, even a serious operating system like BSD."
"We are excited to be announcing our official support of FreeBSD's Linux compatibility libraries," said Scott Draeker, president of Loki Software. "FreeBSD users have been enjoying their Open Source operating system for years, and many of them have been playing our games."
Loki is now preparing several A-one titles for certification, including the highly-anticipated SimCity 3000 Unlimited and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with the Alien Crossfire expansion pack. Other popular programs to be certified soon include Quake III Arena, Soldier of Fortune, and Descent3.
Specially-marked certified games will be available from The FreeBSD Mall in addition to Loki's Web site store.
If it's simple to support an existing Linux port of a game using the compatibility libraries, then this is a can't lose for either Loki or BSDi. It raises the BSD profile a little further, and helps Loki sell a few more games with no real effort (they aren't repackaging or recoding).
I'm not sure either Linux or BSD is mature enough to be a viable gaming platform yet, but that is an issue best covered in this thread from Sunday.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I assume that they'll be released under the BSD license, so that means I can repackage and resell.
Just what I needed to start my own gaming company! Thanks BSD!
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Linux "emulation" really just causes the dynamic linker to use a different set of shared libraries when loading Linux binaries. FreeBSD and Linux system calls are more or less the same. There is no performance loss due to emulation in most cases.
The real problem is that some programs make Linux-specific assumptions; for instance, the (open source) Loki Setup program used to use Linux-specific CD-ROM detection code, meaning that FreeBSD users had to hack the setup configuration file.
I'm not speaking for Loki here; this is just based on my own experience.
-John
I just saw Scott walking by the Compaq booth at LWCE. I'll have to run stop him and shake his hand. Sometimes I doing development in BSD and I don't have to have to reboot to Linux to do some catching up on my Civilization.
It's open source, it's unix, so there's no reason it can't be running on every free unix platform.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
...which misses the point the person to whom you were replying was making. He said:
which should perhaps have been stated as "I just can't see serious demand for FreeBSD/Linux games" to make it clear that it's not Linux vs. BSD he's talking about, it's Windows vs. everything else lumped together.
I.e., he's saying that releasing games for non-Windows platforms - regardless of which platforms those are, and regardless of whether the version for FreeBSD is native or just the Linux version made to install and run on the Linuxator - later than the Windows version could lead to lower sales for the non-Windows versions, leading to less incentive for developers to make games run on those platforms.
Was just thinking that Linux seems to be heading off into the gaming market, making it more and more popular. BSD seems to be taking a similar road, just taking longer to get there. :)
Maybe we are seeing the early beginnings of gradually phasing out Windows in general? Or maybe a more balanced differece between users using certain OSs (IE: Each OS holds a good portion of the market)
If this is done well, we'll definately see a market shift, just hope not too many Linux users head for BSD.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Would Slashdot make an article out of that?
Like, for example, this? Or this? Or this?
My other
BSD seems to be mainly used for servers. While it might be cool to have a quake server or unreal tournament server, or for some other type of game, I don't really see why someone would want to play games on BSD. I'm not a big expert on BSD, but from what I see, linux has support for more hardware than bsd as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.
Linux seems to be mainly used for servers. While it might be cool to have a quake server or unreal tournament server, or for some other type of game, I don't really see why someone would want to play games on Linux. I'm not a big expert on Linux, but from what I see, Windows has support for more hardware than Linux as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.
---
You know, I'm still kind of new to these alternative operating systems, but I'm becoming a BIG fan of BSD (FreeBSD in particular).
Aside from a little bit of "REAL Unix" snobbishness, I'm finding that the BSD communities are very friendly and eager to help out. I had some questions about setting up an old 486 as a firewall and I found documentation right away. When I got stuck, the experts on the newsgroups helped me out right away. Now, my home network is connected to @Home through a FreeBSD firewall that also does NAT. As long as I don't call in a tech, they'll never know how many machines I'm running.
I think that's the important thing for new operating systems to remember -- a kind and helpful community goes a long way. When you provide instant help to newbies, you can take over the world. Look, for example, at how well Perl is doing. Were it not for the help available in the #Perl IRC, I'm sure the language would have never gotten off the ground.
I'm still a Linux fan, of course. Right now, it's a little easier to use and there's still more software for it. Nevertheless, I think the BSDs are up and coming with tremendous potential.
If the lameness filter actually worked, would you even be reading this?
There will be soon enough, although I'm guessing most games for this system will not be fully compatible with FreeBSD due to differences in kernel architecture, the whole PPC vs. x86 thing, and the graphic libraries available. Still, BSD is about to get a huge (in relative terms) boost in marketshare.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I love Loki, because to me, they're the perfect business model to follow for an Open Source/Free Software company.
The games are themselves closed. Whats cool is how they open up every other piece of tech and have a great support system in place - I've had usenet conversations with their developers about installation problems, Mesa compilation/optimization, and so forth. Thats sure worth my $, as opposed to "Well, did you download the latest drivers? It still doesn't work? Sorry, wait for the patch".
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
This step means that Loki believes there can be a return on investment for BSD, which has - no offense - a lot smaller user base than Linux, especially on the desktop.
There is no way Loki would believe in a BSD market if the Linux market wasn't already working out for them.
It seems like desktop UNIX is no longer in its infancy.
Ummm, Roblimo? Come in, Roblimo! Ground control to Roblimo...
Wait a minute - if you're the real roblimo, why are you user #196470? I smell a rat...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Can BSDi use the Linux binary emulation wizardry and play existing Linux games from Loki?
Now, with games like Quake III Arena being produced for Linux, we have pretty decent 3d acceleration support from 3dfx and (shudder) nVidia. But what about the *BSDs? I don't think that I've seen anyone (including utah-glx, which is what I use) claim to support *BSD. I wonder who will step forward first to add 3d acceleration support (I'm imagining that the hardware vendors will have to at least help out a bit...).
Anyone know (or care to guess)?
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
I have to admit, however, the "Code Dungeon" looks kinda cool... fight flaming perl zealots and FUD-wielding slashdotters. Can't wait for the playable demo!
This is definately good news for BSD, although it would be even better to see Loki producing BSD native binaries, or even Linux binaries 'certified' to run under the Linux emulation of other BSDs. Then again, are there really that many people gaming under BSD? I personally really like BSD, butI tend to use it 90% of the time as a server (which is what the BSD people want, anyways).
It's also good to see BSDi (and thus, FreeBSD and Walnut Creek) becoming more 'commercially' acceptable. This attention is long overdue, IMHO.
Hear Hear. I love Lokisoft. I think they have their hearts in the right place, with a lot of brains too. I used to keep a WinDoz partition to play games, but now I've deleted that away.
Loki is a big reason for that, and everybody to chip in and buy their stuff. Because they deserve our support.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Now, this is basicaly a support announcement. They aren't doing a native FreeBSD port. Now, I haven't used FreeBSD (yet ^_^), but have heard about this Linux compatability feature.
My question is: How does this feature compare to running native code? Would FreeBSD users benefit a lot from a native port, or will the Linux binaries run with similar performance?
Second Q: Why doesn't linux have a FreeBSD compatability feature?
Oh wait, it does... it's called "make". ^_^
The enemies of Democracy are
linux has support for more hardware than bsd as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.
:-)
In terms of graphic cards, *BSD has *exactly* the same hardware support (excepting a few beta SuSE drivers). That's because *BSD and Linux use exactly the same XFree86
Sound card support is still kind of shoddy under FreeBSD though.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It's nice to see games being ported to linux, but it would be even better if they opened up their source. If every company (AOL, RealNetworks, Corel, etc.) releases commercial software for linux without opening the source, then true freedom of operating system won't arrive.
My thoughts, exactly. If these are binary distributions, I can do without. I understand their side of the coin, tho, as they each are probably clutching some proprietary piece of engineering they'd just as soon keep away from competitors as long as possible.
After all, who wants to be the next SubLogic?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Is another Mac-like cycle of game development. Game comes out for Windows, everyone buys it. 6 months to 2 years later they release it for Mac/Linux/FreeBSD, and most who wanted it already had it.
I just can't see serious demand for FreeBSD games if they are released so much later than the Windows counterparts. Then when we find out that Linux software games have light sales it won't help the cause to create Linux/BSD versions of these games at the same time as the Windows version. I wish Loki good luck at selling their FreeBSD games.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Also, I think rather than trying to get our server software to be on the desktop, we need to make a new OS and interface for the desktop. I see further into the future that desktops will probably be replaced with something more low key, more like a cross between a game console and a PC. Anyways, with that in mind...we should work more towards developing that, and improving our servers to do their job better.
I don't mean this as a troll and I don't want to tell anyone what to do...but I think that would be more helpful in the cause of better software. I would much rather have a kickass pc/console gaming system that uses a HDTV and a dsl connection and a device to write on that works similar to the palm graffiti so I don't need a keyboard, and a game controller, which may have that built in. It also should have a dvd player/cdrom on it and an OS that is only for doing basic things and you can't crash without running it over with your car.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
That, combined with FreeBSD's inferior SMP (for now anyways - I know FBSD 5.0 will be good), is enough to convince me to stick with GNU/Linux. I would also like to see a journalling filesystem for BSD - there are at least 5 in development for GNU/Linux (Reiser, ext3, JFS, XFS, and GFS - although GFS is of course much more and a different concept altogether, it does do journalling and you can run it as a 'local machine only' FS). Do any BSD hackers know of any similar development efforts for BSD?
I must be bored- I'm arguing with an Anonymous Troll.
I don't HAVE to use links... You use terrible logic to argue with.
Fact: The presence of Office does not make for superiority. If you use that reasoning, MacOS is as superior as Windows is. I don't think you're going to go there... (While I think that MacOS is great- I don't think it's superior to everything else; it's good for what it was designed for...)
Fact: All generalizations are false- including this one. When you make such generalizations as "Windows comes out first, and Linux and MacOS come later..." you set yourself up for immediate failure. Vicarious Visions, makers of Terminus, recently released a single SKU box that had support for Windows, MacOS, and even Linux. Furthermore, your premise is flawed- the reason why Windows versions come out first is that currently the market is something like 80-90% Windows for gaming machines. Even if they have a superior gaming platform that's different than the dominant one, a company would be commiting suicide to not produce first for the dominant platform.
Fact: Windows is still sold on pre-install agreements with Microsoft. The modified settlement that MS had with the DOJ didn't change that. It just made it across product lines offered from the OEMs.
Fact: Claims of Windows being easier to program for than Linux without any proof is NOT a fact. Furthermore I know for a fact that the Windows APIs are laiden with vast amounts of booby traps. A prime example is the GetTempFileName call. In Win16, the first parameter is a number, with the default being 0, for the Windows system drive. In Win32, the first parameter happens to be a pointer to a string so that you can hand it the canonical path ("\\machine\share...") to where you want the temp file to be put. If you pass a zero to the Win32 call, it's behavior is "undefined" and produces garbage in the return string. No "...Ex" version for 32 bits. Nothing other than a warning in their MSDN disks. There's myriads of other landmines like this like thunking and some things in COM- I could go on and on.
I honestly think you haven't a clue about what you're spouting off about.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Perhaps some people do, but I don't, because
I.e., whilst there's BSD-compatible stuff "under the hood" of MacOS X, I get the impression that the BSD-flavored UNIX APIs there are not what most MacOS X desktop applications (and maybe not even most server applications) will use, so porting an application that runs on one UNIX-flavored OS (e.g., Linux) to *BSD (the BSDs are also UNIX-flavored OSes) doesn't make the application much more friendly towards the non-UNIX-flavored APIs that I suspect most MacOS X appls will use.
Of course, you have the problem that no code is truely portable if it takes full advantage of all the feature of the OS. For example, write anything to take advantage of ALSA, and you're limited to Linux. And it's not just people writing non-protable code. If you code just for POSIX, then you end up with a game that really doesn't take full advantage of the user's machine.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
SDL is pretty limited though. For some games, it's enough, but for a real commercial game it's not that great. (Yes I know real commercial games have used SDL.) For most platforms, SDL is just a wrapper for the native services with less features. That leads to lower performance, and a "least common denomenator" API. What is really needed is for some smart cookie to get a bunch of people together and work on a portable API like DirectX.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...