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Gamespy on Linux Gaming
Omnifarious writes "James Hills of gamespy.com has an article that has some interesting and positive things to say about Linux gaming, and Linux on the desktop in general. He has comments about both Loki and Indrema." My copy of Descent 3 for Linux finally arrived, so it might be time to do some extensive research on the subject myself *grin*.
Sure it's not as quick as it should have been, but it's not 5 years either. The fact that it's taken so long is due to red tape, not the developer's fault.
D3 is still a good game, and it's graphics rival a lot of the crap that's coming out now. Not to mention good internet support. :)
It's wrong, unless the PalmOS has magically become Linux-based.
Free music from Jack Merlot.
How can anyone be taking those Indrema guys seriously? They have exactly nothing to show for themselves (a PC with Linux running Quake 3 using a gamepad is hardly something new), they have NO actual professional development support, they don't seem to have been lobbying towards that either. Indrema is a COMPLETE noname in the game industry.
Their OpenSouce comment is just insane, what are they going to do, put consoles in the shops complete with a box of manuals, and hope that people will start writing games on them? Games that will actually get published and sell? Or games that would actually be good enough for anyone to buy the console _without_ intending to program on it?
Does anyone here seriously believe that OpenSource will lead to better and more efficient games being produced? How would 'ownership' of the platform by the development community lead to better games? Do you think Indrema will be able to provide more information on the NVidia chipset to anyone, as Microsoft will be able to provide to NDAed developers? Not likely. And will Indrema be able to provide so much more information as the stack of PS2 manuals on my desk? I don't think so.
The worst part is, I don't think Indrema even _intends_ to be succesfull in the console market, I think it's just a huge scam.
If it's not a scam, those people are incredibly stupid.
Good flamebait.
:)
Also interesting to see how the latest revision of the document by Brian Hook is 0.46, which seems to be somewhere from the pre DX5 timeframe. I'm sure 3D programming on Linux was great fun 3 years ago. (Oh, oops, there wasn't even a single 3d driver out yet
Point is just, DirectX isn't intended to be for your average programmer who wants to do games. It's intended as an extremely powerful hardware abstraction layer, to be used by profesionals to get the most out of the gamers hardware. This is why DirectX exposes a lot of functionality that is close to the hardware, and can be directly supported by the hardware, or not supported. This is why DirectX functionality is continously being updated to reflect changes in the hardware.
This means DirectX _should_ be complex. We're talking about a complex issue here, where a lot of things determine ultimate performance. And ultimate performance is what you want in the end, isn't it? Fast, lots of features, best on all different hardware.
That's why it was designed and exists.
Do you want to work to get this performance? No? Then get another job. Not smart enough to understand all the issues at play? Then get another job.
Most professional game programmers have been happy with this approach for a long time now, and adopted DirectX years ago.
For the average programmer who justs wants to get some simple stuff going DirectX might indeed not seem ideal, and perhaps it is not, but again, that's not what it was intended for, and not what makes or breaks it.
DirectX is a HAL. Not an easy of use utility library.
Also the new jvm from Sun takes up about 40Mb for the compressed file
The runtime jvm takes far less than that. It's less than 10 megs. The developer kit is 40.
It is true that running java apps takes a lot of memory, but this is because the jvm itself has to be loaded and it takes about 20 megs. Also, I would personally be willing to sacrifice memory usage for speed and this is exactly what the jvm does - it uses more memory in order to keep natively compiled code so that it runs faster. RAM is not that expensive and 128 megs is about enough if you are running one virtual machine at a time. If you use Java3D intensively though, I would recommend more than that.
Also if you use C++ and OpenGL to display something versus Java3D it is not really fair, because Java3D has to create many objects in order to provide you with interactivity (mouse picking, etc), while OpenGL will just draw on the screen buffer.
...is probably the same reason a lot of major commercial apps don't get ported to Linux: 90 percent of all desktop pc's (or thereabouts, I think Linux and iMacs are improving their marketshare a bit these days) run Windows. Game companies probably figure it isn't worth it to port to the other 10 percent because pc gamers will most likely use Windows anyway, seeing as that it's standard and that there are more games available. Now on Windows, using OpenGL doesn't make a whole lot of sense, since the chance that hardware manufacturers make their products compatible with DirectX (Windows, and thus: standard) is much larger than the chance of them ensuring their stuff works *well* with OpenGL.
From an economic perspective this makes perfect sense: programmer time is scarce and extremely valuable, so for any commercial outlet it's probably wiser not to waste scarce resources on ensuring compliance with "the other 3D platform" as well and concentrate on dominant DirectX instead.
So, basically, gaming companies and hardware companies don't *care* whether or not OpenGL is better or worse than DirectX and use the latter instead.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
I actually believe that linux-only users are depriving and victimising themselves. Like the man who refused to trade in his betamax vcr for a vhs one.
I'm sure detection is advanced. I said detect and drive.
It't the drive part that's causing the problems.
For example, my suondcard is not supported by OSS. It is supported by ALSA. Took me about 6 hours from 'Damn, my card isn't in this list' to geting it to bleep. And, whilst not a kernel hacker, I'm not exactly a newbie.
If it had been a network card, sure, no hassle. And it can run my graphics card easy, in a crappy mode (640 x 480 x 256). This, I belive, represents Linux's strengths - it's background is UNIX, it's nativly a server style OS.
There is a big difference between Linux and the Mac. Macs are aimed at people who are uninterested in computers, who don't want to learn much in order to get the work done. Linux isn't aimed, whoever wants it can pick it up.*
What does this mean for games? Think about it. On the one hand, you have a group of people who don't want much to do with computers. On the other hand, you have a group of people that actively go out of their way to learn new things about computers. Which group do you think will be the most passionate about computer games?
* Yes, I'm aware these are stereotypes, and not all people fall into these categories.
At the risk of getting modded as flamebait, I just don't see how the Linux game market is going to reach the critical mass to make it attractive for developers. Mac gaming, despite Jobs' strenuous efforts, remains an
ill-served niche. PC gaming, while a sucessful *market* (albeit far smaller than console gaming) is still an extraordinarily tough place for developers to make money due to everything from hardware complexity and
diversity to the hard-to-penetrate and expensive retail channel.
Open hardware standards that PC's use combined with cheap hardware and a free OS that people can modify/change/adapt.
Linux seems to have both the Mac and the PC's problems multiplied: niche market, hardware uncertainty, complexity and (let's be honest) consumer unfriendliness, and poor access to the retail channel.
Better future. It's basically new technology and people havn't become tired of it. Also it's easier to get ahold of a PC and put linux on it than get any old mac to run your game. Also it's possible to run linux on Mac hardware not the other way around.
Linux seems to have both the Mac and the PC's problems multiplied: niche market, hardware uncertainty, complexity and (let's be honest) consumer unfriendliness, and poor access to the retail channel.
Seeing as the last project that Sega bothered with was the Genesis I can't entirely see that they are in finicial doubt. I bought a genesis system as they were going on their way out for $50 and got a few games. Basically they were basically almost kind of like a SNES system with a different controller. They missed the boat with the playstation being released and then nintendo produced the N64 which basically took over what other people didn't own a playstation. The only reason that they have succeeded as long as they have is that they have had the ability to take advantage of the slow emergence of nintendo's new offering.
Respond to s
Don't ask me... I'm not the one moderating on crack.
Actually, I've seen people at work swap obsessively between Diablo II and regular office tools on Windows 2000. Admittedly, you need speeds near the 1 GHz to do that...
The gaming future belongs to the consoles: X-Box, PS2, Dreamcast and Gamecube. Not PC's.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Of course this didn't get on Slashdot. There is an article on 3D Action Planet regarding BeOS as a gaming platform. You can find it here
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm sorry, I believe you are incorrect on several accounts. I realize that you're not trying to trash Linux, but I'll argue these points:
a) Almost all PCI video and sound devices can be probed. This is automatic in most cases. I'll contend that having to manually tweak a configuration file (the very concept of which seems to throw some people for a loop, but then again many people are also afraid of that big round power button on their computers) is better than not having a configuration file to tweak WHEN Windows messes something up. Sure, you can manually edit the registry, but it's not designed for that. Windows hardware installation screws up with a great frequency. Another point that many people forget is that Windows often comes pre-installed on computers, and so people rarely have to configure their hardware for it.
As for a driver interface for IHV's, look at Creative's EMU10k module, and nVidia's excellent OpenGL drivers. Many manufacturers have already released binary-only drivers as kernel modules.
b) Interface isn't up to par? Well, Linux's interface is DIFFERENT, yes. I find it much easier to use than the Windows interface. But then again, Linux allows me to configure my interface exactly how I like it, whereas Windows does not, so there's no way to compare. A Windows user was very impressed when she saw my Linux (Window Maker) desktop yesterday.
c) Not the cutting edge? Depends on what you're doing. For my purposes, Linux is exactly what I need - a light, fast, and stable operating system that runs perfectly on my laptop and supports all of the applications I need (including Maple). The X Window System is old, but there's a reason it has survived as long as it has: it is GOOD. With the advent of DRI, it now has a very solid framework for accelerated vendor-provided 3D graphics drivers. That was also the case with the old-style GLX module system.
d) Funny that, I couldn't get Quake3 running on my box under Windows, but it worked immediately under Linux, and performed very well.
There's no reason it couldn't have autoplay (a small addition to an automounter), but from what I gather nobody wants it. I for one turn it off when I use Windows, because I find it extremely annoying.
Linux does have 3D sound support. Take a look at www.openal.org. It's been used in the Linux ports of Alpha Centauri, Heavy Gear II, and Descent 3. OpenAL is NICE. It's still in development, but it's usable, RIGHT NOW.
Linux doesn't have force feedback, granted. Feel free to add it to the joystick API.
e) Linux does have SDL, ClanLib, and GGI. These three packages have different goals and scopes, but between them you can get just about anything DirectX has to offer. I am mainly an SDL coder, so I'll concentrate on that.
In response to your mention of DirectInput, I'll point out that SDL's new event code makes easy work of any input device, regardless of its configuration. A lot of effort has been put into it. I'm not a DirectX coder, so I can't compare specifics, but I know that some pretty heinous controllers have been plugged into SDL apps.
SDL also provides a very simple and powerful surface interface. 2D graphics programming more or less boils down to being able to quickly combine bitmapped images and perform fast pixel-level manipulation, and SDL is very good for this. Sure, you CAN write slow SDL apps if you don't know what you're doing, but with a bit of care you can squeeze a lot of performance out of it. I assume GGI and ClanLib offer similar capabilities.
SDL has a portable audio interface with backends for Linux (OSS, DMA, and ESD), Windows, BeOS, MacOS, and probably others (haven't checked). In addition to the ability to convert and play audio clips, there is a powerful SDL_mixer add-on library with MIDI playback capabilities and flexible multichannel mixing.
-John
I'm posting for myself, not Loki.
Do you actually know how to run Windows?
I mean, I've seen my share of BSoDs and kernel panics in my time, but you're either very unfortunate or as dumb as an ox to crash your partition because of a gaming demo.
cp savage_driver.so /boot/home/config/add-ons/accelerants.
Wow, that was so much harder than configuring modules.conf!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Don't use the drivers from Aureal in their raw form - they are buggy and don't comply with the OSS standard. A much better alternative is to go to the Aureal Sourceforge site and get the latest release or even CVS version of the aureal driver. I'm running the CVS drivers and I have OpenAL in all its glory, working sound with MAME and mp3s play happily in XMMS. No /dev/sequencer which is a shame but maybe something can be done about that, or you can use Timidity++ as a software alternative.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
It was metaphorical.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No, I understand that the driver didn't work for you. I understand why you don't use it, why would anybody want to use something with a VESA driver? My point was that you justified BeOS being difficult to use due to the whole "8 zillion menus" to copy the file. I was just saying you can do it through the CLI as well. If you had spent a little more time with BeOS, you'd also realize that almost any CLI thing you can do with Linux you can with BeOS, that includes a lot of configuration stuff.
As for the modules.conf bit, installing most drivers under Linux require editing modules.conf (including the NVIDIA driver.) I realize graphics drivers don't usually require editing modules.conf, I was speaking more about drivers in general.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
What? Windows has a command prompt?
Talking about playing games on your Linux box will usually drive them away.
If not, mention Star Wars a few times.
to buy the games that are out now. Until a Linux game makes a serious sales impact, gaming companies(which are often living from milestone to milestone) won't see much benefit in porting their product.
Visit the
The one thing that Linux needs is better support for sound cards... I installed Red Hat Linux 6.0 on a Dell system that had a Turtle Beach Montego sound card... no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to work.
If only Linux could get behind some of the Java developments in gaming (Java 3D w/ acceleration, midi and sound mixing, etc) then it would be easier and less expensive for people like us to write some games in our spare time.
"Gaming" under Linux doesn't have to mean commercial games.
(For an example, check out the realtime strategy link in the
I'm incredibly wary of Indrema as well... to echo someone else's evaluation: "it will be hard to take Linux seriously as an entertainment platform if someone is running around selling rotting lemons with Linux painted on the side."
Which makes Red Hat's endorsement of Indrema all the more disturbing... sigh.
:wq
you've got a really well written post; but i question the amount of time you've spent programming DirectX. you seem to know a lot about it... but when you say "...DirectX is a little complex to program...", that's much like saying "the sun is a little bigger than the earth".
DirectX is a nightmare. I've only been programming for seven years, so maybe I'm too young/new to really be experienced enough to program it - but I doubt it. The brief/important list of languages I know include C, C++, Perl, Java, and LISP. I've done work with OpenGL on Linux stations, and DirectX on Windows95. By FAR the easiest to use was OpenGL. DirectX wasn't what you'd call an easy-to-use environment; frankly, I'm amazed that any programmer can get through the MS BS and get anything accomplished.
Don't want to take my word for it? Ask David Joffe - "However, DirectX is (in my opinion) the most horribly designed API I've ever seen, and I would hate for any newbie game programmers, whose first API might be DirectX,to walk away thinking that it is in any way an example of how a games API should look. DirectX is bulky, poorly documented, unnecessarily overcomplicated, proprietary, and there was never any technical for the existence of large portions of it, such as Direct3D (Microsoft ignored the existing industry standard OpenGL simply because it wasn't theirs and it wasn't tied to the Windows platform, not because they thought they could offer a better solution.)"
Check out his Game programming with DirectX guide.
But he's not the only one; Brian Hook (of wksoftware.com) litterally thinks DirectX is Hell. From the introduction to his Guide: "Microsoft designed and released game development library called DirectX. Part of this library is a 3D graphics immediate mode rendering API called Direct3D. Everyone said it was going to be The Standard for 3D Graphics. I decided to learn it. It sucked. It was difficult. It was poorly documented. It was error prone. Since I've subjected myself to this pain, I figure that others may want to learn a bit from my own experiences, so I'm writing this document."
Read the rest of his Guide if you want to know more about DirectX and pain.
Of course, not everyone agrees with me; there's a couple other resources on the web that gives DirectX a better-than-average glance, and (appears) to like it. Check out Andre' LaMothe's DirectX-tasy guide at loriak.com. His conclusion? "...DirectX isn't as bad as we thought it was, and it really does work and allows accelerators and other hardware to be supported very easily."
So I guess it depends on who you talk to, but in my opinion, DirectX is pure pain. If you're only going to read one, look at Brian Hook's; it is by far the most complete.
But we all knew it was better to be programming on Linux, anyway, right?
The state of Linux gaming comes right down to the big companies not wanting to write modular code; look at Terminus. Terminus was released at the same time for Win, Mac, and Linux. This proves accomodating Linux gamers can be done. Most just don't want to bother with it; which is sad. But if Linux continues this upward trend it's on... I'm willing to bet Blizzard will start porting its newest hit games over, like they did with the Mac. I believe Linux gaming will catch on, if only because of the hordes of people that Microsoft continues to alienate.
just my thoughts.
-lw
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
Windows rarely has problems with load. A can almost guarentee you that a DirectX exclusive mode program will have fewer load problems under Windows simply because it gets Windows out of the way. I think Alex St. John said that about 80% of the code in DirectX is devoted to shoving Windows out of the way. The resultant "OS" isn't very powerful, but fast as hell.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
So I would have to go through hardward detection each time I wanted to play the game? Yeah, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Um, well, to start with....
To have your own OS on a disc causes problems with updates. If you want to patch it, but it boots from, a CD, how do you do it?
Hardware support. The only way that that can work is if either hardware is known and fixed. Like a console. Or if it can autodetect and drve any current hardware. Linux can't do the latter (yet), particularly when it comes to sound and video cards. Not only that, there's the patching problem, on how do you issue updates for new hardware. Customoeters are not going to be happy if they upgrade to the latest and greatest hardwar, and then they find that thioer olders games don't work.
I will admit that these problems are not insumountable, but I don't believe that the games designers want to spend the time and effort solving them. And, as they would involve utilisng hard drive space, for the patching info, why bother with the separate OS?
Indeed, I can see a case for a designed for games, ground up, OS. Designed to be thin, nativly graphical, that lets games really bang on the hardware. Linux is a bit fat for gaming, really. (Do games need inetd [0]? Didn't think so)
And that's exactly why MS will never do it, unless/until they get split up by the Feds.
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Just wait 5 years and you should be able to play Homeworld.
There are several reasons why Linux is very far away from the gaming/consumer arena.
/. crowd. The base their opinion of it on it's closed nature, it's speed in version 3, it's difficulty of programming in version 1. I'm here to tell you that DirectX is fast, stable, easy, and incredibly flexible. Given the flexibility of UNIX, a technology like DirectX should be a shoe-in for something to implement on Linux. Besides Direct3D (btw, which has several advantages over OpenGL, read my rant on OSOpinion.com entited "Is OpenGL in trouble?") there are many cool things in DirectX. Take DirectInput. It is a very flexible mechanism that supports everything from 4 button joypads to cybersex body suits. The whole point behind it is to support controllers of all types in a uniform and easy manner. Or take DirectPlay. It's a mechanism that allows games to communicate without paying attention to the underlying protocol. For someone who has been often frustrated by games that support only IPX and your network is TCP, or vice versa, it is a very cool technology. This is the kind of thinking behind UNIX that is should be as flexible and useful as possible. That's the whole reason UNIX treats everything as a file or why pipes and I/O redirection works so well. Take DirectSound and DSound3D. Currently, not even ALSA offers as much control over the sound process as these two APIs. Then take Direct Music. For a big fan of MIDI (my midi collection is in the hundreds of megs) it's very cool. It allows you to dynamically compose musical scores depending on the situation in the game. Pipe that through DirectSound3D and you've got aureal heaven. Sure DirectX is a little complex to program (not any more so than X, the paradigm is just different), and you can get yourself in trouble if you don't know what your doing (as you can in UNIX as well) but used correctly it really improves the gaming experiance. Linux nor any other OS as anything like it. BeOS and UNIX come close in the graphics department, and BeOS has something similar in the network deparment (though it only supports TCP/IP at the moment) but nothing (without specialized libraries of course) comes close in the input and sound department. Those who think SDL cuts it totally don't get it.
1) It's still hard. No matter what people try to tell you, nothing in Linux is yet easier than doing nothing while BeOS automatically configures your hardware, or putting in a disk when Windows queries your hardware. Sure there are special cases when everything "just works," but Linux plug & play is easily years behind Windows. Case in point: Mandrake (a quite standard newbie Linux distro) doesn't detect my graphics card correctly (a RivaTNT, a quite common card), and makes me supply irq's and DMAs for my AWE64 (again a quite common card.) Then there is installation of new hardware. One point everyone seems to miss is that most new hardware is not supported by the stock kernel. Right now, USB is poorly supported as is Firewire, and for devices that ARE supported, the driver installation is ridiculous. For good modular driver installation, take a cue from BeOS. Drag the driver into the appropriate directory, and it's used automatically. In Linux, the same process is significantly harder. Wheras my ALSA driver install should simply consist of dragging driver to the appropriate place, it instead consists of editing modules.conf with a dozen (poorly documented) commands and supplying IRQs and DMAs. Not acceptable. Then there is the issue of binary drivers. As long as there is no standard driver API, you'll never get driver disks that you can just plug in and have work. Sure OSS is great, but encouraging binary driver is a GOOD thing. The thing most people forget is that OSS drivers have to be COMPILED. A lack of a binary API does more than encourage OSS driver, it makes it impossible to distribute binary drivers (with available source to make you OSS-zealots happy.) Again, unnacceptable.
2) The desktop still isn't up to par. It isn't yet as easy to use as Windows, much less MacOS. People say, "well, GNOME is CLOSE to Windows!" Since when does being as good as Windows count for anything?
3) It isn't as cutting edge. Think about this one. The entire Linux community as an annoying habit of staying with old technologies. Take XFree 4.0. You can't say that Linux has an easy to install graphical system and good 3D hardware acceelration in the same breath. It has the former (XFree86 3.3.6) and it has the latter (XFree86 4.0) but the two are mutually exclusive. Any new and cool technology (DVD, 3D, ALSA, journaling fs) is most often NOT in the standard distro. Thus, you can say that Linux has these technologies, and you can say it's easy to install, but not in the same sentence. By the time the standard distros get on the ball, newer technologies are out.
4) It is light on the gaming features deparment. Face it, people rarely use Linux just for the hell of using a non-MS OS. People use it because it's better. In the gaming arena, it is not better. It's still slower, it's still harder to use (installing Quake is nowhere near as easy on Linux as it is on Windows) and it still doesn't have all the features that have been standard for awhile on Windows. It doesn't have 3D sound, it doesn't have force feedback, it has limited support for 3D cards, and it doesn't have many of the nifty features present in DirectX. It doesn't even have autoplay!
5) It doesn't have DirectX. DirectX is often underestimated by the
Linux will undoubtedly improve. However, from a pragmatic standpoint, Windows is a better gaming OS. Gamers reboot their machines every thing, and don't need the raw stability of Linux. For those who have used Windows NT or Win2K, stability isn't even an issue. A ten or twenty day uptime may be ridiculous for a sever, but for a workstation or desktop use it's fine. Windows will continue to be a better gaming OS for quite some time as well. So far, OpenAL is nowhere near completion. OpenGL doesn't have a new version in sight, and D3D 8 already beats it in features. There are no planned overhauls of the X input API. Undoubtedly they will come, but I've got a feeling it will be years until I can set up a Linux partition and get a better gaming experiance that I do in Windows.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ok I might be biased by from what I have heard from slashdot and the apps I have seen that really isn't all that hot.
Take a good example alicebot look at the java version. The same version of that program in C/C++ takes 1Mb of memory. The Java version takes *at least* 64 and you are suggested to have 128 to make it work comfortably. And mind you the Java version is better tested! Also the new jvm from Sun takes up about 40Mb for the compressed file. Why dosn't someone update kaffe a little more. The only useful java applications I have ever used or thought about were Freenet and some text editor in java.
All the stuff you mention would require you to have probably a monster box just to run nibbles. I hate to see what the sysrequirements are for things like Quake 3 in Java *shudder*.
Respond to s
Once I get D3 for Linux, it's bye-bye Windows partition for me! D3 is the last piece of software I've been keeping Windoze around for. This will give me enough space to start playing around with BeOS...
I'm pretty fed up with Windows gaming. Games which worked last year are already rendered useless by DLL Hell killing or transmuting essential libraries - Myth II is the most serious victim of this and no longer works period, despite attempts to roll back to earlier DirectX incarnations and the original card drivers. Deus Ex almost tempted me into buying the Windows version, and then Loki announced that they were porting Deus to Linux and my wallet awaits the release date... Having installed XFree86 4.0.1 on my machine and got the NVidia drivers up and running, 3D zips along on my machine, I get better ping rates under Linux than Windows for some reason and my Q3demo playing has reached new heights of fragging, so I really ought to buy the full game :-)
I wonder is the level editor ported too...
Err... hello? Did you notice that Loki ported this one? If so, you might also have noticed that nothing is safe once Loki gets on a project and so yes the Descent 3 SDK for Linux is available here. Actually major kudos to Loki for bug fixing the releases for Linux over and above the Windows final releases, and for keeping the patches coming as issues arise.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
At the risk of getting modded as flamebait, I just don't see how the Linux game market is going to reach the critical mass to make it attractive for developers. Mac gaming, despite Jobs' strenuous efforts, remains an ill-served niche. PC gaming, while a sucessful *market* (albeit far smaller than console gaming) is still an extraordinarily tough place for developers to make money due to everything from hardware complexity and diversity to the hard-to-penetrate and expensive retail channel.
Linux seems to have both the Mac and the PC's problems multiplied: niche market, hardware uncertainty, complexity and (let's be honest) consumer unfriendliness, and poor access to the retail channel.
A Linux console might bridge some of the technical and consumer hurdles, but as anyone who knows the history of consoles knows, it takes incredible financial backing, industry clout and marketing prowess to succeed. If even Sega's Dreamcast's future is in doubt, what chance does Indrema, coming from a company that is not a global consumer gaming giant, have?