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Linux Gaming: Looking Back And Looking Forward
James Hills writes: "Gamespy.com has released their end of the year Linux retrospective , "Operating system historians will record the year 2000 as the year that Linux gaming began to become a serious prospect for both gamers and developers. While many things still need to be resolved for Linux gaming to seriously compete with Windows gaming, companies such as Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSe, nVidia, 3Dfx, Loki, Vicarious Visions, Tribsoft, Hyperion Entertainment, and thousands of programmers working on projects such as KDE, Gnome, and Xfree86 have begun to make gaming in Linux gaming a more mainstream concept. Through the efforts of corporate investors and individual netizens, the Linux gaming market experienced tremendous improvements in all areas last year and the year 2001 looks even brighter. ""
Give it a few years. My baby sister can navigate her way up and down any windows application, and I am getting her into Linux. Kids today are born and bred on computers, so the 'average user' will start getting more and more intelligent in years to come...
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
We are still supporting linux.
The only downside of the next product is that initially it will probably only work at full feature level with the Nvidia OpenGL driver, but after the first test gets out (still a very long time in the future), I will jump back in to the driver development to try and bring the other open source drivers up to par.
John Carmack
> DLL Hell doesn't really apply to games, which have largely relied on DirectX/openGL for years now.
Actually, I've had Windows game installations queer my system. I even had the Install Wizard render my system unbootable when I removed a game.
That kind of nonsense is one of the reasons I run Linux on my desktop now.
> With SFP in W2K, DLL hell is near 100% myth - it's not possible unless you disable SFP.
I'm sure lots of consumers run out and buy W2K so they can play games.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I started writing a Tradewars clone called Merchant Empires about 6 months ago. I can fairly saturate my 768K DSL line now with all of the game traffic during peak times. I do this from two server running Mandrake that are installed in a friend's closet.
Cheap bandwidth, which will probably only increase in pipe size and reduce in price, is now creating a completely new and incredible environment for writing and playing large scale, multiplayer games. This is a phenomena that will only increase as projects like WorldForge reach maturity.
I have Redhat for Server.
:)
I have Macintosh for almost everything
I have Win2K for Games. I was running NT4 but one day it blew up on me and I thought, what the heck, I'll put Win2K on it for a change. A hell of alot better for games than NT4. As for why I wasn't running Win9x...because there's no SMP support in it.
So there's a consumer with W2K for playing games
First; Loki does not create their own games, they port them, and thus are not able to GPL them, even if they wanted to.
But GPL-gaming is an interesting subject:
While the GPL works good for applications, games are of a totally different nature.
Sure, some good GPL-games exists, but no opensource project could _possibly_ afford all the work that goes into most top-10 games.
One of the reasons is that a game, unlike an application normally has a very short lifespan. Once you've finished it, theres not much more to it, and thus interest fades.
Games need to sell A LOT on a short period for it to be successful, and getting revenue from support or services is not that much of an option.
That said, there might be exceptions:
1. Multiplayer games may have a long enough lifespan for it to work, and if they use an existing game-engine, it might be feasible.
2. For a massive online-game, it may be possible that the service of being connected may provide enough revenue. But of course, nothing is stopping others from creating lots of competing online-games.
The possibility IMHO exists in reusing GPL'd game-engines. A lot of work in the corporate world seems wasted because most games are written from scratch.
The biggest issue that needs to be addressed in development is to design the games to be platform independant. You will not get any developers to create games specifically for linux, you will have to get them to create games for both linux and windows at the same time, or at least port their game from windows. The problem this leads to is that developers are not going to rewrite their game twice, hence the creation of companies like Loki, so the best thing developers need to do is to write their game for multiple platforms at the same time, using cross platform libraries(SDL is a very popular one) or better design techniques. There is alot of FUD about cross platform development (extreme performance loss, difficulty in designing...). Currently there is an interesting college research project going on that gives alot of good information about this topic. The server for research project goes up and down a lot so keep trying...
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Most "mainstream people" think that linux is about free... why would you install linux (as a mainstream joe not a serious programmer or nerd). It's free, it's the new hype thing, bla bla bla... truth is it's not as easy as window for the average joe to setup for playing, AND mainstream joe is used to the concept of everything on that platform is free, why the heck would he shell out $$ for an alternative OS that he probably doesn't even use as a main one.
Look at what happened with Quake 3, the linux port was quoted not to give the results as expected. Don't get me wrong, an alternative is good, and it's good news, and linux is gaining support, that undeniable, but talking about it beeing a huge success and making a big deal out of it is a bit exagerating, I know a load of gamers, none of them even tried or considered shelling C$60 for a linux game if there's no advantages (performance, etc etc). It's hard to brake into an established market. Microsoft tried very hard since win95, and they've succeeded. They took years to do it, they've built strong support with hardware developpers, and on top of all, they are influencing the hardware buisness with "what's to come" (you want to be fully directX compliant these days else it looks bad against the competition, right?).
Anyways, there's one BIG positive aspect though, the linux community has a much higher average IQ than the windows crowd, (not a flame, an AVERAGE), so I guess the die-hard linux crowd, getting more and more by days, will know that they'll have to act if they want it to continue that way. that means *buying* software in the top of the list.
Makes me think when my amiga was "good only for games, wasn't a serious platform" and now you see linux striving to get the "gaming" tag the amiga had that was so negative... it's sad in a way to see linux stuck conceptually like the amiga was...
I'm waiting for a linux kernel with an amiga-like ease of use and frontend before committing myself to linux, right now, windows 2000 with 2 cpus is the best thing I ever ran since my miggy. But I am always opened to alternatives, as long as It doesn't take me 10 megs of help files and over-configuration to start a simple gui, which is also what mainstream joe wants. Call me stupid, but remember, gaming market is about gaming, not messing around an OS hours to make a game work or this or that... of course there's consoles for that matter too. Oh and all the different configs and linux setups out there, it must be hard to "standardise" everything in a stable fashion for games to run, so again, it's not for the average kid who wants to pop in a cd and play.
I would be cool tho if linux would have a performance edge in any way, but microsoft tweaked it's os and manufacturers the drivers tied to windows really good for that matter so I don't see linux taking over MS in the next year in the gaming area. But still, progress IS good news.
Damn gimme lightwave on linux
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
They sell software and are a business. As such I expect the same service from Loki as any other business out collecting my cash. I've spent ample money with Loki to expect simple customer service like shipping a released product after having committed to an order, instead I was called a liar in a public forum by their customer service rep. You bet I'm pissed, and if expecting basic customer service and simple delivery makes me a "prick" in your eyes, God help you should you ever decide to start a business.
Cheers,
--Maynard
Companies are in the business of making profits. Profits come from changing technology to something that is supposedly 'new and improved' and charging the same markets for the product all over again.
It's a basic business model... if you can't increase your markets, then you exploit your available markets. Having many people committed to SDL will benefit SDL by allowing more people to have control over it. The technology is owned by the people who use it. Nobody pays a dime.
Keeping
Many for-profit businesses release some free code along with their proprietary goods. See Corel, IBM, Sun... they get no special consideration beyond having done a good deed when it comes to fulfilling their customer service requirements to this customer. So, to Loki and it's programmers I say good for you -- you have done a good deed. Thank You for OpenAL. But this doesn't release Loki from their obligation to this, and other, customers. I contacted Loki privately several times before I complained in a public forum. The Loki rep then claimed I had misrepresented our private communication(s) in my submission, and requested permission to post our correspondence. I replied with the correspondence, and the rep never replied back. The story and comment tree is still in Kuro5hin's archives -- read it for yourself.
All of that wouldn't matter to me if they had fixed their web page to make certain others couldn't get into the same bind I found myself in with their ordering and distribution system. They continue to allow these sorts of orders even after having had problems in the past. I do not respect this, nor will I stop my criticism. A lone voice, maybe. But I don't criticize for personal gain, nor out of hatred for the people who work for Loki. I do this entirely because I think it's the right thing to do; your (and many other's) derogatory name calling notwithstanding. And I will enjoy Alpha Centauri from Windows today, bought at a fraction of the cost off of a discount shelf I might add.
Cheers,
--Maynard
'Be' is hardly a 'large-corporation', but they abandoned all of the BeOS users by jumping on the embedded systems bandwagon and announcing no further development for the BeOS.
I do agree with your second point, that they will assure the installed base.
I think the problem with sdl is that it is still in its infancy and a may go in many different directions. Many open source projects are similar to this. But, there are also projects like Apache, Linux, Gimp, Perl, and others. Many companies could commit to Perl and Apache without worrying about the direction of the project changing. Once a project like SDL has a large enough userbase, it will stay on track, because the userbase are the people who develop it.
Keeping
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Multiplayer is where it's at, but not necessarily for a central commercial server. I never played Diablo2 on Blizzard's server after I saw the lag, I always play on a LAN. Same for UT. The purchase model is not going anywhere anytime soon, and bringing up cases where it could possibly work is not going to make everyone decide that commercial server games are the future.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Fight 1...
Klick, versus...
Hacker! Fight!
"3y3 4m 31337!" Insert repeatable unblockable move
WINNER! Hacker.
But the soul still burns!
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
A linux only game that is top of the line that everyone wants to play will be what makes linux a platform worth gaming on.
Except that's never going to happen.
If a company has a good game, they're going to want to get it out to the most people. Linux, I'm sure, doesn't even have 1/20th the amount of gamers that Windows has.
So lets see, which option makes the most sense to Mr. gamemaker?
-- Dr. Eldarion --
The NSA people who designed NSA Secure Linux were being paid. I worked on an OSS project at university and was paid. The lead developers of this projects were paid as well (they didn't even have to teach classes, they are full time faculty who only work on this project).
Keeping
I just bought a new K7/1100, Asus nVidia GeForce2 GTS, and Asus A7V mainboard. I installed RedHat *cringe* 7. It found everything in the box right away, and once I got all the updates applied and Helix setup, I went over to nVidia.com and grabbed their 0.9-5 Linux drivers, read the directions and attempted to install them. The nVidia RPMs for RedHat 7 were built for a different kernel (RH 2.2.16-21) instead of RH 2.2.16-22 (which is stock with RedHat7). I tried their trick of "insmod agpgart --agp-use-unsupported=1" (or something like that) and forced their kernel module to be loaded instead of whining about -21 vs. -22 (while praying that doesn't hurt anything). Also I tried compiling the driver myself but I think RH7's beta gcc is what's preventing that from working. Then I forced RPM uninstalls of all the Mesa stuff which causes problems.
With all that stuff installed, X dies when its launched. I've still got a few more ideas to try, and still a couple more resources to tap (friends, newsgroups, some anandtech articles, etc), but I'm about ready to head back to my former Linux now Win2k box (P2/333 + Voodoo3) to play Q3F until some decent information comes out or nVidia makes an easier install for my machine.)
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Its simple, because 3D engines aren't the expensive part! Games have 4 times the numbers of artists and various other creative talent than programmers. The programmers themselves are really just a pretty small part. Thats why there are so few OS games. Because game production is a manufacturing process not a service process like so much network gear is. Its relatively easy to write the server, etc. but the art and plot of the game is the creative and expensive bottleneck.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Alright, I'm making an OS MMORPG. I make my money off subscription sales. Question: How do I secure my business model? What is to prevent a million people from copying me and destroying my customer base?
If everyone has access to the client and server code then anyone can run a server that can afford the hardware etc. I don't expect the hardware to be a big barrier to entry for that much longer though because its getting progressively cheaper.
In short, your business model would work for about a year or two. Maybe three if you don't release your server code (since you don't have to because it isn't actually distributed). Then other similar services will be up and probably as good as yours. They will also be cheaper since they didn't have to pay the original development costs for the software and you did. Suddenly your customer base has been cut a million different ways and your revenue drys up. You lose.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
And am planning the purchase of a PS2. Frankly, gaming on Linux is a joke. How much do you wanna bet that ID Software isn't going to release Doom 3 for Linux, or allow a port? I'm doubting it.
I own Terminus, Unreal Tournament, and about ten Loki games. I'm pleased with Vivarious Visions (and actually like Terminus)... but as many already know I'm NOT pleased with Loki, or their attitude towards this customer. So I don't buy their products any longer. Where is Alpha Centauri, or any reasonable explanation for this mess? Why do they continue to accept multiple pre-orders on their web page when they know it will hold up the delivery of other games purchased in the same order to their customers?
I'd love to see gaming take off under Linux, and think the software infrastructure should be in place once XFree-4 w/GLX and MesaGL, Linux-2.4 w/DRI, and a standardized base between distributions comes along. I'm guessing this will really fall into place by Redhat-8.0, which means about a year from now or so. Until then games authors are going to be forging a new Linux market and eating the support costs associated with the various incompatibilities between Linux distributions. Until this happens though I've given up. After buying twelve or so games for Linux in the hope that I could completely wipe out Windows in order to enjoy a few good games I've now come full circle and re-installed a Windows partition in order to game again. It's easier than dealing with this mess. Frankly, I'll be buying a PS2 ASAP (God knows when they'll be on store shelves) and am thinking of dumping PC gaming altogether.
Cheers!
--Maynard
What we have here is a classic case of Domino ladies and gentlemen...
For linux gaming to become successful linux itself has to go mainstream, and it's falling short on ease of usability. The average gamer/user is not experienced enough (or do not have the time) to install and learn linux properly and install the games that are available for linux RIGHT NOW.
So once the game companies starts to see that even ordinary gamers/users installs linux with ease and has no problems in learning it then they will finally develop games for the platform and sell them through retail. IMHO linux still has a very long way to go before that happens.
Kids today are born and bred on computers
Close. Kids today are born and bred on WINDOWS computers. They're used to everything being handed to them in a nice little package. As the years go on, they think, "Hey, computers are easy!".
Then you show them Linux. A select few will say, "wow, this is damned cool." The rest will say "Why bother? There's no point. I already have my nice-little-user-friendly Windows box right here. Show me ONE advantage that Linux has for me (that I really give a damn about), and MAYBE I'll give it a chance." And chances are, there won't be any advantages to give them.
These kids grew up on computers running Windows. Most of them will stick with what they know.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
> Linux gaming on the retail scale is a joke.
And it didn't exist at all two years ago.
For the purposes of fortunetelling, it might be better to look at trends rather than a snapshot.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Yes but it is during the "slacking off" phase that you make the majority of your profits because it does take as much effort to stay on top once you get there. Under your model you breed competition for yourself, not necessarily a good thing. Besides any strictly coding improvement can be almost instantly implemented by your competitors with little to no cost to them. Since you have to stay the innovator to keep on top, you end up spending the majority of the development money and reaping few benefits for it.
Having to constantly work harder than your competition is not a recipe for success.
Counting on a good "community" to keep your customer base is nice, but how long will that last if you have to charge more than your competitors because you are forced into the role of innovator? Don't bet your business on intangibles like "community."
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Thanks for your direct reply. I seem to remember that you had previously stated that Q3 generated disappointing revenue, which is what I based that presumpton upon. I'm pleased to know that you're planning to continue supporting Linux. I hope I'll be able to play Doom 3 using a Radeon card rather than the Nvidia GeForce, as that's what I plan to buy.
Thanks also for your games -- you don't know how much time I've wasted with your Quake games; entertainment money well spent.
Cheers,
--Maynard
AOL survives on ease of implementation not on community. Everyone I know who has ever been on AOL started there because it was an easy place to get started. They all left AOL when they realized they were paying too much for what they were getting.
The problem with your model is that many people will go with a cheaper alternative than your bleeding edge game. The services your competitors provide will be essentially subsidized by your own efforts. It is substantially cheaper to reimplement your work than to develop it themselves. Your business model will be inherently more expensive than theirs because you must work harder than them to stay ahead. This is assuming you don't make a mistake and allow them to catch up. Once that happens your business model fails entirely.
Now if you offer your work as Closed Source, then they have to essentially reverse engineer every new thing you do. This expensive unlike simply giving your innovations away for free in OS development.
In short, running a business is much like fighting a war. You want to be able to win definitively and then exploit that, not consistantly scrape by fighting with attrition. You want the fight to be as lopsided as possible because it allows you to make the most profits and that is what business is all about.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
...Linux box, I'll move.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
If I were the president of a gaming firm (instead I'm the president of a free software producing company), I would seperate the code from the content and cut some costs.
Game development costs are ridiculous for the returns of mediocre selling games. Either you make a smash game or you sink. Costs could be cut a heck of a lot if there was more code re-use in today's gaming industry. It seems every little game has its proprietary 3D rendering engine. That's great, but why not focus your efforts where it counts (the fun of the game!).
If there was a free, cross-platform, very fast (as in cpu cycles) rapid game development platform that emphasised modularity, anyone could build games on their spare time using world-class tools developed by thousands of enthusiasts all over the world! All that would be needed is a game production company to want to cut development costs by not wanting to pay for a rewrite of mountains of code.
If the game development environment was to be composed of many interworking (but independant) parts, the useless parts could be discarded when not needed (stopping game developer's fear of bloat :)
Making the environment easy to use would encourage new developers who are only interested in making games (instead of computer programming) to make more games! It would also increase pressure on game production co's to make better games!(nice graphics are a novelty, crappy storylines make for crappy gameplay and no fun)
This only leads to increased prosperity and everything your heart desires. Thank you.
If you are open source then your competitors which are using your code must be, by definition and legal license, open source as well. Therefore they will have player mods just like you and the sum of their players will certainly be more than yours so your competitors as a whole will have more of an advantage with a grass roots player mod movement. Yeah, yeah, you've got the innovative reputation but your opponents are cheaper so players may go with helping out the cheaper server to get the best of both worlds in terms of cost and game play.
Anyway I still think a better choice for games design will always be closed source development with good server scripting abilities for possible player mods. Maybe release a small multiplayer server package capable of supporting a few individuals who want to roleplay. Small enough that you can't consider it an MMPORPG anymore so it won't cut into your market. You should be able to carve out a good two years of use without significant competition, during which time you can still be creating the next generation game instead of being trapped in a short-term constant upgrade path in order to maintain your customer base.
Anyway I think we have to agree to disagree because this discussion doesn't seem to be getting us anywhere. Thanks for the distraction from my dreary hum-drum existence. :)
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Yes, nethack is fun in a retro sort of way, but there's higher standards now.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Woah, slow down there Mr. Zealot.
They moved away from DOS because everyone suddenly stopped supporting it. Do you forsee everyone abandoning Windows anytime soon? That's what I thought.
As for the advantages, note that a good portion of people won't care about stability if they don't know how to do anything. Price is almost not an issue, because they buy computers with Windows pre-loaded. They don't know any better. Basically your choices for computers without Windows (that the average Joe knows about) are: Build it yourself, Build it yourself, or.... Build it yourself! I'd say at least a good 99% of computer owners in this country couldn't do that if their life depended on it.
That last statement is getting less and less true as years go on. Windows is MUCH more stable now than before. My win2k box has been up since I installed 2k three months ago without *1* crash. I'm sure many other people have much better records too.
Pull the RedHat box out of your ass and look at the facts, Linux is NOT going to take over Windows in the Desktop market until Mr. Joe Smith can use it with the ease that he uses Windows, and that's not going to happen for a *LONG* time (if ever). That, added to the fact that his favorite software will most likely never exist for Lunix makes the likelihood of Linux as the dominant OS pretty slim.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
You know what that means don't you? Subscription sales. You give away the source to the game client (hey maybe even the server), set up your world (this should take the most time - this is where you add value, besides the actual server hardware itself) and invite people to play your free client in your world for a trial month. If they like it, pay .. $8 a month for the service. Make sure the world isn't always static (I'm not talking Evercrack here, they've made an obscene amount of money on a pretty crappy service) so players have a reason to come back month after month, year after year, and voila, you have an open-source game that makes business sense.
You don't lose anything by giving away the source; any potential competitors have to flesh out their own world and put up their own server hardware and offer the support that you will provide (because you're not Blizzard, you don't just leave your customers in the lurch when the game breaks down). And some other company did this, and their game looked great, hey I'd play it. Variety is always good, and their code will get back into your codebase. If someone uses your engine to create a fantasy game service, and someone else uses it to create a space game service, they've nailed 2 different, minimally-competing niches.
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It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
'nuff said
Keeping
I think were getting to the point where we need a linux based set-top console box that can play PS, DC, Linux games maybe even M$-Xbox games.
It would be much easier to do networked games. It would be the ultimate universal gaming engine it could even have old Atari and Nintendo emulators. Toppling the greedhead console gaming industry.
A linux only game that is top of the line that everyone wants to play will be what makes linux a platform worth gaming on.
Then they need to make all the popular games have a linux port AND put it on the windows version CD. People don't want to give up windows when their favorite games don't run on linux.
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Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I'm actually not sure if I agree with your first assertion. We're not going to release the source to our gaming engine, but I think it probably wouldn't matter all that much if we did, because the important parts of what we're releasing is the data that runs the engine. If gamers wanted to modify the engine, it wouldn't give them access to the extra levels and game packs we're making. That's the meaty part of what we're selling, really, the creative part. The engine is just the playback routine for the data.
But we do expect to be paid, of course :)
How about some short lists of companies and projects, hmm?
Here's a list of projects where people are getting paid (not everyone, but in most cases the largest contributors):
Actually, I'm getting bored, so I'll end there and note that I probably didn't even get a hundredth of the companies and projects...
There are literally hundreds of Linux games available. All the Solitare and Tetris you'd ever want.
Have you flamed SpanishInquisition t
I shop at a number of different computer stores in the Portland, OR area. Of those, almost all of them have carried Linux games in the past.
Few of them still do.
Sales of Linux games has been sparse. Part of this is that most people who use Linux do not tend to shop at those outlets for Linux stuff. Some of the titles just sit on the shelf for months.
The biggest problem though seems to be with how chain stores order. You think Mac games are considered an afterthought... These people do not seem to know what Linux is or what is wanted.
Stores that you would expect to be able to keep Linux programs in stock are falling behind. The biggest example of this is Fry's in Wilsonville. They used to have a large selection of Linux games and programs. Now the Linux/BSD shelf is half stocked with Windows ME! The only current versions of Linux are Redhat 7.0 and SuSE 7.0. Slackware and Mandrake are gone. There are about two different games. Nothing seems to getting reordered at the Portland store for Linux. (Though they do for their California stores.)
The attitude I see when dealing with these places is "The Linux Hype is over, so we don't carry it any more.".
I guess you just have to keep hammering on your local stores if you want to be able to find Linux *anything* in the future.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Games have always been on the cutting edge. It seems to be a tradition or something
That being said, there is always the problem of the average user. Let's face it, the bell curve of knowledge for computer users is probably biased to the low end of the curve.
The upshot is that the skills needed to setup and install a mildly sophisticated game even on a windows box is likely over the head of an average user.
Some people just don't get the idea of certain products. For example, I can recall someone calling up a tech support line asking for the cheat codes for Flight Simulator.
So now we want to move to the wonderful world of Linux, etc. I can see that there may be problems here until we get the average expertise of people up to speed.
Unfortunately, many people do not care to invest the time and effort needed.
This falls into the category of: "We do not have time to get gas. We are running late already"
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"