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Gamespy on Linux Gaming
Grond writes "Gamespy has an editorial about the future of Linux gaming. A few interesting solutions to the sales problem are discussed." This is a topic that seems to come up about every month or two. I think there are a lot of people that would leave Windows behind entirely if a few more games were released in non-Windows versions. But as long as you have Windows, the game manufacturers know that they need not put the extra effort into releasing a non-Windows version. See "Chicken and Egg".
If the Linux community could get over themselves and write a version of Direct3D for Linux this problem could be solved quite easily. The docs can be found on this website.
I believe that Mac doesn't have enough games but they're certainly not left barehanded- They have Diablo2, Starcraft, ST: Elite Force, Bulder's Gate, and FLY! just to name a few I'd be glad to have hose on Linux if someone would just port the damn things and a question-does Linux utilize all of the resources of the machine? (would you need a better machine or could you actually run it on a slower one than what you would normally need?) e-mail answer to cyberbob@dosgames.com if you would
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
If I could play all of my games on Linux I would never use Windows. Problem is, using my games on Linux is a hassle. Distributions are just getting to the point of having working 3D and any decent sound support out of the box. This means that chances are more likely than not that using a game will require extensive driver upgrades. That can often mean updating libraries. Which can mean a compiler upgrade. Or even kernel updates (Granted many users do that one anyway.).
This kind of effort is too much trouble for Linux gamers. Because games keep up with technology that advances at an insane rate, new drivers are often needed, so doing the previously mentioned driver mess gets old really fast. In Windows I can toss video and sound drivers around like crazy, to the point of using different drivers for different games. Changing the drivers is thirty seconds of effort and a minute of reboot. Beats the hell out of the Linux options.
All of this also makes support a nightmare for games companies. Epic only released Unreal Tournament for Linux online, because supporting Linux for that would have been too costly.
What we really need to fix this is a standard distro games are geared to, with a good apt-get method for up/downgrading drivers with up to date drivers to work with. Make support simple. Make setting it up simple. Give the game companies something else to support, and they will come in great numbers.
The fact is that Microsoft has had lots of failures and limited successes. So far, Xbox looks to me like it's going to flop. I see little about it that is appealing, and Microsoft's tendency of copying too much from their desktops when moving to other platforms really hurts them and makes their products unattractive. But maybe it will succeed. We'll have to wait and see. But assuming that they have won this market because they announced yet another grand strategy seems pretty silly given their record.
I seem to remember a lot of people saying that Windows could never give the performance that DOS could when it comes to writing games - too much OS between the game and the hardware.
How do you know they weren't right? Nobody develops for DOS anymore, so we can't really compare those versions side by side.
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1)There are many, many different kernel versions to develop for. It's completely unreasonable for a developer to require a specific kernel version for someone to have in order to play their game.
2)Libraries. glibc 2.0, 2.2, etc... I mean, really. Game developers do not have the time to deal with things like this - the debugging and such would take phenominally longer.
3) X sucks. Especially XFree86 (which is all I've used myself, but it sucks, and I can't imagine a commercial implimentation sucking nearly as much). It's bloated, it's memory hungry, and it leaks like a ho. That, and it's poorly suited for 3d environmental aspects - it's intended for drawing window decorations and terminals, not 3d vectors and splines.
And besides that, it's simply not a good platform because people don't use it. They're in this for money, after all. That means less people to develop for. As far as Loki is concerned, they've barely made jack.
Please go back to your little cave, little man. You remind me of the scary, technologically stupid people in my painfully dull and pointless IT class, which I wasn't able to get out of due to credit restrictions.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I think the "sell" concept is a foreign idea to most linux users, when most software for linux is free in the first place, and even open source to boot. If one of the most popular games in a while (Quake3 was pretty popular on Win/Mac right?) couldn't sell copies in a Linux form, I'm not so sure that any software that complies to the "expensive, boxed, heavily advertised in national magazines" form of Windows, and even Mac to an extent games, rather than the typical "free/open software, word of mouth/board/bbs" approach that most Linux software follows. It's really two different worlds of software, and gaming companies have found a large amount of success with their current model of things, and I don't see them all Open Sourcing their games (even though it might help) and I surely don't see game companies spending tons of money developing games to give them away for free. But since that's exactly what a great deal of applications programmers for linux do on a daily basis, it's pretty much expected that someone who dares to charge large amounts for software isn't going to get a lot of business right? Besides, anyone who is a true hardcore gamer already has a windows partition for the games, if not a whole separate machine since the good games don't come out for Mac or Linux except on rare occasions where they promptly tank and are found on ebay selling for 1/2 price a month later. It's almost canibalizing your own market to spend time, resources, money and programers to port a game to linux, or even develop one exclusively for Linux (or Mac for that matter, what's the last Mac-only game?).
Actually both Mandrake and Suse are making money with linux. Suse closed out most of their USA office because that one office was not very profitable and are concentrating mainly in europe.
Also look at zope by digital creations. That is open source and they do make a profit off of it. In fact it is far better now and used by more people then it was when it was closed.
So stop spreading FUD troll. In just about all environments most businesss go out of business for having bad business models. Open Source stuff is no different. Most companies tried to sell on hype rather then a real service and they are dieing. Just like any brick and mortar store that would try the same thing.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
Of course we all know how that turned out... Maybe the US government should intervene ;-)
--- If something doesn't feel right, you're probably not feeling the right thing.
The problem is that most game manufacturers choose to program in the platform dependent DirectX instead of the platform independent OpenGL. DirectX is a classic example of Microsoft's "embrace and extend" philosophy in that it is less flexible than OpenGL but integrates well, and is easier to code, for the Windows platform.
Game developers wonder why they should deal with a more difficult API (even though there are some nifty effects that can be obtained--see Quake), when there is only a limited market for games on the Linux platform. Since most people who run Linux are already demonstrating your willingness to dual-boot w/Windows for games, porting games to Linux will not sell many more copies. There is simply no compelling economic reason to port.
Lenny
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
this is just an open question, I look forward to all replies. How willing are you to pay for shareware games? If a company released ep.1 of a game for free, with eps 2 and 3 purchasable as shareware for $20 or $30, would you go for it?
This was the situation years ago in the dos games market, and it worked out pretty well. We got all manner of good games, like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D.. but would the same rules apply in the Linux games market?
Furthermore, would you register closed-source games? Would you expect to receive source upon registering? For most purposes (thinking from a game-developer point of view now), keeping the source locked up doesn't really matter much, cause the value of the game is in the data- the artwork and levels the creators have built. The most you could do with the source would be to build cheats into the game, and if you've paid for the levels that's pretty much cool with us. Would you pay for games that weren't GPLd?
(We're not going to release any of our games under the GPL, although we don't mind releasing the source...)
Thanks much,
Steve
They bought the original windows-only Direct3D (which sucked mightily), but it was developed from the original sucky version in-house to the modern version which is superior to OpenGL in many ways.
There was never an open standard to corrupt.
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is that it's designed with a very specific purpose in mind. To provide a framework to do 'proper' polygonal rendering.
Direct3D on the other hand, is a thin layer over 3D hardware. Microsoft, as usual, is very pragmatic. If some video-card company comes out with a crazy feature like an 8 Dimentional Voxel based chip(or more realisitically a ParticleEngine(tm) chip), it'll get incorporated into D3D, and Microsoft will write a software version for cards that don't. It doesn't matter that the technology will be dead in six months.
OpenGL, on the other hand, has been criticized because they're slow to add extentions. But the OpenGL additude is that it does basically everything it's supposed to anyway. Some crazy 8D Voxels or particle engines have nothing to do with Polygon rendering. True or not, it prevents you from using all the cool new tricks on those $400 dollar videocards.
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
all the linux guys i know don't spend a dime on linux software, but they spend 200-300 a year on windoz games.
... 1989 or so. i will never use MS products for the rest of my life, so i guess some rabid MS supporter will mod me down, but whatever...i hate to see people i love suffer.
.. i also bought some cds from cheapbytes, so i hit my target. i bought no OS last year, cuz i was horribly disappointed in the RH7.0 iso.
as you say, it's chicken and egg. they want the platform to be more viable for gaming (3d audio, better sound/video support out of the box) before they will even download a game demo.
myself, i've spent no money whatsover on MS products since they fucked my brother's company back in
i try to spend $100 a year on linux or linux products. last year i bought q3, which is great, but i had to surf the web, do upgrades, etc. to get it to work. i also bought mythII which is okay
i just had a look at lokigames.com, and they have FOURTEEN titles available for linux...the equation is really simple, folks...if you don't buy linux products, linux will die. take that one to heart.
if linux dies, you will be playing rent-a-app from MS in just a few years...for the rest of your lives. you might want to take action to prevent that scenario.
no, i don't work for loki and am not in the gaming industry.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Of all the components in Microsoft Office, Access is the only one that is outclassed by its free software counterparts. Go grab a copy of PostgreSQL or MySQL and go to town. They don't have graphical SQL statement builders (that I am aware of), but they also don't have Access' tendency to distribute your data randomly about on the disk. These are "real" databases.
Linux Games Fail Becuase of Sales. Period. Look at Quake 3. NO ONE BOUGHT IT. Same goes for the mac. Don't get caught up in the DX vs GL hoopla, if the numbers where there, people would port/rework or use layers to get the software to the platform. I used to work for a major game developer. I personally worked on aspects of the Linux versions of our games. Unlike most of the /. audience, at least the vocal folk, I have no personal vendetta against any OS. (ok, maybe OS/2...).
Quake 3 was a great example. A triple-A game that shipped at the same time (or almost the same time) as the PC version and the Linux sales were startingly low. This totally enforced the standard Linux sterotype --- Linux people will not pay for software other than distributions.
All along people kept saying give us a quality game and we'll buy it. They did and you didn't. Finis.
Actually, I might be inclined to argue the exact opposite, in that the games that you need to have a desktop system for have up until now been networked shooters and RTS's. I don't know anyone who claims that a shooter works will on a platform, and the XBox isn't shipping with a mouse (amongst other things) AFAIK. Frankly, up until now networking has been an issue, and the lack of a rich control set is the other. Also, the relative nastiness of televisions as monitors is another detractor from certain kinds of games.
But, those games that are good on platforms are usually much better than the port to a PC. The value of a dedicated machine. I think in the end the XBox is going to flop hard.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
this is simple stop using windows. Games are not that important.
Well as for promoting Linux, we're trying.
I'm a member of the Linux Users of Victoria (here in Australia) and our Games Sig does all it can to help people run games on their Linux platform. From helping people simply install Linux, helping with driver issues and configuration, general information about games and hardware, and of course, fragging each other silly in LANs.
As it is, we're running a LAN soon called Blast Radius 3 that is catering specifically to gaming under Linux. We're allowing Windows and Mac users as well, but the idea is to showcase Linux as a Gamers Platform, and give them a taste of all the things we can do under Linux.
So do your part, Linux gamers. Organise a special interest group specifically for Games at your User Group. Start organising Tech Nights to help people get their systems up and running, informal and then formal LANs, and help other people catch the fever that is Linux Gaming.
Basically, those games that are written to use OpenGL have rather easy development paths to operating systems other than Windows.
By binding Direct3D so tightly to the Win32 API, they make porting the appliation to a non-Windows API much more difficult.
And the same goes with Macintosh computers - Apple doesn't have its own proprietary graphics API; they use OpenGL. And, just about any game you see in OpenGL appears on a Mac in no time at all. Loki can port the same app to Linux without much trouble either.
For cross-platform game development, we have to start seeing more use of OpenGL, rather than D3D.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Linux is my game. Figuring out more and more about how it works, hacking the kernel, delving deeper into linux's insides proves to be more fun to me than most games. If all i wanted to do on my computer was play games, then i would probably like windows better than linux.
I do, however, play games like minesweeper clones, nethack, etc...non-graphics intensive games that are fun and work in linux.
Sure, if game writers started making their games available for linux i might try them (not buy them though), but if they don't...i have no problem with that either.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."
...might be that I don't have to spend much on a PS2 or N64 to get a decent gaming experience. But if I want a good Lose32 gaming box, I have to plunk down some hefty cash for a video card, cash for plenty of RAM, cash for cache (sorry)...
With my Linux box, however, I can simply fire up KJumpingCube and lose just as many hours of time, for much less money. Holy code that game is so addicting. Between that and FoulEggs I might never leave the keyboard again.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
This is the second or third editorial I've seen that's cited Quake3 on linux as being a "failure". I'm honestly curious about this: I was unable to find the slashdot link that discussed it, but I recall that Quake 3 turned a profit.
By definition, profit is making more money than you spend, so I don't really see how q3 failed. True, it wasn't a huge or impressive profit, but it keeps you in business, yes?
From what I've heard, TuxGames is profiting as well; if everything's making money, why all the negative press about linux games being unprofitable?
-Denor
I bought a windows version of Q3 as it was the only one in the store, I then downloaded the binaries to convert, from loki. Same with UT.
I don't know about you, but _I'm_ buying Tribes 2 for Linux. Even though I really have had a difficult time getting hardware acceleration supported on my G400. I'll buy it as soon as it hits the shelves and figure out how to make hardware acceleration work later.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
> I think there are a lot of people that would leave Windows behind entirely if a few more games were released in non-Windows versions.
I agree completely but let's not discount M$ Office. I switched to Linux a couple years ago and was pleasantly surprised to learn that ICQ, Quake, e-mail, and IRC had equal or superior clients using Linux. However I was man-handled into switching back to Windoze because I rely on an Access-97 database on a daily basis.
Very frustrating, Linux is 95% of the way to being the perfect end-user operating system, but the last hurdle is unsurmountable due to proprietary software...
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its that simple. just don't use windows to play games. use linux instead.
Is your company running tools written by ma
I actually like to use Linux because it's a free alternative to Windows, which does almost everything Windows does, and in some cases does things better..
If Linux becomes successful in the gaming market, there will be thousands and thousands of people coming on board.. and I will no longer be 1337!!
I guess I'll have to install a different OS then.. :)
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
One of the problems with Linux gamming is Loki another is TuxGames.Com.
Why? Because Loki hasn't shipped ANY new games in months and won't say why. Tuxgames.com won't answer emails and every item I have order from them arives beat up.
I have bought every linux game published except for SoF.
Re: your comment...
Unforunately, all my forays into Linux gaming have shown that the Linux version of the game is slow, klunky, and occasionally buggier than the windows version. I've purchased two Linux games so far, and I wont again for a little time until that particular market stabailises, and decent graphics accelleration happens for Linux.
What card are you having the particular problem with, and what basic setup do you have? A lot of the video drivers had lots of issues, and X4 and new driver architechures have fixed a lot of this.
Stock-standard distributions that were released 9-12 months ago are just not going to have the stuff that works well, but then again, how many times on Windows do you need to install new video drivers, run Windows Update, or install new versions of graphics API's (DirectX)?
I've got a Nvidia GeForce DDR (32Mb) and on my K6/2-550 I used to get better (on average) frame rates than I used to get under Windows. Parsec just blows me away, with TWICE the frame rate as I get under the Windows version. Quake3Arena and Unreal Tournament run a lot more stable under Linux than they have ever done under Windows on my machine. YMMV, of course.
There are lots of people willing to help you get your setup working, so check out your local User Group and see what they can do for you. You might be pleasantly suprised.
Blast Radius 3 - http://br3.dual-enforcers.net/ - Australian LAN showcasing Linux
I dont see Linux becoming a threat to Windows on the desktop at all. With DirectX 8.0 coming out and Nvidia's new Geforce3 about to hit the market, it would only get all the more better with the new Vertex Shading capabilities and such. I am not downplaying the fact that OpenGL would very well pick up, and with ID touting OpenGL as the only API they would ever code against (although I would only take this with a pinch of salt), its sure to get interesting.
Linux could however be used for multiplayer games for them to run on a rock solid, stable and scalable server. I just dont see it making a niche for itself on the desktop market.
Rapid Nirvana
I mean, how many people didn't think twice about getting a PlayStation or N64 just to play games? Did you think that getting one was betraying Linux in some way?
I'm no MS supporter, but XBox is going to change almost everything in less than a year. The game market for the Mac and Linux is going to dry up, because you can target Win32 and get XBox as well. That's going to be hard to resist, esp. if the XBox is as cheap as everyone expects.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Just for additional background, Michael Vance (Linux HG2's lead coder) had this to say about the process:
:wq
Games for Linux would certainly give that added push, but I don't see it happenning very fast. First, the companies that write, sell and profit from computer games need an incentive to write for them.... from their perspective, Linux is about "free" and "open." The reality is, that I'd be willing to pay for software (games or applications for an operating system that was free, easy to install, very secure, and extremely user-friendly.
The above ain't Linux. Yet.
With the development of user-friendly software like Eazel and increased focus on the installation interfaces of Linux, more and more Windows users will be willing to make the switch. Especially if Microsoft makes the drastic changes it's rumoured to be planning, such as yearly subscription, elimination of DOS commands/command prompts, etc.
I've installed Linux several times over the last few years, and with each new install, it just gets easier and less painful. There was a time when I really liked wading through how-tos and doing trial and error steps to get my video card set just right, but these days I'm too busy for that crap. I want to install it and occasionally update it. I'm starting to understand something I always criticized newbies for... most folks want to have a tool they can use like a car. My wife's as good a driver as I am (don't let her know I concede that point, though), but she can't change the oil. It drives her nuts that I'd want to rather than pay $40 at Jiffy Lube.
Microsoft won't always be king of the hill, and I can't wait to see them put on a level playing field with an equal or superior operating system. But I have to acknowledge that they got there because they had some insight as to what folks wanted on their computers... I was one of the few geeks that was happy with a dos prompt... like all of the other geeks, I dropped to dos for YEARS (and still) to perform quick operations... Most people don't want to even see that black screen... it scares them!
I don't play a lot of games, but I would love to have Tie-vs-Xwing and Jedi on Linux! If so, Linux would be booted much more than Win... In fact, beyond my need to use Office 2k, I wouldn't need Win for anything!
Cheers
cfeagans
Unfortunately, not just a few. I would like more games spanning more genres. Not just first-person shooting (Quake) or strategy (FreeCiv).
Where are the adventure games, like Escape from Monkey Island (not just MUSHes and MOOs)? What about flight simulators? No one can hack a decent flight sim that has only some of the features of Fly!/MS Flight Simulator/Jane's?
Even a game like The Sims would be wonderful, which defies classification. Right now, all we have are games that developers wantto develop, like FreeCiv. That's fine, but if you want more gamers to come to the platform, those same developers are going to have to branch into new areas.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Until the Linux game market matures, there's not going to be much demand for standalone Linux versions of games. In the meantime they should ship the Linux versions with the Windows versions. Linux users will buy a game if it is supported under Linux, but since most people still keep a Windows partition, a lot of them will not buy a Linux version given the choice between getting the Windows-only version and the Linux-only version. It's fantastic when companies offer Linux versions of their games, but the market forces are such that there's still not much of an audience for standalone, Linux-only versions of games.
As a Mac user, I can tell you that it takes more than just having games--or even having MS Office. Although we have lots of good games--we like to think that Windows serves as our crap filter--Macs still don't have a large marketshare.
There are disadvantages to the Mac platform that Linux doesn't have, sure, but Macs still suffer from a "chicken and egg" perspective--not enough software, or so its said, so fewer people buy Macs, so less software is made. Mostly, all FUD--I've never had a really hard time finding software that I need, or want, including games.
Another interesting thing, is that, even with OpenGL supported on the Mac, some games ported from D3D to OpenGL--are only released as a Linux version, not also as a Mac version. Do developers really think that there are more game-buying (like with real money) Linux users than there are game-buying Mac users?
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$tar -xvf
I mean, if even Quake3 doesn't sell for crap on linux, how can you blame companies for not making the plunge?
Tribes 2 is the next major title coming up, it's one of the biggest games coming down the pike, and they are going to have a near simultaneous Linux release.
Personally, I'd love to see it do extremely well, but I have a feeling, as others probably share, that Linux users don't buy games for linux, and Tribes2 is going to fail on Linux, and leave future developers with little chance of making that jump.
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MS has already said they weren't going to let devs go "port happy" and port all the popular PC games to the xbox without siginificant improvements. Also, this has been said a million times, but Windows-PC games are not compatible with the xbox at all. Developing a game with the WinPC's DirectX and the Xbox's directX will be similar, but there are still some significant differences.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.