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Loki Publishes "Programming Linux Games"
An anonymous reader sent in this tidbit - Loki Software has recently released Programming Linux Games, a book about Linux game development. It covers SDL, several audio APIs, and the Linux framebuffer console. The publisher has more info. (If someone wants to review this, email Hemos.)
Yeah, and back in your time there weren't any linux games either.
Checkmate.
I occasionally lurk on the SDL message board and have noticed that when people have queried SDL about hardware acceleration under X it doesn't always match up with what windows is saying. Does X just need some more work on 2d acceleration, or because Nvidia has closed-source drivers the X developers don't have enough register-level info to expose more 2d acceleration?
More reasonably, though, it's in Loki's best interest to expand the number of Linux games available and thus make it more attractive to the potential consumer, as well as system builders.
It's not quite that simple, at least for existing mass market developers. Deciding to target Linux is not like deciding to target another platform, say Macintosh. Dual-boot and effective Win32/DirectX emulation greatly diminish the theoretical Linux market. If a Linux user can buy a Win32 game and run it there is little motivation for a linux version. The developer needs the linux version to generate new sales, basically what they have to work with are the folks who would never buy the Win32 version.
Now Linux does have more potential for startups. The startup would exist in a less competitive market, and with a little bit of stroking the patriotism of the market could be leveraged. Again I'll go to Macintosh for an example, Bungie. They released Mac only games for a while, and leveraged this very loyal base to expand and grow. Leveraging a niche game market has proven to be an effective strategy to get into the larger mass market. And if the niche grows that is even better, you were there on the ground floor.
The biggest problems with getting games onto linux are:
You forgot about the fact that the market for Linux games is only a few thousand units for a popular title.
This is most definitely not a troll; I love the Loki crowd and wish I could support them more.
there already is.
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The paranoid amongst us might wonder if the book is deliberately obfuscated to keep out the competition. More reasonably, though, it's in Loki's best interest to expand the number of Linux games available and thus make it more attractive to the potential consumer, as well as system builders.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Ditto that! I ordered the book as soon as I saw there was a link to it.
Exactly. What about people with newer cards that aren't supported yet by X? What about the refresh rate hell that is X setup? Some of this is simply that Linux distros don't have the clout that M$ has. I mean, who releases hardware and doesn't think about whether or not it works in Windows? Now, how many hardware vendors even know what Linux is? A few; but it isn't enough to ensure reliable performance.
In that case, looks like I'm going to have to learn how to program with OpenGL.
(^o^)
Or perhaps an XBill 3D (written using OpenGL, of course) where you're equipped with a sniper rifle and have to pick off all the little Bills from a distance. Now -that- would be fun.
Just remember that a short time ago there was no market for Linux, now the source code alone is worth a billion dollars. The key to everything we do is doing it for love, fame and pride of craftsmanship, not money. That applies to games as well. Look at Counterstrike to see where the future is. Sure, there will always be a place for big media in the gaming world, but the bottom line is, we don't give a shit, we're going to develop all the games we want ourselves. The smartest thing EA could do is jump in now so the open game projects don't grow as fast as they're growing. But they're not smart, and I for one prefer it this way.
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
I see that there's a section on developing on OpenAL. That seems like the way to go, but I was wondering if that whole initiative is dead in the water. There has been no news on that front for quite some time. Now that my graphical capabilities are up to snuff (thanks, Nvidia), I'm really starting to miss 3D sound.
Besides, running a game, nevermind the entire OS, would be sloooooooooow as hell...
And I do agree that supporting games, and apps as well, on Linux must be a support nightmare.
As someone who tried writing a game for windows, it's hard for without a big budget to pay experience people. Every little book will help... especially when Linux is trying to get into the consumer market. many people use windows just for the games, and this might help get some games on linux. Kenny
One of the best ways to pick up game usage tips is to look at source code. One guy who's coded loads of SDL games (in C) can be found here. In particular - check out Circus Linux - it's a lot of fun :).
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Wrong, if done properly. Just make gaming more like the Amiga was and ship a skeleton OS with the game.
Ship the game on a bootable CD with the required distribution/setup on the disc. The CD would either run the game like that (using a swap partition if possible) or 'install' to a partition.
Imagine games with completely clean installs and de-installs. Linux is pretty much THE world class embedded OS , why not treat it like one?
I once talked to a Jehovah's witness (Actually I do this quite a lot and find it very interesting). He said that to understand the Bible I would have to sit down and study it for 4 years, and then I would be enlightened. I turned to him and said "Well if I spent 4 years reading any book, I'm hardly going to turn around and say 'Well that was a load of Cr*p!'". What I'm trying to say: Is the current infrastructure (SDL, etc.) a viable solution and assuming your answer is yes, why should I take you seriously? I'm thinking one alternative would be a larger version of Allegro or something.
I once talked to a Jehovah's witness (Actually I do this quite a lot and find it very interesting).
He said that to understand the Bible I would have to sit down and study it for 4 years, and then I would be enlightened.
I turned to him and said "Well if I spent 4 years reading any book, I'm hardly going to turn around and say 'Well that was a load of Cr*p!'".
What I'm trying to say: Is the current infrastructure (SDL, etc.) a viable solution and assuming your answer is yes, why should I take you seriously?
I'm thinking one alternative would be a larger version of Allegro or something.
Don't need to 'reboot', use init.
Distro instalation cds already do the detecting and the results can be cached if the game is 'installed'.
Plus, windows needs rebooting between games, so it's not much of a concept leap. In terms on tech support and long term stability, a dedicated OS is the best solution.
My only problem with it is letting untrusted software write to the disc directly.
By skeleton, I meant in terms of included system applications.
yeah ok, it would have to be installed to a partition (as above). It was just an idea.
...and yet open source games projects get little to no interest from developers. Go figure.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The biggest problems with getting games onto linux are:
a) Developers are mostly much more familiar with Windows, leading them to adopt Windows-specific techniques, making porting difficult and/or expensive.
and
b) There is no 'Standard' under Linux for audio/video/input handling.
Loki is attempting to solve both those problems by
a) releasing documentation e.g. this book that enables programmers to become familiar with game-development techniques on Linux
and
b) releasing a cross-platform library (SDL) that handles these functions, and is looking like the most promising 'Standard' gaming API for Linux.
I don't see how this is a 'free ride' for anyone, since ideas represented in code, regardless of who they are written by can be easily protected using various licenses, most notably the GPL, which prevents companies from 'stealing' anything.
And how the hell you arrive at the conclusion that writing documentation is somehow 'the wrong thing to do' is completely beyond me.
The reason many gaming companies don't support Linux is the same reason they don't support BSD. In terms of the gaming market, nobody buys Linux games.
Is that any reason not to write games for Linux?
Linux never would have made any ground in any sector of computing if this attitude prevailed - 'No companies are doing it, so theres no point trying.'
If a Linux port of a Windows game can be produced for close-to-zero cost, or if Linux can be used as a development environment (can you say 'Playstation 2'?), then delivering games for Linux becomes easier and more attractive, and having good games available leads gamers to consider Linux as their primary OS.
Linux has only just become a platform capable of supporting modern games, and outshines every other *NIX variant in this respect.
It is only natural that books like this should be produced, and i can't think of a better group of people to produce them than Loki.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
If only I had the time...
I'm not a Linux user (BSD baby) nor am I heavy on games, but isn't writing a book on Linux gaming sort of selling the Linux community short? Hear this out if you will.
If it's such a great thing to do, why haven't other gaming companies focused on creating an offspin development team focusing solely on creating Linux games? Could it be they think of Linux as still a `hobbyish' operating system not worthy of creating games for?
Its certainly a nice gesture but as stated if it's such a hot thing for a company to take up (gaming under Linux) why aren't many moving to push for stronger development. Is it just easier for companies to have Joe Bloe coder from Utah (no offense to developers) to create something for free they could capitalize on, as opposed to (dare I say this) looking into other alternatives aside from Windows.
Maybe I worded this poorly, but I see this as a free ride for gaming companies who could easily turn around and use ideas from those who read this book, and perhaps steal ideas from personal web pages and notes, get rich while they release a minimal amount of games for the *nix community.
Well congrats to the authors by all means since anything to *nix is a good thing in my eyes. Oh well back to "Tampering with Nature -- John Stoessel"
Want Root?
what, no xtris? what's the matter with you?
Now maybe someone will create an xbill 2!
Why is allegro "highly deficient"? It seems to be good enough for MAME and many others.
There are simply not enough people who will BUY (that's right, pay for the software) the linux games, since almost everyone and his brother uses windows to run games. Because developing a game takes a lot of money, when there is no market, it's not a very wise thing to do.
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Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
Fingers? You had fingers?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I would take one exception to this.
People really DO need games. Need.
Ever watch otters on snow slides? Cats with a ball of yarn?
The archeological records are full of games, as far back as we can trace, and presumably much farther.
To game is human. . . and weasel, why not penguin?
KFG
The day Linux beats Windows as gaming environment (more fps ant things like that) will be the day when Linux starts to push itself to desktop.
Ah, the wonders of C and standards: Everything *nix/Linux is a Linux/*nix program (or damn close to it!).
You were saying about 'checkmate'? :)
On a serious note, SDL is a hell of an effort and a welcome addition to making cross-platform programs much more likely. A really big and honest THANK YOU to Sam Langa and the other SDL, OpenAL, ... coders out there. MUCH APPRECIATED.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I have in my possession an original copy of the wonderful tome "Apple graphics and arcade game design" by Jeffrey Stanton, circa 1982. Apple as in Apple ][.
This covers such advanced topics as:
Programming Apple Hi-Res graphics from BASIC and machine language.
Raster Graphics and bit mapping
Moving things around the screen
Simulating gravity.
Doing cunning things with 6502 assembler to make things run faster.
As a pre-teen getting to grips with the innards of Apples, this one proved a lot easier to read than anything by Rodney Zaks.
Perhaps if everyone was required to write their first game in 6502 assembler on an Apple ][, they might acquire a better outlook on life. Or maybe just a headache.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It's not perfect yet but it's certainly getting there, certainly something to watch for the future.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
and I'm going to read it, too. Maybe twice.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Now, if this is a true bug and occurs during Tribes or Civ, then I see the relevance. The fact that the kernel list had no response makes me suspect.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
xtris is a FAR more recent program than those others. xtris wasn't really included until you included X, and that wasn't until you actually got the distributions on CDs. It was a pain in the pre-1.0.86 days to get X working, much less a game in X.
and that's my 3 sentances worth
Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant; computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb; together they are unbeatable
Here's the SDL doc project.
Here's an article comparing X-based programming to SDL-based programming.
You can use OpenGL techniques in SDL, so here's some OpenGL stuff for you...
This NeHe page comes complete with a version of the infamous Gears ported to SDL.
Finally, if you really want to start getting the best out of it, you'd better get on hardware acceleration. Either switch to one of the latest commercial distributions (RH 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 do 3d out of the box), or use the source, luke.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Because the Linux is community is how large? And when a new app comes out there are how many CD burning parties? And there are how many companies that have made money off Linux? There are some new exciting desktop initiatives looking to change all this. Look for a new desktop focused distribution coming out late summer and a real office suite to be released in a few months. These will hopefully be combined with a successful business team.
Hunger is the best sauce.
for this since May. I really need to learn SDL (well 'really need' meaning really want to) for my amateur game development. there is just not enough documentation online as to how to use SDL. even allegro - a highly deficient SDL-like game SDK - has tutorials up the wazzo. i couldn't (at the time) find a single one for SDL! so, i figured i should wait for THE book by THE SDL and linux game people. i can't wait to pick it up!
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
I'm glad game companies are pushing Linux as a gaming platform more and more.
:) this isn't a problem, but games are. After porn, games are the most prominent factor to success (see my latest book, page 87).
:) Furthermore, I can only encourage more companies to follow their example, and enjoy every minute of it.
.NET (whatever it's worth) gets ported to FreeBSD, but not to Linux, only because of these silly and irrelevant licensing issues, is a setback for our community. I think we will survive, but we must take notice learn from it.
There are two major factors that must contribute in order for Linux - that is the kernel, not the GNU userland that surrounds it - to succeed:
Games. We need games. People need games. Well, they don't really need them, but games are a major factor for the success of a platform. Just like Philip's Video 2000 and Betamax bit the dust because there was no porn available on it and there was on VHS, Linux has a comparable situation. Since porn is 'cross platform'
Loki shows that it knows what will be fital to Linux success, and I'm glad they contribute to it (no, I don't have any Loki shares
The only thing that worries me is Microsoft's recent statements about the GPL. The fact that
Then, at the end of the day, we will have grown.
You kids have it too easy these days...
Back in my day we didn't have these fansy "books" that taught us how to program linux games. We were real men, who coded real code from scratch, for computers which were not real because they hadn't been invented yet by Al Gore. And we liked it! Bah!
I'm talking about the package(the resources it provides such as the api calls ect.) as a whole as being a fun toy to play around with. and if you use it you might end up with something intersting, or you might learn something under its instructions. Aka the bonus.
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Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
I have gotten some games to run well using the win4linux application found here.
There's a trial version available, so you can test some games with it without buying it right away.
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>> From the time a woman is seven years old till she dies of old age, she is ready for action, and competent. -- M