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Kohan for Linux
XarsonX writes "A demo of Kohan Immortal Sovereigns (a real time strategy game) is out on linux. The full version should be coming soon. News, stuff about the game, and the demo are available at www.timegatestudios.com." I hadn't heard much about this game, but the graphics are definitely impressive. Might be worth a download.
You can pre-order this title through Tux Games.
The price is $46, and we hope to ship at the same time as Loki ships.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Hmm... I'd strongly recommend running any modifications to the GPL past the FSF lawyers, since you wouldn't want to inadvertently make you stuff GPL-incompatible.
According to Precision Insight, DRI allows applications to access 3D hardware directly.
An image of what DRI does is here
Voodoo3/4/5 and I also believe Matrox have DRI drivers in X4.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
I wonder why Starcraft(comparable to kohan) runs about the same speed under X as in Windows. Maybe windows doesn't cut it for games either.
woah nelly, loki actually released something besides a shooter, oh wow, what diversity.
Just FYI -- the built-in GameSpy functionality is in the Linux version, too (or at least was in the beta).
You judge on the wrong criterion. All that matters is happiness of the people & fairness. On this measure, America lags behind most of the world.
Your equation between economics and power, power and politics is precisely what I am decrying.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
"Granted, the U.S gov is bloated, but it is still one of the best alternatives."
Also the most corrupt of any 'democratic' country, apart from Singapore.
Now if only I could get this fucking Voodoo 3 to work under X 4, I'd be in buisness.
I think I'm just going to go back to 3.6. The only thing 4.x has given me is headaches.
--
#nohup cat
That may be true, but that issue has been tackled before from a different standpoint.
Libraries such as SDL exist to speed development on graphics and sound I/O, and things like game engines exist (the quake engine, for example) as open-source re-usable engines.
The graphics engine is what creates the "gee-whiz graphics" that you speak of, not the graphics tiles and textures themselves. (Although they do help).
I think that an open source graphics engine is more useful than re-usable graphics tiles and sounds.
You didnt see the irony in my post ;)
It may also work for the better. Gameplay would be emphasized rather than gee-whiz graphics.
Dijkstra Considered Dead
To bad Loki appeared to have filed for chapter 11 a couple of weeks ago
Why didn't they just port starcraft instead of this one of many imitations.
I like the idea of the project, but I am concerned about the proliferation of games that are all using the same base for graphics, sound, etc.
What happens when there are 20 different RTS games with the same sound samples and graphics tiles?
Seems to me that this would have a negative effect, in that the creative aspect of the graphics tiles and sound samples (how your game "looks" and "sounds") would be lost.
On another note though, I really like the idea of a GPL'ed repository of this stuff. Thanks, and great job!
Yeah, only us dirty Americans would team up with the elves and dwarves to persecute the ogres as in WarCraft...
"For example, the Civilisation series of games placed Capitalism at the top of the tree of economic systems, and Democracy at the top of the tree of political systems."
Well, when was the last time a democratic, capitalistic nation-state beat-out one that has neither of those traits? And remember, even Hitler and Stalin got there by elections.
"The aim of the game was to turn your civilisation into another America, replete with global ambitions and terrible ethics (to kill or be killed)."
The US is actually less capitalistic than some other countries. If we had pure capitalism, we wouldn't be talking about such things as the Microsoft anti-trust case, and we'd all go down to the Standard Oil station to gas up our cars.
And as for the democracy bit, we have senators who represent their state (and not necesarily the people of that state... take a look at how they were originally chosen), and an electoral college designed to take the interests of both the people and the state into account.
And as for the "lousy ethics" bit, you need a source of conflict, or else you wouldn't have a game (or even a story). One could shift the conflict from person vs. person to person vs. nature (natural disasters to plan against and such), but then you won't have a multi-player game.
"Why should capitalism be #1 economic system? Why not communism?"
Because command economies have failed over and over in the course of the 20th century. The Soviet Union was essentially in the red (no pun intended) for almost all of it's existance, spending more than they had to keep up with the proverbial Jonses. The GDP of the People's Republic of China has been a joke until both the incorporation of capitalistic Hong Kong and the loosening of governmental controls on industry. North Korea starves while South Korea rivals Japan. Shall I go on?
"If we develop intelligent AI's, then the issue that has meant communism never worked in the past (the planner was crap all planned economies to date) will not be an issue."
The issue isn't lousy planning, the issue is whether to plan to begin with. For more on the issue of planned vs. unplanned complex systems, take a look over at this /. article and the various responses.
"Why don RTS games show some variety of political systems and consequences, instead of putting the American system on an undeserved pedestal?"
I'm still not sure how you're seeing these governments as "American" and not "French" or "Italian" or "Russian" or any of the other capitalistic republics, but going from colony to world power in about a century and superpower in under two makes me question your use of the word "undeserved."
"I would like to see RTS games be more morally responsible, and allow for a more widespread collection of political idealogies and econmic systems, with no value judgements placed on each."
If you want to do that, you're going to need some sort of measuring stick to measure each system by. If you were to use the real world and recorded history as your measuring stick, guess what you end up with...
"The aim of the games should be multiculturalism and postmodern tolerance, not outright destruction. How can our children be expected to understand and tolerate"
You're one of those "Doom turns kids into muderers" people, aren't you?
"The aim of the games should be multiculturalism and postmodern tolerance, not outright destruction. How can our children be expected to understand and tolerate Japanese, Russians and Chinese when at night they plot to destroy them and commit mass murder?"
Funny you mention mass murder and Japan (anthrax on civilians in WWII), Russia (Stalin made Hitler look like a Girl Scout) and China ("cultural revolutions"... need I say more?) in the same sentence.
However, since both Japan and Russia both have capitalistic economies (Japan can be considered more capitalisic than the US on many counts) and democratic governments, and how China is showing marked improvement only after they've losened controls on their economy, it would seem that you're confusing "government" and "economy" with "culture." As for why Western culture is doing so well, I reccomend you start with a glance at this e-mail (and the subsequent responses) about why China won't be becoming a superpower any time soon.
On my system, (Duron 800, 256MB, TNT2), Kohan runs great.
I have noticed some crappy performance, however, when I was running Loki_Update in the background. I am not sure but it seems that if some other X program is in the background that is updated graphically (like Loki_Update progress bar) it will hurt the performance of the game. Try killing all GUIed apps that update often (xmms, etc) and see if you have the same issue.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
You could have just said it was starcraft but different.
Someone needs to tell these guys about this amazing new technology called "screenshots."
Easy answer.
Write your own!
Seriously, if you feel that strongly about it, get together with some like-minded folk and create your own game and release it.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
IT's funny how frames per second and first person shooter both share FPS haha.
Yeah, and England will be the Mexico of Europe. Hell, it already is.
Long live the Union.
Doesnt matter, it's slashdotted.
No thanks, I'm not homosexual, sorry.
Let them try. I already have a copyright asserted on everything thats possible to copyright. If they take one step in that direction i'll come down on them. Hard.
Bowie J. Poag
No, you just like to think they are so you can practice your fantasies :)
Ack, don't remind me! I'm completely stuck in my current civ game (euro-ww2 scenario)... Allied bombers set France and Belgium on fire, paratroopers are landing everywhere, Marseilles, Milan, and Venice are already taken by partisans and paratroopers, only Rome and Sicilia are defendable against the flying Allied armada.
Then there is ofcourse the war against the Russians which is not going so well because of their insane number of infantry/machinegun units usually placed alongside railroads. I'm trying to capture Moscow now ( I already took Leningrad ) but there's dozens of units coming from the north, the east, and the south!
Besides, Communism and Fundamentalism/Fascism are much better than democracy!!
>You can also go to jail for the SAME PRICE as linux.
I'll tell you when they lock me up.
.Wow, when did windows provide a driver built into the WinME CD for my Playstation-to-Parallel Port adapter?
Since when did ANYONE 'provide' a driver like that with an OS? And what do you do with it, pirate PS games? You can go to jail for that...
The post a few down from this proves my point. I can use the latest hardware without a problem...
There's a broken link on their site. Try this:
http://www.kohan.net/main/press/linux_demo.htm
This looks like my kind of game!
Zooko
Okay.. I've owned kohan ever since Rich Laporte over at Gonegold (http://www.gonegold.com) raved about the beta version..
For a quick description, Think heroes of might and magic, masters of magic and warlords 1-3 combined, and then made realtime
But not realtime in the negative clickfest sense.. Very methodical and well paced real time
Mix in great cooperative multiplay, random map generation, a scenario editor, and at least for the windows version an integrated gamespy client, and you get Kohan
The entire game is structured around heroes(Kohan's), and "squads" of units.
So instead of controlling a zillion little units, you're instead controlling groups of units that you construct
Each group of units has a zone of conflict, and when zones of conflict overlap, the units will engage one another..
Combat is fairly passive, but still has an extremely large amount of tactical depth
There's also a really nice resource harvesting model.. Unique in the sense that it strongly discourages hoarding.. Any excess resources for a timeslice are discarded instead of stored..
Overall its a great game.. One of the best, if not the best rts game i've played this year..
And to top off a great product, the developers (Timegate) have done a great job supporting and updating the product..
They're very active in the community, and host tournaments every now and then..
oh shit. didn't realise. my mistake. sorry.
One less game for me to boot into Windows for.. Kohan is an excellent wargame for thinking individuals, one were blind rushes and other common RTS tactics are far inferior to solid combined arms strategy and logistics. I've been playing this one exclusively for months, now..
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Hmm, I had no trouble with the mouse. The game preformed flawlessly on my IBM T21, very quick and responsive. (RH 7.1 Xfree86 4.1.0, Savage IV) I guess your mileage may vary. Though if your vid card supports it I would highly recommend upgrading to X 4.1.0. My guess is this will fix your problem.
They misunderestimated me. -- George W. Bush
The lameness filter should include "Cmdr (F*ck You) Taco" .
What the hell are you talking about? Britain is the only country not obsessed with federalism on this side of the Atlantic. You'll come crying back to us and Americans when your silly little European Federation crumbles.
Strange. I downloaded the demo last night and it ran very sluggishly. All the other Loki demos/games run well, as do Quake 2 and Quake 3. Perhaps it's something with the particular 2D rendering engine? I have an nVidia TNT2 with the latest driver...
--- witty signature
It seemed quite sluggish to me as well when I tried it, however when I ran it in DGA mode (need to be root and then run kohan --dga), it ran much smoother.
It is a hardware cursor problem..
Another reader suggested that you could use '-x -f' on the command line so try that and you may not need DGA
First of all, in the original Civ games, there was no technology called "Capitalism" -- there were only political systems, e.g. Republic, Democracy, Monarchy, etc. So you are wrong from the start. In addition, Civ isn't an RTS, nor are any games that use political systems to my knowledge.
Second, does your call for "no value judgments" on the various government systems in strategy games extend to, say, allowing your wondrous communist governments to build concentration camps? Engage in pogroms? Massacre dissidents? How about allowing fascist governments to manufacture poison gas for the liquidation of disfavored ethnic groups? You think that would be more "morally responsible"? That's obscene. No, I think (informed) value judgments are just fine, in games as everywhere else, and yours just happen to differ from those of people who aren't blindingly ignorant about the atrocities of communism.
I think gaming is a marginal enough hobby not to need such "open-mindedness." FWIW I don't "tolerate" Japanese, Russians, and Chinese. As someone smart put it, we "tolerate" bad smells, not people.
No they're not...
What are you smoking?
Loki has ported nothing but first person shooters so far...
This will be like the 3rd commercial stratgey game ever released for linux..
I'm still waiting for an adventure game or an rpg.
Seriously go to the store and look at the shelf of linux games, 95% are shooter games (from 18 months -2 years old) and then there is like 3 strategy games, at least 2 of which where not released by loki and a big whopping 0 rpgs or other more brainpower less shooting genres...
I did, and it was funny as hell. I just wish I hadn't blown my moderator status on this thread...
Okey. Jetzt sagen Sie, daÃY dieses neue Spiel für Linux ja ist? Wenn so, ist dieses gut. Linux benÃtigt mehr Spiele, es hat zu wenig. Mehr Spiele würden Benutzer rüber von den Windows holen, bedeute ich, obgleich Windowbenutzer Spiele auf Windows spielen kÃnnen, Haben der Spiele Linux erhÃhe die Zahl Benutzern, die zu Linux schalten kÃnnen und ihre Windowpartition sauber abwischen. Was konnte als ein Computer Microsofts besser frei sein? Es ist Bliss, rein und einfach.
Civilization 2 was made in England. Of cource, they are an American colony now.
Your point about Civilization having an Americanised world-view is totally true. The "Republic" and "Democracy" as being seperate forms of government would have any non-American quite confused. To us, "Republic" means the absense of a Monarchy and nothing more. The U.S.S.R. was a Republic.
Wrong. XFree86 4.x with DRI is fast, fast, fast. Frame rates are at most about 1% (and usually less than that) behind Windows on my GeForce2. And if you're about to say "but not everyone can afford your fast new GeForce2" remember that you're the one complaining about 3D speed issues in the first place...
Of course, I can also do things with X that you can't with windows. For example, running a 3D-accelerated program like Morph3D or Sproingies in my root window as 3D-accelerated wallpaper.
Have you ever played, say, Q3A with DRI under Linux+X? Guess not. If you had, you wouldn't say what you just said...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The US economy is not capitalism. If it is, please explain the governmental regulations, which do not exist in capitalism.
The US government is not democratic. It is a Representative Republic. A true democracy would have no intermediate Congress, but would instead vote directly on the laws.
Get back in line for toliet paper, stupid pinko commie dumb shit.
"we demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!" --Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Its good that this game gets free advertising so it will be bought encouraging more games for linux to come out. so whats the bfdb.
I've heard of it. I own it for Win32. Soon I will buy it for Linux -- one less reboot needed.
Let me guess, you're a fan of the FPS genre? I for one am glad that Loki has chosen to produce some popular games in _other_ genres. So far, their game choices have been right on -- rather than port everything "new" or "fragworthy" they're actually taking the time to find out which games are _fun_ and porting those...
I only hope they survive.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
As someone else in this thread has noted, for certain cards (Matrox G4x0, nVidia TNT, TNT2, GeForce, 3Dfx Voodoo 3 or 5), you can run with root privileges and --dga to really speed it up. (This bypasses the X server, so you can't go windowed while doing so...)
Who says capitalism is #1 economic system? The relative stability and strength of our economy should answer that. Who says democracy is #1 political system? The fact that our has remained virtually unchanged for 225 years should say something (unlike some European countries). Our political environment is stable, people have freedoms unseen in some countries, and allows free trade to drive the economy. Granted, the U.S gov is bloated, but it is still one of the best alternatives.
I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition. (evil tone) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
no where does it list system requirements.. doesn't require hardware acceleration but the game looks good.. the demo is around 66 megs (not too bad) and has a couple tutorials you can play through. I will definitely be pre-ordering this title.
Marking this as a troll is typical of American misunderstandings of Communism. USSR, China, Cuba & their Ilk were not Communist. They were fascim masqurading as Communism. True Communism is not about "taking away freedom" or any of that rubbish. Go read about it, you don't have to agree with it, but at least know what you're condeming before condeming it.
--
"Everything that isn't the American way is Communism!" - Americans
"Everything that isn't the Soviet way is Imperialism!" - Soviets
i think you could.. as long as it has tux the penguin in it, a bsd devil, or something to do with cmdr. taco I'm sure you will get free advertising
On the webpage it is stated: 'All the toolkits available here at System 26 can be freely incorporated into your apps, royalty-free, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, or "GPL"'. So why isn't the description at the top of the page "A GPLed GUI Component Stockpile For Linux And Win32 Developers"? "GPLed" is the precise description of the license, not "Open-Source".
Sam L. et. all have gotten the Linux implementation tight as . The gameplay and economic model ARE different from your standard total annihilation / warcraft /starcraft fare. (Well, those were the last time I touched a game under win32).
The economic model focuses on balancing lots of different resourcecs which can be generated by towns themselves. Takes a bit of getting used to, but it is much more interesting than "energy/metal" all harvested from "mines".
The unit play and tactics are also very interesting - morale, formation, terrain bonuses, flanking. Military historians should love this.
Oh, and they fixed that damnable "rush" tactic.
As of now, I don't miss bilzzard at all (well, that's a lie. I still kinda wanted to try DiabloII in my copius spare time).
And it has additional cool Loki - type features such as the "middle mouse map drag/scroll" that Win32 folks don't.
Check it out!
(This may have troll written all over it ...) Here is a game that the editor had never heard of, a game a majority of us have never heard of, but OOOH - It is comming out for Linux so it gets a news post. Is the software situation for Linux so desperate that whenever a new file manager, game, browser, etc. comes out that it needs attention?
I guess my own counter argument is that there are sites like shacknews.com etc that cover all gaming news and any game that comes out it gets a news post. Also, so BFD if something gets a post, Right?
Oh Well.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
That wasn't a troll. It was a serious and objective observation. X-Windows is slow, often even with 3D acceleration.
I have to feed the troll...
I never have driver issues with linux anymore if I stay away crom the shittiest of hardware. (win anything hardware)
Sorry, but current linux distros work better,are easier to install, and are smoother than ANY windows OS ever created (including you belived XP buttface)
so shove off... a current linux distro blows away everything windows easily.
>(you can pirate it for the SAME FUCKING PRICE AS LINUX!)
You can also go to jail for the SAME PRICE as linux.
>Plus Windows will actually have drivers for your video cards, keyboards, joysticks, mice, ect...
Wow, when did windows provide a driver built into the WinME CD for my Playstation-to-Parallel Port adapter?
Oh, sorry, it doesn't, TROLL.
While the numbers of players are nowwhere close to the big guys (AOK, SC, D2, etc), there are plenty of game available during peak hours, and I rarely have trouble getting a 4v4 game rolling. I point this out because I fear your terminology will give people the impression that there is no multiplayer community, when in fact a strong core group exists, they just don't post on MFO. And things will get better, the European release is just around the corner, which will give a strong boost. Just a few months away is the expansion which will revitalize the community even further. I have confidence that the Kohan community will attain enough critical mass to persist for awhile because the game is just that good. A good example of a game that truly tanked was Submarine Titans. You were often hard pressed to find a game at any time. This game was too similar to previous RTS's to pull people away from the old standbys. Now, as far as I can tell, Subtitans is deader than dead, even the news updates on the main sites are many months old.
I'd personally like to thank TimeGate Studios and Lokigames for (1) writing a great, original RTS game and (2) porting it to Linux. I really like being able to play games with some of my friends who still use Windows. I don't really care who is using what OpSys as long as we can all play games together.
I got to beta the game - I've run it on a k62-350 with a voodoo3, a TBird with a Geforce and a Thinkpad with a neomagic video card and on all 3 platforms it ran great, installed without a hitch and was just an all-around ball.
If yer a Linux user looking for an RTS check out Kohan - its great.
Note that I only use the aforementoined voodoo3 as a 2d card with excellent color and picture quality and I havent tried to install the 3d support as it's not required.
Thanks again to Loki and TimeGate.
The Kohan will return to their former glory!
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Make sure it's announced on LinuxGames and anywhere else pertinent so that everyone knows about it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Kohan is a very good game
Kohan is considered a strong game among the RTS (real time strategy) gaming crowd, but it has not attained the popularity of Starcraft or Age of Kings. This is due in part because of having a new and inexperienced publisher, Strategy First. The publisher never marketed Kohan heavily. Strategy First was the publishing company responsible for the WWII online debacle - they don't have the best track record as a publisher. Members of the online gaming community will be very familiar with this.
Also, Kohan is lacking in the graphics department when compared to their peers. It doesn't look any better than Age of Kings or Starcraft. Some very good 3d RTS games are just around the corner, including Warcraft III, Age of Mythology and Empire Earth. Kohan is a day late and a dollar short in a department that is really a must among the people who really matter - the people in the middle of the curve who buy a lot of games and are not hardcore players.
For the hardcore player Kohan is one of the most unique and best RTS games ever. It is not a clone of more popular RTS games at all. The economic model is unique in a good way. Most other games have over simplied economic models (a good example being starcraft) or an economic model that requires too much micromanagement (a good example being Age of Empires series). The kohan model requires no micromanagement and is complex enough to be very rewarding. The military model adds in aspects of moral and costs of transportation. Slain troops are automatically replaced. This feature alone pushes the economic model to a class above all others. In stead of a static buy stuff/earn stuff model, there is a flow. Costs are higher than income, or costs are lower than income. In my opinion that puts a Kohan feature at the front of the future of RTS gaming.
Unfortunately, Kohan never took off on the windows platform. It deservedly earned rave reviews. It tanked among the online community and the typical community. It was marketed poorly and the graphics technology are below par for it's time. On mrfixitonline, soon to be rtscentral, a place for the most hardcore RTS gamers, our Kohan forums are near dead while after almost 2 years our Age of Kings forum is still rocking solid.
Ok, I'm going to give a shameless plug: I've been volunteering time for an RTS (real time strategy) gaming network for over a year now. mrfixitonline has really taken off. We do neat things like run tournaments and online gaming events, RTS news, expert strategies and forums. We don't make any money doing this. (The site loses a ton), but it is incredible fun.
It is nice to see Kohan make it to Linux. I am a gamer. I also love Linux. I have never played a Loki game in my life. I will buy Kohan when it comes out for Linux. It is as simple as that. If Loki games keeps coming out with strong titles and gaming hardware like soundcards and graphics cards are better supported, people like me will become converts. Kohan is a very strong RTS game. If any of you guys are interested in Kohan, drop by kohan.rtscentral.com and check out what we have to offer for the game. I hate to have to say this, but while still viewable, the Kohan site doesn't display properly under Moz. Grrr.....
How completely stupid, but funny.
They misunderestimated me. -- George W. Bush
Civ is not an RTS game.
While it posesses all of the features of the standard RTS, they're blended in a combination that works very well.
Here are the primary features of the game that I enjoy:
The economic micromanagement aspect that one normally sees (peons harvesting resources) is almost entirely absent, so economic growth is based mainly on the decisions you make, not how well you manipulate virtual slaves to hunt deer.
Units must be supplied with resources in addition to being purchased. Having to support your existing armies is a feature that hasn't really been tried in this genre (yes I know you have to make houses in AOE, but the cost is only noticeable in the beginning). The result is an interesting game dynamic, in that wiping out an army is only effective if you follow it up with some capturing of towns. Give him some time and the troops will be rebuilt and you will have gained little.
Experience for troops is excellent, careful management of your armies lets them effectively go up in level, getting somewhat more powerful(but not overmuch). This rewards the careful planner as opposed to the sloppy turbo-economy player who cranks out troops and lets them die.
Tactics are key, unit companies keep their artillery and leaders in the back (archers/mages and captain), so doing an end run around the front line and hitting the rear is absolutely crippling. It really is a game of how you use your troops, not what troops you buy.
Teamwork is heavily emphasized in that there are few obstacles to trading money or cities back and forth. Also, you can immediately see what your allies are doing (unlike AOK which requires tech research to expose the allied minimap). The result is that there is far more cooperation in the average Kohan game, perfectly accentuating the benefits of multiplayer gaming. Other RTS's often end up being a series of parallel 1v1 matchups on the same board.
The action is very quick. You are generally fighting something or someone within 5 minutes of the start, so there's no 15 minute SimCity game.
The network code works fairly well, disconnected players remember the IP address they were at and try to reconnect. A status indicator lets the whole game know if the player is gone, or attempting a reconnect.
I would recommend this game to any serious strategy gamer without hesitation.
All in all,
England, a colony of America.
and whats this XFree86 thing that people have been going on about recently.
You wont hear me disagree with you on Linux being a more stable and secure OS (*cough*Code Red*cough*)
Thing is, Linux is still really in it's infancy as a gaming platform. And while I really wish that I could dump Windows for good, so long as the games that I play only work in Windows, it'll have a place on my system.
So here's to Loki porting more and more gameS, and hopefully there will be a time when Linux games release along with the Win32 versions. Then I can stick to Linux partitions.
Myth 2 Soulblighter wasn't a first person shooter
A very large portion of the /. community is big into Linux but runs Windows some because it's got the games. Anything that might allow us to run less Windows yet still get the games we want is a Good Thing(tm) and you'd better believe it's gonna get posted.
Linux users are a seriously untapped segment of the gaming market, as Mac users used to be. Loki is filling an important niche and should be hailed (and supported monetarily) for it.
Th1$ w4$ me4nt t0 be m0der4ted to "-1 REDUNNDaNT", n0t -1 0fft0pic. G0 rele4rn h0w t0 m0der4te fr0m K0manderT.A.R.C.0. He i$ the pr0 y0u see. 0k. 0k. N0w 1 4m g01ng t0 sleep 0ff th1$ h4ng0ver. h1c 1 4m drun\k d4m1itt d4m 1 4m drunk m4n why p0st wh1le drunk he11 hel1
No, this is. :-)
Tim
Heroes 3, SMAC, Sim City 3k, Civ CTP, Mind Rover, Railroad Tycoon 2, Myth2, and Erics Ultimate solitare. 9 out of their 18 games announced are non shooters. Three of those shooters aren't first person. Yup, that's some variety
Go here.
Enjoy!
I've been messing around with the demo since yesterday, and it is pretty cool if you like that type of game. The game runs very smoothly (as do all of the Loki games I have tried)
-Randy
I want this game... until now I've been a Westwood whipping boy playing Tiberian Sun and Red Alert (not the lack of anything written after the year 2000). I realize that making games costs money. But $50 USD?? By the time that gets shipped to me, duty, GST and the good honest reaming that the the good ol canadian beaver will get from good ol uncle sam at the banks. This game will cost me somewhere in the area of $90 CDN. I can run down to Business Depot and buy a win32 version for much less including gas. This frustrates the hell out of me because there is no way the wife of this poor sap will let him live if she see's this on next months VISA statement. :(
- Jimbob
Try running your X server in 16 bit mode, that seems to speed up the mouse a lot. When I first started the demo in 24bpp, the mouse was far too choppy to be usable. But with 16bpp I didn't even need to use the X11 mouse to get acceptable speed. I've got an old S3 Virge/VX graphics card, so if I can run the demo, then just about anyone should.
Hopefully one of these days someone will create a hardware color mouse cursor extension for XFree86, so games like this can have hardware color cursors that are perfectly smooth just like the hardware B&W cursors.
Yes, but on the other hand, China doesn't have a DMCA - or an EMAD for that matter.
Don't forget than Mindrover is out. I havent lost so much productive time since I played Nethack for the first time years ago...
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
For example, the Civilisation series of games placed Capitalism at the top of the tree of economic systems, and Democracy at the top of the tree of political systems. The aim of the game was to turn your civilisation into another America, replete with global ambitions and terrible ethics (to kill or be killed).
Quite apart from the terrible ethics displayed (here is is ok to commit wholescale genocide, and cackle as your democratic, Imperial armies crush and annihilate the enemies of the state), there are big problems with the value judgements propounded. Why should capitalism be #1 economic system? Why not communism? If we develop intelligent AI's, then the issue that has meant communism never worked in the past (the planner was crap all planned economies to date) will not be an issue. Why don RTS games show some variety of political systems and consequences, instead of putting the American system on an undeserved pedestal?
I would like to see RTS games be more morally responsible, and allow for a more widespread collection of political idealogies and econmic systems, with no value judgements placed on each.
The aim of the games should be multiculturalism and postmodern tolerance, not outright destruction. How can our children be expected to understand and tolerate Japanese, Russians and Chinese when at night they plot to destroy them and commit mass murder?
OK, that's a bit extreme in argument, but I still think my point holds. We must allow for a more harmonious and interesting and educative style of RTS.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
tribes2 runs under X, and its not to slow. Get some hardware acceleration, otherwise yes, it would be too slow.
X-Windows is X11. Same thing. Forgett it :):)
Ever noticed how games for Linux are generally for the more intelligent of the gamer species? Perhaps Linux users truly are a bit more intelligent than the average bear.
Now, if only Relic could be convinced to produce a Linux version of Homeworld 2.
it's availble through loki_demos too.. so you don't tax one mirror too hard.
What is X-Windows?? Is it compatible with X11??
So how long until VA Linux tries to either buy or outdo this site?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Quake, CrystalSpace, WorldForge, WorldFactory, and Nevrax just to name a couple off the top of my head.
All of this is important (Not all developers can design commercial game quality sound tracks or textures...) so all endeavors are welcome.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
No, really. I liked it.
I am glad the folks at Loki have got started to port Real Time Strategy Games though this one is not my favorite. RTSG is definitely my favorite type of games except RPG. From time to time I have played RTSGs such as War Battle II, Red Alert, Myth, Ace of Empires, and resently Empire(The Battle for Dune). Just hope one day I can play such great RTSGs on Linux, so keep working hard Loki!
This is gonna sound like spam, but i'll say it anyway.
If you're interested in developing games for Linux, alot of the work may already be done for you. I recently started up a project called System 26 a little over a week ago, that aims to provide Linux developers (and Win32 developers, for that matter) with a resource they can visit, and grab all the raw materials they need to build basically anything. By "raw materials", I mean things like images, icons, other graphics, music, sound samples, things like that. They're organized into kits that developers can freely download and incorporate into their apps. In exchange for doing so, we even offer them the ability to showcase their work via our page, to encourage others to do the same.. In essence, we provide the lumber, the developers build the house.
We're trying to build the project's popularity by word of mouth -- I don't believe in banner advertising, and there really is no money to be made by running such a project.. I just thought it would be cool to set up a nexus where artists and coders could exchange their work and loosely collaborate on building high-quality apps and games.
If you're interested, especially if you're going to be building games for Linux, feel free to swing by and check us out. We'll see you there.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
But if you want to make a post extolling the virtues of fprintf, you'll then be SOL.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
I don't know many geeks who play baseball Flight simulator might be cool, or a good RPG
X-Windows is what the non-zealots call it.
Why is Slashdot announcing yet-another-RTS, especially if the editor hasn't even "heard much about this game"? Does all Linux eye-candy that "might be worth a download" warrant a front-page story?
It has some nice new concepts which I haven't seen in RTS games so far. There are unit ZOCs (Zones of Control), and Zones of Supply. The supply concept seems to work quite nicely; units automatically regenerate when in supply zone. This makes defense somewhat easier. However, the supply zone disappears when the city is attacked, so it also makes a kind of siege possible.
The game is based on building cities. The cities automatically have a number of militia units, which is nice. The units can have four formations, each having different combat and movement penalty. That's very nice. However, some common aspects are missing, such as different ground elevations, etc.
Some of the fantasy elements such as "the leaders are immortals" feel rather silly.
The mouse was very sluggish on my screen, but I got it changed to hardware cursor with flags "-x -f".
The demo seems to have a multiplay, but it was empty of players. Actually, there was some player, but he was using a Korean version of the game, which was incompatible with mine. I'm not sure if the multiplay worked properly, because I tried to host a game, but when I opened a second Kohan window, my hosted game wasn't in the list.
The user interface is nice, but somewhat slow, especially the cursor. Even with hardware cursor, it occasionally uses software cursor, which is awful. It would also be nice to have more keyboard shortcuts to various unit functions, for example when you want to build an outpost with an engineer company.
Also, it would be nice to have a bit better UI documentation for the demo. There were many things which I didn't fully understand, such as the meaning of the various resources and trading. Units obviously require certain resources, but it doesn't seem to bother the units if the resources go negative. Well, I guess that it just means that you can't sell those negative resources, and thus can't get money, but how that works is not very clear.
It's great to see another strategy game for linux. I only
hope that the developers can market the game themselves
or through someone like loki. If the game is enjoyable, I for
one don't mind voting for more like it with my dollars.
"First person shooter" games are nice but some of us find it
hard to get excited about Q4 (aka oh-god-yet-another-fps)
and that the whole world doesn't revolve around "Frames per
second" ratings. The game developers might want to keep that
in mind. There still is a gaming market for thinking-gamers.
Hi Jones,
True, GPL and "Open Source" are not synonymous. I'm still tossing around which license I want to settle on (keep in mind, the page, and the components have only been up for a week or so) and haven't quite comitted to going with the GPL at this point -- I thought I would, at the time the very first news article was written. Infact, I thought it was inevitable, because anything less than saying "It's GPL" would potentially scare off developers.
What will more than likely happen is that future components will be released under a "GPL-Compatible" license. Literally, a simple duplicate of the GPL that refers to multimedia in the same ways and manners that it refers to sourcecode. Bottom line, stay tuned. Good catch, by the way -- I missed that one.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
helping
Scooby dooby doo!
vad fan säger du?!