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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.
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..
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.....
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