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Loki Files For Chapter 11 Protection
yamla writes: "Loki is dead!" and points to a Linux Review article which says the gaming company has filed for protection from creditors under bankruptcy laws. Yamla continues: "Read about it here. This is terrible news! I have paid for some of their games and they were always at least as good as the Windows versions. I hope Loki can pull out of bankruptcy and keep going but if not, it will be our loss." There is also a story at LinuxToday (pointed out by reader Beee) which draws from the Linux Review report. Meanwhile, the Loki site appears business-as-usual. Filing for bankruptcy protection is not the same as being "out of business," but it's uncomfortably close.
It just occurred to me that they may just be filing Chapter 11 to get people to buy more games from them. Hell, it worked on me, I just bought two games from them.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
When I installed the T2 server for Linux, for example, it had exactly what you're talking about.
Unpacked, ran the install script, it popped up a nice GTK dialog box that walked me through the install.
As for 3D stuff: Yes, DRI currently is a pain for a new user. I suspect that most prepackaged kernels will include agpgart and the various DRM modules, and setup on the X side isn't that hard; I know Debian's deXter does DRI setup automagickally.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
You know, in this country there are single mothers who are selling themselves on the street in order to pay for food to feed their kids. And you're worried about a few out-of-work California video game programmers?
I realize you spend 24 hours a day logged into Slashdot and thus have very little knowledge of the world outside, but please, try to maintain some sense of perspective.
The fry's in Fountain Valley and Woodland Hills stocked quite a few of Loki's games. They were slow in getting them though.
I believe Loki is really important for the future of Linux, and supporting it means supporting all Linux. It's just that buying game packages might not be the most efficient way to support it. It is also a company, and I would feel quite uneasy making donations to a company. However, buying stock would be a great way to "donate", while still getting at least something back. If not any actual dividend for years if ever, at least a feeling of owning something useful. ;-)
However, Loki's company FAQ page says:
Perhaps Nokia might want to go for rescue, if they're really serious about the MediaTerminal. If Loki goes down, Nokia loses all the best games for the MT. That solution might create some problems though, if Nokia at some point wants Loki to give MT a priority over the general Linux platform. That would be very harmful to everyone, including MT on longer run. Thus, if Loki would get support from Nokia, they should also make sure that they keep their independency.
The world economy is collapsing.
What do you expect? Capitalism servers the stock market. Once 'reality-based' && 'need-based' manufacturing of *stuff* took the backseat to 'brand managment' and 'intellectual property' pyramid scheme.
Im not surprised at all.
Start attending anti-capitalist protests - these morons are gonna strip the planet and leave the rest of us to pick up the pcs.
Perhaps its time to change the business model. Maybe they should focus on becoming a service for game manufacturers that ports the games for a fee but doesn't sell them?
Another thought would be to get away from the damn 1st person shooters. I'm sick of them. Its getting old. Perhaps they could get in with a windows gaming company before a game is released (wishful thinking..) and simultaneously release.
Another thought would be to release bare bones versions with a CD only and a PDF of the manual for a lower price. Kohan is bloody expensive for me to buy in Canada (so I'm not going to purchase it from Loki). Maybe they should throw a wad of cash that they don't have into marketing with large chains. Up here Business Depot carries Linux of various flavours.. maybe they could get in there.
What it comes down to is this is/will be a big kick to the crotch of linux gaming. :(
- Jimbob
Loki has always done a wonderful job in porting games to Linux. While, of course, the actual games had to be proprietary, they made a number of contributions to the Linux community, including the SDK kit.
I don't know how to say this politely, so I will sa it bluntly: The average game player is the ultimate addict of the consumer culture. They want someone else to hand them entertainment on a silver platter. I can see why many gamers do not have the willingness nor patience to learn how to use Linux as a desktop operating system.
Which is a shame, because a lot of those same gamers become the corporate IT department, and end up responding to the word "Linux" with great hostility.
Anyway, enough of my rant. I hope a miracle happens and Loki is able to pull out of this one. I will make sure to purchase every Loki game I can see at Fry's later on this week.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Well, there are several successful (read: still in business) Mac porting houses. They succeed, mostly, by only porting the most popular of games, and do much better when those games don't also use Direct X. Macsoft is one of the most popular, but there are a few others.
As I mention in a post above, I was sorry to see Loki make no attempt to move to the Mac OS X market; I would've thought that once the work of porting to Linux was done, that they could increase their (paying) consumer base by following through with a port to OS X--although there are technical differences, it would still be easier than the original port. And, as I say, there are a few companies that have succeeded porting Mac titles.
--
$tar -xvf
You're on drugs?
Q3A 4 linux was out over a Year ago... and runs well with all cards which have 3d accel support under linux, either through the drivers that come with q3a, or those for XFree 3.3x, or DRI in XFree4, or suplied by hardware company...
uhh and btw, Q3A was never PORTED by LOKI...
ID developed Q3A under linux 'cause it's more stable that way; there was an interview in a german mag where one of the developers said 'if it crashes under linux, we can be sure OUR code f***ed up; under Win, almost anything including next office's coffee maker could be the reason'
Loki just did the selling of the linux version...
bye
[L]
A reminder for us all to look around in our local HW shop "Are there any Linuxware in this joint" before putting our money there. Recently I discovered that Fry's didn't have Lokiware on their shelves. Result: I'm not gonna put down one more penny in that stinkin mess of a shithole they call a store. And that used to be quite some...
Do you have anything to back that statement up? If its just your own experience, my own experience (as part of the Linux Gamers League has been that a low of the dual booting gamer folk who would (unforunatety) happily pirate a Windows game *buy* every title from Loki they can, because they know if they don't, Loki wouldn't exist and their favourite platform would die. A ;lot of new Linux users are the former Windows poer users / LAN party types, and want an extremely customizable environment to do their work in and play Tribes 2 and Urban Terror in it. The Windows Warez Weenie community doesn't care much abotu ethics, whereas the Linux community does, and Linuxgamers generally end up being more like your typical young Linux user than your average Windows Pirate gamer type.
Looking over Soldier of Fortune, Quake 3, Descent 3, Myth II, Quake II, Unreal TYournament, Kingpin, and Tribes 2 (all gakmes wghich run on Linux) on my own shelf, compared to System Shock 22 (which runs under some versions of Windows) I'd happily say that I'm generally buying more Linux games than Windows games too.
Rather, I'd say the chicken and egg problem with stores carrying Loki games is a big problem for Loki. People won't buy games till they can get them from a store, stores won't stock games until they know people will buy them. A lot of gamers are below 18 and don't have credit cards. Solution:
1. Buy them from a gaming store that takes money orders (most do)
2. Arrange with your local LUG for monthly purchases of hear from a Linux company to be sold after meeting. My local Lug, Linux Users or Victoria, has 1200 members and get a stack of goods from Everything Linux sold to us at the end of each meeting (the LUG gets a portion of the proceeds).
Hpowever, I'm not giving up on Loki yet and you shouldn't either. next meeting there will be a copy of Rune (a bloody awesome Tombraider style viking adventure game) waiting on the Everything Linux stable for me, and me with $AU90 to pay for it.
Listen! Loki is only $400,000 in debt. That's not that much. "Will someone with deep pockets save Loki?" No. But we can! They may have gone chapter 11 but the web site is still taking sales.
I don't know what their overhead is but let's assume they make $20 on each sale. That means they only need to sell 20,000 games to be back at ground zero. That's a small percentage of the slashdot population! I know many of us are starving college students and trolls but most of us are well-to-do IT people making real money!
Why stick out necks out to save Loki? I'll tell you why. They have not only made games on linux a reality, but they have made the ability to have games on linux a reality. They made SDL one of the best media layers for any platform. They made OpenAL, the only cross architecture 3D sound library. They pushed the XFree and Mesa developers giving them the need and the user base to make OpenGL on Linux stop being "ok" and start to "kick ass". If it were not for Loki, there would be no Maya for Linux, there would be no glx in XFree86, there would be no SDL. If they go we will lose one of the biggest forces pushing the linux desktop's quality. All of you who remember what 3D, 2D and sound were like on Linux 4 years ago - you KNOW how far we have come, and we owe much of it to Loki.
I know money is tight (it's always tight), but we have an opportunity to save one of the coolest Linux companies around. Like games? Buy some right now, while we still can. Don't like games? Make a 'donation' to Loki to say thanks for all their hard work. Poor? Get one of the older 'on sale' games. Company just IPO'ed? Get two of each and give them to your friends. There are SO many of us!! Sure, Linux companies are dropping like flys but none fill the niche that will be left empty once Loki is gone.
>stronger video editing offerings Who the fuck do you think started SDL and SMPEG?
Yeah mod me down for flame, but he's got a good ppoint mr dumbass moderator. Withoutloki SDL and SMPEG wouldnt be arround - which would just be bad. We also wouldnt have that loki book - linux games prorgamming, which will hopfully start some more opensource projects.
you're wrong. There *is* an easy to find Warez scene for Loki games. Believe me.
I would say that the # of titles "stolen" are far more than those sold.
"Any fool could buy the Windows SKU and "upgrade" it to the Windows one- a situation that explains the story with Doom III and official Linux versions..."
That should read:
"Any fool could buy the Windows SKU and "upgrade" it to the Linux one- a situation that explains the story with Doom III and official Linux versions..."
I need to not post before having my morning caffene IV...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Er ... I don't even play games. Probably the majority of Slashdot readers don't play games. Why the hell should we buy them?
I suppose we could have also saved pets.com if every Slashdot reader had bought just one 50-pound sack of dog food.
Kohan is scheduled to be out 08/15/2001 and can be ordered from the website for about US$50. How much are the games that you normally buy?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
That's a load of crap. I've purchased every game that Loki has released and they are consistently more stable, faster and better maintained then their Windows counterparts. Loki has even complained on their newsgroups on several occasions that they found bugs that they *couldn't fix* because that bug wasn't going to get fixed on the windows side (they would have broken compatibility with the windows version if they had fixed it).
I won't disagree that Loki might have bit off more than they could chew, but they sure as hell did a damn fine job in porting those games.
This issue is distinct from that of the performance of the 3D; when I got it to work, 3D in Linux was at least as good as that in Windows. But getting it to work was the issue.
I learned my lesson that way: the Linux box is great for *serving* for multi-player games, but as a client it was too big a pain in the ass. Much easier to just buy the game for my Windows box. It's not Loki's fault - nor anyone else's, really - that this is the case, but it's just the reality of the situation. I know that this isn't everyone's experience, but it has been the experience of friends of mine. The variety of distributions and the spottiness and inconsistancy over hardware support over different libs and kernel versions and X versions is simply too daunting a task for an OS that is already a small minority.
At least on this post, timothy acknowledges that filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy is NOT liquidation, but he qualifies his statement by saying that Ch11 is "dangerously close" to the business failing. Countless times on replies to slashdot articles I've seen people talk about how a company is "dead", "through", "finished" because they go into Chapter 11. This simply isn't the case at all--Chapter 11 gives them extra time for restructuring to pay off their creditors. Yes, it does mean that they're having trouble paying their creditors, but it does NOT in ANY WAY mean that they're liquidating. People should do their homework.
This is not the end of Loki yet. Their president issued a statement that they will be continuing operations and putting out new titles, while trying to pay off their debt. I don't know if they'll pull off or not, but best of luck to them.
Too bad, they just released the new Demo of Kohan. And it looks nice! Very nice! For more information go here. But, I guess they might pull of a chapter 11. But it wont be the same company after that. Maybe many things will have to go ... Many things as in free things ...
I always liked to look at Loki as the poster child for proprietary Linux software development. I told people who doubted that Linux could have paid software to look at Loki, and how it sold ports of popular games. I was very, very close to getting Call to Power for Linux. Unfortunately, I found out that Call to Power II was already out for Windows, and I just had to get the newer version. I wish I would've gotten the older Linux version, I've heard it's stable and many of the playing features are nicer than the Windows version of CTP I. CTP II has crashed on me a few times and I needed a patch and mod pack to make it worth playing. It's a mistake I don't feel like spending another $30 to correct.
This Kohad game looks very promising though. I probably won't get it right away, but if Loki is around for another 6 months I'd definately consider it for my next game purchase (I never buy FPS, I prefer strategy and RTS, and Kohad looks like a perfect balance between the two).
I wonder how much per game Loki has to pay in royalties, that has to kill the bottom line.
Funny, before Linux I never really felt company loyalty. I'm no fanatic, but I like seeing companies that compete with Microsoft with good products prosper (Red Hat, Mandrake, Progeny, Loki, etc). I'm not even that partial to Linux, I just like *nix better, and I would definately consider using a *BSD for my next play computer or test server.
Oh, and to those that whine about Loki games being released long after the Windows version, look at Tribes 2. It was out 2 weeks or so after the Windows version. Too bad retailers are actually taking a loss to get the foot traffic in their stores to sell the Windows version.
Perhaps the overall Linux desktop audience needs to grow a bit to include people who feel more comfortable plunking down chunks of money for good software. I myself haven't even bought a distribution yet after two years, but I haven't quite found the perfect distro for me yet after trying a few.
In short, if you're looking to kill some time, go buy a Loki game and support a company who's given back a fair share both in free software (the SDK looks cool) and excellent software (I've heard little but rave reviews).
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Don't port to linux. Don't port to mac, either.
Write a decent compatibility library, or tweak SDL for your own uses. Port to that. It would be a bit more work to try to cover up all the loose places where the compatibility library doesn't fit that os well, but you'd be able to simulteneously release for linux, mac, mac os x, and linuxppc, and maybe later on put together a SUPER HAPPY FISH BONUS PACK! with playstation2 versions of like four of the games you just ported to linux/mac.
If you're going to bother with the herculean task of porting spaghetti code (which most games are) to a different operating system, take the extra time to work in a sane portability architecture. In doing so you'll probably at least double your possible target audience with not *that* much work.
That being said, you probably could make more money off the mac users. Mac users probably aren't as heavy into gaming, true, but mac users are a captive audience. Unlike (((the majority of!))) linux users, mac users do'nt have the option of booting into windows. Now that bungie is dead, they have only what can be ported or emulated, and because there have been almost no new mac ports to speak of in nearly forever they are mostly starved for decent games and will probably run anything even mediocre that runs on their computers.
What? Bitter because Loki seems to be gone, and dynamix seems to be gone, and i will probably never get that mac os x version of Tribes 2 i've been wanting so badly? Who, me?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I was somewhat disturbed to see this today, as I just ordered two games this morning (Railroad Tycoon II and SimCity 3000).
I dunno, I guess that if you're worried about the company, you may as well buy something before they go under.
I suppose we could have also saved pets.com if every Slashdot reader had bought just one 50-pound sack of dog food
I bought a 50 pound bag of dog food, and I tell you what it sucked ass. I mean it didn't even taste like real dog, more like fake filler substance and beef. I had to make meatloaf out of it and smoother it ketchup to just get it down.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Most of these target people probably... did not play games as a primary occupation.
<p>
Naturally... Everyone knows that professional video game players only use the Windows platform.
Keeping
Hear hear!!!!!! ^^ I wouldn't necessarily say that $200,000 automatically buys a cheesy game, but this would be a step in the right direction.
Fix the economics first, then the game market will do much better.
I agree about the console market too. Console games are less expensive to build and more reliable, therefore more profitable.
The game industry needs to stop this "one more $10 million engine and we'll finally be like Hollywood" business model and start concentrating on gameplay.
Just my $0.02- You have quoted someone else without his permission (shame shame)
- I hardly think that an employee who left seven months ago is in a position to judge who is still employed.
I have it on solid authority (namely, personal experience) that the count is significantly higher (5 technical, 2 artistic, and at least 4 administrative).Shame on you for kicking a puppy only trying to serve the community while it's down.
well, i'd be more than happy to go all the way to the store to buy them. except none of the stores will sell linux game titles. i really think that retail stores' refusal to stock linux games has much more to do with loki's failure than piracy. but i suppose that piracy hurts a lot more when you don't have the sales to make up for it.
Ouch, that's some kind of generalization!
No it's not. I'd say it's a pretty accurate assessment of the open source community as a whole.
To start, name one popular piece of software for Linux that can't be had for free. Okay, now from that list name one whose market is to individuals rather than to businesses.
And before you spout off about how open source alternatives are always better, please explain why Applixware, Wordperfect, Abiword, and Staroffice were totally ignored for the last 5 years when there was no viable open source word processing application. Then explain why when SUN relicensed Staroffice under the GPL (i.e. made it free for download without restrictions) it suddenly shot up in popularity.
Frankly, one major reason why people use Linux is the fact that it is free. If some company sold a technically superior UNIX-like operating system for $100, source code included, and licensed it with the same terms as the GPL with the exception that any core changes to the OS could only be distributed as patches (which forces one to always pay for a copy of the OS), would it have anywhere near the popularity as Linux today?
One company is doing that right now. Try to guess which one.
I'm surprised usually the accountant is the last employee.
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Speak of the Devil, just caught this on Linuxgames:
Loki Software President Scott Draeker sent in the following regarding the bankruptcy report:
People should not confuse this with a Chapter 7 liquidation, where you close the doors and sell off the assets. That is not what we have done.
We filed a Chapter 11 reorganization. This will allows us to deal with our creditors fairly and equitably and at the same time continue to operate the company. We are still shipping products and porting new games and expect to be doing so for a long, long time.
That isn't true at all. There are many individuals, companies, manufacturers, schools, and foriegn governments to whom the low cost nature of free software is a huge incentive.
I use Linux mostly for idealogical and technical reasons, but it certainly doesn't hurt that it saves me a few bucks I can spend on hardware.
Given the cost for W2K server + client licenses, the cost makes a huge difference for companies running webserver farms. In many cases not as important as the technical issues, but important none the less.
TiVo could have probably used WinCE, VxWorks, or QNX on the TiVo. But I am sure the $0/unit software licensing costs of Linux makes a huge difference to their bottom line.
Schools, especially outside the US, are deploying Linux left and right, because especially on low cost hardware, the cost of windows is a big chunk of system price.
So, yes, when we speak of free software, we mean freedom, but many people use Linux because that includes the freedom to copy it without paying licensing fees.
I'm buying more games. I already have seven of them, which I enjoy very much.
If they are accepting pre-orders for Kohan, I'm plunking my CC# in and doing it. I'll have to buy their book now, which I wasn't planning on doing. I may even buy another copy of CivCTP, because I lost the CD I bought first.
I'll do this this despite living in Canada, where I'll end up paying a shitload of taxes across the border.
Somebody mentioned PayPal, which I was also thinking about when I read the headline. If that happens, I will donate and I'm sure others would, too. Isn't the whole point of the community helping each other out?
If they immediately die out and I don't receive anything, no big deal. I'm trying anyway. I don't have Windows and I'm not going to start using it just to play games. If I can't get games for Linux, I won't get games at all...
Not to make a bad joke, but I wonder if there should be a spinoff website called fuckedlinuxcompany.com
One comment that seems to have come up a couple of times is that many linux users use their machines for work (whether it's "recreational work" [e.g. kernel hacking] or otherwise) rather than play, and that they have a playstation/playstation2/N64/etc. console for pure games...
I wonder if Loki's in a position to concentrate on working with Sony to build a PS2 emulator for Linux...that would instantly make a fair number of top-notch games available for Linux. I know I'd actually buy such a beast if it was available for me...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Think about it. Dynamix close their doors. Tribes2 is doing ok for Loki, but now without Dynamix about to pay guaranteed money for patches and upgrades, they don't have the money to stay with their current financial setup.
I'm guessing this is what some of the companies that Loki have ported games for were obligated to, assuming here that the patches were GAME fixes and not PORTING fixes. I'd expect porting issues to be the responsibility of Loki, and game design changes to be the company that wrote it in the first places problem. I may be wrong, but it seems rather likely to me.
Plus, there is no maintenance money for Quake3Arena now that ID Software have taken over the support for the Linux port themselves (happened a while back). This probably makes things a little hairy, and now that Dynamix have gone down the tubes, it sounds like they have just been pushed over the edge, and need a little security, hence the Chapter 11 reorganisation.
Well, I'm off to buy more Linux games from Loki, because while they are still around, I'm still going to support them. And this time I'm buying them direct from Loki. None of these places in the middle that absorb some of the cost themselves. Every little bit helps.
PS: Those that suggested cutting down on manuals and stuff, and putting PDF manuals on disk, well thats what they did with Tribes2. You get the CD in a plastic DVD-style case (the semi-decent ones), an 8 page (4 x A5 sheets of paper with double sided black and white print, stapled down the center) guide that tells you your Tribes2 Serial Number, the minimum system requirements, a quick "Getting started" install guide, how to register online with the Tribes2 system, tech support info, customer service info, a quick guide to the in-game voice menu keys, and a keyboard layout map of all the keys in the game. Everything else is in the PDF. I've yet to even open that PDF file though. *grin*
I hate to piss anyone off here but game performance on Linux really sucks. I waited for almost a year and a half just to have decent opengl support on my system. The libraries on all the different Linux systems are incompatible eg. Glibc 2.1, 2.2 2.3. I believe only nvidia has true opengl support but its a pain to setup and you need to purchase an expensive Linux distro that costs as much as the game to upgrade if you can't get xf864 with dri support going.
In other words Linux is a nightmare in dealing with gaming and constant compatible game libraries.
I myself refuse to pay twice for quake3. I bought the windows version when it came out expecting a downloadable Linux version but ID wants me to pay for the product again for Linux. ??
I prefer to buy the windows versions because they are faster and they work right out of the box. Until Xp comes out and ms force's me to rent my os, I will not change. The game developers know this so they only develop the games for windows. They assume myself and cmd-Taco will buy the windows versions and they are right. Sorry guys but Linux needs to get its act together in decent graphics and library support. I am quite surprised it took years just to get graphics to work in kernel via a framebuffer. Many Unix legalists who think graphics cards are for only printing text in a terminal need to wake up and realize that framebuffers are ok. How is kernel level graphics different then kernel level I/O in terms of stability?
Anyway this is the real problem why Loki is losing money. The vast majority of Linux users also use windows.
http://saveie6.com/
The linux game market is simply not big enough to support a company like this and when you put in the fact that they don't get the same release dates as windows versions and the high warez rate of there games...I am surprised they lasted this long.
Loki made great ports.
Its sad to see them go out for doing such good work, damn this economic crunch!
I myself own 10 Loki games and I've enjoyed each one.
They said awhile ago that they had lots of capital secured for a situation like this, and they weren't going away soon
I just hope they stick around and pull out of this bankruptcy, I'm really looking forward to Deus Ex. I put off playing the Windows version with expectations of the Linux port.
Frankly, most people would rather have stuff free than have to pay for it. This tendency is of course magnified on Slashdot, because of the Linux Community's ideals of free software. Now does it come as a surprise to any people that a company whose only busienss was selling games to a community that would rather pirate them, than have to go all the way out to the store to buy them, would quickly go out of business? It does not to me. As much was I would like to support a company like this, i would not spend the extra money to buy quake3 for linux when I already own the PC version.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Yeah, every linux user out there that refuses to purchase these games. I have personally bought every loki game (except heretic2). I think everyone in the community needs to rally around loki and buy up as many games as they can. If loki goes out of business, we can pretty much count on high quality ports to stop. If every person who reads /. could just go buy one game, I think we could actually make a difference.
In all of Loki's games that I've played, people complained because they wanted to switch from the Windows version to the Linux one. They did not understand that Loki had to pay for rights to port the game, and actually do work to port it. Loki's only real target buyers were people who already used Linux as their primary OS. Most of these target people probably:
1. Were not used to shelling out money for games.
2. Did not play games as a primary occupation.
Before a company like Loki can succeed, I think that there needs to be:
1. A larger Linux userbase.
2. Simultaneous releases across platforms.
3. An easier way for Windows users to switch to the Linux version, than trying to return their Windows version of the game and get their money back.
Loki isn't going anywhere for the time being. Buy more games if you like Loki so much!
There was an article recently in PC Gamer or a similar rag, Where does the $50 go?, analyzing and illustrating the various things that drive the cost of a game. I was surprised at how much was required SIMPLY TO STOCK A GAME ON SHELVES at Best Buy or CompUSA; it's almost akin to paying rent for that space. Where could a company like Loki get that type of muscle?
I like to believe that we install Linux for its workhorse capabilities first, and gaming second (as compared to the Redmond OS)
Good luck to the minions of Loki
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
This is not entirely true, especially with UT. Daniel did tons of work on the UT codebase, especially the renderer. Joe rewrote a new audio subsystem, etc. Daniel's renderer work percolated back into the Win32 realm, you'll remember. It was very good, and it's no surprise he works at Epic now.
I personally fixed a few bugs in the Quake3 code-base, and I know Bernd did much more.
m.
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B
I'm glad the article noted that Chapter 11 does not mean you are going out of business. This is often confused. This merely means you are seeking protection from creditors to buy yourself time to re-organize and create a plan to pay back your debt, and become profitable.
In todays market, it's very hard to find funding for a tech business. We can all thank Dotcoms for that with their VC Funded Businesses based on Phantom products.
I personally think Loki will be able to pull through this. I just recently downloaded a bundle of Loki demos for Linux, very impressive. They all worked rather well and with little effort, the installer was a shell script with I think binaries encoded, haven't looked but it loaded a GTK based installer that automatically asked which demos I wanted, and downloaded them accordingly. I was very impressed. I hope their upper management has as much talent as their programmers. They'll surely pull through if this is the case. I think what would be a potentially successful model would be to create a Linux gaming "environment". Basically an environment that superceeds your normal distributions environment. Libraries, Programs, what ever required, then build all the games accordingly. This would help with a lot of cross-distribution incompatibilties and help promote gaming in Linux. Unfortunately Linux was not designed for gaming, and Linux does not own a large share of the desktop market (the market that plays the most games), so they face a very large challenge..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
Yes, and his BIOS came pre-loaded on his motherboard. Linux zealots practice what they preach when it's convenient and glamorous to do so. But I'm sure there's one fool out there writing his own BIOS and blowing his own ROMs.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The libraries they wrote to port the games have been open source since day one. You know, little things like SDL and OpenAL. Yea, loki wrote them. And it'd be tough for them to release the source code to games when *they don't own the source.*
Does anyone on slashdot actually know what the hell is going on anymore?
I don't know what you're talking about in respect to quake 3. I play quake 3 extensively (think 3 hours a day or more) and have 0 problems with it. I get a few less frames then Windows 9x players with the same hardware as me, but equal to Win 2000 players (p3 500, 256ram, geforce2 mx 64). And you can hardly blame quake3 being slow on loki since it was the video drivers sucking.
... the windows version has been patched to get speeds closer to linux in recent patches).
Simcity 3000 has been significantly less buggy for me then under windows. Course, I couldn't play it for more than an hour or so on windows before it crashed either. So YMMV.
Tribes 2 has been faster on Linux since day one (look back in just about any tribes forum
Descent 3 I played, but never got into so I couldn't speak for it. SOF was fantastic on Linux. HG2 sucked on every platform it was released. Myth2, HOMM3, and RR2 have all been a excellent.
Start attending anti-capitalist protests - these morons are gonna strip the planet and leave the rest of us to pick up the pcs.
Yup, I'm sure the anti-capitalist morons *are* going to do that.
Seriously -- do you have a better proposal for efficient resource allocation, or do you just prefer to bitch about whatever system is in place?
I mean that. If "brand management" isn't profitable in the long run (I'm ignoring IP -- it's a government construct, and so throws a monkey wrench into free-market ideals) then those companies which put too much stock in it will fail -- which is anything but the end of the world. If these companies are profitable, then that means they're producing a product which 3rd parties are willingly agreeing to trade for cash -- so "stuff" (or at least things that those doing the buying find to be of value) is still coming out.
There was the fun and games revolving around Civilization:Call To Power. Electronics Boutique would only stock 1 copy and when it sold, they'd have to order another at that point- no matter what the demand for it was. CompUSA and Best Buy were supposed to stock the SKU- guess what, it was a no-show.
The same story went for Quake 3- which sold some 2000 units officially (Any fool could buy the Windows SKU and "upgrade" it to the Windows one- a situation that explains the story with Doom III and official Linux versions...).
The resellers aren't going to stock things they don't see a demand for. Since they don't stock much of anything other than Windows versions, they don't see a demand for Linux titles, whether or not there is one, because they don't get people in asking for the stuff.
Since you've got this ugly vicious circle thing going on with titles versus the sales end of the channel, you're not going to get it in any other fasion other than secured downloads and mail/shipping.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
95%* of windows non-games are warez. The rest are budled with your compuer.
/do/ use linux
When was the last time you saw someone actualy buying a copy of office 2000 professional for home use?
So thats not it. I'm not going to spend my precious time rattleing off the usual reasons people
I want to play commercial games. I don hae windows. Hence I must buy loki games - simple as that.
There have been many new game ports for Mac in the last while. Sure, nowhere near as many as for the PC, but that's not entirely surprising given the relative sizes of the markets.
Also, remember that C code, while portable, will not magically always run on the Mac with SDL even if will run on PCs with SDL. Endian bugs abound, and while they are not difficult to fix, recompiling code on the Mac is (almost) never just a matter of running the compilation.
http://www.themeparks.ie
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
There are not enough users of non-Microsoft operating systems to make profitable a company dedicated only to porting high-profile games to them.
Uh, what about MacPlay? Or were you forgetting about non-Linux non-Microsoft OSs? I think the problem is the demographics of the user base, not the size.
Let's see. Everybody who feels guilty buys 3 games. That means Loki might make a little extra dough to stay around for a little longer. But what's the difference? As harsh as it may seem, Loki is a business and as such they have to make money. The chance of Joe grabbing a Linux copy of Quake 3 (except by mistake) is pretty slim. Some Quake nerds I know do like Linux but are far more proficient in tuning Windows to the way they like it.
So how long would Loki last anyway? They have proprietary code that they port with no chance of Open Sourcing. They have to make money or die. They have to make you and I WANT their products. Without demand any business fails. There are so many companies out there with completely awesome ideas and great products. Especially in the consumer market we see a lot more tension than ever before. Take netaddress.com for instance. For the longest time (YEARS!) they provided a free e-mail service to whomever wanted it. When they suddenly realise that they aren't making money they start to charge for it. What do people do? They sure as hell don't start coughing up dough for it. They run over to hotmail.com and get signed up with Microsoft. It makes me think of "bought" friends. As long as you have cash, people love you. When you're out, you're no longer any good to them. While the context is not applicable to the Loki situation, they do try to cater to a consumer market. And a very condensed one at that. There are tons of Linux users out there and most of them are using it because it is a cost effective alternative. These users live in countries where Cable Modems and Pentium 4's don't fall off of trees. Most of these people don't have the fattest 3D accellerators and CPUs available. I imagine that the average Linux box is a Pentium II something with a fairely limited amount of RAM. Not only does Loki cater to Linux geeks, but the ones with the neat Linux machines. I can't imagine that this market is that great.
I am not going to buy any copies of games that I'll never play. I have a pretty decent machine which could handle it all, but I have no interest to play games. Loki's cause is great, but if they can't make money, why should I feel bad?
Alex
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
Scott Draeker (President of Loki) sent a comment to linuxgames.com which said:
People should not confuse this with a Chapter 7 liquidation, where you close the doors and sell off the assets. That is not what we have done.
We filed a Chapter 11 reorganization. This will allows us to deal with our creditors fairly and equitably and at the same time continue to operate the company. We are still shipping products and porting new games and expect to be doing so for a long, long time.
No one has proven anything!
Considering that Loki is simply releasing games originally written by other companies, perhaps it simply too expensive to port existing games when you have to pay license fees for the right to do so.
And this isn't a "going out of business" event. This is a bad thing, yes, but Loki still has a chance to pull this off. Maybe they've just been managing their cash flow poorly, or putting their money into areas that don't directly feed revenue growth.
But should someone with deep pockets save Loki? I think we both agree that is pretty stupid. For my part, I don't really care if there are a bunch of proprietary games available for Linux. Should I be so concerned about Linux "taking over" that I'm willing to spend money on something that I would barely play, and isn't Free Software anyway, just to see that happen? Hell no.
Do we really think that millions of Windows machines out there are just waiting for Sim City 8000 to be ported to Red Hat before they become Linux desktops? Absurd. I can think of so many better reasons why people aren't switching to Linux. And the availability of non-Free games for Linux isn't one of them.
I do not have a signature
Plot: The heartwarming story small group of colorful, eccentric young programmers who take on a media sector dominated by a highy successful, overshadowing, looming, darkly controlling business conglomerate. They work hard and produce quality products but slowly go into bankruptcy due to the machinations of the competition and just as the owners are about to close up shop they're saved by a combination of a Deus Ex Machina software innovation, a sentimental old banker who grew up in the video arcades of yesteryear and hordes of loyal followers who come out of the woodwork and give them the best quarter of sales ever recorded. Walt may have liked it but I don't think CapCities/ABC/Disney would touch it.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Of course, the pundits will say that there is no profit in the Linux game market, and therefore the Chapter 11.
But wait! There is almost no profit in the PC game market PERIOD. It's is very difficult to make a profit in this business. Game development is an expensive proposition - especially when it comes to the advanced graphics and gameplay that we all expect today.
Even high-quality Windoze-centric shops have gone away - just look at Looking Glass studios for one. Gone! And they didn't do ANY linux. And they had great games, and excellent sales. And they were liquidated just last year.
The fact is that computer games like "Who wants to be a millionaire" sell bigger than all the rest, and they're cheap-as-dirt to create. Why spend $5 million for game development, when for $200,000 you can create a cheesey game that has 10x the number of sales???
Strangely, these days, the home console market is the only place where sophisticated computer games have a fair chance of being profitable. The sales volumes are significantly greater than those sales for Linux... and Windows.
I hope a miracle happens and Loki is able to pull out of this one. I will make sure to purchase every Loki game I can see at Fry's later on this week.
Why not just go to http://www.lokigames.com and order from them directly? They will probably make more from an order from the website than they do going through a retailer. Demos or movies of the games are available if you want to try out a game first.
If you are a happy customer and want them to say in business, buy something from their website! I did.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Loki didn't port QIII if I remember correctly. ID did it themselves.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
I have personally only bought 2 games from loki. I bought quake 3 and railroad tycoon2 (one of the very first they did). In that time, I have probably bought 10 times that number of windows games.
The catch 22 is that until all games come out for linux, and at the same time as windows, most people will keep dual booting. But until enough people run linux, (and buy games), but don't run windows, game companies won't have incentive to develop for linux, except as an afterthought.
Since I have a windows partition, I usually get games I see on the shelves that look cool, or ones I have heard about from a friend. When I see a /. story about loki, I go to their site, and usually see a new game they have done, but I already own it for windows.
I wish Loki the best. And I wish I could say something like " From now on, I am going to buy games from loki, if only to support gaming on Linux. " But in truth, I know that I will continue to buy the cool new games as soon as they come out, and unfortunately, that usually means I won't be buying from Loki.
Because Linux is not up to the task of being a gaming OS.
There are very few high-performance video drivers for linux, and the ones that do exist (nVidia)
are terribly picky about configuration.
I'm not going to spend days working on getting 3D working under X,
when I can reboot into wintendo and be playing in 5 minutes.
X itself is a PITA, mostly because it's being pushed to to things (like high-speed graphics)
that it was just never intended to do.
Loki made great software, but unfortunately, the OS support just isn't there.
I bought a copy of Q3A/linux and was never able to get it working because the nVidia drivers were
(and prolly still are, but I gave up long ago) crap.
Luckily, I was able to use the Q3 data files under win tho, so I didn't waste any money -
however, I have not bought (or even considered buying) any linux games since.
It's just too much of a hassle to deal with X and nVidia and all the associated crap.
I'm not going to recompile, downgrade, or otherwise mangle my kernel and/or system just to play a goddamn game of Quake, when I have wintendo a re-boot away.
The problem does not lie in Loki's games, but in the platform they're designed to run on.
In short, linux sucks for gaming (or any high-speed 3D task).
C-X C-S
I think it is important to address the questions you ask in as honest a manner as possible.
... (pause) ... from time to time.
The linux community has rallied behind causes we felt were worth supporting in the past, however cannot remember any instance in which the community has rallied behind a commercial venture before.
Nor can I, and I think the reason is simple: the Linux community has not and probably will not rally behind commercial organizations. It's generally counter to the open-source, share-information culture inherent in the Linux community.
Anyone interested in setting up a Paypal account for the purpose of helping out Loki?
Maybe, but not me, and not a lot of Linux enthusiasts. I prefer to apply my time and financial resources toward a cause that better suits my needs in the end, and gaming is not it.
Today, my strongest Linux interests are: stronger office suite offerings, stronger video editing offerings and Sorenson codec cloning/grafting/hacking -- whatever to get the damn support working under Linux.
I believe such endeavours are more beneficial to the Linux community at large, and if I'm wrong, at least such endeavours better fulfill my needs of Linux, which is the whole point.
Contribute where it matters to you most, worry about your own self interests, others will do the same, and if we share our results, we all win in big ways.
Maybe games fill that role for more Linux enthusiasts than I think. I have been known to make mistakes
Would you be willing to donate a few bucks to help keep Loki afloat?
I think you may be largely underestimating the problems that Loki faces. Maybe some donations will pull them out of their current financial crisis, but there's no indication that they would come up with a long term strategy that works both for the Linux community and fiscally.
If a company cannot work at a financial level, the battle is already lost, it's just a matter of time. Nobody wants to sink money into a black hole, even if it feels like a good cause. If you don't think it will make a difference, then what's the point?
Anyone with me?
I'm sorry, but I think anyone who follows this proposition on its face is asking to waste money. I think it only wise to "chip into" projects that can demonstrate (or at least illustrate) an endgame that makes sense - namely: a company that can sustain itself and provide value to the Linux community.
I like Loki. I like its games. I like the quality of its work. I like its contributions to the open source community. It did everything right, and I haven't bought a game. I probably would never have. It's cold. It's hard. It's probably flamebait. It's the truth.
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
Maybe one day someone else will try to do the same thing but I honestly can't see what Loki could've done to prevent their fate. They had a strong team and did the best they could with the very heterogenous platform that Linux is. Is there really no future for Linux gaming?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Now this sounds like a really good idea!
So why is it only Caldera is participating? Why not RedHat and Mandrake?
Is it just RMS getting in the way of progress?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really when you think about it, 400k of debt isn't all that bad - in constrast to the millions of dollars that the .bombs incurred. Quite a few companies have filed for chapter 11 and got out of it just fine. Far too often we equate chapter 11 with the .bombs who went a-lookin for a buyer the moment that stuff started to go sour before the executive staff bailed. This is not how Loki operated - Loki wasn't public, and the business plan overall wasn't terrible. However chapter 11 does equate an admission that there was a fundamental flaw in your business plan. From there you can either fold, or fix. I think that Loki may look into the way that they sell and distribute their products. For instance, the retail market simply isn't ready for Linux based gaming at the moment. I don't mind it as a secondary outlet - however it probably should not have been the primary focus of the business model. (just for instance) If Loki was to take that all back in-house the profit margin would go up even if they would sell the games for less (less overhead). I do hope that Loki makes a press release, stating what the problems are and how they intend to correct them. If they do that, we as customers and open source / Linux enthusiasts need to overlook the technical details and assist them. Personally I own 11 games from Loki - and I love every last one of them. They do a great job.
Here's to hoping...
This is the attitude in the Linux community that will never see it live up to its full potenetial. If you actually understood what is meant by free in this context, you'd realize that people still need to make money to survive, or they'll move on to doing something that pays them. Unfortunately, many people want the free-as-in-beer side of the community and don't care about the real idealogy behind this whole thing. I don't mind paying for software that I know I will use and appreciate. Not only does that money go to help out the wonderful software writer(s) that main this great app I can use, but it also lets the software to continue being written. This is especially true for games because, being strictly entertainment, there isn't a great *need* just to make your own in your spare time, as you might with some utility software that you use (which is how most of the Linux software gets written). Obviously it doesn't matter how many companies "fail" in Linux, because there is already this wonderful community that doesn't care what happens in the corporate world, and they'll continue using and developing Linux. But on the other hand, don't get upset that you'll be either 1) booting into another operating system to play that supercool game, or 2) waiting another 5-10 years for someone to make a decent clone of it in their spare time. Contrary to the popular belief in the "I'm in high school and won't pay for anything that's Linux because it's supposed to be free" crowd, the people writing that Linux app you love so much need to pay their bills too, and if you don't help them with your dollars, the software will never have the kind of quality-to-time ratio that it could.
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
The only thing I really want is a free replacement for Maple and Mathematica. For now I can get them at student pricing which isn't too bad, but once I graduate I may not be able to afford Mathematica. I don't really need a math program yet, but I'm studying to be a mathematician so I will probably have to use one eventually.
Anyway, I try to support Linux companies when I can. I have limited resources so I can't support them all. However, the "success" of Linux does not matter to me. I don't care about taking over the world or anything like that. However, I still try to support companies that make, maintain, package, or whatever software that I like.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
I've already bought 6 games for Linux, 5 of which are loki ports. More than that, I've bought every title I own through Microcenter. (My local Electronics Boutique doesn't carry linux games.) Microcenter annoys me by putting boxes and boxes of the latest Windows at one end of the 'Linux' aisle (no doubt a paid placement issue, trying to 'recapture' free-os users), however, the fact that they -have- a Linux aisle and that it contains more than just distributions (Corel Office, both windows emulators, the borland products, and of course the games. Also BeOS and BeOS apps, BSD stuff, etc, get put in that aisle) is good enough to keep me shopping there for my games.
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
amen. I could really go for a Mathematica replacement. FYI, Octave, an OS clone of Matlab, is available, and apparently its pretty good. But its not mathematica. Also, R, a Free version is S-plus, is now probably more popular than its predecessor. It does a lot of math, but is really a statistics package. However, it has the lisp-like (functional/interpretive) environment that Mathematica has. The similarities are so great that it probably wouldn't be too difficult to write an Mathematica interpreter that translates into Splus/R.
But.... wasn't this topic about games?
Don't confuse growing pains with utter failure, people. Loki isn't down for the count just yet!
That's the other thing I've been trying to get people to understand; the fact that Loki has filed Chapter 11 doesn't mean Linux has failed, or even that Loki has failed.
It just means that Loki's management is realistic enough to know they've got a debt problem, and optimistic enough to think they can fix it with a little breathing room to get the creditors off their neck. Or, to be more in keeping with what an economist might say, it means they recognize that Loki Entertainment Software, Inc. is worth more as a company than as a collection of assets.
Why even bother with a paypal account? Just go to their site and buy something! Businesses need increased sales, not charity. The only message that the Windows-only game developers understand is the number of boxes shipped. Have all their games? Fine. Buy a game or their book and then give it away to new users at installfests or LUG meetings.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Up here Business Depot carries Linux of various flavours.. maybe they could get in there.
No, I used to work at Staples (Buisness Depot) and they will not carry Linux games. I know, I spoke on the phone to the head software orderer in Toronto.
Staples/Business Depot has no plans to carry Linux games, in fact, you cannot even special order them. (This may have changed in the last year and a half since I worked at that god-awful place, but I doubt it.)
You know, I sat here on Slashdot and advocated buying Loki games - within sight of my desk are:
Quake 3 - Linux
Soldier of Fortune - Linux
Unreal Tournament (supported by Loki, but no direct box for this game)
Descent 3 - Linux
Heretic - Linux
I tried to pre-order the Quake 3 Linux versions, I was going to buy extra copies for my friends so that they had Q3 for Linux, and could perhaps switch to the windows binaries later. I had even planned to install Linux for them just for Quake 3.
I wrote "purchased for use with Linux" on each non-linux game I purchased.
It did not help. =(
How many of us Dual Boot (I do) for games?
Sigh, here comes the cries of "Had I known I would have bought a game..." Right.
[rant]
I know I can't write code worth crap, so I support the free software movement where I can (including buying closed-source games!).
I suppose the slashbot trolls are correct - too many people associate free as in beer.
I am afraid that this is a far bigger loss for us now. Sure, some slashbots will run out to EB world and buy a Linux game. Whoopie. Its too damn late.
Let this be a lesson to those of you out there in the software community. There are more ways to contribute than code - and those who do code need to get paid to eat. Not everything is free (as in beer) nor should it be.
[/rant]
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Its been done with a commercial company before. Slackware did it when they got the boot from walnut creek. The differance here is that slackware always made a profit and was looking for money to get them through the transistion. Let me repeat that: Slackware made profit.
Not revinu but profit. Not chapter 11 but homeless. There is a big differance here.
Some have called that differance a "sustainable buisness model."
Disclosure #1: The only "game" I have on my computer is banner.
Disclosure #2: That system run slackware.
Ascii artist &
> 1. Most has short development cycle
2 years is NOT a short dev cycle. We game programmers play the SAME game for over a year. Never mind "crunch" mode aka "hell programming" that usually lasts a few months, working 16x 7 days a week!
> 3. The developers mostly cannot have the same fun playing the game as others
I disagree.
The anology is this: Can the musician who performs the music enjoy the music just as much as the audience?
Both enjoy the music / game, but at a different level. Programmers enjoy the challenge in bulding something. Gamers enjoy the challenge in "relaxing".
i.e. That was a slick algo/hack for X.
Rest of your points are valid.
2) As another poster pointed out, linux quake3 was chiefly an id port. Loki's primary responsibility was making sure I couldn't buy an in-store copy until three months after the christmas season apparently because they felt it had to ship in a tin box.
Complaining about the situation doesn't help... buying their games can. I've bought every one of their games (except EUS), and if more are releases (like Kohan and Halls of Valhalla), I'll buy them too. And you can still order from their web site. so orders now might help a bit.
How can you compare a hardware/computer distributor to a software company? They're entirely different beasts. All of my personal dislike of Dell aside (<troll>they build shitty computers</troll>), a personal computer can easily be built for less than the average $1000 price tag Dell wants to extract from your wallets. Regardless, it's rare that any Linux install lasts very long at the receiving end of my keyboard. You think I'll trust someone else touching my machine??? <Insert control-freak explicative here>
Let's bring the conversation back to the real competition in question, software vendors. There is something to be said about supporting companies that not only support your favorite operating system, but provide positive influence to the design and gameplay of your favorite computer games.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Software benefits from the "many-eyes" approach to design. That's part of the reason why OSS projects are generally successful. Software company "A" hires software company "B" to port their code to another operating system. Not only does software company "B" act as a code auditor, it acts as positive and constructive feedback to the original game manufacturer. Software engineering improves, software designers skills improve, games improve, enjoyment improves.
Ah, but I've said this all before. I for one will support Loki when I can actually afford to buy another game. I've been eyeballing a few, but you know, life and its responsibilities get in the way of entertainment sometimes.
assert(expired(knowledge));
No offense, but do you plan on raising $200,000-300,000 every year to save Loki? That's fucked up.
Don't donate to a life-saving charity, donate to a money losing company. Loki is in it for the cash - just like all companies.
I don't think this had much to do with the economic crunch.
I think it had more to do with the fact that they were trying to sell products to a market that couldn't support them.
Lemme see. They used to say that the overall cost of a worker in a software company was $100,000 / year. Dunno how many people loki have working there, but let's say 20. Now, on a $40 game, the developer will normally get about $10 (if they're lucky) if it's sold through retail channels.
So: cost to run Loki/year - $2,000,000
Number of units you need to sell just to break even: 200,000
That's a tall order, even for a Windows game. There's only a few titles a year that sell that many.
Okay, maybe your're getting paid to do the ports, but the advances you're going to get for Linux ports aren't going to be very great.
It's incredibly difficult to keep your head above water writing Windows games. It must be almost impossible for Linux.
BTW they are totally /.'ed now, so don't bother for a couple of hours...
Jan
If IBM were smart, they would swoop in and save this company. Games may not be Linux's short- or medium-term purpose, but in the long-run, games are useful because they tend to push systems to their limits and advance the state of the art. This is particularly important for Linux development on the desktop market.
There really is very little money involved here: $500,000 . This makes me wonder why they took such a drastic step. I mean, this is pretty much less than the mortgage on most houses in Silicon Valley. I wonder if there is more that Loki is not telling us.
evanchik.net
You know, I find that really offensive. There is no pirated software on any of my machines - none at all. I'm sure that's true of many other Linux users, probably most. There is proprietary commercial software on my machines, including Loki games; but it's all paid for.
Yes, I'm an open source person. Most of my own work is available under BSD license. I maintain three separate open source packages. I use, in my work, many other open source packages. And there are a huge range of packages I don't use because their licenses are not compatible with what I'm doing.
Open source people are not pirates. Most pirated software, lets face it, is Windows software. How many Windows machines do you know which have no pirate software at all? Closed source people are far more likely, in my experience, to be pirates than open source people.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
This is Chapter 11, not 7 bankruptcy.
Basically, they're telling the court that there's no way they can pay the interest on their existing debt and stay afloat - *but* the business itself is viable, and if they're allowed to write some of that off or at least delay payments they'll eventually be able to pay the rest.
What ended it for Loki Games? Well, I happen to know one company I can slap the blame on. nVidia.
Why nVidia? well, its simple. when the tnt2 debutes, nVidia releases a statement that they are the only 3d video chip maker that is fully supporting Linux with Open Source Drivers. They were to release register specifications, and release a working, open source driver developed by nVidia and helped upon by a bunch of other interesting people. What happened to this ideal? They took it back of course, just as soon as 3dfx died and opensourced all their IP. When nVidia saw the monopoly knocking at their front door, they immediately withdrew their plan (this one year later) and decided to go closed source. you couldnt even use a custom kernel with the nvidia driver because it was entirely closed source binary only.
Too bad for Loki, who just spent the last 6 months porting Quake3 to Linux, now they just found out that the only video card they can officially support with Xfree4 is the Voodoo3 and Matrox g400 (dog slow in linux).
Add this to the fact that Quake3 for Linux came out on the SHELVES about a month after the windows version, and then, more expensive (by then, the windows version had been reduced in price by retailers, and the linux version could be downloaded off the internet, there was so little market for the linux version, they had to sell them at full price)
Imagine that, Quake3 launch more costly to consumers, and later than everyone else, not to mention that the only video card that could run quake3 at the time was a tnt2 and Geforce1 at reasonable speeds, and didn't even have alpha quality Xfree4 or kernel drivers(required to use 3d direct rendering in Linux)
Of course, nVidia released their closed source with open source wrapper later on that year, by then, it was too late. EVERY gaming migrant from windows switched back to windows specifically because of their video card's support (NVidia).
If you want a finger to point, point it at nVidia. they should be brought up on charges of anti-trust IMO.
Fuck you nvidia, I have nothing else to say to you. bitch. You ruined the only gaming potential Linux has ever had. If it wasn't for your delayed closed shitty alpha quality driver, Loki would have made a killing on Linux quake3. insted, only the newbies who bought the voodoo3 could play quake3, and so, only 10% of the potential market actually bought it. You had the only card that could handle quake3, and you lied on your promise to be the "leading 3d video card maker on the Linux platform"
Have a nice day.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
Huh? I went to the site to see when it was going to be released and it just said "soon". I wasn't particularly keen on preordering a game from a company filing Chapter 11 for obvious reasons, but once it is actually available I'm almost certainly going to buy it. Still, a few pity buys aren't going to save them if they are in the kind of trouble it looks like they are in.
I read the internet for the articles.
Making a game is a huge endeavor. These days you hire more artists than you do programmers. You need really deep pockets because most of them fail, but every once in a while you get that one home run that pays for everything else (Hmm, sounds like the music or movie industry...) While Loki is minimizing their exposure by doing ports of just the games that didn't suck, they are also minimizing their chances that they'll have a home run on their target platform either. If a home run is made on Windows, it'll be milked there and maybe Loki will get it a year or two later, long after everyone has moved on.
I'm not saying I don't appreciate their games, and I own a few of them myself, but I'm part of a rare lunatic fringe that refuses to have a Microsoft product on his system at all. Dual booting over to Windows is just too simple a solution for most people, and that's what they're doing.
I'll pop over to Loki's site once it recovers from its slashdotting and pick up a couple more games but I wouldn't be surprised if they were completely orphaned within a year.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It is much better for Loki if you buy one of their games than donate money. In order for Loki to get contracts to port the best games they need to be able to show good sales figures on what they already have ported. So even if more of the money go to production costs if you buy a game than donate money, it will proabably be much better for Loki long term.
Somehow, I think the main reason that Loki didn't do as well as they should have was the way their products were marketed. For example: Tribes 2 for windows can be found at any decent computer store, and at CompUSA and Fry's, it has been on sale almost constantly for $19.99. Tribes 2 for linux, on the other hand, can be found in no retail store that I've been to. The only option I have is to buy it online, for around $50 (plus S&H). Now which version would most people go for? The only reason that I didn't spend $20 on the windows version is because I don't run windows on any of my machines, but most people aren't in that situation. I think if it was possible to get some more games into stores (at more competitive prices!), they could have done much better. The one or two copies of quake III that each store has don't count ($50 apiece).
It's hard enough to make money on PC games anyway, especially at the moment, with the new consoles arriving. Making money on PC games on a 'fringe' desktop OS like Linux must be even harder.
I'm not really suprised.
The newer titles come in DVD style packaging.
But I think you miss the big point here. One of the reasons a lot of people dont ditch windows is because of lack of game support(myself included). If you want Linux to take over what's almost completely a windows market (gamers) then your gonna need a company that ports games.
-Bucky
You know, you've got some rather old or inaccurate info there- might want to get caught up with the times here...
.so files. It's a design mis-feature of the dynamic shared object system in use on Linux- the KDE team had to do handstands while juggling clay pots with their feet to hide this issue. It takes forever to do the fixups, etc. with C++ classes, esp. if you've got a lot of pure virtual classes (Something that happens in Windows games a LOT...). Once up, the game runs well on most setups.
Myth2 shipped with the only stable 3D accel support at the time- Glide. Accelerated Mesa support at that time was rather hit or miss at best. Right now, if you buy the copy off the shelf and run Loki Update (or manually obtain the update) against it, you'd find that it works with pretty much anything 3D accelerated. I know, I was one of the people they specifically asked to beta test the patch for GLX support.
As for the minimal machine story, letsee...
I wouldn't think that a P133 would handle Myth2 nicely or even passably well- in fact, I remember trying the Windows demo on a 233MMX machine and being rather disappointed with it's overall performance with the software rendering. If you don't have a supported 3D accelerator, the minimum system config is never going to work well for you on any game that works "better" with one- ever.
The delay from the menu selection to game start...
The delay on the click is a delay of load-up due to the numbers of C++ derived
Believe what you want- but you're going to look stupid and ignorant going on like you are right now.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Other ways you can help are to link from your webpages to Loki or to Tux Games. This will help spread the word, because a surprisingly large number of people DO NOT KNOW about Linux gaming. (Linking via the Tux Games affiliate program can also make you some money).
Whichever you do, do something. Loki has provided us with great games over the last few years, and now its time for us all to pay them back.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Sadly, this observation flies true to its target sometimes. Other times, you get observant people who realize that proprietary != bad. Remember, proprietary != closed-source in all cases. There seems to be a general agreement that the technical definition of Open Source does not choose sides as to whether a software product is proprietary or not. On a similar thread, Loki has demonstrated that a software company CAN work on proprietary software while contributing to GNU or the Public Domain, take SDL for example.
When finances permit, I have and will continue to support Loki Software by purchasing the fruits of their labor. Even if it is for a money-sucking Microsoft-loving company like Sierra. At least they figured out that there WAS a market in the Linux crowd. Don't confuse growing pains with utter failure, people. Loki isn't down for the count just yet!
assert(expired(knowledge));
Stop /.-ing the site for people who are there to buy them!
*rant over*
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
Wouldn't it be more logical to put your donation into one of the open source game projects? I mean, that way even if the whole effort goes to the waste bin, at least you still get the source code...
Come on people. If we want Linux to truly dethrone M$, we're going to actually have to spend some money! Why is Dell halting Linux installs on their consumer desktops? Because no one bought them. What's the point of forking out $1700 for a computer from Dell with RH7 preinstallted when you can rebuild that 2 year old one and throw your downloaded copy on it? Face it, Dell can't continue throwing money, people and time into products that no one is buying. That's Business Management 101, braniac. Why is Loki going under? Same reason. They invest resources into products that only a few buy and the masses copy!
So get off your penny pinching asses, take some of that cash you saved by using a "free" OS and support the revolution by actually buying Linux-based apps.
This is really too bad - I don't mind paying cash for games - in fact, it made up the largest portion of my personal software expenses during the last 12 months - and I liked the idea of voting with my pocketbook by purchasing T2 for Linux. Guess it's just an example of a good idea coming out a little too early - sad.
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
After spending $150,000 writing free software, the thought has occurred to me to file chapter 11. Let's face it. Who cares it the software is open source. Just make sure you don't have to pay for it.
I've personally bought Quake III even though I haven't the hardware to run it: Soldier of Fortune, Myth II, Heroes of Might and Magic III, and Heretic II.
All to support the company, if nothing else. Will buy the remaining titles soon...
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
If you want to personally port a game to Linux, write me a letter (remove the _nospamplease), and I'll try to hook you up with the game author and source code. The catches are: a. I need a resume and convincing that you're not a flake, and b. you'll probably have to release it in binary form only.
This is how Linux game ports work- one by one.
Funny thing is.... Loki didn't port either Quake 3 or Unreal Tournament. They where hired to do support for the games, but the ports were primarily done in house by ID and Epic.
The linux community has rallied behind causes we felt were worth supporting in the past, however I cannot remember any instance in which the community has rallied behind a commercial venture before. Anyone interested in setting up a Paypal account for the purpose of helping out Loki? How much are linux games worth to you? Would you be willing to donate a few bucks to help keep Loki afloat? Consider what message this would send to Windows-only game developers...the linux community is not only wanting for games, but willing to support companies that will provide for them.
Anyone with me?
--- "...And everybody died!!! Except for me, of course...you know why? Because I had my tray table up...and my seat ba
Well, if they would sell warez-like release of their games, just downloadable files and pdf manuals or even without manuals or with just a stripped version, they could charge half the cost since all the money would go to the company and wouldn't be lost in the supply chain. And it would be very good solution for these types who say that the cost is "just too high" so they better download it from warez. I guess this could be good marketing move, no?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Loki has produced quality products that deserve the support of gamers. Come on, Slashdot! Show you really give a damn about Linux and BUY something, for chrissakes!
All about me
It's not over until the fat lady sings, of course, but I think I hear her sucking air into her lungs and clearing her throat. That fat lady is going to sing soon and when she does she's going to blow some eardrums. There are very few companies that survive the chapter 11 stage. Stop deluding yourselves guys.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Scott Draeker always dodged sales figure questions, and we all *knew* that they were abysmally low. Shareware-level low. Then I saw their actually figures through one of those sales tracking services and there were in that range. A couple of guys taking four months to port a game that sells 500 copies? That's not a business, sadly.
Guys, you can't have it both ways:
If proprietary software is evil, then Loki was evil.
If Loki was good, then proprietary software is good.
Pick a moral stance and stay with it. To paraphrase J. C. Watts, integrity is doing the right thing, even when it's inconvenient.
Linux doesn't have many games for it, so if you like to play computer games, you've already got another computer that runs Windows for them, or you dual boot your Linux computer. And if there's a game that you really wanted, you've already bought the Windows version -- months before the Linux port comes out. When the Linux port does finally come out, you may have moved on to the next game, or you may just not feel like paying for the game *again*.
Had Loki been able to release Linux ports of games at the same time as the Windows versions, things may have been very different. I'd certainly have bought some of the games if I didn't have to wait.
Also note that Mac ports for games are similar, but they have one big difference -- a Mac cannot run modern PC games (PC emulators aren't quite good enough) but a Linux PC could always be dual booted into Windows. So a Linux user with a PC could always install Windows on another partition if he *really* needed it.
Because of this, the market for Mac games, even Mac ports of games that have been out for months on Windows boxes, is a good deal larger than the market for Linux ports of old Windows games.
The situation here is a conundrum, a no-win situation, a bootstrapping problem, but that's not what Catch-22 was. In the book, Catch-22 means:
I know, that's pretty nitpicky, but the concept is so interesting that I like talking about it (even when no one's reading). Unfortunately, there's no simple way to explain it that makes it clearly distinct from the no-win situation. It's related, but not the same. Catch-22 is a paradox... that's what made Joseph Heller so cool; coming up with stuff like that.
So, just to plead for mercy from the -1 Offtopic mod, I tried to think of an equivalent Catch-22 for the situation the poster mentioned.... No luck so far. Somehow it'd have to involve like, "you can only make a Linux port of a game if the Windows version flops, but if the Windows version flops the game maker goes bankrupt and can't make a Linux port...." Something like that.
Ah, why bother? I need coffee....
N
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
Really, you just had to upgrade your liux distribution to the version that already included all that.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
did you ever get the feeling that you're being followed?
...
,6. 6!!!! check
are you not familiar with the book of revelations?
he forced everyone to receive a mark on his right hand and on his forehead so that no one shall be able to buy or sell unless he has the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name and the number is 6, 6, 6.
What can such a specific prophecy mean?
What is the mark?
Well, the mark is the barcode, the ubiquitous barcode...
Every barcode is divided into two parts by three markers and those three markers are always represented by the numbers; 6, 6
So what does it say? Nobody will be able to buy or sell without that mark?
It looks like the Loki order page is swamped right now (comming back with mysql too many connections messages), so maybe the community is doing it's bit.
So.. if you like games, or like companys that work hard to make GNU/Linux more popular follow me over to Loki with a credit card.
hmmm....
Quake3 windows: 30-40fps at 1024x768
Quake3 linux: 40-50fps @ 1280x1024
this is with a geforce2mx, 400Mhz, 384ram
of course, i dont have the kludge of a windowing system to hold it back
No joke, I was downloading Loki Demos about 2 hours ago and I said to myself "Hmm, I wonder how Loki is doing.." and in the middle of the download, throughput drops by a factor of 10.
I check slashdot, and right at the top is "LOKI FILES FOR CHAPTER 11". SUCK.
That really is a shame. Loki has a pretty good business model. If there's a company that doesn't deserve to go out of business, it's them.
NOTE: This does NOT MEAN Linux gaming is dead or unprofitable. In these situations, game distributors made money because (IIRC), Loki ported the game for free and simply collected the profits on sales, giving a cut to the publisher/developer.
Before Loki, individuals would basically approach companies (or later be sought out by companies) and asked to do the ports. Greg Alexander, for example, used to leaked quake source to do an svgalib port. It was sent to Carmack, who not only didn't call the FBI, but used it as the base for the official port. That fellow as later contacted by Raven to port Heretic 2, and he eventually turned down the offer to port Soldier of Fortune.
I don't see Linux dying. I think Loki was just unlucky. We'll see.
I know what you mean. I just played through the demo of Kohan and was going to check out Loki's site for more information on it. So I pulled up Mozilla and my homepage (Slashdot) loads and what do I see: Loki is dying! Gah! I really hate dual booting to play games, and the Kohan demo ran great on my (fairly meager by todays standards) system.
Now it seems like the only thing that will save Loki is either a killer title or just a sudden surge in Linux gaming popularity. I'm not enthusiastic about the second possiblity, but the first has happened before (although as a game porting company Loki is not going to have an easy time making any sort of killer app).
By the way, for those of you who don't know, Loki's demo system is pretty cool, it keeps a list of all of the available demos in a central app and lets you automaticaly download, install, play, and uninstall them. It's really quite nice.
I read the internet for the articles.
I don't honestly see Linux game porting companies as being successful anytime in the near future. This is for several reasons. The easiest way to explain this is to draw a parallel between Loki and another company, say, Wildcard Design (dead link, I know; it went out of business a couple of months ago, but you can find some info on it via a Google search).
Wildcard Design was a company that was founded to port games to BeOS. Despite the high licensing fees and restrictive NDAs the founder had to surmount to obtain the source code to the games he wanted to port, he decided to give it a go. Needless to say, he failed, the main reason for which is this:
There are not enough users of non-Microsoft operating systems to make profitable a company dedicated only to porting high-profile games to them. The cost is simply too high for the authors to recoup. A few games might turn a profit, but eventually, after even one poorly-received game, perhaps, the company will find itself deep in the red. It cannot sell games to nearly the scope of audience that Windows ports sell to because the gaming types generally are not comfortable enough to migrate away from the operating systems they are used to, which in most cases means Windows. Hence, sales of ported games will barely be a dent in the overall sales of said games.
OK, you give up, I'll support Loki by buying at least 4 of their ports directly while they're in Chapter 11. Don't you worry now, not everybody has to have a spine.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
That's so right. Usually by the time Loki releases the game it's in the bargain bin at the local big-box store. Very unfortunate for them, because ordering online for full price and waiting for delivery is much less attractive than picking it up for $15 on the way home and rebooting to play it.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Will they call their joint venture Noki or will they call it Lokia.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
but sending money to a company in the midst of chapter11 seems well FOOLISH. I wish them the best but they will have to prove they are valid
company with a decent market and share to survive.
No one can prop them up.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Amen. I worked at a company that had a reasonably sucessful game division, in that it almost broke even (at least until they shut it down).
Over the past 2 years, just about every game company has been bought, gone under, or had massive layoffs (often on the order of 1/2-2/3 the workforce). Good games are extremely expensive to make, hardcore games have very high standards, and there is so much competition that games don't stay on the shelves long.
And now Quake-fucking-four is coming out. Gee, what a fun FRAG FEST we'll have playing the same game again, but this time you can see actual internal organs coming out their asses and there will be 2 new artifacts:
- Buy-upgrade-pack and
- read-month-long-jokes-on-uf-about-how-cool-q4-is
The last good game I played on the PC was DeusEx. We need more games with substance and the developers need to spend less time on meaningless eye-candy. In my good-old-days of rec.games.nintendo posting, this would always happen with new consoles, there would be many games that took advantage of the new superior graphics but had mind-numbingly boring game-play. Then, with time, the new graphics would wear off and fun games would start to appear as developers got used to the system.The PC, however, is constantly in that new hardware void. There are always new toys and the software developers keep churning out the same crap over and over but with updated goodies for the graphics; "Now Supports T&L! Woo-Hoo!" Nevermind gameplay.. Then Loki ports them over to Linux, charges twice as much and wonders why they don't sell any copies. I have purchased no less than 5 titles from Loki (Myth 2, RRT2, Q3, s3k, and SOF) and the only one that was any fun was s3k which was so buggy that I had to shut it down every few hours (but the Windows version suffers from the same problem). They ported all that garbage but then failed to port Halflife, StarCraft, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Diablo 2 and DeusEx -- the very best games over the last few years.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
Something is wrong is this world. Loki is a very good company, with very good people.
A couple years ago Microsoft was buying up PC game companies left and right, where is the IBM promise of "billions of $$ on Linux" pledge now?
Maybe someone should set up a pledgeboard, something like "I promise to buy $XXX of Loki Games or the SDL book" within two weeks".
IF the SDL book comes out, I pledge to buy both it and the Tribes 2 for Linux, even though Dynamix is dead.
It's not just Linux that's dying, it's not just the dot-coms, look at Japan, the lowest stock indexes in 17 years. The world economy is collapsing.
Goddamn government, while they've dragged out the Microsoft trial for 15 years, they should have been doing the same thing with software that the post office does with their vehicle fleets..splitting up the dollars spent between vendors. The monopoly desktop would not even be an issue now.
Linux is ready for the desktop. When people use it work, they will start using it at home, and more games will sell. RedHat, IBM and Apple (for example) would get a broader base of enhancement requests and the state of Linux/BSD/Apple would increase rapidly.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
When you file for chapter 11, you are seeking protection from your creditors, largely so you can have enough money left over to pay off the employees. Companies are obligated to pay off their employees before creditors, so chapter 11 is a mechanism for them to reserve the cash to do this.
There are a few isoloated cases of filing for chapter 11 pushing a company back to profitability, but these are an infitesimal fraction. Once you are bankrupt, you are persona non grata to lenders - you have in fact sought legal protection to become a deadbeat loan - and its nearly impossible to run a business without lines of credit.
Rest assured no one files for chapter 11 unless its pretty much game over.
Ah, yes, what an amazing and convincing argument you have here. So, according to your logic:
* If my dog bites people and is mean, all dogs bite people and are mean.
* If a black man robs you, all black men are robbers.
Glad to see you find your world so easy to generalize.
Bullshit. The stances being taken on Slashdot are more like:
The concept of "dog" is immoral, so only own cats.
Except my dog Loki, he's OK.
Peddle your straw man somewhere else. Slashdotters have been claiming left and right that the very CONCEPT of proprietary software is theft, but now everybody's in a tizzy over poor Loki.
I didn't make the argument black and white; I'm one of the ones claiming that it *ISN'T* black and white. Proprietary software is OK. Loki is good. Microsoft is good too. Windows sucks, so I don't use it; but it doesn't mean Microsoft can't make something good I will use, such as my Intellimouse.
I use Linux because it's better, not because Microsoft is evil. If Microsoft makes a great program for Linux, I might very well use it.
It's simply these game authors who charge exorbitant rates to allow Loki to port their games. The reason they're charging so much is that they're assuming the games are worth that much because of how much they make on Windoze.
Linux users should rally behind Loki and petition game software authoring companies to charge a fee that's according to the Linux market. They have nothing to lose and much to gain if the Linux gaming industry grows.
They never charged that much 5 to 7 years ago when the Windows market wasn't as big as it is today
MindRover is for the logical thinking type- and is excellent (Don't forget that it NEEDS 3D accel...) It's not your normal strategy/action fare, but it's awesome just the same. Check the minimums and give the demo a whirl- most will be pleasantly surprised.
Alpha Centauri's just good- it's from Sid Meyer and could technically be called Civ3 (Not to knock Civ:CTP, an awesome game in and of itself...)
You have Myth2- it's challenging; you should be playing it.
If you're into 3rd person RPG/Action games Rune will fit the bill, being visually impressive and fairly immersive at the same time. Be warned, it's got steep machine requirements and you're better off on the high-horsepower end of the spectrum for this one.
Team play works well on Tribes 2, but you're going to need the most muscular of machines (you need that even under Windows!) for this one. With an NVidia GeForce 2 card and a PIII-750 or better, you'll be treated to a visual feast and rather good multiplayer game play.
Kohan looks to be yet another one- unique real-time-strategy (Myth2 is a sort of RTS- but it's different than Kohan...) and nice visuals.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Ideally, all software should be open, yes.
The world is not an ideal place.
Some things either can't be or really shouldn't be open sourced- at least not at this point in the development of our "civilization", if you can call it that.
I've never once said that all proprietary software is theft- nor has many others. Get off your own high horse there, sir- you're making yourself the fool just as the "open source advocates" that spout off about what you're accusing all of us of.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas