Maxis Developer on Linux Game Porting

friedmud wrote in to tell us about a comment from a Maxis developer, Don Hopkins, who did a partial linux port of "The Sims". You can find his post here (3rd one down, comment from Don Hopkins titled "Reality check from a game developer") in a LinuxGames.com forum. I don't know if I agree with his assertion that Wine is the best way to have games happen on Linux but his comments on the economics of Linux games development and especially the costs of keeping versions concurrent on multiple platforms are insightful.

Comments

The Sims

[stoopidguy]

I never really enjoyed The Sims that much; but I guess getting a game like that to Linux would at least encourage some people that Linux is legitimate (quake 3 != legitimate)

Re:The Sims

[drzhivago]

Of course Quake 3 is legitimate. Why else would ATI hack their own drivers to boost Quake 3 framerates?

But I guess what you mean by legitimate is "geared to casual users". The Sims is definately geared to casual users where Quake 3 is aimed right at hardcore gamers.

If you want a game that would put Linux on the map, try any of the Blizzard games. A huge following, tremendously popular games, yet Blizzard refuses to port to Linux. Kind of surprising they haven't tried it with at least one game, considering they release all their games for the Mac.

Greg

Any idea to port at all?

[kalleanka2]

After all, do all the will-not-pay-for-software open source geeks really support (like in paying for) the porting-costs anyway?

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[ichimunki]

I will gladly pay for software. I'd even gladly contribute towards porting costs. But if the software is not Free Software, what's the point? Unless I get lucky, my distribution or architecture may well not be supported (or not supported well), then I'm no better off than I was starting out, and my only hope of getting support is to convince, cajole, or convert the developer to offer that support. Given the history of luck this ex-Mac-zealot had getting stuff for Mac OS (pre-X), I'm not going to hold my breath.

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

an ex-Mac-zealot?

So really you're just a contrarian.

Hmmm...

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[quartz]

I'm an open source geek, and I do pay for software; in fact, just last week I bought a copy of Redhat Linux 7.2. I pay for games too, and I don't even care if they're closed source -- WTF, they're just games. But for the same reason, I'm completely uninterested in Linux games. My PS2 is more than enough to satisfy my gaming needs, and it does a better job at it than Linux will ever do.

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[kaimiike1970]

Just out of curiosity, but what do you play your PS2 games on without a TV? Do youhave some kinda monitor adapter thing? If so, where did you get it?

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[quartz]

No, no monitor adapter. Just a cheap video capture card + xawtv.

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[friedmud]

Or you could get a Dreamcast - which DOES come with a monitor adaptor....

Or you could just subscribe to Transgaming and not worry about any of that ;-)

Derek

Re:Any idea to port at all?

[Happy Monkey]

So you DO have a TV, you sneak! Perhaps not standalone, but still...

SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[geekfiend]

The process of porting a game can be much less difficult if the developer chooses a multi-platform library. For games SDL allows this and for other sorts of applications, QT can do the same. The challenge lies not in porting, but rather the developer chosing to work with a propietary single-platform library (DirectX) versus something more portable, and argueably better!

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[kalleanka2]

But what exactly is the point in porting?

Will anyone buy it? The story so far is that it's madness to invest in Linux development altogether since people just refuses to pay.

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Ctrl-Z]

Who says the decision is up to the developer anyway? I work as a developer and I don't get any choice as to which language or platform I code for. I would love to write platform-independent code, but I just don't get that option. Why would game developers have it any differently?

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[drzhivago]

I believe some of the problems lie in the way a multiplatform library works. For games, if SDL isn't as fast on Windows as DirectX, why should it be used? I know its a bad example, because I think that SDL actually routes down to DirectX on Windows. Remember, users come before developers...

But what about a UI library that doesn't draw the controls the same as the user's operating system? Look at Photoshop for Windows.. it looks like I'm using a Mac. I don't want that! I want an application that looks and feels like what I normally use. The best libraries will work like that, even though they have a cross-platform API. Linux versions will have the window manager look and feel. Mac versions will look like a Mac application.

RealBasic for Mac does this pretty well. Using a single source tree, RealBasic will compile for both Mac and Windows. The Mac apps look like Mac apps, and the Windows apps look like Windows apps. That transparency is what will win.

Of course, to make it easier for the developer can be a good thing. But to give the user a better experience is more important. Because if a user doesn't like your product, why bother?

Greg

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

I would bet RealBasic was made for Mac first? In this case it makes sense to port it to windows since you reach a bigger market this way.

Porting something to Linux is...well...more like a stupid thing to do.

Who will pay for your software? Maybe 2 people or something. Who will encourage people to just grab the software without paying for the authors work? Lots of people (like RMS).

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[mangu]

The story so far is that it's madness to invest in Linux development altogether since people just refuses to pay.

An interesting point. Take me, for instance. I have bought a lot of windoze software (mostly games), but never any software for Linux, although I use Linux for everything but a few favorite games.

Why? Maybe it has to do with economy of scale. Since commercial Linux software sells less than windows sw, it is less tested, therefore potentially more buggy.

The solution would be for software sellers to include both versions in the same box. The largest parts of any software are data files. Including an additional set of executable files wouldn't take that much space on a CD-ROM. I would readily buy software that gave me a choice of operating system.

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Who says the decision is up to the developer anyway? I work as a developer and I don't get any choice as to which language or platform I code for.


Where do you work, so I know never to work there?

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[drzhivago]

Just to clarify about RealBasic: RealBasic is a native Mac application. It only runs on the Mac. However, it can target Win32 from the same source code that targets a Mac (OS 9 and X). I was just pointing out when it does that, the compiled Win32 app fits with Windows, just as the compiled Mac app fits with MacOS.

Greg

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Lumpy]

The greatest part od SDL is that it allows anyone, and I mean ANYONE to write a game or graphics app. Write it in perl, C, C++ python, Whatever.. SDL is the most portable and crossplatform multimedia system there is. Some may argue that Direct X is more powerful, but that's only based on the fact that it's an integral part of the OS it is targetted for.

Right now companies are busy trying to wring every penny out of what they have. They could care lessabout attracting new customers or trying anything innovative. Any game development house that hasn't researched SDL or any of the non-platform specific systems is driving the nails into their own coffin.. I'd rather have my programmers using open source and ZERO cost tools than having to shell out several hundred thousand dollars every year for upgrades and license fees that are unneeded.

The other problem is finding programmers good enough and smart enough to be able to write software outside a GUI and IDE.

Universities today are cranking out CS degrees that can't comprehend a command line compiler let alone understand how to create a makefile by hand. and the fault lies directly in the hands of the professors.

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[jedidiah]

Then that pretty much rules out 90% of the game industry for you. Even if you're a "single digit employee" of one of the member companies of Electronic Arts, they're not going to take you seriously when you suggest targeting the next new game for Linux or some non-MS API.

You'd be VERY lucky if they even let you port it in your spare time. The first thing your own lowest level manager will say is: "Where's the money!".

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Mekanix]

The way to make developers ditch DirectX in favor SDL is not by talking, argue, pushing, debate, but to show them.

It would take one game to prove SDL's merits. A game with blisteringly fast 3D-engine, beautiful graphics, jawdropping soundtrack, pricewinning storyline. Put it on one single DVD that runs on any OS (Linux, *BSD, BeOS, AmigaOS, MorphOS, MacOS(/X), QNX, Windows and any other SDL-enabled OS) and get it out to the gameshops.

This would go a long way to prove that you can reach "any" platform, that you can use SDL without any loss in quality or speed, and you can do this with little extra cost.

Is SDL up to the task? Is the community?

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing: It must be shown that the Linux community are not the freeloaders that they seem to be. Not much point in making it if noone pays.

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Most games I've seen don't use Windows controls for their UI. The developers draw their own controls, matching the visual style of the game.

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Osty]

Right now companies are busy trying to wring every penny out of what they have. They could care lessabout attracting new customers or trying anything innovative. Any game development house that hasn't researched SDL or any of the non-platform specific systems is driving the nails into their own coffin.

That's really only true for Valve (Half-Life, Half-Life GOTY, Half-Life Gold, Half-Life Platinum, Half-Life You'll Buy This Too, Even Though It's The Same As What You Already Have, etc). Most other publishers might make a GOTY edition and leave it at that. However, if by wringing "every penny out of what they have" you mean making sequel after sequel, I don't see what your argument is. Especially since the good sequels do add innovative new features or items (let's ignore the Tomb Raider franchise, shall we?). As far as not porting to other platforms, I don't see how that's really an issue. Most game houses don't seem to have problems porting back and forth from consoles (PS2, PSX mainly) and Windows. They're not going to bother with Linux because it's such a marginal market. There's no money there, so why bother? And ignoring a valueless (monetarily) market is not going to kill a company. In fact, porting to that market just might kill them instead.

I'd rather have my programmers using open source and ZERO cost tools than having to shell out several hundred thousand dollars every year for upgrades and license fees that are unneeded.

Note that

1. DirectX does not require a license for you to use it
2. Nor does it require you to use Visual Studio as your development environment
3. Thus, you can use Borland's free compilers (or buy the commercial versions), or use a gcc port like mingw32.

The other problem is finding programmers good enough and smart enough to be able to write software outside a GUI and IDE.

Because we all know that only poor, stupid programmers use IDEs ... (btw, all the Visual Studio compilers (for C++, VB, C#, Jscript, and so on) can be used strictly from the commandline, using makefiles or build scripts, and you can use any editor you want to write the code they compile -- vim, emacs, notepad, Source Insight, Visual Studio, or whatever)

Universities today are cranking out CS degrees that can't comprehend a command line compiler let alone understand how to create a makefile by hand. and the fault lies directly in the hands of the professors.

Red Herring. It's not a University's job to produce automaton that can write a makefile or compile the latest 'sploit by hand. If that's what you expect from a CS program, you'd do better to save money and go to a tech school (or alternatively, save money buy hiring a student out of a tech school). A properly educated CS student may not know how to write a makefile or use gcc from the commandline right out of college, but I can guarantee you that s/he will be able to learn how to do that quicker than your average self-taught or tech school programmer can learn to analyze the performance considerations of various search algorithms (for instance).

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

Universities today are cranking out CS degrees that can't comprehend a command line compiler let alone understand how to create a makefile by hand. and the fault lies directly in the hands of the professors.

Quite the opposite, in my experience. The university CS subjects I'm familiar with (including the ones I did) all taught programming in pico/vi on Linux or Unix machines, using gcc or g++ and requiring that the students implement makefiles if they wanted full marks.

Of course, there were plenty of dumb students in there copying all kinds of assignments with no understanding (and presumably many of them passed)... and the Engineering faculty still trying to teach OO using basic Pascal with fourth year students...

However, we never even saw Visual C++ or Visual Basic (or indeed, practically any other tool that might conceivably be used in a commercial environment, except the command line ones mentioned above) unless it was necessary for a thesis project.

If anything the problem seemed to be that the course was more about the seemingly useless theories of software development and engineering and so on... but then, in a big programming organisation/project you suddenly find that they actually use this stuff...

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[belthezar]

Here here!!

Someone mod the parent post up please!

Damn I hate that I never have mod points at the right time. :(

Re:SDL and other multi-platform libraries

[BeermanUK]

And the first thing I'd reply is "What part of 'spare time' don't you understand?"

Maybe this is one of those weird things specific to the game industry, but I know the day my manager starts telling me what I can and can't do in my spare time is the day I run away to join the circus.

I'm waiting for the game...

[ackthpt]

I'm waiting for the game ..

wait for it...

wait for it...

Sim Sim Developers rimshot

The game where the Sims are cognoscent and write the next game they appear in.

Yeah, that's the ticket...

Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

What we need are elegant, cross platform game libraries (and languages) so one code base can be used.

I think the best current approach involves Java, which can be either natively compiled (gcc 3.0) or run on a VM (JDK 1.4 should be quite good). Check out Arkanae for an early preview. :-)

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Native ports are best!

[cyberlync]

There are only a few problems with this, primarily gcc (3.0 or otherwise) does not support graphics at all, they have yet to implement even the awt much less swing or java3D. In fact, gcc, or more correctly gjc, only supports java 1.0. These being the facts, it is very unlikly that you will be able to do a game using java and gcc. As for the VM, even with jit technologies Java is still no where near fast enough to do any modern style of game.

Now dont get em wrong, java is a good choice for server side apps, its just not there yet for the client side.

Re:Native ports are best!

[nomadic]

Problem with Java in games is that most games require that which Java is worst at; a graphical interface.

Re:Native ports are best!

[psxndc]

Keep in mind that 1.4 is a long way off from being standard. It's in beta and while 1.3 is pretty well rooted among developers, the _industry standard_ is still jdk 1.2.2.

That being said, at Java One I saw a game written completely in Java. It was definitely an interesting concept and it seemed to run pretty smoothly (it was a FPS-type), but it was damn ugly. That may be just that they didn't have the artists necessary for the models, but it sure wasn't quake3. The technology is almost there, but other posters are right, Java isn't great at graphics. Almost, but not quite yet.

psxndc

Re:Native ports are best!

[damiam]

There are Java bindings for GTK, however.

Re:Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

There are only a few problems with this, primarily gcc (3.0 or otherwise) does not support graphics at all, they have yet to implement even the awt much less swing or java3D.

Check out gl4java. It is the graphics API used in Arkanae (linked in first post). It doesn't require , swing, or Java3D - just a 1.1 level VM. Not many commercial games use any GUI other than custom programmed 2D or 3D graphics.

In fact, gcj is ideal since gl4java could be ported to use CNI instead of JNI, which would gain efficiency. The same could be done for OpenAL and SDL bindings, which would be straightforward.

In fact, gcc, or more correctly gjc, only supports java 1.0.

Actually 1.1. On the gcj issue, I thought that was deprecated in the same way g++ was...but no big deal.

These being the facts, it is very unlikly that you will be able to do a game using java and gcc.

I don't think the word "facts" means what you think it means. ;-)

As for the VM, even with jit technologies Java is still no where near fast enough to do any modern style of game.

And you base this on what evidence? Arkanae would seem to be an existence proof that works against you. JDK 1.4 should improve things much more, mainly through the DirectBuffer mechanism.

Now dont get em wrong, java is a good choice for server side apps, its just not there yet for the client side.

It is there to the extent that if I were starting a game project today, I would definitely go with Java. The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, IMNSHO.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Native ports are best!

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the VM, even with jit technologies Java is still no where near fast enough to do any modern style of game.

This is such a ridiculous statement. Java on a machine purchased on October 31st is as fast as C on a machine purchased on January 31st.

Re:Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

Keep in mind that 1.4 is a long way off from being standard. It's in beta and while 1.3 is pretty well rooted among developers, the _industry standard_ is still jdk 1.2.2.

This really doesn't matter, since most folk won't want to download any decent game (too large with all the multimedia resources). Therefore you can bundle the VM (JRE) with the game, of course checking to make sure its not already installed. This is actually good in the sense that you proliferate a modern VM to more computers. :-)

That being said, at Java One I saw a game written completely in Java. It was definitely an interesting concept and it seemed to run pretty smoothly (it was a FPS-type), but it was damn ugly. That may be just that they didn't have the artists necessary for the models, but it sure wasn't quake3. The technology is almost there, but other posters are right, Java isn't great at graphics. Almost, but not quite yet.

That was an art issue...you can do anything with gl4java you can do with OpenGL 1.2 (in other words Quake, or Doom 2).

Did you see the Grand Canyon Demo at JavaOne? Pretty impressive stuff, also using gl4java! I think an Open Source Java flight simulator using the FlightGear art and other data is fine idea in fact. Anyone interested?

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Native ports are best!

[Anonymous Coward]

No... Incest is best!!

Put your sister to the test!!

To generalize and say that incest is best, is to assume that sister passed the test. If you think my sister's so great, then let's swap sisters. Oh wait, then it wouldn't be incest, would it?

Re:Native ports are best!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a one thing to use gl4java which basically is nothing more than thin layer on top of Gl->Hardware but it is another thing to try to write reasonably sophisticated and FAST AI or other code where hardware cannot be of any help.
Sure I could write something reasonably fast in Java but then I could write it in C++ and still have some spare cycles left to add couple more things.

Re:Native ports are best!

[rlaskey]

Java is a very bad idea for games. Right idea with trying to keep a common system for all games, so that windows games, just as easily run on linux. But java is not the answer. This java client I have for Oracle Applications still isn't fast enough for me. Why the hell oracle had to drop the Terminal interface I'll never know. Telnet interfaces are so much better at doing real work. Anyway no way on java games. Unless it's pong.

Re:Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

It is a one thing to use gl4java which basically is nothing more than thin layer on top of Gl->Hardware but it is another thing to try to write reasonably sophisticated and FAST AI or other code where hardware cannot be of any help.

Take a look at the Grand Canyon demo I linked in one of my other replies. It does quite a bit of processing, including scene culling and LOD calculations, all in 100% pure Java (JDK 1.4).

Modern VMs are quite competitive with C++, and gcj should be close to a wash. See Binaries vs. Bytecodes for one interesting set of benchmarks, with source code. Java outperforms both gcc and msvc in different instances.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Native ports are best!

[psxndc]

A) It sucks that you haven't been modded up.
B) I didn't think about the bundling of the JVM with it. In that case though, wouldn't you then need to still sell specific versions since the JVM is OS/machine specific? How much of a footprint is the JVM on a disc? Maybe the publisher could put all the jvm's on the install disc and have the installer pick the correct one at runtime. But then does Sun charge your for licensing one jvm or X (x = number of jvm's). I am not up on Sun's licensing policy, but you do have to pay for any jvm you bundle with software you distribute if I recall.

psxndc

Re:Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

A) It sucks that you haven't been modded up.

The moderators giveth, and the moderators taketh away. Actually, I think I've annoyed some moderators with my political views, so I take a karma hit. ;-)

B) I didn't think about the bundling of the JVM with it. In that case though, wouldn't you then need to still sell specific versions since the JVM is OS/machine specific?

I'd just try to bundle JREs for the major supported platforms.

How much of a footprint is the JVM on a disc?

The full JRE 1.3 for Linux is ~14 MB, so it wouldn't be too bad bundling a few of them (Windows and Linux would be the only two currently).

Things could also get better if Sun provided a way to distribute the platform independent part of the JRE (.jars) separately from the system dependent stuff.

Maybe the publisher could put all the jvm's on the install disc and have the installer pick the correct one at runtime.

InstallAnywhere already supports this. Nice package, too.

But then does Sun charge your for licensing one jvm or X (x = number of jvm's). I am not up on Sun's licensing policy, but you do have to pay for any jvm you bundle with software you distribute if I recall.

I'm pretty sure there's no problem redistributing any number of JREs.

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Native ports are best!

[Maddog_Delphi97]

Well, I tried that Grand Canyon Demo link; download some components required for it (I'm running Windows 2000 sp2), and no matter what I tried to do, it gave me a "Unexpected Error" at "java.nio.channels.FileChannel.map(IJI)Ljava/nio/M appedByteBuffer;"

According to my Java Web Start Application, I'm running 1.4.0-beta3... and it seems like I also had 1.3.0_03 already installed.

Re:Native ports are best!

[cyberlync]

This is an argument made often, the only problem with this is that java seems to bloat in proportion to the speed of the machine. Java was slow when it came out in 1995 and its still slow, explain that one under this conjecture.

Re:Native ports are best!

[cyberlync]

Actually 1.1. On the gcj issue, I thought that was deprecated in the same way g++ was...but no big deal.


Nope, according the gnu's gcj website it is the 1.0 specification, not 1.1. And Gnu is still calling it gcj so I guess I can too.


And you base this on what evidence? Arkanae would seem to be an existence proof that works against you. JDK 1.4 should improve things much more, mainly through the DirectBuffer mechanism.


I base it on personal experience, I code java full time mostly server side but occasionally gui as well, and as yet I have never seen any java based gui app perform to a resonable degree. As far as Arkanae goes, it looks interesting but I will reserve judgement until I get a chance to play.

Re:Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

Nope, according the gnu's gcj website it is the 1.0 specification, not 1.1.

I think you're confusing the language spec with the JDK spec. Could you post a link to the page to which you're referring? JDK 1.02 didn't include JNI, but gcj does, for instance. I don't think gcj is a full JDK 1.1 implementation, but it's close and getting closer all the time.

And Gnu is still calling it gcj so I guess I can too.

I thought I covered that, but thanks very much for pointing it out...again. ;-)

I base it on personal experience, I code java full time mostly server side but occasionally gui as well, and as yet I have never seen any java based gui app perform to a resonable degree.

Really? You don't think jEdit or LimeWire perform adequately? Regardless, Java games will generally not be GUI apps. They will be 2D or 3D graphics apps with custom user interfaces.

Swing is a heavy and inefficient library in current implementations (supposedly better in 1.4) but Java games don't need it. That is why gcj is an option even though it doesn't have AWT or Swing. BTW, what is your rationale against games developed with gcj? I see no reason why they would be slower than OO C++.

As far as Arkanae goes, it looks interesting but I will reserve judgement until I get a chance to play.

It's far from complete, but it is Open Source. Fun stuff!

If you'd care to continue this in e-mail, use glock27sd@yahoo.com. Thanks!

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

Re:Native ports are best!

[Glock27]

Well, I tried that Grand Canyon Demo link; download some components required for it (I'm running Windows 2000 sp2), and no matter what I tried to do, it gave me a "Unexpected Error" at "java.nio.channels.FileChannel.map(IJI)Ljava/nio/M appedByteBuffer;"

According to my Java Web Start Application, I'm running 1.4.0-beta3... and it seems like I also had 1.3.0_03 already installed.

I thought there was a 300 MB dataset involved...did you download that? Something related to that would seem to make sense given the error you're seeing...

299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!

just say no to ports

[capoccia]

forget porting and forget emulating/re-implimenting.

game developers need to write to a cross-platform gaming library like sdl. then all the os-specific and hardware-specific enhancements can be developed in the library by people who enjoy those sorts of things and game developers can spend their time developing games. and the users are happy because they can spend time playing games instead of being concerned needing a specific os.

Re:just say no to ports

[Anonymous Coward]

The only game that comes to my mind that I've enjoyed a good deal that I can't run on a single OS is koules.

Any other game I want I am certain I can run on Windows, unless it's console-only in which case it's a moot point.

So, to put it succinctly, 'the users are happy because they can spend their time playing games instead of being concerned needing a specific OS.' That is already the case. The OS is Windows. Only the OS zealots are fuming and sputtering.

Its a shame.

[Captain_Frisk]

As much as I'd like to see more games ported to linux, so that I might be able to give up my MS habit completely, you have to agree that economically it just doesn't make sense.

Having multiple target platforms is a serious headache, and Linux just isn't a big enough market. Most linux users are used to getting their software for free anyway, and probably have the technical savvy to score free versions of any software released. While I'm sure that there are plenty of honest people out there, the fact is that there are very few people who are going to pay for linux games.

Also considering the generally degraded performance of games under linux and the continued acceptance of DirectX as the standard for graphics, all make Linux development difficult.

I read recently that id doesn't want to release their next product under linux (historically they have been pretty good about that stuff) because its a support nightmare, and just really doesn't bring in that much revenue.

I think in order to start getting more native Linux games, Linux needs to prove itself as a consumer OS first. Once Linux starts to satisfy peoples needs easily (thats so important) then i think more people will start moving over, and once they do, then the linux games will start rolling in.

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably just decided to troll, games with decreased performance on Linux is rarely the case. It's actually the opposite, games run in a more stable enviroment especially networked games. They seem to just be smoother overall; not to mention that I've got an increased framerate in Quake3 but I attribute that to good Xfree86 DRI code. This dude has no idea what he's talking about sadly. It seems slashdot is filled with trolls like these as of late.

Re:Its a shame.

[nirvdrum]

Is it not possible that people experience different results under different systems? I typically get 3x the framerate on Windows than I do on linux with my TNT2 Ultra. And I've had a lot more crashes with games under linux than under Windows.

Does that mean that you'll have the same problems? No. It's just people talking from experience. That is not trolling. What you and the previous poster have done is construed as trolling, but since you're carrying the linux battle flag, you don't see it as that.

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to post unattributed anecdote, please do it with a logged in account so we can email you for details.

Otherwise all I can say about your comments about higher performance on Linux, or any other top-heavy time sharing system, is: bullshit.

Re:Its a shame.

[lazarius]

Otherwise all I can say about your comments about higher performance on Linux, or any other top-heavy time sharing system, is: bullshit.

I consistently get better performance in Q3 and UT (until there's just *too many* bots... that's a big number, by the way) on my Linux (RH 7.1, GNOME 1.4, KDE 2.?) box on a Celeron 366 with 160MB RAM and a 64MB Geforce2 MX400 card than on my brother's WinME machine using a PIII 750 with 512 MB RAM and a 32MB GeForce2 MX???. (well, his computer is often fully loaded with Internet proxy etc. that was set up before my box was). I don't actually have the framerates here, but I know that using the Flak Cannon in UT slows my brother's machine to a crawl with only about 4 bots, and on mine it needs about 6-8 bots before that happens.
That means:

Games, such as Q3 & UT, native to Linux seem to run faster than the Win native on WinME.

CPU intensive things depends on CPU speed, not OS (so it seems).

It seems really strange to me that my little Celeron 366 is sometimes faster than my brother's PIII...

I guess that the difference in RAM and CPU power doesn't make that much difference in the game sense (also, other than lack of sound in UT, it's more stable on my machine). However, for something like ripping a disk to MP3, on my machine it will go at maybe 2x speed, but my brother's machine is way faster (CPU thing? RAM thing?)

Oh, and just for the record, why didn't you use a logged-in account when you asked for the other guy (not me) to log in?

MIKE

Re:Its a shame.

[RainbowSix]

Most linux users are used to getting their software for free anyway, and probably have the technical savvy to score free versions of any software released.

No. Those are tech savvy Windows users. I argue that most linux users understand the value of their free software and contribute accordingly. If I like a distro I'll donate or buy a boxed set. If I like a game that is in Linux, then I'll pay a reasonable price for it.

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're getting 3x the framerate under windows, then your linux drivers are misconfigured. NVidia themselves typically claim 10% faster results on linux than windows. Are you sure you're using the nvidia drivers, and not the crappy "nv" driver?

you are lying.

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's troll tuesday.

Someone hasn't been paying a fuck of alot of attention around here, have they?

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't need to log in, because he wasn't making shit up. If he was gonna make shit up, then he should at least log in first.

Re:Its a shame.

[nirvdrum]

I am using the latest nvidia drivers. Though, I admit last time I tried was about two months ago, since I was so disgusted with performance. And I run debian sid, so my software versions for things like X-Windows are usually as recent as they can be. And when I tried Mandrake 8.0, my frame rate was even half that as it was under debian (still haven't figured this one out, since I had the same "packages" installed, and used the same config files.)

Now, as a linux user, the real question is, what do I have to gain by lying?

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds most strange. I have no idea what is wrong there. All I can say is that I have not experienced any of your problems, and that the NVidia driver flies on my Linux box.

One thing to note - Mandrake 8.0 installs the "nv" driver by default, and it would be dog slow. Are you absolutely, positively sure you installed the nvidia drivers instead of the ones supplied with the OS ? And changed your XF86Config to load the new driver?

What CPU do you have?

Re:Its a shame.

[nirvdrum]

Yeap, I definitely was using the nvidia driver (I even got the nice splash screen). I was using it on a variety of processors, ranging from a K6-2 350 to a K7 - 1.3 GHz. And a range of kernels from like 2.4.5 to 2.4.10 (I know agpgart had some make-overs, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it).

Re:Its a shame.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, an unfortunate mismatch between agpgart and the nvidia driver could slow things (nvidia had their own agp stuff for a while too) - but even so, a 3x performance decrease simply does not tally with my personal experience, and I'm sure there would have been more fuss about it on the mailing lists if other people ran into the problems you had - the only similar ones I've seen are when people mistakenly used the nv driver rather than the nvidia driver, and/or Mesa's libGL.so instead of Nvidias.

Also, just maybe, if the Nvidia library wasn't using 3dnow/SSE instructions on linux and was on windows, you could see such a decrease, but unless you'd disabled CPU-feature identification for some reason, that wouldn't happen.

That said, I do also remember there were issues with Nvidia cards and the agp on certain athlon mobos - but the problems were in hardware (marginal timings), and would have affected windows just as badly or worse (since windows would be more likely to crash outright).

Re:Its a shame.

[Some Dumbass...]

Having multiple target platforms is a serious headache, and Linux just isn't a big enough market.

This is probably true, but it always makes me wonder why there are Mac ports of most games.

Having said that, if you're already planning to support two platforms, why not aim for multi-platform support from the beginning and include Linux?

Re:Its a shame.

[beerits]

Two points about mac ports:
1. There are tons of games that are never ported to Mac

2. It is probally easier to port games to mac because of the limited number of hardware configurations to support.

Re:Its a shame.

[Dusty Bottoms]

As a Linux user, I take offense to the notion that because I get most software for free, I won't pay for any software. As a matter of fact, one of the compelling reasons for me to use Linux is the fact that I can legally obtain a lot of quality software for free. As a result, I don't mind purchasing an occasional Loki game, because copying it would be illegal. It's so much easier to pay for an occasional piece of software than in the Windows world, where everything "free" ends up being adware or crippleware anyway.

Free Software keeps me an honest man.

Re:Its a shame.

[Some Dumbass...]

Good points. I would have to partially disagree, though. As for point #1, I think we can both agree that there are still a lot more games ported to the Mac than to Linux. As for point #2, I'm pretty sure that hardware abstraction layers like SDL (and DirectX, grumble grumble) and multimedia standards like OpenGL/AL/IL are designed to deal with that. I mean, varied hardware hasn't stopped DirectX from being widely adopted, right?

I just don't get it...

[Xerithane]

... we have SDL. we have OpenGL. I fail to understand the logic that game companies harbor to not write cross-platform games. I've done some development with SDL and it's a really good toolkit. Sure, it needs some more work but everything does. OpenGL is awesome, and it's not controlled by one proprietary source.
Taking some extra time to port to linux and ship it on the same CD as the windows version doesn't seem like a bad idea. His talks about Wine are fine and all, and I can understand that.. but I really dislike his dismissal of whether or not it is native. AFAIK Wine still requires Windows. That is bullshit. I want a game to run on Linux. Linux. Not windows, not wine. Wine is Not an Emulator, Right?
It doesn't seem to take much to build a game using existing cross-platforms toolkits that rival Direct3d. OpenAL seems to be the largest gap to bridge.. but, this is a pointless rant so I'll end it.

Re:I just don't get it...

[kalleanka2]

I'll tell you the reasons.

1: SDL and OpenGL doesn't keep up with DirectX. OpenGL is really nice (IMHO) but it's falling behind since it's evolution unfortunately is quite slow.

2: Is there really any point in porting? Noone buys software on Linux so it really doesn't make much sense at the moment to invest money in it.

Re:I just don't get it...

[brunes69]

Wine hans't required windows ever, AFAIK. It certainly doens't now.

Re:I just don't get it...

[PlaysWithMatches]

> It doesn't seem to take much to build a game using existing cross-platforms toolkits that rival Direct3d.

Maybe, but their code is already written for Direct3D, and that's what their developers know. They're not going to pour the money into training developers to use totally different tools and platforms, and pay for the development time to convert everything to OpenGL/AL/SDL whatever. Your points are valid, except in a case such as this - the code is already there, and they're not going to re-write it all.

I just know somebody is going to say, "open source it, we'll port it!" or something like that. But think about it - if you were a company like Maxis, would you give away the source code to your best-selling game that you've put millions into (and received that much as well)?

Re:I just don't get it...

[Amokscience]

I see you glossed over the fine points so let me restate it simply:

Linux is not worth it. Not 5 years ago, not today, not tomorrow, not a year from now. I have a game developer friend, he was enthused with Linux before he had to port his companies game; now he detests it and much of the (Linux gaming) 'community'.

OpenGL develops slowly and requires proprietary extensions for the newest video cards. Hardcore gamers are the last people on Earth who like to wait until their new-fangled video card and sound drivers are supported. Video card companies will support Quake because of it's mindshare. They don't support other companies near as well.

The development and support costs FAR outstrip the benefits of having a native Linux port. The bottom line in a truly cutthroat industry is how much ROI can you get. Last I heard, Q3's linux version didn't do well enough to justify further Linux targeted box sales (late release, blah blah blah, excuses), and the Quake series is probably the biggest, most popular commercial game among the /. crowds.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Bilestoad]

I'll tell you why - there's no money in it. Require more explanation? Look at sales of Linux games. Look at Loki (and their attitude as shown to Don Hopkins). Look at the gaming industry as a whole, and observe the choice of DirectX over OpenGL. Where's the convincing reason to switch?

People who are concerned with making money don't give a rat's ass about Linux because the paying market is not big enough. This is the same reason many games never make it to the Mac. You think the game industry is somehow nobler because it involves programmers? Believe me, the game industry is just as rapacious as Hollywood - and if money is the metric, there's more at stake, too.

Re:I just don't get it...

[garcia]

didn't come out at the same time as the Windows version, most people hopped out and grabbed the first god damn copy they could.

Only the absolute Windows haters would grab the Linux only copy.

Re:I just don't get it...

[damiam]

A new version of OpenGL was just released last month. And if you use OpenGL and other cross-platform libs, porting shouldn't take much more than some tweaking and a recompile.

Re:I just don't get it...

[eMilkshake]

Yep, crossplatform coding is easy. Until you go to check previous settings (registry | conf), open a previously saved version (windialog | KDE dialog | Gnome dialog), create an installer (just pop open a crossplatform text-only interface written in C), try to do some fancy timing, use the network, print.

Frankly, I don't know why every program isn't cross platfrom. In fact, they both use Intel machine code, so all programs should just work!

Re:I just don't get it...

[On Lawn]

Linux is not worth it. Not 5 years ago, not today, not tomorrow, not a year from now.

Being a small buisness all linux network administrator for two different companies (concurrently) I feel your pain, even if it is a different realm.

You might want to tone it down a notch, as your statement comes across way too ideological. There are many instances where SDL and OpenGL make sence for game developers, even if it doesn't for the "latest greatest see realistic blood and guts" games developers. It may even make sence for them too, I wouldn't dismiss it.

In the market as it is today, I wouldn't want start the two year long development cycle for the killer game on ActiveX, only to find out that my compeditor reaches a larger market with SDL (PlayStation, Sega, etc...). I wouldn't want to try to make a name for myself in to a saturated ActiveX market and my compeditor actually make money on a more scaled back SDL production.

I just couldn't justify that kind of decision to my Boss, VC's, or share holders.

Re:I just don't get it...

[yesthatguy]

I just know somebody is going to say, "open source it, we'll port it!" or something like that. But think about it - if you were a company like Maxis, would you give away the source code to your best-selling game that you've put millions into (and received that much as well)?

This is an excellent point. If a respectable company (like Loki often did) comes to a game developer and wants to port the game, with the intent that much of the revenue will still go to the original company, the game company will most likely give up their code, but just to Loki under an NDA or heavy license/IP restrictions. Giving the source to every person who buys the game is a surefire way to increase piracy many-fold. What they could do, is to provide a certain amount of the code, or a demo that uses many of the same functions of the real game, and say "Make this run natively under Linux, and we'll give you (not everybody) more of the code to work with, if you're interested.

Re:I just don't get it...

[DGolden]

Linux is not worth it. Not 5 years ago, not today, not tomorrow, not a year from now.

People said the same about windows games. "Why develop for Windows when everyone has DOS?". Well, corporate IT was moving towards windows, so the savvier game developers saw that people would soon have windows everywhere - and if there's one thing that people always do, it's play games when they should be working. Now corporate IT (at least in here in Europe and (according to reports) in Asia) is moving toward linux on the desktop and server.


OpenGL develops slowly and requires proprietary extensions for the newest video cards.

OpenGL development did slow down a bit. It's speeding up again now, thanks largely to Mac OS X. There may sometimes be extensions, but that's still better than the whole bloody thing being proprietary and at the whim of MS, like D3D is. There's a well-defined process for folding such extensions into future revisions of the OpenGL standard. OpenGL was designed to be extensible.

Also, the Direct* APIs are a bitch unless you code in MS-mutilated C++ - OpenGL has well-defined, easy to use, pure C and fortran bindings, as well as decent bindings for many other languages. - That's one of the reasons OpenGL is used for high-end applications, like CAD and scientific and engineering visualisation (my specialty). DirectX truly, deeply sucks for anything like that. OpenGL is also designed for very high poly-count stuff encountered in visualisation. OpenGL on linux is being developed enthusiastically, from the industrial side - visualisation front ends for $50000 numerical simulation software that used to run on SGI IRIX systems are now being run on Linux boxes. OpenGL isn't going to fade into obscurity anytime soon - the profits from a couple of licenses for the sort of software that really uses OpenGL can outweigh the profits from the sales of hundreds of thousands of copies of weenie windows games.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Xerithane]

Funny how Q3 uses OpenGL and has no problems.. And yep, there is a point to porting when done right because it doesn't take much more effort when designed correctly.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Xerithane]

I'm not saying convert existing applications. I'm talking purely about the waste of throwing money into Windows-only applications. If you just hire good developers that already know OpenGL (which most graphics developers know anyway) and the core development team can learn SDL very easily (What training costs.. programmers should be able to read the specs and start developing with an API or they aren't worth their weight in bile).

Re:I just don't get it...

[Xerithane]

Cross platform code is easy. All your arguments are drivel. Build an installer in QT, compiles on Win, *NIX - and problems with networking? wtf!? .. I'm not even going to go into why this isn't an issue, because it would be lost on you since you even put it up there. (And yes, i have written networking code on win and *nix)

Re:I just don't get it...

[mangu]

would you give away the source code to your best-selling game that you've put millions into

Actually, what consumes millions is not making the software, it's creating the data. There are some good open source libraries and engines for creating games, but what makes a successful game is the storyline, the characters, the virtual environments, etc, and those can be copyrighted.

Unfortunately, in recent years game companies have begun to forget this. They are trying "advanced" features as selling points, rather than imaginative games. For instance, one old favorite of mine is the "Monkey Island" series. The latest sequel has a "three dimensional" GUI, but it seems to lack much of the imagination, originality, and sense of humor of earlier versions. Perhaps that story is just getting old, but I wonder if they really invested as much in creating a good story as they did in creating that new GUI.

Re:I just don't get it...

[kalleanka2]

I didn't say OpenGL has problems (for the record I love the OpenGL API design) I just said it evolves to slowly compared to DirectX. There are games that supports OpenGL but most uses DirectX instead.

I can agree there is a point in porting to Mac or PS/PS2 or other consoles but no way porting to Linux is a good idea. Even if you manages to compile it on Linux actually release a Linux-version makes no sense, you don't get paid.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"waste of throwing money into Windows-only applications"

What waste is that? Windows is what sells.

"the core development team can learn SDL very easily "

What is the purpose here? Ports to gaming machines and possibly mac can be ok but Linux is a meaningless dead end, it don't make money, it only costs money.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is going to put in millions in developing something only to be harrassed by people like RMS telling people paying for your software is unethical? It's simply better to stay out of linux.

Re:I just don't get it...

[kalleanka2]

"Why develop for Windows when everyone has DOS?".

Do you have any example of anyone saying that? It took a while before windows games made it but thats because it had some technical issues in the beginning. Also, there was lots of games "in the pipeline" that was made for DOS and normally only during the planning phase is things like platform altered. However, everybody knew windows was going to take over, it was just a matter of time.

Linux is a different thing. Linux is dominated by people who refuses to pay for software. It even have quite a number of people who tells people it's unethical to charge for software.

It just makes no sense to support Linux under those circumstances.

I agree with you that OpenGL has a very nice API and I personally prefers it over DirectX. However, it don't keep up with DirectX when it comes to features.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Amokscience]

Wake me up in 2 to 5 years when Linux/X is actually ready for the Desktop. Until then I'll run it for the two things it's really good for: serving and unix development.

And the argument isn't about OpenGL for $$$ CAD apps. It's about using it for $50 a pop consumer games that are obsolete and out of mind 6 months after they come out.

Re:I just don't get it...

[windex]

The only diffrence between network development in windows and *nix/*bsd* is that you must initalize winsock. All function calls are identical in the C libraries outside of the init function.

Microsoft's Winsock would've never taken off if they haddn't emulated the BSD-style networking functions everyone else was using. It's just the way it was at the time. Hell, Microsoft could've most likely taken any protocol and made it what would now be popular, but, at the time they weren't as big and had to play fair.

Now, the networking stack in windows leaves much to be desired, but...

Also, you've got more options than Qt, you've also got GTK and wxWindows..

The GTK windows port seems to be coming along well, last I checked.

Re:I just don't get it...

[jmauro]

No, the new Monkey Island did suck. Who's ever heard of a game that didn't let you use the mouse? It took me 20 minutes to figure that one out. And then the game wasn't even worthwhile enough to make me want to play it, I gave up after an hour or so.

Re:I just don't get it...

[geekster]

Noone buys software on Linux

That's a pretty bold statement, I mean, no one at all? I have bought plenty of games for Windows and I fail to see the difference for me in buying for one OS or the other (though, given the choice I'd choose Linux).

Re:I just don't get it...

[jedidiah]

Actually, by right we should be getting that sourcecode anyways. Anything that the publisher doesn't think is worth publishing anymore should be PD. That's all there is to it.

Software Publishers are benefiting from the limited monopoly (and necessary goverment interference in commerce) yet not willing to live up to their end of the bargain.

Re:I just don't get it...

[DGolden]

Do you have any example of anyone saying that?

Not to hand - that's going back a long time, back before most windows/dos people were leaving tracks on the net (remember, they were latecomers to the net, not like Amiga/UNIX heads like me :-) ). However, in an article from 1996 (five years ago, now!), I found a quote from late in the transitional period

And DOS-only computers? Well, of course they only do DOS games. And watch out - there are old DOS games that will run on a real old banger, and there are new DOS games that need the same amount of power as Windows - in other words they need a new PC but the old DOS operating system.

So, clearly, even then, there were quite a proportion of developers targetting DOS. I'm afraid all I have before then is anecdotal evidence of my memories of the time.

Linux is dominated by people who refuses to pay for software. It even have quite a number of people who tells people it's unethical to charge for software.

And you'll find that even Richard Stallman makes an exception to that for games, which he (and most others) regard as a special case, since the important bit is the game data (storyline, gfx, etc) that make the one-off game experience, not the engine. In fact, this is quite a common view - witness the DOOM, Quake, Descent, Heretic etc. engines, which have all been open-sourced, with restrictive copyright retained on on the datasets that are the meat of the game.

Re:I just don't get it...

[jedidiah]

If Scott Draeker ever saw a copy of Hopkins' port of SimCity for Unix, it's little wonder that Scott gave him attitude.

Re:I just don't get it...

[DGolden]

Huh. Linux has been running on my desktop for years now, even back when people were making similarly crappy claims about Linux not being ready for the Server.

My previous post was countering stupid arguments like "people are using Direct3D for Games, therefore OpenGL is dead, therefore Linux is dead." - OpenGL isn't dead. I was attempting to illustrate that more powerful forces than the games market are keeping it alive - and as European governments start to use open source OSes on desktops (and they are doing so), then european games developers who want to make money will follow with linux games. The presence of OpenGL on Linux makes it very easy for them to do so, since chances are they already know OpenGL anyway.

There have been an amazing number of illogical attacks on OpenGL on /. for the past while, usually from clueless teenage Windows gamers who wouldn't know an SGI if it bit them on the ass. OpenGL is the grown-ups 3D API, and it's not going away because people are writing windows games targetting Direct3D.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Noone buys software on Linux

Then why did Loki do Chap 11 instead of Chap 13? They seem to think they have a revenue stream worth keeping.

Re:I just don't get it...

[kalleanka2]

They are only open sourced when the engines are out of date. ID should never release their sourcecode for a soon-to-be-released game. I would not agree that only the gamedata is valuable, the engines are quite valuable.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The only diffrence between network development in windows and *nix/*bsd* is that you must initalize winsock. "

No, Windows supports asynchronous (message based ) API and UNix does not.

Re:I just don't get it...

[dvNull]

Thats because id makes a lot of money licensing their engine. Which is also fine by me. If you license their engine, you can make and sell as many games as you like which are based on that engine.

But once the life term of the engine is over, id releases it as free software and look at the Quake 1 engine. Still getting enhancements and more programmers willing to keep breathing new life into that engine.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Steveftoth]

The only reason that the DirectX api is developing quickly is because MS see it as necessary to move quickly, right now. As soon as they don't see sales go up they will stop developing the API. If (and this is an if I don't want to bash) the XBox fails, I don't think they will continue to develop the API as quickly as they have been in the past.

DirectX is not a bad thing, but as soon as it's unprofitable, it will be dropped.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Xerithane]

Thanks for the supportive response - I think if most people realized how similar cross platform development design is we'd see more cross platform applications. I think the biggest thing that is holding the open source movement from being on the desktop is the lack of cross platform applications. If there were a substantial amount of open source applications available on Windows as well as Linux we'd get a lot more valuable exposure.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Amokscience]

And my Desktop comment is in relation to games as a viable market. I think you'd have to agree. Does you using Linux as a Desktop make what I said false? No.

I don't see why you attached your OpenGL comment to my post. I hardly tried to say OpenGL was dead. I just said it didn't make sense for game developement in most cases.
To reiterate: *all of my comments are in relation to games on Linux* I hoped to Jebus that I wouldn't have to type out every exception and write a 2,000 word essay on my background and beliefs to jsutify my comments.

Re:I just don't get it...

[PlaysWithMatches]

Anything that the publisher doesn't think is worth publishing anymore should be PD.

Perhaps, but we're not talking about something that's "not worth publishing anymore." We're talking about The Sims, which Maxis has made, and continues to make, thousands of dollars off of. Not only that, they're going to be rolling out an online expansion of it, not to mention the various add-on packs they keep selling for the game.

So in Maxis' eyes, there is zero reason to consider putting The Sims out as open source or public domain, or whatever. There's still moolah to be made, after all.

I do agree in a way, though. I think many companies would be smart to open source or give away games that are no longer profitable. Especially if those games have sequels. "Hey everybody, download Diablo 1 for free, and check out the open source Linux port in the works! And hey, if you like that, boy have we got a sequel for you..."

Re:I just don't get it...

[EnglishTim]

SDL just isn't as good as DirectX for most things. It's that simple. DirectX has been in development for longer, and has had more quality control.

OpenGL is good (and easier to program with than DirectX), but has been falling behind Direct3D a bit recently. Especially with the whole 'use a different extension for each card's T&L' thing.

Support is a very big issue. Linux distributions are so varied that support is very difficult thing to offer, especially when video drivers are so badly supported under Linux. On most modern PCs with Windows installed, 3D works straight outta the box. It can be like pulling teeth getting it to work under Linux.

Also, the idea that just using the SDL will just make your porting a breeze is misleading. Another platform equals a completely new set of testing, Q&A etc. All of this takes a lot of time. Most game engines can have things like the sound, graphics, network and input modules interchanged, so the effort in porting would not normally be that much increased over using something like the SDL from the start anyway.

Linux just doesn't have a big enough market to make it worth developer's time, and support is just too much of an issue.

Re:I just don't get it...

[Webmonger]

For a long time, folks were running Windows, but dropping to DOS for gaming. Windows games succeeded in part because Windows was DOS-compatible.

What does that say about Wine(X)?

Best UNIX for Games?

[toupsie]

Do you think that installed base for Linux will be higher or lower than the installed base for Mac OS X in terms of gaming population? Do you think that it will be easier to port your games to Linux or Mac OS X? Will UNIX ever beat Windows for Gaming?

P.S. Thanks for native build of "The Sims" on Mac OS X and supporting Linux in general.

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[isa-kuruption]

Actually, UNIX was originally written to play a game at AT&T. It was a play of the name off of the failed O/S called Multix.

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[kalleanka2]

Don't know about the install base but the major difference is that mac users are more likely to buy software.

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[toupsie]

What was the game??? Has it been ported to Linux? :P

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[kin_korn_karn]

The thing is, Windows itself doesn't really "support" gaming. DirectX is a hack that allows things ran in the API layer to access the hardware directly. It's a nit, but I had to pick it :)

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[damiam]

The thing is, Linux doesn't really "support" gaming that well either. DRM is a hack that allows things ran in the API layer to access the hardware directly. It's a nit, but I had to pick it :)

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[dvNull]

The game was space travel and i believe you can get the source to the game somewhere ...

Re:Best UNIX for Games?

[Doktor Memory]

Do you think that installed base for Linux will be higher or lower than the installed base for Mac OS X in terms of gaming population?

In terms of a gaming population that will pay money for games? Infinitely larger, since you can't divide by zero.

Sim this

[Flakeloaf]

Am I the only one who's getting a little tired of Maxis' "guess my algorithm" game? Sim City was brilliant. Each game that came after it was either trying to cash in on success, or add an extra level of pretentious detail on top of what is essentially an experiment to see how well game players react to behaviour modification.

Porting this game to *nix won't lend any air of legitimacy to company or platform. Get Blizzard onside and I'll be impressed.

Re:Written by : anonymous user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic?

Ummm the post (3rd one down from the link to the article) is posted by an "Anonymous User". This is very on topic.

WineX could work iff....

[the_2nd_coming]

I think the subscription is a dumb idea....why put the onus on the user to get the most up to date libs for his system? if TG would sell their wine implementation to a game studio so that it can be included on the cd, then the game studio only needs to make an installer for Linux, the Winx is included so the Linux user just needs to buy the game with the penguine on the box, not worry about how it is being implemented, the installer can look at the system, see the winex libs are all compatable, if not install the ones that are included on the cd, and put an Icon on the desktop. bam a game that runs and the user dioes not have to know how it works.....that is how to make good use of wine, by including it in the installer, not a subscription.

Re:WineX could work iff....

[zangdesign]

By putting Wine on the install disk for a game, you run into the same DirectX-like issue that we have on Win machines. How does the installer determine if the version of Wine on the Linux box can support the game? How do you handle custome extensions written by the game developers to optimize Wine for their particular game? Don't tell me it won't happen - it will. No two Linux installations are alike and there are bound to be more problems than solutions.

Re:WineX could work iff....

[the_2nd_coming]

how about iff = if and only if dumb ass

Re:WineX could work iff....

[the_2nd_coming]

well, if transgaming is to be successful, it will need to maintain backward compatability to be able to run older games that it supported, so they will only sell wine libs to companies if the lib is backward compatable and therefore nothing to worry about.

Re:WineX could work iff....

[yomegaman]

It's a common mathematical shorthand for 'if and only if'. Hope this helps.

Re:WineX could work iff....

[the_2nd_coming]

you are a fucking moron if it can not occur to you that iff was meant to be IFF you dumbass....its people like you that try to weasle out of somthing based on dumbass technicalities.

Re:WineX could work iff....

[the_2nd_coming]

ok, you got me on that one :-)

Re:Open Source Maketplace Insights

[ellem]

Is it at all possible that you and your crack team are just really really comfy with W2K/NT? That you are able to configure those servers better than you can a *nix box.

As for Apache being demeaned by you as a "volunteer based project written by weekend hackers" I hope you realize that it is Apache that holds the lion's share of the web server market and that IIS has been relegated to the realm of ludicrisly broken.

The Sims Hot Date

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

... is only the first of a slew of revolutionary match-making games. Soon, the following titles will appear :

- The Sims Warm Feeling : you have to prepare the ceremony. Choose the right cake, find an affordable ring, discover friends to invite who aren't drinking buddies, select an appropriate church (avoid the ever treacherous Vegas drive-in wedding !) : will your marriage be successful, or will she say no ?

- The Sims Hot Waters : your mistress and you are busted ! dodge flying plates, try to watch the ball game amidst the shrieks : can you manage to stay married, or will you join the legions of single men again ?

- The Sims Cold Feet : you can't take it anymore, your family urges you to take a decision. Work harder to pay attorney fees : can you make enough money to win your divorce ?

Re:port

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds to me you don't know anything about linux

You might be wrong

[kryptola]

I think the other way around.
Lots of The Sims fans are completely ignore Linux (or don't know how good it is (example: my sister and her buddies) so i think the sims might lure them away from Windows.

Re:You might be wrong

[bribecka]

so i think the sims might lure them away from Windows.

IMHO, no game is going to lure people away from Windows. Think about it:

There is a user that runs windows and buys games that run on windows. Now, one game is ported to Linux, but it also runs on windows! Why would they switch? There's no need, that game already runs on windows, as does every other game they own, and the overwhelming majority of games due to come out.

Really, what is so *great* about Linux that will lure the gamer from windows? The lack of games? The lack of driver support? Or maybe the fact that it's completely different than everything they know?

Now, if the Sims 2 came out *only* for Linux, you might have something!

Re:You might be wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, what is so *great* about Linux that will lure the gamer from windows?

The freedom. The lack of crashes. The configurability.

Re:You might be wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

>Really, what is so *great* about Linux that will lure the gamer from windows?

>The freedom. The lack of crashes. The configurability.

I think of them, then I realize that linux DOES crash (often in really archaic ways)... I think about how much I really care to configure my game machine, and I configure about the "freedom" of not being able to play games because I'm using linux.

IMHO linux is as robust as it is because it lacks a lot of the little touches that windows has. If all you want to do is program and run servers, use linux... But if you want a user friendly environment that plays games well, use windows.

Re:You might be wrong

[Phanatic1a]

Yes, because Galactic Civilizations is the game that made OS/2 such a success.

Re:You might be wrong

[Crackerman111]

Really, what is so *great* about Linux that will lure the gamer from windows?

Windows = $200
Linux = $0

Re:You might be wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a nice chunk more than that if we're talking about the majority of the gaming market, who would probably want to buy the more commercial versions of Linux complete with manuals etc., and may not even realise that they can download it.

Re:You might be wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, but what if you're perfectly happy using Linux as a desktop, but still want to play games? I'd rather do without the so-called 'friendly' windows environment, but I still want to play good games. The Sims is the sole reason I still have a Windows partition - the few other games I play, Loki have ported.

Re:You might be wrong

[ilovecheese]

I'm not so sure about that one. The only reason I actually use Windblows is for the games. The Sims being the main one. The rest of my time, is spent on Linux & FreeBSD. If The Sims, or a few others (Flight Sims & NFS) are released, or playable under unix, I'd drop Windows in a heartbeat.

Just my $0.02

Re:You might be wrong

[bribecka]

The only reason I actually use Windblows is for the games.

That may be true, but the original poster was saying that if the Sims was ported to Linux, people who don't use Linux might be lured away, which is a bit of a dream.

Re:You might be wrong

[carlosjordao]

Now... the only thing that keeps me running windows is games!
If they were in Linux, I would say good-by to windows.

Why not games on Novell?

[OpenMind(tm)]

I'm not quite sure qwhy everyone is so insistant on games for Linux. So far, the prime excellance of Linux is as a network server OS. Now if game developers want to spend time on Linux ports, good for them, but I don't think it warrants a political movement. I think people some times discount Linux as an OS, because they see it trying to be all things to all people, and the first one a consumer would lay hands on (games or desktop productivity), it doesn't do that great.

What we really need is an open source OS written to be the perfect game platform, putting development ease, hardware support, and performance above all else. Imagin getting a game on a self-booting CD/DVD, that boots you into the a fast, BSOD-free environment. Code it to use Windows hardware drivers and various filesystems for installs, and you'd have something worth developing for.

Re:Why not games on Novell?

[liquidsin]

Imagin getting a game on a self-booting CD/DVD, that boots you into the a fast, BSOD-free environment

I have that system. It's called a PlayStation2.

Re:Why not games on Novell?

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like an XBox

Re:Why not games on Novell?

[OpenMind(tm)]

I think the key point was it being open source. But you're right, in the proprietary software and hardware world, PS2 fills the niche, although in its current hard drive-free form, it doesn't offer quite all the flexibility of a general purpose computer.

Re:Why not games on Novell?

[Christianfreak]

Because Linux is an alternative. I can't afford a copy of Windows nor do I want one and I defenatly can't afford a [insert your favorite game console here] nor do I like consoles that much. I have a bunch of games from my windows days and I'd love to get them to run on linux again. Why should windows be the only multi-purpose operating system?

Re:Why not games on Novell?

[Sloppy]

Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda. Although the BSOD isn't blue, it remains a BSOD.

Re:Why not games on Novell?

[Anonymous Coward]

> I think people some times discount Linux as an
> OS, because they see it trying to be all things
> to all people

One of the main reasons I use linux, is exactly the point that it's trying to be all things.

I don't want to have a Mac for graphics, an Atari for music, OS/2 for word processing and an Amiga for games (and windows for crashing, if you really want that).

With linux I can do everything I want on a single system.

Wine is important, but..

[k98sven]

In my opinion, there is no future for linux gaming if wine is the only way to go..

The problem is: at the moment, the best gaming API
is Microsoft DirectX, like it or not, and
the likelyhood of DirectX becoming a cross-platform API is zilch.

So obviously, Wine is needed at the moment, partly as a windows-simulator,
but also as an implementation of DirectX on linux.

In the long run, however, It's unhealthy to be dependent on an API dictated by microsoft.
We need a new, open, alternative.

Perhaps SDL 2.0 or OpenGL 2.0 is the answer needed?
Linux needs a killer DirectX-killer-API, much in the same way DirectX was the
MSDOS-killer that moved games development to windows.

However, if wine is the future of linux gaming,
we are (indirectly) giving that future to Microsoft.

Re:Wine is important, but..

[BenjyD]

Just because DirectX is the most widely used API doesn't neccesarily make it the best. But, given M$'s tactics, it will no doubt eventually become the only game API anyone uses, especially once the Xbox is popular.

Re:Wine is important, but..

[man_ls]

Maybe someone with lots of money and an open source bent would pay Microsoft some odd millions of dollars for the source to DirectX 1.0 and go from there? It would be so buggy it would be unusable for the most part; but the OSS community would refine it and make it better. It wouldn't be an MS API but would be compliant to the DirectX spec.

Not that MS would ever sell it, but stil...

Re:Wine is important, but..

[GauteL]

Why does Direct X _have_ to be dictated by Microsoft? Why can't the OSS-community embrace and extend?

The fact is that most development houses will only program for one API and they will choose the one that is reaches the largest parts of the market. If another API can reach an equal amount of people, while being clearly superiour and not costings lots of money for retraining, then you can expect to have game developers actually use it.

If you can prove that an cross-platform API will make you sell substantially more copies of a game, without it being a support nightmare, you have a winner.

Personally I think there is a bigger chance of having gaming houses try to make sure that their game works fine with Transgamings DirectX-implementation, than switching API.

I really don't care if a game is native or not, if it works perfectly and seamlessly under Wine. It's not like it would look or feel any different, like the difference from at Qt/GTK+ -app to a Wine-app (like Word Perfect).

Re:Wine is important, but..

[Burnon]

Here's another angle on this one:

Assuming Wine actually meets the goal of becoming a true Windows compatibility layer, at some point there won't be a reason to buy a Windows license to run Microsoft API games. That's the point where it makes financial sense for game developers to support to native Linux APIs (or Hurd, or *BSD, depending on which OS is in vogue when Wine gets rock solid).

Until you reach the point where Wine gets good enough to "just work", then I think there will be a market for native *NIX games. I'll certainly pay for a Loki game that is supported and known to work well.

It would behoove Loki to monitor add Wine and Winelib to their game porting toolkit. If Loki embraces Winelib, there's no reason it can't garner Winelib porting contracts until such time that game developers have a more urgent need for direct Linux porting (i.e., real consumer demand).

What's most interesting, I think, is that Loki's current business model actually appears to NEED the mass gaming market to flourish on SOME OTHER PLATFORM. If the mass gaming market were for Linux, Loki would lose its contracts, and have to get involved in game creation, not porting.

But that's just my uninformed opinion. YMMV!

True

[Liquid(TJ)]

It's given that porting games to linux isn't economically viable for windows gaming shops. I hope Loki recovers, and of course the Carmack is going to keep porting Quake because he has plenty of money already, but for the most part, here and now in 2001, Linux gaming is in trouble.

I've never tried to use WINE (I game in windoze for now), but from what I read in that article yesterday they're making some really good progress. If they manage to get WINE running as well as or better than the real windows API, that could do a lot for the community all by itself. "Linux runs windows apps better than windows" sounds almost as good as "Linux has a lot of apps."

If WINE keeps progressing, it could be the shot in the arm that saves Linux gaming. It may not do anything for the Linux gaming industry, but everyone knew that trying to make money in it was risky.

Re:True

[prisoner]

"Linux run windows apps better than windows" reminds me of IBM's marketing campaign for OS/2. Indeed, the only way that OS/2 ran windows apps better (remember, these were Win3.1 apps) was that when they crashed, they didn't bring down the whole system....

Re:True

[tmark]

Linux will never run "windows apps better than windows" because Windows is a moving target. The day WINE or whatever comes close to really threatening Windows is the day Microsoft will make just enough changes to *something* that will set screw the emulation up *just enough* as to be unusable.

As someone else has pointed out, IBM tried the exact same route with OS/2, which did run Windows better than Windows, with predictable results. The problem was Windows kept 'evolving' and many of the later (not much later, at that) Windows apps just did not work. For the larger purposes of Linux evangelizing, Windows emulation is worthless if it is not 100%, because nist people are just going to be PO'ed at anything less.

Re:True

[Znork]

Not to mention that the day WINE or whatever comes close to really threatening Windows is the day that the lawsuits start raining over anyone even close to WINE development. Not that such a lawsuit would have had any merit a few years ago, but with the way the US IP laws are shaping up it wont be quite as certain in the future.

Re:True

[friedmud]

Just try it!

It is free for the first month - and only $5 a month after that. I think you will enjoy what you get.

All of the games that work for me so far (Half-Life, Counter Strike, Baldur's Gate II, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and others) all run just as well (if not better in the case of BG2) as running them in windows.

I also get 2500 3dmark 2000 3dmarks.

It really does work.

Derek

Might be repetitive or obvious

[karb]

But he had a pretty interesting post on /. lately, as well.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23108&cid=2491 410

Re:Might be repetitive or obvious

[karb]

although now that I look farther down on the linuxgames page, I can see that his comment is exactly (or nearly) the same as his /. comment. Ne'er mind.

Re:Might be repetitive or obvious

[Mr. Gus]

I actually thought that the story was going to be about the Slashdot comment. :)

If you thought you've seen enough people bitching about the place before... heh...

Re:Might be repetitive or obvious

[karb]

actually, I misread the article ... the guy posted twice and I only read his first post, even though the /. article said to read his second post. So, I'm not an idiot, just mildly incompetent.

Reality... altered reality

[X]

The issue of keeping the network protocol consistent on multiple platforms is BS. That being said there are still lots of issues.

The truth of the matter is that no matter how rich your protocol, you still have only a small portion of your code, on both the client and the server, dedicated to the protocol. It is entirely possible to have this part of the code isolated from the rest of the code, and for it to be completely platform independant. It's also possible to allow for updates to the protocol code independant of the rest of the code.

Most well implemented protocols have built in support for handling multiple versions of the protocol simultaneously (typically implemented through some form of extension mechanism or flat out versioning). I've worked on projects using extremely complex binary protocols which make games like Sims Online seem pathetic. It can be done.

The real reality is that most game houses have not yet developed this expertise, nor are they likely to in the near future. Furthermore, even if they DID develop this expertise, heck even if it cost them ZERO $'s to develop on an additional platform, it still doesn't make economic sense. Why? Because no matter how hard you try, each new platform dramatically adds to the support costs for the product. You now have to support a whole new set of OS bugs, train your tech support people on how to support a new platform, etc.

As everyone in the open source world knows, support costs are the real costs of software development. Until your userbase grows large enough outweigh the support costs, well, you won't get a lot of commercial software. So be it.

Well...

[geomcbay]

I met Scott Draeker at the Game Developers conference on March 7 2000, about a month after The Sims shipped on Feb 4. I suggested that Loki port The Sims to Linux, because I was optimistic that it was going to be a popular game. He didn't seem to think so, and brushed me off, with a "go away kid, you're bothering me" attitude.

Just goes to show what a stellar business-man Scott Draeker is. Maybe that's why Loki's business is in the shitter and all of the good programmers jumped shipped months ago. If I were the Transgaming folks, I'd be happy that Scott Draeker was poo-pooing my idea as he has shown time and time again that he has no idea what he is talking about and in fact is often doing the exact opposite of what the right thing is.

Re:Well...

[Time Doctor]

Of course you don't seem to understand that loki is still releasing games, and Don Hopkins is still charging 80 dollars for a networkable version of sim city (the original) in tcl/tk. I've heard that the networking doesn't work, and 80 dollars is a bit steep for any game. Especially when you can get Sim City 3000 from Loki which isn't using tcl/tk for less. Don Hopkins seems to enjoy lining his pockets and repeating the market speak of native ports being bad so he can draw attention to this fantastic non-native port which is ruining future ports which are actually native, and not emulating a closed source API.

Re:Well...

[jedidiah]

This anecdote is MEANINGLESS.

Scott Draeker is NOT the person you talk to about porting The Sims. You talk to someone in Maxis or EA corporate. THEN, you have someone who is someone give Scott a call.

No sh*t Scott copped a "go away kid, you're bothering me" attitude.

...not to mention the fact that Hopkin's previous work is enough to get him dismissed out of hand by any Unix user or game company employee.

Re:Well...

[geomcbay]

...not to mention the fact that Hopkin's previous work is enough to get him dismissed out of hand by any Unix user or game company employee.


Hopkin's work on The Sims, the extremely popular high-selling game of the past year? His work on Pie Menus, which have become pretty much de facto standard on 3D Apps and other creative tools?

You must be one of Scott Draeker's blind lackeys if you'd dismiss him out of hand.

Loki is a big huge failure. Scott is to blame. The guy shouldn't even be managing a McDonalds.

Re:Well...

[geomcbay]

Scott Draeker is NOT the person you talk to about porting The Sims. You talk to someone in Maxis or EA corporate. THEN, you have someone who is someone give Scott a call.

No sh*t Scott copped a "go away kid, you're bothering me" attitude.


Sorry for the dual replies but I couldn't let the larger issue here slip. This type of logic is exactly why Loki was doomed from the start. Why should anyone from Maxis or EA give Linux a second thought when they are going to make insignificant revenue from it compared to the Windows version? Its Scott's job to go out there and sell these companies who make successful games on the vision of Linux gaming. If he can't do that, Loki has no reason to exist...

Who wants 3-5 year old ports of games that were shit to begin with (*cough*Postal*cough*)?

This sort of attitude just proves my point that Scott has no grounding in reality and his company was just a ploy to cash in on the Linux craze of a couple years ago. He should do his employees and his investors a favor and just kill Loki and sell off what he can and call it a day.

Re:Well...

[n3bulous]

This post is so late I'm sure it won't be read, but I met Mark Jacobs, President of Mythic Entertainment, in EB while preregistering for Dark Age of Camelot. He talked to me for probably half an hour and even politely answered some silly requests I made.

This is how an executive should act with anyone who is interested in their company (as long as they are polite, of course!).

Excellent points

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are a lot of valid points. Sales for Linux have been abysmal, and porting to Linux just doesn't make sense at this time.

slow news day

[_|()|\|]

So let me get this straight. The highest modded post from yesterday's story is copied to another forum, and it makes today's news?

Native vs. Emulated/Wine

[Bonkers54]

I think the problem here is between games being developed with the ideal situation in mind and the practical most efficient situation.

The most efficient way to develope a game to run on multiple platforms is to be able to use a single feature-full API that will run on any platform. Currently, the only fully featured game API is DirectX. SDL with OpenAL/GL and other such combinations have many features and work well, but they still can't compare with the feature set of DirectX. It is most efficient to use the DirectX API and develope an application for one platform, Windows, and have it run verbatim on the other platforms such as Linux using Wine.

Above is the most efficient and practical method for a game company to use, but the ideal method is completly different. The ideal method would be to develope a cross-platform gaming library which contains all features a game developer would need. Currently SDL with OpenGL and OpenAL is available for use, but this combination is still lacking some features. So I see two roads that can be taken. The cross-platform gaming library can be extended to included the needed features and a standard can be decided on which all game companies will use. Or SDL with OpenGL and OpenAL can be used as a base and all other features can be coded into the given application. Either way would result in a native application. In the end the ideal method will also turn out to be the most efficient and practical, but in the current time frame it isn't. The choice is up to the game company to decide which time frame they want to work with. Large companies can go for the extended time frame and work towards the ideal situation, but smaller companies as is the situation for most, will have to go with the smaller timeframe and use Wine.

I hope the someday the ideal road will be acheived and everything will be native to all OSes. But until then, Wine will suit me just fine.

Re:Native vs. Emulated/Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Currently, the only fully featured game API is DirectX.

No, it's lacking a big feature too: PORTABILITY.

No API is perfect.

Re:Native vs. Emulated/Wine

[sam@caveman.org]

It is most efficient to use the DirectX API and develope an application for one platform, Windows, and have it run verbatim on the other platforms such as Linux using Wine.


i'd have to say that it would take a very, very incompetent development organisation to honestly think that developing for DirectX will allow your software to run 'verbatim' on Linux. Wine is not in any way associated with Microsoft, and do you wanna guess how many engineers they have ensuring that DirectX 8.0 breaks Wine as best as it can?

and another gripe. DirectX is not open source on the OTHER end as well (API is the front end you game developers write for, the 'other end' is the driver support for the video card). my video card is BAD-ASS. 64 MB framebuffer, 64 MB of texture, perfect OpenGL support. absolutely ZERO DirectX support. and absolutely this is as much the fault of the manufacturer's as Microsoft's, but hey, all your DirectX games I cannot buy, either, and i run windows. so perhaps if developers would bite the bullet and develop toward an open API they would find themselves with not only a linux, freebsd, and mac market, but a market on windows as well for those of us DirectX is not a solution.

-sam

You arent subscribed so dont talk

[HanzoSan]

Its a great Idea, I'm subcribed, and voting on the development process is GREAT!!!

Re:You arent subscribed so dont talk

[the_2nd_coming]

umm. I think it is a dumb Idea so I am not subscribed, this is not somthing you have to be clued in on to get how it works. I think the implimentation is bad, but the idea of Winx is good. it is totaly diffrent if I do not use wine but say wine sucks. I don't use it so how do I know it sucks. implimentation is another story, if I think they are implimenting it in a bad way and I can give a nice logocal alternative there is nothing in the statment that invalidates me.

Re:You arent subscribed so dont talk

[friedmud]

I understand your point - and I like the idea of Winex on the disk.

The problem right now is that Winex is no where close to being ready to put on a disk. That might come at some time later - but for right now they just need cash to be able to pay the bills.

I will support them until they don't need it anymore.

I really, really enjoy being subscribed and being able to vote on things. I never realized how much voting within a company by its customers could be cool! It really gives you a sense of cummunity when the PAYING customers all come to a consensus about which direction the company should head in. (if you don't believe me about the consensus thing - then subscribe for one month free, and you will see the incredible discussions that go on in the voting forums).

You might think they have a bad model - but you really should take them for a spin and see how it feels first.

Derek

Feh

[Aqualung]

As an avid gamer and coder, I'd have to say that linux really isn't going to catch the gaming market in the forseeable future. Call me a pessimist if you like, but that's the way I see it. Gaming may be a large market, but right now, the market is firmly entrenched on a Microsoft codebase. As the guy from Maxis pointed out, it's not that the tools aren't there, or that they're not professional quality...

Porting games really isn't a solution, as Loki found out... any gamer that's serious about playing isn't going to wait for the linux port to maybe make the rounds, if someone decides to pick it up... so they basically exist to serve two VERY niche markets... the "I won't run anything unless it's on linux" and the "I'd rather run it on linux" groups. Concurrent development for multiple architectures is indeed expensive and carries with it a lot of overhead, EVEN if it's planned from day one! While this may have benefits in the long term, as with the Sims linux code being used as a base for the Sims Online project, I believe that this is still the exception rather than the rule.

So, you a cry, a killer app is perhaps warranted? Difficulties abound in this scenario as well... any game that becomes immensely successful automatically spawns imitation... play-alikes would be appearing on the Windows platform in VERY short order, capitalizing on a much greater market that has been overlooked, purposefully OR unintentinoally, by the original creators.

Realistically, there's only one thing that will make Linux a commercially viable platform for which companies can develop games: Linus' plan for world domination(tm). The game companies will go where the money is, that is the simple truth... if the gamers come to Linux, the games will follow. Loki's "testing of the waters" showed that there isn't the demand yet to justify a supply.

As for the discussion on how to get people to Linux... well, that's a whole different can of worms, and one that I won't open in this thread. I should probably (knowing /.) add the caveat that when I'm talking about games, I'm talking about modern, commercial-quality games, with Hollywoodian budgets and all the bells and whistles.

Just my two cents...

Re:Feh

[Gedvondur]

Sensible, reasoned reply, with realworld economics taken into consideration.

Kudos.

Re:Feh

[Anonymous Coward]

> Realistically, there's only one thing that will
make Linux a commercially viable platform for which companies can develop games: Linus' plan for world domination(tm).

Where did you read that Linus wants this? In all his interviews he's said that he doesn't care one way or the other, he's in it for the interest, not the marketshare/domination.

Re:Feh

[Sloppy]

so they basically exist to serve two VERY niche markets... the "I won't run anything unless it's on linux" and the "I'd rather run it on linux" groups.

Fine, call it a niche. But niche != nonexistent. Niche == opportunity for someone who wants to make some money.

I'm typing this on my Amiga, so I just have to snicker when someone calls Linux users a niche market, implying it's totally unviable or something. If you wanna see unviable ... oh, never mind.

Re:Feh

[Aqualung]

Just because the Amiga niche is even smaller than the linux niche doesn't mean the Linux niche is economically viable... and remember, we're not referring to the Linux community as a whole, we're referring to gamers who use Linux...

Gaming on linux is much more difficult than gaming on windows... needed drivers often aren't there, unless you buy just the right hardware, you have to get the right drivers for the right game, set up the game to use the drivers, the list goes on, as opposed to popping the CD-ROM in the drive and clicking install. Lazy? You're damn straight... if I just picked up Quake9 or something like that, I don't want to have to spend hours futzing with drivers and config files and what not, I wanna frag something!

Until you can dumb down Linux to the point where it really is just click and go, you're going to keep a large portion of the market away, myself included, and I'm a big fan of Linux... I'm more than happy to use two OS's for different purposes, and treat my gaming rig like a big overblown console, and be productive with Linux.

Re:Feh

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy games for Linux. I won't consider myself in the "I won't run anything unless it's on linux" group - I could probably dig an old Solaris (sparc version) out somewhere. However, if I have to spend the price of a playstation to buy a different OS (e.g. windows), I would rather buy the playstation.

Remember Windows 95?

[uchian]

Anyone remember when Windows 95 came out originally? It had no games, or at least the ones it did have sucked big time. Everyone moaned that Windows gaming would never take off because dos games were faster, and more dedicated.

And now everyone uses Windows.

Why?

Because it was still possible to play at least some dos games under Windows (because it was built on dos), and with for a bit of hassle, Windows would close, your game would run, you finish your game and windows would reboot.

Yeah, it wasn't neat, but it let people move to Windows 95 and still play their dos games. Once the user base was large enough, native games became available.

My point is, the argument against Wine is exactly the same.What I want to be able to tell people is

"Yeah, you CAN play all your existing Windows games under Linux! Try it and see! It's SOOOOO much better than Windows!!!".

Y'see, if we could get people using Linux more, the user base grows. Then it becomes more feasible to make native Linux games. Then the user base grows some more... See what I'm getting at?

If wine can play all windows games, we can get all those game loving people who won't try Linux because it hasn't got any games to try it and love it too.

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[Jeffrey Baker]

You could also play all your old DOS games under OS/2, but that didn't make OS/2 a big hit.

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[theoddone33]

Remember Windows 95 coming preinstalled on every computer you bought around that time? I'd say that had more to do with acceptance of Windows 95 than what games it did or did not run. A larger user base will help native games, but I'm not convinced wine is the answer. I don't think the Transgaming people really want to write self-depricating software.

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[Arandir]

OS/2 could also run Windows applications natively. This led in part to the demise of OS/2. If you could write an application once for Windows, and have it run on both Windows and OS/2, then why bother ever writing for OS/2 natively?

So the consumer sees 10,000 native Windows titles and 10 native OS/2 titles on the store shelves, and thinks to himself "duh!"

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[nusuth]

It could have been that dos would stay for gaming, ad windows 95 would do the rest. The reason that it did not happen was Directx. It is one of the few things MS did right. GDI sucked really hard, it was impossible to write games with it. Once windows 95 had a dos speed sound and graphics api, and support for it were better thru win drivers instead of custom drivers, windows gaming caught on. Correct, that could not have happened without a large user base, but user base is not the only variable, and it is not the only varible linux is lacking.

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[Broccolist]

Wow, I had never thought of it that way before. For once a comment that really is insightful :).

However, by most standards, Win95 was vastly superior to dos. Whereas Linux is at best (and many/most people disagree with even this) somewhat superior to Windows, especially XP which nullifies Linux's trump card of never crashing. Linux will have to get a whole lot better for your analogy to hold.

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[collar]

I remember when I first got Windows 95, I had it set up so that it booted to DOS. I couldn't understand why I would want to go into windows by default, all that windows was good for (in my mind, having used win 3.1 all those years) was writting up assignments.

I didnt play games in windows to start off with, because it made games run much worse than they did in DOS (on another interesting note I remember reading magazine articles before win 95 came out claiming DOS games would run faster under win 95 than in DOS, hehehe).

Then something happened, ID announced a quake port for win 95 and said from now on they were only going to release games under win 95 not dos. I couldn't believe it at the time, WHY?

Of course, now I know exactly why. Under win 95 they didn't have to worry about sound card drivers, joystick drivers etc. Pretty soon, all games only came out under win 95 and the reason was simple, it was better for both parties. Users didn't have to worry about if a certain game was going to work with their ESS Crap sound card and developers didn't have to worry about the users dodgy sound card either. The small trade off in performance was soon forgotten with the next hardware upgrade.

The point is, people didn't move to win 95 because they could play their dos games, they moved because games ONLY came out for win95. Sure, if you couldnt play dos games in win95 it would have made the transition a lot harder, but it wasn't the defining factor. Linux can not offer a benefit to gamers in running their games, or to developers either. For both parties it is still harder than windows, and this means it will stay a small specialised market for those that already run linux. WineX is a step in a good direction for making the process easier on developers and users, but dont expect a rush of gamers to come from windows.

Re:Remember Windows 95?

[ikickass]

IMHO, OS/2 failed because IBM decided not to compete with MS Windoze. Think about it: even it IBM would win, it would have been a very costly victory. And at the time, they still had anti-trust issue to be resolved. Ability to run Win3.1 proggies has nothing to do with demise of OS/2. (I am assumming OS/2 is dead. Is that right?)

As for world domination of OS by Linux, it will have to be gradual, evolutionary and organic process. In that regard WINE is definitely a help.

Why bother?

[DarklordJonnyDigital]

Why bother porting games? Linux users can just buy Windows games and use WINE ;)

Of course, if and when Linux becomes mainstream enough that it's not only used by nerds like us, it will be advantageous for game creators to make sure their games are able to run on Linux, with or without an emulator.

You know what would be really k00l tho... transparent emulation of Windows software on Linux. That way you wouldn't have to fire up an emulator every time you wanna play Stellar Frontier.

Re:Open Source Maketplace Insights

[spencerogden]

Don't feed the Trolls

Hey!

[Happy Monkey]

Think of it as evolution in action, to quote somebody whose name doesn't deserve mentioning.

What's he got against Niven?

Re:Hey!

[Emil Brink]

Good question, I was just going to post it. Very weird-sounding quote, that one... It made me suspect he (Hopkins) has heard the quote somewhere else, or something. Weird.

Re:Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, that was Pournelle's line...

Real world, eh?

[quartz]

From the original article: Real People in the Real World don't care about religious issues like if it's running under Wine or if it's a native port.

Linux users don't care about religious issues? No shit. If I didn't care about religious issues, I would be running Windows XP now, not Linux. Dumbass...

Re:Real world, eh?

[cgray4]

I think you're just implying that Linux users aren't "Real People" or don't live in the "Real World". That is the kind of stereotyping of Linux users that a lot of people are trying to fix.

Re:Real world, eh?

[quartz]

No, I'm implying that your "Real World" is mainly populated with simple minded beings who are unable to think beyond "I'll just do what everybody else does and I'll be fine". You know, the people that you see on the streets these days running around in a patriotic frenzy, waving American flags marked "Made in China". THAT's your "Real World". And I'll be damned if I will allow myself to be reduced to that, just so I can play some stupid computer game.

Re:Real world, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users obivously do not live in the real world. In the real world, people need to actually make money. Real money.

Re:Real world, eh?

[jedidiah]

People need to make money.

Software doesn't.

1000 monkeys with an hour of freetime can bang out the software equivalent of Shakespeare.

Open gaming will catch up eventually. Just bear in mind that GNU started in the early 80's. It didn't even start gaining serious momentum until 10 years later.

However, once the momentum starts it builds on itself. Eventually, EA will find it difficult to compete with the combined intellectual output of the planet and the associated historical output.

EA is not the place to look for innovation anymore anyways. Look toward the small cottage shop that might use Crystal Space as a way to lower the barrier of entry for them.

Re:Real world, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

At the risk of feeding a troll...

Actually in the "Real World" most people see the computer for what it is...a tool and entertainment device...they usually don't get all emotional or religious about it, they just use the best tool for the job (When's the last time you got all excited about a power saw?). Beleive it or not, but what everyone else is using is factor in choosing the best tool for the job, especially when you have to interact with other people and/or companies. From a corporate point of view there is also training to consider, and more people are trained in "What everyone else is using" which means they are useful and worth their pay that much quicker. Sorry, but that's the "Real World". If we are talking about Nazi germany and helping contribute to the genocide of an entire race then I'd say you'd have something to get excited about. But and operating system/computer? Come on. There are far more noble battles to be fought (go help find the cure for cancer or something, or choose a country where atrocities are being committed and fight to help the people there if you feel the need to be righteous).

Personally I'm looking forward to this WineX and I hope they get it working well. I don't want XP because I see don't see how it's going to make my computing experience any easier, and it looks like it's the start of a less than pleasant future when using my computer...but I see the writing on the wall...I eventually won't be able to upgrade my hardware since Win 98 drivers won't exist, so I need to move over to a new OS. I've been playing with Linux, set up a box in my basement as a file server using samba that my windows machines can access, played with KDE some and I like it. Problem is I have tens of thousands of dollars worth of windows software, mostly games, that I don't want to throw away because I can't use it anymore. WineX is probably the solution for me if they can get the compatibility even at 90%. It means I can move forward with my computer hardware and to a new OS without having to deal with the new Microsoft "vision" AND keep using the software that I have purchased. I will be keeping an eye on WineX, I will be getting the Mandrake Game edition, and if The Sims performs as well as my Windows version then I will be subscribing to WineX and help support it. Heck I may even help with some of the Wine code where I can.

Microserf? WINE? No thanks.

[tigrrl]

God, I'd be grateful for linux native games. I have 2 systems right now - a linux box for serious work, and a MS box that I use only for gaming. I have the usual objections to Windows, but mostly I resent the forced march upgrade. I don't like WindowsMe, but it runs Diablo just fine, and I'm willing to put up with a certain amount of extra BS.

What I'm not willing to do is shuck out a pile of cash for Windows XP. Or a pile of cash for any other Windows system. Unfortunately, I know damned well that I'm likely to see a whole rash of new, cool games that won't run on Me or 98, and that I'm going to be forced to buy another expensive, bloated, crappy operating system.

And blow WINE. I actually went out and bought Corel Office for Linux, partly because I needed a suite and partly to provide support for linux development. It's a piece of junk, and I'm assured that it's not the office suite itself, it's the damned EMU that underlies it. If WordPerfect won't run right, why on earth would I expect Unreal or Half-Life to behave?

Re:Open Source Maketplace Insights

[Anonymous Coward]

Apache is what most of the lil' web servers run.

It's not what the bulk of the big revenue producing servers run.

Hell, it's not even what the bulk of the productivy serving web servers run.

It's just what's free so it's what every yahoo with a static IP puts up when he really doesn't have a business use, but what the heck....

Let's get real here. It's a Patchy Web Server.

Re:Remember Windows 95? Mod it up!

[CBravo]

Because it is insightful.

Bioware?

[mickeyreznor]

Everyone knows that Bioware is doing a native linux version(and they were talking about the possiblity BeOS port as well) of Neverwinter Nights, but has anyone actually asked their motivation for it?

I'd certainly like to know. Is it that they see a potential in linux gaming, or are they doing it out of good will? I'm unsure but it looks like they've snubbed directx and direct3d completely in favor of OpenGL.

(before anyone asks "when is it coming out?" go here)

Platform-independent games

[smcv]

Why stop at netcode?

"It is entirely possible to have this part of the code isolated from the rest of the code, and for it to be completely platform independant."

This applies nicely to other stuff too.

Have you seen the Unreal engine, responsible for Unreal, UT, Rune, Deus Ex and others? Video, audio, input, physics, etc. are implemented in C++ for speed. The game code ("when the player touches a gun lying on the ground, add it to their inventory" and so on) is written in UnrealScript, a compiled-to-bytecode language vaguely similar to Java. In the case of UT, you'd probably be surprised how much is done in Unrealscript (you could quite conceivably make a whole new game without changing the C++ bits, although you'd be stuck with a slightly older graphics engine that way).

I believe Quake 3 uses a similar system (mostly so that auto-downloaded mods can't carry viruses because they run in a Java-applet-like "sandbox"). This is why the UT and Quake 3 Linux ports consist of a smallish set of replacement binaries (the UT one is around the same size as the latest Windows UT update patch), and require a Windows CD to install from.

Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Gedvondur]

One of the things I didn't see mentioned is that a lot of developers are writing for the console only.

Consoles have a lot of advantages. They are stable same-same environments. Not a lot of variance, since there is only one manufacturer for each one. There have been some companies that have questioned making games for PCs entirely becuase of the wide variance in the hardware, let alone the operating system.

Many companies make two versions now, one for their console-of-choice and another for Windows/Intel PC platform.

Guess which one is the support nightmare. Pretty easy when you have to support several different video card manufacturers, even ones that don't exsist any more like VooDoo. Yet, the small, vocal, they-will-get-my-VooDoo-when-they-pry-it-from-my-c old-dead-hands crowd clamors for support and then whines when they can't get it.

Different versions of Windows, cheap, God-awful systems from Best Buy and Circuit City, poor white box mail order, you name it, and its a problem on the PC platform.

So, is it a Windows vs Linux thing? Not really. Unless Linux becomes the dominant desktop environment, or at lest has double digit percentage numbers, its a useless question. Developers don't REALLY want to develop on the PC to begin with because of the high support cost, and they are certainly NOT going to develop for a low desktop marketshare OS like Linux.

Think about this anyway: If they did, they would only support it on Red Hat anyway,(market share and mind share again) and then you would bitch about that. This community will only be happy if there are NATIVE Linux games that work on every distro. Ain't gonna happen. Be happy there is still a market for PC games at all.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[helixblue]

This is actually one advantage Mac's have, as much as some people don't dig the platform. As a longtime FreeBSD user/contributor, I love MacOS X. :)

When I grab a game for Mac, It's reasonably guaranteed that it's been tested on my exact hardware (DP533), and maybe even my widescreen 22" LCD. Why's this matter? Well, I know it will work perfectly, that I won't have to update my Geforce2MX drivers, and that I know it will most likely nicely support fullscreen at my aspect ratio.

That, and of course, because the OS is assured to be tested on your particular machine, you know at least that there will be no odd quirks as far as that, and probably will never have to install or update a driver. Sounds almost like how IBM used to market AS/400's, but it's true.

This said, it does suck that I'm going to have to play Civ III in VirtualPC for a few months. I've been fine with some of the delayed releases.. but I've been waiting for Civ III for 6 months now.

I almost feel guilty for not running a totally open-source desktop, and that my Athlon 900 now sits in a closet, but it sure is nice.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Aqualung]

Guess which one is the support nightmare. Pretty easy when you have to support several different video card manufacturers, even ones that don't exsist any more like VooDoo. Yet, the small, vocal, they-will-get-my-VooDoo-when-they-pry-it-from-my-c old-dead-hands crowd clamors for support and then whines when they can't get it.

I'd beg to differ... both Windows and linux have sets of standard-ish API's that developers can use in their applications to abstract away hardware considerations to the point where it's not an issue... DirectX, OpenGL/AL, SDL, etc... In this respect, gaming development in the console and desktop arenas are actually converging... while console developers can expect a common hardware platform which will behave identically on any given system, PC developers are rapidly approaching a common hardware abstraction which will also (ideally) behave the same on any given system. While the Linux API's may lag behind a little bit

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[ChristTrekker]

Funny...by that logic (standard hardware, standard software) there should be a zillion Mac games available. It should be the platform that developers crave to work on.

I don't think there's any one simple reason.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[yesthatguy]

Hmm. I'd be glad to take that Athlon off of your hands, if it's just gathering dust :) A nice upgrade to my low-end PII.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Aqualung]

Sonofabitch, I kicked my keyboard out of the damn socket =) To finish my post... while Linux API's may lag behind a little bit, the article's author states that the "quality gap" is rapidly closing between the two, and that linux gaming API's aren't what are holding back the developers.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. PC games are barely profitable as it is. Look at how many PC devs have gone belly up recently, or been swallowed up by larger conglomerates. Most of them won't even do Mac ports, and at least the Mac registers on the radar... you think they are gonna do ports for %0.0000000000000000001 of the market? Wake up.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Haeleth]

You have, of course, had to pay a little extra for this privilege. The advantage of a console is that it's much cheaper than either a PC or a Mac, and you know for a fact that any game will work perfectly. (Except for the ones with bugs in. Or for the ones which don't work with newer revisions of a console.)

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Gedvondur]

I can see your point.

I am not sure that the hardware abstraction is moving ahead, but I would also argue that that still is a long way off. There seems to be a great deal of incompatibility out there.

Case in point would be the the recent release of Tribes 2. Tribes 2 is an OpenGL game that experienced a LOT of hardware issues on PC platform. I certainly don't want development on PC platforms to cease.

There will always be platform specific issues. These will continue to pose a problem. It's not neceessarily the overriding factor but, it is a factor. PC hardware varies too widely and changes too rapidly to ever really be completly extracted from the developer. IMHO.

Re:Console vs. PC vs Multiple PC Development

[Stanza]

they-will-get-my-VooDoo-when-they-pry-it-from-my -c old-dead-hands they-will-get-my-VooDoo-when-they-pry-it-from-my-c old-dead-hands

They will pry the voodoo from my computer as soon as Linux supports the Diamond Stealth 64 that is currently just sitting on my desk collecting dust a little better.

Theoretically I'm going to get another machine so I can have only one operating system on each, but that may not be for a while.

Not meaning to be a total pain in the ass, but if I can't play tuxkart and the cool screensavers don't work, what good is a video card?

Re:Remember Windows 95? MOD PARENT UP!

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

Re:port

[Anonymous Coward]

whoops! Sorry to hear that. Well at least you still have your other dad right ?

same old bull again

[Erris]

As much as I'd like to see more games ported to linux, so that I might
be able to give up my MS habit completely, you have to agree that
economically it just doesn't make sense.

Huh? Ignoring the most enthusiastic 10% of
computer world makes sense? Did it ever occur
to you that honesty and integrity are part of the
reason so many people are switching over to free
software? I'm not using Debian so I can
distribute other people's work, I'm using it
so I can make fair use of the things I own.
I'll buy the $30 CD to play a game. Warez loosers, who don't mind putting backdoors on their machines won't spend a dime. Sheesh.

Re:same old bull again

[Reality Master 101]

Ignoring the most enthusiastic 10% of computer world makes sense?

10%????? You are WAY dreaming. Not even the Mac is 10% of the market. You would be lucky if Linux users were 0.1% of the market, and the percentage of those that ONLY have Linux available (versus dual boot) is probably even lower (0.01%?).

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux users are 8% of the market, worldwide. Lower in the U.S., of course.

Re:same old bull again

[Reality Master 101]

What a bunch of crap. Show me the reference that shows 8% of desktops are running Linux as their primary operating system.

Re:same old bull again

[tmark]

Ignoring the most enthusiastic 10% of computer world makes sense?

There is no way anything close to '10% of [the] computer world' runs Linux. The most optimistic estimates of Linux's share relate to server installations, and often to websites run under Linux (the count of which can vastly exceed the number of actual machines running Linux). Since the vast majority of Linux machines are actually installed in offices/ISPs/server farms, this hardly seems like a market worth targeting by a gaming company. Maybe one day it will be, but it sure does not make sense now.

And just because Linux users are 'enthusiastic' does not mean they are any more likely to buy a game, any more than enthusiastic Solaris users are going to be more likely to buy a game that happens to run on Solaris. The few remaining Amiga users, for instance, are evidently very enthusiastic, but it would be a very poor business plan indeed that proposed catering to this enthusiastic market.

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off. I've looked at your posting history. You're either a troll or a Microsoft shill, so nothing I say will convince you.

Re:same old bull again

[Reality Master 101]

Then don't worry about convincing me, post the reference for all the people who might be misled by my "trolling". Come on, I'm sure there are many people who are confused by all my rhetoric.

Think about it -- there might be game developers reading who might buy into my lies. Nothing like facts to bring the sunlight of truth into the dark void of deceit spread by people like me.

Go on -- jump out of the phone booth with that huge S on your chest and strike me down with your righteous information! Punish the disbeliever who doubts that Linux exceeds even 1% of the desktop market! Gather the forces of your links to the studies to strike a blow for Truth, Justice and the Free Software Way! Humble me with the power of your references, and the fury of your truth writ in burnished rows of letters!

I await the lesson to be adminstered.

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, hyperion made a decent amount by porting PC games to Amigas with 3D cards (a tiny market, but pretty much every person in it buys a copy of every game they release). Hyperion have branched out into Linux and Mac ports.

Clickboom also make a respectable amount from the Amiga games market - "napalm" in particular was a big hit, and is also available for the PC.

That said, their presence in the amiga market probably meant that there wasn't room for much else :-).

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you start your own game company and write games for Linux if you think you can make money. See you in the bread line.

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you will buy it - its only 90% of the rest of the linux community wont.

The thing that amazes me is that of all the warez doodz and software pirates i know and have met (and i have met a lot of them) are ALL Linux advocates and such like - after all many many of you guys think that all software should be free - piracy and copying is rampant and i dont blame a company for telling you all to get lost - and that 10% of the computer world would end up eating 50% of the company support time due to the complexity and proliferation of different distributions and implementations combined with the lack of actual OS knowledge and skill amongt 8 of that 10%

Get off it - the linux community have shown time and again their attitude towards anyone who --gasp-- tries to actually make money in the open source community.

The only way to make money from a game is to have copyright and controlled code - how would that jib with your GPL and Free code sensibilities ? And if the game developer cannot close their source then why bother ? whats the point is everyone else can take your expensively developed game engine or AI routine and stick it in their little project.

Re:same old bull again

[dvNull]

"The only way to make money from a game is to have copyright and controlled code - how would that jib with your GPL and Free code sensibilities ? "

GPL software is also copyrighted/copylefted by the author. If one says GPL is the only license and violates another copyright, thats not what the GPL advocates stand for. What we say is that if you dont agree with a license then DONT USE that product. I use Linux, OpenOffice, Mozilla for the same reasons. Not to warez it out. Even RMS says about MPAA, DeCSS etc is that unless you are sure that the movie is really worth the $8 you pay to see it, dont go to see it. He doesnt say try to sneak in through the service door and see the movie for free because the $8 ticket price doesnt justify the crappy movie.

Re:same old bull again

[iso]

10%????? You are WAY dreaming. Not even the Mac is 10% of the market.

You're absolutely right. This always cracks me up when people say things like this. Servers are one thing, but there is no way in hell that Linux desktop marketshare is even remotely close to that of the Macintosh.

Articles like this prove it: The Sims has been available for the Mac nearly as long as it has for Windows, but where's the Linux version? I still have yet to see any credible evidence that Linux has any more than a negligable desktop market share, and I think your guess of 0.1% is generous. I use Linux on all of my low-end servers, but there's no way I'll waste a perfectly good desktop machine with it.

- j

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

(another AC)

Statmarket has some figures available... most need subscription but amongst their (older) free sample stats it shows that not even Unix is anywhere near 8%.

This is March 99, but the proportions shouldn't have changed that much...

Windows: 94.39% (and increasing)
Mac: 2.63% (and dropping)
Other: 2.54% (increasing)
Unix: 0.44% (dropping)

Even if Linux is counted as the entirety of both Unix and Other, it's no more than 3%.

According to the OS version chart, in March 99 Linux had a huge and fairly stable market share of... 0.2%.

Other online stat sites show similar amounts of considerably less than 1%, and many of these sites depend on accesses which would tend to boost Linux (lots of students on Linux machines at uni, and we might suggest that many people who are not online and hence not represented are amongst the less technically savvy, hence probably running the 'default' OS of Windows)

Re:same old bull again

[rseuhs]

I still have yet to see any credible evidence that Linux has any more than a negligable desktop market share, and I think your guess of 0.1% is generous.

Take a look at Webserver stats

Konqueror, a Unix/Linux-only browser has 1.23% marketshare and Mozilla, which is also strong on Linux has over 7%.

So I'd say 5% Linux marketshare is realistic for that site. Of course it is a developer site, but 1% to 2% overall desktop-Linux marketshare is realistic.

Re:same old bull again

[Reality Master 101]

Come on man, lay off the crack. What proportion of everyone are developers? 1% -- maybe? Remember we are counting AOLers, businessman, secretaries, accountants, marketing drones, home users, everyone. It might be less than 1%. Do the math, and you're not getting from 7% on a Linux-heavy site to 1-2% of the general population.

Re:same old bull again

[rseuhs]

Come on man, lay off the crack. What proportion of everyone are developers? 1% -- maybe? Remember we are counting AOLers, businessman, secretaries, accountants, marketing drones, home users, everyone. It might be less than 1%. Do the math, and you're not getting from 7% on a Linux-heavy site to 1-2% of the general population.

That's typical. If you don't know any arguments any more, just attack the messenger. Somebody who does not bash Linux must be on crack, right?

Anyway, seems like I was quite right, as I've found the google-statistics:

Google-Statistics

So it's 1.18%, that's pretty well in the 1% to 2% range I guestimated.

And it's more than 11 times the 0.1% you Linux-haters guessed and said it's "generous".

Oh, and please not that these statistics are installed base, not marketshare. Actual desktop-marketshare is certainly higher than 1.12%.

Re:same old bull again

[Reality Master 101]

That's typical. If you don't know any arguments any more, just attack the messenger. Somebody who does not bash Linux must be on crack, right?

I am not "bashing" Linux. In fact, I use it every day (for development, not for "desktop stuff"). However, "The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices. The pursuit of simple Truth."

And I didn't run out of arguments, I told you why your statistics where bad.

Oh, and please not that these statistics are installed base, not marketshare. Actual desktop-marketshare is certainly higher than 1.12%.

Once again, you used a Linux-friendly site that will skew your numbers. Probably 95% of Linux users (99%?) use Google, because they are knowledgeable about search engines. On the other hand, the general population uses a variety of other search engines, including AOL's and MSN's search engines (only the two top portals). Possibly in your favor is the fact that Yahoo uses Google, but the page says "google.com" statistics, and I have a feeling that Yahoo stats are probably not included since they have a separate deal. Yahoo might even use their own hardware.

Anyway, that most likely drops us back in the low fractional percent statistics.

Re:same old bull again

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, nothing like a post that really sticks it to RM101. His trolls get so tiresome after a while. Good show.

Re:same old bull again

[rseuhs]

Once again, you used a Linux-friendly site that will skew your numbers. Probably 95% of Linux users (99%?) use Google, because they are knowledgeable about search engines. On the other hand, the general population uses a variety of other search engines, including AOL's and MSN's search engines (only the two top portals). Possibly in your favor is the fact that Yahoo uses Google, but the page says "google.com" statistics, and I have a feeling that Yahoo stats are probably not included since they have a separate deal. Yahoo might even use their own hardware.

Google is the most popular search engine, that's a fact.

Of course the statistic is not perfect, but since google is the most popular search engine and probably even the most popular site, it's THE BEST STATISTIC YOU CAN GET.

Google sais: 1.18%, maybe the real number is a bit higher or a bit lower, but CERTAINLY above 0.1% which is absolutely ridiculous.

Oh, and FUDing Linux with "Nobody uses it" and calling people who dare to look at real life statistics crack addicts, *IS* Linux-bashing.

BTW, the market-share in Europe is a lot higher (because of SuSE), for example this non-Linux and non-Technical german satire magazine has those stats:

Konqueror: 0.8% rising quickly (0.44% 2 months ago)
Mozilla: 2.8% also rising quickly (1.65% 2 months ago)

oh, and "Opera/Linux" entries add up to 0.32%

Re:same old bull again

[Reality Master 101]

Google is the most popular search engine, that's a fact.

That's a belief, that you didn't even bother to check. Check this out, and then read this.

probably even the most popular site, it's THE BEST STATISTIC YOU CAN GET.

What part of your ass are you pulling all this from? Most popular site?? Best statistic you can get???

Instead, why don't you review this guy's post.

Oh, and FUDing Linux with "Nobody uses it" and calling people who dare to look at real life statistics crack addicts, *IS* Linux-bashing.

I'm still waiting for you to look at "real life" statistics, and not ones that skew them toward your beliefs. Hey, if you can show a real world study that shows Linux on the desktop with any sort of marketshare > 1%, I'll admit I was wrong. So far, you haven't shown jack, except a lot of wrong assumptions (Google "most popular site"???).

Just out of curiosity, are you willing to admit that Linux on the desktop is just not there, or do you "just know" that it's better than what the numbers show?

Re:same old bull again

[rseuhs]

I'm still waiting for you to look at "real life" statistics, and not ones that skew them toward your beliefs. Hey, if you can show a real world study that shows Linux on the desktop with any sort of marketshare > 1%, I'll admit I was wrong. So far, you haven't shown jack, except a lot of wrong assumptions (Google "most popular site"???).

Well, OK maybe that was a bit exagerated. But Google is certainly popular and is not connected to Linux in any way as a website.

Just out of curiosity, are you willing to admit that Linux on the desktop is just not there, or do you "just know" that it's better than what the numbers show?

Technically it's there. I installed SuSE 7.2 on a friend's machine and he's quite happy because StarOffice 5.2 can open .doc files that his Office97 can't do. (No, buying Office2K or OfficeXP is not an option)

The only thing still missing is Windows-compatibility, well Wine is just solving that problem.

Platform indenpendent API?

[sterno]

The problem I can see with contemplating Wine as a tool to port games to Linux is that it will always be dependent on the whims of Microsoft's DirectX API's. Furthermore, the emulation insures that overall games will rarely perform as well under Linux as they do under Windows.

What might be a much better approach is to find a solid API that is compatbile with both systems. I'm sure somebody could write something far superior to DirectX and could provide compatibility for both Linux and Windows. The economics to fund such an endeavor might not be there but it definitely would be in the interests of Game Developers (so they could cooperatively fund some open source effort).

Wouldn't it be nice if a game could be ported between Linux, PC, X-box, PS2, Game Cube, and Macintoshes with little need for changes to the code. Then it would make the task of supporting multiple platforms nearly trivial. Basically I'm thinking something akin to Java, but written very specifically for gaming.

Re:Platform indenpendent API?

[Time Doctor]

It's called SDL, it works on many platforms already including Linux, Windows, PlayStation 2, and more. It should be easy to port to others as well. It's LGPL'd I believe, and documented well.

Re:Platform indenpendent API?

[friedmud]

But will SDL make Baldur's Gate 2 work right now???

NO!

The advantage of Transgaming is that it enables you to play the games you have now. Sure future games could be written to be more cross platform, but why wait when you can play the games you already own right now using Transgaming?

Derek

Re:Platform indenpendent API?

[Time Doctor]

Except if you'd bothered to read the parent instead of trolling, you'd see that the poster was previously unaware that such an independent library exists for multi-platform gaming from the start of development.

Killer Apps

[NeuroManson]

What is it that allowed Windows to win the mainstream? What is it that allowed Apple to win the mainstream? A concept known as killer apps... Essentially, a program that allows the platform of choice to perform a duty and function that is NOT available/possible on other systems...

Linux is good for server applications, but *really*, what can it do that Windows/Mac cannot do, other than not crash as often? Very little... Why is this? Between platforms, Linux does little more than ape most of what anyone running Windows/Mac can already do, and far FAR simpler... Can Linux be used optimally for graphic design and video production without any hassles of hopping between CLI and GUI? Nope... Can Linux be used for mainstream business applications and gaming without doing the same, or relying on emulation? Nope... Face it, Linux relies on a few adequate programmers attempting to reinvent the wheel, or emulating an OS that already exists with far less BS to fight through to get the job done...

THIS is why Linux fails... This is why Linux isn't replacing 100% of Windows desktops...

This is not a flame, this is constructive cricism... The problem with Linux is that there are plenty of people willing to rally around the banner, but very few willing (and able) to actually go to war for it... Linux, in order to fight against the two big shots, is to make some applications that are COMPLETELY unlike what is already on the market, and unique in what it can provide... Make something, ANYTHING, that can either (a) supplant existing applications (make a graphic editor far superior to what can be found on Windows or Mac platforms, with a GUI to allow you to use it, artists traditionally don't LIKE to have to haggle with CLI's just to draw, I'm an artist, I KNOW this), and (b) provide a program that is completely unique, anything that the existing Windows/Mac scene has completely overlooked... Use your imaginations, you want the OS to succeed, then FIGHT so it can, instead of pretending that just being crashproof is the lone cause for it's acceptance...

What good does a bulletproof jacket do you in a world where everyone fights with rocket launchers?

Re:Killer Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

> What is it that allowed Windows to win the mainstream? What is it that allowed Apple to win the mainstream?

What?? You've got the first part right (the reason is marketing, though) - but APPLE? What "mainstream" did they win? Absolutely not the same one as Windows.

Re:Killer Apps

[Haeleth]

Publishing.

Re:Killer Apps

[Anonymous Coward]

What is it that allowed Windows to win the mainstream? ... A concept known as killer apps...

That is so wrong! What allowed Windows to win the mainstream was a concept known as preloads, combined with a concept known as hostage-file-formats, combined with a few other tricks. Name one Windows killer app.

Re:Killer Apps

[Brownian Motion]

Open Source prevents a problem to this.

Posit: Someone develops a Linux killer app.

It's fair to say that if this were a commercial app, it won't be Linux only or wouldn't have been developed for Linux, rather it would have been targeted towards the Mac or Windows ("where the money is").

So it's most likely an open source program.

Now, if this program is so killer, it won't take long before it's ported to Mac OS X and Windows XP. This will negate any competitive advantage that Linux gets from the app.

Re:Killer Apps

[microTodd]

Microsoft Office.

Sorry, but its the truth.

Re:Killer Apps

[David Jao]

Linux is good for server applications, but *really*, what can it do that Windows/Mac cannot do, other than not crash as often?

"Server applications" to me is no small potatoes, but if you want one that you haven't already mentioned, it's: educational value.

Linux/BSD is the only x86 system I know that even so much as ships with a C compiler. Assume for the moment that I'm a poor student who doesn't relish the idea of paying for MS Windows, Visual Studio, IIS, and MS SQL server, even at academic prices (which is the truth). Unless you are suggesting that I:

1. Solicit donations (and I'll gladly accept any checks you send my way), or
2. Warez

you have to admit that a completely free development environment with all the tools I need is a pretty killer application, albeit not a "mainstream" one.

It should be further noted that Linux doesn't need mainstream business to survive, since its continued progress is not dependent on any single company's business revenue or business prospects. But that's a story for another day.

Re:Killer Apps

[NeuroManson]

/me suddenly shifts into Ballmer mode,
"Developers developers developers developers!!!"

Priceless!

[Anonymous Coward]

You should mod the above post up for humor value. Kernel programming in VB?!?!? I was rolling on the floor for hours!

Re:port

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad was killed by a drunk driver 5 years ago.

Good for him. It's been at least 5 years since he made any more dipshits like you.

Blizzard says WarCraft III will run under Mac OSX

[Partisan]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/applications/

If WCIII runs under Mac OSX then it's practically running on BSD, right? If that's the case then how hard would a Linux port be?

Fixing a weak spot

[Zach`]

Games are a big weak spot for Linux, so naturally it seems that making Linux an attractive game platform is an important long term goal for the community. Sure, some people don't like games, but no one can argue that games haven't partially driven CPU technology in the past and have almost totally driven low-end 3d technology.

So how do we push Linux (and unix in general) as a usefull game platform? Obviously we need to present game programmers with a programming interface that they can use to port games to (or ideally write original games for). Like GTK+ is for GUI applications (or Qt, depending on your religion), we need the "GTK+" of the game world. Some kind of library that:

1. Is portable
2. Is extendable
3. Can make use of hardware acceleration
4. Can grow with future graphics/sound technology
5. Is based on _some_ kind of industry standard

Number five is VERY important. A standard has to be agreed upon or developers are just going to shrug Linux off as a bunch of non-standard API's each evangalized by their own creator but no one else.

What we have been seeing lately, is too many chefs spoiling the soup. Everyone and his uncle has their own API they are trying to push, and no one is working together to agree on a standard.

You aren't going to like this but I'll say it anyway. The reason Windows has caught on as a game playform is because of DirectDraw and DirectSound (and to a lesser extent hardware-accellerated OpenGL). Simply, developers don't have to worry about writing their own routines to allocate video memory, access the sound card's dma buffers, etc. etc., because Microsoft for once provided a pretty decent standard API to write to, that everyone could pretty much agree on.

Everytime someone announces his own "KICKASS GAME API" we (the Linux/unix community) actually suffer a set-back. We slip farther from the goal of having a single, open, standard API for mainstream developers to rely on.

Fortunately we have things like Mesa, which seems to "Get It". I'm not going to advertise Mesa more than I have to, suffice to say it meets all of the five criteria I mentioned above. Personally I believe time spent on writing APIs that essentially do what Mesa already does is time wasted. LOOK INTO MESA before you decide to write "Yet Another Graphics API".

On the other hand, we have sound support on Linux. Currently it's a mess. Basically application writers need to directly access the sound driver in order to get any kind of noise working. We currently have no standard _OPEN_ API to work with, and for the most part sound capabilities under linux are limited to a single process using a sound card. This will not fly with game developers.

Like the graphics world, we need an sound API that:

1. Is portable
2. Is extendable
3. Is hardware-independant
4. Allows more than one process/thread access to sound hardware simultaniously (a mixer)

One thing I have seen that looks promising is eSound. Do your own research on it but it looks pretty nice, and it will get the job done if its developers continue to do "The Right Thing".

It is important for us small-time game developers to look for APIs like Mesa and eSound, which are implemented properly and have potential to become some kind of standard, rather than latching on to one that has cool screenshots but only had a single game written to them--or worse, just writing our own game API.

Re:Fixing a weak spot

[man_ls]

Please mod this "Flamebait", because I am sure it will offend quite a few people.

I'm a Windows user. Windows 2000 specifically, because of its more powerful command line interface and more crash-resistant GUI, but still a windows user.

The problem in my eyes is that Linux has no central figure directing development. For those who would jump up and yell "Linus!" think again - he's doing the OS core but not terribly much else in this area. In the Windows world, where Microsoft is on 80-95% of desktops depending on how you count, MS drives the entire industry. DirectX is *the* API. It killed off Glide, and OpenGL doesn't seem to be doing terribly well either now. Why? Because it's standard. It comes with the OS and it comes preconfigured to *work* with the OS.

I have psuedo-Linux (Cygwin/XFree86 running KDE 1.1.2) installed and am learning how to use it. I hope to one day shed my chains of Microsoftness and become Enlightened, but I'm struck by the complexity of it all. I just learned how to mount drives. I still don't know how to install software. Every time I try it tells me my GCC can't produce executables. No mention on how to fix this, however.

Linux is, for many average *gamers* too difficult of a market to bother wasting time on. 9/10 of games are for a gamer, not a *geek gamer* which the Slashdot community is. With the exception of hard-core simulators (NOT the porn kind to all trolls), everyone the game company cares about is running Windows. Why spend $$$ porting to another platform?

I don't agree with that personally, but it makes sense in a business way.

JKoebel

Re:Fixing a weak spot

[OpCode42]

Sorry, I couln't resisting biting...

1) Linux does have a central figurehead directing development. It *is* Linus. Linux is just the kernel - the rest of the system is GNU / Other.

2) You do *not* have pseudo-linux. You have Cygwin/XFree86 running KDE 1.1.2 - Linux is nowhere to be seen on your system. And as I remember, KDE 1.1.2 sucks :)

There are alternatives (cross platform, noless!) to DirectX - SDL is superb.

You really need to install a full system based on Linux. Mandrake is a good starter, holds your hand for a lot of the setup stuff, automounts your drives and will let you compile your own software (as long as you install all the "Development" stuff.)

Everyone the games companies care about is running windows? Someone tell id this! And Activision!

FWIW, a Linux system is no longer limited to the l33t g33k people any more. Distributions like Mandrake can bring it to your "average gamer".

If by "average gamer" you mean people who dont want to bother installing software, bugfixes, changing configurations, tweaking graphics cards to get the best gaming experience - the answer for these people isnt Windows. Its a console. Windows will still expect you to keep your system updated with the latest DirectX, graphics drivers etc. to keep up with the games.

Will the Unix in Mac OS X make it easier for linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the programmig aspect that much but will it be easier to port games to linux if they are already written for another unix like Mac OS X?

If so, that may be the ticket to building up a little game portfolio.

Sure the Mac doesn't have as many games as Windows but they have a lot more than linux.

It might be a good first step.

hot grits vs. hot shit

[Anonymous Coward]

i just cant decide which i like better. a bowl of hot grits down my pants is a warm, enveloping feeling that tickles my genitals down to their roots. but having someone take a hot shit on me is much more subtle, the taste, aroma, and texture is something truely unique that must be experienced to be believed. even eating hot grits vs hot shit is too close to call, they are both good in their individual aspects.

what do the users of slashdot think?

It can work in both directions

[darkonc]

Having wine well-developed will encourage people to use Linux without having to worry about lack of access to the older (windows) software. This is an old trick that IBM used when they did microcode for ..... eh I think it was their first 360s that emulated their predecessor.

Once the mindshare of Linux goes up, people will be more willing to develop for Linux. Until then, a good emulator means that people have to worry less about the MS F.U.D. about 'but what if you need Windows application "Y"'.

In the short term, however, it's problematic because it encourages people to just write for Windows -- however, we can encourage people to write wine-enabled extensions to their windows code which will allow them to take advantage of Linux capabilities. This may encourage a migration of users to linux/wine.

My quick guess (never having used wine) is that wine is likely to be a bit more expensive for heavily graphics intensive apps (like quake) than for more CPU intensive apps (like The Sims). Once again it's a question of using the tool that's appropriate for the job. For those jobs where WINE does the job, it's dogmatic and counter-productive to demand a 'native' Linux port.

On the other hand, insisting on WINE, whether it works or not, is a different problem in the other direction. Granted: It'd be nice to always have a linux base port, but politics and economics often directs otherwise.

Re:It can work in both directions

[Anonymous Coward]

to worry less about the MS F.U.D. about 'but what if you need Windows application "Y"'.

Until you figure out that people actually DO need 'Windows application "Y"', and it isn't just a gigantic Redmond-based Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt campaign, your views on the subject are irrelevant. Go back to your LUG or men-only sauna or whereever it is that people think you make sense.

Re:It can work in both directions

[Stephen Samuel]

Sometimes it is FUD. Sometimes it is real. In any case, improving WINE makes it easier to convince people to go to Lunux, if any 'leftover' applications can run under wine, and they know that they probably won't have to either dual-boot or have a second machine if they come across some windows-only killer app.

Bootable CD's....

[mjh]

What I'd much rather see, than Linux supporting lots of games is game developers using Linux to create bootable CD's on which thier games exist. If the game developer doesn't want to have support problems, then create the entire OS environment on the CD and distribute a bootable CD that just starts up the game. It's cheap for the vendor because they don't have to pay for Linux, and it makes a huge cut in support costs becuase they don't have to deal with installation problems on *any* os. The game is already installed and will interact with the OS perfectly... and to the consumer, it doesn't matter what OS is installed on their machine, or how fubar'ed the installation is. All that matters is that you have a machine with the minimum hardware requirements.

Of course the biggest problem with this is knowing what hardware the user has - especially video cards - and making sure that a large number of video cards support a standard set of well known API's accessable from drivers written for Linux. Without this, the idea falls on its face.

I know! It shouldn't be too hard to convince all the video card makers that it's in their best interest to release open source drivers for their cards... oh wait.... nevermind.

Re:Bootable CD's....

[Time Doctor]

Except you can't patch them, you can't save games, you cant do good copy protection (would you like to enter in the same 20 character key each time you 'boot' this monstrosity?), you can't add new drivers for new hardware, you cant....
It goes on and on, so it's not fun for anything beyond simple arcade games which will run into problems that require patches because the theoretical system of bootable cd games is too new.

Re:Bootable CD's....

[Eugene O'Neil]

Where did anyone get the idea that typing a 20 character key is "good" copy protection? If a software pirate can copy an entire CD, surely they can copy a 20 character key to go with it! Keys serve no purpose, but inconvenience the user.

Re:Bootable CD's....

[Haeleth]

Similar problems have plagued console systems. An entire software library consisting only of endlessly pirated simple buggy arcade games - no wonder the Playstation was so unpopular!

Well... you're right about the drivers, I'll give you that.

MOD UP!!!

[gatesh8r]

AMEN! I am SO glad someone in the /. crowd said this.

I personally feel Transgaming is a Good Thing(TM); screw Loki for now until we have a -competitive- marketshare (I'd say at least 15%-20%) before native ports happen... we have the libs, yeah; we have the hardware; yeah... I hate to make this a "me too" post but everyone needs to get this point hammered down. Give the customer their PROGRAMS, and they will choose to come to Linux. Why??? Well, let's be the average Joe. Their programs don't have a need for 100 FPS (Why would they? They got a "deal" at Best Buy on an HP for $699!). Their OS is Windoze; it's not that they hate it, it's because they can't run their games (no matter how much you and I think they suck :-P) or Office (and fuck getting them to run StarOffice/OpenOffice/KOffice/Whatever because they're not intrested). Speed isn't an issue so much as it's a reasonable speed. It works the same, and Linux costs less... effectively, we have competition! Competition is also a Good Thing(TM). This would not only extend marketshare, but it would help break down the Evil Empire more. If the gov't is going to let Billy G. and his Borg get away with it, we can't say "Oh the gov't will get us back to normal again." This however, can, and we need to act.

Re:MOD UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know, I really tried hard to finish reading your post, but your writing style is a fucking mess.

Re:Blizzard says WarCraft III will run under Mac O

[Anonymous Coward]

Difficult.

They're assuming a lot of higher-level APIs for sound, graphics, etc. that are specific to either Darwin or the non-open MacOS X bits (Quartz, etc.)

Put your hand under your penis

[Anonymous Coward]

How many balls can you feel? Four? Yes, that's correct, there are four balls there. Two are yours, the other two are belong to your boyfriend, who is right now fucking your very loose ass.

Commercial Game Attitude?

[JohnG]

What is really that attitude of the majority of Linux users regarding commercial games? At present I am writing a shareware game which will be released for Linux, Windows and possibly OS X. Of course the shareware game profits would be used to build bigger and better games with contracted artwork and possibly licensed engines.
I'm doing the Linux port because I prefer to develop in Linux and the libraries are all cross-platform, but I don't really expect the Linux port to sell well. I also expect to get flamed for not releasing source.
It occurs to me that startup companies could offer a great deal to Linux, but the community seems only interested in giving money to established companies and complaining that the new guys want to charge money. Almost every commercial/shareware game on happypenguin for example has a comment saying "it would be better with source code" or "I refuse to use it because its not free".

Re:Commercial Game Attitude?

[Error27]

I generally use only open source programs. I don't use flash pluggins, for example, because I don't like close source standards for things on the internet. (There are open source flash viewers but no open source generators).

But games are a different. Games don't need support. You can't make money off an open source game. Your business doesn't rely on a game to run. You don't really need a game at all.

I look at games as the same as movies. They are entertainment. No one asks for open source movies. Sometimes I guess, it might be fun to have the source code to a game but it's not necessary.

You will probably get flamed by people asking for the source code. People who do that are wusses. I think most people are more reasonable than that.

Re:Commercial Game Attitude?

[JohnG]

Thst's pretty much my logic behind it. I plan on redoing my game TutorShooter to use SDL instead of my PowerPak lib and re-releasing it, once again under the GPL, becuase I feel that educational materials be they "Edutainment" or not, should be free if possible. I also feel that Operating Systems should be free, as well as a few other things.
But you don't HAVE to have games, you don't benefit in any way from having a non-educational game with the exception of pleasure and I think it is acceptable to pay to be entertained.

hehe

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulation! You have been trolled.

-AT-

Open Source and Innovation

[LoveMe2Times]

There's a lot of talk in this thread (and related ones, recently) about the catch-22 of games needing user-base and user-base needing games. It's the same problem for all proprietary software, not just games, but in other application areas the community gets together and starts working on open alternatives. It's also a perennial pasttime of gamers these days to sit around and whine about corporatization of games and how Tomb Raider 16 really sucks yet still sells a bazillion copies while [insert favorite game] languishes in the clearance bin.
So I want to know, where are the open source games? Yes, I know about FreeCraft and QuakeForge, but yes, well, and?? Nethack is cool, and I think it really makes a good demonstration of the possibilities for OS games, but I think we'll all agree that something a little more modern is in order. Between SDL and CrystalSpace, I think it's high time us gamers got together and started making our own game market instead of waiting around for the Windoze gaming sheep to bring Who Wants to be a Billionaire XXIVIVM to Linux. If we can get say 10-15 major gaming projects underway with a decent spread of genres, these libraries will get really worked and improve really damn fast. Then it's off to the races, the way OS builds momentum. I know we all want our games and we want them now, so here's what I propose: for every dollar you spend on a proprietary game, give 10 cents to an open source gaming initiative. I, for one, believe that open source can innovate in games 10 times more than bean counters...

Oh, and for the record, yes, I just downloaded and built the latest CrystalSpace and am playing around with it a little, and yes I have some game ideas...

How about...

[Soko]

Game developers write the specs of gaming APIs they would die for and publish them, so they can be implemented by OSS, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and any other person/entity that cares to implement them?

They would then control thier own destiny - as long as they could resist $ from marketing deptartments - and would have a common set of APIs to support in thier games.

If a game didn't run on PlatformX because of a malformed API, the author of the API implemenation would be on the hook, not the gaming company. IOW, the game authors hold all the trump cards, no one else.

SDL seems to be an atempt at this already, but is it coming from OSS developers or game developers? The difference is important.

Soko

Re:How about...

[Bullschmidt]

Speaking as a starting game developer, I can already see some problems:

Conflict of interest, NDA's, IP issues abound. It would be tough for any game developer to really have a significant impact on a truly OSS library. The minute it became large, his or her employer would want to make it proprietary, and probably could do to the all the legal stuff. What motivation does any company have to share its code freely? Why give competition help? Now, former game developers or independant game developers might be able to do this, but its tough for industry developers. Of course, this is just my guess.

Kevin

Re:How about...

[Soko]

Think RIAA and MPAA like cabal, bud. These "associations" are comprised of competing companies, yet they seem to work together enough to get what they all want - especially from the companies who make the hardware that consumers need to get at thier wares.

I said nothing about code either - just API specs that game deveolpers all agreed on and would develop to, then ram it down the throats of the OS developers. The $ in savings of basically coding a game once and then supporting that single code base will likely make them co-operate with each other until the spec is done.

Soko

Using the MacOS X port as a start?

[George Walker Bush]

I believe they have ported the Sims to MacOS X already. Given the UNIX foundation of MacOS X, how easy would it be to use THAT port as a start for the Linux version, rather than working directly off the Windows version?

(Or how about other games... if there's a MacOS X version out, shouldn't they use that to do Linux/UNIX porting, since Mac OS X is UNIX?)

Re:Using the MacOS X port as a start?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is oversimplified but think of MacOS X as having two APIs, one derived from MacOS and one from Unix. Using either API gives you a native MacOS X app. Game developers are using the MacOS style API, targetting MacOS 8/9 and MacOS X. This doesn't get you any closer to a Linux version.

Re:Remember Windows 95? Mod it up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your ass is both deep and wide, but certainly not insightful.

Curses, foiled again!

[Aqualung]

My plot to paint an ominous picture of the open source movement has failed again! Bill will not be pleased! And I would have succeeded if it weren't for you meddling anonymous cowards!!!

Native look? That's where Qt comes in:

[infiniti99]

Linux

Windows

Mac OS X

Re:Native look? That's where Qt comes in:

[Anonymous Coward]

you know, the least you could have done is to get rid of the "copying Princess-Bride-DVD.avi" dialog window on the Mac OSX screen shot to make yourself look not like the stereo-typical cheap ass slashdot geek.

Re:Native look? That's where Qt comes in:

[infiniti99]

Except that I wasn't the one who made the screenshot, but oh well.

Re:Native look? That's where Qt comes in:

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude can i have my goatse video back? and it better not be frosted like last time

Re:Native look? That's where Qt comes in:

[Anonymous Coward]

this one time i put my balls on your toothbrush and i forgot to tell you

oops

Re:Native look? That's where Qt comes in:

[Anonymous Coward]

dude my sac smells like triscuits

Re:Rumors

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, nice stuff, that [yahoo.com] thing. Is that Open Source? Can I use it in my trolls?

MacOS X games != *NIX games

[Anonymous Coward]

MacOS X games are not *NIX based games, they are really based on classic MacOS. MacOS X based games are/will be typically written to the Carbon API with is basically a modernized MacOS subset.

Here's an idea

[Ender Ryan]

Instead of using Direct*, which forever ties your application to Microsoft's completely non-open and non-standard operating system, use SDL, or OpenGL, or OpenGL and SDL, or any other portable API.

Notice how ID, the only gaming company around to actually follow this principle, can port their games to a zillion OSes very quickly and have it run extremely well on all OSes that they're ported to. The most expensive part of of doing Linux releases for ID is publishing...

Tying yourself to a proprietary API makes anything you say about portability completely invalid...

JMO

BRAVO

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, after almost three years of reading slashdot, I've finally read a comment that makes some common fucking sense.

I've really chaffed at some of your comments in the past, but this one atones you for all sins. Thank you.

(a different AC)

The obvious conclusion

[Sloppy]

So there is absolutely no way to support any more than one client executable, because the clients and servers must be updated together in real time by downloading patches, just like Ultima Online and other games.

So I guess what this all boils down to, is that Windows needs a Linux emu-- excuse me -- loader and API wrapper.

What about a directx port to linux?

[jezerbel]

(little bit offtopic)

I'm just asking this question cause I really have no idea about whats out there... but wouldn't it be possible to make a port of the directx api to linux? Even perhaps using a specialised cut down version of wine et al... to increase development time for game porting? these types of ideas are the ones that excite me with linux. having multiple distros that deal specifically with one aspect of computer use. we all know that windows/linux/bsd/osx all cater for a generalised user base with the exception of some server optimisations.. I'd so much love a version of linux that dealt with media primarily for recording, digital audio/video editing.. i know one is in the works already... just seems that this could be the real advantage to all that source code so that we can create customised os's... ofcourse we dont want to run 7 customised os's jsut to have an optimised office/gaming/media platform however for those wanting to pursue such things on a professional powerhouse level...

More Sims porting happening

[prototype]

I'm also currently working on porting most of the Sims code as well as all of my Sims tools to native versions for Linux and the Mac. The reason was fairly straight forward. Wine emulation can only go so far, requires a bit of a techie person to use and given the nature of most of the Sims users, it's beyond them. I know that's a blanket statement that will probably come back and bite me in the ass, but it's true.

A native version is the way to go. I'm in the same boat as Don, although he's got more access to the code than I do. I generally go through him to get the code I need. When the issue of providing a Mac version came up because most of the utilities wouldn't work under VirtualPC, I looked toward some cross-platform library rather than emulating with Wine or whatever Transgamer is providing. I settled on wxWindows (between a choice of QT and wxWindows) just because of the licencising issues around QT (I'm not in a position to release any Sims code and bound by NDA to not).

The big issue was the fact that The Sims was completely dependant on DirectX (even though they try to abstract it out in some of the wrapper libraries they have) so the first thing I did was to port all the graphics code to OpenGL. Don and I have been communicating as well and had some success with porting some of the lower level functionality of the game engine to use Python via SWIG wrappers.

I think one of the key things here with any game development is that the commercial developers should look at writing portable code. Maybe they don't have to take the effort of writing the code for those other platforms (whatever they may be depending on what you call your base platform) but at least take the effort to provide those hooks with little effort. Don't tie yourself into a proprietary API and put the platform dependant features in the platform dependant code where it belongs, separate from the main code. But then that's just stating the obvious right?

liB

Zork: granddaddy of multiplatform

[morcheeba]

I'm surprised no one's brought up Zork. This old slashdot article links to a great paper on infocom and zork. This was a time when there were many more home-computer platforms than there are today, and infocom found a way to easily port to any of them. The Z-machine was a virtual machine (unheard of on home computers back in the day!), and they only had to write one interpreter per architecture: instantly their library of a dozen games would be available on the new platform. Of course, the hardware requirements were simpler (i.e. text, no graphics), but for what it did, you would have never known it was interpreted. I think that eventually graphics will reach that point- we're just starting to get relatively cheap hardware ( O($1.0E2)) hardware that is getting closer to photorealistic and is today what text was then (relatively straightforward to implement decent useability). Any, check out the article, it's a great read.

Plus, your competition is...

[DrCode]

... Microsoft, which has bought quite a few game companies recently. And, quite coincidentally, their DirectX games seem to have fewer problems than yours.

Re:Blizzard says WarCraft III will run under Mac O

[Anonymous Coward]

Here they explain that they're just using carbon, the older macos compatibility layer, for OSX so they can cover OS9 too. In any case that means no unix-like target that's a tweak and a recompile away from a linux port

Get a console...

[Mike McTernan]

It seems to me that lots of people want to get good games for Linux so that they can drop Windows and end dual booting. I know that I would like that.

However, why don't we just go out an buy a console? That would sort the dual boot problem for good and give a purpose built system on which to run games, cutting the need for Windows...

Addicted to Freeciv

[kimihia]

Well, I must admit, that after all these years I have finally kicked the addiction to Sid Meier's Civilization 1, that classic game from DOS that came on two floppies.

I'm addicted to Freeciv instead.

Where's rehab? I've gotta get some work done.

Addressing a few off-base accusations ...

[SimHacker]

Of course I talked to people from Maxis and EA corporate, because I was a Maxis employee at the time. I worked with Will Wright on The Sims for three years, developing the character animation system and user interface. Now I work with Maxis/EA as a contractor. Will and other people at EA suggested I talk to the people at Loki myself, which is what I did.

Why do you say Scott Draeker is not the person to talk to about porting The Sims to Linux? Is there someone else at Loki I should have been talking to instead? Or some other company than Loki I should have approached instead?

Please clarify just what you mean by "...not to mention the fact that Hopkin's previous work is enough to get him dismissed out of hand by any Unix user or game company employee."? What previous work do you mean?

Are you refering to my work writing The X-Windows Disaster chapter for The Unix-Haters Handbook? I wrote that AFTER porting SimCity to X11 with TCL/Tk, compared with my previous experience porting SimCity to NeWS with HyperLook.

Or has my work with pie menus for ActiveX, Internet Explorer and other crass commercial products tainted me as Politically Incorrect?

I hope you at least appreciate that I'm taking the time to personally answer your message and directly address all of your accusations, instead of copping a "go away kid, you're bothering me" attitude.

-Don

Where do you get all your incorrect information?

[SimHacker]

I don't know where you get all your incorrect information.

First of all, I started porting SimCity to Unix in back in 1991, and DUX published multi player X11 SimCity for Unix 1993, which is reviewed here. Before that, I released HyperLook SimCity for NeWS in 1992, which was awarded "Product of the year 1992" from Unix World magazine (in the Jan 1993 issue).

Secondly, you have the price wrong -- it wasn't $80. Single Player Node Locked License: $49. Multi Player Node Locked License: $89. Single Player Floating License: $129. Multi Player Floating License: $149. Such prices for Unix workstation software were unheard of at the time, and there were hardly any other commercial games available for Unix. (Despite their bluster, Loki wasn't the first Unix game company.)

For comparison: In May 1991, Curtis Priem's and Bruce Factor's "Aviator" flight simulator for the Sun workstation from Artificial Horisons sold for $150.

The authors worked for Sun designing the GX graphics accelerator board, wrote Aviator in their spare time to demonstrate the hardware, and published one of the first commercially available real time 3D games for the Sun. Good thing they had a day job.

Because right after they published it, some butt-head Sun employee posted a crack to defeat the licensing scheme to the tstech alias at Sun. They had to send around a message begging people to please delete the crack and pay for it.

I haven't made a penny off of Unix SimCity for years, because you can't buy it any more. Loki didn't exist for years after I saw my last penny from porting SimCity to Unix.

I don't know where you got your unattributed misinformation that the networking in Multi Player SimCity Classic didn't work. I first demonstrated it at the Interactive Experience of the 1993 InterCHI conference in Amsterdam. It worked just fine then, and even better now that computers and networks are faster.

Just recently in May 2001 I showed it to the MIT Media Lab sponsors and researchers, at the Digital Life confence. I demonstrated the colaborative multi player game user interface and voting dialogs, running over the network between two linux laptops, and it worked just fine. It's just not available as a product any more, and hasn't been for a long time.

I am not "repeating the market speak of native ports being bad". I am making a point, based on my own experience as well as talking with other people who I trust, like Will Wright and John Gilmore.

My point is that Wine solves many more problems than it causes, and that native ports to Linux aren't worth it, unless you put a lot of time, energy and creativity into improving the game so it substantially takes advantage of the platform.

Even then, there's no guarantee that it'll be worthwhile. There are many more important economic issues that totally override trivial technical implementation details like porting versus emulation.

On the other hand, I think that any effort put into improving Wine is well spent, that will truly benefit many people over the long term. If it can run games, then it can do a lot more. Double duh.

It's much more productive to practically solve real problems right now, than to argue over how you would solve imaginary political problems in the ideal world, if only the Supreme Court appointed you Dictator and Congress burned the Constitution in your honor. That job's already taken.

-Don

Re:Where do you get all your incorrect information

[Time Doctor]

"Multi Player Node Locked License: $89."
^^^ What I was talking about, you charge even more than I was aware of.
I believe it was in the LinuxGames.com comments that someone complained the networking wasn't working (Note that you can't have networking without the working bit).
Then you proceed to charge even more outrageous sums of money, still for the simple original Sim City.
Congratulations Don, you could have been an innovator in these times of bad sales for Linux ports, and yet you choose to be hurting the market with allowing non-native ports under your nose. Thanks for nothing.

Yo Momma programs in ActiveX

[On Lawn]

Lets look at the stability of ActiveX, in one very quantifiable and non-fiction example...

Xbox

Speaking of Games

[hmccabe]

I went to Taco Bell today and I got a large drink, which has an game piece on the side of the cup to win an X-box. Did anyone else notice that you have to not only peel of the game piece from the cup, but scratch it off as well? Far too complicated, but leave it to Microsoft....

Re:Where do you get all your incorrect information

[SimHacker]

Time Doctor, you are obviously replying to articles after only having read a few words of them, totally out of context. Please go back and read the entire message. You will realize that you have made a fool of yourself in front of anyone who bothered reading the whole message.

The price for a single player license is $49. There's nothing wrong with charging more for the multi player version of SimCity game, especially after I put literally years of my own original work into designing and implementing it, using my own equipment.

I was not paid for my time, and the only way to recoup my investment of time and effort was through royalties on sales, which didn't come close, believe me.

Remember that this was 1993, and the market for games on Unix workstations was extremely small at the time. The price of Aviator, the only other commercial Unix game I knew of, was $150. Aviator was a multi player game that you could run over the network, and I charged a lot less than Aviator cost for the multi player version of SimCity.

Time Doctor, please realise that the extremely foolish religious fanaticism of people like YOU is the reason that there will never be any successful commercial games developed for Linux.

-Don

PS: Oh, and Time Doctor: for someone who obviously doesn't read messages before he replies to them, you shouldn't go around telling other people to do what you won't bother to:

"Except if you'd bothered to read the parent instead of trolling, you'd see that the poster was previously unaware that such an independent library exists for multi-platform gaming from the start of development." -Time Doctor

That is what I call pure unbridled hypocrisy.

Re:Where do you get all your incorrect information

[SimHacker]

Excuse me but I can't let this slide:

"Congratulations Don, you could have been an innovator in these times of bad sales for Linux ports, and yet you choose to be hurting the market with allowing non-native ports under your nose. Thanks for nothing." -Time Doctor

Imagine John Candy, making the funny "quotation marks" in the air with his finger as he rants and raves:

Thank you for "analysing" my "problem", mister "Time Doctor," sir.

Oh, so I "choose" to be "hurting" the market? Just what am I "doing" that's "causing" so much "damage"?

So I'm "allowing" these "non-native" ports, huh? Oh, really?

"Allowing"? That's not very "active". Maybe I should get off my "passive" ass and do something more?

Would you rather I "prohibit" instead of "allowing"? How do you suggest I go about "prohibiting" other people from running "The Sims" on "Wine"?

Should I have somehow "prohibited" Loki from doing a "native" port, instead of trying to "cooperate" with them?

Or am I the one "responsible" for "allowing" Loki to "fail"?

How could I have "prohibited" Transgaming from getting away with improving Wine? By visciously "attacking" them in public, in spite of all the wonderfully useful work they've done? Is that what you mean?

So "get" to the "point": what exactly have I done to "allow" this "hurting" of the market?

Was it by "porting" The Sims to run "native" on Linux myself?

How did that "allow" Loki to fail? Or "allow" Transgaming to succeed? Is it all really my "fault"?

To cop an attitude from Scott Draeker, "go away kid, you're bothering me".

-Don

Re:Where do you get all your incorrect information

[Time Doctor]

No, Don. Hypocrisy is knowing native ports are good, and letting non-native go by as if they're fantastic gifts to our operating system. Anyone who's used one of Corel's wine based 'ports' is aware of the shoddy API emulation going on there. You sir, clearly enjoy arguing about a different subject than the issue at hand: Native ports are good, non-native ones are bad in any situation. TG must be paying you well for supporting them, I know every man has his price. If they aren't paying you, yours seems pretty low.

Altered reality check

[SimHacker]

It's entirely possible to do anything, given an infinite amount of time, resources and optimism. But that's not how it works in the real world.

I'm just telling you how it is, not how it should be in the idea world. Ultima Online and other games download patches over the network, to keep the clients in sync with the server. That's how The Sims Online will work too.

I'm not just making this up. I specifically asked Will Wright about the feasability of a Linux port of The Sims Online client. (In case you don't know, he's the founder of Maxis and designer of The Sims and SimCity.)

I'm just telling you what he told me, and what I know first hand from working with the code since 1997. I'm familiar with The Sims source code, because I wrote a bunch of it, worked with all of it, ported it native to Linux, and optimized it.

The Sims wasn't designed to be a multi player game in the first place, and it's the result of more than 8 years of evolutionary design, redesign, tweaking and overhaul.

In other words, the code is hell ugly, but it does what it's supposed to. That probably applies to a lot of other games, too. The simulator is quite tangled up with the rest of the code, and it's a lot of hard work to sort it all out into a networked multi player game.

Please believe me when I say that The Sims Online server wouldn't be able to tolerate an out-of-date client. It pains me to think about how horribly it would crash. And that applies to a lot of other online games, for economical if not technological reasons.

No online game developer in their right mind would ever choose to take on such a nightmare of supporting out-of-date clients, when they can simply download patches, which is the standard industry practice.

Ultima Online has been doing it successfully for years, and it wouldn't have worked any other way. Online games, especially community oriented ones like Ultima Online and The Sims Online, constantly evolve in response to the needs their users.

For any non-trivial online game, evolution requires dynamically patching client binaries, and changing the server in ways that depend on the client updates.

It's extremely difficult and expensive to develop, maintain and support more than one platform, especially when you must download client updates.

Even if cross platform development were effortless and free, it would still be impossible for a third party company like Loki to develop a native port of a game like The Sims Online. That is because it would still require all clients of every platform to be synchronized and updated at the same time, which would be impossible if third party developers were involved.

On the other hand, the Wine approach should hopefully make it possible to run The Sims Online client, the very day it's released for Windows, and even download and apply the patches in real time.

It'll probably require a bit of testing and coordination between Transgaming and Maxis to make sure that it works well, but obviously they already have a good working relationship.

Wine is a win-win deal for everyone, not just Transgaming.

To the players, it means that not only can they play The Sims on Linux, but they can also run the free content creation tools like Transmogrifier, Art Studio and other third party tools. Without Wine, you will never be able to run most of those tools on Linux. They won't ever be ported to Linux, because they were written over time by many different people.

To Maxis, it means they will sell more copies of The Sims, and they will have more paying Sims Online subscribers, without having to invest resources or effort in developing cross platform clients.

So please stop trying to blame all your problems on Wine. Wine solves many more substantial real world problems, that far outweight any trivial ideological problems it causes. Attacking Wine for the good of Linux is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Please stop trying to censor and sabotage what other people want to do with their own computers. If Wine offends you so much, then simply don't use it!

-Don

Re:Where do you get all your incorrect information

[SimHacker]

What do you mean by "letting non-native go by"? You are totally off base. Please explain how you could possibly characterize the fact that I did a native port of The Sims to Linux, as "letting non-native go by"?

I did everything within my power to help Loki get a native port of The Sims for Linux to market as soon as possible. They're the ones who dragged their feet, left me hanging, and failed to take advantage of the situation.

I still don't understand what it is that I did, that makes you so mad. It's more like you're mad at me for something I didn't do, or allowed to happen by my inaction.

The fact remains that you've visciously attacked me, and gotten all of your facts wrong. So I think you owe me an explanation or an apology.

-Don

PS: You said:

"Of course you don't seem to understand that loki is still releasing games, and Don Hopkins is still charging 80 dollars for a networkable version of sim city (the original) in tcl/tk. I've heard that the networking doesn't work, and 80 dollars is a bit steep for any game. Especially when you can get Sim City 3000 from Loki which isn't using tcl/tk for less. Don Hopkins seems to enjoy lining his pockets and repeating the market speak of native ports being bad so he can draw attention to this fantastic non-native port which is ruining future ports which are actually native, and not emulating a closed source API." - Time Doctor

The facts you got wrong: The price wasn't $80, it was $49. I'm not "still charging" anything, because I haven't sold it for years before Loki ever existed. At the time (1993), $49 was dirt cheap for a Unix workstation game, compared to $150 for Aviator. Single player SimCity was $49 in 1993 dollars, while Loki's SimCity currently costs $49.95 in 2001 dollars. So Loki's SimCity is actually $.95 more expensive, so you're wrong about it costing less than mine. And you can't buy Multi Player SimCity from Loki for any price, while I was asking only $89 in 1993, which certainly didn't cover my time and effort. Lining my pockets??! I haven't seen a royalty check in many years, and the few I got were quite small. And I just don't understand the rest of your criticisms.

-Don

Why I ported SimCity to Unix

[SimHacker]

My previous message begs the question: Why did I port SimCity to Unix, if it was obviously not profitable? Two reasons: I didn't know that at the time, and I wanted to.

When I first saw SimCity, I was an undergraduate at the University of Maryland, working on user interface research and development for Ben Shneiderman at the Human Computer Interaction Lab.

As a programmer and user interface designer, I dreamed of understanding how SimCity worked, and having a chance to redesign its user interface (optimize it to run fast, enable scripting, use pie menus, display multiple views, support multi player colaboration, etc).

I was quite interested in cellular automata and visual programming and user interface design (which I still am). So I naturally saw SimCity as a complex colorful organic CA; with easy-to-use built-in real-time painting, zoning and bulldozer tools; like a beautiful abstract visual data flow programming language, with its own grammar of roads, parks and buildings; that just happened to look and behave like a city.

And I posted the following review of SimCity to comp.theory.cellular-automata:

From mimsy!brillig.umd.edu!don Fri Dec 29 13:03:18 EST 1989
Article 292 of comp.theory.cell-automata:
Path: mimsy!brillig.umd.edu!don
From: don@brillig.umd.edu (Don Hopkins)
Newsgroups: comp.theory.cell-automata
Subject: SimCity
Summary: Urban development simulation where it belongs: in a video game!
Message-ID: <21436@mimsy.umd.edu>
Date: 26 Dec 89 13:37:09 GMT
Sender: news@mimsy.umd.edu
Reply-To: don@brillig.umd.edu (Don Hopkins)
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction Lab, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 28

I just got a chance to play SimCity! It's like a drawing program that lets you build cities, by zoning districts, putting down power plants and football stadiums, wiring up the power grid, laying down roads and railroads. The simulation is actually running *while* you're constructing it! It acts like cellular automita with very high level rules -- it keeps track of each cell's population, land value, pollution, and many other factors, and the rules that govern how the zones develop are based on the state of neighboring zones, and other global factors (tax rate, etc). Districts that you've zoned don't come online and start developing until they're hooked into the power grid, by being connected through power line cells or adjacent buildings. Buildings seem to "feed" off of people brought in by roads and railroads. Residential zones in busy districts grow into high-rise apartment buildings. Traffic patterns develop on the roads, and you can see little cars zooming around based on the population of the area, and the flow of the roads! Once you build an airport, a helicoptor flies around the city and reports on heavy traffic, encouraging you to redesign the roads in that area!

You may wonder what traffic copters have to do with cellular automita. You just have to play it yourself to understand.

SimCity is absolutely the most amazing game I've seen on the Macintosh to date! (It's available on other computers like the Amiga, as well.) The graphics and animation are beautiful. I'll leave it at that -- mere text cannot do it justice.

-Don

foo

[Anonymous Coward]

test

It's not so bad...

[SimHacker]

I think Wine is an important step in the direction of making Linux more accessible and useful for everyone.

The fewer reasons anyone has to boot over to Windows, the longer time they spend running Linux.

Wine solves many more substantial real world problems, that far outweight any trivial ideological problems it causes.

Moore's Law guarantees that Wine's way will win. I've developed on The Sims code on a now-obsolete 500 MhZ laptop, running Visual C++ and Outlook Express at the same time. When it's running on a modern run-of-the-mill 1 Gigahertz desktop, there are plenty of cycles to burn.

All the time taken up by the layers of wrapper code, and even the simulation itself, is totally lost in the noise, compared to the time spent rendering, mixing sound, moving memory around, and reading from disk.

-Don

Wine

[Anonymous Coward]

Wine works good on my 350 Pentium 2. I play Half-Life with it. I wonder has Sony looked into using SDL for its playstation games. I know they have Linux runing on the Playstation 2. This could open the market for Linux gaming. We could run the playstation 2 game on linux. I wouldn't mind playing 50$ for a game I could run on my Desktop as well. Twisted Metal Black would look great on my Tnt2 Ultra.

I can dream I guess....

L8R

The Sims Online is doomed!?

[Anonymous Coward]

From this guys article it sounds like Maxis is using a simple lock-step philosophy for The Sims Online networking engine. That spells trouble. Lock-step is simple in theory but difficult in practice.

Also, they seem to be taking the easy implementation route (take a game and munge it into a server) rather than creating a well thought out and engineered solution.

Well, no doubt EA/Maxis has deep pockets for a gazzilion servers to act as game hosts. Seems kind of schlocky to me.