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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.
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!
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!
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
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.
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.
... 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.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
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.
I do not have a signature
P.S. Thanks for native build of "The Sims" on Mac OS X and supporting Linux in general.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
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.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
... 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 ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23108&cid=2491 410
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
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.
sigs are a waste of space
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.
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?
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.
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...
- Dave
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.
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.
do not read this line twice.
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.
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)
Got Freedom?
Thinking?
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.
One of the things I didn't see mentioned is that a lot of developers are writing for the console only.
c old-dead-hands crowd clamors for support and then whines when they can't get it.
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-
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.
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.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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!
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
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.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
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?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
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.
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%?).
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
AMEN! I am SO glad someone in the /. crowd said this.
:-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.
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
Karma whorin' since 1999
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.
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".
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
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
>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.
Yes, because Galactic Civilizations is the game that made OS/2 such a success.
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!!!
- Dave
Linux
Windows
Mac OS X
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
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
So I guess what this all boils down to, is that Windows needs a Linux emu-- excuse me -- loader and API wrapper.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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?
The Anti-Blog
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
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.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
... Microsoft, which has bought quite a few game companies recently. And, quite coincidentally, their DirectX games seem to have fewer problems than yours.
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
"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.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
Lets look at the stability of ActiveX, in one very quantifiable and non-fiction example...
Xbox
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.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
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
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
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.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?