Rune for Linux Review

Woody Hughes sent a review of Rune for Linux thats running over at Reactive Linux. Rune is based on an enhanced version of the Unreal engine which has been ported to Linux by Loki. It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.

Comments

What do you call a dead parrot?

[Anonymous Coward]

A polygon. Boom Boom!

How do you kill a polygon? Does the texture just curl up and die or does it just slide off?

Huh?

[brunes69]

It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't ALL polygons 3D?

Re:Huh?

[Tim C]

That says "3rd person", not "3d". Also, not all 3d games are about killing (although I admit that I'm finding myself hard-pressed to think of any examples; I think that probably says something about my taste in games...)

Other than that it could be argued that, as the game is displayed as a flat image on a 2d screen, no the polygons are not 3d.

Cheers,

Tim

Re:Huh?

[arglesnaf]

By the dictionary def, it need not be 3D.

http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=pol ygon

It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't ALL polygons 3D?

But what I have to ask, is what the hell does your question have to do with the line you quoted?

Re:Huh?

[MrFredBloggs]

a polygon is 2d. It has 3 points, the most complicated object capable of always,only existing in 2d.

Re:Huh?

[brunes69]

Sorry, I gues I should have bolded the "Other" part. Make what "other" polygons dead? The ones that aren't 3D apparantly. And what does making a polygon dead mean anyways? The post makes no sense to me at all.

Re:Huh?

[brunes69]

Sorry, I read 3rd as 3D. But still.... How do you make a polygon dead? What does that mean???

Re:Huh?

[yatest5]

>> How do you make a polygon dead? What does that mean???

It's a game about killing other people. The guy coined the phrase 'make other polygons dead' meaning 'you can shoot other people in the game'.

Re:Huh?

[arglesnaf]

He means you kill the other critters made up of Polygons.

Apparently Taco still isn't funny.

Re:Huh?

[bowb]

A polygon is dead when it goes back to the Platonic realm of eternal forms.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, another crack smpoking moderator, modding a down comment that tried to clear up what Taco said...

Sheesh...

Re:Huh?

[Novus]

Quoting CmdrTaco's original post: It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.

Someone asked what this means; it seems reasonable to assume that it means that something polygonal gets killed.

The moderators are on crack again (since when is clarifying the original post, as in my parent to this post, "offtopic"?!?).

Re:Huh?

[zeno_2]

Triangle - 3 points Polygon - 4 points

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or geography in your country.

Re:Huh?

[Rogerborg]

• a polygon is 2d. It has 3 points

Drivel. A polygon has as many points as you like. A triangle has 3 points. Just because 3D programmers and artists get lazy and refer to triangles as "poly's" doesn't make it true.

If you're going to be a smart arse, at least have the common courtesy to be a correct one.

Re:Huh?

[pblanton]

To continue your thought...

In 3d games, "people" are represented by clusters of polygons. Also, people aren't necessarily people. They can be monsters, aliens, other Duke Nukem instances, etc...

Making them dead means, well, de-allocating their system resources, flipping their state from active to inactive, inducing a sufficient amount of deceleration trauma via an assortment of imaginative, high tech weaponry, to render them non-threatening.

Or something like that.

Re:Huh?

[Sludge]

A triangle can be 3D. They are the most complicated object that can't be concave, which makes them efficient for line of sight algorithms.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you're going to be a smart arse, at least have the common courtesy to be a correct one.
"
Follow your own advice.
There is nothing "lazy" in refering to trangles as polygons.
After all, every triangle is a polygon .

Re:Huh?

[psamuels]

Just because 3D programmers and artists get lazy and refer to triangles as "poly's" doesn't make it true.

Yes it is true, a triangle is a polygon. Obviously the converse is not true (the point you were apparently trying to make) but if you can take people to task for verbal pedantry, I can too.

Amazing

[alexborges]

I think its the best game ive seen on linux since q3, runs without a problem in an Athlon 800 boxen we have here. Im just sad that it wont work on PPC (i think), since my preffered box (bow onto me children) is my Titanium....

Alex

Rune is cool, but..

[Xzzy]

..ultimately I found it frustrating.

Sure the whole swinging swords around and lopping heads off is a fun idea, but the combat is so basic and ping based that you never really have any fun.

Basically the guy with the lower ping will swing before you do and kill you before you kill him. In the event that two peoples' ping is the same, it's just a matter of jousting around each other until someone gets a lucky strike in. Shields? Forget it. Even the best shield won't stop a killing blow if you just stand there defensively.

Again, a nice diversion, but it has the staying power of wet toilet paper. Liken it to a game of quake where everyone comes equipped with a BFG and unlimited ammo.

Now if someone incorporated the combat lessons taught in Oni and made it multiplayer, THEN you'd have a close combat game worth getting excited over. ;)

Re:Rune is cool, but..

[Shemp]

I can't agree with your comment. I've played quite a bit of deathmatch with the same core group of guys for a number of years. We've gone through Duke 3D, Hexen, Unreal, Quake, Quake II, Quake II, UT, and now lately Rune. We've all agreed that Rune has been the most fun to play. We all got really tired of long-range rocket launcher battles, or people sniping with the rail gun. The lack of range weapons plus the addition of the Rune powers has really added to our enjoyment of the game.

Now, we always play on a lan, so I can't really speak to the ping issues. However, I can say that I have used a shield effectively many times. You just can't stand there and expect it to protect you forever!

Being the lone linux user of the group, I was greatly looking forward to Rune for Linux. I own the Windows version, but I am ready to pay for the Linux version as well. However, after reading some comments about the poor performance and the high memory requirements, I may have to take a second look.

Re:Rune is cool, but..

[Masem]

I'll add from playing Rune on the PC (twice) that the single player version of the game can get frustrating as well.

Part of the problem is that because this is no longer a shoot-em-up, there's no ammo problems. With HL, you could choose to try to mow down headcrabs with a rare hand grendade, or slowly but precisely pick them off one by one with common pistol bullets. With Rune, you chose if you want to slash, hack, or bash, and work from there. Yes, sheilds could be damaged, but I rarely used it; once the big weapons were present, I forgot about the sheild as I could run forward, attack, then run back better than defending by blockign the attack. So there was little incentive to play 'cautiously' in the game.

Also, the SP levels were rather poorly laid out. After you got past the setup, the first several levels were all wimpy enemies with the worse being the tube-claw monsters that were a pain to kill because of timing. This went on for *several* levels. Then you come across the netherrealm with *very* hard enemies that you have to decapitate in order to kill, and the only way to decap them was to jump up and slice or hack; you couldn't easily decap at ground level with them. This got tedious very very fast. However, after that set of levels, the game becomes a bit more interesting, but you've already done 1/3rd of it without a lot of exciting payoff, IMO.

Interesting when you talk about Oni; it has a small ammo/efficiency aspect, since you can choose to use weapons instead of fistdecuffs to win (and in some cases, that was a better solution), but again, the end portion of the game got boring since it was simply using the same moves on the same types of opponents, just in increasingly larger numbers. Great idea, but the SP just got boring particularly with the overly-large levels.

Re:Rune is cool, but..

[Asterax]

I must agree, lag is major issue in some multi-player games, when you are trying to loop off your friends (or foes) head, using your 56k and your friend is on DSL. Espcially if you start swinging your sword and by the time you do that your enemy has completely left that space. Leaving you confused, annoyed, frustrated, and probably a large sword shaped hole some where in your back. I must contridict Xzzy right here though, if you have the flaming mace and beating people with it while using the super powerful Rune (The Quake Power-up type) you can kill a lot of people. Even if your ping is higher then someone elses. I don't see much reason Rune for Linux will do much better then Mac and PC. I suppose the plot for the single player is "OKAY" but I wouldn't go so far as saying it was Baldur's Gate or Diablo 2 material. -Asterax

Re:Rune is cool, but..

[Outland Traveller]

The trick you missed with the zombies is that you can simply walk up to them with a sword, tilt back far enough so you see the top half of their body, swing and decapitate in one go.

No jumping, no fancy aiming.. It decapitates 70% of the time in one hit.

Good games

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why people bother to port BAD games?

Sucked on Win, it will suck in linux.

Server already dead... :((

[ishark]

I would have very much liked to write an intelligent post, but it looks like the poor site was wiped out of existence.

Dammit, even a dumb "mirror of the text" post to get some karma would have been good.

I'm definitely not fast enough :((((

rune for linux....

[Anonymous Coward]

All I'd say is, why would anyone want to waste precious hd space on rune anyway? Run around in a few hundred different sewers with a dull axe for about 6 hours. That about sums up rune... See oldmanmurray's review here: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/runepage1. shtml

Loki's Rune for Linux page

[Novus]

The review referred to in the original post seems to be somewhat unreachable (it can't be slashdotted yet, can it?), so you may want to try Loki's page for the game
here.

Games I'd like to see on Linux

[Hunts]

I dont genreally play alot of games on my linux machines, and there is a good reason for it. My Linux box is a fairly slow old Celeron 300. It cant keep up with 3d shooters. What I'd like to see converted to linux are old classics like master of orion and games of that nature, maybe the odd RTS game or 2. If any knows of any of these sorts of projects, sing about them loud and clear. The old games that ran happily under DOS etc, these are the sorts of I want. Maybe a conversion the old Wing Commander series so that I can play games on my old reliable linux machine whilst my GF using my Windows box to us MS office..

Re:Games I'd like to see on Linux

[Lumpy]

it cant keep up?? why?
I run a P-II 266 and play UT and the Half-life series of games along with Quake, Quake II, and QuakeIII in 640X480 mode (Gotta love my Nvidia AGP Geforce2 video card :-)

All of the above games run nicely in linux, dboot out to win98 and then play KFDM, ThiefII, and a host of others based on the QII and QIII engines. (they all are just copies of the base ID engines arent they :-)

you have plenty of horsepower to play the games, just not at 1600X1200 with 32 bit depth and 6.1 surround sound. and on a good 3d card the low res looks dammned good .

Re:Games I'd like to see on Linux

[arkanes]

Thief and Thief 2 (and System Shock 2) are based on the Dark Engine, not the Quake engine :)

Re:Games I'd like to see on Linux

[mortalic]

I would give anything to see the master of orion series on linux, in fact, If given the source, I'd even attempt the port myself. I wouldn't finish it, cuz I never finish projects, but it'd be fun!

Rare Game Review

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I don't want to whine (too much), but this is one of the "rare" game reviews on slashdot. The game isn't that exciting, nor is it very anticipated. Why is this frontpage material? I understand that few games get ported to linux, but there was no review for alpha centauri when it made it to linux.

Square deal

[MarkusQ]

A: what is a square?

A polygon, and thus 2d (not three). The previous poster was off base saying a polygon has three points (in the biz, we call those "triangles"; all triangles are polygons, but not all polygons are triangles).

Polygons are by definition two dimensional.

-- MarkusQ

Re:Square deal

[Anonymous Coward]

"Polygons are by definition two dimensional."

Of course, it depends on which definition ...

Main Entry: polygon
Pronunciation: 'pä-lE-"gän
Function: noun
1 : a closed plane figure bounded by straight lines
2 : a closed figure on a sphere bounded by arcs of great circles

Definition 2 certainly doesn't give 2D polygons (as measured in the same coordinate system that you use to measure the polygon defined in definition 1).

Re:Square deal

[big.ears]

Ok, I'll be annoyingly pedantic. Definition 2 assumes a 2-d manifold. All arc segments of such a non-euclidean polygon can be defined by 2 parameters, just as in definition 1 (aside from specifying which is the inside and the outside of the polygon, which isn't necessary in a euclidean space). So it really depends not only on the definition, but the interpretation of the definition.

I'm not really convinced by your argument about the 'same coordinate system', because even if you only accepted definition 1, its easy to find coordinate systems that require 3 or more dimensions to represent valid polygons.

And for my next trick, I will tell you how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

Re:Square deal

[psamuels]

Hey - the surface of a sphere is very much a two-dimensional coordinate space. Therefore a polygon on a sphere is a two-dimensional object.

The fact that it can also be described using a 3-D (Euclidian) coordinate system is entirely beside the point. After all, a Euclidian planar object could be described using 3-D coordinates in some non-Euclidian system.

(I'm an expert. I live in Kansas, which for the most part is mind-numbingly flat, even though we are technically mapped on a spherical surface. A wheat field around here is definitely two-dimensional, as anyone can see.)

Playing in Madison

[wetdogjp]

I took a trip to Madison, WI this past summer, and got the opportunity to play a deathmatch test with the developers. Needless to say, I got my arse kicked, but that's how most games go for me. Playing with the guys who made the game was a very unique experience, though.

As multi-player goes, I'm getting sick of all the 3D shoot-em-ups out there; there's really a lack of creativity in that field. I was drawn to Rune simply because it was a change of pace to get to fight hand to hand.

Graphics and sound for games nowadays all seem the same, too, and Rune was like any other there. But the gameplay was very different, and it really sets it apart.

We had about 20 people playing a map at any given time. Seems that Rune wasn't prepared for or designed for that. The maps were too small for that many people, and it created a lot of lag, even on a hefty server. Of course, this was just a test game, too.

I haven't played any single player parts yet, but I think I would be more intrigued by that. The game sorta has that feel of being made for single player, and multiplayer was just thrown in hastily to make it complete. I'm sure this would go well at a LAN party for a while, but unlike some other games, I don't think we could play it all night.

-WetDog

Re:Playing in Madison

[Archfeld]

I gotta agree, I belong to an active LAN group out
here in Calif, we ran RUNE for a while, it was fun at the lan, for about 5 hours, then we moved on. It did not last long on the NET servers either, being voted out in less than a week. I really liked the single player version, and I understand they've done some net tweaking but all in all I prefered Heretic2 to Rune.

Great, but there are some issues

[Ryn]

Rune is great, but there are some serious issues with the Linux version. Namely:
Game requires 512M of ram+swap to start. If you dont have that much dedicated for the game itself (dont forget to add on the RAM requirements for Linux itself), it'll kill your system at level transitions/whenever kernel can catch up to the allocations.
It is running piss slow on P3 450M system with 680M of ram (even on the 800x600 res).
These are my two main concerns with it, not to mention the fact that Loki only acknowledged the NEW ram requirements after a bunch of people expressed their concern in the mailing groups.
The 3D engine is ok, but still not bug-free.

Re:Great, but there are some issues

[dinivin]

Game requires 512M of ram+swap to start. If you dont have that much dedicated for the game itself (dont forget to add on the RAM requirements for Linux itself), it'll kill your system at level transitions/whenever kernel can catch up to the allocations.

Not true at all... Certainly the added RAM helps, but before I bought more it ran just fine with a total 128 Megs RAM + 256 Swap (though it did take noticably longer to switch levels).

The 3D engine is ok, but still not bug-free.


Which is true of nearly every 3D engine.

Dinivin

Re:Great, but there are some issues

[Anonymous Coward]

plays just fine on a P2-400 256MB Geforce2MX with max details and 1024x768 here, and there's no swapping going on.

I am using Win2000 though...

Re:Great, but there are some issues

[zoward]

I had 128M RAM on a PIII-700 with a 256M swap and a 32MB nVidia graphics board, and Rune *would not run* until I increased the size of my swapfile. Which, seeing as I had a swap partition, forced me to allocate an additional swap partition (so I stole a gigabyte from my Win98SE paritition 8-P).

It ran, but took forever to cache the levels in the swap file. The graphics were a little choppy as well. I later added an extra 128M of RAM (for a total of 256M RAM), and both these problems went away.

Once I made it past that hurdle, I enjoyed the game so much I went back and ordered the expansion pack. Go Loki!

Re:Great, but there are some issues

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Not true at all...

It's very true. From Loki's page:

RAM
64 MB RAM minimum, 128 MB RAM recommended
512 MB combined RAM and swap required)

Re:Great, but there are some issues

[dinivin]

512 MB combined RAM and swap required)

Perhaps that's what they say, but it's still not true... As I mentioned, I ran Rune with considerably less.

Dinivin

Re:Great, but there are some issues

[asincero]

> Which, seeing as I had a swap partition,
> forced me to allocate an additional swap
> partition (so I stole a gigabyte from my
> Win98SE paritition 8-P).

Just so you know in the future, you could've made an additional swap file with dd(1), run mkswap(8) on it, then did a swapon(8) on the file to dynamically add more swap space in addition to your swap partition.

- Arcadio

Rune for Windows

[Recolada]

I bet Taco plays this on his Windows box.

Linux game development taking Mac model?

[tenzig_112]

Mac games tend to come out 6 to 12 after the PC version [with as many bugs as the 1.0 PC release]. How long ago did Rune come out for PC? It looks like Linux developers are taking a page from the Mac game development playbook (porting PC games after they have proven their worth [and become passe] ).

The drawn-out death of Loki is a great example. How far can you get asking people to buy a game they probably already own on a different platoform? And a domographic that isn't used to paying for software, either?

Re:Linux game development taking Mac model?

[Svartalf]

Isn't used to paying for software? Riight. If it's worth something, I buy it or pay for support from the people providing it. I don't use what I don't pay for or get legitimately through other channels (freebies from companies, beta copies, open source, etc.)- most of the Linux crowd is the same way, what makes you think we'd use pirated copies of things?

The reason for the problem with Loki's multifaceted- there's the delay, there's the fact that a majority of the Linux crowd's impatient (yes, that's the word for it) and has the luxury of dual booting (unlike the MacOS crowd...), the relative dearth of driver support for 3D cards until recently, and how expensive it is to license AAA titles (I personally think they bit off more than they could safely chew in a year's time...).

Re:Linux game development taking Mac model?

[wishus]

IIRC Linux Kohan came out only days after the Windows release. For that title, I believe Loki had worked concurrently with the game developers so the two versions would be available at roughly the same time.

But in most cases, you're right. By the time the Loki port gets out, the game is old news.

But then there's people like me who are still playing Baldur's Gate and won't buy BG2 until I finish the first. I bought q3a for linux in a store for $10 about a month ago. I'm just not in to games enough to buy them when they come out. I rarely have time to play them, so by the time I get around to buying them they've been out for a while already.

Also, even though I am a linux user, I don't mind paying money for a good game. In fact, every time I upgrade my linux distribution, I make a point to buy a boxed version at CompUSA or Best Buy. I know I could download it, or get one of those budget CDs, but I like to support linux companies by buying their products. $40 for SuSE Personal is money well spent, in my mind.

It's also a source of great amusement for me to converse with CompUSA salespeople about linux distributions. That's more fun than any video game.

Re:Linux game development taking Mac model?

[cnkeller]

IIRC Linux Kohan came out only days after the Windows release. For that title, I believe Loki had worked concurrently with the game developers so the two versions would be available at roughly the same time. Not even close, Kohan for windows was out in February of 2001. Linux Kohan didn't even beta until August.

Re:Linux game development taking Mac model?

[NutscrapeSucks]

It looks like Linux developers are taking a page from the Mac game development playbook (porting PC games after they have proven their worth [and become passe]

You mean after proving that they are profitable?

Face it -- most games are Windows only and die a quick, unprofitable death. The games that are really popular (UT, Sims, HalfLife, Railroad Tycoon) have a shelflife of a year or more.

Maybe the hardcore gamer types run out and buy/warez a game the day it ships, but the vast majority of the market doesn't operate that way. If Linux is indeed a big enough desktop platform to support the game market, they can do it with 6 month old games.

Re:Linux game development taking Mac model?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us don't buy games for Windows.

Death to all polygons!

[bgarcia]

It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.

But what did the other polygons ever do to it?

It's slow on both platforms

[fialar]

I got it when it come out for Windows, and it was pretty sluggish on a K6-2 450 OC'd to 500 with 192 MB RAM running 98 SE.

When I read that the Linux version needed tons of memory, that turned me off. What do they need the memory for? Storing textures? I thought the vid cards did all that? It uses the Unreal engine so it shouldn't be memory hoggy at all. UT: GOTY runs nice and fast on my machine, Tribes 2 isn't half bad either.

Perhaps they should be working on trimming down those memory requirements, it would boost the game performance overall.

Re:It's slow on both platforms

[Mandelbrute]

When I read that the Linux version needed tons of memory

It runs acceptably on 192MB (dual celeron 300, 16MB Vanta card), and not badly enough for me to want to go to the effort of getting memory out of the other machine.

Scenes are slow to load, but the gameplay is fine.

I laughed, I cried...

[GISboy]

I posted to show my ignorance on slashdot...

Not really, but I laughed at the "ability to make other polygons dead"...that was cute.

I cringed because I had this discussion before with an editor before.

3d, 3D, 3-d all mean (ok, to me) 3 dimensional.

3rd means third, but I was told by this person that to "the average reader 3d means third".
The fact that I laughed at this person did not endear me to them, nor pointing them to 3dfx.com helped much either.

But, I digress.

I thought Rune was a good game, personally.
If my memory is correct, it uses the Unreal (tourney?) Engine.
Good game play and interesting idea in melee combat, but tedious at times.
I did like some of the minor humorous bits sprinkled in. (the fscking lizards on one level gave me a laugh)

The grfx, I have to admit were excellent...remember the original Unreal's first level of looking down the waterfall to the valley below? Even at 640x480 it was absolutely stunning. This is how most of Rune is...just stunning.

I never had the chance to play Rune online, but I have heard it is quite amusing.

So far in my online experience the best replay values so far for online/offline game playing are any Quake (Q3 above all) and a tie between Kingpin and Descent (especially Descent 2) and Carmageddon2.

Personally I think Rune was a Heretic/Hexen wanna be...almost. Sure you could throw hatchets, but it needed more projectile weapons (crossbow (heretic), spear, sling {F.A.K.K2}...something).

Rune like Oni was a good game, but it was such a radical departure from the norm it did not 'trip a lot of people's triggers, literally and figuratively' in the way that Thief did as an "anti-shooter".

I guess it was *too* different, if that is possible.

Re:I laughed, I cried...

[nevets]

(the fscking lizards on one level gave me a laugh)

Ok, I played through the game twice (once at medium, and again at hard), and I don't remember seeing this. What level was that on?

Re:I laughed, I cried...

[scrytch]

two extra keystrokes would have spared us all this nitpicking. one just needed to spell out the word "third". *sigh*

Mode of combat and 3rd person...

[fialar]

I think many people find 3rd person combat confusing, myself included. When I first played it, it took me a few hours just to get view down. Sometimes if I hit the wrong key, it would zoom in or out too much and totally screw up my estimation of distance, that usually meant getting my head lopped off.

One of the things I noticed the other guys I was playing with at the LAN party were just running and banging on keys and they generally got lots of kills. Utterly amazing. Maybe if I programmed lots of key commands in on one of those monster joysticks and just ran around swinging, I'd get a lot of dumb kills too. :)

Re:Mode of combat and 3rd person...

[crawling_chaos]

I think many people find 3rd person combat confusing, myself included.

This is exactly why I never got into Jedi Knight. It was too hard for me to figure out the 3rd person views for the lightsaber battles. Maybe, I'm just lame, but I've avoided most 3rd person view "shooters" since. I guess the only exception would be Diablo 2.

Another Rune site

[Novus]

Another very extensive site about Rune is here.

Rune is a Great Game

[stuce]

I got a copy of a few weeks ago and I have to say I loved it. The single player game is simple and fast paced. There's no hunt for the secret door or figuring out complex puzzles. There just a lot of running around killing things with a big sword and occasionally going back to find that door or ledge you walked past. Most single player doom-ish games try and be sooo tricky with all there puzzles to make the game take longer, where as Rune is just a really long, forgiving hack-fest. The first couple of levels are a little dull since they are just getting you used to the controls but it picks up steam and just gets better and better to a very satisfying end.

Mind you I have not played with the death match much but it does indeed look like quake with all bfg's.

how to kill a polygon

[posmon]

polynomials will starve it to death

Correction

[kraf]

Loki didn't port the UT engine to Linux, it was someone from Epicgames.

Re:Correction

[BadBlood]

Brandon Reinhart (sp?) to be specific.

Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues.

[iCEBaLM]

Many comments made this reviewer look really stupid in my eyes, these comments were:

Sound: The SoundBlaster Live! is the soundcard of choice. And it's cheap too.

There are many soundcards better than the SB Live which have solid Linux support.

That's pretty much it. If you don't own an NVIDIA-based card, then I can't help you out since I don't own anything else.

This from a review site? What really do they review?

Heavy Metal: FAKK 2 was the first game I ever picked up that was in third-person, with Rune being the second. So, you can no doubt believe me when I say that my eyes actually hurt a bit until I got used to the gameplay.

Are you 15 years old? Never played Tomb Raider, Diablo, (War|Star)craft, any EA sports games, Oni, Shadows of the Empire, MDK, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Armagetron, Tuxracer etc? Exactly why should I trust the opinion of someone who DOESN'T PLAY MANY GAMES?

Mod me as flamebait, but it's true.

-- iCEBaLM

Purchase from...

[michaelsimms]

For anyone wanting to buy, Tux Games. Its out of stock but new stock expected tomorrow.

Re:Purchase from...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would love too.
except....

1. Tuxgames gouges on shipping and "handling" charges.. If you cant ship me my game for $5.00 then you're robbing me.

2. Why on some games can I buy the same game CHEAPER from the game company themselves? They're charging me full retail I'm sure and TuxGames get's it at a massive discount so they can sell it for suggested retail? (I was in the software reseller biz, buying a case of the games for 40% of the retail cost was very normal... and microsoft FORCED you to sell at their "suggested price" or they refuse to let you sell microsoft software.

SO I am all for supporting Linux games companies, I buy from Loki every chance I get, I bought from tuxgames once.. and will again when sane shipping prices and overall pricing come back.

NOTE: handling is a sham, only really scummy companies charge handling or inflate the shipping price to get extra $$$$.

Why Bother?

[splitfyre]

Rune was in general a very slow and grudingly painful game that will hopefully see a boost of improvement in future versions. Now that it's running on Linux shouldn't make a big difference.

no, it's not that bad

[Ender Ryan]

I played throught the whole game in Linux, and it was great. Yes, it does suck down a lot of memory, but ram is too cheap these days to let that stop you. As for poor performance, if you have enough ram it's not a problem, in my experience anyway.

Just grab a 256MB ram chip for $21 at Bunta.com, it's cheaper than the game is!

...ability to make all other polygons dead

[Swami]

This is old. More than one hundred years ago, A. Square wrote about isosceles triangular soldiers in Flatland; they could make other polygons dead too.

Another review

[jnik]

Don't know why a review of a game that's been out for so long is front-page worthy, but if you guys want a different take, I didn't like it very much. Just a lot of repetitive combat that, unlike a good twitch game (such as Descent) didn't have much fun quotient.

Fun single player.. think "Norweigan Tomb Raider"

[jonabbey]

It's a fun enough game to play single player, I think. The levels are interesting to look at, and kind of fun to play through. Combat's not all that, but getting to see the next level and cutscenes have proven to be enough of a motivator to keep me playing. The game is very well done from a thematic perspective, and it's big.. lots and lots of levels to satisfy your idle 'hm, i should be gaming right now' urges. Easy to pop up the game and work through a level or two before going back to whatever you were doing.

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Then don't trust his opinion troll.

Since ReactiveLinux is pretty much on a shoe-string budget along with the fact that both guys who run it have full-time jobs, they don't have the luxury like most sites, including OSDN, who have actual employers dedicated to the site and have budgets. For what they do for the Linux community, they do it well...especially on a small site with not a lot of time.

Worst game ever

[Rui del-Negro]

Rune has to be one of the worst, most frustrating and most boring games ever. The only objective review of it I saw as at Old Man Murray.

This is definitely the kind of games Linux doesn't need (I think Rune is actually a perfectly valid argument against Windows). I'd much rather see conversions of Chris Sawyer's games (Transport Tycoon Deluxe, for example) or the Ultima series (up to Ultima VII / Underworld II anyway, Ultima VIII and IX were crap).

Um...

[Polarcow]

Rune for Win32 is based on the Quake 3 engine. Did I miss something and Loki ported it to Unreal?

Re:Um...

[Polarcow]

Nevermind. My bad...

RUNE FOR LUNIX MOD

[Anonymous Coward]

hi there i am a open sorec operatingsysetm user and i wanted to ask you poeple soemthing and i ahve a reques tfor you cool people :) :) :)

would soembody please please PLEASE make a mode for "RUNE FOR LUNIX" so u can go arnund and petrify!!! right no wthere arent any good petrification gaems for lunix since "stonie's revenge" and "duke 3: naked and petfirifed" werent ported. so PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE make a rune mod that will make paetrified!!! so we can "NATALIE PORTMAN NAKED ADN PETRIFIED"!!!

thank you.

damn tard

[cube00]

hi there i am a open sorec operatingsysetm user and i wanted to ask you poeple soemthing and i ahve a reques tfor you cool people :) :) :) would soembody please please PLEASE make a mode for "RUNE FOR LUNIX" so u can go arnund and petrify!!! right no wthere arent any good petrification gaems for lunix since "stonie's revenge" and "duke 3: naked and petfirifed" werent ported. so PLEEEEEEEEEEEEASE make a rune mod that will make paetrified!!! so we can "NATALIE PORTMAN NAKED ADN PETRIFIED"!!! Are you typing with greas on yout hand and cheesy poofs stuck in your keyboard or what? All time favorites : "lunix" - Linux for lunatics "petfirifed" - uh huh .. Coul dyoum ak ean ymor espellin gmistakes.. Gees.

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[dinivin]

There are many soundcards better than the SB Live which have solid Linux support.

If you don't mind me asking, what would you recommend? I've been extremely pleased with my SB Live and the Alsa drivers... They support a great deal of the hardware of the card, and have really nice quality, IMHO. Also, just because there are better soundcards, doesn't mean that the SB Live isn't the soundcard of choice, as the article claimed. It's not uncommon for an inferior card to be the more popular one, and given the frequency of questions on the Alsa mailing list, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the SB Live is the most popular one under Linux.

Dinivin

I've had it for months

[Mandelbrute]

I've had it for months, and it wasn't new then either. I don't think it was a simultaneous release with the Win* version, but it was released not long after.

I disagree

[Roxton]

It takes a while to get into the swing of Rune, but once you've gotten down the basics of timing and facing, you can slug it out with another player for several minutes. Each weapon requires a different offensive strategy, and each opponent weapon requires a different defensive strategy.

It's a lot of fun. My only beef is with some of the cheesy powerups, which can mercifully be mutated out of the game.

It's bad if your having latency problems, but if you can keep it below 200, there should be little problem. Keep trying.

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[Banjonardo]

Are you 15 years old

I liked the comment, but I resent the above.

I'm 15. And I've played most (not Shadows, MDK, Armargetron, Tuxracer) of the mentioned games. Age has *nothing* to do with gaming. Unless you're under a certain age, you can have played many great games.

Furthermore, age (or lack thereof) does not mean tendency towards playing shooters; many of my friends have played, say, Monkey Island, Wolfenstein, etc.

So don't discriminate against us young people.

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked the comment, but I resent the above
>

It would at least justify that explaination.

Lots of young people have no taste in gaming. You are an example of someone with taste. Nobody is attempting to discriminate against anybody...

Everybody's always a victim... :)

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[Anonymous Coward]

ahahahah

And I quote:

"Age has *nothing* to do with gaming. Unless you're under a certain age"

Bought it, completed it, got the expansion pack

[x3ja]

I ordered Rune 2 weeks ago and it arrived a week ago (and since I'm in the UK, that's pretty good!) I have avidly played through it in the past 7 days and here is what I think:

- Initial impression was - sweeet, nice graphics, cool weapons and a decent(ish) plot.
- Unfortunately there is too little variety in the creatures you meet - you spend about 4 hours of it just beheading zombies - and when you can't find a sword - that gets very frustrating.
- Lack of variety of attacks was also a bit dull. Need some special combos or something. However I did like the rune idea to get cool attacks, makes up for the lack of combos.
- Some good puzzles to get round, but not so hard as to bore me, but some were too simple (like being able to strafe round the edge of big swiping blades, instead of the jumping them)
- Expansion pack (same price as game) is a mere 70Meg install, with a bunch of extra maps and a couple of new multiplayer games. Whilst cool, I feel a little conned out of my $30. But I only installed that bit today, so maybe there's some surprises waiting.
Overall a good game, but maybe not worth the cumulative $72 I paid for it. It was my first commercial Linux game, and I'm sure it won't be my last. Thank goodness Loki are still around!

controling melee combat

[dmwilcox]

personally i find first person games great fun, but rune is a bit of an exception in many ways. speaking as a sword fighter from the SCA,
http://www.sca.org
there's alot more to manuvering in melee combat than strafeing and attempting to duck behind a shield. for this reason i, personally, think that first person games with a melee base will not take off until another sort of interface is developed (or a revolutionary control set). anyway my two bits.

daniel
till then on with quake 3!!!

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[Per Wigren]

Yes, age HAS something to do with gaming (even if you're under a certain age, LOL). Ever played Frogger, Djungle Hunt or Scramble?

Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues

[Banjonardo]

Frogger, yes.

However, you can't go blaming people for being young.