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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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: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...).

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: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.