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.

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.

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

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

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