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Last Word on Loki
A random reader sent in: "Loki's public CVS and FAQ database are now being hosted at icculus.org. The information, and a bit of evangelizing about Loki's demise can be found on icculus.org." You might take a look at the Linux Gamers' FAQ while you're there. Update: 01/25 21:05 GMT by M : Scott Draeker sends word that there will be an "official" repository of Loki code, including apparently some projects that weren't finished, hosted by SEUL in the near future.
... is the SDL. Made by a Loki employee (forgot which one, someone help me here) to help the porting process for DirectX, I believe. Its a nice package for any linux developers that want to make games...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
No. They can't, because they don't own the rights, most likely. The original game publisher will retain exclusive right to the licencing of the game product -- all Loki owns is the Linux-specific stuff that got written for the port, and parts of *that* are even probably unreleasable because it'd expose too much of the game's underlying, proprietary, operations.
It's a damn shame, I played the hell out of Tribes and there were a couple other games I was considering buying when a few bucks came my way... guess I waited to long.
But at least we get access to some of the great work they did release -- most notably SDL.
R.I.P Loki.
So if Loki is going to shut down on 31 Jan 2002, which is six days from today, will they fully process any game orders made today?
I haven't seen any termination warnings on their site to dissuade customers from ordering products.
I figured I'd probably want two or three games over the next year, but this is making me think of buying some now before they're gone.
[
But I can't help but think on how some folks helped push them over the edge in a twist on the tradgedy of the commons scenario. Everyone can have some free software only so long as no one gets greedy about taking advantadge of the good will of others, especially when the goodwill is provided by people whose side you are on. sort of. kinda. maybe.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Unfortunately I couldn't read any further of your comment as I was helpless with laughter ;)
If you vote with your wallet, I don't think it makes much of a difference:
1. If the company is HUGE, one person not buying their product isn't going to hurt them. Something that would hurt would be a class-action lawsuit or something similar.
2. If the company is small, one person isn't enough when they vote with their wallets.
I think in the grander scheme of things, (Loki's demise aside, and how the big companies continue to get away with crimes), corporate lobbying must be curtailed, campaign reform laws must be enacted, and the right of the government to revoke corporate charters should be fully reinstated.
Oh and I am no hypocrite. I have bought many titles from Loki games. I fully supported their goals and vision. Sadly they are gone, but I hope a new company can take their place and do a better job at managing the funds, or at least try to change the perception of the "BIG BOYS" games companies (Blizzard comes to mind) that Linux ports are A Good Thing (tm).
-fialar
...we should start helping out the guys at Transgaming - they're doing great work, and for me it was worth the $5 subscription :)
Let me prefeace this by saying that I'm an avid linux user, and an avid game player. I'm (presumably) the target market that Loki was shooting for.
Yet I didn't buy any games from them. Why?
Simply put, they didn't release anything that I wanted to play. I had Quake 3 and UT - I didn't need any other FPS games. I had played Heroes III before (yes, under Windows), and while it's a nice game, it's not something I would be willing to purchase a copy of for linux - it just didn't enthrall me that much. I was a fan of the old Descent games, but for me they lost some of their flavor after Descent 2, regardless of the eyecandy that was added.
I will admit - I was SORELY tempted to buy Rune - but after playing the demo, I wasn't totally impressed by the gameplay. Sure, melee is fun - but it got old after about an hour.
What I would have bought (and still will buy, if anyone makes them), no questions asked:
Ports of Bioware's Infinity Engine games (Baldurs Gate I/II, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment) - these are, quite simply, incredible games. They have metric tons of gameplay, replay value, and storyline. That's why they're still fun today.
Ports of Diablo II and Starcraft - yes, I know these are from Blizzard, who will never, ever, release a linux version - but they were DAMN good games that are still loads of fun now, well after the release.
I don't feel bad about not buying their games - I refuse to buy something I don't want, even to support a company that *might* in the future produce something I would like to buy. While I support *what* they were doing, I think their choice of games to do it with was poor (albeit probably the only choice they had in this world of "Intellectual Property" lawsuits)
To my mind, writing software is a SERVICE, with the end result free for all to use.
Sure. But what's the difference?
What the hell, it's only Karma.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
SDL is wonderful, and is evidence that Loki's existance was good for Linux as well as other platforms. But also don't forget about the Loki Installer, used by Codeweavers for the Crossover plugin (as well as RTCW, among countless others), SMPEG, OpenAL, and *free* binaries to Quake3 and Unreal Tournament. Yes, there was a time when Q3 was box-only, but Loki supported Q3 well after that point.
It brings me great sadness Loki is going. But thanks to Icculus, id Software, Loki, and all the countless volunteers we now have a much better platform.
Another, Linux-based dedicated game Distros. You pop in the CD and boot, start the game, no install required. Make the PC into kinda a game console. The wide variety of PC hardware makes this not work that well however...
/bin is 6 megabytes. /lib is 48 megabytes. /usr/X11R6 is 239 megabytes. Now, even assuming you can cut these down to half the size they are on my box, that's still 173 megabytes total. Accounting for hardware differences, you'll need to have *at least* three (3dfx, nVidia, and everything else) XFree86 servers and GL driver sets, for another 21 megabytes or so. We're up to 194 megabytes at this point, and it doesn't run a game yet. Now, you can't pull out a whole game to core, as most people don't have 400 megabytes of RAM to blow on top of the game's footprint and X, etc; therefore, to prevent significant performance losses, you'll need to store the game uncompressed on CD. According to the bottom of the Quake3 box I have here, an install takes no less than 440MB. At this point, we've hit 634 megabytes.
OK, for the sake of this argument, we'll assume you're talking about a standard CD, maximum capacity somewhere around 650 megabytes.
To get a minimal gaming Linux distro up and running, you'll need:
a) the kernel and some essential binaries and libraries,
b) XFree86,
c) sound, networking, etc. drivers, and
d) the game itself.
Now, let's take a look at some sizes.
On my current Linux box (RedHat Linux 7.1, kernel 2.4.17),
This doesn't include audio or networking drivers, both of which are dodgy to get working even with human intervention at this point in time.
In addition, you're going to need swap and storage space that work irregardless of the user's chosen operating system, and that's going to be another 2 headaches.
(For the record: someone on OpenProjectsNet:#loki brought this up about 6 months ago, and I challenged them to come up with such a CD that would work on Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD, etc. I never heard back.)
Let me sum this up in two words:
not feasible.
For one, transgaming. Full porting takes too long, while you port, the market buys up the windows version.
Uhh, not if you have the miraculous luck to be working with a company that's not a bunch of idiots. In those cases, you can achieve simultaneous release across platforms.
By 6 months, the market was saturated. With Transgaming, they have a chance to get to the market before it *completely* dries up.
So, you propose to save Linux gaming by having people purchase the Windows versions in a manner indistinguishable from the other 95% of the public, then having them play them in a sub-par API wrapper layer. <sarcasm>Sounds absolutely freaking great.</sarcasm>
I'm inclined to agree with both Draeker and icculus. It's partially the Linux gaming community's insistence that everything should be free (if someone mirrors news.lokigames.com, take a look in loki.games.* for all of the "free binaries" threads; you will find them).
In any case, TransGaming is not the solution. The only places where I find it anywhere close to appropriate to use WineX is when I'm using free programs that are Windows-only (say, 99.999% of all 3D modelers (UnrealEd, QuArK, and WorldCraft, too...), media players, and installer packages for products produced by a bunch of single-platform ninnies), very few of which, I've found, actually *work* in Wine.
In other words, I'm inclined to agree with both Draeker and icculus. The Linux gaming community as a whole had a great opportunity to make themselves heard, and they spoiled it by being a bunch of warez monkeys, Wine boosters, and dual-booting cheapskates. Now that Loki's gone, and there's one fewer company to mooch off of, you recommend stopgap solutions that perpetuate Windows-centric gaming.
To quote the late Douglas Adams, "'Pathetic bloody planet. I've no sympathy at all.'"
Want Linux games? HERE.
That there are people willing to do the ports practically for free, and still let the owner companies pocket all the revenue from the games, if only they'd be allowed to port it. And yet game companies are so worried about letting valuable secrets slip out that they won't let ANYONE see the code, NDA or otherwise. The silly notion is that even if someone picks up on a great idea, by the time that idea can be implemented into some other game, it'll be a good year later at least, and by then there will be new technologies and new hardware and the old stuff won't matter as much anymore. ID knows this, which is why they GPL the code for older games.
Perhaps the linux community isn't a huge source of revenue. WHO CARES? If the porting can be done for you for free, then its all gravy. Same with device drivers. Nobody sells device drivers, they sell the hardware the devices interface with. And if they can pick up a new market without any investment of time or money and not even have to support it, how can that be anything but a benefit.
And yet they hold on like there's some dangerous secret that might leak out and put them out of business. I must be missing something obvious here.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Another thing to keep in mind is that most mac users could not dual boot to play the new PC/Win game that they just purchased the week it came out. If I had a Mac -- I had to wait until the Mac version came out if I wanted to play. (Much different that dual booting on the same machine.) I think Loki would have survived if 3 things were in place:
A...If dual booters were really hardcore linux fans -- and refused to dual boot (even for games) -- Sales go up 50% for Loki -- because people would not have already purchased the "windows version".
B...If Loki were able to offer Linux games closer to the time they were released for the other platforms....(nothing like getting a "new" Linux game 12 months after the windows version had hit the cut out boxes for $9.99. -- Sales go up 25%.
C...If they had been able to port the games that people wanted to buy...The Starcrafts, Warcrafts, C&C, Red Alert, Diablo...Sales go up 75%
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I find it very interesting that you feel that using Linux means doing without gaming nor coding. Let me guess: You live in the United States (more details on why I have this theory below).
Linux has had a large number of games ported to it; I believe Loki ported 20 or so before going under. I find that this is enough games for me to waste far too much time playing; my open source coding project would not be in its current state if I spent any more time playing games on Linux; and I only have two games which I regularily play on my Linux laptop. I have not had time to finish either game.
As for coding, I find the coding environments of Linux extremely usable and powerful. For example, the Perl interpreter allowed me to create, within one day, a new unified documentation format for all of my program's documentation when people who translate my documentation requested this.
When someone says "Linux does not have a usable coding environment" what that person is saying, in effect, is "I am not willing to take the time and effort to learn the excellent coding environments the Linux has". Which I find very strange.
Programming, after all, is not like playing a video game. Programming is a discipline which takes time and effort to learn. The effort to learn, say, the Emacs environment or the most common Vi commands, is trivial compared to the effort required to learn how to write a usable and maintainable computer program.
My general experience is that Europians are generally more willing to take the time and effort to learn the language of Linux; most of the people who are helping me out with my open-source project are from Europe. I think this is because most Europians have had to learn one or more foreign languages; learning a foreign language makes one intently aware of the time and effort needed to accomplish something truly worth accomplishing.
Programming code is not like watching "Allie McBeal" on TV; my general experience is that people who need automated tools to generate code write code that is inefficient, difficult to read, and unmaintainable.
Linux is not a charity case
The free software foundation is, in fact, a charity.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
So I'm just curious...do you use assume all idiots (like the poster) to be Americans?
This seems to be a very popular among the English, who badmouth Americans for being violent while their own fine English football fans murder people in stadiums. Then they talk about how Americans are crude and stupid while they let their elderly citizens die forgotten on a hospital trolly waiting 60 hours for treatment of a stroke.
There are 260 million Americans, give-or-take. Perhaps you should not paint us all with the same brush.
Stupid Americans started the Open Source movment, wrote Unix, and provided most of those neat tools that Linux was later based on. Not to mention the bloody internet you are using now.