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A Loki Timeline
Al "Alkini" Koskelin writes: "Matt Matthews, with the help of the LinuxGames staff and some ex-employees of Loki, has put together a Loki timeline. The timeline is an attempt to document every major event in Loki's past, starting with the announcement of SDL and the Launch of the Loki Website through today, when Loki is officially ceasing operations." They're also looking for more information to make the timeline more complete.
The link to the actual timeline is here:
http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/lokitimeline/
liB
A Loki Timeline
Legend:
Game demo release informationGame beta test informationProgrammer or staff informationDevelopment informationInformation about a game going gold and being released or shippedAnnouncement, press release, interview or web posting
1998
22 January
The Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL), on which most of Loki's games would be based, is announced by Sam Lantinga on USENET in this post. At this point, the version number is 0.3. 10 December
A LinuxGames reader sends in note that Loki Software is now online with a website claiming they are the "first and only company dedicated to commercially porting top selling computer games to the Linux." A press release from Loki is also issued. 31 December
Loki signs a contract with Activision to port Civilization: Call to Power to Linux. 1999
4 January
Coding begins on the Linux port of Civilization: Call to Power 2 March
Loki calls for beta testers for their port of Civilization: Call to Power14 April
Loki announces that Civilization: Call to Power for Linux has gone gold and is ready for duplication.30 April
Archive: See Loki's webpage as of 30 April 1999 here. May
The Loki technical support office is set up in Utah, and staffed by Nate Ashford and Brad Barton. 3 May
Civilization: Call to Power for Linux is shipped. 10 May
Programmer Stephane Peter begins work at Loki. His initial work was on the port of Myth II. Later he would work as the lead programmer on Heroes of Might and Magic III and SimCity 3000 Unlimited. Behind the scenes, he worked on much of the infrastructure, including SDL, SMPEG, SDL_mixer, and the installer, Loki Setup. He also assumed responsibility for Kohan, after Andrew Henderson departed, and worked on it until he left on 30 March 2001. 12 May
The SDL MPEG Player Library source is released by Loki under the GNU LGPL. This is the first of several free software tools that Loki would release. 17 May
Loki announces that it will port three more games: Myth II: Soulblighter by Bungie Software, Railroad Tycoon II and the expansion pak: "The Second Century" by PopTop Software and finally, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire by Delta Tao Software. 18 May
Loki attends the LinuxExpo 1999 in Raleigh, NC and gives the first public demonstration of Civilization: Call to Power running on Linux. 1 June
Programmer Michael K. Vance joins Loki. While at Loki Michael would work on Myth II (including all of Fear and some of Loathing) and Fenris, the bugtracking system based on Bugzilla. He would also be lead programmer on Heavy Gear II, Soldier of Fortune, and Tribes 2. In addition to games, Michael contributed to OpenAL, Mesa, Glide, and SDL. He would eventually depart from Loki on 29 January 2001. 11 June
The first patch for a Loki game, version 1.1 of Civilization: Call to Power, is released. This is also the first release of the LinuxPPC binaries for a Loki game. 12 June
Beta testing for Myth II begins. Karl Rollibard is the lead programmer. 19 June
First report on LinuxGames of a sighting of Loki's version of Civilization: Call to Power in a brick-and-mortar store. 14 July
Loki announces a parternship with Terra Soft Solutions to bring games to Linux on PowerPC hardware. 22 July
Jake Simpson of Raven Software announces that a port of the client of their first-person shooter, Heretic II, will be handled by Loki. 30 July
Loki releases a Myth II demo. 30 July
The beta test for Railroad Tycoon II begins. 8 August
Loki starts running a server with newsgroups for discussion about their games and open source projects. 12 August
Loki wins the "Best of Show: Entertainment" award at the LinuxWorld Expo for their port of Civilization: Call to Power. 13 August
Comments by Scott Draeker confirm that Loki will port Activision's mechanized combat game, Heavy Gear II. 18 August
Preorders of Myth II ship to eager Linux gamers. 24 August
A comment by Michael Vance in the Loki newsgroups removes all doubt that Heavy Gear II is being ported to Linux. 25 August
Job openings at Loki are posted on their website. Specifically, they say they are "looking for enthusiastic game programmers with a love for Linux and a desire to contribute to the growth of Linux as a premier gaming platform." 30 August
Archive: See Loki's 30 August 1999 site redesign here. This is the style of their website for the rest of their existence. 8 September
Loki releases the SDL Motion JPEG Library as free software under the GNU LGPL. 9 September
The beta test for Eric's Ultimate Solitaire begins. 17 September
Loki announces Loki Hack '99, an event where Linux coders will be given temporary access to the Civilization: Call to Power source code so they can compete to make the coolest enhancement in 48 hours. It will be held at the Atlanta Linux Showcase on 11-13 October. 29 September
Civilization: Call to Power 1.1 is released for Alpha machines running Linux. 5 October
The beta test for Heretic II begins. Bernd Kreimeier and Jim Kutter are lead programmers. 11 October
LokiHack officially begins at the Atlanta Linux Showcase. A group of 18 Linux hackers are locked away to add improvements to the Linux version of Civilization: Call to Power. The improvments will then be judged by Sam Lantinga of Loki and Jeff "Hemos" Bates of Slashdot. 11 October
Loki and Activision announce a partnership to bring games to Linux. Civilization: Call to Power, Heavy Gear II, and Heretic II are all Activision games that Loki was known to be porting at this time. No new titles are announced. In the press release, Scott Draeker is quotes as saying, "Earlier this year, people wondered if there was a market for commercial games on Linux. We have put those doubts to rest." 11 October
Loki announces that the program they use to install games, Loki Setup, has been released as free software under the GNU LGPL 11 October
Andy Mecham begins part-time work handling QA at Loki. 12 October
Loki releases a demo of Civilization: Call to Power. 15 October
LokiHack winners are announced. Christopher Yeoh's first place hack added several units to the game as well as a modification to the existing spy unit. Other winners were Andrew Henderson, Ryan Gordon, Chris Swiedler and Joshua Shagam. Henderson and Gordon would later work as full-time Loki employees. Daniel Vogel is also a participant and would later work at Loki. 18 October
Loki's third port, Railroad Tycoon II ships to gamers. 29 October
Creative Labs, makers of the famous SoundBlaster and SoundBlaster Live! audio cards, announces that they will be working with Loki on 3D audio for Linux. Loki and Creative would announce OpenAL, a cross-platform audio API for Linux that includes 3D effects, on 3 March 2000 1 November
Andy Mecham joins Loki full time as the sole member of the QA team.1 November
Through a comment in a Slashdot post, it is made publiic that a Railroad Tycoon II demo is available from Loki. 1 November
Rick Johnson, of Raven Software, announces that a port of their upcoming first-person shooter, Soldier of Fortune, will be available for Linux. Upon clarification, he says that Loki will be handling the port, just as they're handling Raven's Heretic II. 3 November
Loki officially announces that they are porting the 3DO Company's popular game, Heroes of Might and Magic III, to Linux. 4 November
The patches from LokiHack are made available to the public. 4 November
Loki's CVS server goes online, hosting SMPEG, SMJPEG, Loki Setup, and SDL. 7 November
The beta test for Heroes of Might and Magic III begins. 14 November
Loki announces that Heretic II and Heroes of Might and Magic III will be going gold almost immediately. They would be available on store shelves during the Christmas shopping period. 22 November
The Linux version of Unreal Tournament is available online. It uses Loki's Setup tool to install the binary and reads data from a Windows UT disc. In most areas, UT hasn't even hit store shelves yet. This is the first commercial game, outside of Loki's ports, to use Loki's installer. 1 December
Loki and VA Linux partner to publish the Debian distribution, packaged with a demo version of Myth II. 2 December
Loki announces that they will be publishing the Linux version of id Software's Quake III Arena. Of particular interest is that the Linux version will be packaged in the limited edition tin boxes that were made in limited quantities for the Windows version. Bernd Kreimeier would act as producer of the Linux Q3A and later take on the role of maintainer when Dave Kirsch left id Software in early 2000. 3 December
To get the Linux version of Q3A to Linux gamers by Christmas, Loki says they'll ship just the CD and the CD key and ship the tin boxes and other materials later. 4 December
Loki's Linux port of Heretic II ships. 7 December
Loki announces that the Linux port of Quake III Arena has been approved by id Software and is being sent for duplication. 7 December
SDL, used extensively in almost all Loki ports, reaches version 1.0. Many Loki programmers contributed to SDL and the use of SDL in Loki's games pushed the API more quickly towards maturity. 7 December
A LinuxGames reader sends a report that the Linux version of Quake III Arena had arrived by FedEx. The game had been officially reported to be in duplication only hours before. It is made public that initially a Matrox or 3dfx card will be required for the hardware OpenGL acceleration on which the game depends. 20 December
Loki reports that their port of Heroes of Might and Magic III is shipping. 22 December
Programmer Joe Valenzuela joins Loki and starts working on OpenAL immediately. In addition to his critical work on OpenAL, Valenzuela contributed code to Heavy Gear II, Soldier of Fortune, SimCity 3000 Unlimited, Rune, Unreal Tournament, Tribes 2, and the unreleased Deus Ex. He also worked on code for Kohan and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, but that work was never released. He would eventually depart from Loki on 29 January 2001. 25 December
Loki programmer and SDL creator Sam Lantinga reports that he has ported the recently released Quake source code to use SDL. 30 December
Loki programmer Michael Vance says that a port of Q3Radiant, the Quake III mapping tool, is being considered. 31 December
The year ends with Loki shipping seven games: Civilization: Call to Power, Myth II: Soulblighter, Railroad Tycoon II, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, Heretic II, Heroes of Might and Magic III, and id Software's Quake III Arena. 2000
11 January
News leaks of more Loki ports: Interstate '82, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and SimCity 3000. No confirmation is received from Loki. Interstate '82 was never mentioned again. The other two were eventually ported and released by Loki. 12 January
In an interview, Dynamix employees discuss a Linux port of their upcoming game, Tribes 2. 13 January
Programmer Ryan Gordon begins work at Loki. While at Loki, he would head development of the Descent 3 and Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 ports and release the Heroes of Might and Magic III Map Editor. His last day was 30 March 2001, although the announcement wasn't made until April. 25 January
Loki releases a Heroes of Might and Magic III demo. 28 January
The beta test for Heavy Gear II begins. 7 February
In an interview, Scott Draeker indictes that Loki will port a RTS (real-time strategy) game and a sports game to Linux in the year 2000. In total, Loki hopes to publish 16 games in 2000. 3 March
OpenAL is released to the public. 20 March
Heavy Gear II goes gold and is ready for duplication. 1 April
Leonardo Zide joins Loki as a programmer. While at Loki, he would work primarily on the Quake 3 Arena SDK. He would eventually depart on 30 March 2001. 3 April
Heavy Gear II ships to Linux gamers. 8 April
The Heroes of Might and Magic III Map Editor is released for Linux in beta form. 14 April
Loren Osborne departs from Loki, having worked on both Heavy Gear 2 and Civilization: Call to Power. 14 April
The beta test for SimCity 3000 begins. 18 April
The beta test for Soldier of Fortune begins. 18 April
Dynamix says that they will be using OpenAL in their game Tribes 2. 17 May
Daniel Vogel begins work at Loki as a programmer. He would handle the maintenance of the Unreal Tournament client as well as the ports of Rune and Deus Ex, until his departure at the end of December 2000. He also patched Heavy Gear II and ported the Building Architect Tool for SimCity 3000 Unlimited. In addition to heavily optimizing the OpenGL renderer for UT Linux, he added the ability for NVIDIA cards under Linux to use the high resolution textures on the second Unreal Tournament CD. This work was eventually ported to Windows, one of the few examples of Linux users getting a feature before Windows users. 17 May
Mike Phillips joins Loki as a member of the QA team. 18 May
The beta test for Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri begins. 18 May
Loki announces that their SimCity 3000 port will actually be a port of the enhanced version, named SimCity 3000 Unlimited. 18 May
Loki releases an updated Q3A SDK, including tools for building mods and maps under Linux. 2 June
Loki announces that they will port Descent 3 to Linux. 2 June
Loki releases a demo of Solider of Fortune for Linux. 6 June
The beta test for Descent 3 begins. 20 June
Loki announces that they will port Cognitoy's game MindRover to Linux. 20 June
Loki releases a demo of their port of Heavy Gear II. 30 June
Programmer Jim Kutter departs from Loki. While at Loki, Jim contributed to Heretic II and Soldier of Fortune. 6 July
Loki and theKompany announce a deal to distribute a development suite known as PowerPlant. 13 July
Loki begins to ship Solider of Fortune to Linux gamers. 13 July
Loki releases a demo of their port of Descent 3 for Linux. 28 July
Announces that their port of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is completed and ready for duplication. They also release a demo to an eager public. The game would not actually ship until 17 April 2001. 31 July
In a GameSpy interview, Scott Draeker reveals that Loki will have a booth at E3 in the Spring of 2000. By the time of the show, Loki would be far behind schedule on some games and some key programmers would have left for employment elsewhere. Loki would never actually have a booth at any E3. 7 August
Loki and Epic Games announce a partnership under which Loki will maintain the Linux port of Unreal Tournament. Along with maintaining parity with the Windows version of UT, this is the first time that Linux users can receive full technical support for the Linux client. Daniel Vogel is the lead programmer on UT at Loki, and uses that background to quickly port both Rune and Deus Ex to Linux in the winter of 2000. 7 August
The beta test for MindRover begins. 9 August
In a Slashdot post, John Carmack talks about Linux, gaming, and some points about Loki. In particular, he says he thinks Loki did a great job handling the Linux distribution. He also says that Loki has been pushing for binary only patches to Linux versions of id Software games to deter the conversion of a Windows version into a Linux version through the download of a full Linux client. Carmack say he hates binary patches because they are difficult on the end user and will not be using them. 13 August
Descent 3 ships to eager Linux gamers everywhere. 14 August
Reports from the floor of the Linux World Expo that Deus Ex is being shown at Loki's booth. This photo proves its existence. Loki would never ship any version of Deux Ex, although the port was ready for beta testing at the end of 2000 with only a few known bugs. 15 August
Bernd Kriemeier and Michael Vance, two Loki programmers, hold a workshop at the Linux World Expo on the issues of porting a Windows game to Linux. 25 August
Loki wins "Best of Show" at the Linux World Conference and Expo (LWCE). 25 August
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri runs under LinuxPPC, but is still not shipping. 1 September
Loki releases a demo of SimCity 3000 Unlimited. 4 September
Loki announces that SimCity 3000 Unlimited has gone gold and that it should ship the following week. 6 September
Loki and TrollTech announce a strategic partnership, part of which will include Qt functionality in SDL and the Loki Setup tool. Further, the press release mentions Loki's newly formed "Applications Group", to port applications to Linux. 8 September
Loki announces that they have signed an agreement to port TimeGate Studios' real-time strategy game Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns to Linux. 22 September
Loki announces that QLITech will begin selling PCs, called Advanced Multimedia Workstations, that come bundled with Loki's Civilization: Call to Power, Heavy Gear II, and a Loki Games Demo CD that includes the full installation of Eric's Ultimate Solitare. 28 September
Loki announces that SimCity 3000 Unlimited has finally shipped. 29 September
The Tribes 2 Beacon, an online newsletter, reveals that Loki has been contracted to port Tribes 2 to Linux. October
MindRover gold master is signed and approved. It would not ship until 24 May 2001, almost 7 months later. 4 October
Loki announces that Scott Draeker appear at a conference on the subject of Free Speech. 25 October
Raven announces that version 1.07 of Soldier of Fortune will incorporate client authentication and server browsing through GameSpy and drop the connection to WON. The Linux client, which Loki ported, is never updated to adapt to this change. 26 October
Loki releases a trailer (in MPEG format) for their upcoming port of Kohan. 9 November
Loki officially announces that they will be porting the Tribes 2 client to Linux. 17 November
The beta test for the Loki DemoCD begins. Sam Lantinga is the lead programmer. 27 November
Loki posts the news that their port of Soldier of Fortune has been chosen by Linux Journal to receive the year's Best Game Editor's Choice Award. 1 December
Loki issues a call for beta testers for the Linux version of Deus Ex. Subsequently, no beta test is ever held. 31 December
The year ends with only 4 games published by Loki. In February, Scott Draeker had commented that Loki would publish 16 titles by the end of 2000. 2001
4 January
Loki announces a partnership with Gathering of Developers (GOD) to port and publish Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 from Ritual and Rune by Human Head. Loki asks for beta testers for these two games. 5 January
Loki Vice-President Lance Colvin leaves Loki. 16 January
New projects from Loki are released to make getting demos and updates even easier: Loki Update, Loki Uninstall and the Loki Demo Tool. 17 January
Another tool, Loki Patch is released for making binary patches in conjunction with Loki Update. 19 January
The public is informed that Daniel Vogel has left Loki and is employed at Epic Games. 21 January
A demo of the Linux version of MindRover is released. 29 January
Programmers Joe Valenzuela and Michael K. Vance depart for Treyarch, a company specializing in console games. 1 February
The beta test for Rune begins. 9 February
Programmer Andrew Henderson announces his departure from Loki to take a position as an embedded systems engineer in Irvine, California. Development of Kohan is handed over to Stephane Peter. 18 February
Tribes 2 for Linux goes back into beta testing after a hiatus. 27 March
Loki releases a port of the Tribes 2 dedicated server for bringing up a Tribes 2 server with the Win32 CD. 28 March
Andy Mecham departs Loki after running the QA team since late 1999. He begins work at NVIDIA shortly afterwards. 30 March
Programmer Stephane Peter and sysadmin Rafael Barrero leave Loki to work at Codehost, Inc.. Ryan Gordon also leaves, although this would not be announced until 13 April. Programmer Leonardo Zide leaves as well, and begins work for Treyarch. Programmer Bernd Kreimeier had left a couple of days earlier. While at Loki, Bernd led development on Heretic II and Quake III Arena. He also contributed to Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2, Descent 3, and was the main architect of the OpenAL specification, among other projects. 11 April
Loki announces they will soon ship Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and Tribes 2. The port of SMAC had been completed on 28 July 2000, over eight months before. 13 April
LinuxGames posts a farewell notice by programmer Ryan Gordon. 17 April
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri actually ships to gamers and resellers. 18 April
Tribes 2 for Linux begins shipping. 19 April
An interview by Linux Weekly News with Loki's Scott Draeker reveals that they've been hit hard by a lack of funding. This has led to several staff departing but they are now in a position to continue work off of existing revenue. 21 April
In an interview with IT World, Scott Draeker explains Loki's past and current situation: "We had scaled up to a point, anticipating a certain level of growth, and anticipating a lot of new products coming out. The slowdown caught us by surprise. Now what we've done to address that is we've scaled down through attrition, we've hunkered down. Now we're ready to start releasing products again." 16 May
Loki announces that they will provide games for Nokia's Linux-based Media Terminal, a set-top box. 19 May
A reader sends in an email they received from Loki stating that Loki is not currently involved in maintenance of the Quake 3 Arena client for Linux. 22 May
Timothee Besset announces that he has taken over the responsibilities for the Linux portion of Quake 3 Arena that had been maintained by Loki. 24 May
Loki ships MindRover, almost 7 months after the gold master was approved. 18 June
The beta test for Kohan begins. Sam Lantinga is the lead programmer. 21 June
Loki ships Rune to Linux gamers and resellers. 21 June
Loki releases a demo of Rune. 29 June
No Starch Press and Loki announce the release of PROGRAMMING LINUX GAMES: LEARN TO WRITE THE GAMES LINUX PEOPLE PLAY, authored Loki's John Hall. July
Programmer John Allensworth begins working at Loki. While at Loki, John ported Postal Plus in addition to patching Heroes of Might and Magic (1.3.1a), Tribes 2 (24834), and Kohan (1.3.1). Left incomplete were patches for Descent 3 and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. He would eventually depart from Loki on 18 January 2002, shortly before Loki ceases operations. 27 July
Mike Phillips departs Loki after just over a year of hard work for the QA team. 31 July
Sam Lantinga sends an email to the SDL mailing list in which he uses a signature including "Software Engineer, Blizzard Entertainment". This announces his departure from Loki. 3 August
Loki announces that Kohan and Halls of Valhalla (a stand-alone expansion of Rune) are both gold and should begin shipping on 15 August. 6 August
The beta test for FAKK2 begins. 10 August
Loki releases a Kohan demo. 13 August
A report surfaces that Loki has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to receive protection from their creditors. 17 August
Scott Draeker clarfies Loki's position. They are seeking protection from their creditors so they may continue operations until such time as they can emerge from bankruptcy and satisfy their creditors. 20 August
Loki announces that Kohan and Halls of Valhalla will ship on 24 August. 20 August
In a Slashdot posting, John Carmack reveals that "the linux market is not viable for game developers to pursue" and that "Linux ports will be done out of good will, not profit motives". A later post explains that "All linux games sales EVER don't add up to one medium selling windows title. We are one of the creditors that aren't likely to see money that Loki owes us, so we have some idea just how grim it is." 27 August
Loki programmer Dan Olson gives notice that, unlike the Windows version, the Rune expansion Halls of Valhalla does require the full version of Rune to run. 28 August
Tux Games, a Loki reseller, reports that stock of Kohan has arrived and will be shipping shortly. 4 October
Ximian's Red Carpet service is reported to feature a Loki Demo channel. 5 October
The beta test for Postal Plus begins. 8 October
Loki announces their port of Postal Plus by Running With Scissors. 25 October
Scott Draeker comments on TransGaming, WineX and the business of porting games to Linux. 30 October
Loki announces that Postal Plus is now shipping to gamers and resellers. 30 October
Loki announces that the retail version of Red Hat 7.2 includes a Loki Demo disc. 14 November
Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 ships from Loki to gamers and resellers. 30 November
QLI Tech announces that they will include a free copy of Kohan with every multimedia system and laptop that they sell until 12 December 2001. 11 December
SuSE Germany states that they will no longer sell games for Linux, including Loki's past and new titles. 31 December
The year ends with Loki releasing 7 games total: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (with Alien Crossfire expansion), MindRover, Rune, Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2, Rune: Halls of Valhalla, and Postal Plus. 2002
18 January
Programmer John Allensworth departs from Loki. 23 January
A leaked memo appears on FuckedCompany.com revealing that Loki will cease operations on 31 January 2001, just over three years after work on their first Linux port began. 31 January
Loki ceases operations and closes its doors. By: Matt Matthews, with assistance from John Allensworth, Lance Colvin, Ryan C. Gordon, Al Koskelin, Bernd Kreimeier, Andy Mecham, Stéphane Peter, Mike Phillips, Daniel Vogel, Joe Valenzuela, Michael K. Vance, Leonardo Zide,
I invite you to get acquainted with an ex-Loki employee named 'Icculus' located at icculus.org. Among his famous Loki work is a port of Serious Sam, a port of the Build engine of 3dRealms/Duke Nukem/Shadow Warrior/... Not to mention hosting of former Loki technologies all for free.
We love our platform. Commercial support or not, we will make happen what we want to happen... Even if that means playing games.
I tried for months to understand Direct X, and toyed with example after example... doing the same with SDL is tons easier and allows me to code the software in a real dev os instead of windows. (ok that was a harsh jab at windows... sorry... well. at least let me take back the sorry)
Tribes 2 was announced long before the Windows version was out. There was a slight delay shipping it, but if you bought the Windows version instead of the Linux one, it's your own fault.
The real people who should be complaining about Tribes 2 are those that had to spend an extra $100 on a video card to make it even run.
I'm not privy to information regarding the financial situation surrounding Unreal Tournament, but I believe Loki was paid by Epic for their involvement with the game. The real loss for Loki on UT was the time of support staff spent helping people get a charity product running.
To be honest, the delays in Civ:CTP were probably similar - it must be frustrating to be a developer stuck in contractual problems with potential buyers wanting to know what is going on/ETAs and not being able to give any information out...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
And no - I don't work for Loki. I just bought their games and read their newsgroups.
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Loki was payed by Epic for maintenance and support.
SDL has been hosted on its own site ever since Sam Lantinga, the SDL project founder, left Loki. The remaining projects have found other homes -- including OpenAL (which should continue to be available through openal.org).
Licensing and licensor approval delays, negotiations on components (the strategy guide), cost of producing over-sized boxes similar to the Windows Planetary Pack, that sort of stuff. With that much going on in a cash-strapped company under pressure, well, you get the picture.
True, but then the next problem arises: the Windows version of Tribes 2 was sold everywhere for a reasonable price, the linux version was much harder to find and usually with a hefty price tag.
No computer game is sold for a "reasonable price" ever. Warez drive up game prices, then more people warez so as not to pay such unreasonable prices. Such is the PC gaming spiral of death. Lots of people point out the price differential between Windows games and Linux games, and I'm sure it was a valid reason for many people to not buy from Loki, but every birth comes labor pains. The birth of commercial Linux gaming is no exception.
Continued patching is indeed an annoyance of simultaneous Windows and Linux development. Luckily, Dynamix had some excellent coders. In most cases, the lag you noticed was due more to communication between companies than it was to converting the patch. Loki's understaffing later in its life cycle certainly contributed some also, considering they were working on Kohan, Postal, FAKK2, Deus Ex, and various patches with a programming staff that hovered between two and three persons.