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Michael Simms of LGP and TuxGames
jvmatthe writes "The scene for native Linux games has been sleeping for months now, given the demise of Loki. Now LinuxGames has posted a very interesting interview with Michael Simms, who leads both TuxGames and Linux Game Publishing (LGP), which details his views on where Linux gaming has been, where it stands now (including comments on WineX), and where it may be going in the short and long term."
linux SUCKS
Fuck profits! we're going GNU!
"Michael Simms: Both Tribsoft and Hyperion entered the market with the expectation that the Linux games market would be proportional to the number of Linux computers out there. "
It isn't? I would have expected that too.
So what order is the function?
Isn't LGP a group that manufactures telecom products?
We as a community of users are still not being good advocates. It's more than advocacy - it's basic manners and the ability to communicate.
If you flame or abuse somebody, you give them the excuse they might be looking for to ignore you.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
A linux game that ends up being :)
:)
massivly populare and ported to
most Windows systems out there
that would be cool
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
Rather than splitting the *nix games development effort, back the only *nix that's getting any real support today and write for the Mac OSX. If the effort is split (and let's face it, it isn't - as of today it's all behind OSX - anyone seen WC3 for Linux ). Drop the dead donkey.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Thank you very much. If you need a receipt please press the receipt button.
is a killer app, a game which isn't available on another platform, which takes advantage of the special properties which open source and linux operating systems can offer... like really long uptimes... like keeping the game on in the background all the time in a minimal mode, so that it acts likes a server using p2p for playing (like doom3) when you're not playing it.
:-)
a massively multiplayer elite-a-like? a massively mutliplayer first person perspective action/RPG based in a bladerunner type city?
expandable using user programable add-on modules?
Oh, and release it under a license which doesn't allow for ports to non open-source operating systems
The hardened open source/free software crowd doesn't pay for their OS, their web browsers, their web servers, their database servers, their mail servers, their mail programs, their office suites, their graphics packages, or *any* other piece of software. There's no reason to believe that there's a market for games, either. I certainly wish any commercial Linux software vendor well, but with little hope.
Linux crowd will never pay for games. Why the hell even attempt to make a market for it. I say leave the gaming to consoles and Windows. Linux is good for what it's designated. Hell with gaming.
I've never really tried gaming on linux, but from what I've hear it's pretty difficult to get the games going. It can take hours sometimes to get systems set up to play the games correctly.
I wonder if anyone else has other experiances. A lot of people belive that most linux users who play computer gams have a windows partition for that.
But who knows.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Not only is linux gaming dying, but linux is dying. We need to move aggressively to FreeBSD, the better more advanced cleaner operating system. Linux code is just a mess.
That would require spending thousands of dollars on proprietary hardware. It's kind of missing the point of Linux.
Besides, the mac world already has tons of people trying to bring games to it. They might be unsuccessful over all, but I doubt dropping support for the Linux world would help much.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
is a killer app, a game which isn't available on another platform, which takes advantage of the special properties which open source and linux operating systems can offer... like really long uptimes
When was the last time you ran windows? The uptimes are pretty good these days. Besides, if a game needed to stay running for months in order to enjoy it, you'd obviously have to write it to survive a system reboot... I don't want to buy an UPS to play a game.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If ever there were a way to destroy a company before it's doors even open, THIS is it.
Is a complete working wrapper/port of DirectX, so that makes life porting code easier. SDL is good, but not complete, and you can't just insert SDL.h instead of directx stuff.
I dont understand the game selection that the Linux porting companies are releasing. The problem is that all games, that have been released after Tribes 2, were not interesting at all. Possibly the publishers did not let them port other titles, or they have been too difficult to port. But I dont wonder when they sell bad. All of them were B titles, unlike the Transgaming supported games. And no, I am not really happy with WineX, WineX games run never as smooth as Loki games did.
No I did not know that. Very interesting indeed. So you are the one who still runs freeBSD.
wonderful post, bravo! in fact, i think your post is so fantastic that i urge the /. eds and readers to track you down in meat space and ram a lighted blowtorch up your ass repeatedly. after which a slow castration would be in order - video streamed to the 'net, of course. then a nice roasting of your corpse would be most appropriate. followed by a banquet!
see, despite what everyone has always told you, you CAN contribute to the general well-being of society.
Basically you need to be able to compile your kernel in most cases to get sound and / or DRI modules built. Thats about it. Most distros already have SDL precompiled so thats easy.
Now, building games from CVS and the like can be more challenging but its not usually overly so.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind...
The proper phrase is "a beowulf cluster of supergeeks."
Back in the day, this same thing played out over OS/2. I would say that Linux is more popular (and better than) OS/2, but it was a similiar situation in that a number of people thought if there could be/would be an OS/2 gaming market that OS/2 would succeed on the desktop.
Short story version is OS/2 didn't succeed on the desktop and OS/2 games sold in minimal numbers.
The interesting thing is this; OS/2 had Windows emulation. In fact, it had better Windows emulation then Linux does today [this is arguable in that Windows today is a different animal then it was then, but the point should stand]. And you know what, Windows emulation didn't help OS/2. It didn't help because anything that is a windows emulator is destined to break because you-know-who controls the windows API and the windows gaming API. If you start to be successful in writing something that doesn't actually require windows to run windows apps, then you-know-who will BREAK the API and you will forever be playing catch-up.
The short answer to getting your now broken app to run again is to what? That's right, reboot and run it under Win32, where it was written and where it runs correctly.
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
It was given a chance. It was called Loki. Some people bought games from them, but nowhere near enough to keep the company going.
Welcome to slashdot brother macksav. May peace and happiness find you.
Most Linux users are there for stability, because they believe in it, etc. Thus the Linux gaming market will be mainly for people who are not hardcore gamers - just programmers, geeks, etc who are looking for the occasional game. I find it hard to believe the market will really rumble, since on the same hardware most people can install and run Windows games on their M$ OS of choice. There are exceptions of course, but I'd put my money on them being few and far between.
However, as implied in the interview, the key is predicting the future. Getting in on the ground, becoming a respected name in Linux gaming, could be a good strategy ready for one of several possible events:
I think the second point is most likely what Linux gaming could be all about. The console market is shifting towards a more "Home Entertainment System" with DVD and networking. Add a hard drive, get TiVO-esque services, run Linux for an OS and push Intel/Microsoft aside with a decent, lower cost alternative to the PC. Plenty people I know have VCRs, DVDs, HiFi etc without ever thinking they'll need a PC, but might like a games console that does all the above. The lines between devices are blurring more and more, and Linux could be the heart of some of the newer generation devices.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
You say:
"We're a Linux development company and we'd like to partner with you to port your product X to Linux.
"We're willing to pay you up-front for your developers' time to get us up to speed with your codebase and we'll take Y% of profit on sales of the Linux product.
"In other words, we're taking all the risk and you can't lose."
If they're not likely to make money from it so they can't afford to do it.
Go ahead and make a linux game. Chances are good that I will purchase it if looks fun. The only windows games I buy anymore are bargain bin games and those I buy to try and run under Wine. But if one person, like myself, is buying them, then there is a market, however tiny.
The biggest problem with sound in Linux is the lack of a standard, CPU powered mixing system. Windows has this in DirectX. A lot of driver developers are unwilling to do this in Linux.
/dev/dsp device. After this card was designed, DirectSound got big, and hardware manufacturers took a "winmodem" approach to things. Most modern soundcards do not actually mix audio on a chip level. It is usually done by the CPU, via DirectX. Some DSP chips accellerate this, just like videocards do to 3D graphics. It is a similar concept.
/dev/sndstat showed that there were multiple devices playing audio over *virtual* DSP devices without a hitch! The rear and center audio channels also worked with my 5.1 speaker system, and I could also spatialize audio to the front and rear. I bought the drivers, for a pretty low price, and I have never been happier. Over 50 programs can access the DSP at one time, even if they are hardcoded to /dev/dsp. The Drivers automatically route the audio to a virtual device, as DirectSound does. It all also real time too.
Many years ago, soundcard manufacturers started hardcoding mixers on a DSP level. The SB Live, for instance, can automatically mix streams of audio that access the
By rejecting the idea of a good, software mixer, I think that we alienate people who want to use Linux, and they can get frustrated by simple things, like sound device conflicts. Certain daemons like aRts and ESD can help this, but they are not given enough priority by the kernel to perform these operations, even if you set them to real-time. This has been my experience, at least. Plus, another problem arises... You actually have to write software to take advantage of aRtsd, or ESD. You can't just make it play standard audio to the DSP device, or else you have conflicts.
I was kinda torn with something... I was sick of aRtsd's latency problems. I was sick of not being able to take full advantage of my Santa Cruz, which was pretty powerful in Windows. It was like having a Winmodem. I checked out the drivers from www.opensound.com. I was happy to find that they offered a demo version of the drivers, that was fully functional. Installation was a snap. Just run a binary, and let it do the rest. The most amazing thing was its superior sound mixing, and its mixer! I was actually playing 3 instances of different MP3s at one time, while my messaging client was playing sounds too. A look at
In the way of USB, I haven't had any major problems. Most joysticks work perfectly by means of the HID (Human Interface Device) module in the kernel. It works pretty much the same way as a Windows USB joystick does. The only issue is that on sime distributions, you have to do a little configuring of the joystick device... Set a symlink or two, and set some permissions. That makes things abit more difficult, if you want non-root users to be able to use it. Heck, right now, I am even using a real PSX pad on my Linux box.
Game publishers don't believe that a Linux game will sell, but many of you do.
Forget the technical issues of drivers and APIs, those don't matter (a good development team will solve them). What matters is getting the rights to port a title. A good, class A title.
If you really are willing to buy Linux games and want to stop the chicken and egg dilemma, pony up and start a gaming "trust fund" or some such beast. Use the capital to buy the porting rights (you do know that you have to buy the rights to do the port, don't you? Expect to pay $50k or more) and pay the programmers.
If the title is ported succesfully and sells succesfully, then do it again.
ESB
Someone I actually know got posted on slashdot :)
:)
For those of you that don't know, Micheal is a great programmer, he has dedicated a lot of his time to working with telnet based "talkers", which have continualy grown in popularity.
Now, Micheal if you're reading this, What happened to GREL ?
Yes, I used to be Michael Simms' PHB :o)
At least I read Slashdot, hell, I even let them put "reading slashdot" down on their timesheets! :o)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
You can spend a lot more money, have custom written software including the operating system installed on every PC, and then pass the costs on to the consumers. Isn't that what you expect the public would want you to do?
Dumbass, you're trying to use the letter of the law to put down Microsoft. Do you really think there is a Judge or Jury that would convict a company on privacy issues for running the operating system with 99.9% market share? look at the intent of the law, it was intended to protect consumers/patients, not to put Linux in your office.
Compile the kernel? What for?
Most video and sound works out the box with newer distros.
If you want your cool new nVidia card to do 3d, you just download the driver and install it.
We as a community of users are still not being good advocates. It's more than advocacy - it's basic manners and the ability to communicate.
While I agree with your comment, and the quote you cited, 100%, I think it should be pointed out that, by last count, there are between 10 and 30 million GNU/Linux users. Given the large population of the 'community' (which is analogous to the population of New York or Mexico City) it shouldn't be too surprising that there are boisterous idiots somewhere in the crowd, nor should a rational person associate the behavior of a few such idiots with the population at large.
Unfortunately, one of the weaknesses of the human psyche is to associate unusual (especially negative) behavior of a few members of a minority group, such as GNU/Linux users, with the entire group while at the same time ignoring the same type of behavior among just as many (proportionally) members of a majority group.
This means that Windows users who behave similarly (and there are plenty of those) will not be associated with Windows users, while GNU/Linux users who do so will affect the repuation of the whole group. It isn't rational, or accurate, but it is nevertheless real. Just ask any black person in America who has had to contend with stereotypes vis-a-vis crime or loitering, while the exact same behavior is ignored in the majority (white) population. They are victims of exactly the same flaw in the human psyche (though other factors, such as prejudice and racism, do exist to exacerbate the problem, so the comparison isn't perfect). Pick any other racial/ethnic mixture, anywhere else in the world, and the same phenomenon exists. The interesting thing is that the mind draws such patterns irrespective of racial or ethnic prejudices (a relative of mine worked on a study regarding this very topic, and the results remained the same when distinctly non-prejudicial conditions were applied, things distinguishable but having nothing to do with ethnicity or economic status. Very interesting stuff actually, but I digress).
In any event I find your comment to be 100% dead on, but in fairness we should keep in mind just how large the community has grown, and just how inevitable it is that a group that size will contain a number of jackasses. Most importantly it should be emphesized (and probably reemphesized everytime this comes up) just how non-representative such behavior really is.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
IMHO the reason Loki et al fail is strictly economics. The goal for Linux games manufacturers should be to get as many Windows users to buy the Linux equivilents as possible. The problem with the Loki games from what I was seeing in my local retailers was that they cost the same as the Windows versions. Why in the world would a Windows user endure the headaches (for them, not me) of installing Linux when it isn't making their gaming any cheaper from their perspective. I know that Loki was probably bound by license agreements and their own costs from making that possible but I think that was a good part of why the ports failed. Even when the Loki products became cheap (their $5-$10 now) they're still not flying off the shelves which indicates that they will need to be considerably cheaper for a *long* time before any significant coup in the gaming market will occur.
The original poster (me) didn't say that all Linux users are freeloaders. The original poster (me) has also paid for distros (Slackware), Linux software (Blender) and books (too many to list). None of these things constitutes a market for Linux games.
Perhaps the more pissed-off respondents should learn what a "market" really is: it's not a bunch of people saying "I'd buy it". It's people *buying* in sufficient numbers to sustain the activity. The Linux software situation at large doesn't fit this description, and games even less so.
Aiii! caramba. IF loki was releasing ports of 3,4,5 year old games... What the hell are they going to be releasing if they plan to take longer to produce them? This guy doesn't get it. Most gamers, even on linux, want the games they want ASAP. Take any length of time to release it over the windows versions and your sales start going thru the floor.
You geeks wrote a cool OS. Why wait for commercial Linux games? Can't you write your own gaming engine open source style? Keep it free!
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
THE PROBLEM WITH COMMERCIAL GAME PORTS (WITH A FEW NOTABLE EXCEPTIONS):
The problem with Loki was that their games releases lagged the release of the same game under Windoze by six months or more. Whilst the Loki version of the game was about the same price as the original ON THE DAY IT WAS RELEASED, by the time the Linux version was out at $40, the Windoze version was available at $19.99 or less.
Anyone with a dual-boot machine (pretty much a necessity for SERIOUS gamers who love Linux) would either buy the Windoze game as soon as it came out and not wait for Loki to catch up - or they'd wait - and be disappointed to find that the Loki version was so expensive.
Linux is still too small of a market for the big games companies to want to drain their valuable developer resources either co-developing the Linux version or having their programmers help out a third party with co-developing it. That means that we are doomed to seeing that six month lag.
Quake is an exception - the Linux versions of that series were done more as a hobby by the developers than as a viable business. They lost money on it.
THE PROBLEM WITH FREEWARE GAMES:
(...And I speak from bitter experience. I wrote 'Tux The Penguin: A Quest for Herring' and TuxKart).
It takes a team of programmers at least a couple of years to write a game that comes even remotely close to the quality of a MODERN commercial game...and that assumes that you can find OpenSource Artists and Musicians (which you can't - trust me).
That's OK - I could live with that - anything worth doing is worth the commitment. But these games have a 'shelf life' of just a couple of months
and then there are no more downloads, your work is gradually forgotten. That's to be expected - most games are something you play for a few weeks and then you are looking for something different. Remember that only one in THIRTY commercial games ever sees a profit.
So you spend years of your life developing something - only to find that your rise to fame is extremely short-lived. That's not a very rewarding experience.
Also, the 'Bazaar' effect where lots of people come on board a working software project to make it better either doesn't happen - or is a waste of time because the game has fizzled in popularity before the effect can build up to a useful degree.
If you 'commit early' and release your game before it's fully polished then people play it once, decide that it's crap and never return to play it again.
It's just not like most other OpenSource development. If I had written another GIMP or an Apache or even some other small-but-useful application, my work would be used and appreciated by others for years to come. Other developers would improve upon it. I would feel that all the effort was worthwhile.
Games are a lot of fun to write though - that's what keeps me doing it.
DEPRESSING CONCLUSION.
I think there will be no significant numbers of good Linux games until there are perhaps ten times as many people using Linux as there are currently. At that point, there might be enough of a market for the mainstream games companies - or smaller startups - to make commercially viable Linux games.
Meanwhile, there are more than 50 versions of Tetris and over a dozen Bomberman clones - because those games can be written quickly and without the skills of a dozen great 3D artists.
www.sjbaker.org
OMG, I didn't know Lord Voldemort was responsible for Windows!
It does make sense, though..
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I guess if you want a game that has a long what is needed is Game construction kits.
Provide the basic game and way for users to build new levels of there own and hopefully contribute them back. In open source the resuable tools libraries and resources that other projects can cannibalize are often more useful than the actual program, standing on the shoulders of giants etc.
I would love to see an open source pinball construction kit or suchlike with a few playable levels to start with and then they users could add their own levels. (I saw a program called Visual Pinball but i dont think it was open source).
Think of the community that has built up around quake mods. Quake is more than just a game it is a whole world and you can get just about anything from Machinema to Chess to racing games out of it.
I really must mention frozen bubble, probably the best open source game i have ever seen.
http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
The concept is not new, i have loved Puzzle Bobble for years (but very few other people seem to have heard of it) and there seem to be a new Worms game based around the same concept called Worms Blast. http://wormsblast.team17.com/
Part of what makes the game so good is that it is so polished.
You can add levels but i dont think there is a graphical level builder yet. (maybe you could use a tool like Dia to contruct it or customise on of the many map/level builder programs in sourceforge).
Essentially i think game construction kits would really appeal to hackers a lot more. It just occured to me while reading the parent post
Sounds like what will happen with MONO. Since it's not a game, however (unless you consider that some people are trying to beat MS at their own game, perhaps) I don't think people see the correlation between OS/2 and MONO and .Net. There's a very good reason that MS hangs on to even "simple" things like file formats. Being able to break alternate implementations in order to maintain monopoly status (what the marketeers call "market share") at will is probably chief among them. It'll kill MONO just like it killed Linux gaming just like it killed OS/2 (although there were other factors involved as well). It might kill WineX, although they seem to be happy in the play catch-up role. They certainly fill a niche.
I tried really hard to give Linux gaming a shot. I bought every single Loki game made, and a couple Hyperion ones as well. I happily lived without a windows partition for about a year and a half. But the game, pun intended, is over. MS won when it was "shown" that Linux gaming is not a viable market. Game companies think that all Linux users want things for free, and won't pay (I was probably among a small minority of peopel that bought Linux and Windows copies fo Tribes2, for example). Quake3 had dismal Linux sales, but a lot of Linux binary downloads. People won't wait for a Linux port -- they'll buy the Windows version and dual boot if they have to.
It would have been nice, but a Windows partition is in the future for anyone interested in playing games.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
You have to start with the engine or framework, like quake3, worldforge, cube ultima 1 remake etc. Then people can make mods for your game and those mods become popular for a year or two etc.
You can write a tux racer. You can write a puzzle game. But you have to realize those will have a short shelf life. If you write a worldforge or a nice gaming development toolkit/ platform, especially for the mmorpg scene, you may see you work live on for a long time.
I'm sorry, but I have to take issue with everyone in the Linux gaming community continually saying that wine/winex is the wrong way to implement games. All wine/winex is doing is re-implementing windows' API on Linux. Linux has implemented SMB services for better compatibility with Windows, so why is this any different? It's not sacrificing anything, providing better compatiblity for Linux, and allowing Linux gamers to play many games sooner than would otherwise be possible (if at all). These people need to get off their high horses and realize that wine/winex is nothing but another API. If it makes gaming easier on Linux, great. If it gets gaming companies to realize that there is a Linux market, great; even if they are just using windows api calls. In the end, wine could become obsolete if companies code straight for Linux, but wine/winex isn't hurting ANYTHING now and only helping the future. If eventually companies want to code for only linux, they can do that and will be welcomed with open arms. Until that time, these companies wouldn't even recognize a Linux gaming market without wine/winex (granted it could be argued they don't now). In the mean time, wine/winex is providing a valuable service to Linux. Stop berating Transgaming's approach. Without them, I'd still have to boot to windows if I wanted to play Civ III or D2. Whether people like it or not, this is a good way to play games in Linux. Atleast for now.
Yes I'm a subscriber to Transgaming, but I truly don't play many games. The ones I'd want are available on Linux thanks to them. I haven't booted to windows to play a game in a long time. It's that the eventual goal? To play games on Linux and show there's a market for games on Linux? Who cares how?
KhyronQ3 was out on Linux.
I still don't see my massive amounts of Linux games.
What needs to be done is that we drop all support for MS Windows. Why keep it? Why should I spend $50 on a Linux game, when the MS Win version is sitting on the bargain rack for $10?
Porting? Please. There's a reason Loki bombed.
I don't know why you hate Wine, but the future is more like this:
1) Wine allows people to play games on linux NOW
2) People actually start switching to Linux and using it regularly because they don't have to reboot for games and such crap
3) Native games continue to be release occasionally, such as the ones by Id Software. People using Linux purchase these because they are more stable and have better performance than emulation.
4) Because linux actually has a user-base of gamers now, from emulation, companies find that porting is a viable business strategy.
5) People make games for linux. New games are native, old classic also work using emulation. Everyone is happy except Microsoft!
Using your own logic, this is how things will happen. The better performance of native games guarantees that while Wine garners Linux a bigger user base, those users continue buying and supporting any native linux games that are available.
I've heard from people who have tired playing games on linux, assuming what I read was true, then my point stands.
I don't need to have seen a nuclear bomb go off to know they cause a lot of damage.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
OS/2 2.1 and Warp were available as "OS/2 for Windows" if you already had Windows 3.1. That version was cheaper and was what I had. But the more expensive version included the Windows binaries.
:-)
IBM and Microsoft codeveloped Windows for a while, so IBM had full rights to the Windows code through Win3.1 I think.
But I suppose you are right that it wasn't emulation; it actually had the (full) API and binary libraries.
OS/2 was a kick-ass product. I never used it extensively but recognized its technical superiority right away. It was the first fully 32-bit system I ever used. No thunking. No 64k file limits on any apps. You could associate the individual data file with an application so the 3-letter extension default app could be overridden.
I'm glad I found Linux after OS/2. I still mainly run Windows for various reasons but the geek in me needs the good OS'es.
The "problem" I see with Linux success is that there is no agreement on what success is. Should it become the dominant server OS? Client OS? Gaming platform? Does its sales have to outnumber or outrevenue competitors or just be installed on more systems? How do you count multiboot systems?
People have different ideas. Companies have different ideas. Some try to sell a Linux distribution with manuals, polish and support. Some want to sell their hardware and consulting services and use Linux as the grease/glue. Some want a free way to turn their old PCs into tinkertoys.
To me, the scalability (floppy based firewalls and 4/8MB embedded systems to renderfarms) and flexibility of Linux is an awesome success.
As far as gaming, when my late Grandmother can configure her XFree86 4.0 DRI, load her sound modules and cross-install QuakeIII then Linux will be ready for commercial games.