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UT 2003 Client For Linux?
Thomas A. Anderson writes "Although not officially supported, there is a very interesting post here from Mark Rein (VP of Marketing for Epic Games) that says UT 2003 client *already* runs on linux, and that it *might* be released close after the windows client. Let's all support Epic on this...
Background: Back in April, on an IRC chat, Mark Rein stated that a linux server will happen, but the chance of linux and mac clients were a qualified "likely". He stated something similar in a chat in August. All the chat logs are interesting reads..."
Does it run on BSD?
.. To keep my Windows partition, Yahhooo!!!
3000 dead over past 2 years, still no free Palestinians, still
Funny how linux on the desktop was supposed to be a dead horse? Way to go Epic, put me down for a copy of UT2003! Check's on the way.
Digit
"Well hello there Charlie Brown, you blockhead." -- Lucy Van Pelt
If they DO create a UT2003 client for Linux, I'll be one very, very happy camper...
if the Linux client is already working why should the users have to wait for it to be released? Don't they understand that is just an unnecessary hassle for Linux users who want to play their game?
Release the Windows client on CD, make the Linux client available on the www/FTP, and be done w/it. Most people are going to buy the CD for Windows anyway, the Linux people are quite familiar w/downloading their own clients from the web.
Just do it.
Because now players won't use the lame excuse when they're losing the deathmatch:
"Sorry my game froze, I had to reboot"
Great, now I have crank on linux and windows. Home life is now gone, along with all work productivity.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
Is to make sure we have driver support for our ATI 9700's so that we can actually play it.
"Oh Yeah!" - [Jumps up and does pelvic thrust taunt]
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
I love UT and hate Windows. No reason rebooting if this baby runs smooth.
Girls are strange. They don't come with a man page.
-- Michael Mattsson
Not trying to troll here, but I seem to recall another eagerly anticipated game (neverwitner nights) being "available" for linux... not saying this wont take happen, but...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I'd like to alert Epic of my support for Linux UT 2003, but I can't find any email addresses except support on their page. Who do we talk to? On the other hand, maybe they don't want to be bombarded by those crazy Linux weirdos.
Vote for global prefs bug
Well, I am definitely looking forward to getting my hands on UT 2k3, if only to see how far I can mod it.... However, I fear that it will be completely overshadowed by Battlefield 1942 sales (which will go hand in hand with sales for new video cards to handle the hardware T&L requirements). Not that it's a bad thing, because Battlefield may wind up being a far superior game in most aspects.
This news about the Linux client, however, is really surprising. Lately, I've heard much more about centering development around DirectX in order to save on a humongous chunck of development time for the X-Box on the Unreal Engine as a whole. Something along the lines of "Why bother with OpenGL, when DirectX does everything we need and more" seems very familiar to me....
Will the Linux version cost less because they're not offering tech support with it. or will it just be community-support-based, like every other product? And, if it is going to be community based, are they going to "provide the space"?
I can understand why no tech support - every user has 1239880198231 different configurations. But it seems that if they're not going to be providing a valuable source of information (just because you're a geek doesn't mean you've never called tech support, everyone has), they ought to do two things: A) Establish a community space for the Linux Gamers on their site to allow questions that pertain to the Linux Version(s) to be answered and/or B) provide source for some pieces of the program.
Since most people use these types of games to play online anyway, if they have a secure system for validating keys (see battle.net), they shouldn't have to worry about open-sourcing parts of (or the entire) client.
(From the post on the linked page)
.EXE, I know, I know). I e-mailed ATI's tech support and they sent me back a form letter. If this is the way ATI treats their main market (Windows users), I feel REALLY bad for Linux users. Isn't The Weather Channel developing an open source Radeon 8500 driver?
Currently Linux will only work well with Nvidia cards - apparently ATI's OpenGL Linux and Mac drivers don't support texture compression. Hopefully this is something they will soon fix.
ATI fix bugs in their drivers??? I'm running OLDER drivers as it is because the latest Radeon 8500 drivers are unstable, overlay doesn't work with my Divx movies and VB hangs while compiling (okay, building an
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I am more interested in that one. But I will buy UT2003 when it has a linux client.
I'm not much of a gamer. I didn't know what UT 2003 was and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Is it so hard to spell out the entire headline of a story?
Let's hope this doesn't turn into another Foobarco Systems All-Clients-in-the-Box(TM) thing like NWN turned out to be.
I'm beginning to think that sort of thing is becoming the game industry standard - clients for Mac and Linux turn up months after the Windows release does, as the company tries to find other ways to eek out the maximum revenue of a product whose sales are dwindling,
Dave Haas
Chief Operating Officer
PopCap Games
way to go epic!! now that we have a lin* client, ill take the next year of my life and port it to bsd )
sideone
ITBitch.com Your reason for leaving work!
And please, don't bother replying with, "And it'll also come out when I root your boxen."
:)
I'm fucking sick of hearing from game makers that they will release their title on GNU/Linux... shortly after the Windows release. Bullshit. Utter bullshit. They will either _not_ release it, or wait a few fucking months after the Windows release... that way, noone is playing it anymore and is interested in the next game. I'm sick of it and I'm not going to deal with it any more. I'll just buy a GameCube game instead of doing this stupid "Hey, this company is pretty cool because they support GNU/Linux... This company is shit because they lied about supporting GNU/Linux! Fuck them all!
I will pre-buy 2 copies Right now without question.
Gimmie gimmie gimmie!
UT is still my absolute favorite game of all time... it is better than all the quake series to me (Gotta love sniper rifles! although Q3 with Urban Terror really rocks) and is still played heavily at most of the lan parties I go to (next to Half life... Cripes! HL get's alot of play!)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I'm not much of a gamer, I've only purchased two games in my life, Unreal Tournament and Medal of Honor: AA, Unreal Tourny 2003 will be my third, Especially since a Linux client is on the way. Great Job Epic! Keep this up and hopefully I can purchase a fourth!!! :)
Mark Rein was also the one who said we could expect Quakeworld quality multiplayer out of the box from Unreal. Anyway, Mark Rein is just PR and this just seems to reek of a PR stunt. The Linux gaming community is very small, but one cannot deny that giving the small community games enhances the general image of the company.
EPIC is going to release a Linux client for the next version of Unreal Tournament, why should we care? It's pointless to get overjoyed by this semi announcement. I mean it's not officially supported. It only works with NVidia cards and it won't show other companies that people want Linux games.
Linux needs applications that can be purchased directly as Linux apps.
In order for Linux to goto the next level we need UT2003 to be supported and sold in a Linux version. Just being able to download the Linux binaries will not bring Linux to the next level. Software companies don't care how many times epic had the Linux binaries downloaded they care how many copies Linux UT2003 sold in the market And yes I do understand that when Quake3Arena had a Linux version it wasn't all that successful but that had to do with a couple of reasons. Unless companies see that Linux apps and Linux games sell Linux will just be a webserver or hacker toy.
I love using Linux, BSD and the like but just being able to download the binaries gets us no where. id has been releasing the quake binaries for a while as was the first version of UT able to be played on Linux. Being happy that a company is releasing semi working Linux binaries for download it nothing to cheer about, you should be pissed that epic doesn't trust the game enough to release it to Linux.
Don't waste your money unnecessarily; I plan on sticking with the demo unless I find a really good reason to buy it.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
You wood, you FUCKING MORON.
This guy is a troll, please moderate accordingly.
The article and discussion on the Linux Games site can be found here.
I only noticed it because I have Linux Games as a slashbox on the front page of slashdot...
Check out MKDoc a mod_perl CMS
i'm talking about slashdot
Not to be an ass, but I would like to know why people choose to run BSD when there are more apps and better driver support under linux? Yes, I know that you can run most linux apps flawlessly under emulation, but can you cite one good reason why you run BSD on your DESKTOP computer when Linux is available? BSD makes an excellent server OS, but the only reason I can see to run BSD on my desktop workstation is simply for additional elitism. It doesn't do anything that linux doesn't already do.
Please know that I am not bashing BSD. I think its a great OS. I simply want to know why people run it as opposed to linux on their desktop PC when linux has far greater support for new apps and hardware.
...doesn't mean it's ready for release. It means that they have a source tree that compiles and largely executes under multiple platforms.
There's quirks, etc. from the Windows side that invariably slip into the mix that render code written to be cross-platform unstable. Those bits of code have to be found out (unless you're coding 100% for all the target platforms...) and fixed before release or you have something buggy as hell out there.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
WTF is Lin*? Do you mean Linux? Christ you people, get it together...
I've been told that we should be able to release the Linux client and server executables around the same time as the windows version ships.--Mark Rein
It seems that the Linux version of the server will also be released around the same time.
I know I do.
I play UT every single day and have the windows version because i wanted it pronto, not a couple of months after it was released. I wont be buying the windows version this time cause i havent a single windows disc or installation (except a couple of beer coasters, pretty stained they are).
If there are a linux client avaliable what keeps them from releasing it. A popular game like UT should give a pretty good picture of how much interest there is in linux and gaming if they realese them at the same time.
If they realese windows version first many ppl will buy the windows version just so they can play the darn game. Thus linux user copies showing up as windows copies.
HTTP/1.1 400
There goes all hope of saying that converting to Linux will help productivity.
----------
I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
It really does.. I play a LOT of fps games. I am a great fan of the delta force series of games, although their on-line play sucks. I really like operation flashpoint etc. but the realism goes a little bit too far and makes them frequently un-playable / too frustrating... Counterstrike is great but if you make a mistake and get killed in the first 30 seconds of a round it can get a bit tedious.
Battlefield 1942 is incredible, you have the die and re-spawn of quake et al. with some believeable real world physics (if you blow up a jeep while it's moving you can watch the arc of the jeep as it flies through the air and bounces), not acurate but fun and not stupidly un-realistic.
The range of vehicles and the way they respawn is great being able to pilot an aircraft carrier, then jump into a bomber, do a few bombing runs before bailing out, getting into a tank charging forward with another player operating the machine gun on top, then jump out crawl up a hill and snipe people, then use an AA gun to shoot down planes - fantastic fun! Add to this is ability to ride on a tank by jumping onto it.. or even ride an airplane wing and do some wing-walking, it is one very imersive and fun game.
To become an expert requires practice and good control, but anyone can pick up and play very quickly. I will definately be buying battlefield when it comes out. I've never really got on the with Unreal games, though I must admit they look pretty.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
...and there's a reason that iD isn't releasing a *nix version of Doom 3: the market just isn't there. It's nice to cater to a niche audience, but these are big companies with a lot of outlay to recoup and they're not losing anything but not releasing a *nux version of their games as everyone dual-boots.
The game's pretty and it runs almost as fast as Unreal Tournament while being noticably prettier (at least the alpha leak does on my computer or so I might say if I had gotten a copy of it). I can't wait to get my hands on a real copy of it.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I like running BSD on my desktop simply because it's a lot faster than Linux is. Even after optimizing my system to the max, Linux can never touch FreeBSD's speed.
Happy New Year, it's 1984!
Not to be an ass, but I would like to know why people choose to run Linux when there are more apps and better driver support under Windows? Yes, I know that you can run some Windows apps flawlessly under emulation, but can you cite one good reason why you run Linux on your DESKTOP computer when Windows is available? Linux makes an excellent server OS, but the only reason I can see to run Linux on my desktop workstation is simply for additional elitism. It doesn't do anything that Windows doesn't already do.
Please know that I am not bashing Linux. I think its a great OS. I simply want to know why people run it as opposed to Windows on their desktop PC when Windows has far greater support for new apps and hardware.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Okay, I know it's Unreal Tournament. And most gamers probably know the acronym as well. But could slashdot editors at least spell out acronyms once in a story description? Geez...
-Laz
I'd like a CD with both clients and a registration card asking me which one is my primary gaming platform.
Hear, hear.
This would guarantee that all versions were widely stocked, at no extra charge to the gaming stores, and the registration card (or an "OS ID" string transmitted by the binary) would tell the company how popular each OS choice was with their gamers.
The only problem being that, as per a previous post, the OpenGL (read: non-Windows) versions are still buggy. Oh well.
I was one of many burned with the first Unreal.. One full year of broken promises to the key of; "We're all exhausted from developing, the patches are coming soon", and the patches that did eventually come out were weak, breaking functionality left right and centre.. "We're still working hard on the patches, please don't e-mail us anymore!", it went on and on when all of a sudden boom out comes Unreal Tournament, the original Unreal was still in beta.. I ended up dropping it around then because I was fed up of the whole scenario, looking around today there seems to be a "final" patch for Unreal, but the game's back in it's box and gathering dust. I'm curious as to how their Linux initiative will unravel, but my past experience with them was lacklustre to say the least and you can bet that I won't be rushing out to the stores to buy my copy, I'm going to sit tight and wait to see what happens with all this first..
well, for me it's because linux has little foibles that annoy me. I like the way freebsd works. the way of updating the base system, the cleanness of the /etc directory. it's a matter of personal preference really. I never really liked compiling kernels on linux and the spraying of user installed apps all over the filesystem. I find freebsd to be "neater" and I know it better than I know linux.
most of the things I use are available in source form and compile wonderfully on freebsd. other apps I run under linux emulation (including, I might add, unreal tournament with full 3d hardware acceleration, I'm hoping to get simcity 3ku linux working this week (after it arrives that is).
dave
hehehe. One word: stability
And this is just me having not run Linux on a decent machine for a long long time. :) How is Linux for handling games that are heavy on the 3D? I've never bothered using it for 3D gaming at all, so if anyone could enlighten me on this it would be great.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Gotta say, I love your sense of humor, Mr. AC Troll. If there's one thing a true patriot hates, it's cold, unemotional logic.
"true patriot", that is... If only there were a way to get this read by more people; how many of us are there that purposely read troll postings?
Beggars can't be choosers, and Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
The fact that major companies are even discussing releasing major titles for what has only recently (in the public eye) become a major OS is a serious victory.
Or should we all just play XBill instead?
Change takes time, and histrionics and kneejerk melodrama don't help anyone or anything.
You wanna help? Take what you're given, stand up tall and speak wisely, and play and write linux games.
This all or nothing bullshit is exactly the reason I get sick of reading Slashdot.
But don't mod^H^Hind me, I'm just an anonymous coward.
Hopefully Epic spent some of the effort in getting it running on Linux to get it working under Mac OS X. That would be far more appealing than kicking the PC code to Westlake Interactive and letting Mark / Glenda Adams (he / she, think Dan Bunten revisited) work a semifunctional port.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
Why play a closed source game, when you can play a great opensource (GPL) game like Quake? The gameplay in Quake is just as good (some say it is even better) than the latest and greatest first person shooter. Not only that, but Quake runs nicely on 4 year old PCs. You can already play Quake on Linux starting today, so why wait for a closed course, expensive rehashing of the same thing thats already here?
1. Stability.
I've had Win2K freeze up on me a couple of time -- taking down the entire system. Vanilla Win2K installs, too. Nothing by Windows and Office 2K.
I've only had Linux take down a system once, and that was due to faulty hardware (fan on CPU died).
I *HAVE* had KDE and Gnome hang, but I can always SSH in an kill the task.
2. Cost
Win2K or WinXP costs quite a bit of $$. So do many of the apps. Granted, I *DO* use OpenOffice on both Windows and Linux most other OpenSource apps require Cygwin or some other destabilizing hack to work on Windows.
For example, PostgreSQL is free and combined with the small fee to The Kompany for Rekall, it can save a company THOUSANDS over MS Access, or even MS SQL Server.
Kivio is another example. It is a wonderful tool for diagramming. Priced Visio lately? Ouch! All Kivio needs is Visio import/export and I'll be happy. However, since Visio isn't as pervasive as Word/Excel/Powerpoint, most diagrams I get are PDFs anyway so import/export is a minor issue.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This release is and will be "UNSUPPORTED" if you read the Rein comments. So there will be no cd release or hybrid cd because they would than have to support it.
Next time try actually describing what on earth you're talking about in the summary when posting an article. "UT" is not descriptive enough to figure out you meant "unreal tournament". I shouldn't have to read the article to figure out whether or not I want to read the article.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I have to completetly agree. I had first started with an early version of Redhat, 5.x I think. After a good while I tried Mandrake 8. Worked ok, After I got Half-life to run it hosed my ext2 partition. I messed with Debian some, that left me the best impression of linux. I then tried FreeBSD on my old 233 to build a webserver. It truly felt as though a box had been lifted over my head in terms of understanding the *NIX enviroment. It's clean and easy to use.
I have not tried as a desktop system yet. I still use windows for games. I love games and win2k is a pretty damn good version of windows.
Understanding is a three-edged sword. -- Kosh Naranek
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If I remember correctly, the original Unreal Tournament release (or possibly it was just the demo) was fairly glitchy on everything except Glide; it was obvious what sort of video cards the staff at Epic had :-)
:-)
The later patches upgraded it to good Glide and D3D, and reputed-to-be-slightly-wobbly OpenGL (which wasn't officially supported); once Loki Games made progress with the Linux port, Epic released an improved GL driver heavily based on Loki's work! (obviously, non-3dfx cards on Linux don't have the option of D3D, so Loki had a rather large incentive to make a decent OpenGL driver.)
If UT2003's anything like UT, the graphics drivers will work as a swappable plugin system. UT has software, "pure" OpenGL, Glide, D3D and S3 Metal on Windows; software, Glide, "pure" OpenGL and SDL OpenGL on Linux; and presumably much the same options as Linux on MacOS, although possibly without the SDL GL driver.
Incidentally, SDL is the default choice of renderer for new Linux UT installs, and all you open-source game hackers have Loki Games (they of the Linux UT port) to thank for SDL - they developed it specifically to make Windows to Linux ports easier.
Back on topic, this is great news for the state of Linux gaming, and Linux mass-marketness in general; and purely from my own point of view, I was wondering whether to bother with UT2003 before, and I probably will now. ++EpicSales
-- Psychic_313, Unreal Tournament mod programmer
Sweet. UT was always the gameplay king over Q3 - a wider variety of weapons (and weapon secrets, with various right/left combos) excellent level design (remember that monastery on top of an insanely steep mountain, or the assault level on the train?), good taunting `die, bitch' and lots of bonus goodies (Epic released 4 major bonus packs for Unreal Tournamenent). I'll definitely play UT 2003 because all my useful applications are in Linux and frankly I can't be bothered running 2 OSs and rebooting to play the Windows version.
If you're into UT, and you purchased the original Linux UT, then you should definitely check out Return to Na Pali, a single player sequel to the original Unreal that plays using the UT Engine. There's also a patch to allow you to play the original Unreal under UT too. Google is your friend.
This is where I'm glad the company I buy my video hardware from actually pays people to develop drivers for their current hardware that give the same or better performance than Win32 - sorry, as a technical person, performance and OS support matters more to me than a sense of ethics I don't share.
Yes, I'm talking about NVIDIA.
It may just be me, but isn't UT2003 suppose to be 99% DirectX (D3D) based? If so, how would they make it run on *nix? Convert all direct3d function calls to their appropriate openGl? Or make use of wineX and get away with 1/2 the fps?
I'm afraid it is you who are mistaken about a great many things.
In a follow up from Mark Rein he says that they should be shipping the Linux client on the CD with the Windows one.. And the Linux client should also be released for the demo!!! Very exciting stuff!
I'm windows free. Weeeeeeeeeee
God I love Linux
Tux Games is now listing the game here. We will, as always, report the sales of any game from our store as a Linux sale, to try and encourage further porting of Linux products.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
Epic are a bunch of bast4rds employing people like Straylight Studios who continually rip-off independant musicians. Fook them and fook you too for buying their shiV.
:p
RTCW looks better than UT2k3 anyhow
>Will the Linux version cost less because they're
>not offering tech support with it. or will it
>just be community-support-based, like every other
>product?
Well, if it goes anything like the loki games port of UT, there will be no tech support and 10,000 unanswered forum posts saying "I can't get this to run"...
You could say "yeah, but loki's gone", but from the looks of the archives, it was no less likely to run when they were around...
Its a case of "I'd love to have it". If UT worked in linux, I'd have no reason to boot windows unless to play an occasional new game for a while... UT2003 "warez demo" has not been hugely received by my friends (I avoid all unofficial demos and "tech demos" since the days of Q1).
But what the hell, better than nothing. Or as they might say "a dodge in the right direction".
Ordinarily i'd simply pirate a windows game, such as UT2003. However, if UT2003 (Linux) becomes available to buy, i would fork out for a legit copy. That's dedication for you...
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They've made a further update, and it looks like the linux client will be available with the demo!
s =& threadid=201170
http://ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?
Only because you haven't patched the Linux kernel to not have sleep(1) in the main loop...
<Amanda`> I just went out to the parking lot in my bathrobe to exchange warez CDs.
Spose so but im not sure where to buy it in Australia, we live in a very Linux Deprived Country. Any one got any ideas on where to buy it? Thanks, SuperNova
Fellow Slashdot' ers, the day will come...