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UT2003 LiveCD
ztc writes "Gentoo has added a Unreal Tournament 2003 demo to a version of their Linux-based LiveCD. It has up-to-date nvidia graphics drivers, sound drivers, network drivers, etc. on the CD ready-to-play. LiveCDs have always been a great way to sway potential Linux-converts, but this should really impress them! You can download the iso here." A sneaky way to promote Gentoo. I like it.
LiveCDs have always been a great way to sway potential Linux-converts, but this should really impress them!
Zealot: "And look at this!! You plug in the CD, and it runs Unreal Tournament!!"
Normal Person: "But... my Windows already does that."
Zealot: "But you don't understand! It's better because it's Linux!!"
Normal Person: "But it looks the same to me... ?"
Zealot: "Well, yeah, but that's the point! It looks the same, but it's on Linux!!"
Normal Person: "Er.. OK. Show me The Sims next!"
Zealot: "Give me a few hours to get Quake working..."
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
A good way to sell 3D games is to include screen shots in the demos to give people an idea of what they are going to see....
Even a link to a site with screen shots would be a plan.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I feel sorry for ibiblio.org
Now coupling a blazingly fast Linux port, they're throwing in UT 2003. What more can one ask for?
Maybe a coffee maker built into my PC to keep me awake for days while playing.
If you're looking here for something insightful or thought provoking, you're probably looking in the wrong place.
Is it just as quick or quicker?
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I downloaded and installed UT2k3 demo on both my linux partition (up to date gentoo) and my W2k partition. I am running an admitidly unbalanced celeron333a w/ 192mb ram and a gf4ti4200-64mb. ... 320x240 was in the list!). ... heck its not completly unplayable at 1600x1200.
Under linux I get very choppy sound and an almost-kinda-sorta-playable slideshow after setting all the options to their min (ok I left the res at 800x600
While w2k gives me a reasonably playable game
Thoughts on tech, Software Engineering, and stuff
Well, I don't know exactly what the LiveCD does, but I will say that if you're trying to impress them with the game, then I'm not sure that the Linux demo is going to be that impressive to Windows people. If I were a Windows-only user, I'd ask them what the big deal was, since I could play it on my Windows machine already. And I'd point out that, despite the fact that NVIDIA cards are pretty widespread, the demo on Windows supports a wider range of cards, including the lowly 3dfx Voodoo3. And that it doesn't require rebooting the machine.
If this were a Linux-only game that supported a wide range of hardware configurations and showed off graphical splendor that wasn't generally available on Windows, then that'd be impressive to lots of people. As much as my geeky side can be impressed by the idea of putting together a CD like this, I just don't see Windows people giving a hoot.
FWIW, I'm not a Windows user. I only use Linux at work and at home. Heck, I even wrote an article on the Linux demo and how it came to be. But most Windows users are still puzzled about why a Linux port even exists. They're certainly not going to want you rebooting their machine just so you can boot up Linux and play it from a CD.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I saw this early this morning and I began the download. It's at 66% now. If the hordes of /. break my d/l (the ftp is NO RESUME), I'm gunna be fit to be tied.
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Oh, and yes I will be downloading the demo - phorm
This is put out by the Gentoo people, not by Epic. What would you like screenshots of, the CD booting? Go to Epic's site if you want to see UT2003, there were plenty of links to screenshot in the previous article on it.
Is your browser retarded?
I just started using gentoo last thursday. This after 5 years of slackware, and only slackware.
It's a fantastic distro for those of you with a pretty strong system, I highly reccommend it.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
What does Gentoo have to do with MacOSX?
Nice to see another Linux port for PowerPC systems. While Mac OS X fills all my needs, it's still fun to tinker in Linux.
So, that brings the Linux for PowerPC distros to the following, and I bet I'll forget one:
-SUSE
-Debian
-RT Linux
-Mandrake
-Linux PPC
-Yellow Dog Linux
-Gentoo Linux
-MkLinux
-HA Linux
I wonder if the UT2003 code is targeted to x86 or whether it cares. I would presume it does care a lot. A "Windtunnel" G4 has all the necessary specs, otherwise.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
What the hell is LiveCD? :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
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XFree86 does support your Radeon 7500 and 8500, anything more recent you're on your own ! ATI doesn't offer any better drivers, just "support" by the way of links (www.linux.org ... yeah riight, like that's gonna solve my problem).
When they say 'ready to play', do they mean it plays off the disc like a platform gaming system, or that you can install it off the CD and then play the game?
The reason I ask is that if the former is true, then it makes Linux more attractive to me as a gaming machine, particularly if it can handle initiating those drivers while it's running. One thing that annoys the hell out of me is that games in Windows think they need to be installed first. I can understand wanting to have a save-game folder, but I find it ridiculous what all needs to be copied over to the computer.
LiveCD is a standalone bootable CD that you can pop in most newer computers, boot up and play the game.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
What's one of the big reasons people always give for not switching to Linux? What's one of the big reasons that many of us STILL have Windows boxes or dual-boot?
The games.
Now we've got two or three big games being released for the Linux platforms. (UT 2003, NWN(when it's done?), Quake 3(I know released heap long time ago, but it's still a big game) Proof that Linux can run major market games. May help sway some people.
The future
What *I* would like to see is games released in this Live CD fashion. So that you don't have to worry about getting the latet drivers. It almost turns any computer into a gaming console. You just put in the CD, reboot, and play. Don't have to worry about clearing out hard drive space or buying a new hard drive so you have enough space. You don't have to worry about having the drivers that work with the game. It's all bundled up in the UT OS I don't know how it was for some people, but it was a PAIN trying to get Quake and Quake2 installed and running under Linux for me.
Heck you and some friends could burn off these CD's and head to your local internet cafe or Best Buy and play some UT over the net...hehehehe
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman
Zealot > Look at this! It's a demo of Unreal Tournament under Linux. You just put in the CD and it runs.
Poor dude > What's all that writing?
Zealot > That's it booting. You don't need to worry about that.
Poor dude > Why's it taking so long?
Zealot > That's the amazing thing! Gentoo compiles the kernel, the libraries, the compiler, the compiler again, X, AND unreal tournament before running it! So it runs really fast!
Poor dude > So how long does it take to get working?
Zealot > About 3 days from pressing the power on button. But it's fast!
I have not seen this mentioned yet, but I think it should be noted that it is not Gentoo's fault that the UT2003 LiveCD does not run on ATI cards. Epic made the call to only support the newer nVidia cards in the demo and it has nothing to do with Gentoo or the fact that XFree86 has less than ample support for the newer Radeon card line.
Is a Sig really an expression of the person behind the post or just random nonsense?
Gentoo runs WineX (since the source is available), and there are people working on it.
Gentoo has a different development model than most distros. There is a lot more user contribution in improving it than most; users often write code upgrades. Also, the user forums are INCREDIBLY active. So they are most likely looking to add users who already have some knowledge of Linux, but want to augment it.
This is one compelling reason: you run Linux? Want to run Wine, but its not working for you? We've got it running - even WineX. Oh, and here's UT as well.
Seems like a good way to get the flock to join a new fold.
I myself switched to Gentoo because I was tired of downloading source packages under Mandrake and going through the "find and compile the library that is needed" game whenever I downloaded a program that was too new or too small to be in the distro (its considerably easier to do this type of thing with Gentoo, plus they have more packages), and adding packages that weren't part of the install was sending me into RPM oblivion.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
This post is precisely ontopic. We're talking about run-off-the-disc Linux distros in this thread. If someone posts a link with information about another such tool for accomplishing this, it's informative. Maybe some people out there want to do something similar, but without using Gentoo.
Moderators, try using some objectivity! Sheesh.
Why bother.
A cd that you can pop into your computer, which will boot Linux without actually installing it onto your hard disk.
(Some people were wondering)
Not to begrudge Gentoo (an excellent distribution IMHO) anything I figure I'd mention a full featured (takes up the whole CD) live CD distribution which offers a good generalized suite of applications: office, technical, programming, game, educational... called KNOPPIX. It works really well as a demo and is even quite usable as a portable linux for regular use.
What I find interesting is the possibility to offer games that come with their own OS. Instead of distributing a game which comes for Windows, Linux, or MacOS, why not put an optimized OS on the CD or DVD so that anyone can boot it and play the game. The game could fetch configs and saved games, if available, on a user-specified location on disk, or better, online. It would work much as a console; of course, having to boot on the CD is a drawback, but console users don't seem to mind.
The only way this happens is a game which requires network transparency. Right now the window's world is using thick clients but a very thin client game meant to be run over a lan...
Sucks when you make an uninformed purchase huh? I had an old Creative gamepad that probably only sold 1000 units. Zero support for it, then and now.
It's always fun to get the latest whizbang hardware...until you find out the manufacturer doesn't give a rat's ass about linux. Thank god for Nvidia, even if they *are* closed-source drivers.
Really, there's an Armagetron cd? Nice. I know there's a Frozen Bubble Mandrake-based ISO that's bootable.
Now what I really want is a nice bootable Xmame disc. I've got the whole mame rom collection and it'd be cool to shuck a dvd to a friends' house, throw it in the pc, and boot into a graphical frontend and start gaming.
That's a cool idea. Use Linux to boot into off the CD and auto-detect what it needs.
The downside is that us Win2k/NT (and presumably Linux) users are used to having their machine up all the time.
However, I'd be happy to dedicate an OS-less machine just to gaming.
I've seen 220 megabyte Mlnl CDs out there.
:-)
Anyone else notice this little detail?
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!