Slashdot Mirror
UT2003 Gone Gold, Ships with Linux Support
SiW writes "This announcement should be music to a Linux gamer's ears: Unreal Tournament 2003 has just gone gold, and supports Linux (client and server) out of the box!" It's not often that I get to play a new game without rebooting. I'm really looking forward to this.
let's hope that this will hapen more often, one of the most frequently heard arguments for not running Linux is: "but, I can't play my games on it"...
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
Kudos for the unreal team - it's about time more software was released first run with linux/bsd support.
Insanity is contagious. - Yossarian
Instead of just buying it because it supports linux? The linux and windows demos can be found here.
is great and all, especially since they bundle it with the game. (unlike q3, which required getting a different box, which was impossible to get here in norway)
Too bad the game feels like a UT expansion pack though - after 10 minutes you forget the fancy new graphichs and physics models, and you realize that not only are almost all the weapons exactly the same, you still got the same voice taunts, the same feel, the same sounds and the same game.
You know what would be funny? If UT actually put some code in there to send statistics back to its HQ to see how many people actually ran a copy of it on Linux. And no... 50 people replying to this post saying they will does not count as part of statistics :P
:) I always thought it would be funny if slashdot put peoples USER-AGENT header next to their posts too...
Even more importantly, if those stats could be found from certain slashdot admin.
Anyone have some informationss regarding a Linux version of UnrealEd 3.0 on the final release ? It would be cool if we can both play and map !
I think that this is great for linux gaming. I'm sure that other gaming companies is going to follow, and maybe this is going to be a common trend in gaming. If it is, I think linux's popularity is going to rise even more. Maybe we can finally microwave our win cd's now...
I was a little pissed off when I heard that they were not going to do Linux support right off the bat. I couldn't understand why they wouldn't at least put up the binaries on FTP/WWW and let the geeks download it after they bought the Windows version...
:) We don't have to have a poor showing on the shelves (yes, we will) and we still get the binaries out of the box.
I like this idea a lot better though
I don't play games on my computer, but I think that this is the best way to go. Just bundle both in the same box and forget about it.
Thanks for letting me rant my hangover off.
just noted that UT2003 doesn't support Mac (as far as I could tell).
Does this mean that Linux is now considered to be a more lucrative market than Mac, or is this just a show of support for Linux?
UT original did run under mac, but it used an engine that was native to DirectX. Now that UT2 is more openGLish, cross platform would be much easier. Perhaps the portion of linux users that play UT is greater than that of mac?
I want a skin in UT 2003 of the goatse guy with a Bill Gates head?
Can somebody please make it for me?
I don't know how most people set up their computers but I have one Windows (1.4ghz) machine and 3 Linux machines (600mhz, 350mhz, 166mhz). The Windows machine is the fastest of the 4 basically because most games are played in Windows and they need the speed.
The limited number of people that just have a bunch of uber ninja boxen spells slow growth for the Linux gaming world.
You can argue that people dedicated to Linux gaming are already using it. Well, yes, but where does it go from there? To attract new customers you have to provide something they desire at a reasonable cost. For me giving up Civ3, EQ or Warcraft3 isn't worth making the switch (yet).
sig
Anybody want to share their experiences with UT2003 on Linux with whatever video card you have? Many here might be going shopping.
Yes ditto.
Are there any reports at all about UnrealEd 3.0? I'm really curious..I tried mapping with UnrealEd 2.0 and got really, REALLY frustrated...it was buggy as hell, and kept causing BSP errors all over the place. The worst is that I would put a lot of effort into a level, only to have it CRASH without any explanation during gameplay. I HATED UnrealEd 2.0...I hope 3.0 is better.
Im not too enriched by the compatibility issues with the Radeon 9700 & Xfree 4.xx but I have troubles getting over 24bit colour @ 1280x1024 on my All in Wonder Radeon. Im using the Gatos drivers of course and TV, Capture, MPEG-2 Acceleration works fine! Though, since ATI just recently announced the next ALL in Wonder Radeon 9700 to be released in the near future, I am really considering purchasing the product!
:)
Hopefully I can get 32bit colour this time and no issues with XAWTV
Aleks
More likely, they did it just because it was easy, (same hardware) or because one of the staffers ported it on his/her own time. Or both.
A Mac port would be more lucrative. But not as easy. :)
oh, and one final nitpick. The original UT favoured software rendering and glide, not D3D. UT2k3 is geared towards Direct3D first and foremost. The GL renderer was extremely hard to code, as I understand it.
"Break out the gin, and the small violin, I'm a raging success as a failure." --Firewater
played the demo for a bit, graphics are nice, went back to the old favorite. i may eat my words by next month, but this ain't no counter-strike killer.
At work I have a Linux workstation and a windows workstation. The Linux one is typically running something so I surf on my windows box. I also read maccentral and apple.slashdot from windows.
At home/my office I have these systems:
Athlon XP 1500 / Win XP (for PocketPC / VB Dev)
PowerMac 8500/180 OS 7.6 & 8.6 (old mac compatability)
G4 Tower QS 733 / OS 9.2 OS X 10.2 (Cocoa Dev)
Dual P3-933 Linux Server (web/mysql)
Celeron 1.2GHz Linux Server (mail)
Ultra 10 SPARC Solaris 9 (oracle 8i)
4 laptops (apple & pc) and my wifes computer.
So in short how the fuck do you get that in the USER-AGENT? Well rounded is better than being a putz who likes to believe that it's all Linux or nothing.
SEND IN THOSE REGISTRATION CARDS!
Make sure that when the vendor tallies the results that Linux is well-represented.
Allow me to compare and contrast UT2003 with QuakeIII in this regard:
QIII: Windows shipped first. Linux shipped later. Justification: "We need to be able to track the Linux shipments."
Result: hard-core games bought Windows version, waited to download Linux version.
UT2003: Both versions are in the box.
Result: Hard-core gamers can get whatever version they choose to run now.
www.eFax.com are spammers
What a terrible joke. Linux is Open Source kernel. GNU/Linux is Open Source operating system. UT2003 works only with closed source nVidia drivers. Compare it with Return To Castle Wolfenstein which works perfect with my old Voodoo3.
Please do not talk about "Linux support" until S3TC will be deleted from UT2003.
I downloaded the demo in Linux, only to find out that the game will only work with Binary Nvidia drivers. I own a laptop, I can't just go around buying new video cards and putting them into this machine.. I really hope they will have removed the dependency on nvidia by then.
I was pretty worried about how the UT demo would run on my system, since I've never really tried any linux games.
My system:
Athlon XP 1800+ @ 1620MHz
512MB RAM
nVidia nForce
Ensoniq AudioPCI for sound in Linux
GeForce4 4400 @ 300/650
Mandrake 8.2/WinXP dual boot
I booted it up, and I was getting 50-100 fps, only about 5% slower than Windows, and zero image quality differece! Kudos to the UT development team! I don't think I'll have to boot into windows for the next month!
"HEAD SHOTTTTT!" oh yeah, give me day of defeat with friendly fire on anyday.
Another Unreal game! I've mucked aroud with the demo, and it's not really markedly different from UT2 (except it runs natively on my machine). Same weapons, same taunts, same levels, and its all really boring.
:(
I mean, CTF... the classic CTF maps were back in Quake1/2 CTF and Team Fortress Classic (2fort being the best). The idea of them is to divide the level up into areas which you can defend in different ways, giving the game some tactical depth. The level with the demo is just one big open space full of spikes, with two little rooms at each end Boo. Dull. And the lightning gun is horrid... I suppose the idea is that the old sniper gun was untracreable, and therefore too good on open maps, but why not just give it tracer bullets? The lightening gun just feels, well, rubbish.
On the plus side, it's nice to see they've used Loki's installer program (and update program) which work like a treat. Hopefully in the next releases they'll also know they'll be able to ship the UNIX versions in time, and so will write that it runs on various UNIX based OSs on the box. Oh and maybe they'll support more drivers than Nvidia
OS X version coming in December
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
WARNING do not try this at home without supervision by an professional geek, in fact: don't try!
Do, or do not.
There is no try.
yoda
Vacuum cleaners suck. Kings rule.
I may just have to get this to support linux game development. It's the same reason I bought the Quake I version they put out. I know ID is decent about linux support, but if somebody is making money off linux gamers then more companies will want a slice of that pie. Now granted I wasn't a big fan of UT1's physics and feel as opposed to that of Half Life and Quake, but I've heard decent things about death in this one that would at least be fun to check out...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
This should be stipulated, it seems that nvidia is the only manufacture that has drivers to work with linux and be able to run UT2003. This is evident that nvidia wants to push all platforms, and they have their logo start first thing when running the demo.
It's not that UT2003 is closed that it will only run under linux on an nvidia card, it's just that no one else has drivers... and nvidia was smart enough to pair up with UT2003 to get the market share (seems looks of people are talking about doing a UT2003 upgrade as they can't wait for Doom3). It's really up to the manufacturers to get their shit together and give us good Linux drivers for 3d, not just 2d drivers.
pretty much makes my ATI Radeon 7500 AiW useless..:(
cool!
when it's included in the normal box you don't need
to *buy* the game to support linux...
I'm actually impressed with Epic. I hated UT... the physics, the gameplay, etc. Being a Quake aficionado (and still a qw player) I never could understand how could someone play so "slowly".
Anyway, from what I see from ut2k3 demo the gameplay is faster and very Q3-like, the graphics are quite good (for a company who doesn't have a johnc among them) and now this! Linux out of the box... Kudos to Epic.
I believe this is the way to go. A good game with support for the most proeminent desktop OSs around in one box. The Q3 way of doing it was wrong. Happily they corrected it for Q3 Gold and shipped with hybrid cds.
-- Would it be acceptable to just put my name on my sig?
I think many people are hoping that this game kills the aging counterstrike (and the less-old Quake3 and UT).
:)
But yeah, there will likely be counterstrike-like mods for ut2k3. It would not be counterstrike itself, since it's owned by valve now. Many old-time counterstrike players, hated cs after it was bought by valve. They just kept on making the game slower and slower. cs beta 5.2 was the best cs version
Things are happening. Governments considering/adopting open source solutions here and there. Mass media covering Linux/Open Source every now and then. The world's biggest computer chain selling computers with Linux preinstalled online for now. Not to mention the impressive inroads in the server market.
Now imagine all these win* gamers opening their UT boxes to find a "linux version" in there. They won't give a damn, but deep in their minds they will start to get to the idea that Linux is there, that it exists, that it is as "normal" as "win*".
One more step. Many Thanks to the UT team !
downloaded it three different times. I always get CRC errors when unzipping. I download tons of movies that are intolerant of bad bits, and none of them ever have transmission errors. I've given up on ut2k3 because I can't see the demo.
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
UnrealEd has not been ported to linux, and as of now there is no plan to do so. There was some discussion on the mailing list of a community developed port of the Editor, however this was more or less ruled out. Basically they are concerned about releasing documentation on the engine libraries, which change often and would "open up a ton of cheats we couldn't detect" (Ryan C Gordon).
____
to asdf and beyond!!
Except you can't play it on linux....unless you have an nVidia card. Supporting something available on one brand is very shortsighted if you ask me.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
On the UT copyright notices page, it says
"Ogg Vorbis Copyright © 2001"
Is this new or has UT used ogg before? I just love seeing open standards replace proprietary standards.
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
You can pick up a Pentium 133 for dirt (usually free at any big company without a hard drive). Simply make it a firewall and voila! It may require some work on your part but you'll be better off for it in the long run!
PMFirewall makes configuring a Linux firewall very easy!
ut2k3 will not support Matrox, Ati, or any other cards in any near future...
A toy that has 80+% of the market. So what does that say about Linux/MacOSX/BSD/etc.?
Don't click it if you value your sanity.
There is nothing wrong with money. This is a more complex issue than choosing to include the GPL from code u borrowed. $$ is behind the knowledge that even allows these standards to be created. Remember recently how Linus wants to have not much to do with the patent issues that some kernel code bring up and would rather the big linux names take care of it. Asking for these standards to be implemented in the linux kernel, for all hardware, for free, really goes against the grain of owners. The issue is very cut and dry: Linux users have to wait for some node of the non-deterministic mesh that financially supports it to fork over the $$. Since economic models for supporting this type of activity are not too well practiced, there is hesitance. The hesitance, and the nature of the web mentioned before, are why linux support is slow. Do the benefits (in other areas) that linux provides mitigate the costs? Clearly in this case, no. Some paradigms need to shift before the floodgates permit this far more complex model from delivering the same results that permit standards adoption. To finish, i have a simple analogy: centralized,fast napster vs. decentralized,slow gnutella
-- -- --
Help my mini cause: My journal
Beta 5.2? Hmm... never heard of that version... I'm still enjoying 1.5 myself, and it's not running slow at all.
CS was bought by valve? Well, from what I understand cs was produced using valve's engine and SDK, so didn't they 'own' it already?
As for killing off the aging counterstrike, wouldn't counterstrike condition zero be the real killer? Updated engine, better graphics, etc... (I haven't followed all the details...)
They didn't know the Linux version would be finished in time of shippment? And what the Demo coming in sync with the Win version???
This sounds *really* fishy to me. I wounldn't be suprised if someone payed them not to mention that it's Linux compatible....
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The characters blend into the environment too easily, kind of like camo,
That was really well-put. My first time playing UT2003, I got fragged two or three times in a row, because I couldn't identify that something in the distance was really a player shooting a gun at me. In the previous Unreal, there was never any problem picking a player out from the background. And the parent comment to what you wrote has things totally wrong -- UT2003 is a totally different beast from the original. Gameplay is entirely different. It's cleaner, the weapons are more precise, and despite the incredible and gory animations the game feels a whole lot less violent.
Yes, all of us with hardware capable of running this.
I can't figure out why people are so obsessed with *new* games. Do games suddenly suck because they're a year old? I like my Linux box because I *don't* have to constantly upgrade it to keep it nice and usable. I have an old PII and a Matrox G450 that work nicely in Linux, but would never be able to play this at a reasonable clip.
Let's work this out:
a) People that dual-boot. They can already play this in Windows. Little reason to use Linux to play UT2003.
b) People that don't dual-boot -- are they going to upgrade their graphics card and processor to play a single game? Plus, most of them already can live without games pretty well, or else they wouldn't be using Linux in the first place, so there's a significant cost to doing lots of hardware changes for one game.
Now, don't get me wrong. I bought Quake 3, Alpha Centauri, and Jagged Alliance II for Linux. But those *run* reasonably on computers not built for gaming. UT2003? Riiight...
Ah, well. I'm sure others won't agree. However, IIRC, SimCity 3k and Alpha Centauri were Loki's biggest sellers...
Now, I don't mean "retro" games like Asteroids. I mean, what about Close Combat? Command & Conquer? Fallout (okay, this *does* work in WINE, so less draw)? What's wrong with porting these? Does the port cost so blinking much to do that it's not worth it?
(Exile III did get ported, which was great, but the widget set used was absolutely unbearable. Try it and see what I mean.)
May we never see th
I, for one, would be interested in showing User-Agent with Slashdot posts. Perhaps registered users could have the option of disabling it, as I'm sure some people will object.
May we never see th
The "nonsensical cartoon shit that makes games blow" is much of what I like about escaping reality for a bit, into a good game.
I suppose you never played any of the arcade classics either? "Pac-Man is crap! I'm supposed to believe this little yellow guy can eat that much stuff and not gain any weight? And these ghosts are chasing after him? I don't even believe in ghosts!"
Bah... The tradition of video games is alternate or suspended reality. If I want to simulate being in a real war, I'm better off playing paintball with some buddies and getting the full experience. (How realistic is it fighting a war from your computer chair, with only a mouse and keyboard to shoot your gun with?)
I find it boring and lacking in action/enjoyment, playing these Counterstrike type games where you're shot once, and then you're stuck sitting out until the whole game is over. I'd rather spend the time running and shooting make-believe stuff, instead of sitting out whenever someone hits me with an e-bullet.
Transgaming's stuff (well, WINE in general) works with some stuff, not with others. It frequently takes a fair bit of poking around, often has worse performance or glitches even on things marked as "fully working", and is probably not what the Average Joe wants.
It's a hell of a cool technical feat, and it's saved my butt a few times, but presenting it as a general alternative to Windows for users who want to use Windows products...no. That's not fair representation at all. Think of it as icing on the Linux cake ("AND you can run some Windows programs") rather than another bullet point ("Runs Windows programs").
May we never see th
It's not often that I get to play a new game without rebooting
It sounds to me like that is a Flamebait, with a reference to Windows. If you can't install and play a game in Windows without rebooting, kill yourself. Seriously.
So why did Matrox do fully (well, sans a *small* amount of microcode for two specific features -- WARP and Macrovision, which weren't x86 code anyway) open source drivers for their earlier cards? I'm using a fully open source G450 driver. Why can't anyone demand the same from other graphics card vendors?
May we never see th
I think he's just saying that many / most of his games live on a Windows partition, and to reach them he must reboot the machine into Windows.
Tim
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I'm running XFree86-4.2.0-64 as packaged by RH. I'm using the DRI Matrox G450 drivers happily and with no trouble. I frequently use fancy features (play Quake, I code OpenGL stuff, use mga_vid to write movies directly to video memory, use xv). No memory leakage.
Nvidia is certainly entitled to make closed-source Linux drivers, just as they are to make no Linux drivers at all. However, my money will always go to companies that are putting out open source drivers for their cards.
May we never see th
I'm in a video games class being co-taught by a UT engine developer. It's taught entirely on Linux.
Believe me, most developers love Linux. The bloody thing was made to appeal to programmers and techies. If the consumers will shift to Linux, you can be damn sure that the developers will be there in a heartbeat.
Of course, the poor schmuck that has to support the things will be miserable, but...
May we never see th
I'm still playing Rogue Spear on my windows partition daily. I'm really looking forward to Raven Shield, which is based on the UT 2003 engine. The official RS site makes mention of native linux server software that will be included with the game. I only wish the would release a linux port of the game itself. Anyone else feel the same???
Stop being so paranoid!
> Beta 5.2? Hmm... never heard of that version...
;)
Try visiting a page like this for a brief history of CS.
> I'm still enjoying 1.5 myself, and it's not running slow at all.
I was talking about slow gameplay (compared to before cs 1.0), not slow fps
> CS was bought by valve? Well, from what I understand cs was produced using valve's engine and SDK, so didn't they 'own' it already?
The guy who made CS was gooseman (his real name is Minh Le)... he helped other mods before starting CS, like the famous aq2 for quake2. CS started out as a project completely independant from Valve. It was just a halflife mod. It's status is similiar to how most q3 and UT mods are. id and epic don't support most mods to their games, and their distributors don't put these mods in stores.
However, counterstrike is different. Gooseman was hired by Valve. It was packaged and put in shelves. The post-Valve cs plays quite differently from the Gooseman-only beta CS versions.
> As for killing off the aging counterstrike, wouldn't counterstrike condition zero be the real killer? Updated engine, better graphics, etc... (I haven't followed all the details...)
Who knows.. There have been many CS clones and CS-like mods for q3 (urbanterror, truecombat), UT (tac-ops), but none of them have had the success of CS. Many of these clones actually have arguably better graphics and gameplay than CS (mainly because they aren't based on the quake1-derived engine that halflife is.)
But all games have a limit until they go stale. I don't think CS:CZ will be as a hit as CS was, but who knows..
Yeah! Let's buy it to show our support! ..It's just too bad our support will not show anywhere.. Linux version is packed in the same box with Windows version - so there is no way for them to know whether it was a Linux or a Windows user who actually bought that game.
The grownups don't use Linux because (appart from pro/E, very recently, and that's crap) there is no CAD/CAM software for Linux. So that's my excuse :)
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Just to explain the time difference, there are 2 reasons it's being ported. First of all, the Mac's programing style/requirements are different from either Linux or Windows(although Cocca is closer than Classic/Carbon ever was), and without a Mac-head at Epic to do the Mac work like they have done with Linux, it's not possible to do in-house.
Second, and probably just as important, there's the issue of support. The Linux client will be "unsupported", there won't be anyone to call and help you with any problems. Support will be provided for the Mac version, which requires setting up a seperate support team, since Epic's team simply doesn't know the Macintosh.
As long as it manages to get shipped out before Christmas, the Mac version should hold its own against both the Linux and PC versions.
For an even faster paced game, try BR + Insta-Gib. I just learned that Insta-Gib means one shot = one kill. It completely changes the nature of the game and speeds it up dramatically. Of course, that isn't always a good thing...
Bleh!
This will get modded down as flamebait probably..
I hear people saying "I'll buy this game just to show my support for porting Linux games"
I beleive this approach is wrong. It is not represening your preferences and the law of supply and demand is broken (demand too high).
Let's say a million geeks bux this Linux game. SW Companies smell profit -> they all start porting -> the fake demand can't cover the supply -> companies lose money and stop porting games to Linux
All we have then are a bunch of companies that have lost money on Linux and won't even think about porting programs/games.
they very first time I loaded a linux server to play the demo at our last LAN party. I was sold the instant the curses based installer appeared on my screen.
LRJ
ok, ut2k3 will have native linux client and server support. this seems good for linux. the game only supports nvidia based cards [ati too?] this sucks. it shifts the monopoly problem from one company to another. however, if ppl interested in linux gaming support dont support this game, it will be a clear message to game publishers that the linux community doesnt want games, and they cant make a profit off of us. for this reason, i plan to buy this game. but wheres the best place to buy the game. id rather not support the big companies such as gamestop and ebgames which are indifferent to linux support. tuxgames (http://www.tuxgames.com)games seems to be a better place for linux gamers to give their money away to. any other linux specific sites that are selling ut2k3 or other linux games?
but did you play the beta ? it is nothing really special beyond snazzy grafix. I was hoping for some new twist but alas it won't come from UT2003. I don't see how it can compete with 1942. I kept flashing back to Quake3 while playing it...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Nowadays I just purchase the game for the engine, in hopes that the mod community will make something exciting out of it.
The AC wrote: "There are plenty of good games available for Linux. He does not need *THOSE* games."
:) I am pretty content with the range of games that comes with an average Linux distro, at least as content as I am with games in general. I prefer simulations, and what I would really like to see is a good *driving* simulator, an automotive equivalent to FlightGear, where one could drive around the country, whether in any sense a game or not. With a simulation framework set up as open-ended as possible, people could just drive around and small groups of individuals could devise their own games based on the available maps.
...
;)
Never having been much into computer games, I tend to agree with you -- from screenshots, I judge UT to be outside my area of interest
Wouldn't it be nice to race from Boston your friend located in California (at least in the simulation) to some point equidistant to both of you? In realistic terms, this might mean a 2 or 3-day game, or broken up in chunks as you see fit
Anyhow, now that's a digression
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Has anyone ever played the arcade game called "The Grid". I think it was made by the mortal kombat guys. Its a really cool fps style game with wicked weapons. You play a virtual character in an arena that is linked with other arcade stations. We need that over the internet on pcs!
- The early worm gets eaten by the bird.
has anyone heard if they might open source unreal or unreal tournament? Like Id has done with doom and quake? -nil
I've tried the demo on my P3-600 and G400, and with all graphic settings on minimum, gotten less than 15fps on average. Benchmark settings are an abysmal 20.75 for flyby, and 10.02 for botmatch. People using K6-450's with GeForces have reported playable framerates.
I would say that the choice of videocard matters much more; especially if you've bought a CPU from the past few years.
--
Now I have to go waste a large sum of cash on yet another FPS. Ah well, I'll use my NVN money.
Linux out of the box, I will support. Linux out of the, "Uh, uh, REAL SOON NOW GUYS! We promise!".. Go to hell.
Now if Sony/VI could get EverCrack working under Linux (The Mac! They're porting it to the Mac!), my MS Windows partition would be hosed faster than you could say, "Holy swap space, Batadmin!"
We can't support anything copyrighted. Why doesn't someone do a game for donations?
Picture rugby with guns and you've got the basic idea.
Rugby is a good comparison. If it was to be like American Football, whenever a player dropped the ball, you'd have to stop the game and cut for an ad break for 5 minutes.
mogorific carpentry experiments
You can run most windows games at a decent pace (including directx games, such as max payne) using winex/transgaming.
You're also forgetting the used game section of stores like EB, which are nearly all older games sold at a discount. If I were the only one buying these older games, this would not be the case at all.
And who cares if the reputation for Linux is budget games? If that's what the market actually consists of, then that's what is going to sell. I can guarantee you that there's at least as many Linux installs on older machines than newer ones. The people who most often "need" the fastest and newest machines are the gamers, and thus aren't going to be running Linux except on a server (which is most likely their old machine that they don't need for gaming any more). If people run Linux on older hardware and can only run older games or newer ones with low requirements then that's what can potentially sell.
I know the port was out years ago. I couldn't afford it at the full price, and even if I could have I wouldn't have sprung for it. There's only two games I've ever paid full price for: Quake III and Civ III. I bought the Windows version of Quake because I couldn't get 3d acceleration running on my machine at the time in Linux (it took more than a year to get it working in fact). I didn't want to wait for a month or more to buy the Linux version, and obviously I wasn't alone in that. I only pay full price for what I consider the best, and none of Loki's titles (other than Q3, which was late and didn't work for me) were what I considered the best. I had absolutely no responsibility to support Loki or anyone else. I didn't pirate their software but I also didn't buy it because I thought the price was too high. Obviously, so did others or they might still be here today. Like I said, older games at a bargain price. I would have easily paid $20 for Myth II and others, but not $50. They got half the equation right but priced themselves out of my range. I'm sorry if that's not good enough for the likes of you, but that's your problem.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
first BSD dies, now CStrike!!!! Good bye cruel world!!!!!!
(jumping out the window) AARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!
kko is dead
It's official; the coroner confirms kko is dead
One more crippling bombshell............
No, seriously, I just come here for the articles.
Why does my linux box screw up far more than my windows box? I use a Dell GX1 w/redhat 7.3. KDE/GNOME apps both crash once every two days or more. Often the panel segfaults. Usually opera won't start. My windows xp box (custom built athlon 1.4ghz/266) hasn't had a freeze in weeks, and the only app that crashes is Counterstrike.
Now, I still think windows sucks. I hate it because the user doesn't really get to know what anything is doing. It's not easy to script, monitor processes/users, or have reasonable assurance of security. As far as stability goes: for the desktop user, I still think windows 2000+ beats redhat 7x.
I work as a unix sysadmin. *nix kicks ass for production servers. Most of our webservers have 200+ day uptime. The NT ones are going to need daily reboots.
Maybe the window managers or applications are just buggy, but they are the most widely used so that's no excuse.
Myst for Linux? No, you have to run it under Wine
Half-life? or is that Wine too.
You were talking about ports. The market for ports of old games to Linux is tiny.
I care about Linux's reputation. If it's seen as a platform for old, budget games, then it's going to look like second best. I think it should look like the best.
Myth II was priced at $50 because that's the price that enables profit. The half of the equation that you are missing is the part where companies have a motivation to release for linux.
I have nothing against people wanting cheap games. But you can't expect Linux to get decent games if people wait for the companies to go under before buying their games at knockdown prices.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Would you happen to be Robert Dupree? Which Robert are you?
The only problem was keeping my wife from noticing my looking in that direction. Who cares what they name the stadium as long as we keep winning. They could name it Rusty's Frozen Custard Memorial Stadium for all I care. Anyone in Oklahoma that can give $50 million in 3 years deserves something.
If you really like the Sooners I suggest getting the XBox and get College Football 2003 from EA Sports, it is so realistic. If you program the names the announcers will say them (since they were recorded but couldn't be in the game because NCAA rules).
Hopefully Hybl can pull it out. People forget he was banged up real bad last year.
The best thing about living in Norman is every fall the town gets about 10,000 good looking girls from all over Oklahoma and Texas. If anyone is reading this from anywhere up north you've got no idea what you're missing. California, Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas and Colorado have the hottest damn women anywhere. Everytime I go to the North East or Chicago it's freaking brutal. Must be those hard winters. Oh wait Minnesota has some hot ass nordic women, ahhhh sweden/norway/finland, unbelieveable!!!
until a warez group releases it.
^_^
I would be happy to pay for HL a second time if it gave me a native Linux HL engine that works with CS.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
If you want to make inroads with Linux you can do something real simple as a developer. I don't understand why people don't grasp what I am about to say.
---SOLUTION---
Sell your program for Windoze but have the installation/play CD a bootable Linux system. Have the CD mount the Windoze installation directory and thanks to the fact you piggy-backed the Windows installation you can look up all the needed hardware and install the Linux drivers. Using a small file in the installation directory as a swap partition now for the "power" gamer he can boot into a Linux version of gaem XYZ cutting out all the MS fat and really get a performance boost.
There is the true way to make in-roads. The to subsidize your development costs have commericals in a small corner of the HUD that play while your are dead in CS 2.0 =) Better yet full screen ads to help pay for your server, thus preventing that nasty habit of ghosting....
Mmm.... Ahhhh... that hit the spot.
-- GOT DOOM? --
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
I care about Linux's reputation as well, but only to the extent that it deserves it. If there isn't a market for ports of new Linux games, then there isn't a market for ports of new Linux games. If there were, Tribes 2 would have likely sold a lot better for Loki, and quite possibly Q3 (although I think 3d acceleration was severely lacking at the time of Q3's release). Let's face it, Loki's plan sucked and that's why they didn't do well. They sold ports of year old games at year old prices. No one except die hard Linux fans will buy that, and quite frankly given Linux's actual cost that number is few and far between.
Once again, I'll point out the likelyhood of having Linux lying around on the old computer is far greater than having it as the sole OS on a brand new home desktop system. Linux has a wonderful reputation for being a fun and practical way to resurrect old boxes, and this wasn't gained for nothing. The old cheap game port idea could leverage this quite well. And yes, the market isn't huge, but it's no smaller than the market for new games that are only made for Linux out of the box. People will buy the cheaper windows version to avoid the porting costs and the possible hassle of distro incompatibilities simply because most new desktops will have some form of windows on them, and rebooting for a gaming session isn't a big deal.
Plunking down $50 dollars for yesteryear's game isn't going to help the Linux gaming market at all if you're looking to have it taken seriously as a platform for new games. It's not going to be much of a platform for new games until it really starts showing large numbers of desktop installs.
I understand perfectly well why Myth II was priced at $50, but that's the problem with the business plan. A very small number of people are going to pay the relatively high price for an old game that won't even run on their toy Linux system (but will run great on their Windows side). Companies can be motivated to allow ports of older games though because it's old news. They'd be wringing a few extra bucks out of an old product that they thought they were all done with. The cost that the porting house would have to pay would be much lower because it is an older game, and the original developers wouldn't feel the need to charge the massive price to port their latest hit (i.e. Tribes 2). What you obviously don't understand is that porting houses pay the developers to be allowed to port their games, not vice versa. In turn, the porting house expects to make some income on the game to pay off the costs for porting it. If the fee that the company charges is high, then the retail price would be high. If Loki had decided to port Bungie's Marathon series (before the release of the engine source) it probably would have cost them very little, and thus the product itself would have been cheaper and would have run on far more Linux installs.
Of course, I could be wrong about the idea that people are interested in old games on Linux, but there's a lot of projects that back me up. ScummVM, X-MAME, SNES9x, various NES emulators, FreeSCI, and of course, Freeciv. I can already hear you complaining that these are all free, which is true, but they do show that there is obvious interest in old gaming on Linux. And free is cheap, is it not? It's a little bit sad that the various companies like Lucasarts and Sierra didn't see that people might want to play their older titles under Linux, or they might have gone ahead with the projects themselves. But the community just implemented what they really wanted.
The community also wanted new games, and that's why we have WineX. Gamers wanted it all, so that's why Transgaming is still around but Loki is not. Porting just isn't good enough (I know this, having been a Mac person for years). I'm just as willing to support Transgaming as Loki. If they provide a service that's useful to me, then I'll purchase their product. Anything more or less is doing the Linux community, as well as the company in question, a disservice. If the reputation of Linux is really your concern, then you shouldn't be advocating artificially buoying poor business plans. If Transgaming survives, it will be because they provided what the Linux gaming community really wanted. And what the community wants is what should actually give Linux its reputation, not some feeling of needing to support some people just becuase they made something on Linux.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
[Maturity consists in the discovery that] there comes a critical moment
where everything is reversed, after which the point becomes to understand
more and more that there is something which cannot be understood.
-- S. Kierkegaard
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