Slashdot Mirror
Linux Port of Disciples 2 Announced
bobz writes "Happypenguin is reporting that Linux Game Publishing has announced the next game they'll port to Linux will be Disciples 2: Dark Prophecy a turn-based strategy game that was well-reviewed but not terribly successful commercially. /me breathes a sigh of relief that it's not another first-person shooter."
a turn-based strategy game that was well-reviewed but not terribly successful commercially. /me breathes a sigh of relief that it's not another first-person shooter
Why in the hell would you port a game that won't bring in money? Honestly, porting games that bring in a TON of cash commercially do poorly in the Linux market, so who thinks that porting an unsuccessful game would bring in a profit?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The fact that theres too damn many of them.
Some of us want to play games that don't involve a first person perspective and blowing things to bits. Games that involve wider strategies, or more detailed plot structures or charachter development or improvement. Some of us just don't have the 1337 5ki11z to be good at FPS, ans prefer strategy or role playing games.
Thats whats wrong with First Person Shooters.
Port 69, the Linux Port of Discipline.... mmmm.
Good to hear they're up to 2.0, I hear that version 1 had some nasty bugs.
Wah!
OK, from the slashdot article:
Posted by michael, written by bobz.
From the happy penguin article:
In IRC today, evil genius Michael Simms... , this article was written by bobz.
I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine? I was wondering why a non-profitable game being ported to a market that has never been marketable (linux ported games) was a frontpage slashdot article. Now I know.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Product Title Disciples 2: Dark Prophecy
Available
LanguagesEnglish
Suggested Retail
Price£30.00
Product Description
Disciples II: Dark Prophecy returns gamers to the magical realm of the Sacred Lands where four races - the Empire, the Mountain Clans, the Legions of the Damned and the Undead Hordes - continue the battle for the destiny of their Gods. A decade after the First Great War, the final prophecy continues to unfold. Deep within the crevices of the Sacred Lands, the Chosen One has emerged, fated to bring salvation to some and destruction to others. Braced with renewed faith and newfound conviction, each race must once again take up the sword for the sake of their people and the glory of their God.
Disciples 2: Dark Prophecy comes in a DVD-style case on a single CD-Rom
Current Status:
Agreement signed, no development yet.
Minimum RequirementsCurrently unknown
Prerelease InformationRelease Date is currently not announced
... but is this the right approach?
I'm a gamer, I'll admit, and I love seeing the great new games that come to market. And even moreso, I love it when these games work in Linux. Currently, I can get nearly every game I want to play to work in Linux. For the ones that don't, I wait patiently...
However, I wish I could say the same for my friends - lots of them are thoroughly intrigued by the idea of Linux, and really want to switch to only Linux - but lack of support for newer games hold them back. I can certainly get what I want to play to work, but when my friends ask "But will Battlefield 1942 work?" I have to say "No." I think that work has to begin on either porting massively popular games, or convincing more devlopers to develop for Linux (although I am happy with progress so far!).
As a side issue - wouldn't it be in LGP's best interest to work on porting games that are more comercially successful? I know that there's more to it than just getting people to switch to Linux, but I'd like to ensure that they can stay in business too!
Illegitimi non Carborundum.
Well, editor, that may be your opinion, but to us gamers first person shooters are most 1337 game there is.
I don't have 2 weeks to play a simulation or turn based game, or figure out a plot based walker, but I do have half an hour at the end of the work day to frag my IT buddies and then turn it off and walk away.
My passion for the past year has been bzflag, the 100% open source multiplayer game made in the mold of battle zone. It is a little slower and more deliberate than the action packed quake or unreal, but I found that it takes real skill to keep your frag/death count positive.
bzflag handle: xxxl
still mourning the death of games.astercity
music lover since 1969
not to be a buggaboo or anything - but when will a really good RPG or Action adventure come to Linux (and don't tell me Nethack or Wyvern) - granted Neverwinter Nights is going to come out for linux and that's great - but I want to see a (IMHO) FUN RPG (like FF, DW, Septerra core, Chrono Cross, Skys of Arcadia) come out or be ported to Linux - i'd even be willing to helpout with a project like that....
but of course I guess most nix people really like TBS and FPS types....since thats most of the game's i've seen for it...
Ave Molech Setting
Hi,
I'm currently working a 3D version of Freecraft, which in turn is a 3D version of Warcraft.
It is comming along quite nicely, and if anyone would like to give a hand with the models or coding or anything, you would be welcome.
See a kinda old screenshot at http://130.88.226.154/snap4.png
The game is progressing very quickly - trees are in now, units expected with a week, etc.
Anyway, message me through slashdot or email or anything.
You carry on yarnin' like that sonny, and you ain't gonna be goin' to Heaven y'hear? Hyuk, hyuk.
Couldn't agree more.
The fact is, I'm really quite good at first person games, but the more THINKING that's involved, the better. For instance, I prefer capture the flag to deathmatch, and prefer Return to Castle Wolfenstein to Quake 3 (much more strategy, in my opinion). Even better are the games that combine the best of FPS and add RPG elements, such as System Shock 2 or Deus Ex.
What's great about Disciples II is that it's turn-based, which makes it great for the thinkers who aren't into twitch gaming, but makes network play rather tedious. If you haven't played it before, the gameplay is almost exactly like Heroes of Might and Magic, but with a dark and dreary gothic look to it. Brings out the Necromancer in you!
The speed of time is one second per second.
You can also purchase the 1.07 version of MindRover and buy an update for the original version of the LokiGames release (which will also enable you to get future updates.
9
Information here:
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/info.php?id=
Finally, got my own linuxsimulations.org site going, to help cover Linux Simulations that run on Linux, which is a neglected area at teh moment.
StarTux
But yeah. Plenty of them out there. The reason I
like them is that there is no time commitment. You
are in and out and it's over. No need to find the
mystic jewel of donut or anything like that. What
I'd REALLY like to see is a kickass multiplayer
online racing game. Something that's as good as a
playstation2 racing game. Need For Speed 8, where
you race against online players through super
realistic maps of real life cities. Twould (yeah,
invented a word) rule to blow by other online
players in a ferrari spyder with the top down on
lakeshore drive, or US 1, or route 66.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
OK, don't take this as a troll (and no I'm not just saying that to Karma Whore), but what kind of a choice is this for a Linux port? Having never played the game myself, I won't comment on whether it's good or not, but I can comment on the interest this will recieve with your average gamer: 0.
Seriously, if you're going to go to all the trouble of porting a game, why wouldn't you want to port a big-name title that might actually generate some interest? Where's The Sims? Where's Civilization 3? Where's Warcraft 3? Where's Unreal Tournament? Hell, where's the Half Life client?
Is it just the developers that make this difficult? Are the small guys (or obscure games) the only ones willing to play ball? Are there GPL issues at work here? I really can't understand how a developer/publisher would object to some company wanting to port their game to another platform, assuming they could work out some kind of deal where the original developer/publishing house would get a portion of profits made. Is it a fear of quality control? (Which, if true, is really funny if you've patched...er, played a major release video game in the past 5 years).
Seriously, this is not meant to be an anti-linux troll or flame. I'm really interested in what the major road-block here is. Sorry to any Disciples 2 fans out there, but releases like this will do next to nothing to generate interest in big-time Linux gaming.
I've played it through, all four campaigns, and the game itself is great. However, the computer is too easy to fool (even on Very Hard), though I felt the same in HOMM3 (haven't played HOMM4), so I guess that's not just this game.
Playing it multiplayer is a whole different beast, but I really don't like it. All too much depends on who sees who first and can beef up/spellblast to make the actual fight completely uneven.
Personally I feel it was well worth the money, but once you finish the campaigns it's not much more to do, the scenarios aren't that interesting. It's a game to play once, win, and find the next good one in the bin. But that's fine with me, I got bored with Morrowind because it was *too* big - I had to get a solve to actually get anywhere with the main quest - I was winning every battle, but didn't find the right battles to fight....
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Disciples II: Dark Prophecy is a fine, addictive turn-based strategy game that will have you up all hours of the night, unable to tear yourself away from the computer.
After immersing myself in the demo for two weeks and alienating myself from my family, I was compelled to purchase the game. Unfortunately, CompUSA did not have the collector's edition on the shelf, so I settled for the regular edition.
I haven't been able to stop playing since I bought it.
The oddest part is, I've never been a fan of turn-based strategy. I could just never get into it. Disciples II has opened my eyes to a whole new world of gaming. It's that rare game that offers a thoroughly satisfying experience.
The Disciples series has been and will continue to be compared to HOMM (which is readying for a release of its fourth installment). One of the things that jumps out as a striking difference is the graphics. While both games boast some very attractive images, Disciples is a decidedly darker game and more grounded, it seems, in the fantasy setting. And while HOMM's combat screen is moving to a more isometric and zoomed-out perspective, Disciples II adheres to a combat interface that displays large images of the units, which makes for more detailed characters and interesting animations.
The units in the game are quite varied and boast some intriguing--and even amusing--abilities. In one battle, for example, I put my Undead Hordes army, consisting of a Death Knight, Doomdrake and Fighter, up against a neutral army that included two magic-using units that could transform my units. My Doomdrake was transformed into a huge blubbery Jabba-the-Hut figure for a number of rounds and, when attempting to attack in this state, would simply fall over backwards. It was a frustrating battle, but I somehow prevailed. And beware of armies with Ghouls and Ghosts or Specters. These units can paralyze your units. You'll spend round after round watching your units be paralyzed and pummeled.
One of the great features of the game is RPG-like development of your units. Some of the most important decisions you make will be the upgrade paths you choose. The upgrade paths determine the abilities, strengths and weaknesses of your advanced units.
One of the things you'll quickly discover is that you have to build balanced parties in order to survive your battles. Units have various immunities, so if you assemble an army of units with the same kind of attack, you'll likely encounter an enemy with an immunity to it and find yourself getting thrashed. Elements like this add a lot of tactical decision making to the gameplay.
The only real complaint I can lodge about the game at this point is that the retreat feature seems to me to be rather flawed. Retreating from combat usually means death to your party. I'd really like to see a patch to improve this feature so that you can bow gracefully out of a battle when you find yourself overmatched. In a game where economy is important and resources are contested, it's just too expensive to lose a whole group of units, which occurs more often than not when you attempt to retreat.
All in all, Disciples II is a very satisfying and challenging game. I can only hope that Strategy First will continue to release add-ons and sequels to the series, because I am thoroughly hooked.
It seems that no matter what kind of game this is, it deserves the comment "Oh, not yet another *blank*". Not yet another FPS. Not yet another RTS. Not yet another MMORPG. I'm not just talking about Linux here, there just isn't a whole lot of variety out there *period*.
Don't get me wrong - I'm a Linux gamer and I'm pleased to see more coming out. I really love UT2K3 and my copy of NWN is pre-ordered. I hate TBS, so I'll pass on this one probably, unless I find it on the cheap somewhere. I bought a bunch of Loki games just to support them and look where that got me (crickey - Postal is a crappy game).
But back to my off-topic - are there any unique ideas out there about game-types? We have our FPS and our strategy games (TBS and RTS). We have RPGs including MMORPGS, real-time, turn-based, hybrid, 3d and isomorphic. There are card games and economic sims (I *heart* gazillionaire), empire builders and even bridge builders. But when was the last time you saw something new? The Sims? Boy are we in trouble.
Does anybody have a really cool and unique idea you could let us in on?
A Linux port of an underachieving game makes the headlines, but news of a MySQL security hole does not.
I guess that's what they mean by security through obsurity.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
"Suggested Retail
Price£30.00"
Who here in the States has £30.00 laying around?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I think that work has to begin on either porting massively popular games
Off course all of us linux users would love to have every big name game available in a native linux port, but Linuxgamepublishing (LGP) has not choice but to contiue down this path.
First off, game companies don't want to pay to have their games ported to Linux. LGP must pay the game company to port their game and also pay royalties on each copy to them as well in the same manner that Loki did (minus the corruption).
I asked Mike Simms about this a few weeks ago, and he brought up that new AAA titles are very expensive to port, so for LGP to be profitable they are mostly porting lesser known titles.
It would be great if he could work with game companies as a consultant to port games, but the very small nubmer of companies that are willing to pay for this service are being served by icculus.org.
Mike is a really nice guy and has no interest in competing with icculus for porting contracts.
wouldn't it be in LGP's best interest to work on porting games that are more comercially successful?
.com boom?) of buying rights to less successful games. They're going to be much cheaper, and thus require much fewer sales to recoup the costs of. With the dearth of Linux games, users are going to buy the game if it interests them whether or not it's a big-name title. For example, I never would have heard of Disciples if I was still using Windows. But because I use Linux and I crave HOMM-like gameplay, I'll be buying the only new game in that genre, namely Disciples 2. What's the point? To make money. Not a ton of money, but to make money. If LGP can profit off of Disciples, then they can afford to do another game. Maybe a bigger-name game. Each game they can profit off of grows not only themselves but the Linux game market. With a slow, conservative approach they have a much better chance of being successfull than if they bought a $300,000 game, lost $1 mill, then went bankrupt.
Short answer: No.
Long answer: A game that is commercially successful is going to cost more to get a license for. Loki apparently payed several hundred thousand dollars for the rights to some of their games. Unsurprisingly, the immature Linux gaming market wasn't large enough for them to recoup their costs. That, along with mismanagement, is what buried Loki. LGP, not wanting to go bankrupt, is taking the much more conservative business model (remember that, from before the
The reason you think work has to begin on porting massively popular games seems to be because of a common, but incorrect line of thinking: That Linux has to become a major desktop success right now. It doesn't. Modest, sustainable growth in Linux gaming is the correct method, and the one that will work. Maybe the size of the market will reach a critical mass and be able to grow much more rapidly, but trying to force that day to come sooner by over-reaching is a recipe for failure. LGP learned this lesson from Loki, and I think they learned the right one.
The enemies of Democracy are
May I suggest giving Thief and Thief 2 a whirl? Described as first person sneakers, they require you to listen well, move with stealth and plan your actions. By far my favourite "FPS" series.
Trolling is a art,
For a good thinking game go give Ghost Recon a shot. A game is a lot harder when all it takes is one bullet to take you out of the picture. Its based on the Tom Clancy Op Center novels I believe.
In Republican America phones tap you.
A quick question about the multiplayer for those that have played the windows version. Is there multiplayer? The only type that I saw mentioned was hot seat. I've been looking around for a nice slow paced strategy game lately and this might be it. I'd still like to be able to play it with my friends online though.
In Republican America phones tap you.
Linux users are somewhat of a captive audience. They are somewhat more educated and probably more likely to read a review of a game at least once before getting it. Also, they are more likely to see any particular game because of the low number of high quality games available. If a game does not do well in the main stream because it was overshadowed, it didn't apply to the majority of people, or maybe it just wasn't so completely innovative that it captured everyone that had contact with it, then market it to a smaller market where quality, (thought not necesarily originality), matters. A market that is actively looking for good, quality games.
I think it's interesting that the market for linux games developed for profit is slowly increasing. It began with the FPS's, but it is now moving more into the simulation and RPG geners. I hope that the pattern holds, and no matter how slowly, the linux game market becomes as plentiful as the windows game market.
I do security
Whether or not releasing a port of some old Windows game makes good business sense is debatable. But what are these people thinking when they spend good time and money porting a game that wasn't successful on Windows ? If it ain't successful on Windows, how do they expect to make their money on Linux, where there are far fewer gamers ? Wouldn't it make more sense to port some game that was moderately succesful ? Maybe this is some stealth MS project designed to make Linux look really bad...
...chosen to port the infinity engine games. All of the games are basically the same in terms of design and what not, you port one you port them all. And obviously, most Linux users are the geeky kind: we like RPG's, and I would bet alot of money that half of the people reading Slashdot right now own an Infinity engine game.
...that porting the infinity engine would allow to rapidly make mods and expansions - Linux only expansions. Also, official expansion packs could easily be ported, probably very near to the actual date of the Windows release.
LGP is quite a promising group of people. They're working alongside Tuxgames to sell their software. If you support Linux, you should purchase all your software from Tuxgames. As for Happypenguin, this news is 24 hours old and Linuxgames.com posted an article before they did :-) . Happypenguin.org covers more home-brew games than Linuxgames.com, but when it comes to commercial games they both offer competitivly insightful forums. For the greatest source of gaming news in europe, HOLARSE is the place to go (PS: use babelfish).
In fact, just now, Linuxgames.com has an article about how LGP is taking over the porting effort of Mindrover: Eruopa Project. And one last thought, Linuxgames.com doesn't censor their forums, unlike Happypenguin.org
But I'm sure you already Gnu that.
why would you use a hardened Server OS, for games?
Disciples 2? Crappy? Under which rock did you slither from?
Turn based fantasy strategy at it's most addictive. Way better than HOMM..
that they never port the popular MMORPG's? such as EQ and DAOC? These are probably the biggest fanatic driven games out there... a huge number of the people playing these games ONLY play their one RPG and do virtually nothing else on the machine, these would be perfect candidates for a port since they aren't tied to their OS except for the game. I know several people who play EQ or DAOC and keep dual-boots just for this purpose...
I guess there are a few ways to read that headline. At first reading, I figured a few "disciples" had gotten together and made a distribution of Linux... figured they called it "Port of Disciples". And now they're announcing their second version, considering the raving success of the first version.
Michael Sims, /. user 4716 and editor, posted a story about a game being ported by Michael Simms, user 580077. They are two different people. There is no reason Michael Sims ought not to have posted the news about Michael Simms' port. There is no conflict of interest just because they have similar names.
And by the way, Disciples 2 was rated very highly by just about every review site out there. IIRC, Disciples 1 was multiple-GOTY awarded. However, Disciples 2 was not very well marketed. I would bet Disciples 2 will be on Gamespot's 2002 Awards for Best Game Nobody Played.
Yo, IT is not Michael Sims. But REALLY Michael Simms. So it could be the same guy. Because Michael Simms editor at slashdot has given interviews with CNN, answered questions with newsgroups using MICHAEL SIMMS as his name.
0 01 -02/msg00396.html
/. fame. Timothy and Michael will discuss Slashdot's
9 9- 07/msg00385.php
/. you need to have a very big stick and live close
I ain't saying it is the sam guy. But sho do look strange.
Well I am gonna post this three times, so flame on, troll, do whatever. I dont care here is what a little investigation brought back. Maybe someone here can do a more digging with this evidence.
The links are too articles and the articles are quoted below the links. Almost looks like to be the same Michael as Michael Simms from Slashdot has a uk email address in one. Isnt Linux Games UK based?
Michael Simms..
http://www.nylug.org/mlist/nylug-talk_mhonarc/2
This an excerpt from an article about a LUG that interviewed Michael and Timothy from Slashdot. Please
note Michaels last Name is SIMMS, not Sims. The same one as the Linux Gamers Guy.
Please join us for a glimpse into "A Day in the life of a Slashdot
Poster". Our presenters will be michael (Michael Simms) and timothy
(Timothy Lord) of
history, what it's like working on one of the busiest sites on the Web,
and other issues of importance to the Linux and Open Source community.
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/19
This is an article where Michael Simms(Michael from Slashodot)responds to a forum question about slashdot
and his return email is on a UK. Server, more wood for the fire?
From: Michael Simms <grim@argh.demon.co.uk>
To: scrappy@hub.org (The Hermit Hacker)
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Slashdot...
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 1999 02:37:57 +0100 (BST)
> Does anyone know what you have to do to get anything on slashdot? When
> v6.5 and v6.5.1 was released, I posted something to Slashdot announcing
> it, especially considering that the new MVCC code added by Vadim...
To get anything on
to rob so when he doesnt get round to posting information, you can
beat him with it.
If you dont live close to him, then the chances are about one in a
billion it will get posted. You could always email linus and get him
to mail rob, that will do it too {:-)
Yep, making line Enos from the Duke of Hazzard today. I am on the case.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
And RTSes are any better? While there's slightly less RTS titles than there are FPSes, there's still a horde of uninspired, derivative games out there; How many times can you remake Dune 2 (or whatever you consider the seminal RTS)?
Besides, most RTSes have -some- flaw in the game balance that allows your to win, not neccessarily by applying strategy & thought but by abusing the game mechanics.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Well, editor, that may be your opinion, but to us gamers first person shooters are most 1337 game there is.
I think myself an occasional gamer (with too little time for it), but personally I find non-realtime games more appealing than first person shooters. It's nice to be able to take a little break by reading newsgroups, browsing web, talking to phone etc. That's just not so simple with first person shooters.
About the lack of time; the non-realtime games tend to have amazing features like "save game" too. ;) I've been playing Jagged Alliance 2 for a long time now, it doesn't really hurt if it's one battle per month or so.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.