LGP Announces Game Development Team
Ronald Hymer writes "Linuxlookup.com is reporting Linux Game Publishing has announced the Linux Game Development Project team. The eight winners of LGP's game development company initiative were announced last evening and Linuxlookup's very own resident programmer Matt Wilson was granted one of the eight positions on the team. Along with project information, they link submitted code samples along with the team member URL's." See our previous story about this. Hey team: no penguins in your game, okay?
Adventure games?
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
From the article, they don't appear to have any game ideas yet... I only hope they come up with something good.
--------
Free your mind.
Good luck competing in todays PC gaming market (hope you have the cash to buy a good game engine instead of taking the time to make one from scratch).
Remember, graphics and wizbangs are what makes the sale, but plot and fun is what makes a game outlast time.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Hey team: no penguins in your game, okay?
Amen brother!
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
...all those microsoft.com games that EVERY PERSON IN MY OFFICE SEEMS TO PLAY...
Bespelled, Bejeweled....hell, I was starting to think BeOS was making a comeback in the online games industry...
Actually, it would be great to see some Linux games that could still be enjoyable on slightly older machines...
But I second the opinion, please, no Giant Robotic penguins battling for supreme server space....
A nice Mech game would be good...
LosT
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
Looks like they haven't got any game to develop yet tho. Perhaps they can hook up with some other game designers and make their games more linux-friendly?
Try to make a Linux game that doesn't reek of amateurish game play and graphics for once...
LGP's current game, Ballistics, is looking pretty sweet. It's a 3D racing game with fighting and other neato things.
I am a filthy pirate.
where you can apply for this?
Jolan Tru. (If you know what this means, you're a tru geek)
how about
Duke Penguin
Mortal Linuks
Leisure Suit Linus
Max Penguin
Splinter Server: The M$ add-on
Sorry.
It's one of *those* days.
LosT
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."
I am skeptical. Is there enough hardware support to offer a realistic gaming experience that can be felt on other platforms?
Yes, I jumped in Doom. But I jumped alot higher in Quake II.
I can't wait to play some great games on my linux machine! Perhaps I am setting my standards a little high; but if this takes off the world may actually see that linux is not just an OS for geeks, but an OS that everybody will want to enjoy. I, personally, have been dissapointed by the serious lack of games for my favorite OS. I have always believed that, that was one of the big reasons that linux hasn't been a pervasive as it should be.
Thats just my opinion,
SitLantos
The flying hamster of DOOM rains coconuts on your pitiful city.
Having received only seven applications in all for the post, linuxlookup.com made up the deficit by "granting" the remaining position to one of their own programmers :)
Yeah, the only flaw I can find with Linux is the lack of games.
i think the adventure game market could be huge now...if they market it correctly. I mean come on, the last few FinalFantasy's played like a washed up wanna-be King's Quest with a bad combat system....and Resident Evil is just Alone in the Dark with a gun.
click me
This is the true story (true story) of eight unrelated programmers picked to work on a Linux project and have their code made open. This is what happens when programmers stop being nice, and start being real.
Seriously, I could see this as being the next big reality TV series. I have no doubt that there will be some serious "static" between these people. What kind of leadership model is there going ot be? Are they just throwing them together and letting them work it out amongst themselves? I worked on a Linux game with my best friend, and we were at each others throats within a week and had to ditch the project before we killed each other.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Does anyone have a link to the Linux Game Project's homepage? I googled for it, but didn't find it. (?!)
What's this Submit thingy do?
I wan't a game with chicks, guns and blood.. NOT merchandise for the OS it runs best on...
freeMoo2 like freeCiv2 I would be happy enough. Of course I would be even happier with freeDoom3.
In the past ten years, people having been flocking to get MFAs in creative writing. There are tons of writers out there. However, it always seem like game developers think that it would be better if they wrote their own stories and scripts. Writing is not a trivial business. I mean, everyone can write, but everyone can sing too. Why not get a writer to write? I understand it becomes a matter of control, and that the developers want to put in their own birlliant anime-influenced ideas, but its like letting the programmers draw the graphics. I suggest getting a writer to write the story, and let them run the story.
Don't forget..
Dark Ages of Penguins
LinuxQuest
OS Craft
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Free your mind.
... how I got labelled an "International Man of Mystery".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No need to purchase an expensive 3D engine. The Tux Racer engine is GPL'd and kicks ass!
They seem to make or break the systems in the console market. The final fantasy series is totally evidence of that. Good adventure games would be sweet too. Anyone for Sam n Max?
I hope they code up some MMORPG. We need some linux MMORPG's (well, with a port to windows so we arnt all alone bickering about what rm -rf / does :S)
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
Make one of those, please. The dependence on the 3D card of the user will be minimal. The influence of Linux will be huge. It'll be a new new thing, not a copy of the old new thing. It'll be a challenge.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
a MMORPG entitled:
/.'
'Linux Warriors: The Battle of
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Not even Tuxamillion? The Penguin version of Maximillion?
StarTux
will come out when it's ready. Not before. Now go away.
Here's a few more:
Age of Geeks
Balmer's Gates
Ballmer's Gates II: Shadows of Redmond
(Eris S.) Rayman
Solid Snack: Sons of Lethargy
Without sounding sarcastic, what to they expect to accomplish? Loki tried; they had excellent game engines and talented programmers. Tribes 2, Hero's of Might & Magic 3, Heavy Gear 2, Heretic 2, Railroad Tycoon, Myth 1 & 2. Not to mention the Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 and the ton of Quake 2/3 based games. **IF** Loki's biggest problem was indeed mismanagement then lets hope LGP has better people in charge.
:) Hey LGP!!! Give Sierra a call. I'm sure they will hook you up like they did Loki. "You can co-develop along with windows, can't release it till 6 months after the windows client is released. PLUS we will charge you 100's of 1000's of bucks for engine licensing. Then, we will release the engine for 100 bucks AFTER you've folded" /sarcasm
I think they should start with Tribes 3
I've nothing of importance to say, now go away before I taunt you with a second sig!
Has anyone tried this SCI interpreter for Linux? I loved Space Quest, King's Quest, and Quest for Glory...
This would have been great for Idremna. :) But hey, perhaps these linux games could be easily ported to such a console if the future does bring one to life?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Using Crystal Space would really make sense in a project like this.
How about the classics?!?! (Disk)Space Invaders Mist (Deadlines) and last, but not least: Sim Penguin
The entire writeup at linuxlookup.com was lifted verbatim from my announcement at happypenguin.org. As far as I know, this team has not been announced *anywhere* yet besides happypenguin. Plagiarism sucks, guys.
I much prefer an open-source game; it allows me to make tweaks and implement house rules; something a proprietary game does not allow.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Oh my god! YES!! A game that uses the most powerful imaging software on earth >>>the user's IMAGINATION! Clever storylines, some way to tie in multiple users... good grief! Nerds could start meeting nerdettes... it would be almost like... a life... LOL! Seriously - I strongly agree - this kind of game could be HUGE.
and the odler games, they were totally void of any such cases? I mean, yeah, those platformer games really went beyond good versus evil and blowing shit up. Right. Or even Ultima, or Wizards and Warriors, Might and Magic, ADVENT, etc etc and etc...it's all cliche and violence...
if anything games are involving towards more plot and less linearity.
click me
-----QUOTE-----
And, hey, if they MUST use first person, why not a first person multi-player game WITH a story... imagine king's quest first person where you walk around a 3d environment... what if you took your friends along with you for the quest? That way you can chat with them and you can all cooperatively solve problems / puzzles / decide on things?
-----ENDQUOTE-----
Isn't that exactly what A Tale in The Desert offers? And with a Linux-Native Client too!
lysergically yours
... unless you're running an AMD cpu (they still haven't fixed the loop error in the binaries, and I have better things to do than recompile a game I'm too busy to play anyway).
Here's to the hope that we can get a decent, native Linux game going.
If this article confuses you, don't worry. It was posted yesterday in a much clearer fashion.
Dude, you made my day with "Leisure Suit Linus", that was too damn funny.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
I very much doubt that you are the target-group anyway. It seems that you just loves every game with bloathed graphics and run to your local store (if you aren't a 0-dayz warez-guy) because of the nice commercials. I have played C&C Generals on my machine, and really don't give a damn, redalert still rocks (a simular game just went opengl for kde). The game is not innovative, the idea is about 15 years old (Dune), only graphics improve and different features arrive or gets lost.
:) these people seems to be hardcore game-programmers. One had made one of my favorite games for years: mad bomber! man I played that on my Amiga with my friends a lot in the early 1990's :) Another makes great samples, another really great graphics. The only question is if those people can actually work together, because then I cannot see why they couldn't make a succesful game that hopefully are TRUELY innovative.
.
.
For the articles sake (eventhough it is the shortest one I read today, yippie
(yes this can be compared with sex)
Man, if they could do a cool adventure game, with humour like the Monkey Island series, I'd be all over it.
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."
Please don't feed the trolls -
Seriously, I used to keep a ms partition on my computer back in 1994 or so, so I could play doom.
That was then, this is now - with all the great id titles over the years (doom II, quake, quake II, Q3A) and games with the id graphics engine (RtCW), or other games such as unreal tournament, or any of the other linux games I haven't even had a chance to play, linux gaming is good for a lot of folks, including me.
Can't wait for doom 3 -
Sierra (when they were still named Online Systems) published a game called Softporn Adventures.
;)
Here's an image of the box.
Here it is emulated. 100% text! Softporn indeed.
That's right, I couldn't remember how it was spelled. Thanks. :)
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Linus has already forked a child process, hence he has definitely gotten laid... sorry about the Leisure Suit Linus game idea, but it doesn't hold up.
Next!
All: ????
Coder6: Profit!
Here we have 8 coders, working parttime. A quick conversion into man-hours, and it'll take them, say, 6-10 years to make a game?
And they haven't even got a game idea! And there's a vague mention of hiring some artists at some point, which is more than a little weird considering the artists have at least as much work to do as the coders...
Any designers writing design documents? Nope, didn't think so.
Personally, I'd like to see something combining the storyline of a good RPG with the action of a good FPS. Open ended would be nice, something like Privateer or Freelancer but in a fantasy or military setting rather than as a space sim.
Not that I'd mind any of those things, but when you can refer to the genre of your game in shorthand ("FPS") and you want to re-make existing games in a different setting, that's hardly breaking new ground. Do we want the open community to produce nothing but less-polished takes on overpriced, over-card-dependent consumer boxed titles?
(Anyone who can come up with a worthy successor to M.U.L.E. would have my blessing, such as it is.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Eh? Penguins aren't in the Dark Ages... It's Dark Age of Redmond, of course, wherein the wizard Linus helps the GNUs overcome the Black Knight, Bill...
now point a gun at them and tell em they have less than 60 seconds to do it :)
We know you're not a rookie, but a brief refresher course will sharpen you up for your mission.
LGP is encouraging this team to make a Windows version as well, so if it's halfway decent they should be able to fund the GNU/Lunix port.
If it good, I'll buy it and hopefully they won't port it to Windows. That will be the day everything changes, the day that Linux gets it own exclusive game.
Maybe for the Xbox port of linux you will be allowed to run an extreme sports game, using a colour with RGB values greater than 128.
One good game from past which has no be updated or
has got part II.
Seal team.
Even there has been similar games,not yet there has been as good as seal team was.
Gameplay like ST but new story and update to real 3D.
People are wondering about business models, etc. But lets look at what is happening here. Yes they are probably creating closed source products. But the fact of the matter is that they have an open development process. This is a totally new twist to building software.
I truly find this interesting, especially with your twist of suggestions from the slashdot community...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Hell, the original title would still do: '... in the Land of the Lounge Lizards'. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Not everyone is a FPS fan. Some (infact, most) people would like a more diverse selection of games. Look at the PS2 vs Xbox. The Playstation 2 is selling more because it has the largest selection of great games. There's something for everybody. The same cannot be said for Linux gaming, or even PC gaming in general for that matter.
but plot and fun...
Remember, this is an English Language Query, NOT a boolean. Therefore the original poster did not mean you had to have plot AND fun in order for the game to have staying power, but that plot and fun were two members of the set of criteria that can result in staying power. Therefore, a game with plot alone can have staying power, a game with fun alone (Ms. Pacman for example) can have staying power, and a game with plot AND fun can have staying power.
You responded rudely to a post that did NOT exclude your game from the possible set of games with staying power. Ms. Pacman is "fun" and therefore has the possibility to have stying power within the parameters of the original post.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
For those of you that don't know, Spaceward Ho! (that's not being a Ho!) was a space exploration/strategy game for the Mac. It was a lot of fun. sort of Civ'ish.
-- DuckWing
The team were only informed that they'd been selected sometime late last night!
It's a bit early to expect anything other than "getting to know each other" chat via email.
www.sjbaker.org
I think in the original contest document, they stated that they'd purchase the required devlopment tools, eg. the torque engine (I think they should have called it the Newton-Metre engine, har har). Torque is a pretty nice engine really, good enough anyway, games aren't built on graphics alone. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing a game with some Tribes-like aspects. I found Tribes fun mostly because of the challenge, and freedom. The challenge comes from the speed, and funny physics they employ (most people don't slide down hills at 100kph ;)). Whenever you shoot your weapon at speed, just like real physics, it takes on the velocity you currently have. Aiming at your target isn't enough, or aiming where you think he'll be isn't enough, you have to aim such that you compensate for speed! It's really great fun, not to mention the fairly large map sizes, which give you pretty well all the running around room you could want. To make a game fun, I'd say you need a few things (from my point of view as a gamer anyway):
-it has to be hard enough, that you can be horrible at it to begin with, but eventually 'master' it and have some sense of accomplishment
-it has to have some innate sense of fun, all the typical fun qualities apply here: explosions, high speed, tension, humour, excessive brutality (not gruesome, but just enough for you to say "jeez, that was awfully painful looking")
-you should be able to play it for short periods of time, no sitting down for 2 hours just to make some marginal increase in progress. that's not fun, that's just repetition (everquest reference here really).
-if it is online, it should be VERY easy to be social. if people have friends in the game, they're more apt to play it, more apt to buy, etc.
-directly linked to the previous point, teamplay is important if it's online. online games really shine when you pretty well FORCE teamplay, because it makes people talk to each other, be more social, and overall have a better time! (which is what games are about right? having fun?)
-having said all that, it should have some sort of innovation. no one is expecting revolutionary work here, but at least make something that stands on it's own. dont' let anyone say "well, it's really like q3 and counterstrike put together" make them say "well.. uh.. well, it's really just like it is, hard to compare it to anything". I think that's important, because if they are forced to say that, THEN you know you've given them something they can't get anywhere else.
These are just what I can think of at the moment, but that's briefly what I find when I look at the games I really really played a lot, and truly liked. I'm actually quite excited to see what they can come up with, should be very interesting!
Most people probably don't know who Steve Baker is. He's been in the Linux 3D community for AGES. He started out as a big-time contributor to FlightGear, the open-source and relatively good flight simulator. However, he was working for a big commercial outfit that eventually decided his participation in the project was a conflict of interest, and he had to drop out.
He began developing a 3D library for "toy games," but this was just an elaborate ruse. In fact, the 3D library was quite useful for (you guessed it) the FlightGear project.
Since then, his publically-stated stance of developing this 3D library for games got some notice from game developers that took him seriously, and in the vein of "self-fulfilling prophecies" his libraries became quite good at their officially-stated purpose.
Steve Baker is one of the little heroes in my own personal list of little heroes, which would include a whole lot of names no-one knows despite the fact that they're extremely important in the open source world.
(sigh) Thanks, Steve et al.
fifth sigma, inc.
In addition there is a MMORPG company, Lyra Studios, which wants someone to port their game client for Underlight to Linux. Underlight is a pretty cool MMORPG which actually focuses on *gasp* Role-Playing and player interaction. It's pretty cool, and they just need someone with the necessary experience to port it. So, if you are a Game Programmer with experience in DirectX and OpenGL and such, and would like to help out with this, contact Lyra.
Note: I am not a Lyra Employee, I'm just someone who really likes Underlight, and would love to play it under his OS of choice.
http://icculus.org/updates/ssam
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1324
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Games are more than code. This team seems unbalanced.
I am surprised almost no one noticed that one of the guys is a software engineer at an internal Microsoft graphics department.
It shows that either the Slashdot public doesn't read the articles, or it has matured enough to not pay attention to such "exotic" details.
I myself have obviosly not matured.
The GPL is geared towards a single sale - great for a lot of software, but obviously not for games (unless you're promoting hardware). Once one copy is out, you no-longer have total distribution control.
AFAIK we are left with the following options (please post any I've missed):
Purely donations/download charge (voluntry)
The Ransom model (we release when the money pot reachs $X. Blender Style. Except you don't know what you're going to get. If ever.(unless they release preview non-gpl binaries).
"Impure" Licencing. Like Quake - The code is free, but the artwork isn't. I think this is legal, but I'm not sure (in general. Obviously ID can "violate" their own copyright)
Adding value to something else you're selling. i.e. hardware or a service. Perhaps a magazine. I can't think of any relevant gaming hardware. This could work (short-term) with evercrack type games, and games with good, essential manuals.
Making it hard to copy because of size/tech. i.e. most people don't have access to a dvd burner. (Record Companies were originaly protected by this. Then they got copyright.) This wouldn't work because it would end up on a linux magazine.
There is an obvious parallel between this GPL copying/money problem and Illegal Copying.
I think the target audience of this awaited game are on average vastly more technically competant than any other platform - corupt cds hold no significant anti-copying value. The only protection is a respect for the law and the publisher - So why not use the "impure" option?(replacement free artwork would take time). I think linux people would really apreciate the free code.
With all those programmers, I wonder where the creative content (art, sounds, etc) will come from. Usually leaving that stuff in the hands of the programmers results in shitty looking and sounding games. Like the majority that are already available for Linux.
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire.
:-|
More than mere navel gazing.
Mortal Linuks is already in the making at http://apocalypse.rulez.org/~upi/Mortal
No penguins, though.
Maaaaaan, now I'm regretting that I didn't submit an entry. There are no women on the team! How depressing.
Why was that a troll?
Are they paying those people?
And since when is 2 - 2 = -1 ?
By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in
the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were
still five feet between rails.
It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,
in one day. This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May
of 1886. For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the
axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which
could run on the new track as soon as it was ready. Finally, on the day set,
great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn. Everywhere one
rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its
new position. By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate
over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere
was possible.
-- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957
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