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Linux Gaming after Loki
mahdi13 writes "Linux Hardware has a great story about the past, present and future of Linux Gaming in 2003. They briefly touch on the commercial games available and what will be available for Linux in the near future. It is a good read and contains excellent information to keep the Linux Gamers satisfied with what is commercially available."
keep the Linux Gamers satisfied with what is commercially available
Come on! No Linux gamer with his stuffed penguin would say that it is possible for him to be satisfied with what is commercially available for Linux.
Another great place to find loki games that wasn't mentioned in the article is used bookstores. I'm not sure if they're a nation-wide chain, but Half-priced books in columbus, OH usually has a bunch of loki linux games that I guess people probably bought thinking they were windows games. You can get most of them for a buck or two. I also found copies of quake3 a year ago at microcenter for $3! Though, I suppose at this point thats probably what you would expect to pay anywhere...
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
is that sort of like Windows Security?
Karma: Chameleon (mostly affected when you come and go, you come and go)
The Past
Loki has undoubtedly become a synonym for "Linux game." While the company is long gone, their legacy lives on. Many of their works can still be had for a fair price at online vendors such as TuxGames, or at local shops which still carry older stock. I have found a number of my Loki titles at Electonics Boutique, including a tin box version of Quake 3 Arena. So which Loki-ported games were released? Which ones are still available? Well, the first question has an easy answer. If you look in the table, any game title that is still in stock is a link to its respective page on TuxGames. If there is no link, then the game is out of stock. This is not to say that you can't find it anywhere, but just that TuxGames no longer carries it.
Alpha Centauri Civilization: Call to Power Descent 3 1
Deus Ex 2 Eric's Ultimate Solitaire Heavy Gear II
Heavy Metal F.A.K.K. 2 Heretic II Heroes of Might and Magic III
Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns MindRover: The Europa Project 3 Myth II: Soulblighter
Postal Plus Quake 3 Arena 1,3,4 Railroad Tycoon II Gold
Rune Rune: Halls of Valhalla SimCity 3000 Unlimited
Soldier of Fortune Tribes 2 Unreal Tournament 1,3,4
Legend:
1 - expansion available
2 - unreleased
3 - still in print, not by Loki
4 - downloadable binaries
As you can clearly see, there are still a good number of Loki games available. These titles won't last long, so you should order them as quickly as you can. TuxGames is not the only place that sells Linux games, but they do only sell Linux games, and game-related merchandise. It is possible that some of the titles that are no longer available can be found elsewhere. And there's always eBay, if you are comfortable with online auctions. It is unfortunate that we never got Deus Ex, but circumstances and fate prevented the game from ever being completed.
Rune
Some gamers don't want to buy these games, and that is fine. Not everyone appreciates every genre, and some people refuse to buy games that don't get shoved down their throats on television and Internet ads. However, for the majority of Linux gamers, the series of Loki ports includes some of the best games ever created. There is no telling what games Linux users could be playing if Loki were still around today.
Tribsoft ported a game called Jagged Alliance II to Linux, and has since disappeared from the scene. Their domain name even points to some weird site in British Columbia now. I imagine they won't be porting any more games, but if you want a good strategy game with adventure and role-playing elements, something like Fallout, then look no further than Jagged Alliance II.
Xatrix Entertainment developed a game called Kingpin: Life of Crime. They ported it to Linux, and if you can find a copy of the game anywhere, you may like to check out the unofficial installer, made by ravage, of icculus.org. It's worth checking out, if you like violent first-person shooter games that revolve around organized crime.
So now that we have a good idea of what has happened in the past, let's take a look at what is going on right now in the world of Linux games.
The Present
So we know where Linux gamers got their roots from, but where will they go tomorrow? What is there to fill the seemingly large void left by Loki? Well, as you may have heard, there is a newer company called Linux Game Publishing, often referred to as LGP. What they do is, well, they publish Linux games. This includes titles that they port, and titles that are ported by others, just as Loki did.
So what does LGP have in store for us? Well, for starters, Majesty has gone gold, and should be available any day now. You can pre-order it already. The game looks and plays like a cross between the best parts of Lords of the Realm 2, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms, and Age of Empires. It brings back those same feelings I used to get, and I can get lost in the gameplay for hours on end. definitely keep your eye on this game. Click here for some screenshots.
L
I've always been more into the freely available games out there when it comes to Linux.
:)
For big flashy commercial 3d games and such, I generally prefer Windows anyway since I know it'll work right off. (Well, usually anyway
In Linux, I like those games made by people with creative minds, but not the money to try to produce a big budget game. These games are frequently much more interesting, and sometimes even more graphically appealing.. (I like cheezy 2d graphics better sometimes, especially if it's a fun game)... in fact, one of my favorite Linux games ever, Koules, had very simplistic graphics, but four of us would huddle around the KB and a joystick and play that game for hours!
I bet you that game had a budget of $0. Development tools, graphics programs and all sorts of useful apps exist for free in Linux.. so anyone with an idea and enough spare time can make something that could be more fun to play than a game with a 10 million dollar budget.
Give the playable demo a try and see for yourself. Though most of my Linux gaming involves xmame or zsnes, when I'm not doing actual work.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
because Mac users have been playing Neverwinter Nights and UT2003 for months and us Linux users have been waiting for so long... Oh, wait...
What, no mention of Transgaming? Sure they don't actually port the games to Linux, but if it works it works. The only big problem is that the Transgaming versions have to deal with all of the copy protection crap the Windows users have to deal with. Has a CD Key ever kept someone from pirating a game? Do any games with SafeDisc (which don't work in my computer) actually avoid being 0-day Warez? How many hours of my life have I wasted installing games only to realize that it's got another CD protection scheme that breaks in my DVD drive? How many hours of tech support time have I wasted with these problem (at least Blizzard fixed it in a patch, unlike most companies that just ignore you)[1]?
I think Loki got it right. Too bad they were probably a bit too early (not enough users with cash) to make money. It's a shame, because the Loki versions usually ran better than the Windows versions on my machine.
[1] Well, not too many, I usually just return the game instead.
I read the internet for the articles.
I really see gaming as the last area where Linux is seriously behind Windows. We have things like WineX which allows some games to be run and of course people like ID activly support Linux. However I have a number of games that I like to play that force me to reboot into Windows just to play them.
:)
Ask anyone and they will say that the availability of games, and even decent graphics drivers on Linux is really behind that of Windows. So if you have the ocassional home user who want to play a games, even a demo off a cover disk they aren't going to be going for Linux are they? Mind you they could just as easy go for a PS2
rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I am completely switched to Linux & FreeBSD for my home PCs, but my co-worker will not switch (he wants to) until he can play games like DAOC, EQ, BF1942, PlanetSide (Yes I know you can use Wine and WineX) in linux. I think the syngergyst (sp.) that could cause a switch would be a Linux Based Gaming Console. Games are the only thing keeping home M$ Windows sales up.
Thank you for playing!
Karma whorin' since 1999
I see no mention of ut2003 in this article. It is one of the best ports i have seen. It runs nativily on linux. The installer is even included in the retail, which imho is great.
/Esben
"Nobody really checks their email any more. They just delete their spam"
It's like I always say: `Kill -9 first. Ask questions later.'"
Yes, but it doesn't roll off your tongue quite the same way.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
21-6 Productions is one of the studios developing games with the Torque Game Engine offered by GarageGames. It's a bit of a shameless plug, but today is the launch day for our title Orbz 2.0, which is being released for Linux, Mac, and Windows simultaneously, along with a demo for each platform.
We really believe in developing fun and interesting games for both the Linux and Mac platforms. We don't just believe in doing so just because it's "the right thing", but also because there is money to be made. The article mentions Marble Blast, another TGE-powered title, and the Mac and Linux sales have been substantial. Certainly nothing for a small, independently-financed game studio such as ours to turn our noses up at.
The subject is commercial games.
I'm amused by trolls when they are clever. Guess that counts this AC out.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Oh yeah, but it runs already, sort of. Like just today I totally quit playing NWN on Windows and switched to Linux, because I got my accelerated graphics working and got far better performance than the 5 fps I pulled earlier. It was like, adding "export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so.1" to the nwn shell script with vim because it used the Mesa library for some reason instead of the nvidia-glx libGL.so
I mean, it's so simple. I can't see why anyone's still using Windows for gaming.
(Yeah, I'm inspired by that... whatever switch ad parody it was out there in the great web. But really, I'm happy that it now works and I get really amazingly smooth game. =)
"A while ago, Hyperion Entertainment ported both Sin and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division to Linux. While they haven't ported any games to Linux recently, they were considering porting Tzar, but Linux gamers rejected that idea. That is sad, because Linux doesn't have an overabundance of real-time strategy games at the moment. I think that we shouldn't be so choosy when it comes to what we get ported, as we are a very small market as it is. I would have liked to buy Tzar, or any RTS game for that matter. I hope that Hyperion find something to port in the near future, as well as a publisher willing to support them. The more games we get, the better!"
Shogo had clipping issues, pretty large ones....Tzar was rejected because we're getting Disciples 2, wehich is similer but much better. Tzar didn't really offer anything unique.
StarTux
Yeah, but (geek)&&(!(married)) == !(laid)
Hyperion just completed an agreement with IncaGold to bring their games to Amiga, MacOS, and Linux, the first title being Midnight Racing. Here's to giving Linux another shot. ::raises glass::
A small company called Spiderweb Software released a game for Linux called Exile III - it is similar to the classic Ultima IV or Ultima V style. It is shareware, so you can try before you buy (even for Linux). I am kind of disapointed they only released one game for Linux as they released so many for both the Mac and the PC - including scenerio design tools - and this was way before Neverwinter Nights. Sure the graphics are not overwhelming but worth a look. Here is a link to the game.
I personally bought and played Exile I-III on the PC around 1998 and was very satisfied. Currently, there is NWN and Everquest and many others to choose from, but I felt it was the best comptuer RPG at that time.
But the reason I bring this up is that apparently it did not sell well under Linux - perhaps it was piracy, perhaps just not enough of a user base (note: I did not play under Linux maybe it is ultra buggy or something) but for whatever reason an ideal candidate for producing Linux games was turned off.
a war on terrorism? How can we end a war on a method?
Luckily quite a few top name game developers refuse to use DirectPlay as it requires Windows servers and too many game servers run on Linux these days to ignore.
There could be problems with patents yes, but that's an issue for the whole of Linux (mp3, ntfs etc) not just Wine. And as SDL is simply DirectX done again, patents would cover similar Linux technologies also.
You are incredibly, unbelievably wrong.
Windows is not "the best OS for gaming". It is the worst, and will continue to be the worst for many years to come.
It simply has the most commercial games available. That is important, don't get me wrong. But it's easy to imagine many of those, if not all, having superior stability and/or available resources on anything other than windows. Windows is a bad joke, and I wish you subhuman microsoft groupies would quit telling it.
Since UT2003 is available for linux, the engine has already been ported so Unreal 2 should be an easy port. The only reason why they may not publish it for linux is due to an estimated lack of demand making it not financially worthwhile, but I suspect that even then it should be possible to just borrow the engine from UT2003 and use the Unreal 2 data and game code to play the game, since the developers seem to write everything in UnrealScript these days.
All uninformed speculation, of course.
Hunt the Wumpus and Hangman should be enough for anyone.