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Hyperion to Bring IncaGold Games to Linux
An Ominous Cow Erred writes "Just wanted to let everyone know that Hyperion Entertainment will be bringing IncaGold's game lineup to Linux (as well as AmigaOS and MacOS), starting with Midnight Racing. On a personal note, I'm happy we're giving Linux another shot, being a devout Gentoo user myself! (I should also point out that while the Linux section of the website is kind of old and crusty, there should be more info on the new titles soon!)"
The Midnight Racer game looks good. Are there any tentative pricing information or timeframes though?
Go calculate something
I'm sure a handful of third rate bottom of the barrel unknown games will rocket linux to desktop superiority!
One thing you cant find in the gaming aisle of Best Buy: complete shit.
My karma burn for this fine tuesday. Enjoy it mods.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
That has to be about the most creative name I have ever heard. I do wonder if some chemicals were involved (inhaled, possibly?) during its creation, though. =)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Forget targeting MacOS and Linux, and let's assume doing either or both is viable. But AmigaOS ? That's a business plan gone seriously awry and I have to conclude this company is doomed to failure. And I write this as a guy who is looking at a working Amiga 1000 on his dining room table right now...
This oughta add a couple more genre's to the native linux market. Comercially speaking of course.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Great move for them. Now they can break into the big leagues of Linux Gaming by releasing blockbusters like "Bowling USA" and "Family Collection", both 1 AND 2. Oooh.
Me, I'm holding my breath for "Paintball Heroes".
"I want to risk our company's future by supporting the Linux platform; it's not widely used, and the few people who do use it don't like paying for stuff."
"Sounds a little bit too safe for me. Let's support AmigaOS too, and we'll be SURE to fail!"
"Great idea, Bob!"
Seriously, is this truly front page news? This seems more like a press release than a real story, and it's not really news to announce the Linuxification of Family Collection 1 and 2. And the last *real* game released by Hyperion for Linux was the poorly selling Shogo. It's gonna take more than a couple of B games to sprout a thriving Linux game community. Maybe the real starting point for Linux gaming is the distro for the PS2? At least I know one thing for sure: this is not it.
. . . makes a dent in the PC Gaming market. IncaGold, publishers of such classics as Midnight Racing and . . . what else exactly? This is about as newsworthy as me deciding to port my SHA1 hasher utility to Linux. It will mean a whole new world opening up for hashing on Linux! Yeah, we almost care.
While it's nice to see Linux and even my old favorite Amiga OS get some new software Midnight Racing is a terrible game.
I picked it up for the equivalent of about $2.50 US and felt thoroughly ripped off. While the screenshots look fine it plays like it was written by someone who's never been in a car much less driven one! On the bright side the DVD style case could be reused after throwing the game out.
I hope their other titles are better but given Autobahn racing looks like it uses the same game engine I don't hold out much hope.
Cheap DVDs - Amazon with all the crap filtered out
Its nice to see some games coming to linux - however they are clearly bargain bin games. Thats fine and all but lets hope they stay priced as bargain bin games.
Perhaps making these games open source might be a good idea. If Incagold really want to encourage interest in these games I think the interest will lie in modifying the engine to people's own devices.
Otherwise we're just looking at a sad indication of the fact that our choices are so few that people who make hasty, poor quality games can envision taking advantage and profiteering with this.
I digress though, no offence to Incagold, I'm sure they have talented coders who could write good stuff if they had the unlimited budgets and timeframes of some game houses.
Don't get me wrong, it's fantastic that Linux is getting more games. I love games. It's just that your average Joe definitely isn't going to jump on with Linux if the entire game collection consists of clones of other games and very few "big-name" games will run on it.
Porthouses like Hyperion need to start talking to the developers that make big-name games, considering that the publishers certainly aren't taking a chance on it. Simplistic? Yeah. Idealistic? Definitely. But it needs to happen.
"Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
Can you guess which one of these doesn't belong here?
Now it's time to play our game!
Now let's play our game!
"Half Life 2"
"Doom 3"
"Midnight Racer"
"GTA3 Vice City"
"Derp de derp."
AMD is in a battle with Microsoft to force the version of Mozilla with support for Ogg Vorbis to be ported to Linux.
Damn, this is front page stuff!
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
That about says it all; sure we want more games on Linux but I think we want to see quality games. Sorry but with the hardware we have these days we should expect more from a game. The graphics from this game look a bit dated. What worries me is how much do they want to charge for this product? If they even think about $20 they will have one heck a battle in the sales department. Yeah, yeah I know they don't have the big teams like ID, EA, or anyone else. This doesn't excuse one of putting out a crappy game. For those people that want to prove Linux is better than Windows in every aspect-don't show them this game.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Someone has to lead the way. Gamers more than any other subgroup are behind the technology's dizzying upward spiral. They're also the most technically literate non-professionals out there, happily scripting away game binds and running servers. Gentoo's new gaming kernel is chock full of low-latency patches for your gaming pleasure and will provide a much, Much, MUCH better impression of the platform's potential than Redhat or Mandrake, both fine distros themselves.
First the best, then the rest will follow.
Linux doesn't need that many games, just a few key titles. Sure, the hard core gamers are constantly looking for something new. But for us casual gamers, things were perfected around the time of Starcraft, Half-Life and Unreal Tournament. Yeah, it's nice to have new levels and graphics, and a few new play modes. I for one don't need yet another deathmatch game. But for the most part older games are just fine. Now if we could just get some OEMs to start including decent graphics cards and maybe bundling some games...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Titles like Tropico, GTA, etc. cost large sums of money just to get the privilage to port them. This is part of the reason why Loki went under in the first place- too many top titles too soon. You probably won't see a port of Tropico unless one of the LGP people win the lottery in their respective locations as the publisher and studio want way, way too much (which is their right, afterall) for it to be economical to port it. The same goes for Warcraft (and anything else from Blizzard), any part of the GTA franchise, sports games from EA, etc...
To be sure, while I'm glad Hyperion's back in the Linux porting business, I'm a little confused as to why they're working with what is basically a valu-soft style company. However, if they're priced accordingly, they'll probably do okay at it all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...that all the Linux users keep on shooting down all the games that Hyperion considers porting. I mean, why should they bother? No one has anything good to say about it, and the same jokes are being said over and over again.
We could have had a port of Tzar, but no, everyone had to complain about it, and now we could get a racing game, but it's not good enough...
I recommend Hyperion to just go the way of Tribsoft and forget they ever considered Linux.
People don't seem to be too impressed with the quality of the games. I haven't heard of most of them, so I can't comment on them, except on Traitor's Gate. The Swedish company Daydream did a game called "Safecracker" way back. A very addictive little puzzle game, you had to crack all the safes in a house with a time limit. One or two of the safes were based on real safes, others were logic, mechanical or cypher puzzles. The game wasn't true 3d but used the Quicktime system where you can stand still and look around 360 degrees. When you click to move forward on one of the hotspots it plays a little movie until you reach the next place where you can stand still and look around.
Traitor's Gate seemed to be a bit updated version of it with a bit more action. There were guards, and you had some Thief style non-lethal ways of dealing with them, but if you were spotted it was game over. The few people who noticed it gave it quite decent reviews.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
I'm not a big game player, so I'm not that upset with the limited game selection on Linux. However, I do like to play them sometimes. I bought the tin-box Linux version of Q3A, bought UT and downloaded the Linux installer, and bought RtCW for Linux.
Last year I bought a PS2 to satisfy my non-FPS gaming desires. Since then I've bought about eight games for it (GTA, GTA/VC, Spiderman, ATV Offroad-whatchamacallit, and a few others I can't recall right now). I mostly play them with several cheats enabled to bring them down to a level where they're fun. I'm not a gaming purist. I have games to pass some time and divert my attention for a while, not to forge a new lifestyle (which is why I won't buy or play NWN or participate in any MMORPG).
The point of all this? I'm more than willing to pay for quality games that I'll only play every now and then, and they don't necessarily have to be big blockbusters.
Two of the most enjoyable games I've been playing recently aren't even commercial. I've been playing FooBillard off and on for a few weeks, and I love the game (I'm not even a pool fan). Same thing with Kolf. They're quite simple (from a playability perspective) and a great way to recharge my brain after (or while) working.
High quality doesn't have to mean expensive or big name. Too many game designers are focusing heavily on visual effects and too little on re/playability. Castle Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake were brilliant (I am quite impressed with Carmack and co.) in terms of both replayability (I still fire them up from time to time) and uniqueness.
But now everyone and his brother (and including Carmack and co.) keeps pumping these rehashes out. When I had first heard of RtCW, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. After playing it for a while, though, it quickly dawned on me how repetitive and uninspired it was. It just just another Quake with different graphics and a new storyline. The gameplay was the same old stuff. Like Star Wars and Star Trek, it's time to let these franchises take a vacation.
I know that John, for example, is capable of great gameplay insights, and I'm still greatful that he is allowing for Linux versions of ID games (and releasing old games under the GPL!). But I just can't bring myself to buy yet another FPS or common rehash.
I remember from years ago, a company called MVP [Software | Games] made a very simplistic but incredibly fun game based on the 1991 gulf war. I had no money back then, but I would have bought the full version if I could have. Now that was different and fun. It was shareware, and would have been well worth the money.
Now that I've been gainfully employed for a few years, I have discretionary income that's looking for fresh outlets. If shareware game makers would use OpenGL/SDL and exercise creativity, I'd be happy to pay for their products. As it stands, games have become mostly monotonous and trite over the last couple years.