LGP Announces Majesty is Complete

michaelsimms writes "Linux Game Publishing have just received their first stock of Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. This is the first game ported completely by LGP. Kudos to the lead developer, Mike Phillips, for much hard work to get us all a great game!"

Comments

Rock and Roll.

[13Echo]

The game is a few years old, but is an excellent title. Play the demo, which is downloadable from their site.

I ordered mine a while back. $37 isn't too much to ask. It's a very high quality port of a great game.

Simms- I'm looking forward to the future titles!

Re:Rock and Roll.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get the Linux demo at:

3D Downloads

And as a last resort:

david.hedbor.org

Try it. It's lost of fun!

Re:Rock and Roll.

[13Echo]

I'm not the best source of info on this, but as far as I can tell, they got the contract just last fall or so. It was a pretty quick port, for a small team. It took less than a few months.

Re:Rock and Roll.

[MBCook]

That's a good question. I'd like to know the answer too. That said, it obviously depends on how the game was programed.

If everything is seperate, so that you could just drop in some new files to completely change the sound or graphics subsystem, then it shouldn't take too long.

If, on the other hand, everything is woven into the game tightly, it could take a VERY long time. By this I mean things like having a function like:

void doCPUPlayerLogic(HWND parrent...);

If the logic is like that, you're going to have to rewrite large parts of the game. "Proper" programming suggests that you should program like the first option, but we all know that doesn't happen. Depending on if they origionally thought they would port it (they would have been thinking Mac or console I'd bet), just how hurried they were (often the second solution can be easier to do), etc.

That said, can anyone answer the question well? How long does it take to port the average game to Linux? Does it vary by genre (obviously a FPS that uses OGL would be easier to port than one that uses DirectX)?

Re:Rock and Roll.

[Qzukk]

Well, given that the "average" game is never ported to Linux, I would say that it takes an infinite amount of time...

But seriously, porting applications requires two major sets of changes. First is I/O (this includes everything - display, sound, user input, networking code, filesystem interaction). The second is process control.

For I/O, design decisions can have serious impact on the time it takes to develop a port. Are you writing your own libraries from scratch? If so, these must be ported as well. If not, are there Linux versions of these libraries available? Are there wrappers to fake availability of these libraries (eg, wine's library replacements)?

Process control is a similar situation, however, process control is fundamentally different in Windows and Linux environments (for example, last time I checked windows lacked a process-copying fork() call). If an application makes heavy use of threading and IPC, then there will be more work required in converting these to the "Unix Way" of doing things.

Re:Rock and Roll.

[UnknownSoldier]

> That's a good question. I'd like to know the answer too. That said, it obviously depends on how the game was programed.
> If everything is seperate, so that you could just drop in some new files to completely change the sound or graphics subsystem, then it shouldn't take too long.

Off the record, the game codebase is pretty clean since we had already ported it over the Mac. i.e. I believe they got the "Mac-n-Trans" codebase. (Trans = Translation, or localized.)

Re:Rock and Roll.

[treke]

Two different companies. Tribsoft, the company that ported Jagged Alliance two originally had the contract to port both Majesty and Europa Universalis to Linux. Due to lack of money though, they died off before much of Majesty was ever ported. When LGP got the rights to the code, they largly started from scratch on the port.

I don't know when LGP actually started their work on Majesty, but I think it was sometime around the last half of last year, and it first went beta in early November of 2002.

Fun game. Glad Linux has another.

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

Something about this game is really cute. I bought it when it came out on Macintosh last year. The game itself is not that hard to beat, tho- but definitely a lot of fun. The idea of indirect control over your heroes is interesting. Spells are fun to watch, animations and sound are high-quality.

Direct Download

[Mister.de]

screens: http://www.cyberlore.com/Majesty/screens.htm demo: http://demos.linuxgamepublishing.com/majesty/majes ty_demo.run

Great game

[FurryFeet]

Majesty is a great game, and well worth 40 bucks. It's a little on the short side, but has a really interesting multiplayer component (nothing like placing a huge reward on your opponent's buildings and watching his own heroes destroy them). I'd advice anyone who hasn't played it to do it.

Re:Great game

[GMFTatsujin]

Majesty Gold has both the original missions (~15 I think) and the Northern Expansion (another 10 or so).

The official missions are short, but I've really had fun with the Freestyle game generator. You can generate just about any kind of mission imaginable, including monster types, map size, building restrictions, economic factors, starting heroes, and so on. It's amazingly easy, complete, and fast. The only thing you don't get with the freestyle game is the mission briefing voice-over.

Re:Seriously, this game is awesome

[_Sprocket_]

It's just too bad I already paid for the game once. $80 for a $40 game?
...
Ditto with Kohan, the Sims, Neverwinter Nights, etc... I'm all for the parallel development though - go UT2003!

My understanding is that one can use the Windows-only copy of NWN and simply download the Linux client (albeit still beta).

I suppose its a kind of lagging parallel development. ;)

Sequal is in the works too

[shione]

Cyberlore, the developers are already in the the process of making the sequal. screenies which can be viewed here: http://www.cyberlore.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ub b=get_topic;f=4;t=000099

If this port sells well cyberlore might even work first hand on the linux version. Lets hope hope they don't charge too much for it and a lot of dosh changes hands because on pc majesty is dirt cheap.

Re:Ideal components for a Linux gaming machine?

[Kadagan AU]

well, I'll attempt to answer this, since no one else has.

first let me point out that I'm more into linux coding than linux gaming, but one day (hopefully sooner rather than later) when there's as many great linux games as windows games, and when you can easily network a linux system to a windows system to play multi-player... I hope to be into it ;)

ok, now I'm not sure what video card would be best. I've heard that ATI cards have better linux drivers. I'd also suggest staying a step or two behind "bleeding edge", to give time for drivers to be made. This also saves a LOT of money.

audio - I've never had a single problem with my onboard AC'97 audio that is on just about any mobo I've ever owned.

OS - I'd guess Mandrake, since it has wonderful support for all sorts of hardware. You might want to look into the (now slightly out dated) mandrake gaming edition. It's on their site if you care to check it out. It comes with the Sims. If it can handle that, then Majesty wouldn't be an issue at all. If I recall, Majesty only requires like a 90 MHz processor! Another obvious choice is RedHat, since it's the most prominent distro, I'm sure that the manufacturer tested on it at some point. Lastly, I'd *hope* that the company making Linux games gives out good instructions, and have good tech support.

that's all I can think of, but it's all my personal opinion, feel free to prove me wrong.

-Jon