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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!"
Unfortunately some of the more prominent applications that people use are Microsoft applications (i.e. ms word, excel, outlook, etc) and will not likely see the light of day for any Linux porting since this would only contribute to the Windows demise.
Will be very interesting to see what the future holds and how the market might react/shift to alternatives such as Linux or even BSD.
The parent said the game is a few years old....
Did they start porting it straight away? Can anyone give an idea of the average time taken to port a game to linux? (just curious)
I'm not a game developer, but it seems to me that the amount of effort required to make something run for, say, Linux, may be somewhat high...but once you do that, the additional effort to also build it for the BSDs and for MacOS-X is minimal. Compilers, libraries, and all that, all the hard work is mostly done.
It'd be interesting to see if this sort of trend could be encouraged.
I spend so many hours playing this game. There was something VERY addicting about recruiting rangers, elves, thieves, warriors, wizards, paladins, healers, monks, etc and watching them run around killing beasts and buying things.
I loved how that economy worked... The houses and inns would just automatically generate money, and heroes could earn money slaying monsters, then spend it at the market, blacksmith, Wizards' Guild, etc. Then your trusty tax collectors went around collecting money.. It's pretty simple, but it's fun to watch.
I recommend you pick it up if you haven't yet. It kept me glued for weeks, and the wife and I come back to it every couple of months. Well worth it. I've been emulating it in WineX and it's been spiffy.
"WineX! Oh no! Support linux gaming, man!" Well, I'd love to. It's just too bad I already paid for the game once. $80 for a $40 game? I mean, Majesty's good, but not *that* good.
Ditto with Kohan, the Sims, Neverwinter Nights, etc... I'm all for the parallel development though - go UT2003!
The games with the least portable code I've ever seen took about 6 months. Most take less than 2. I find it interesting that our native ports at Loki took about as much time (or less) than transgaming's "ports" to winelib.
Man, if you don't see the big deal, then you have never played Majesty! I recently bought the Gold edition for windowz, and love it. I've been eagerly awaiting the linux release!!
This space for rent, inquire within.
So the game is 4 years old already. If it is a good game, then it doesn't matter.
Good point. And it *is* a good game. And it really doesn't matter how hold it is. The take on RTS is very original (to me anyways) and very fresh. Not directly controlling units, but only influencing them with money (what else?) is cool, and the hilarious phrases characters say when dying is hilarious and icing on the cake.
I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
"For CPU intensive games, the OS is even in the way, hurting performance. Yes, Linux as well, albeit maybe marginally less than Windows."
Also, in Linux, you can run a "barebones" Windows Manager (twm, blackbox, WindowMaker, etc.) when you play games in order to minimize use of resources - this can give an extra performance edge against Windows.
"There is a reason you don't find many games under Linux. Graphic card drivers are much better optimized for Windows systems."
Well, that depends on the video card. For NVIDIA cards, the Linux drivers are as optimized as the Windows ones. It's the ATI ones that lag behind, IIRC.
Reminder: find a new sig
- Which display card?
- Which sound card?
- Which distro gets them to work without tweaking, or at least with minimal tweaking?
There is a reason you don't find many games under Linux. Graphic card drivers are much better optimized for Windows systems. Porting a graphics intensive game to Linux is a waste of resources.
That's the reason, huh? And it doesn't have anything to do with Linux being relatively young, having only recently broken out of the server-os category, and still being on the shallow end of the desktop growth curve?
Anyway, it's not a concern, there are already more games coming out on Linux than I have time to play.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Porting a graphics intensive game to Linux is a waste of resources.
Maybe so (I disagree), but if game designers/programmers wrote the game from the ground up to work with Linux (as well as Windows) the "waste of resources" would be minimal. And on top of that, I don't have to boot into Windows just to play computer games.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
still being on the shallow end of the desktop growth curve
Not only that, but the quality of the desktop seems to be increasing exponentially.
6 months ago - I would have placed Linux on the desktop at the Win95 level. Mostly functional and ugly.
The latest Mandrake is simply kick-ass. It's beautifull, integrated, feature filled and stable. It's well past Windows XP on almost every level.
Ive had the joy of placing it on two friend desktops and they *love* it. I thought that they would grudgingly tolerate it, but they *love* it.
The're starting to act like Mac users: ther're rabid, I tell you!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Frankly, when this game came out I ignored it because it sounded really dumb. (Ooooh, "the fantasy kingdom sim!") Plus it didn't have a lot of ads in game magazines, which is how I judge games.
Good to know that the media forcing opinions into our heads is the only way to go about forming individuality.