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Gentoo Games
TheSurfer writes "Today, Gentoo announced the creation of Gentoo Games, 'a gaming technology company created to deliver innovative Linux-based game technologies to the public'. They also released a GameCD with the full version of America's Army. For more information, see the threads in the forums here and here."
Their logo looks very like the Nintendo Gamecube logo.
Are they going to produce a super optimized distro for games?
Are they planning to aggressively port popular games to Linux?
Are they planning to develop games from scratch?
From the announcement, it suggests that they're doing 1 and/or 2...
There's just nothing as good as the BSD game collection :)
*goes for another round of mille bornes*
but I cann't seem to find one! A couple forum threads about the game doesn't really count.
Anyone got more information about the company?
Its nice that Gentoo includes America's Army, but the story should mention that Ryan Gordon(icculus.org) is the one that did the port.
For some reason I just don't think this is going to make that much of a difference to your Linux user/Gamer. Unless they can get the game developers to actually develop Linux ports at the same time they are doing their Windows design then we will just continue to see a few old games ported over. By old I mean like 1 year of course.
I think this is a great idea, and I love Gentoo, but I know I will be keeping a Windows partition around to dual boot until more companies like id (read Valve!!!) release for both Windows and Linux at the same time.
Daniel Robbins and the rest of the Gentoo crew have done an amazing job with Gentoo as a Linux distro, and even though it's a relative new-comer, it has exploded onto the scene as a force to be reckoned with. I really believe that they will be as huge a success in the game industry as they were in the Linux distro field, they are competent coders and they know what the average Linux user wants, because they ARE your average Linux users. Also, I've had a few chats with drobbins in #gentoo on freenode. When was the last time you saw the head of your favorite distro kick it wif da homies on #IRC. He was even providing basic support for total newbs. Maybe that's why there's so many of us Gentoo zelouts who just won't shut up about it :)
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Anyone else find that America's Army game kind of sick? Sort of glorifies the horrors of war by caricaturing it through a cartoon-like portrayal. Plus, it makes it look like war is a cakewalk for a teenage audience. Reality is people dying, not losing 20 points off your health.
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Gentoo has several high paying sponsors such as IBM. They also sell gentoo branded merchandise on their web page. Personally, I'd like to see the offer some enterprise support, but it's really just not that kind of distro (yet).
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I really hope this is better than it looks.
20 or so posts in a forum plus a logo doesn't form the foundations of a great company. Especially when half the posts are discussing installation and politics of America's Army.
Yeah, we have America's Army... but surely the fledging company was helped by the Army's obvious goal of getting the game out to as many people as possible...
That being said, I don't know how many of us geeks they want to recruit onto the front lines... (pizza boxes under the bunk beds, wars would have to be scheduled between 3pm and 2am, Simpson's battle crys, etc.)
Anyway, I hope this is more than it now appears.
Davak
Gentoo is great, but I don't particularly care to 'emerge ut2006' and wait 6 hours while it compiles. ;)
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
How does this work? Ideally it would the CD would have the following: - A micro kernal with just the services needed by games (LAN, video, sound, disk management, not much else). This would install itself on your HD for future use, auto-update if the one on the CD is newer. - Smart driver finder (searches the disto currently installed on your machine for the necessary drivers) - Game files (obviously) This would have a number of advantages, from console like loading (stick the CD in, turn PC on, quick boot and run). To optimizing the operating environment (no unnecesary services running, should be easier to agree to standards for a micro-kernal like this). Could also be run in UML so you don't have to reboot. Hopefully this would give games developers at common target to aim at whilst also making the games easy to install and run (would only really use HD space if needed, shouldn't be a problem at all) Quick, I'd better patent all that ;o)
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Gentoo Games, Inc.</title>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<img border="0" src="gentoogames.png">
</center>
</body>
</html>
you can download the ISO using this bittorrent link: http://gentoo.twobit.net/misc/aa-20030513.iso.torr ent
As opposed to the way it is today where todays youth enjoys the fun and games of killing demons from hell on mars or killing Germans in World War II ect.... Kids are already killing people in there games; this is an ATTEMPT to show a slightly more realistic view of this and do a little recruiting while at it. What's wrong with that?
No, like a true linux website, the image is stored in multiple pieces in a MySQL database, and is dynamically created by a 400 line PHP script every time you hit it.
Because for some reason linux folks can't bring themselves to using static content.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't know about "cunning ploy." They are pretty open about the purpose of the game, especially as they have to justify the cost of its creation to the taypaying public. Recruiting is needed to run a volunteer army the size of America's; this is not any markedly different from TV or mailing campaigns.
I suspect the government (and parents who buy their kids the game) see it this way: if kids are going to play violent games anyway, why not get the kid a game where violence is at least being carried out for a "positive" goal, as opposed to games like Postal or Grand Theft Auto which depict criminal acts, or games like Quake and Unreal where the violence is mindless and the only point. There are other objectives in America's Army, and, while there may be some discrepencies, it is not a totally inaccurate and unrealistic idea of military service [i.e. you can't take 40 hits before dying]. Most Americans respect members of the armed forces, whether you agree with it or not, and see it as having a positive influence. Any good parent would have a serious talk with their child about the armed forces before their kid decides to march into the local recruiting office based on a video game.
I suspect most of those who play are quite immune from the propagandizing effect anyway, and simply enjoy the game.
Care to be asshole buddies?
Which, of course, is:
Yrma Eht Nioj!
All that game needs is belly dancers to sing it ad nauseum.
Reminds me of the morons who object to liquor or tobacco ads, because they don't present "the whole picture". Why should they?
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Gentoo what??
Gesundheit.
Yes, take a look at the website, you can download it now. www.gentoo.org
Really, Debian and Gentoo are quite different. They both have a similar mechanism for downloading and installing software, but there is a huge difference.
.deb files which are pre-built packages very similar to RPMs. Gentoo uses .emerge which is the source code, nothing pre-built.
Debian uses
When you "apt-get install package" in Debian it just downloads and installs the package. In Gentoo when you "emerge package" it gets the source, compiles and then installs. This takes a considerable more amount of time, but the package in optimized for your system, not a general build for everything (like Debian packages)
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Just create a mod for q3a that turns quake console into a shell terminal, make a boot CD with it, and I'll use nothing else. :P
Please, I *need* this mod!
and try an 'emerge -b ut2006'
duh.
Good story on America's Army in the Wall Street Journal today.
Check it out
Do the Evolution
But the main reason I love gentoo is a good, working BSD style ports system. I've uninstalled Windows on my desktop, which was the last place I had it running... thanks Gentoo, and everyone in the Linux community. I will only buy games that have a native Linux port, and since UT2003 and NWN will last me a long time if nobody ports, I'll keep my money, and donate some to Gentoo and others who are advancing the cause of Freedom.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
I just know this Blackadder quote would come in handy some day
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
Recently, I gained a first-hand understanding of the frustration of having to explain to a child that the game that was just bought for the child won't run on the child's computer due to some software incompatibility.
Before now, I had always assumed that by paying attention to logos on boxes, etc. it would be possible to avoid such problems. However, a child doesn't care about things like logos when shopping for games. Instead, a child cares about things like pictures on boxes. Once a child makes up his/her mind in a store that he/she wants a particular game, as a parent it's difficult to argue against a chosen game on the basis of lack of logos. Instead, it is sometimes easiest to just take a chance and buy the game (even if un-logoed) and hope that it will work.
Of course, a parent quickly learns that taking a chance often ends in the game-won't-work frustration that I mentioned earlier. What's a parent to do?
Enter consoles.
Consoles are great at solving this problem. During the shopping trip, a parent can simply say to his child "you can have any game as long as it's from the PlayStation section." When the child picks a game from the PlayStation section, the parent can be assured that the game will run and that there won't be any frustration.
Does this relate to Gentoo Games? Yes.
Bundling pre-integrated, no-install-required Linux in with a bootable game cd basically changes the experience of using a general purpose computer into the experience of using a gaming console. Just pop in the game cd and run, the same as when using a PlayStation. In both cases, the OS is invisible and irrelevant. Perfect.
Granted, there could still be considerable hardware incompatibility issues. However, at least the software incompability issues would be gone as they would have been resolved beforehand by the game developer. Given the pain that average computer users have when installing software on Linux, this could be a big advantage.
Perhaps Gentoo's compile-upon-install model could be leveraged to eliminate many of the hardware incompatibility issues by compiling some stuff to the needs of the hardware upon startup. On a network-enabled computer, the startup routine could even include a fetch of necessary drivers, etc.
Anyway, as a new buy-games-for-children parent, I appreciate anything that would make the experience of gaming on general purpose computers be more like the experience of gaming on consoles.
Wow, how many years has it been since we had to have a "boot disk" in order to run games? That's not something I want to go back to.
Also, how could Linux geeks be in favor of rebooting their machine to play a game? You guys think dual-booting Windows for playing games is absurd, yet don't have any problem rebooting to play the game in Linux? Huh?
We need something to Slashdot.
Gentoo has several high paying sponsors such as IBM.
uhhh...no we don't and no they aren't.
--kurt
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/