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Savage to Support Linux
focitrixilous P writes "Gamespot writes about the upcoming hybrid strategy game Savage: The Battle for Neweth, which will provide a full Linux edition on the same disk as the Windows version. The title blends real time strategy with action titles, along one player to act as a general while others do the actual fighting."
So Linux goes a long way to having a nice standard base system for portability. Is this another game released as a "Linux" game, but really meaning "Linux on x86" game?
I do get a bit pessimistic, and should probably RTFA
Probably because nvidia drivers are the only decent ones available for linux.
I agree. There are really only a few things that are preventing me from switching to Linux.
;D
1. Multimedia support. Xine and Mplayer are great, if you can get them to work. I've had little trouble on SuSE but it's awfully flaky on Slackware, through my experience. Additionally, there's really precious little to compare to Premiere for video editing.
2. Games. I do play a lot of them. Thankfully, ZSNES and a lot of other emulators are available on Linux. This alleviates that tremendously. Unfortunately, Tux Racer isn't my idea of immersive entertainment.
3. Consistency. Red Hat/Mandrake's attempts to unify the desktops with Bluecurve/Galaxy, respectively, are one step in the right direction; now, if GTK+ would only fix that file picker dialog
With Wolfenstein, Neverwinter Nights, and now Savage, we're headed in the right direction. 1 down, 2 to go.
It has to do with decisions that the programmers made very early on. If they chose to use ActiveX and take full advantage of all the APIs that Windows as a platform offers, it's going to be very difficult (ie, almost a full rewrite of display, input, and sound code) to port it to another platform.
Smart designers plan for multi-platform use early on. Quake 3 was written portably, and its engine is in use on platforms as exotic as Sega Dreamcast and Playstation 2! And probably many more non-PC type computers. And it's used by a lot of other games too! (Nevermind the fact that those games play almost exactly like Quake 3. I'd like to see an RPG based on the Q3 engine, huh?)
BTW, it must be incredibly painful for anyone who writes a complex 3d graphics engine to hear you say that it's "minor work".
I see what you mean, but it's not so incredibly difficult to use wrapper functions/objects for this sort of thing. Plugins are even better, like the graphics output plugins in Unreal Tournament. (OpenGL? 3dfx Glide? Direct3D? S3-fucking-MeTaL? Great planning.)
;)
I meant that it was relatively minor work compared to the rest of the game -- I have undertaken many simpler engine-building tasks and can say how daunting things like memory management can be in a game that needs to track hundreds or thousands of objects, without even getting into the 3D aspect. But compared to the lengthy process needed to build most games, from design to concept drawing to modeling to recording the voice acting -- the engine, while integral and obviously very involved, is by no means the most time-consuming part of the project. (I have not been involved in the development of full games, so if you have, please by all means interject and correct me.)
If you want a great example of how not to do an engine, check out Morrowind.
Maybe now one company's had the balls to actually go ahead and do this
"the upcoming hybrid strategy game"
they've had the balls to announce it and we've heard it all before
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The trick to installing mplayer is to use an RPM-based distro
No, the trick is to actually read the docs and have an idea of what you are
doing. And no, rpm -i *.rpm doesn't qualify.
Sorry, I just hate laziness of thought and not too fond of those who advocate
such.
SealBeater
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
This approach should be nothing new to hardcore gamers, or even dabblers that grew up with PC games before Windows 95, because most of the games actually came with instructions to roll your own DOS bootdisk. But using "init" it is possible to allow the user to switch Linux into "Gaming Mode" as well as allowing such an option to be chosen at boot time.
And Windows users like to get all their games from their favorite warez iso source. Any other stereotypes you would like to bandy about?
No kidding.
I figure if just this once, Slashdot put its money where its mouth is and bought the game, the gaming companies might realize what kind of a market there is. Linux is getting more desktop users every day. Keeping software portable isn't difficult if you keep your code multi-tiered and that relatively small effort gets income from Windows, Linux, XBox, etc... this seems to be a trend.
I thought this game sounded good, much like Allegiance or even Battlezone II. The graphics look nice, and I could use a new game. But normally I'd just wait until it hit shelves and take a look then.
But Linux support? Hell yeah. I just preordered this game from EB.
$39.99. That's $10 off, you get access to the ongoing beta when your order is confirmed (which Linux is a part of, per the article), a free comic about the game and Linux support in what looks to be a good game.
Not bad.
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
Keep in mind that most game projects are underfunded, over-budget, and over-schedule at it is. More "relatively minor work" for no market return is a questionable choice.
Besides, if your game is actually released and successful, you can always port it later. Except that Loki proved that Linux users would rather run Windows than wait for a native product.
Actually s/games/apps . If someone put out a DVD Player that was blessed by the DVD Forum, I would pay for it in a New York Minute. I have paid for Linux games in the past...my copy of Unreal Tournament is bought and paid for, so too Hexen and Myth II: Soulblighter.
I want to buy UT2003 to be supportive and to send in my registration card stating it's playing under Linux, but I can't bring myself to do so because all the "improvements" made to UT2K3 have ruined gameplay. I can't bring myself to buying a game that sucks, just to show I am rah-rah supportive of Linux Gaming.
I don't think I'm the only Linux user who would actually pay money for decent Linux apps. C'mon! Bring 'em on!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Linux users are soon to outnumber Mac users.
This is how Slashdot folklore gets started. You're obviously referring to that ridiculous article posted a while back on Slashdot that said Linux would overtake Apple in the desktop market in a year. Everyone ridiculed that article. Linux will not beat Apple in the desktop market. Not until people get their shit together.
But, there are those who refer to it as truth long enough, and now it's morphed into "Linux users are soon to outnumber Mac users." This is why people make fun of Slashbots and their inability to stop drawing up vague claims with nothing to back them up as if they are common knowledge. It was a bizarre report then that nobody believe, and it's a bizarre claim now that nobody believes.
Next.
"Sufferin' succotash."
No, the trick is to actually read the docs and have an idea of what you are
doing. And no, rpm -i *.rpm doesn't qualify.
Sorry, I just hate laziness of thought and not too fond of those who advocate
such.
Ah, bite me. It's a video player. Would you prefer it if you got your DVD in a box with a hundred pieces that you have to assemble, after you've got a half-dozen other pieces that weren't included? I can compile the program, but the fewer programs I have to download the source and install a dozen development packages and then wait for it to compile, the better.
I have been involved in the development of several full games (though not as a programmer), both PC and console, so I will interject.
The design, artwork, and programming all go to some degree in parallel. And it is very true that many aspects of the process can be brought across platforms. But programming and debugging, once you hit the optimization phase, becomes problematic. Optimizations can cause problems on one console but not another, and fixes for such problems can break the first one. Keeping two computers perfectly synchronized for online play is quite a task, but keeping them synchronized on different operating systems is a nightmare.
My company has as many programmers and QA people as artists and designers. Don't underestimate the difficulty of such a task. And remember, that additional 5% sales you get from the other OS may be counterbalanced by lost sales due to missing your ship date, which can total millions of dollars per week. When numbers like that become involved, people start to believe that they would be better off tasking their programmers to making the game better on one platform, rather than trying to reach that last bit of audience.
And honestly, I can't fault them for that decision. Build a better game on the dominant platform or an engine that can reach the niche markets? If you are in the market of selling engines (like Id), your decision is clear. For the rest of us, we just want to make the best games we can.
The ______ Agenda