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Half-Life 2 - A Linux User's Lament
jvm writes "If you're a gamer with a pulse, you've probably heard about the impending release of Valve's Half-Life 2. As a gamer and a Linux user, I always get a little stirred up about the whole Half-Life situation, where we have a dedicated server but no client. So here's my reflection on the sad situation, past and present. How will the rest of the Linux gaming community react to the release of Half-Life 2? Boot into Windows? Wait for WINE or WineX support? Get the Xbox version? With so many Half-Life servers running on Linux, will the same be true for Half-Life 2?"
GET BACK TO WORK YOU LAZY ENGINEERS!
*caps is like yelling so you have to offset it with lowercase text*
Given that I'm stuck on an old overclocked Celeron 300A/450 mHZ which has difficulty running even Half-Life one at full speed, I have a hard time feeling sorry for this fellow.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I hate to say it but sometimes MS is just better. DX is better than OGL, discuss amongst yourselves.
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http://houndwire.com
I just played a good game of Unreal Tournament 2003 on my Linux box. It plays great, the installer came on the CD, and all updates have been available for Linux. If Valve doesn't care about you, spend your money somewhere else.
Less time wasted on video games, more time for programming.
Whoever said the the Linux gaming scene was full of shit?
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
Rarely do you see games using DirectX ported to Linux. Perhaps a better design choice was to use OpenGL to implement HL2. Although, the newest video cards by ATI and NVIDIA are optimized for DirectX (well ... at least ATI) so HL2 graphical features may not be elaborated if implemented OpenGL.
Design choices, nothing more.
The fact is that VALVe is a company. A company which, obviously enough, wants to make a profit. The easiest and most effective way to do this is to pander to the widest possible audience -- Windows users. Linux, as a gaming platform, has been lacking since it came into being. The answer to the question of Linux gaming won't be discovered for a while to come. In the meantime, the more people that run Linux servers for Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the more VALVe will take notice. This isn't something that will be won quickly, but with a little patience and understanding of the ideas behind VALVe's business practices, Linux will have a version of Half-Life all its own.
I swear it was like watching your dog get hit by a car as he returned from the pound.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
With a website background colour such as the one he's chosen, I doubt any of his readers will be able to see well enough to play a game. The colour and font size he's chosen leave my eyes seeing a pattern on everything.
I'm running netware, that means I can't even play tuxracer! Why oh why won't Valve give me a netware port?
One other thing, I have this Amiga....
most gamers don't want to sit around and configure a linux system for gaming, nor do they even know how, and windows is pretty idiot proof in that respect.. (at least as far as the idiots are concerned)
Linux has a strong hold in the server market, but not so much with clients. It would seem be holding true here too, but not for the same reasons.
...nethack?
How do you think I should react? I mean, I could switch to Slash'Em, but don't you think that's a bit extreme?
.sig Realistic fines for copyright in
It won't kill you. Just think of it as a Wintendo.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Do you think that Halflife 2 will run on my Linux box? P166/64M RAM, voodoo3 PCI... :( seems like it's time to upgrade... just waiting for the next paycheque... have been, it seems, for quite some time *G*
The 5P1D3R...
fp?
and I'll look into valve studios and find out for you.
I will pay $5 more for the linux version of HL2, in order to show my support for a company that supports linux. Just like I sometimes pay for the boxed versions of RedHat (and SuSE at work) even though I can download the distributions form the net for free. I do this to 'vote' for these companies with my $$$. Thank you.
Ever so often someone bring up the Linux as a game platform argument.
Yes its technically capable. Especially with modern nVidia drivers the way they are. But that's not the point.
The point is that you have to expend money, resources and time to make a Linux client. Why are you going to do that when 95% of your user base can/will use the Windows version anyway?
Besides community goodwill, there is no good reason for a developer to port a game to Linux and until there is a damn good reason for developers to port games to Linux, UT2K3 will remain the exception rather than the rule.
Blah Blah something about DRM blah Steam is some form of DRM, or something, Steam is part of Half-Life 2, shallow summary of linux community, sudden appearance of the baseless assumption using Half-Life 2 would be some kind of acceptance by the linux community of DRM. Innuendo? Strange assertion that hacking Steam would somehow be easier in linux than windows becuase linux has an open-source kernel, totally hypothetical question as to whether or not whoever it is that makes Half-Life 2 would allow Steam on linux or whoever it is that makes linux would allow Steam on linux, inexplicable reference of DMCA, betrayal of the fact that I know very little about economics, witty but meaningless remark.
[Think of creative Sig to put here before submitting]
It took them a long time to get Half-Life 2 right (er, it continues to take them a long time.) Imagine how much faster, though, if an open-source gaming engine were started? sure, it wouldn't have the Half-Life storyline, but who cares? If you play an FPS for the story, you have problems.
"Software is like sex; it's better when it's free." -Linus Torvalds
I finally said goodby to Windows almost a year ago, and I won't be going back for a mere game, no matter how good it is. If they won't support me, I won't support them.
If they do decide to port it, though, I will gladly give them some of my money. Sadly, I don't see that happening. I guess I'll just have to give it to id and Epic instead.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Is that an option?
When linux comes out with a directx equivelent then they might write for it ( this is ONE set of API's ) . Not opengl doesn't count, that is only graphics.
You need sound,graphics,networking,AND graphics card writers writing to those drivers. That is what makes windows such a good gaming platform. Linux needs to consolidate and throw away the 4 graphics libraries and the 3 different sound package and the 60 windowing library packages and get down to one standard that EVERYONE uses. Not a lot of people use one, then debian uses another cause it ain't GPL and linux using a combination of 3 and suse using another cause its written outside the USA.
Linux needs to stopping getting into a pissing war over who's library is better and I re-wrote this library cause I like it better my way and consolidate.
Then maybe folks will port apps. If I write a game on linux 7.2 it better damn well work on redhat 11 without needing download 65 new packages and getting updates from the vendor.
it really comes down to the fact that directX is the most capable api for games at the moment.
DX9 beats the living pixels out of OpenGL, and that's just a simple fact.
I hate MS as much as the next slashdotter, but come on guys.
Windows has Linux beat hands down for gaming.
On another note, while freeBSD runs fine on my 500mhz via mini-itx board, I know I'm not the only person out there buying a whole new system for HL2 and Doom3 in the next few months. and guess what's going on the primary partition? It'll only get booted up to play games, web/e-mail can be done on anything.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
And important things, like recompiling the latest test version of the 2.6.0 kernel.
If Vivendi doesn't release HL2 client for Linux, then they aren't getting my business
Currently, I am able to play quake 3, warcraft 3, unreal tournament 2003, and wolfenstein enemy territory, all on red hat. I never really was a HUGE fan of half life.. but what I am waiting for is DOOM 3, which will surely have a linux port :) If you are a hardcore linux gamer, the next big thing will be from id.
Tried using it with Bochs? I can't say I've tested it with something like Halflife, however it's got to be a better option for gaming than Wine(X) (hey, if someone can get Doom to run on it, who knows what's possible
~
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The bottom line is, Valve is a company with many ex-Microsoft employees. They fully embrace DirectX 9. In fact, the reason that the Mac port that was almost completely finished was cancelled was because (I believe) they wouldn't be able to get them to network together due to DirectX concerns.
Valve has made steps to ensure that Half-Life works under WINE, but the reality is, they will continue to use DirectX, as they feel that is how they can make the best possible game. The money that would go into creating a Linux box would be prohibitively expensive, not to mention perhaps impossible because of patents/copyrights on DirectX technology.
It would be great if it worked under Linux, but the bottom line is it doesn't make economic sense.
Since 1/2 * 2 = 1, shouldn't this version of the game be simply called One-Life?
I loved half-life....counterstrike was my know all be all in college. I played that game every night like there was no tomorrow...probably why I bombed out of college :-/ So take this into consideration as I'm casting my vote down now....
I switched over to Linux as a desktop about three years ago...I dumped half life...it was a very very very hard thing for me to do because yes I was ungoldy adicted to it. I picked up Tribes2. Then after Loki died and Sierra wanted to patch only the Windows version of Tribes2 I started a petition....made a lot of people really ticked off about the things I said along the lines of Sierra making a commitment to Linux users because we use their network and it says this in our EULA...and yadda yadda yadda...it wasn't pretty. Eventually some guys that used to work for Loki ported it over without Sierra even knowning about it.
But the brick wall I ran into when that entire thing went down made me realize that the gaming industry was not at all thinking with a full deck. No one seams to doubt in the tech field that Linux will only be gaining desktop space in the future and yet there is such a hard rock to move for even basic support under Linux. I really don't think it is only a matter of the # of Linux gamers out there....
So out comes half life 2 now and at first I actually thought I had a choice to make....go back to windows just to play the game I was so in love with or tuff it out in Linux. This thought only crossed my mind for about 30 seconds but still it happened...and I'm sure those still addicted to the game are still thinking about it. Valve's creators new the success of Half-Life 1 being used under wine in Linux (the #'s of gamers here...not how well it did or didn't work)...they had two petitions in front of them to know how many people thought it was important to provide a Linux version long before Half-Life 2 was ever put into stone. They choose not to. They choose to ignore the biggest thing to hit the Tech world since Windows 3.1.
I for one stopped thinking about Half-Life 2 when I saw someone post a link to this game that DOES have a linux version
http://www.s2games.com/savage/downloads.html
Something new and cool...something that I will not have to switch platforms just to use....why bother with valve...they've chosen their path.
I find it amusing that people still expect companies to make games for Linux. If you're really a gamer you need to get on Windows plain and simple. I don't like MS or Windows but I'm at least realistic about the situation.
And no, the Mac doesn't count as a real gaming platform.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
Linux users sad about no HL? How about Mac users? The Mac version of HL was essentially finished, but then axed by Sierra. Mention of it can be found here. How's that for getting stiffed?
gabe newell, head of nerve, worked for microsoft in various senior positions for 13 years...
they are already talking about making HL2 an xbox-exclusive title, locking out PS2 etc.
how friendly to linux do YOU think they could possibly be?
Translation: I couldn't get laid
Valve has a long reputation of discontinuing projects.
Team Fortress 2 was originaly supposed to come out for half life, then they announced it as a separate game. After TFC came out, Team Fortress 2 turned into vaporware. Valve at one point did announce they were working on a linux port of the first half life, I don't know what happened to that. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero seems to also have dropped off of the radar.
In fact, it realy wouldn't surprise me at all if Half Life 2 just stopped seeing any press releases, and suddenly turned into vaporware.
IIRC, the idea of porting Half Life to Linux was dropped after the Half Life crew recieved a large number of flames because there was a Linux server but no Linux client.
There was also this from Linux Half Life:
In a press release on the morning of Sunday, 1st of April, 2001 Valve CEO Gabe Newell announced that they had secretly been working on a Linux port of the most popular game, Half-Life.
"We have taken alot of offensive email recently, asking for a port, all the while we have been secretly porting the game, it has been alot of fun."
Valve's marketing department speculate that Half-Life will be a top seller for the Linux platform, despite the fact its getting relitvly old, and that it seems to work flawlessly under WINE.
"We think that most of the Linux Half-Life players will purchase the game, in order to get native support, better performance and ofcourse to support the Linux gaming industry. Sales of Half-Life will determain if we port Teams Fortress 2 to linux".
Which seems to contradict my original statement, however, that statement was made on April 1 2001*. And I still don't see a port. After the dismal sales of games for Linux such as Quake 3 and the rest of the Loki selection, I believe that Valve saw no profit in the port, and were probably tired of the flames anyways.
FYI, for those of you who are about to bitch about the volume of Linux game sales:
1) EB World stopped carrying Linux games because they did not sell.
2) I bought every Linux game Loki made, with the exception of "Eric's Ultimate Solitare."
If we want a Linux port, we need some way of making Valve *WANT* to do a port - either by making it profitable, eliminating the flames, or both.
It is unfortunate that the open source community cannot come up with a way that the people in the community could provide the porting for Valve. Maybe some of the hot OS coders out there could agree to sign a NDA for Half Life so it could be ported? I know, I am hoping too much, but it is worth a try.
* The date of that release also makes it very questionable...
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
I really wanted to try the Unreal Tournament 2003, but my ATI card is too old, and they haven't released a driver for it that can run the game.
Now I've played it a few times, I find myself wondering why I bothered. It would probably have been easier to buy a Geforce card and I'll probably do that before I switch back to Linux.
I love linux but do miss the games you get on Windows.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
Valve won't realease a version for Linux because it is doubtful they will support Open GL. All of their press materials and promos call Half-Life 2 a Direct -X 9 game.
... am I right or wrong? If you want to run a dedicated Half Life, Counter Strike, etc server, its a heck of a lot cheaper to find a company that will host your server on Linux than on a Windows 2k or Xp machine. Duh. http://www.fragism.com/prices.phtml Or do a google search on "half life hosting" -Pizaz
General Clark is a 1966 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point where he graduated first in his class. He holds a Master's Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
http://www.americansforclark.com/about.php
Why do they Lament for half-Life 2?
I have not the heart to tell you.
By buying Doom 3 and running the native client in Linux.
suck it up ... and wait for Doom 3
Is Linux a decent OS for server-side gaming? IMHO, yes and we see a lot more Linux servers hosting games like Wolfenstein Enemy Territory and others.
Is Linux a decent OS for client-side gaming? It depends on the type of game and what your alternatives are.
On the same hardware, why should I lose 1/2 of my framerate (FPS) just to use a different OS than Windows? As long as the game doesn't crash while I play it, then I could care less--although the security issues are of a concern on multiplayer games.
Games like Half-life 2 will probably be much better when played on Windows until Linux finds something better than XFree86 for gaming.
Considering the current plan with Steam is that once you download a patch or play online, you have to be connected to the net even to play single-player. I've already lodged my complaint, though most likely Valve won't care.
Nobody's willing to pay the $699 they would have to charge in order to sell it.
I'm a little disappointed with Valve about now. Strike one is the DRM nitemare called Steam that they're shoving down the gaming community's throat. OMG! What a fiasco that is. Strike two is the shutting out of linux users. If Id can support linux, why can't Valve?
What I don't fully understand is why Valve went with DX9 over CG and openGL, especially since DX9's HLSL is essentially identical to CG. CG offers cross-platform compatibility. DX9 limits the portability of HL2. So why do it?
When all else fails, run.
. . . that we still have lots of people who still have some fight in them. Heaven knows we already have too many give-uppers who will bend over at the drop of a dime. OK, Mr. Realistic, bend over now. Ready? Here it comes!!!
Cheers,
e.
Wait a long time for it's release.
Then there is the Linux GUI mess. So much to choose from... but unlike picking your favorite car that runs on all the roads and uses the same fuel, all these cars require special catering. As a result, a patchwork of gas stations, peripheral shops, garage shops, tire stores, highway departments and even traffic ticketting methods have popped up. Sure, we can all point to "Gravel Definition Language (GDL)" and "Open Road Sign Language (ORSL)" but those do not fix the whole problem. I sincerely hope that the Linux / Open Source... well just the non-MS providers start working together to fix this (have you seen the 'tudes from some of the various forums and mailing lists? Bloody flame fests they are). That will be a glorious day when developer studios will start popping out Linux releases of games the same date as the Windows versions. Until then... like it, love it, emulate it or wait and hope.
What/who this post is not by:
- Windows user
- winex user
- wine user except in emergencies
What/who this is by:Please! Half Life 2 MIGHT run on a PS2, but there is no way it is going to look "Half" decent too!
The X-Box only port is not some giant conspiracy. It's just a better gaming platform for Half Life 2.
(P.S. I run linux)
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
There isn't only Windoze+Linux in life !
There are many other OSes out there, why coudn't they have it too ?
Besides, usually when company release Linux versions, they only give binaries for specific versions and of course only for x86.
No wonder why PPC can't compete... *g*
Freemannus Interruptus. Very unsatisfying.
I will wait for a while to see what the status of a Mac port of HL2 looks like. Chances seem slim, but the Mac market has expanded since the original HL so there might be enough motivation for a port. Still probably a few years down the road though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Technically, this probably means that some small part of the engine runs under Linux. In the past, dedicated servers have been little more than headless clients, clients without a rendering engine. As with Half-life, there is probably no technical reason that Half-life 2 couldn't run under Linux, especially given that the latest Linux drivers from ATI and NVIDIA have expanded support for even the newest hardware released by those vendors. Given that a game as new as UT2003 runs under Linux, I think that it isn't that much of a stretch to say that Linux could handle Half-life 2 as well.
No, it doesn't. Just because you can run a server, which people connect to and run maps from, doesn't mean your server is actually "rendering" anything. It's loading data for your clients to read/write to, and its controlling the flow of that data. Linux does this much better than Windows, which is why the Linux server exists in the first place. No one would bother cooking up a dedicated server for it otherwise.
But Half-Life 2 is DX9 from the ground up. This means it uses extensions, functions, and rendering calls that are so deeply ingrained into windows, that you can NOT run the game any other way. This is where WineX and whatnot come into play, taking those same function calls and telling Linux how to use them.
Firstly, this type of translation is going to make any port of the game run slower, until the code is much faster than it will be in the first few WineX releases supporting it. Yes, I know how fast UT2003 can run in Linux. But have you seen the tech demos for HL2? It will be quite some time before we see that level of speed and clarity on a Linux system.
And, this sounds really pathetic, but their licensing agreements with Installshield may hold them back as well. From what I recall, this is the same thing that held up NWN from being released on Linux. The Windows registry can be a shit-filled bog, and the Installshield makes the game-makers lives that much easier. It sounds pitiful, but little stuff like that can hold up development.
And finally, Valve has busted their ass on Steam, and even though it stumbled out of the gate with their recent full-on release (who didn't see that coming), they put so much time and effort on a solid DRM release platform that to try and convert that to Linux, who by nature is a registry-less system, would be too much time and trouble for a company to put themselves through, let alone farm out the work at considerable cost.
In this dreamworld that the article-writer lives in, he forgets that game companies are under intense pressure to deliver perfect product all of the time. It is easier to leave it up to the community than to put serious time and resources into making the same thing available on both OSes.
And don't forget about DRM. We geeks chuckle at it, but the fact remains that as the years go on, and MS has its way (which it always does, eventually), between the Windows versions of iTunes and delivery mechanisms such as Steam, you'd be surprised at how this will begin to hold Linux back, in my opinion. DRM is awful, I agree, but everyone loves iTunes and what is it but a wolf in sheeps clothing (nice interface and high moral standing but really just DRM)?
Food for thought.
come on now...we're all reading slashdot at 1am on happy hump day.....the moral of the story is: Some people can get laid sometimes...some people can laid all the time....some people can get laid only a few times very rarely...some people can get laid a lot by one person their entire life...but noone can be laid by everyone all the time. Or something along those lines.
Or maybe a better question would be: could he not get laid because he was playing a game to much...or was he playing a game to much because he couldn't get laid. Now which would be worse? Maybe he had his fill of sex in high school and decided to take a few years off...lol. Or maybe you should just be modded down as flamebait.
Nice sentiment - unfortunately it does not mean much. The lack of sales due to people using Linux won't hurt Valve in any measurable way. The problem really is that if you want to play games, you have to have Windows.
I tried this a few years ago, I switched entirely to Linux on my home PC. Guess What? I had a bunch of nice Loki Games, but other than Quake 3 I could not deathmatch with my friends in games like Half Life.
That did not do me much good. So, I started looking into different ways to get Half Life to run under Linux, wine, etc. I had to fiddle with drivers, modify stuff etc...
Then I realized I was wasting my time for an ideal. I did this same thing all day at work on Linux servers. And when I got home the last thing I wanted to do was tweak my OS just so I could play a couple games with my friends.
So, sure, your logic makes sense if you only use your PC for browsing, MP3's and email - which I mostly use mine for. However, a large number of my friends play Half Life*, and I like to play with them.
The fact is, that there are a large number of people who want to play games on their PC's, and I am one of them. It would be wonderful if I could run Linux with a MacOS X interface, and have all the software out there run on my system just fine. But we don't have that. So, while it is good that you are maintaing your ideals, and not buying Half Life 2 to support Linux software. In the long run it makes no difference either way.
What CAN we do?
Well - find some way to make games profitable for Linux. Sure, it is a chicken and the egg problem - Linux needs desktop dominance for that, and that is a LONG LONG way off for Linux (unfortunately).
*And now America's Army which does have a Linux client, but the communications software we use does not.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
"DirectX 9.0 has been crucial in helping us create a worthy sequel to Half-Life, one that gives Windows gamers everything they've been waiting for, a truly unequaled experience," said Gabe Newell, cofounder of Valve. "We are thrilled that our relationship with Microsoft has produced a title that all of us can be proud of."
Winter 2010: With Glowing Hearts
isn't that redundant?
Welcome to earth. Nice to have you here.
This has been an issue in computing for the last decade: PC game companies write games for Windows. That's the way it was, that's the way it is, and unless something drastic happens, that's the way it's always going to be. Gamers use Windows because it's the platform the majority of PC games are on, and PC game companies target Windows because that's where the vast majority of their audience is.
This isn't a Linux-specific issue either. As an OS/2 user for the last 12 years (and Linux user for the past 4 or 5), I've seen it first hand. The only thing that will potientiall change the situation is if the game companies either see a huge decrease in the sales of their Windows titles, or feel there is sufficiently pent-up demand for Linux-based titles.
Personally, I don't see that happening anytime soon. My advice to you is to do what I did -- leave your PC for serious work, and go out and buy a PlayStation 2, a good TV, and a surround sound system. Add in the network adapter and the PS2 Linux kit, and you have a kick-ass game system, DVD player, and Linux box all in one nice black box, leaving your PCs available for more serious computing tasks.
Yaz.
As others said, Valve is a company aiming at the widest possible market for its products. That means Windows, period.
Now, why on the earth some good hackers don't take that lack of games as a challenge and start writing THE engine for a 3d gaming platform under Linux -aimed_at_gamers_and_not_engineers-?
Yes, ther are already some, but after a multi bazillion files download and resolving a nightmare of dependencies 9 times out of 10 the engine simply doesn't compile, the game doesn't install or something just doesn't work.
C'mon guys, stop whining and do some work to let common people play games under Linux; there's no point in writing a game aimed at the average Joe Gamer if it requires a kernel hacker to compile and install.
I also see great commercial opportunities in the future for a well designed gaming engine under Linux. Suppose you are a company that produces game consoles, would you spend tons of money to develop your software or rather take a free kernel, a free game engine and aim all your efforts into designing advanced hardware to make the above run on? Think about the ease of Linux kernel and software portability.
I'm a Linux programmer, sadly not the one who could even start a project like this, but if I had the skills I'd seriously consider starting a project in that direction.
At the BEGINNING of this thread. lol. Doom 3 WILL own HL2 just b/c ID is such a better company then Valve. I mean really, have any of you paid attention to the recent we hate Nvidia scheme that valve is spewing out?? All those "benchmarks" that are supposed to show how well the game runs, use a driver set that puts the ati card to the advantage. It doesnt even look that great truthfully. I have seen the vids, and the FIRST thing I noticed was the amazingly large ammount of jaggies. I really really really HATE jagies with a vengece. I run 8xAsio and 4xAA just for that reason. With a game like HL2 I wont be able to, and it looks as though it will not be the eye candy that everyone was hoping for.
Don't expect every single programmer to adopt this religious Microsoft vs. Linux crusade that so many here on Slashdot have succumbed to.
Not everyone hates Microsoft, and not every one cares enough to cut off their nose to spite their face. These HL2 guys know which side of the bread is buttered, and they SHOULD cater to the Windows crowd. They outnumber Linux clients by, what... 45 times? There are more PS2 and X-box users than Linux end-users.
And the fact is, you will play it on a Windows box. HL2 will kick so much ass that if you don't have a box, you will be forced to copy it (I'm quite sure most slashdotters don't even have a legal copy of Windows anyways) and use Windows to play it.
Kudos to the UT developers and id for having the spare time to throw a bone to all the linux geeks, but this is an exception, not the rule.
Warcraft1 was pretty good.
:)
Warcraft2 was better than Warcraft1, but Warcraft3 was a waste of $50.
Maybe Halflife will be like Warcraft... Note to self: Don't buy Halflife3.
I'm a Computer Science major at a Prestigious Southern University with huge network pipes. I plan to host a few CS2.0 Linux servers at 10 ping. This will improve my class rank significantly without the need to spend a dime on arguably less ethical or lawful means.
When do companies ever release a press release on a Sunday?
And trust me -- no reasonable company anywhere ever makes a press release on April 1st. They'll date it March 21st or April 2nd instead.
Yaz.
You said it yourself: they're not going to get rich selling a linux version of HL2. That's the deciding factor.
Think about it from their perspective. From my experience, the PC industry does not put much emphasis on good design, maintainability of software or the even the assumption that the software base will need to be maintained for more than a few years. With those kinds of development practices, porting to another platform is hard, takes time, costs money, and might engender grumblings by the PHBs who wonder why the effort to port to such a small target.
I think it'll take at least one significant successful game on Linux to change challenge the idea that it's not profitable. Would HL2 (assuming it's as good as the first one) on Linux do it? You don't even believe it yourself.
i used to play half-life on this linux box. it ran better and looked prettier than on windows. but i gave up half-life and its mods at least 6 months ago.
i got sick of the poor quality of the games, the constant bugs, security flaws, and general lack of what i like to see in a community. not to mention the fuckers couldn't port the shit natively like the codebase they originally forked and bastardized into the sorry excuse for a graphics engine it is today.
i play just about everything else now. half-life 2 won't be gracing this linux box, even if WineX is hacked up enough to support whatever monstrocity Valve has cooked up. Doom III, on the other hand, will be getting my full attention...
Insightful
What's not to like about WC3?
so THAT's why they call it W(h)INE...
As others have mentioned, the problem is that Valve embraced DirectX 9 as the only API they would use to run the game.
The stupid thing is, they couldn't even just say they would code pure DirectX 9, because Nvidia in their wisdom decided to implement DirectX 9 in their own proprietary way, thus leading to the current public spat with Valve saying they had to code separate paths to have Nvidia hardware work with the game anyway!!
It really is time that a game protocol is made that is truly able to be used as a cross-platform API. I mean, game developers must surely realise that if they were able to code in one API and have it compile under Windows, Linux, Xbox, PS2, GameCube etc, they would make way more money servicing all the market segments, not just one, and save on development costs to boot!
OpenGL 2 is touted as being all that DirectX 9 is and more, plus it is an open protocol, but game developers need to use it and help formulate it for it to be a success.
I use Windows because of the games. That's the ONLY reason. Linux is more than capable of being my primary OS for web browsing, email, office work etc. But without developers coding for Linux, it will never gain the crucial support of the younger generation whose first question will be "What games run on it?" And if you don't hook 'em while they're young, then you will lose another generation to Microsoft's grasp.
ATI and Nvidia both supply 3D drivers for their cards, so why aren't they trying to get developers on board to actually code or port GAMES for the Linux market???
Someone really needs to write a GameOS version of Linux, and basically give it away as open source. If one or two top games like Half Life 2 or Doom III were able to run on it, it would soon saturate the market and provide developers with a free alternative to developing purely for Microsoft. Heck, why doesn't Sun write it? It could be a whole new line for them and firmly establish them as a true competitor to Microsoft. Just make it an open source game protocol is all I ask.
Visceral Psyche Films
I play Et exclusively in linux. I have it installed in both windows and linux, but I might as well uninstall it in windows as I never play it on windows. They roughly get the same fps. But just overall smoothness is much better, probably due to swap file activity.
And people can say dx9 is so much better, but why did value make hl1 d3d when the engine behind it was native opengl. You sure can't argue dx was the better tech back then
Since not only is Windows better optimized for gaming than Linux, but the market share for it is huge compared to the small section of Linux nerds that think all software should be free; why would the company waste their development resources porting it to Linux?
The reason they made a linux dedicated server but no linux client is twofold:
1: The dedicated server is simpler and easier to port because most of the source remains unchanged and you don't have to fuss with OS-specific API's and graphics libraries beyond the very rudimentary GUI
2: Linux is sucessful in the realm of servers, but is not yet a mainstream primary desktop operating system. Sure, maybe there are 10% as many linux desktop installs as windows, but the vast majority of those linux users also have a windows partition or another computer running windows, therefore it's not worth porting the client to take advantage of an extra 1% of market space.
Repeal the DMCA!
Basicly, look how much the users have spent on 3d cards only to have MS cherry-pick the very best games for their own "system". Remember when you use directx you're just a beta-tester for the next MS toy!
...if you are a hardcore gamer. Sorry people. That's just the way it is.
Valve can hardly be blamed for trying to defray enormous development costs by concentrating on the platform the vast majority of gamers will use.
Linux on the destkop has made tremendous strides, particularly in the last two years, but it's still a long way from being able to draw mainstream gaming developers from spending a significant portion of development time to have their games run on it.
Do I like this? Of course not. But all we can do as a community right now is continue to support those developers that do release official Linux clients with our wallets. We can also continue to help our friends and family make the leap to our OS of choice. Linux will get there. It's just going to take some time. But blaming developers for not releasing Linux clients will get us nowhere. They will jump on board on their own when a substantial user base is there who purchase games for Linux. If you have any doubts about that theory, just look at IT industry giants like IBM, Sun, and Dell and their about-faces in the course of the last decade concerning Linux support.
One last point, as far as I'm concerned, Mac users have had much more to caterwaul about than Linux users. The treatment they've received from game developers pales in comparison.
Looking for a Linux/Windows tech monkey in the Los Angeles area? Please see my resume.
That will have a proper linux version, look how good Enemy Territory is.
I can say that they are certainly screwing over the HL1 mod market. I current run one of the premiere Natural Selection servers known as Texas [HK] Palace.
We have a nice rig on an incredible network. However, Natural Selection is an incredible CPU hog. This is confounded by the newest version of hlds (3.1.1.1d+ on Linux, 4.1.1.1d+ on win32 I think) which uses 50-100% more CPU than hlds 3.1.1.0. Now, in the past we've had the choice on which version to use. With DoD, we need 3.1.1.1, same goes for CS1.6. On Natural Selection, the coolest HL mod IMO, we have to run 3.1.1.0. hlds 3.1.1.1 uses TWICE as much CPU has hlds 3.1.1.0.
HL2 is removing our choice to run 3.1.1.0 or 3.1.1.1. They're removing WON authentication and replacing it with a new Steam powered system to make way for HL2. It will lower the total number of slots available for Natural Selection because few servers will have the dedicated CPU time to run a stable server of more than 18 players.
We will probably be forced to drop 4 to 6 slots from our NS server to accomidate an HL2 server. Or be forced to splurge on a dual-opteron to run the amd64 build of hlds.
It won't kill you. Just spend your time doing something constructive.
Try Teamspeak. It has a windows and linux client, as well as a server for each platform. Free, as in beer!
I've nothing of importance to say, now go away before I taunt you with a second sig!
Like the Xbox version will be close to the PC version. IMO, The PC version is the only version to play and I own all 3 consoles plus a PC.
Nice sentiment - unfortunately it does not mean much.
It means more, statisticly speaking, than my vote in a presidential election, and yet I still drag my ass to the polls every chance I get. To say that I shouldn't vote because my one vote is like a spit in the ocean is just plain stupid.
What it comes down to is this: Windows isn't the only thing I gave up a year ago, I also vowed to never again pirate software. I don't care how great of a game HL2 is, it's not worth the $300 or so it would cost me to get it and a legitimate copy of Windows to run it on, never mind the however many hours of patch/reboot/repeat it'll take to get it running properly. Windows is aggravating enough when I'm being paid to deal with it, I'm certainly not going to subject myself to that in my spare time and on my own dime. I can get all the games I'm currently interested in playing, all of which are already ported to Linux, for less money than that, and it will take me less time to get them all installed.
I tried this a few years ago, I switched entirely to Linux on my home PC. Guess What? I had a bunch of nice Loki Games, but other than Quake 3 I could not deathmatch with my friends in games like Half Life.
I got Half-life running under wine without difficulty, same with Counter-strike. You are aware that progress has been made on Linux in the last few years, aren't you? With Q3, RtCW, and UT2k3, that covers all of my gaming need currently. (I like America's Army, but their authentication servers seem to have serious issues) I know people who have been happily gaming exclusively on Linux for over 3 years now.
What CAN we do?
Well - find some way to make games profitable for Linux.
I don't know about you, but I'll continue doing exactly what I've been doing: buying games that support Linux, and more specifically buying them from vendors like tuxgames that make a point of letting the producers know that my copy was bought to be played on Linux.
Dual booting and buying all the newest and greatest Windows-only games certainly isn't going to solve the problem.
But, to each their own. Clearly, games being made available on Linux isn't important to you. Fine, that's your choice. It is important to me, and I've decided to do something about it; namely voting with my wallet. It may not be terribly effective, but what else am I gonna do, buy a game that won't run on my computer?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Email addresses of Valve Software execs and developers: http://www.valvesoftware.com/people.htm
I'm quite confident Doom3 will run on Linux, do i WILL spend my money somewhere else ... to ATI
Ok really, i don't understand this running after the latest feature-bloated fun-extender. Quake won't be any less fun after HL2, so play with yourself Valve!
If you want a decent desktop OS and games you have to dual boot. Period. That's the god-awful truth and it's not changing any time in the next 5 years.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
bani? The same bani thats trying to turn Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory back into Return to Castle Wolfenstein?
Wow, for such an influential guy you're kinda an idiot.
Gabe Newell = Valve = Half-Life
Nerve = Nerve = Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Man, the just plain wrongness is staggering. Wait until I tell your boys at PlanetWolfenstein. Next thing you know you'll be claiming Splash Damage made Unreal Tournament. You think whoever let you in on the ET source would like to hear about you spreading this kind of slanderous false information about Nerve and Activision?
+1 Inaccurate is more like it.
That linux is unpopular because it doesn't run a lot of windows games, or not well at least. I've got news for you, windows doesn't run windows game well either. I've got a game sitting right here, works on my PC, but on another machine (with specs that well exceed game recommended) it craps out.
Now, tell me the wonders of gaming on an MS platform, because in many cases it is still hit-and-miss as to whether your game will work 100%.
What would be nice, is a game booting off a liveCD. If I can get a full OS+Productivity apps to load off a mini-CD, one would think that booting off a standard disc or perhaps DVD would run a game rather well.
And for savegames? Perhaps a USB memory stick (hell, they're pretty cheap, an 8mb or 4mb wouldn't cost much) and/or the ability to mount off a hard drive. If you can slap a memory card in a PS2 you can figure out a USB stick.
Seems to me that the ability to boot a productive running kernel without an HDD should be a boon that potential game developers should consider. At that point the pre-loaded OS becomes a rather moot point.
But atleast when I was running an Amiga, there was a VAST gamming library.
I find it amusing that people still expect companies to make tires for Ford cars. If you're really a driver you need to get on Yugo plain and simple. I don't like Yugoslavia or Yugos but I'm at least realistic about the situation.
And no, cars made by Chevy or Toyota don't count as a real driver's vehicle.
Wolf ET Linux, free as in free beer:
s &d id=834
s &d id=981
http://www.fragland.net/index.php?page=download
http://www.fragland.net/index.php?page=download
It's Linux, no one gives a shit. Just stop trying, go join OS X, which is, weither you want to admit it or not, is everything you've ever wanted Linux to be. Or join the WinCrap crowd. Or Unix, or SCO, or whatever else, just jesus, give up on this pile of garbage already. At least the Penguin is cute.
The PS2 wouldn't be capable of HL2 in any real, uncompromized sense. Both the XBox and Gamecube could probably handle it, but porting to the Gamecube would be a bit of work. The XBox, on the other hand, is just a matter of tweaking. And I'm a Gamecube fan - I'm just pointing out that there are sound reasons for only having an XBox version.
Fact: Linux is never going to make inroads onto the desktop with all these stupid boring business apps. We need games, man, kickass games!
So here's a typical slashdot response. I mean, just because it runs on Windows and not linux, you have a bajillion people calling shenanigans on Valve. I didn't hear nearly as many complaints when Nintendo released Legend of Zelda for the Gamecube only. And the same can be said for any third-party-developer game released for a single platform, so don't say that's a bad analogy.
And of course, for those people who say that it's the same hardware, so it should be easy, well, just look at how long it took to get WINE working. It's not easy. It's essentially developing for a different platform even if the hardware is the same.
So before you get all self-righteous about this, just stop and think for a second. If you're about to whine because Valve won't support your platform of choice, just remember that you made a choice. No one's forcing you to use linux. No one but you. And quit saying that Valve is in bed with Microsoft. It sure seems that they've been pretty linux friendly, compared to say... ohh. I don't know. Blizzard. And pretty much everyone else out there. Sure there are some exceptions, but in the end, they're about making money, and yes, you hate that, but many of you live in America, and enjoy doing so, what with the whole democracy and capitalism thing going on, imperfect though our implementation may be. Like the subject says, this is like whining about it not running on your toaster with netbsd. So. Yeah. Stop it.
They haven't written it for OS/2, either!
Or BeOS!
Or PalmOS!
There's not even a whiff of a C64 or Amiga version!
THE BASTARDS!
Half Life 2 = Life.
:)
Get one today
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Perhaps open an on-line petition.
While you're at it, open a petition for homeworld as well.
You think you Linux users have got problems? How the hell do you think us mac users have to deal with this?
Go cry me a river.
What it comes down to is this: Windows isn't the only thing I gave up a year ago, I also vowed to never again pirate software. I don't care how great of a game HL2 is, it's not worth the $300 or so it would cost me to get it and a legitimate copy of Windows to run it on, never mind the however many hours of patch/reboot/repeat it'll take to get it running properly.
This is the reason I don't own a console - instead I own a PC with legit software.
I don't know about you, but I'll continue doing exactly what I've been doing: buying games that support Linux, and more specifically buying them from vendors like tuxgames that make a point of letting the producers know that my copy was bought to be played on Linux.
I constantly sent back the registration cards for games with "Purchased for use with Linux" scrawled on them in bright red letters. I also own every game from Loki except "Eric's ultimate solitare" - (I don't like solitaire) even though I have only played half of them.
But, to each their own. Clearly, games being made available on Linux isn't important to you. Fine, that's your choice.
Having games run on Linux *IS* important to me. The problem simply became that I was spending more of my personal time fiddling around with an OS, than I was doing other things, such as playing the games. I work with Linux all day, and for a server, I would accept nothing less than Linux or BSD. Why?
Because, for me, it is the fastest (my time wise) solution, and less expensive than windows (both in time spent, and cash spent).
However, I have found that (for me) Linux as a gaming machine did not meet my requirements. There is often an extra layer (Wine for example) that makes the game run slower under Linux than Windows. Also, given that I do all my admin work at the command line, PUTTY allows me to access my servers, which are Linux based, just fine.
I view my computer as a tool - as a means to an end. Unfortunately, my personal time is valuable to me, and I can only support so many causes with my time. One of the things that I choose to do with my free time is computer gaming. It is unfortunate that Linux consumes more of my time in toying with it to reach that goal. Conversely, Windows eats more of my time when I try to use it as a server, therefore I choose Linux in that situation.
I guess I belive in using the right tool for the job. While it was fun using Linux as my desktop OS, and toying with various window managers, multiple desktops etc. I found it just ate too much of my time up.
When this changes, and Linux consumes less of my personal time on the desktop, I will switch back to using it on the desktop - but not until then.
On the server level, I cannot see Microsoft producing an OS that will consume less of my time than a *nix.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Have you tried Teamspeak? A friend of mine who has tried a lot of comm software on Wintendo says this is the best on Wintendo. (And the software is just about identical on both plats.)
Lemon curry???
yes, i was thinking valve but typed nerve. any fuckwit could have made that connection after i mentioned gabe newell. it was beyond your feeble comprehension i guess.
but if your life sucks so much that you need to 'tattle' about an obvious typo to make yourself feel better, then go ahead and perform your mental masturbation on planetwolfenstein.
every little os out there? should they also make custom releases for redhat, debian, suse, mandrake, etc..? and what about mac? and lindows will probably need it own because its so f-ed up. what the hell requires them to support your pissy little platform that hardly anybody in the real world uses. get real and stop being such a pretentious group of pricks.
"I can get all the games I'm currently interested in playing, all of which are already ported to Linux..."
Oh really... you're not just conveniently uninterested in any games that aren't ported? Will you still be making such a claim after HL2 is not ported?
And you'd really have to spend "$300 or so" - for example if you decided to dual boot with Windows for the sake of gaming? Uh, no, another exaggeration. Even if you did have to buy (hard to believe), you could do so at under $100.
Your points have less of an impact when filled with obvious half-truths and exaggerations...
There's no shame in a dual boot setup my friend.
Assuming the poster was requesting a single, unified API for multimedia development, he has two APIs from which to choose, and either choice should satisfy his request. He doesn't need to use a 'number of differing libraries'.
The point is that you have to expend money, resources and time to make a Linux client. Why are you going to do that when 95% of your user base can/will use the Windows version anyway?
Just to clarify and elaborate on your point, the 95% are Linux folk not Windows folk. Most Linux gamers dual boot or run Wine, they are already customers. A Linux port would not generate new money, it would merely replace a Win32 sale with a Linux sale. That's a loss from Valve's perspective, more work, no new money.
The Linux Game Market is not anyone who would buy and run a Linux game. It is only those who would never buy the Win32 version, those who would do without and not dual boot or run Wine.
They better bloody come through, cause its gonna suck being the only one at a LAN party without HL2 running.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
It's sadly amusing that we get lessons in morality from somone that doesn't even have the wherewhital to use their name.
Oh, wait... this is Slashdot.
Let's face it: Microsoft Windows has 95% of the desktop market. Linux has 2% and that is splintered amongst various distributions. It makes logical sense for a company to code their software to the operating system that is most popular and (until kernel 2.6) handles multimedia best. Get over it.
"Care about people's opinions and you will be their prisoner." ~~Tao Te Ching~~
They could be waiting for anything :
_ They could just be so thightly bound to DirectX that a port to an OpenGL based engine would be a lot of effort for a small amount of clients.
_ Or they could be waiting for proper 3D acceleration for high-end ATI cards under Linux.
My last computer have an ATI 9800 pro and I just can't use 3D acceleration. (I curse ATI every night for that)
Those are two good reasons IMHO.
I can't even use disks without suffering random crashes mind you : I have a pure SATA-150 system. I've tried all the workaround availables, none is working stable.
Up to this one, every computer I own are running Linux 90% of the time. (All my older AMD/nVidia based computers are working fine)
My best and most expensive computer can't be used as a Linux gaming machine.
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
who cares?
What would be the pro's & con's (both from a company and a user's perspective) to integrating a game with, say a stripped xNoppix distro ?
It would be like turning your PC into a console: put game cd in, reboot equals start game, end game equals second reboot.
I think the solution to getting something like Half Life 2 on Linux is to create open source versions of similar games.
Given the amount of effort that has gone into HL2, it may sound naive to propose that. But a lot of the work in HL2 is the result of pushing the limits of current technology. If you take something like Quake or Quake 2, there is probably far more free game content out there than there was available commercially with the original games, and there are open source renderers with comparable quality (and distinct from the open source releases of the original game engines). Contrary to what people claim, there are a lot of people outside the industry who create 3D models, art, sound, music for fun, not profit.
Companies are good at pushing the limits in areas like gaming; for that, they earn a lot of money, and for that they have to put in a lot of messy, unpleasant work (like dealing with DirectX). Open source then is the market mechanism by which those technologies then come down in price until they are free. If you absolutely must have the latest and greatest right now, then buy the commercial stuff. If you just want good games, wait a few years until similar open source Linux games come out.
Just because HL2 *currently* only supports Direct3D doesn't mean that an OpenGL and Linux port couldn't be made. The ease of this port will depend on the architecture of the game - how well it's been designed.
If it's been designed very well, a quick, rough first OpenGL implementation could only take a day. That was how quickly id Software got Quake 1 up and running under OpenGL when they first tried. It took a little while longer to do everything properly, optimise and make sure the game did everything properly for performance, but still.
If there was an experienced developer at Valve who had Linux experience, was quite familiar with their own engine - and was sufficiently motivated - it wouldn't suprise me if there was a Linux client made available within a month or two of the game's Windows release. Probably not supporting the high-end rendering features that the DirectX version does, but you're going to have to turn all of those advanced features off anyway on lower-end Windows machines (I remember something about a GEForce 2 being the lowest-class hardware that they're supporting).
So to anyone who says a Linux port is impossible because the Windows client is Direct 3D based - no, that's NOT impossible. It merely depends how much they want to keep ignoring Linux.
Remember EpicGames? The folks who developed UT and UT2003. Well, you can now be sure we won't be seeing any more Linux titles from them. According to this article, EpicGames and Microsoft have just signed a multi-game publishing deal which would make the games PC/XBOX-exclusive and I really doubt MSFT would permit any kind of Linux support.
I'll be playing Savage. :) Kudos to S2 for great linux client support in the same box and at the same time as windows.
Unix implies Mac OS X, but Mac OS X does not imply Unix.
Targetting Mac OS X does not necessarily get you close to Linux. Most Mac OS X games use the Carbon API which is basically a modern version of the original Mac OS API. Most Mac developers prefer Carbon since it is a closer match to their existing code, libraries, and experience.
Another Mac OS X API, and the one that is considered the native API, is Cocoa. It is basically an updated version of NextStep's API. Its also implemented in Objective-C.
Your monther bought Geforce FX video cards and 3D FPS video games the day they came out....
oops, then she wouldn't be able to run linux..
Your story makes no difference. Gaming will not come to linux with more users, because gaming must exist on linux before people can switch to gaming on linux. nVidia and ATI drove the nail in Linux's 3D coffin a good long while ago.
my 2 cents.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
First of all, you forgot SAVAGE . A reference grade quality, high end Action FPS / Large Multiplayer RTS with state-of-the-art grafics, dripping with eye-candy. And they are the _very__first_ to come out with a client for Linux from the get go whilst officially making that their policy.
So right away, go and buy that game and mail them how much you appriechiate them making a Linux game and how much you love to give them your money for it! They've even got a download purchase, so you can be playing in something like 20 minutes.
Second of all: The transgaming people are heroes, no doubt, but something like 1 out of 30 mentionable games actually run. I won't buy any windowsgames any more, even *if* they are supported by tg and those where the first and last 30 bucks tg got from me. Sorry guys, Master of Orion 2 runs quite ok (the first 15 min.) but that's about it. No, really, it's better we rid this shoddy emulation stuff sooner than later and pay developers for making cool native Linuxgames. Whe can use them to await the time when Linux has conquered the desktop and gaming developement kicks in.
Remember the Amiga days? Would've you thought that PCs would once be a gaming plattform? Me neither.
Bottom line:
Quit whining. And if you're bored help the Boson team finish their promising project.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
is to get the xbox version...
I have vice city installed in Gentoo and Win XP. The game is much quicker under Linux (feels like double the frame rate) although I suspect this might be something to do with anti-aliasing or other settings. One thing's for sure, the linux version keeps running without slowdowns, whereas the XP one takes a coffee break now and then when some vital process takes over in the background (reporting my installed apps to MS, checking for patch o' the day, downloading NAV filters, etc etc)
Cheers
Simon
Really, any true linux gamer jumps at the chance to buy any half decent game when it either supports linux through downloads such as Neverwinter Nights, or supports linux right off the cd. But how many true linux gamers are there due to the fact that so few games are actually available for it?
I remember after I bought Neverwinter Nights (about 2 days after its release) there was talk about the upcoming linux client, and although there was a bit of excitement and apparently a lot of forum posts from the linux users, when you look at it realistically, these users were simply a tiny percentage of the population who purchased or planned to purchase Neverwinter Nights.
Unfortunately, linux supporters who are also extremely avid gamers don't have much choice when it comes to a gaming platform. If I ran linux on my gaming machine, I simply would not have the wide variety and choice of games that I do when I run windows, and yes, people crave choice. I personally don't want to be stuck playing the same 2 or 3 FPS games when I also enjoy racing games and sports games. I have yet to see a retail port of *any* big title racing or sports game for linux.
Why don't developers/publishers spend money on developing linux versions? Because there simply are not enough users to make it worthwhile. And that is the unfortunate truth when cost > benefit, however I don't see this as a "linux users don't have the money or aren't willing to spend it" kind of issue. If linux was a truly viable gaming platform (If games of all sorts were developed for it) I guarantee you more people would either run linux because they can play the games they purchased on it, or the linux guys would buy the games because they now have an option.
Just don't run any linux servers, until you get a linux client. And if you manage a network, and feel a little BOFH-like, don't allow any HL2 traffic through that linux NAT either.
Why cant companies if its so hard to make linux versions, just make a damn wine compatible version.
Just make it basic, and openGL and of you go.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I know this sort of talk is likely to get me stalked but ...
What possible reason would Valve have for releasing a Linux port of Half Life ? It'll get bugger all sales. Face it if you walked down your street and knocked on all the doors how many of the people there would be running (and using, not just have it installed) Linux ? Eff all in the scheme of things! So why then should Valve employ a bunch of horribly expensive developers to make a Linux port with no visible returns in sight ?
Face it Linux people, Linux is very good at some things (server stuff, though I'm not keen on it being in important/sensitive datacenters) but impracticale for others.
I always find it interesting that the minority groups are the loudest whingers ... you should here some Amigans ;-)
Now if you'll exscuse me I'll jet find my asbestos undies ...
Petition for Half-Life
Ploum.net.
A Playstation 2 port has been anounced.
m int=1
"September 02, 2003 - During ECTS last week, Valve's director of marketing Doug Lombardi confirmed that Half-Life 2 would be making its way to the PlayStation 2 sometime in the future."
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/436/436323p1.html?fro
IMHO the same thing which happened to splinter cell, on the gamecube and PS2, will happen again.
Bad ports, only to please some customers. The PS2 doesn't have the hardware for this game.
on a budget of say, 5million, surely one linux programmer on 65k/year isnt going to kill the budget!
plus you dont have a windows and linux versions, you have BOTH damn binaries on the same CD, unless your a clueless manager that has some anal marketing reason for it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
All ten of the lunix users that actually pay for games will whine for a bit, then buy it anyway and boot into the Windows install that they, you know, just keep around for games and stuff. Valve will see not one penny less at retail, and will save thousands in support costs.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Because that's what I'm gonna do. At the time I tried the original Halflife - in the early days of CounterStrike -, it already felt really old and wasn't so impressive. Unreal was out already so there was a clear winner in the "look and feel" department.
Sure, HL2 seems to have snappy graphics, but apart from that it's gonna be plain ol'. The only thing I want to see is an end to Halflife mods! If I see one more damn 64x64 bitmap explosion and 3-polygon player models, I'm gonna throw up all over the screen it's on.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Actually HL2 will use InternetExplorer to render the MOTD, will be with "active-x" and "scripting" disabled, but you know... thats with IE is a joke.
:D
All Steam powered games will be easyly tracked with this and bug images, will be easy to place track coockies in the client, etc...
On-Topic:
I dont think all the Game developping is trow away OpenGL technology, but is OpenGL is slowly diing. I think Valve is killing anithing but Microsoft technology. The fact that Half-Life1 run as OpenGL Its because is Quake1 based, but a theorical Half-Life1 not Quake1 based will be no-opengl. I dont think Valve like OpenGL or standards, I think Valve like Microsoft *Closed* technology.
This is critical, because OpenGL 2.0 maybe will not change this. And all people want to continue playing Valve games, because where fun, but is code is CRAP. Look at Steam, the more crappy tool never seems, more bugs than line of code. But is a nice idea
-Woof woof woof!
As a developer I use a platform I think is stable, robust,opensource,... but fun at the same time.
;-)
;)
Hence Linux,Mac OS X,...
As an avid gamer I buy the games that I would like to play, and unfortunately run them on a platform that enables me to play those games as easy and as fast as possible.
Hence Microsoft Windows.
I hate, dispise windows from top to bottom, but when I'm gaming I can suppress that hate or at least channel it at the next Cacodemon I face
I am a full-time Mac OS X user, but will never buy a Powermac for gaming because I will have a slow gaming system and have to wait untill all the games get ported.
If I ever get the urge to run an Gamecube game that's not available on a PC game I would buy one, maybe even an Xbox if they invent a game good enough for which I would sell me soul to Satan
I really hope all this changes and that every game resembles Warcraft3 (simul. Mac + Win) and/or UT2003 etc, but untill then I'll play the games on Windows
I love gaming too much to let my geek OS preference get in the way of that!!
blaah !
I agree, after all most Linux people seem to go on about CHOICE, dont get upset if someone doesnt choose the same as you! Get your army of linux coders and start another Source Forge project then maybe in 5 years you will have another Tux Racer!!
Laptop Reviews
i don't get what the big problem is. fact of the matter is linux sucks if your a gamer and until someone changes that why doesn't everyone just stop whining. repartition, linux on one, windows 98se on the other, read slashdot on one, play games on the other... i don't see what the big problem is here... frankly, if it doesn't run linux and you're not willing to run windows too then stop the bitching.
and just to get this out of the way: i only say win98se because frankly i like to have that DOS support too. there are a lot of DOS games i loved and still like to play so why not just use the real thing.
it's just my opinion and it's very ON-topic. damn moderators have gone mad and it's affected me. just keepin' it real, yo...
fact: microsoft > linux
It's very hard to get Linux games on the shelfs so companys will try to snub Linux.
The companys who have supported Linux in the past enjoyed support from Linux users and what that means is that Linux many Linux users use Linux as a sort of personal server running personal websites, e-mail and other services from the system.
I've noticed the vast majority of game servers seam to be running on Linux. This becouse Linux makes a very good server and there are game clients for Linux. BSD and Solarus might make better servers but with no clients BSD and Solarus users just don't feel then need to support the games they themselfs can not play.
Linux users MAY chouse to reboot to Windows but those users will not be running game servers as they'll be taking those servers down to play. There just isn't any point to having a server if you can't play on it.
I don't actually exist.
Remember transgaming? Oh, that's right. They are STILL IN BUSINESS. And they sell LINUX GAMES! AMAZING! So it appears that geeks are talking the talk and walking the walk! And by golly, there IS A MARKET FOR LINUX GAMES! Ok, toasted that point. What's left....
Valve simply auctioned off access to their title to the highest bidder. They didn't read anything. If redhat had approached them with a huge bundle of cash, they would have put a friggin' penguin in the game. Valve simply doesn't care about linux, accept to run dedicated servers for their products. Unlike say, ID which does the Linux port for "practice". Carmac's words, not mine. Of course, Valve doesn't have a Carmac. Valve doesn't even have half a Carmac. They have a Gabe Newell and it remains to be seen what that's worth. This is their first graphics engine that is all their own. Valve does not have a stunning track record in regards to releasing rock solid code. They've also been known to outright lie their asses off about problems with their games blaming problems on drivers and hardware in the past only to fix the problems silently later with a patch. It's because of that attitude of theirs that I don't have very high hopes for HL2. Valve has repeatedly whined about graphics cards and drivers since the dawn of time when people get pissed about broken stuff. Where as a professional company doesn't whine and bends over backwards fixing problems instead of pointing fingers.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Whatever their reasons are. We know that Microsoft pays money to lock out competitors, so in the case of Valve I'm pretty sure they will or did get benefits if they provide a Windows version only. Which maybe makes the economical reasoning kind of redundant, at least short term. And I'm pretty sure ID could make quite some money more if they did like MS would have it (Xbox?), especially since I suspect they haven't actually *sold* too many Linux copies of their games. Regarding me, in my house Windows hasn't seen itself booting for some three years now, and HL2 won't change this sensible habit. Another sensible habit btw being to actually *buy* my ID games.
loki went under not for the lack of cash, but due to really bad management. yet yerself informed before spreading FUD.
Whoever modded the parent as Informative should be #;#;#;#;#;#;#;#;.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
.. by the time they release it in 2015, you'll be able to ALT-TAB between Linux Kernel 7.7.15 and Windows 2010 Advanced Server (the last version of MS-Win Server released after they decide to get out of the server market in Q4-2009).
First, there was vaporware. Now, there are vaporworries.
Oh my god. Finally I've found someone on Slashdot that appreciated that the OS is a tool to help them get things done and that "things" is not tinkering with the OS to allow them to do other things that can't be done without the first "things" being done.
You head directly to my friends list :o)
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Selling a game for $40 that Windows users can grab out of a bargain bin for $10 won't work and it has nothing to do with how supposedly cheap Linux users are. With that kind of price differential, I'd check out how well it works in Wine.
If Loki had way to be in on the process from the beginning and get Linux ports out no more than a month or two after the Windows debut then that is something else. I did pick up the QIII tin box. That came out when the Windows stuff did and was no more expensive.
>
Linux gaming community react to the release of Half-Life 2? Boot into Windows? Wait for WINE or WineX support? Get the Xbox version?
>
>
Buy Final Fantasy X-2 for the PS2.
PC Gamers are *SO LAME*.....
Since you'll already need a new PC to play the thing, where's the loss? You'll be booted into windows on one, and linux on another- just don't use the windows one for anything else, and you'll be fine.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Cheats in gaming has becomed an increased problem in some on-line games.
Since WINE sports Hardware acceleration, future game hacks (e.g. a program that aims for you, and other cheats) that are developed to run and hack through WINE, might be undetectable for the Windows anti-cheat program. Thus, it might be that the Anti-Cheat will block any WINE.
I've allready seen cheats that is undetectable through WINE in Half-Life Counter-Strike, and my guess it's only a matter of time before WINE is getting blocked, unless a anti-cheat client from within Linux is written.
This is why I have a Gamecube. My gaming machine is for gaming. I buy a game for it, that's written for it's hardware, put it in, and play it. I don't have to worry about if my drivers are as good as some other OS's drivers, or if my video card is new enough to run the game, or feel bad because I have to play the game on Windows even though all I use is Linux.
My computers are for email, the web, programming, etc. My gamecube is for game playing. Problem solved.
Guess I'll keep playing Heavy Gear II, same as I kept playing Quake when I was on OS/2. If I can't have it conveniently in the delivery vehicle I want, I'll pass.
RIAA, are you listening?
I actually broke a /. trend and went and RTA before posting here.
Now I can understand the *nix gamers lament. I've considered switching my main desktops over to linux for many reasons that we all know and have disussed here for years now. I still have not and yeah, it's mostly because of the games.
And yeah oh no I must not be a real Linux/GNU/OSS person because there are games for linux! Well yeah, duh, but to be quite frank they are not even in the same league with the sheer number of games that you can play on a Win32 boxen, let alone if you want to, gasp, pick what you can play.
But back to my point, this guy says he wants games on his *nix boxen but instead he just figures that buying a console is going to be better!? Excuse me? An XBox no less?!
I'm sorry, but this just set of my BS meter over the top. Yeah, consoles are gaming platforms and for people that use them it's cool. But are they any better than using a proprietary OS? And on top of that a proprietary console from MS?
I'm sorry, the whole artical is -1 Flamebait.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
You want a Half-Life 2 Linux client?
Set up a closed room and start reverse-engineering a port of it the day it comes out. Start up a project on SourceForge called OpenHalfLife2 and quit yer whining.
Half the fun is in specing out the project anyway.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
OK, folks, here we go again.
/dev/null.
Go back and look over this story. There, one before, we had a story on Slashdot about a software vendor not supporting Linux. At that time, I made a very reasonable suggestion - write to the company involved and ask for a Linux port. I also asked folks who had done so to comment in my Journal, so as to have a public record of the number of letters so written so that when the company involved said "We've never had any requests for this" we could trivially disprove the claim.
And what came of it? Nothing. cat
Why did Valve release a Linux server for Halflife? Because the community innundated them with requests for it.
So you want a HalfLife2 for Linux? Innundate Valve with requests! Stop bitching on Slashdot, and write them a physical, paper and toner letter requesting a HalfLife2 client for Linux.
Now, as for the whole "Just suck it up and run Windows" crowd, and the whole "Fuck Windows - Linux or Nothing" crowd: Each of us must make a decision what is more important - running the OS we choose, or playing a game. And you know what? That decision is going to be different for different people - imagine that!
If you are willing to put up with Windows to be able to run Halflife 2, then by all means do so, have fun, and SHUT THE FUCK UP!
If you will 'live free or die', and refuse to run Windows in order to run Halflife 2, then great! Welcome to the fold, accept the consequences of your decision, and SHUT THE FUCK UP (on Slashdot, that is)! Bitching on Slashdot won't change things, writing a letter to Valve just might!
Or if you don't want to write Valve, then help out on the Wine DirectX layer (and yes, I actually DO have contributions in the Wine source tree.)
But whatever your choices are, accept that they come with consequences, and STOP BITCHING ABOUT THEM WHERE IT WILL DO NO GOOD!
www.eFax.com are spammers
If you're serious about wanting the client for Linux , don't play it on Windows. I'd love to see it for OSX, which probably won't happen until the game is stale anyway. If I buy HalfLife to play it on PC I'm saying, "I don't mind that your're developing MS-Only software. You'll get my money anyway."
($.02)
WineX and wine atm emulates directx, anyone know why they don't work on lower level api calls instead, so you could download and install MS-DX instead of half coded emulated dx?
8 /0578.html :p
I searched on it and came up with this thread:
http://www.winehq.com/hypermail/wine-devel/2003/0
while I don't have the skills or time to start doing that myself, SOMEONE, get it done
No really. Get a life.
remove the ' ' in between 08 and /, no idea why that's added, but I can't seem to post without that showing up..
From http://www.blame-the-french.com/portal.php?article =0&sid=c6d361f221e8bb6e95ac4b053c4928de
Email and reply from some bloke and the HL2 pr bloke, Gabe.
--
Gabe Gabe Gabe!!!
As I'm sure you are aware the HL2 community is going crazy with the rumour that HL2 is going to be like a MMORPG and you will have to pay a fee each month via Steam to play HL2 multiplayer.
I don't believe this to be true but can you please put it to rest once and for all. PLEEEEEEASE.
Kind Regards
Matt
Here's my current thinking: Some people want to buy Half-Life 2 in a store. Right now we have three SKUs planned at three price points. One will have single-player only and not play MODs and we think of that as the mass market SKU (sold mainly at the Costcos and Walmarts of the world). The second is our traditional single-player plus multiplayer SKU that runs MODs and is sold at places like EBX. The third is the collector's edition SKU with lots of cool bonus stuff for people who like cool bonus stuff.
In the Steam world, some people will want to buy it once, like the middle SKU above. Other people will want to buy the game on subscription (e.g. $9.95/month). The good news for the "buy it once" crowd is, well, they only have to pay once. The bad news is that when we come out with new content (expansion products, TF 2, and presumably other games) then they have to pay separately for those. We're pretty sure that the $9.95 guys are going to get the better value, as we've been pretty good over the years at generating a lot of content.
Now nobody has done this before, so we're scratching our heads and massaging the plans to make sure we've got the best set of options. We've had some feedback that we should sell the top SKU (single-player only no MODs) on Steam, and my reaction has been "yeah, right, for the three people in the world who have a broadband connection, are sophisticated enough to purchase software over the Internet, but DON'T want to play MODs and multiplayer". Some people have said "I want a subscription, but I think the box and the manual are cool, so what about sending me those" and I think that's pretty interesting and we're trying to figure out what to do for them (needless to say Sierra isn't exactly jumping for joy at the idea of selling us boxes so people don't buy Half-Life 2 in stores).
But nowhere has there been a suggestion that people pay in the store and then pay a monthly fee on top of that a la the MMORPG.
Gabe
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I think one thing everyone is forgetting is that the HL Linux community is huge and has written probably millions of lines of code specifically to work with Half-Life. All this code has done nothing but keep HL1 alive, ever extending the life of the game.
Check out Metamod, a server mod that allows you to load multiple server mods. All server add ons are pretty much based on Metamod. Here is the List of Plugins available for metamod.
Then we have AdminMod, probably the most popular server mod adds all kinds of capability to the HL server, including MYSQL support. Not only that, it has a small interpreter built in and there are litterally hundreds of plugins available.
There is also all the Anti-Cheat software, software written by someone else then 'acquired by UnitedAdmins' (inside joke), server log parsers in pretty much every language, server status tools, bots, map building tools for linux, the list goes on and on.
The great thing about running a Half-Life server is that is really the BEST bar none game server software available. It makes Quake3 server and BF1942 look like Kommander Keen. Much of the functionally came from the Linux community. It was a 'symbiotic relationship' but I think Valve owes us a little more than a thanks.
Valves new slowdown/bloatware system "Steam" ? They are going to chance over from the Won servers in a couple of weeks (alledgely)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Have you told your parents you're gay yet??
I don't mean to sound like I'm knocking you as being ignorant, but have you ever tried programming both a server ap and a 3d game ap for Linux?
There's a huge difference between programming a server engine and programming a graphics engine. Linux is highly evolved when it comes to the former, but for the latter the tools are still in development. If they wanted to produce something that worked as well on Linux as it does on Microsoft, they'd probably need to spend most of their time developing the necessary drivers instead of actually programming the game. The cost of developing the engine versus developing artistic content might be minimal if developing for Microsoft, but it's not like all there is to it is a five-minute rewrite of the model->render(); method. Even the situation with NWN is instructive, in that there were all sorts of headaches just trying to get in-game movies to work, and those have nothing to do with the game engine per se.
The fact that it's coming out on XBox doesn't mean anything more than they can program for two different Microsoft-dominated environments, and, considering the XBox's need for hot titles, they probably got a ton of help from MS to make it happen.
Don't get me wrong. I love Linux. LOVE it. But there are times when that old cliche about using the right tool for the job applies, and it definitely applies in this case. Case in point: I developed a search engine for a message board database in under a couple of weeks for Linux. Despite missing some features, it positively smoked, and that was my first foray into socket programming. I tried making a tackle handball game for Linux, and after three weeks, it still looked like something worse than what the original Nintendo was offering.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Look some companies have tried to sell linux games, but no one bought them! They sold a bunch of the windows version though. I like open source, alot, but open source folks have to realize that alot of companies make money from SELLING SOFTWARE! We can't have everything for free.
Instead of signing a petition, wait till a company
comes out with a linux game, and BUY it, buy 2 or 3 for your friends. Thats how we will get good games on linux.
petition with your wallet...
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Games for linux are gonna be few and far between cause very few use it for a personal computer. Don't waste my time or yours whining. Everyone knows this is true.
I like traffic lights
If HL2 works in Wine, I'll buy it. If not, I won't.
Using Wine, I'm able to play Counter-Strike (without sound, which makes it difficult to own). With ePSXe, I'm able to play Wipout 3 (a great PS1 game). I could do both of these on Windows, but then I'm missing 1 full-time Linux box as a trade... simply not worth it. A friend of mine pointed out that some folks, including both of us, use UNIX *for the apps*. I'm OK using cygwin on windows if I have to, but it's only a short matter of time before I grab SecureCRT or JavaSSH to connect back to my home machine, and sanity. Emulated Bash&Emacs on Windows feels like emulated Counter-Strike in Linux. I guess Bash&Emacs are more important.
With Windows, I really feel like I'm wasting my time. If I use it, and spend money to get games for it that I like, I'm postponing the day when I get what I want. Not to mention that it feels like a clunking mess, the Standard XP install using much more RAM and FS than my standard Lin install.
So, I just deleted it. I fretted a bit about it, as I now really need to be serious about Office compatibility, but man, I feel 100% better. There's no MS in my house. Except the open win32 implementation in Wine, of course, which is... ironic, to say the least.
VUshitgames.com requires you to use Flash?! Does the Linux communite have Flash?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Let's see, ATI and Nvidia both tout their cards as DX9 cards. I don't see DX9 on any linux box.
So if you want games on Linux, tell the graphics card industry to make OpenGL optimized cards.
I can picture a conversation at Valve.
"We can make one of the most revolutionary games ever using DX9 or we can tone it down a good deal and make it workable on Linux. What do you think?"
Oooooooooooooooo that's a tough one, make money? Yes please.
Linux, SERVER not DESKTOP.
Get over it.
a fork in Microsoft's potato, rather than wasting time on Wine, the Linux community should figure out how to run X-Box apps.
I am going to give Valve the benefit of the doubt. I'll bet that once they get the game out the door, they'll work on the Linux client. It wouldn't make sense for them to hold up the ship date for 1% of their potential market. So if you want the Linux client, you'll probably just have to wait. It isn't so bad, what do you really gain by getting the game the day it comes out? Hell, I played the multiplayer version of HL years ago, but didn't actually play and finish the standalone game until this year. No, I am not kidding.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think most people here are missing the point. I've read posts about Valve employees coming from Microsoft, DirectX 9 being better than OpenGL and prohibitive costs in doing a Linux port. All good arguments, but not the main point of the article.
Valve expects Linux users to support their game by running the server, but doesn't understand that they should support Linux users by giving them a client. If supporting Linux is too much work, then they should shove their Linux server up their ass and make due with whoever wants to run a Windows server.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
It seems to me that the answer is in the question. A good portion of HL servers run on Linux. Those servers collectively hold a decent amount of power over the ongoing success of HL. If they shut down, demanding a Linux client, Valve sure would wake up.
Ah yes... Loki... When they ported Civ 2 I was hoping to go down to my local CompUSA and pick up a copy. Loki said that would happen. It never did adn I eventually bought it off the Internet. I wanted to get it direct from Loki but as far as I can tell they never got their online store working. Other places where I tried to buy it were out of stock but I eventually found one. The same thing happened with Alpha Centauri, Railroad Tycoon and Tribes2. Ok, now I'm not an economics professor, but I think how it works is, if you want to make money you make sure your customers can buy your products...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
to make game engines OS independent? All I want is to buy a game, stick it into my CD-ROM, have it boot and run without a need for an OS.
Valve bailed out on the Mac port of the original Half-life mere days before the port was done. Why? Because they made a decision that they were going to issue NUMEROUS updates and bug fixes, and they knew that the Mac version would always lag behind the Windows version, meaning that Mac players would not be able to play against Windows players most of the time. That was the official line.
I think the real reason Valve didn't release the Mac version was the cost of the patches, since Valve didn't charge for any of them. Will there be enough Mac or Linux sales to cover not only the initial development costs for each platform, but also the ongoing free patches and upgrades? Probably not.
Restoring save file... You return to level 8 in Black Mesa.--More--
Hello Gordon, welcome back to NetHack! You are a lawful male quantum physicist.
Weapons
a - a +0 9mm pistol (weapon in hand)
b - 24 +0 bullets (in quiver)
Armor
c - a +1 H.E.V. suit (being worn)
j - a cursed +0 pair of jumping boots (being worn)
Tools
d - a blessed +2 crowbar (alternate weapon; not wielded)
e - a large box
f - an uncursed pair of lenses (being worn)
t - a blessed bag of holding
(end)
You miss the headcrab.
You miss the headcrab. The headcrab hits!
You just miss the headcrab. Your pet security guard hits the headcrab.
You miss the headcrab. The headcrab hits!
d - a blessed +2 crowbar (weapon in hand)
You begin bashing monsters with your crowbar. The headcrab is killed!--More--
Your pet security guard picks up a headcrab corpse. "That'll look nice in my trophy room."
come on people. with an extra 2 gig hard drive you can dual boot with windows 2000, and not even contiminate your precious precious.
Linux could be a fantastic gaming platform, but, hey, isn't enough that its a fantastic everything else platform? Really. I mean, I am just happy that new games come to the PC platform in general, instead of being made exclusive to the PS/2 or GameCube format.
You guys buy into a philosophy and a system that makes selling commercial software as difficult as possible, then bitch, moan and whine when nobody makes commercial software for your system.
Games are commercial software, and they always will be. You can't make money by selling the manual to a game. You can't make money by selling a "service plan" for a game. You can only make money by selling the software itself, a transaction Free Software is specifically designed to thwart.
You've got no one to blame but yourselves.
In case you haven't noticed, Windows is becoming a less and less atractive platform for games. Microsoft is not going to be able to provide a (more) secure platform and a fast gaming platform in the same box.
Therefore: X-Box.
The whole reason for X-Box is to hold onto the important gaming/tweaking market. Of course trying to prevent X-Box hacking is contrary to promoting the X-Box for this market, but wth.
Linux will be the gaming platform of choice.
Oh wait... this is Slashdot. First we need a browser that blocks Slashdot.
Linux dedicated server. I run XP and will probably never make an install of any form of Linux on this computer, but I recognize the stability and low latency that comes with most Linux servers.
sorry, thought the subject would get people's attention.
I do want to make a case for OS X though.
Mac software has historically carried a lower support cost than software on other platforms (though I'm sure any differences are much smaller now than in the Win98 and earlier days)
Mac users spend more on software than Windows users (per user per year). Mac OS users exist in a slightly different culture... a culture where you're so happy to see the software you want on the shelf that you actually buy it instead of just firing up Morpheus. The only real exception to this 'rule' are poor designers... they swap Adobe licenses like it's going out of style...
Apple _finally_ has hardware that will run modern games nicely. I'm not sure I've been able to say this since the Blue and White G3 days (when Intel started to pull away).
Here's the deal... OS X is an easier sell for a company like Valve. You have a supported OS (don't start about the wealth of great linux support on the web, I know it's out there but corporations put more value in a manned phone line). You have robust graphic drivers and a company behind them that would be very happy to help you with any issues you find. You have a large corporation who would back your development efforts... heck HL2 would probably end up on the index of http://www.apple.com
what does this buy Linux users? They get an OpenGL 1.4 codebase from the OS X project. The only thing left to port is the networking and coreaudio... repackage the installer.... badda bing.
"stupid ffakr" -- that's me.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
I'll bet that once they get the game out the door, they'll work on the Linux client.
Unfortunately, the head guys have stated repeatedly that neither HL2 nor the underlying 'Source' engine will be ported to linux. It's a shame, really.
-Bucky
2575 signatures so far.
...on a friend's machine and download vmware
.net on my redhat box. i think that's pretty impressive.
i used it to install and run visual studio
given the money someday, i will actually purchase a copy from them, it is outstanding software.
i sell illegal drugs
It's not business as usual, it's an "inexcusable insult on their behalf!!!"
*sigh*...
"Sufferin' succotash."
Like it or not linux is a server platform and not a desktop OS. So it makes sense, at least for the time being, to only make a server for HL2, and not a client.
Not trolling, I don't care how great you think Linux on the desktop is, it's still not as refined as Windows.
Oh, wait - yeah.
There wasn't EVEN a server version for Mac,
much less a client.
Count your blessings, Saint Nix
They could have easily written the engine to use OpenGL as well as DirectX. It's that plain, that simple. I should know, Linux Game Publishing does this sort of thing on a regular basis.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's OpenGL's fault. They sat on their asses with OGL2.0 and now that they've FINALLY approved OGL1.5, which is equitable to DX9 (and yes, HL2 makes extensive use of DX9 pixel shaders, which is why NVIDIA cards perform so badly), drivers for OGL1.5 won't be out for another few months at least. If the ARB wasn't stupid and did this last year, you might see HL2 using GLSLang rather than HLSL. But, you didn't. Blame the ARB.
Now you know how mac users felt for all those years. Welcome to a niche platform.
And not from UT fans or Epic, either.
All of the previews I've read from review sites, smaller and larger, have commented on how impressed they were with UT2004.
Many of them have said things amounting to "UT2004 is much much more of an improvement to UT2003 than we thought", "UT2004 is the spiritual successor to the original UT", and "UT2004 will probably be the game to purchase over the holiday season." These aren't actual quotes, just paraphrases of quotes that I've read--paraphrased because I've heard different previewers say very similar things.
More than once, I've read previewers make comparisons between UT2004 and Battlefield 1942. That's because the new UT2004 has a new mode, Onslaught, that is much like the original UT domination, but more involved, and involving capturing nodes on the way to capturing a main base. Put that together with vehicles, and you have something that apparently plays much like BF1942, but science fictiony, with better graphics and apparently smoother gameplay.
Or so the previewers say.
I highly recommend you check out sites like Gamespot, IGN, Gamespy, and other places (I can't remember which other ones offhand). I'm really looking forward to UT2004--it sounds like a really great game. I find myself thinking of buying a new graphics card for that game alone (although I'm currently running UT2003 just fine on a GForce2).
Coordinate a day with other Half Life Linux Server administrators to select a day once a week, two weeks, or month to turn off your Half Life Linux Server. Make sure that the creators of Half Life 2 know that the reason that you are doing this is to convince them to release a Linux client of HL2.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
I assure you, Linux Game Publishing, Hyperion, and others would be more than happy to help w/the testing, tuning, etc. with a game company. And we'd not be mis-managing the situation like Loki did.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"How will the rest of the Linux gaming community react to the release of Half-Life 2? Boot into Windows? Wait for WINE or WineX support? Get the Xbox version? With so many Half-Life servers running on Linux, will the same be true for Half-Life 2?"
I think that there are far more important things to worry about and strive for in the Linux world than this.Come on, people! If you really wanted to run games, you wouldn't use a PC to do it, you would buy a gaming system.
Let's move on, here. Nothing to see... It's called "Half Life" for a reason: it is not even worth saying "get a life" to this article.
Loki didn't go out of business because there wasn't a market. Loki went out of business because the upper management was utterly clueless.
Scott bought some 50k units of those stupid tins, etc. and delayed the release of the Linux version (which SHOULD have went out only a week or so AFTER the Windows version) by nearly a month. Worse, he wasted the money on the massive production run when he should have done something more reasonable like 5k units to limit his losses. Had he done that, the margins per unit would have been smaller, but the game might have broke even.
Loki bit off more games than they could comfortably afford and did pathetically stupid business decisions with the ones they DID have.
THAT is what killed Loki.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If they're abstracting the DirectX stuff, like most games seem to be doing (Well, some do a better job of it than others... :-) then it's a moderately simple matter of sliding in the changes to the abstraction layer to support the other platforms. Some of the code's warped because of DirectX, but unless they're doing some bog stupid things like thoroughly intermixing the DirectX code throughout the game engine code (Not likely, but possible), then a port is possible- if they're amenable to the act and willing to license the rights for a reasonable rate.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Carbon doesn't provide 3D. OpenGL does.
Carbon doesn't provide Networking. OpenTransport/OpenPlay/NetSprockets does.
Carbon only provides input layer code.
Once you port to Linux, you already have the makings of a MacOS X game since the code uses OpenGL and either Activision's ActiveNet (LGPL) or OpenPlay/NetSprockets (Apple's public license). SDL handles the input layer issues.
Mike Phillips just provided the patches for the GPLed SoulRide that allow the game to compile for and run on MacOS X. They were a logical consequence of the clean-up work on the Linux version we're doing for the commercial release of the same.
We're pondering what to do with Ballistics and Bandits in the same regard- because it's a short hop over from the Linux version.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If you won't go windows, why go Xbox? isn't it essentially the same, since its all microsoft?
SLATE
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
of course, what would happen if all the linux servers of Half-Life disappeared for say a week in protest? Valve would be in definite trouble if that many servers disappeard. 70-80% of half-life servers are linux servers, iirc. the number of complaints valve would receive about that would be ridiculous.
OpenAL sits on Linux, Windows, and MacOS X. Unreal Tournament 2k3 uses it. America's Army:Operations uses it. Most Linux games use it.
There's a solution that actually makes sense that allows you to target all three OS platforms without much more effort than targeting Windows solely.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I have a similiar philosophy as that of the article author: I'd rather do work on my PC and play games on a console. Unfortunately, the kinds of games I like to play are mods of first-person shooters, which have not been particularly available on a console. What I'm praying for is that Microsoft will be able to use some of their clout to get real, non-crippled ports on the XBox. And for the love of IntelliMouses, please let me use a proper input device!
It's a complex of several different ones accessable under COM calls to the same. Microsoft markets the thing as one unified thing, but it's more akin to the multiple libraries- much more than most people think.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You just boot up the copy of Windows that almost certainly came with your machine when you bought it, you fat, whiny dork.
If it won't run on my computer, then I won't buy it.
Linux gaming is at the point where Mac Gaming has been for the past 10 years, hopefully it will increase in the future, but the only way to do it is to be good advocates and make noise with our wallets AND tell the companies that you bought their product BECAUSE of the linux version.
The Mac Game Market is not a useful comparison, the Mac and Linux situations are different. Counting users is a mistake. The Mac situation wildly differs from Linux in that Mac users can not dual boot or effectively emulate. On the Mac they not only have to emulate the APIs but the CPU instructions as well. For modern games it a native version or nothing. On the other hand Linux users can use the Win32 version of the game. Most Linux gamers dual boot or use Wine so they are already customers. Targeting Linux does not generate any new money from them, it merely replaces a Win32 sale with a Linux sale. That's a money losing situation for the developer. The Linux Game Market only consists of those Linux Gamers who would never buy the Win32 version, those who would do without rather than dual boot or use Wine.
Linux isn't for games. Sorry. Yeah I know you can play Quake, and Master of Orion now and maybe a few others using wine or winx, but lets get real Linux, just like apple, will never be as good a gaming platform as windows. Sorry. Bitch about performance, Bitch about pipelines and fantasize about 64bit architecture, but the FACT is windows 0wNz on the gaming platform and with so many game developers contnue to stick wiht that trend its gonna stay that way.
So keep your linux for your server. Your mac for your printing, and windows for your games.
Ave Molech Setting
On Windows of course. The Secret Weapons of World War 2 is great.
5% of 300MM is 15MM, not 1.5MM. 1% of 15MM is 150k. You've got the end result right (300,000,000*.05*.01=150,000), but the process wrong.
If there's a Linux version then don't forget about us Mac users with OS X!!! :)
I'm still kinda pissed Macs never got Half life. At least we have Unreal...
Ok, maybe a linux user can help me understand this... but why do you want to play games in linux? What makes it so great and advantageous over Windows game/graphics/sound-wise? When new games come out, it seems a lot of linux users say they'll try to run it under Wine, or they complain that there's no native linux port, etc. etc... why not just dual boot Windows/Linux? Make a 5-10 gig Windows partition, and have fun playing your games.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
How will the rest of the Linux gaming community react to the release of Half-Life 2? Boot into Windows? Wait for WINE or WineX support? Get the Xbox version?
Pirate it because "information wants to be free."
You Linux clowns are all alike.
Convince them through simple supply and demand. Like other people have said here, write in! But the thing you guys don't note is that they won't comply because they somehow "fear the community" or "love the community" (although they might)... they'll simply do it from a financial perspective. If enough Linux users write in then they'll analyze the cost of doing a linux port versus the profits gained from doing so. Simple as that.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Support your friends at ID Software. Most people that don't feel that strongly about it will already have an extra Windows computer or a Windows partition.
But I think its really important to show your support for companies that support (or generally seem to remotely care about) our community. Sierra has shown some interest (supported the porting of the last Tribes 2 patch to the now unsupported Loki port), but this is the kind of release that demonstrates where their loyalties are (or aren't).
Most be games will come with a Linux server now and those that don't give us anything back don't really get the Linux community. We may be a minority, but we are (at the very least) an excellent resource.
Quack, quack.
There are no commercial games for FreeBSD, so I don't buy any. I have been thinking about Unreal Tournament, but... I prefer to have a native version instead of Linux emulation.
If you have enough RAM and disk space then you can always run whatever windows app you like with even better performance than windows itself with VMWare
He looks at the facts from the point of view of a linux-geek. The thing is - most of the servers online are not owned by linux-freaks - most of them are from a gaming-related company or a clan.
The servers simply run best and require less resources on linux - and linux-serverhosting is cheaper than windows-servers. THAT are the reasons that so many game-servers run linux - not that some geek runs a server for a windows-game just because it runs in linux. At this moment - there are thousands of halflife servers running linux - when there is no native linux-version - would that all be linux-geeks that like it that there is no native version? Don't think so - just the fact that there are already so much HL servers running linux, and the fact that there were already an awfull lot of them long before I was able to even think of starting HL in Wine - or WineX even existed - proves the author wrong.
Another point - about HL2 not running on linux. OpenGL simply doesn't support the necessary features that the HL2 engine uses - unless it is done thu vendor-specific extentions of nVidia or ATI. The HL developers already didn't like it to write a specific rendering path for the last-generation of nVidia cards because they were to slow when running with the generic DX9 rendering path - so they are certainly not going to write 2 separate renderers using opengl for the few customers that want to run it in linux - because - face it - we are a minority in gaming-land. From a developers point of view - I can perfectly understand that (I don't say I like it). Also they don't have any advantages supporting and developing a linux-version - linux is there - and it runs their servers just fine at this moment. Epic had to develop in linux anyway for the PS2 version of their engine. Owkay - they had to write the OpenGL renderer - that's true - but by experience I know it is easyer when you can port a game and run & test the game itself it in the development environment - and have one guy writing the PS2 rendering engine - and let the others work on the port - while able to test it without the necessary equipment - believe me - I do embedded development - but we test and run the main-applications on pc, simulating the hardware - and have one guy (read: me) do the hardware dependand stuff. Yes - that takes a one-time development of the testing-libraries for pc - but in the business I am - I see another type of hardware every half year or so - so it is worth it.
I strongly doubt that we will actually see a PS2 version of HL2 any time soon - so there will be no need for them to port/run the game in linux.
Slashdot _would_ exist without "programmers getting paid" for keeping it alive, and I dare say it would even suck less. You have a low enough ID# to remember when
At a grocery store maybe. But grocery stores are not the only place where you get the stuff to fill your belly. Ever heard of collectives? Most of the OSS is collective work too. How do you think people filled their bellies all the thousands of years when currency itself didn't exist?
The OSS developers do their best and then share and take advantage of eachothers works thus eliminating the "suits taxation" wherer a lot of their sweat is converted to money for in effect non-producing individuals. Also, it really shold be needless to mention all the OSS companies who sell services instead, but I guess you may have forgotten about them too?
And remember: Don't eat your soul to fill your belly!
Cheers...
I wanna run Linux, but I play all sorts of cutting edge games. I don't see Lock On: Modern Air Combat coming out for Linux at the same time as the Windows version. I'm still waiting for the Raven Shield dedicated Linux server to come out like Ubi promised. I don't see EQ II for Linux coming, I don't see Half Life 2 for Linux coming out anytime soon after the Windows version either....
On the flip side I'm also deeply interested in networking, operating systems, and interoperating with them I have a plethora of OS'es all running.... on one system concurrently. See part of the side effect of being a rabid gamer is having an uuber powerful system. This pays off when running VMWare cause I can have several OS'es going all at once. RedHat 9, RedHat Severn, Netware 6.5, OS 2 Warp, Windows 2003 Server, Solaris 9 x86, blah, blah, and on and on.
So, I love to run Linux, but it's not my only OS. And besides, I have Linux on my 'server' too, so it's all good.
So Linux lover? game freak? whatever? It's all good...
You wouldn't pay for it anyways.
articles like this show how truly pathetic people are.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
So, it already happened, and the only problem for PC users was... no Halo?
Dude, my nephews have an Xbox. I've played Halo.
Halo sucks. I mean, it seriously sucks big, fat hairy, stinky monkey nuts.
So, I'm not afraid.
In case you didn't notice, 1.5 million is about as much as the almost the complete market. Starcraft, which is still sold today, sold ~ 4 million copies. The Blizzard Guys were celebrating when they shipped the 1 millionth copy of Diablo II. So, even if the "real" market for Half-Life II is 5,000,000 copies (which sounds ok, since it is a 3D shooter and those are more straightforward/popular in General) - 1% of all those gamers might be linux gamers - I don't think that is a small figure, most of the gamers are about 14-18 years old and can't operate a DOS console (or whatever that thing is called in XP).
Now let's say half of that mass buys the game, 0,5% -> 25,000 copies - and those over a time period of about 4 years. Maybe 18,000 of those will sell at the full price (other 7,000 come from the bargain-bin after a year or so). 18,000 copies, maybe at $20 (actual profit), that's ~ $360,000 - even if they say "no support at all for the linux version" - which won't help selling - that is not enough to make a profit. Those units have to be made, the port-dev team has to be paid, etc. Now that leaves an amount of money that in a large company like valve probably doesn't even pay for lost time of the devs who could bring out the next title a month earlier.
On the other hand, I personally think that this all just because of Steam - they want their DRM stuff be distributed!
If anyone ever again says the mods here are pro-linux and anti-windows, remind me to smack them. What pro-linux sites do you know would mod up a blatant flame and troll like this, even using a word like "loonix". The microsofties have taken over! What posseses M$ fanboys to come to slashdot? Are they so zealotus that they absolutely must defend there precious product?
Couldn't have put it better myself. You missed one other option, though- buy the games that are natively available for Linux, such as Neverwinter Nights, UT2k3, DooM 3, Majesty, Ballistics (Yes, I know it's not available yet, but it's in beta right now...), Bandits, etc.
More games purchased means showing that there is an actual market there. In the case of buying LGP published titles, it means we can afford to buy the rights to more titles to be produced.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"On the other hand Linux users can use the Win32 version of the game."
I don't bevause it's too much trouble. Dual-booting and wine are both a pain in the @$$.
Then you are one of those extremely rare members of the potential Linux Game Market. Rare with respect to Linux users, not x86 PC users in general.
Plus, Linux runs on non-IA32 systems, so a fraction of Linux users can neither dual-boot to Windows nor run Wine.
Sun, Alpha? Sorry, those folks are so few they are commercially irrelevant with respect to games. Targeting those folks is not as simple as recompiling, and sometimes that is not simple either. Commercial games have to be tested, patched, etc. These folks can't support such efforts.
PowerPC? The same arguments apply as with Sun and Alpha. In addition the x86 dual boot argument applies as well, however in this case the developer would target Mac OS X rather than PowerPC Linux. Incidentally I dual boot Mac OS 9 and Yellow Dog Linux on an old PowerMac 8500.
the point of having a Linux port is so I don't have to reboot my PC!
If there's one thing that's true of computers, it's that everybody has a different experience with them. Mine has been exactly the opposite of yours, at least on the desktop (obviously we agree on what's best for servers). All I can say is that you should try it again, the Linux desktop has improved dramaticly in the last few years, enough so that I strongly suspect that's the main difference in our respective experiences.
[disclaimer]: I use SuSE exclusively, YMMV.
I constantly sent back the registration cards for games with "Purchased for use with Linux" scrawled on them in bright red letters.
I commend you for doing that, but unless there's a box for Linux on the card, I very much doubt that there's a field for the person entering that data to put it in, so it's quite unlikely that it gets to anyone that matters. I could be wrong, though.
While it was fun using Linux as my desktop OS, and toying with various window managers, multiple desktops etc. I found it just ate too much of my time up.
When this changes, and Linux consumes less of my personal time on the desktop, I will switch back to using it on the desktop - but not until then.
I think the answer to the second paragraph is in the first. I actually made the switch because I found that Linux required LESS of my time as a desktop OS than Windows (a large part of that is that it's better able to withstand the unholy duo that is my wife and daughter, while still giving them all the functionality they want). That's not to say that I don't spend more time messing with Linux than I did with Windows, but the vast majority of that time is what I consider play time, whereas with windows it was almost exclusively maintainance and repair.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Well goody for you. Hey, on a similar note, I won't be supporting Nintendo, because they don't support me and my XBox.
No, it's not apples and oranges. If game companies only want to develop exclusively for DirectX, then that's the linux-only users' problem, not theirs. They're not being unreasonable in not going out of their way to support the Linux community. Businesses that support open-source / *nix are commendable, but we shouldn't expect it from them
No, he's right.
Microsoft has stated numerous times that Windows is faster than Linux!
Not to mention Windows 2003 Server can save you a nickel.
The only winning move is not to play.
[nt]
So, I suppose I should spend $$$$$ in a Xbox than $$$ in Windows XP just because I'm not fond of old Bill... Linux isn't yet suited for gaming, live with it!
It's even worse than whining because Mario Bross was never released to the Genesis or Sonic was never released to the SNES... Because THEN you would have to buy a new console to play your favorite game.
Shut the fuck up you moron.
If you want to play games, get a pc or a console. Shut the fuck up about not having a game released on linux.
Id doesn't take an extra six months because of that.
Epic doesn't take an extra six months because of that.
It all depends on the quality of the developers- if it's going to take an extra six months to come out, you may want to wonder about the quality of the code coming from the game company at that point.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I DO work in the games industry as a consultant/contractor. My current moonlight gig happens to be Linux Game Publishing. Michael Simms isn't an idiot by any stretch of the imagination. And, I do know for a fact that Id's not ran by idiots nor is Epic. The remainder may be up for debate, but the generalization's pretty much wrong.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
There's as many things that can go wrong with a Windows install as there is with a Linux install these days with a game. These days, it's actually rather easy to get a game going under Linux- in fact, with the good hardware (which, by the way, happens to largely be the same on both OSes...) you're going to get no major issues with a Linux game whatsoever. However, you've got one other thing that seems to be an issue with Windows (XP in particular) that doesn't seem to be so with Linux on the same hardware.
The PCI latencies can be off (That's a VERY common thing in Windows)- it can throw the OS or the app completely off, causing stuttering in sound or skipped frames with the video. Doesn't seem to happen on Linux based setups on the same hardware, but under XP, it does bizarre things with your applications.
Suffice it to say, basing the current state of affairs off of what they were a year or two ago is making an error in that you're operating off of old info.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Don't support these companies, but don't deprive yourself either. If you try the game and like it, then play it. Just don't pay for it, pirate it! And the windows you'll need, pirate that too! And if you find that it isn't so good that you can't resist it, then resist it. Don't help it's popularity. Don't host servers, etc. But please, use your money to reward only, not because society expects payment.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
My take on the Sierra/Valve thing is they had the right game at the right time. A good 32 player supporting engine that ran on your average machine of the day.
If you look at the post-mortem reports on Half-Life1, it was NOT that they were creating another FPS that "just happened" to be fun and ran on low-end hardware. It's guys like you that "blow off" the efforts of game developers.
Rather, you would see Half-Life was designed on a weekly-basis to be fun; so much so that they had a principle where the player would not get lost after 5 minutes(i.e. they put lots of mini-goals). Half-Life brought back the concepts of "huge monsters and arenas"(i.e. the tentacle-level) that FPS of the day have forgotten.
Where Half-Life got lucky was in the mod-department - CounterStrike. And the fact using an older engine ran pretty well on current hardware.
Like you, I also haven't had any trouble getting these games to function correctly without fiddling. *shrug* As you say, to each his own.
There is definately a REASON why nobody distributes games in that form for the PC
Yet, anyhow, and one of the reasons is probably because the idea is much less feasible in the windows-centric gaming world than on 'nix.
Give it another year or two, liveCD's might become a decent way of gaming on a PC. At the very least the issue could be traced to specific drivers, etc (again, common drivers at the time on the liveCD, only extended ones on the memcard). In the playstation, you can choose "Memory card A, B, etc", so no problem doing the same for a PC I'd imagine.
And remember, just because somebody hasn't done something yet, doesn't mean that - with a little care and effort - it can't be done in the future!
I honestly don't think so.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Yes, it's a step backward into the world of dos gamming...but if MS was to sabotage windows [highly possible] then a live CD video game system would be a great alternative. After all, everyone spends all sorts of time tweaking out a system. Why not let the game have the whole thing to itself. I'm sure there could be a way to not reboot between games [virtual machines, etc], or use the game from a desktop. There are too many different Linux "desktops" out there to effectively deal with without simply dictating like this anyway! But, the point is for the game to take care of itself "just like a console" This way a game disc could be written to run on any x86 PC without worrying about Windows or Linux...
As soon as you get rid of dealing with other software on a computer, getting games working becomes many times easier..well worth the trouble. You'd also have some HDD access for swap, saves, and drivers. Like I said above, the API would have to be extremely well controlled so that drivers and such would work for years on old and new mixes of machines. It'd just require out-engineering MS.. which OSS brags about regularly anyway! This is the "outside-the-box" solution!
But read what's not being said by the 3d chipmakers. They seem to be afraid of MS retaliation if they get too involved with linux or Mac 3d gaming. Look what happened with Nvidia. Between the lines it looks like MS derailed Nvidia for jacking with the Xbox part contract....nothing offical, but you gotta wonder. MS still seems to be very much in the playing favorites game...more so if they think they can go back to having "competition" with Linux, they may feel the need to "sacrifice" someone as an example.
Remember that DirectX was supposed to turn Windows machines into consoles...for the most part it did...but MS split the market to make a quick buck. Only after Linux has started making in-roads are the showing a "recommitment" to DirectX to prevent a mass exodus. That and buying up PC 3D patents so nobody else CAN compete if they decide to grab for it all!
Unless a special path is written specifically for NVidia cards, they will run like shit. And while you are taking shots at Valve, When's the last time ID has made a game with a good storyline, wait, any storyline. Checkmate.