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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?"
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.
While we're talking about short memories, don't forget that Loki failed not because they had no market, but because they were poorly managed. They were one of many holdouts to the dotcom era who's only ambition, only hope, was not to bring the love of gaming to linux, but to IPO and cash out. It's sad too, seeing how many of the employees of this company that was doomed to fail, stuck it out regardless, and at the end, went months without getting paid, and in some case even spending their own cash to keep the company alive, and in the end, they get screwed by the owner.
Had the company been managed properly, they'd still be around today, and going strong. Linux would have a much stronger influence on game companies pondering to make a linux port, and if they were successful, there would be other serious competitors. Alas, the chance was lost, only because people at the top had the wrong vision.
At least we got SDL out of it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
SDL is nothing more than very basic glue, barely enough to provide a portable framework. It does not provide even a fraction of the features Valve would need to make HL2 portable, and none of the OpenGL implementations on linux support the required pixel shader version.
HL2 is a very different beast to HL1 and even Quake 3 and UT2003, it takes a completely different approach to rendering, and implementing it using the tools available on Linux would be very, very hard.
You mean something like this?
http://www.gentoogames.com/