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Live CD for PC Games?
Onion asks: "Can anyone inform me why games developers don't put out games on a 'Knoppix' style live CD? This would negate coding the games for different PC platforms. Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch, the game could be coded using GNU/Linux for development and would run on any PC machine, regardless of OS. Only major drawback I can see would be the need to 'reboot' each time to play. Any thoughts or views on 'why not' ?"
"Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch"
Hardware, ESPECICALLY gaming hardware changes so frequently, that it would be difficult to support you gam ein a few years, it would possibly be unplayable on newer hardware.
FP
Because most games don't even fit on a single CD for one OS, let alone a Win/*nix/Mac combo setup... even a DVD is probably too small.
Plus I don't wanna reboot my system to play games.
...and that's all there is to it.
Why not? Sure "why not". The reason is hardware support (obviously) - trying to support everything in people's computers now would be an almost impossible task (Linux has a hard enough time doing this, imagine every little game developer having to attempt it..). And assuming you COULD manage that half, the major thing would be that you wouldn't work on any new hardware released after the game shipped, unless it tried real real hard to be compatible with older hardware at a low level. In the age of the "legacy free PC", the industry is moving in exactly the opposite direction.
I think we've certainly lost something since the days of Amigas, Atari, and even older PCs (with 99% compatible hardware), where you had basically a fixed hardware platform and to get new features you crammed in extensions (rather than building something totally different and just writing new drivers). I wouldn't argue that either approach is better, but it's certainly lowers the barrier to entry for fun things like fringe operating systems, and, oh, say, games that boot off CD. Ages ago, there were actually a few PC games that booted off disk and bypassed MSDOS entirely.
Now you could agree upon some conventions and standards for drivers, how to arrange things on the disk so your self-booting software could find them, and you'd already be most of the way toward having an operating system. You'd then probably have a pile of CDs with utilities for configuring your hardware, managing files on the disk, etc, etc.. and eventually they'd start getting distributed together, coupled tighter and tighter, until you ended up with something indistinguishable from the operating systems we know today (reminds me somehow of the way business try to merge vertically until they encompass every aspect of their market, just to shave off a few percent of overhead each step of the way).
I think this is pretty much how the industry evolved to start with.
Okay, lets say that the hardware dectection was there. I really don't think people want to reboot every time they want to play a game.
Plus you couldn't multi-task you're games anymore either. granted, a lot of games you dont need too. however there were times where i would play counter-strike in window mode and multi-task back to a word doc or the net while i waited for the next round to start. as well as letting you run say, winamp in the background and mute ingame music.
and just as im typing this. how would save games be handeled? you cant assume they have a HD if its a live cd.
it sounds brilliant at first. but quickly falls apart imo.
What about game saves? Sure, it could possibly include drivers for the current filesystems (of course, NTFS r/w was/is still pretty sketchy under Linux last time I checked), and the boot process could seek out the current drives. Of course, they'd also need to be able to support all the ways people connect drives to their systems. If I'm saving my progress in a PC game right now, it doesn't matter whether I'm saving it to an IDE drive, SCSI, USB, Firewire, network share (Samba, NFS, Netware, etc.), or even battery-backed RAM disk.
But, even assuming they could manage to handle all the currently supported filesystem types and all the ways of connecting them that already exist, what happens when new FS types come along? "Sorry, sir, but your machine is too new for our game to be able to provide you the ability to save your progress." I don't think that will cut it.
Why not use the idea of a liveCD and somehow work it into a game consol. You don't have to worry about hardware support because the hardware is standard, but you get the benefit of having better versions or tweaked versions of the linux kernel for each game and an easy environment to design games in rather than specialized hardware or software that has a steep learning curve. As a sidenote this would allow you to play games from independant studios that might not have money for licencing fees or development hardware.
What happens when there is an exploit in something like the TCP stack that is used by the kernel that the bootable cd is using? Then your machine is exploitable everytime you want to play your game. The game company isn't going to want to press another edition that fixes the exploit and replace the old copies on the shelf with it so that your machine will be safe.
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>as well as the OS they have to include.... but with no OS
That's nonsensical. The whole point is that it does include the OS, and even you agree to that.
>drivers for the all the hardware
That is impractical. Including almost every driver that a Windows install cd does would be more sensible. I think Knoppix is already at that stage, but I haven't tried it. You can always play in your existing OS installation if it doesn't have the drivers you need.
>how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.
Last I checked, most Windows games ship with a copy of DirectX, so that library isn't much of a problem. The CD has to have all the drivers, the kernel, OpenGL, X, SDL, etc. but thankfully doesn't need a desktop environment or most of the misc. apps that typical distro has. How large would it be? I'd say less than 50 MB, but who knows. The gentoo game cd is, what, a 130 MB download including the UT2k3 demo? Compressing it on CD is always an option.
>Games frequently use swap
Knoppix can use existing swap partitions (or format its own). In most cases, the user probably has enough ram to run the game, though, so swap isn't a huge deal. If not, they'd need swap no matter where they boot from.
>some kind of ramdisk for multidisk games
What of it?
I appreciate the sentiment here, but what about forward compatibility? How would a game made today talk to the video card I buy in a year?
I think that point has been established already. Another one that's been covered heavily is the reboot issue. I don't want to reboot just to play a game. I have consoles for that. If it's really that imperative to make a game like that, then why not make it under a virtual machine? Why not use something like VM-Ware or MAME? Make a game for MAME, and you're golden. Okay, there are limitations, but it works on everything down to a PocketPC.
Gotta ask, though, why not just develop the games in Java?
Reconfiguring your network connection everytime you go to boot a game cause you can't save settings on a CD? that sucks...
why boot off a cd? hard drive space is cheap and minimal linux installs are tiny. just include a umsdos/loadlin option as a bonus on the main cd for those that want it (stability during important matches would be worth the reboot back to windows when you are done). The whole patches and save game thing ends too.
The OS could, on boot, read update information off a directory on the hard drive. For that matter, if it were done cleverly, it might even be able to load its kernel image from it.
The advantage of having control over the environment the game runs in is enormous. Of course, it also means the machine would be useless for background tasks, and no one could interrupt you with something more important...
Aaah, who am I kidding; nothing's more important than the game! ph34r m3 l4m3rz! d13!
>>as well as the OS they have to include.... but with no OS
.5% of game players who have Linux, but the rest of the world doesn't have a Swap partition. I know you CAN in Windows, but it isn't required, and as such rarelly gets made.
>That's nonsensical. The whole point is that it does include the OS, and even you agree to that.
Yah, let's go ahead and show the whole quote now, shall we?
"Games frequently use swap, but with no OS, they have no facilities to make their swap files."
He meens an OS to handle the file system. I'd like to see you put a swap file onto a CD-ROM. What's ROM stand for again?
>>drivers for the all the hardware
>That is impractical. Including almost every driver that a Windows install cd does would be more sensible. I think Knoppix is already at that stage, but I haven't tried it. You can always play in your existing OS installation if it doesn't have the drivers you need.
You know what's impractical? Expecting everyone who's ever going to play your game to have hardware who's drivers are on that disc. Hardware is constantly being created; tomarrow ATI will come out with a new graphics card, the next day Creative will release a new sound board, and the next we'll get a new nVida card. You are right, most people can get video with drivers out of the box from Windows. They get 640x480 with 16 colors and a *BEEP* from the PC Speaker for sound.
>>how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.
>Last I checked, most Windows games ship with a copy of DirectX, so that library isn't much of a problem. The CD has to have all the drivers, the kernel, OpenGL, X, SDL, etc. but thankfully doesn't need a desktop environment or most of the misc. apps that typical distro has. How large would it be? I'd say less than 50 MB, but who knows. The gentoo game cd is, what, a 130 MB download including the UT2k3 demo? Compressing it on CD is always an option.
Most Windows games do NOT have DirectX on them. Most Windows games DO have the DirectX INSTALLER on them. Big difference in size, and in functionality. Most games already take a full CD or more... cramming more shit including a whole OS isn't going to work unless you want to release Pong 2K4 to the world.
>>Games frequently use swap
>Knoppix can use existing swap partitions (or format its own). In most cases, the user probably has enough ram to run the game, though, so swap isn't a huge deal. If not, they'd need swap no matter where they boot from.
I never play games... but a friend of mine told me he needs to upgrade his RAM, because he's under his new games REQUIRED MINIMUM of 512 FUGIN MB. I wanted to hit him with a keyboard and confiscate his mouse for putting up with it... but it's a fact. Games require more and more, and it's unlikelly they are going to be happy with your RAM enough to not want a lil swappin' on the side.
And as for the Swap partition... that would be wonderful for the
Oh, and I'd LOVE to see people's reaction when to play a SINGLE game, the 'installer' has to format your drive. "Please wait while your existing partition is resized and a new one created... if you had any data you wanted, you should have most likelly backed it up".
>>some kind of ramdisk for multidisk games
>What of it?
Meh.
>You are right, most people can get video with
.5% of game players who have Linux
>drivers out of the box from Windows. They get
>640x480 with 16 colors and a *BEEP* from the PC
>Speaker for sound.
My Windows XP CD has drivers for most of the common motherboards, graphics cards, and sound cards. I've never had a problem with it finding them, and it even recognized a card that I couldn't. As I said, if you need other drivers you could just boot your normal OS installation.
>Most Windows games DO have the DirectX INSTALLER
>on them. Big difference in size
The installer has all the files needed to run it, they're just compressed. The data on the CD could be compressed, too. Loading a compressed file would probably be faster than loading the uncompressed one, too. I doubt it's really all that big when installed, either.
>that would be wonderful for the
I think Linux can use swap files stored on a filesystem.
--That was disappointing as hell, I wanted to run it on my Riva TNT2 card. :( Didn't know about the fancy Geforce requirement until just now when I read your quote.
/opt somewhere.
--Plus the layout of the CD wasn't exactly intuitive; I think the game itself was in
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??