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Turn Your New Opteron Into A One-Game Console
An anonymous reader writes "A new 64-bit Linux CD can instantly turn an AMD Opteron-equipped PC into the ultimate gaming console, according to Super Computer Inc. (SCI). The company has created a distribution of the popular America's Army multi-player strategy game on a bootable Linux CD, that it says was developed in partnership with AMD, nVidia, and the US Army."
try 100s... www.mame.net
If that's the killer niche app for the opteron, I feel sorry for AMD!...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Didn't Gentoo already do this when they created an Americas Army LiveCD for "any" x86 system?
Well, alright, it didn't actually run on "any" system - maybe on ran on "some" systems but I seem to remember this was quite a while back when Icculus first ported it.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
How much is an Opteron system? How much is a GameCube?
Where do I sign up?
Maybe they can release instructions on how to dissemble my car and build a go cart out of the parts.
Oh? Kind of how Gentoo Games [ www.gentoogames.com ] has done sucessfully for months now? Yea.
Why would you ever want a console that only plays a single game? I thought the whole point was being able to switch between games. In this case, the writer of the news blurb fails to realize that you could switch between several such self-booting, self-contained discs (such as the UT2k3 Linux LiveCDs that Gentoo made) and then your PC would be kinda like a console system in that you don't need to muss with drivers or OS configuration outside of the game to set things up properly.
... The Ultimate Gaming Console except any 128 bit machine and the upcomming PS3. When compared to anything other than those systems, it's the ulitmate. yeah.
There is a project going on called Advance CD which utilizes the same concept of the bootable linux CD "game console" though it uses mame... I like the idea of the "Bootable CD game" and could be the next generation of a way to distrubute them? -Henry
--- #@$DF@#2%@^%3^&*$%FRHG%%[NO CARRIER]
...but without all those lovely console advantages like the uniform hardware target, well-designed controllers, and (in the case of America's Army at least) some decent gameplay in the games!
:)
Where do I sign up?
Game dev and music blog
wouldn't a linux distro as gaming OS be the coolest thing ever? if a lot of game developers would focus on one linux distro, and gaming hw makers would focus their drivers developement on it.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
How far we've come since the days of Apple IIe and Commodore64 and Kaypro. With all this new technology, it's interesting to see the return of the "Application Diskette".
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
but what about ATI cards?
drop this into an opteron with an nvidia card it should say.
Okay so I'm replying to myself but is the 'significant' difference here the 64bit port? - Is it wildly different from the 32bit version of AA or is it just quicker?
Anyone have any further info on this 64bit port as the article seems a little thin in that respect....
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Using Linux for a CD-ROM bootable game is no simple thing. It assumes full and excellent detection of hardware: graphics, sounds,...
/home. Need new software? Download a new ISO, burn it. Take any PC (office, home, cybercafe), insert CD, boot, insert dongle, work/play.
I see the future and it looks like this: a bootable Linux CD with my choice of applications, and a USB dongle with my
It is a revolutionary way of using PCs. And only possible (AFAICS) with Linux and the kind of support provided by Knoppix et al.
I predict 12 months before bootable Linux CDs become a completely standard model for games and application distribution, and 24 months before Microsoft attempt an imitation.
Just love it...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
... the game isn't any good.
...are missing the point. This isn't a permanent change to your computer it's a way to get the best performance for your games. You're not turning a $2000 machine into a $150 toy you're maxing out your machine for a certain task. How often are you multi-tasking while playing a game like America's Army? Not often. When you're playing a game best to get all of the potential of your machine focused on putting out the most frames per second, most textured and anti-aliased pixels, and least lag. End of story...
Except that I will say this sounds like a cool idea and I will definitely give it a shot.
~Dan
http://www.pbase.com/efatapo
There are always posts about where can linux break out and really take over market share (i.e. desktop, server, etc...), and when i first read the story, I didn't really see the point to this. But then:
.02.
From the article:
"The fact that America's Army is available in 64-bit on the GameStorm CD allows gamers to get a taste of the next generation of gaming just by inserting a CD and powering up the computer," said Major Bret Wilson, Operations Officer for America's Army.
This really does make sense to me. P.C.s in my mind are just better for the serious gamer, and hardware issues aside, if they can actually get to a point of porting single CD games like this, it could really create an exciting new breed of "console games." I'd love to just pop in a disk of Baldur's Gate, Nascar, Halflife, etc... and get the best of both worlds. Quick access to the game w/o the hassle of an install and all the advantages of the superior AI seen on the p.c. platform as compared to the console platform.
Add in the capability to save games and "ini" info to a CDR or Floppy and you are good to go.
just my
jeff
This would make it very easy to play games places that you aren't supposed to be playing games. School computer labs for instance, where the networks are good, and the computers are great, and... they use them for MS Word. Or cube farms.
Now, all that's needed is a hotkey to eject the CD and kill the machine in case Someone approaches...
Karma: \Kar"ma\, n. [Skr.] (Buddhism) One's acts considered as fixing one's lot in the future existence.
Imagine the day when all games are delivered in this way. You get the best OS available and instantly into action with your hardware fully utilized.
For the gamers that always want maximum frames per second this must be a dream. Nothing extra claiming memory and other resources in the background. It's just the game and you! Not to mention how this would boost Linux game development.
Ciryon
Now it sucks even faster.
The entire develpment and support cycle for the creation of the game, plus maintaining the servers, paying artists, EVERYTHING, is a tiny fraction of the cost of one (1) fighter jet. Or tank. It might be as much as 4 or 5 jeeps. It's probably a tiny fraction of the cost that the Army spends on maintaing and opening recruiting offices, and sending flyers to high school seniors. Get some perspective, here. If you're going to be bothered about what your tax dollars do, you've got alot more options. For example, far more of it goes to ACTUALLY killing people, rather than simulating killing people.
Besides, maybe the game will teach some kids who would not get along well to avoid joining the military, and get others who would enjoy it and would fit well to join. That can only save us money and increase efficiency. So in the end, it may be a win, even from a purely financial standpoint.
As for training kids to kill, I think we've seen that the ability to blow people up with grenade launchers in games does not translate directly into being able to plug a bunch of kids with your dad's hunting rifle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
how long before we have another columbine-type scenario where the kids have learned team combat tactics from playing these kinds of games and are far more successful?
Just have armed teachers camping at the respawn points. That'll learn'em!
It's rare that I look at a new idea being done with Linux and get depressed instead of excited, but this definitely qualifies. This is a fairly bad idea. As people pointed out in a recent Slashdot discussion, OS-with-game means that the game will soon stop working on new hardware for which there is no support, requires rebooting to play the game, doesn't let you take advantages of the OS *anyway* (I mean, the only role the OS plays in something like this is in what kind of sound latency you're seeing).
May we never see th
I am so sick of hearing about Gentoo everytime I read Slashdot. If Gentoo were a living person I would kick him in the ghoulies.
I predict 12 months before bootable Linux CDs become a completely standard model for games and application distribution
I predict the entire computer gaming and applications industry will not follow your lead. Just a hunch, but it seems slightly beyond farfetched to think that anyone who sells software for money would consider a bootable Linux CD the ideal method of application distribution. It's especially farfetched to think they'd drop everything they're doing and begin selling their products this way.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I think that the real attraction isn't necessarily performance, but the convenience:
The game developer's life is made easier because they don't have to deal with different desktop architectures, registry cruft or driver versions. Plus, they can tweak the drivers and kernel to optimize performance for their specific game.
The user doesn't have to install anything to the hard drive, but the HD (or hd or floppy or cdrw or usb flash-drive) are all available for saving games and/or settings.
Is rebooting to switch games annoying? Maybe if you are talking about solitaire, but I don't think many people duck in and out of CounterStrike for five minutes between phone calls.
Plus, since the developer can control the ENTIRE hardware driver layer, their costs are going to go down beacuase if you call tech support with a problem, it's NOT the drivers -- you probably have a hardware problem!
This cancels out every reason you have to buy and X-box except for price, and even that advantage is vanishing with new small-form-factor low-cost motherboards and hard drives.
Perfect? No. Worth exploring? Absolutely! Maybe the gaming industry should even put together a gaming hardware support standard and develop a heavily optimized Linux Gaming Distro with an API and support tools for game developers. Most of the components are already out there (ALSA, SDL, Hotplug, etc...), they just need to be organized and polished underneath a common
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Of course, it's harder to "acquire" rom images, now that Mame.dk is not allowing downloads. It was bound to happen; it's still a shame it did.
Just because the game is bundled with the OS, doesn't mean you can't get it un-bundled as well, or that you couldn't get it to work outside of the CD.
It's a good thing, just not as good as it could be.
As it stands, it may bring a few players over that would have otherwise stayed away from a Linux version or port of their products.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
FYI,
You can download America's Army from multiple sources very quickly at magnetmix.com. It'll download off of everyone who has downloaded it on Gnutella.
Should we forget Movix? Movix is a tiny Linux distro that goes at the begining of CDs with movies on them to make them play without having to wory about people having their computers setup properly. I'm planning to make my wedding video and time surrounding (not the actual event of) my baby being born available to my realatives this way. Most of them don't have internet access and those that do aren't necessarily adept enough to get CODECs and the like. Between the Americas Army disk, the UT2k3 Disk, and Movix Linux is finding it's place on Windows machines and theoreticaly computers without hard disk at all. If this keeps going screw the X-Box, make generic consoles with the nForce chip, loads of RAM and no HDD. Save game progress on standard run of the mill smartcards and the like. USB keyboards, joysticks and gamepads will now rule. This is a geniune idea, wonder if I could make a few bucks?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
"by the fact that your tax dollars (if you live in the US) are going to create a game which simulates basic training? it's one thing if a private company wants to do it, but don't do it with my money!"
Grow up. I don't want to pay for Social Security because GenX won't be getting anything lavish as that, but I still have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for murderers on death row for 20 years, but I have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for lazy people with fake disabilities robbing our safety net, but I pay for it. Maybe you should write Osama or some of the other people we pay our taxes to the military to protect us from for some generous health care options. I'm sure he'd truly respect your pacifist beliefs just as much as he professes his loathing of socialists and other so-called infidels. Or say Mr. Hussein who some people around the world claim we illegally removed from power. I'm sure he'd thank you by introducing you to one of his industrial sized plastic shredders as a token of appreciation.
As for America's Army, its a great way to train basics to people interested in the Army experience in the leisure of their own home. When our country was founded (and before that, with the colonies and the homeland aka the United Kingdom), every able bodied man and teen were expected to be trained to protect their homes via the militia experience. Would you prefer the States offer militia training? Switzerland does. Would that make you shut up? How about compulsory military service when you turn 18, like how Greece, Russia, and Israel all require? And what about the fact that America's Army is rated M for Mature, meaning it is meant for 17 year olds and up, which is the very age someone can be recruited into the U.S. Military? Compare that with television commercials for the military that any child can watch on television, monitored or unmonitored? Doesn't that bother you more?
Video games have a long history of being dual-use technology. Atari's "Battlezone" (the first arcade tank simulator) impressed the U.S. Army so much they asked Atari to make some modified versions of it for training purposes back in 1980. The game was designed to be fun; it was not meant to be a pro-military tool. Atari did jump at the contract, and they did make one of the creators of the game modify it for the Army's needs before he quit. But the history of man being inhuman to his fellow man long predates the arrival of movies, television, and videogames. U.S. soldiers shooting children on the Trail of Tears happened long before "Pong" hit the scene in 1972.
Columbine was the fermentation of years of bullying two intelligent misfits who finally cracked and unleashed their own personal demons upon their tormenters and others who failed to prevent their debasement amongst their peers. It is not related to them bowling or how they loved to play *Doom* or listen to Marilyn Manson. Do you want to ban Pac-Man because it might promote cannibalism?
Ergo, your argument is null and void.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
It's probably a tiny fraction of the cost that the Army spends on maintaing and opening recruiting offices, and sending flyers to high school seniors.
It is a rather small portion of their recruiting budget. One of the early press releases for the game mentioned the actual percentage, but I don't recall what it was. Several articles reference that it cost over $6.3 Million to develop and a few more recent articles mention that it has paid for itself (which earlier articles referenced as 300-400 recruits, meaning that the average cost of recruiting is ~$15,750 per person or more).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Many people here seem to be complaining that this reduces your PC to a console device, which it does in a way. I also see complaints that this will "return us to the days of DOS" with reboots and memory management etc.
I doubt either situation is the case. What I actually expect is that this is a great short term solution to the problem of not having a mainstream 64 bit OS on the desktop for PC's. This gives the Opteron a chance to shine as the game will be compliled for 64bit, as well as the OS that runs under it - 64bit Linux.
Microsoft has not released 64bit XP except to subscribers AFAIK - and it won't be available until 2004 anyhow.
"But wait!" I hear you cry - you could continue to use Linux on the desktop yadda yadda... That is not the target of this thing. It is a quick and dirty solution to getting a 64bit game out the door and into the players hands. Yes - you could do this with Linux alone, and no boot disc, however, most people who play America's Army don't use Linux - or even MacOS X for that matter. They use Windows.
This then, is a good win for Linux - some of the users may realize that they are using Linux, and become intrigued by it if America's Army runs much better in this form. More "joe sixpack" users may start to take notice of this strange OS. Furthermore, with the lag time that Microsoft will have in getting a 64bit OS out to the public, and with the avalibility of the Opteron right now, we may see more Linux games!
This is a good thing!
So stop whining about it, for the love of god. It is no wonder that people may not want to support Linux apps if as soon as one is released in any form, all the slashbots start complaining about it.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. The mass produced CD-ROMs can include software at the kernel level that would enable them to read parts of the CD that are unreadable by copy software. This would be an almost foolproof form of copy protection. I'm not a CD wiz, but I believe it is possible.
They would also be able to open their market share to users of Windows (tm) as well as those of us who prefer to use an alternative Operating System (i.e. as long as it is x86 it will work).
But this is a 64bit CD!
I've had the amd64 (nee x86-64) manuals that AMD is giving away for free on x86-64.org for a while now. I've been waiting for the Opteron and the Athlon64 with anticipation. And part of the deal with amd64 is that, while AMD was defining a new x86-ish ISA, they made some other changes -- like doubling the number of general purpose registers as well as the number of registers available for MMX and SSE.
But these extra registers are only available when using the new amd64 ISA -- i.e. when executing 64 bit code. We've seen lots of benchmarks and tests with the introduction of the Athlon64 running 32 bit windows, but next to none of the amd64 architecture in 64 bit mode.
But this CD boots the amd64 port of Linux, capable of using all 16 GPRs. And it reads like the America's Army version on the CD was compiled 64 bit too -- so it has access to 16 GPRs, 16 MMX and 16 XMM registers instead of the 8 available to standard x86.
It's the first 64bit game available for the Opteron and Athlon64! Somebody needs to go get this CD and benchmark it next to a 32bit x86 version of America's Army. Anyone, anyone?
"That's all I have to say about that" --Forrest Gump
It sucks for game distribution, but bootable Linux CDs that go right into a full featured OS (X, a DE, some kind of Office progs, a browser, etc) is really cool when I want to show someone else Linux.
I honestly try to show as many people as I can that it is a viable alternative and not just a nerd OS anymore.
"Linux would be too complicated for me. I'm not really good with computers in the first place."
"Well... try this and tell me what you think."
"I can make my desktop look like that!? That's really nice. Oh... and I like these programs. There's a program here like Trillian too. I thought Linux was harder than Windows."
Hell, I'm putting both my parents on Linux now and my girlfriend just put a second hard drive in her box for a Gentoo installation.