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LGP brings back Loki, Kind Of
michaelsimms writes "Linux Game Publishing has announced a publishing deal with Epic Interactive to publish Northland for Linux. What's this about Loki, you ask? Well, Northland is a game featuring the Norse god Loki, and a group of heroes battling to save the world in the time of Odin and the gods of Nordic myth."
Anyone remember them playing Loki on Nick Arcade? I do :(
I want loki back so they can finish porting Deus Ex (The original) to linux.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
...so I can figure out if I can finally buy a copy of the Alpha Centauri port. Thanks kids.
Just admit that linux users are too small of a percentage to viably sell any commercial games popular on other platforms.
I thought he was a mortal.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Hate me!
I hadnt hear of Loki ever !
Is is by any chance similar to Black and White (without the creature of course) or is it more like Warcraft ??
Since it has been established that the title does not refer to the recently-deceased Linux game porting company, where is it exactly that this Loki has been brought back from? Age of Mythology?
Don't bend over backwards next time trying to conjure a clever title. You either got it or ya don't.
How well does WineX work in allowing Windows-platform games to work on Linux? What are the limits of this program? And finally, how much do you have to pay for it?
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
Anyone remember shareware "Thor: God of Thunder?"
That was rad.
Do you love freedom??? Do you love freedom!!! DO YOU LOVE FREEDOM!!!!!!!!
Had me excited there for a minute...I thought they were going to reserect http://lokigames.com
BUT NNOOOOOooooo!!!!
It's a game featuring the Norse God, Loki...Next time someone pulls a posting stunt like that, they should be drawn and quartered!
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
I haven't played Northland, or even heard of a game of that name for that matter, but the initial description reminds me of RUNE...
Anyone else get that feeling?
Sig currently under construction. Mind the gap....
I guess it's true...mention ANYTHING to do with Linux and it's hailed as newsworthy here.
This just in. Books have been written about Loki.
This just in. A movie has been produced about Loki. (the Mask)
I don't normally whine about goofy blurbs, but fer chrissakes!
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
Sort of off topic, but anyone know the status of Angry Pixels, the LGP sponsored linux game development company? Their site, www.angry-pixels.com, is down, and haven't heard any news in a LONG time...
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
I mean the core of norse mythology is the belief that the world as they [the norse] knew it would be destroyed...
Look it up~~~!
Well, have you ever heard of google? If so, you might have found this link
s /n orthland/northland_story.html
http://www.epic-interactive.com/english/project
Which has screenshots (heh...slashdot time?), seems to me to be like warcraft...but not as cartoony.
Loki?
No, waitaminute...
Loki?
That's not right...
Ah, here we are! Loki!
Chris Mattern
I can't take seriously any game or other literature / entertainment that shows pictures of Vikings wearing those blasted horns. Vikings did not wear horns. It is really annoying to keep showing them wearing horns.
Besides, this game must be pretty dire to receive cover-art this bad, and not having received a Mobygames users-rating this long after release.
I can see it now Knoppix Northland! This is what everyone was talking about a year ago: Bootable Linux game CD's.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
But does anyone know whatever happened to the Angry Pixels group? Did they dissolve?
I'm not really a Linux gamer, but I know what Loki meant to the community. Connecting the game publisher to a Norse character is just rediculous. A misleading headline like that is a slap in the face. I hope the editors will use more common sense next time. Maybe I should just block all stories by timothy when I'm logged in. At least I'm not a subscriber.
"Northland.... tells the story of Bjarni the Viking." I know this guy... he's that purple dinosaur-like mascot they use in the Metrodome for the Minnesota Vikings... ...
any word on whether "Ratatusk, the Squirrel Tale bearer" made the cut?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
How about actually reading the title? LGP != GPL
I got mine for $10 in the discount bin before Loki officially went under. $148, you say? Perhaps it's time to put mine up on ebay.
I was looking forward to a flood of game ports to Linux. I guess one more is better than no more. Why companies don't release executables for Linux (like Id for quake(1-3) and Bioware for NWN)? Most of the games today are datafiles anyway (ie. pictures and sound that would work on any platform). Are game companies so locked in to using Microsoft's APIs like DirectX that they can't program a game to be portable anymore?
Electronic arts probably pisses me off the most as they make a few changes to Id's engines (MOHAA) and neglect to release binaries for Linux. Yes, I am aware of the port on icculus.org, but EA could have done a port of MOHAA long ago.
Linux link getting ./ed
Offical Site: Here
Blurb:
The overall gameplay element from Cultures 2 that still exists in Northland is in the "Godsim" style of play.
You are responsible for watching over and assigning professions to your Viking civilians and building their culture up.
-I can't believe my boss pays me to do this... *SNAP* (@$^#ing daydreams)
The future of Linux gaming is in the hands of the original developer of the game. Epic, Bioware, ID, etc. Those guys put out excellent Linux releases. Maybe the execution was botched on a couple but Epic LEARNED alot with UT2003 and the UT2004 port is being perfectly done. You gotta cut developers some slack on their first try at Linux. (ie. stop mouthing off in forums like you know what your talking about)
What is out there as far as native Linux games (commercial or not) that are actually good?
Is there a list of commercial game publishers that make native Linux games?
This is a very, very misleadingly titled article. Shame on you editors!
Vote for global prefs bug
Now, when many people convert to FreeBSD.
Is it really that difficult to make a working port for systems which are really good for desktops?
I wonder how different Mac OS X and FreeBSD really is and if it's just a matter of compiling a 3D-shooter on the proper platform.
anybody seen a linux based homebrew console for
nes, snes, genesis, etc?
I predict they will have to stop publication of this game, because Mythic Entertainment (the creators of Dark Age of Camelot) owns all the rights to Norse mythology.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
this will obviously bring bill gates to his knees. Linux is superior!
In related news, SCO announced that Epic and LGP are now SCOsource licensees in a deal worth 7 figures.
An insider from Epic called the announcement a gross mischaracterization, claiming that SCO actually paid Epic and LGP the 7 figures. In exchange, the Linux version of Northland will feature Darl McBride, CEO of SCO, as the voice of Loki.
Everyone's boat floats in some kind of water, but Northland's kind of water doesn't float mine.
::tardcasm:::) I'd put my 2cents towards UT2K4.
The game is a case study of the effects of extreme co-dependency. All the villagers need you too badly, they need you to tell them to get shoes, where wood is, where tools and weapons are, takes a few hours just to get the tech-tree up enough to be able to survive some battles.
Detailed to the nth degree, but I don't think having some things being autonymous would of been so bad. Like let them find their own mates instead of the player being forced to play cupid, things like Populous were successful in achieving that. Have a Norse god cast a decree "Go forth and hump like rabbits!" to have more children. Instead of telling each female in the village to produce an offspring.
I played the demo for a few weeks, it's not a bad game, just too tedious for my tastes.
If you only buy one game for linux this year (you're lucky, you've got more than one to choose from this year
Yes, I know... Don't be posting mod requests...
While I can't verify either side of the story- the parent presents a different side to things from the Angry Pixels' apparent demise...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
We need:
- A sane desktop. Gnome and KDE are far, far away from being that.
- Proper binary installation/uninstallation routines built in to the GUI, so Adobe could port Photoshop if they wanted, put out a CD, and the desktop would be able to fire up the CD setup installation program and install, adding application shortcuts on the menu and everything.
- A multimedia library, akin to DirectX but even better...not just graphics, but sound, networking, and input.
Basically, it boils down to having a sane desktop. That will let developers port to a standard, non-moving target (and not the crumbling GTK and QT toolkits...even just upgrading to the latest version of QT in Gentoo broke the menu drawing of KDE 3.2).
"Sufferin' succotash."
whether it's immoral is another, mostly personal, question. as old as the internet, there has been traffic in out of print games, whether the company went under, or simply stopped production. go do a search on google for 'abandonware' or 'oldwarez'.
or go hang out on #oldwarez on EFNet, and see some of the moral degenerates who like oldwarez
Northland coming to Linux
Nottingham/Tuebingen - March 4, 2004 - Linux Game Publishing and e.p.i.c.
interactive today announce a cooperation to bring award winning RTS game
Northland to the Linux platform. RTS game Northland, originally developed by
Funactics Software from germany, was ported by e.p.i.c. interactive and will
be available to Linux retailers from Linux Game Publishing soon.
The Linuxversion of the game is in beta stages now and a demoversion will be
available prior to the release of Northland. Northland can be preordered now
.
Northland, which only recently has been published for the PC, tells the
story of Bjarni the Viking.
The story begins where the plot of "Cultures 2 - The Gates of Asgard" ended.
After perilous adventures our four heroes defeated the Midgard serpent and
thus saved the world. A great celebration began and everyone was happy and
content.
But only a very short time later the peace was disturbed by a call for help
from their friend Hatschi. Hatschi's homeland was plagued by mysterious
monstrous serpent creatures, which spread chaos and destruction through the
country. Without hesitation Bjarni and Crya hurried to help him and stumbled
right into a new adventure, in which the sly god Loki will play an important
role...
Northland features:
* Stand-alone Adventure Strategy game.
* Single player campaign with 8 missions including several sub missions.
* The exciting plots tell the story of Viking God Loki who tried to take
revenge on Godfather Odin for his banishment from Asgard to Earth. For that
he abuses our four human heroes with his intrigues and traps.
* 8 additional free single player missions (non campaign).
* 3 difficulty levels to make the game fun for everybody from beginners to
experts.
* Special effects like weather effects, fog, ghost units etc.
* Based on the enhanced technology of "Cultures 2 - The Gates of Asgard";
enhanced AI.
System requirements:
PC@800 Mhz or better, 128 MByte RAM, graphics board with 16 MByte RAM, CD
drive, Linux kernel 2.3 or better.
About e.p.i.c. interactive
Founded in 2000 to port and publish games for niche platforms such as the
Apple Macintosh or the Commodore Amiga. The first releases were the classic
adventure game "Simon the Sorcerer II" (2000) and real time strategy hit
"Earth 2140"(2001) for the Mac. In 2003 e.p.i.c. started adapting its
porting API to the Linux platform.
About Linux Game Publishing
Founded in 2001, Linux Game Publishing was formed to help companies
bring their games to market. Combining extensive Linux knowledge with
a solid business foundation, Linux Game Publishing is partnering with
a number of other companies to bring to Linux both ports of games from
other platforms and original titles.
For more information please contact
Linux Game Publishing Press Department
press@linuxgamepublishing.com
It's a combination of things...
Some of it is using Microsoft API's.
Some of it is using things like Bink, which didn't have a version for Linux until recently and it will cost you another $2k or so to provide a Linux version for sale or download (Both of which was the reason there were no in-game cutscenes for NWN...).
Some of it is that they have to provide testing and, at minimum, deal with support calls even if they explicitly state that it is unsupported.
Some of it is that there is a perception that writing to Windows is cross-platform enough since it's "portable" to the X-Box. (Which is flatly wrong...)
Some of it is that there's the perception that writing to just Windows is easier and that writing cross-platform code is more difficult because it requires careful dilligent work to make the game work on all platforms (using the argument that there's different capabilities on each of the same and you have to code for each... Again, all of which, is pretty much wrong...)
With all the obvious and percieved expenses, most of the publishing houses don't really see any profit in producing Linux versions of anything. In the case of Id, Bioware, S2 Games, and Epic (not to be confused with Epic Interactive of the main subject...), they are studios going out on a limb and taking extra risks because they believe in Linux or they think that it's got some potential.
We can't fix the real expenses and risks- the studios and publishers will have to weigh those risks against potential profits and decide if they're going to do the version, let someone like LGP handle it for them, or not do one at all.
I'm endeavoring to talk to the percieved expenses and risks that are opposite to the way things really are. I'm scheduled to be giving a 30-minute talk this month at GDC on the subject.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
to figure out if this 'kind of' business is supposed to be some kind of joke.
What the fuck?
Hey, d00d, I had sex with Jenna Jameson last night. *looks at raw right hand* 'kind of'.
oooooook. *rolls eyes*
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
In norse mythology you find several gods which are almost duplicates Thor/Tyr and Frigga/Freya/Frey. Some historians claim that the same goes for Loki/Odin. A theory states that these doubles appeared as two Germanic peoples mixed into one at some point in prehistoric Nordic history. As the people merged, their pantheons also merged into one. This merge is said to be the origin of the story of the war between the asa and the vana. As the pantheons merged, new roles were invented for some of the gods. Freya became the Goddess of love, whereas Frigga became the goddess of mariage. The male god Frey also got a place in the resulting religion.
The following story is said to support the view that Odin and Loki originate from the same god: A norwegian king had chosen Loki as his God instead of Odin. A young hero went to the cave where Lokis was chained to check him out. He saw that Loki was a hideous creature, and to prove this point he stole a hair from Lokis beard. He took the hair home to show it to his king. Seing the hair the king got so angry and disappointed that his stomach opened. This became the death of the norwegian king. After that day the norwegians followed Odin.
The story is supposed to originate from the point where Odin was replacing Loki as the leader of the pantheon. In other words it was originally a propaganda story. A few centuries later Jesus was replacing Odin, the same story was reused with Odin on the roles of Loki. A young hero went to pick a hair of Odin.. etc
Ah, crap! That's the worst type of BAIT AND SWITCH.
Bastards.
In my own Viking tongue, Swedish, it's Loke and Oden, not Loki and Odin. Thor is called Tor and Frey is Frej or Fro. Tor's horse is called Sleipner and his hammer Mjolner. And so on. Just to set the record straight. ;)
Urge to cringe overridden by... resentment of sucker punch.
I would give my left testicle... and a kidney for a Linux client of Battlefield 1942.
Shit, over half the servers are on Linux server anyway.
man you are stupid.
apparently you did need to read the article
and get your head out of your ass
I was lucky enough to beta test for Loki on Tribes 2 and the most frustrating thing was the release. No it wasn't that we had problems making the deadline and getting all the bugs worked out for release, it was that Loki wasn't allowed to release at the same time as EA. We were ready before the windows release. We had better performance and stability then the win guys.
I remember reading the listservs and hearing all the win guys bitching about frame rates and how they had to turn everything down while I was running everything maxed and had a comparatively old system.
So when the release day came, all of us linux testers where sitting there with our beta accounts laughing at the win guys bitching about performance. It was a shame to because they ended up taking a lot of cool features out in the name of performance but on the linux side we already had no problems. Seems to me we had to wait at least a month before Loki was able to ship out the linux copy, and all we did during that time was check the patches that kept us compatible with the windows version.
I think the game you're thinking of is Toki - it was released for the NES and (I think) the Genesis and starred a little monkey with a big head who could spit fireballs. Loki was the head villian in Enix's "Valkyrie Profile", though.
I have this game for the Atari Lynx; it's pretty fun!
Respectfully:
Fuck legality. The law ain't always right.
If nobody's going to give you a legally-permissable avenue to satisfy a demand, go ahead and satisfy it "illegally," as long as it does not infringe on anyone's life, liberty, or physical(1) property(2), and do so at market value. In matters of trivially-replicable things (like bit patterns), this cost is naturally negligible.
If it's matter, it's physical; its recipient-owner can do with it what he wishes. If it's conceptual, and it is released to the world, by natural right it becomes part of the commons; however, we allow, under the law, a contributor to receive compensation for a limited period of time (ya hear that, SCOTUS!).
The law is a set of guidelines that exists to enumerate the natural rights of man and the artificial rights of man, corporation, and government. It is not the end-all and be-all.
So if Loki's investors haven't been getting their act together, it's their fault. They fail to meet your demand with supply. Seek an alternate source.
(1):---Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary
All applicable to physical things, none applicable to intellectual things (arguably save art).
(2): I consider the consideration of "the pursuit of happiness" as a fundamental right to be an authoritarian idea; said pursuit has the potential to be contrary to others' life, liberty, and property (as defined above) and therefore must be given second precedence.
-------------
As a bonus, I'll even throw in this mega-rant about money!
Money is an artifice born of convenience. A natural economy is by barter; unfortunately, this gives rise to the necessity of a double coincidence of needs (you need to have something they want) for a transaction to take place. Money therefore provides a useful circumvention of this problem.
However, money creates very much overhead in its usage.
First of all, money undergoes inflationary pressures. When inflation is controlled, it is a necessary and endurable evil; when not, it brings a society reliant on money to its knees.
Furthermore, let us consider the depreciation of a physical object; the inflation of money is like permanent depreciation of the currency---each dollar (or whatever) is worth less. However, with a physical object, we can make a new object; on the other hand, it is much more difficult to introduce a new currency to replace the old, near-worthless one.
Another overhead encountered is distribution of wealth. It is easy to accumulate wealth when it is formless and unsubstantial. You need not do anything, in some cases, to earn money.
Most money now days is worth something because a government says it is, and people believe them. The economics suggests that this fiat money is better than precious metal standards.
(Aw, I've run out of steam. A delay of three hours right in the middle of a rant sure defuses it...)
I am not suggesting that the world drop the concept of money; that is simply irrational. But I do suggest that promoting the barter for small-scale transactions makes for more efficiency and less of a strain on the natural freedoms (even though I haven't said anything about that).
Just because Loki is gone doesn't mean that all who distributed its wares are out of stock. They paid for their legitimate copies and have a right to recover their investment. Respect people who invest in Linux.
OK, the object of the game is to traverse a window-facing hall while avoiding the cellphone yappers. If you bump one wearing a tie, you're fired. If you bump one wearing a hawaiian shirt, it just slows you down. You get the idea.
Call it Nokia-Lokia??
If you have a stable desktop multimedia platform, you have a stable gaming platform.
The "-1 Troll" mod is just the result of a few crybabies who think Linux is above criticism. I'm sorry, but once you improve the desktop, only then will companies start porting their games to it. I thought that point was obvious, but I'm currently being modbombed by some anonymous, cowardly trolls.
"Sufferin' succotash."
And the reason that you go uncontested most of the time with your ridiculous assertions these days is that people are tired of refuting you over and over again. So please, enough with the 'I'm not a troll' schtick. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that you are.