Slashdot Mirror
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."
Hate me!
Loki is the Norse "Trickster" god. Full fledged greater deity.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
As a former Angry Pixels "developer" I think I can say: project is and (almost from beginning) was dead. Months of wasted time from my point of view :-/
Actually, he is a giant, not a god, although giants can be considered to be "evil gods".
Real life is overrated.
Not really. He was technically a giant - the giants as you should know were the Aesirs nemises - even though he mingled with the gods in Asgard. Also, I wouldn't exactly call him the Norse "trickster god" since unlike the rest of Asgard's population he wasn't worshipped (being responsible for the greatest betrayal* in the entire mythology and all that)... he was more like the Norse bad guy :)
* the slaying of Balder
The distinction between Norse gods and giants is really blurred. Odin (and his brothers Vili and Ve) were created from a frost giant. Odin went on to become head of the AEsir, Vili and Ve faded away.
:)
Traditionally Loki isn't really a god. He's Odin's blood brother, which is why he's allowed among the gods, even though he will play a central role in their downfall.
And indeed, all gods are actually mortal. At Ragnarok, the gods are killed. Odin by Fenrir, Thor by Jormungand, Tyr by Surt... Balder's already been killed by Hod, although that was really Loki's fault.
But though they're mortal, they can come back from the dead, as Balder will do after Ragnarok. So being immortal isn't as useful as it may seem..
He's actually a giant, a character of mischief and faslehood. He is the 'evil' of the norse mythology. One of the things he did was to convince the blind Hoeder to shoot an arrow made of a certain type of wood at Baldur, the son of Odin, thus killing him.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Hel is the one who really messed up the whole Baldr situation (by not letting Baldr of out of the underworld until after Ragnorak.)
I'd say that makes Loki a bad guy (or at least a bad parent :-)
His kids were brats who eventually destroyed the whole world!
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)
How well does WineX work in allowing Windows-platform games to work on Linux?
It really depends what kind of game you want to play. Looking at their supported titles list:
5(Works perfectly): 7. One of those being Diablo 2, which has been out for almost 5 years, and 2 of the other being Warcraft 3+expansion. And another being a Hoyle Card Game collection.
4(Playable with minor irritations): 278. Including such gems as "Blair Witch, Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock", "Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-O-Rama", "Revenge of Marjorie the Chicken", or "Hello Kitty: Cutie World".
As you can see on closer inspection, the vast majority of the games with these ratings fall into one of two categories:
1) FPS games.
2) Games from at least 2-5 years ago with massive followings, like Star/Warcraft, or Everquest.
3) Obscure games that almost nobody does or would ever want to play.
The rest of the list, ranging from "Playable with major irritations" to "May install but there is no gameplay", down to "Does not install and does not work" contains, at last inspection, around 591 titles, or more than twice the amount of working titles. Take from that what you will. If all you want to play is games on their "5" or "4" lists, then it may be worth it to you.
And finally, how much do you have to pay for it?
$5 per month with three month minimum for access to updated binaries of the software. I believe only the subscription version contains code to work with stuff like special CD copy protection, but that may be different now - I subscribed a couple years back, and cancelled my subscription when I couldn't get any game I owned working to satisfaction.
And yes, if someone is looking at my post history, this is stuff I posted a few weeks ago.
IMHO problem was bad set of people and terrible organisation of whole project. From selected 8 coders only Steve Baker and I were experienced in graphics - and in 3D at all. There were people experienced in mud programming, Bill Kendrick is great coder, but experienced in 2D arcades, there was also guy experienced in audio...
:-( At least I will not make similiar mistakes in future. Always double check project you will be working on.
Steve Baker left, when it was clear that LGP wasn't able to give us good artists (porting!=creating). Then even discussions on mailing list dissapear. And I think it was exact moment of death.
PS. I was really, really mad and irritated, because result of all that stuff was few months delay of my master thesis
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)
FYI: It's a different Epic. The company that the thread is about is Epic Interactive, who specialiazes in a lot of lesser-known (but good) games. Recently, they've been doing Linux and Amiga (and MorphOS) games in addition to their Windows and MacOS publishing.
;)
Epic will be bringing Divine Divinity (GameSpy runner up for PC RPG game of 2002) to alternative operating systems as well. Here's hoping that LGP gets to publish it.
Try here:
http://www.tuxgames.com/
I've purchased three loki ports (Heroes3, Myth2, and Heavy Gear 2) and all three are excellent. Checkout http://www.happypenguin.org/
for links to some great opensource games.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
Loki wasn't always the bad guy guy in Norse Mythology. In many instances he came through to save the day(most of of the time he caused the trouble that put all the gods in jeapordy in the first place.)But obviously he did have a nefarious side his children Fenris(the wolf), Hel(goddess of the undeworld) and the midguard serpent. Loki also had "human" children. Inerestingly enough the only gods that are supposed to survive Ragnarok(Norse equivalent to the Apocolypse) are some children of Loki and Thor.
It's all Politics
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
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. ;)