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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."
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 :-/
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
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. ;)