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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."
...so I can figure out if I can finally buy a copy of the Alpha Centauri port. Thanks kids.
Hate me!
Hell, I'd settle for them releasing a 'best of lokisoft' collection. I can't find a damn copy of alpha centauri / alien crossfire other than the used copy selling for $145 on amazon.com.
Anybody got a copy they're not using? Please?
"Linux != commercial games"
Linux does not equal commercial games?
Yeah, that's insightful. Next time you'll be telling us that Linux does not equal tasty fruit.
"Linux != tasty fruit"
Loki is the Norse "Trickster" god. Full fledged greater deity.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
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 mine in several months, and YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!
BWA! HAHAHAHAHAA!
I got that feeling until they said it was an RTS game. At that point, it's more like Age Of Mythology, but specific to the Norse mythos.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
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 :-/
Although this is obviously a troll, there is a little truth to it (at the very least, truth in the minds of game publishers, where it counts most).
However on the other hand, there are countless thousands of tech-smart gamer kids out there who would not hesitate to give Linux a try if only they could play games on it. So the argument is really invalid, since the demand for Linux games is not constant (presumably too low a constant to justify Linux game production, although this might be arguable too), but in this case directly related to the supply.
And besides, I don't know what this other guy is talking about; Linux is some damn tasty fruit if you ask me.
True, Linux!=tastyFruit.... but you do know that Linux.equals(tastyFruit), right?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
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
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?
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.
Linux is not a viable platform to sell games if the games are only for Linux, but If developers took it into account beforehand and developed in opengl they would have an easy 2 (osx, linux) decenctly sized platforms to sell copies on without a _huge_ ammount of effort. It seems to be working for Epic. In fact epic licenses their engine by platform, Windows/OSX/Linux are considered a single platform for pricing
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
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!
Which begs the question: is it immoral to pirate a game when you can no longer buy it legally? (because the publisher went bankrupt)
And, is it legal? (who's going to come after you for doing it?)
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)
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.
While Linux users do not make up the majority of computer users, I would make a wild ass guess that the majority of Linux users are very probably gamers. To make an even more totally wild ass guess, if we say there are several hundred million computer users out there, and 2% are Linux users, this would make a few million potential gamers to sell to.
Mind you, these same people probably also have Windows boxes, XBoxes, etc. as well. However if commercial interest in selling to Linux users grew, we would probably find more drivers and utilities produced for Linux in order to support the games. After all, it is my humble opinion that games were one of the main drivers of home PC technology for a long time. Granted other new software required more horsepower, but heck, you really needed a monster computer to get the graphics and AI of the new games! :-)
NOTE: I refuse to let facts get in the way of this conversation
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Actually, Epic did recently say that GNU/Linux sales account for fewer than 1% of client sales, so they don't produce cross-platform clients for commercial reasons.
... even if it doesn't make you money." And "our feeling is we can't give them a Linux server and not give them a Linux client... that wouldn't be fair."
Rather, according to Epic's Mark Rein, "Sometimes you've just got to do the right thing
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.
This is a very, very misleadingly titled article. Shame on you editors!
Vote for global prefs bug
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.
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.
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
Oh, go ahead and troll. I'm still not convinced Loki Games was a fair trial.
I HATED, HATED, HATED the version of their website I saw. The Elfin-friendly woodland green text on brown of equal chroma was so impossibly hard for me to read, I actually navigated their site by lynx browser to read game descriptions. I should try the wayback machine to see whether I can archive a copy of one of their pages as an example of how _not_ to be a web designer.
The ports themselves were another issue......
IMHO problem was bad set of people and terrible organisation of whole project.
A bad set of people? I think not, the group were a talented bunch. I would not argue that organisation was a problem either, though it is hard to organise a distributed group of people on a major project.
From selected 8 coders only Steve Baker and I were experienced in graphics - and in 3D at all.
Whether or not the group were experienced in graphics or not (I forget who had experience in what), how many developers do you think need to be experience in graphics on a game project? A game's graphics are only it's visual representation and is a very small part of development.
Steve Baker left, when it was clear that LGP wasn't able to give us good artists
I think, although Steve may say differently, that he left due to lack of progress and not lack of good artists.
Then even discussions on mailing list dissapear. And I think it was exact moment of death.
Interesting. I received 1,147 e-mails from the list after Steve left (of a total of 2,809). This wasn't the moment of death, though it didn't help.
In all honesty the project was going to be incredibly difficult to make work due to the lack of regular monetary motivation (as in a wage), which meant maintaining motivation for the project was incredibly difficult.
On the topic of motivation, it didn't help to have a person who is quite possibly the most pessimistic (sic?) and most difficult to work with ever (certainly of all the people that I have ever worked with). Oh, that was Jacek btw.
Oh well, c'est la vie.
Sorry for the upset, but no it isn't legal.
Remember that the consumers are not the only people who "lost" in the dissapperance of Loki. Loki's investors were also harmed, and although they will have better luck getting water from a stone, they feel that even a dollar from Loki's residual property should be made, it should go to them. The footed the bill for Loki's downfall, and they should reap any (even a miserable) profit.
Morally it is less decided, but legally you are still depriving Loki's investors of money they lay claim to. But these guys won't want to loose another dollar in ressurecting Loki, they are holding out for a (phantom) company to realize what they have is valueable (and buy it off of them for millions).
The main reason this hasn't happened yet is probably because what they have isn't nearly worth what they want. In other words, they're dreaming.
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
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
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. ;)
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.