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Is the Key to Linux a Games-Based Distro?
An anonymous reader writes "If in the FOSS community we could only get our act together and launch a game-based distro, we will be home and dry. That, at least, is the view of one British games enthusiast, Ian Bonham, who says in the short Linux World article: 'I would be happy to help a group of volunteers create a distro based on games, because I believe that's where the next generation is - NOT in giving away copies of Linux or OOo. That's a short-term ideal. The PS2 and the X-Box(sic) run Linux, so let's create a distro that turns home PC into a console with development potential. Expand that distro to the consoles. And lets get some 'killer' games on that disk.'"
Can we get Tux Racer? Now that's livin'...
Yeah, whatever.
There's so much missing structurally for that to even be considered. You know, silly stuff like reliable, robust video and sound drivers.
Cart before the horse.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Of course, you couldn't just run OS/2 off of a CD with no install, and video was next to impossible to configure correctly when you didn't specifically know what video card was in the box, and networking didn't work, yada, yada, yada...
Anyway, it would certainly help to have a WIDE VARIETY of games, that rivalled ones on other platforms, etc.
When you get to hell -- tell 'em Itchy sent ya!
The Mac suffers from a shortage of games, albeit not as great as Linux, and those games sell for $$$. It's a nice thought but the reality is that you need the developers too. A whiz-bang platform without games leaves you... well... with a neat looking Linux box with a game controller.
Trolling is a art,
...did I miss the point here somewhere? Just about everything I know about gaming says that the more the OS stays out of the way, the better. Now they want to replace our thin OS-like layers with a complete business/research oriented OS. Why?
Seriously, the OS doesn't *do* anything for a game. All a game really needs is a collection of APIs to transparently access low-level hardware. Threading is nice, but "green" thread libraries can be used in its stead. That's much the reason why MSDOS (save for the 640K barrier) was such a great gaming platform. The OS literally did nothing. It got the frick out of the way, and stayed there.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
That's a step backwards I think. At least in windows you can both develop/work and play games.
I think a step forward will be to get some form of standard for graphics/sound/input ala DirectX style. sure opengl, oss, sdl are all good libs but they follow the unix philosophy. That is, do one thing and do it well.
There should be a unified development tool/library that includes them all. E.g. I can install "blah" and boom I got 3d graphics, sound support, joystick/keyboard support, timers/interrupt/callback etc...
Of course that doesn't stop people from just picking their fav collection of tools [e.g. ut2k4 which runs perfectly on my Gentoo box].
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Isn't the challenge not to make windows games run under linux, aka wine, but to get game publishers to release linux versions of their games?
Now a standard linux distro aimed solely at game developers to make their life easier might be a better way to go......
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As those games are played, kids will be encouraged to learn how they work and maybe work on their own. AMOS and Blitz basic on the Amiga formed a huge range of great games, but getting people learning C++ from an early age would lead to great things for the future, I'm sure.
Does he have any sort of clue what goes into the development of a modern "killer game"?
Programming is nothing. There are thousands of man-hours going into art assets, level design, animation, voiceover production, playtesting, etc..
The days of the kid making a neato race car game on his vic 20 are long, long gone.
And like every other twit in linux land, he offers to "help make a linux games distro, even though im not a programmer and have no appreciable skills". Which follows the standard OSS game production model:
1) Think up cool name for game
2) Open sourceforge project
3) wait for programmers and artists to come write it for you
4) ??
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
For Linux to truly become the gaming OS of choice it will need a killer app that can't run in Windows, forcing users to switch over.
Problem is, no developer will be willing to develop said killer app until Linux becomes the gaming OS of choice.
Windows became the top gaming platform without any special "gaming" versions of its OS. They did this through marketing and its DirectX APIs. Get some good games and people will play them regardless of their distro. Get a "game" distro and nobody will use it without good games. Either way, the distro doesn't matter.
gentoo already has bootable game cds, one with americas army, and another with ut2003 demo
Just think about it. You boot up Linux for the first time, and the way to activate functionality is to make your way through the "game". The first thing it should read when you boot it up:
It is dark. You will mostly likely be eaten by a Stallman.
>inventory
You are carrying:
man light
>man room
The room brightens. You are in a small chamber. A sign on the wall declares this room to be: init.
A door reads, "Daemon Restroom". A light glows from underneath it. You hear a toilet flush
A tall lanky fella steps out of the darkness. He wears a threadbare cloak and carries a large sack. He opens the sack, and grumbles something about "699". A large stilletto knife dangles from his belt.
1.- Develop a game locking out 90% of the market.
2.- ???
3.- Profit!
I think that the poster is obviously refering to the X-Box linux project, which via a buffer overflow exploit in certain games, enables linux to be installed without requiring a mod-chip.
The inherent open-ness of Linux and its various development kits allows developers to create software and games software without the costly restrictions and control console manufacturers seem to place over their respective hardware.
It should be noted however that Sony have released a Linux based distro specifically for Playstation 2 for exactly this purpose.
My own personal belief is that it is extremely difficult to create next-gen games without the kinds of near-hollywood budget software houses have to throw at it. Im not saying its impossible, but small scale bedroom coding aint gonna produce the kinds of masterpieces that Lionhead or $GAMESTUDIO_OFCHOICE are producing.
I think a better twist on this idea would be to produce bootable CDROM's ala knoppix, bundled with a specific game. This way you remove the notion of operating system dependancy. Linux enables you to build a very low-level OS, with just enough required to boot the game. If something along these lines were to be introduced it would allow mainstream software studios to sell games to anyone who has an x86 machine, regardless of OS.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
A bootable, playable CD would solve a lot of headaches for game developers.. provided you can solve the driver issues.
There's a Morphix module (Morphix Gamer) that already provides this. Plus there are related projects like KnoppixMame.
However, I tried Morphix-Gamer a week or two back and feel compelled to point out that easily half of the games that came included either would not run at all (at least not from the CD), or were unbearably slow and clunky (TuxRacer for one). My machine at home is nothing to brag about (Athlon XP 1800, 1/2 gb ram), but it seemed to me it should have been sufficient to run whatever was bundled with the gamer module.
Not sure why they bothered included games that wouldn't run tolerably well from the CD. Sure someone might choose to install it to HD, but the whole point of a live-cd is just that.
First off,
Please do some actual research before you state something as a fact. An accrual informed write-up of multi Monitor support in windows
And that review focuses solely on gaming under multi monitor situations in windows, there are even more options available if you are not trying to game. So your "only 2" options in windows statement is quite false. Thanks for your time.
The problem is that if someone has a game that they really like (the Warcraft 2 Expansion Set comes to mind for me), then they will want to be able to run that game on their PC. If they can't, it doesn't really matter if the PC runs newer games (which is what manufacturers will port) or not. If they can't run their existing favorite games, they can't run Linux full time.
.doc format; Evolution can connect to my Microsoft Exchange server; etc.).
e lopment
For this reason, I consider a games distro to be one of the worst ideas to gain Linux converts. There are just too many games.
Concentrating on general (email, web browser, word processing, spreadsheet, etc.) and specific (CAD, web design: e.g. Dreamweaver) applications makes more sense. There the issues are more in terms of supporting a few apps that someone uses almost exclusively. File compatibility is the important part, not application compatibility (I don't need to run Microsoft Word if OpenOffice can load and save
I especially like CAD as a Linux app, because CAD designers frequently run *only* their CAD software on their PC. Even if they can't run any other software on it, it doesn't matter. They wouldn't anyway. Further, CAD uses gobs of resources and is thus better suited for lean running Linux (system processes leave more room for CAD processes).
IMO, games should be one of the last areas of focus for Linux developers. There are just too many legacy games which will never get ported. Thus promoting hacks like WINE. Linux should concentrate on its own apps, not pretending to be Microsoft Windows.
In the meantime, consider looking at multi-platform game development engines like those provided by Garage Games: http://www.garagegames.com/pg/browse.php?type=dev
Multi-platform engines enable game designers to get both markets easily. Ideally, they could develop on Linux (less system process bloat means faster compiling) and test the game on Microsoft Windows.
Btw, now that I have actually RTFA, I notice that the author is talking about something like bootable CDs with games on them. This already existed: that's exactly what Gentoo Games CDs were. The website ( www.gentoogames.com ) no longer seems to work, so I'm guessing that it never took off. Morphix also works on this (game specific live CD).
Another reason not to wait for games is the problem of too much of them being content rather than code. Modern games are frequently based on impressive 3D graphics (content) and movies (content) rather than spectacular game engines (code). Several of the big time multi-player games have already released Linux version (e.g. Id Software products). Until Linux has much more of a market share (at least 20%), we can't expect anyone to develop a Linux only game.
Look at how much money Microsoft is losing on XBox. Not a problem for them, since they have the money to lose. Linux doesn't have those kinds of resources. One game wouldn't do it. To really draw people would take ten or twenty.
Why doesnt the OSS community collaborate with Apple to make a robust *well marketed* alternative to DirectX for *nix? It would use OpenGL of course for the graphics. The rest of it might even be able to come directly from some existing projects.
This would be a win for Apple and the community as then game developers could target one platform that would encompass Mac, Linux, BSD etc. Perhaps the combination of all these platforms together would be a big enough number to start convincing game companies to pursue the *nix market.
The key here would be convincing Apple to throw in the marketing. Without marketing, it would probably never take off. And come to think of it, maybe it would be impossible to convince Apple since they really arent trying to sell gaming machines. idunno, just a thought that seems to make a lot of sense in a lot of ways.
The PS2 and the X-Box(sic) run Linux, so let's create a distro that turns home PC into a console with development potential.
There's a man who has really thought this one out.
We need some "killer'"games on the CD.
We need the source for the games on that CD.
We need that CD in places like Electronics Boutique and GAME.
We need kids able to pick up that CD (or DVD, with respect to another learned friend posting here) and turn their PC into a games console, without ruining Mum's or Dad's official documents.
Ok, to sell this as a platform, you have to add the words "exclusive" after the word "killer." Otherwise, you just have a platform that can play the games that are already available on Windows, and there is no incentive to switch. But making a "killer" exclusive game requires more than just 80 hour weeks and a 10 million dollar budget: it requires both of those things many times over to create a single "successful" title. A "killer" title might require 30 or 40 fully-funded projects that reach the store. If effort was enough, we would have 100 "killer" titles every year.
Good luck with source. If you though cheating in online games was rampant before...
Besides, most videogames don't lend themselves very well to open sourcing. The industry just moves too rapidly, and games aren't something you're going to improve because you use it every day. There is, of course, NetHack and other Open Source games that do incredible things. But let's be real here, would you buy a box with NetHack on the cover if it was sitting next to a box of Doom 3?
Getting on the shelf in E.B. is not that difficult once you have actual street cred and some cash to back it up. E.B. loves cash. But as this seems to be lacking a business model (or, for that matter, a plan), I don't know where they would get either.
As for transitioning to consoles... That doesn't make any sense. If the Phantom and ApeXtreme are such bad ideas, why would a Linux based ApeXtreme be any better? Why do you need a console when you can have a computer with TV out and hit the mass market? Or, conversely, why would the average person want to run Linux on the PS2?
He fails to mention that the CD would need to be bootable, ALA Knoppix, or else the formatting process would "ruin Mum's or Dad's official documents." Because, as we all know, official documents require Rockin' graphics cards left in public spaces or they get lonely. Likewise, you will need to be able to install to disk, like Knoppix, or else there can be no platform transition. You need to support a large amount of hardware, like Knoppix, and have a lot of available games, like Knoppix. Oh, and you want it based upon the most solid binary distro available with the clearest licensing, like Knoppix. Are you seeing where I'm going with this?
No. What he really should be doing is going to game development companies and pushing the idea of entirely self-contained games running on Linux. It would be significantly harder to cheat in a MMPORPG game if it ran as its own OS, booting without a HDD, and then you could offload the action processing to the individual clients without fear of modification. Lag would be a thing of the past, and MMP twitch games could be released. Ask for a hash key of random length of the CD every now and then, and you would have a very tough nut to crack. And if people did crack it by learning to hack through Linux, all the better for the platform. He could also push Linux to Sony and Nintendo as a way to quickly create a solid development system for next-gen gaming. Unlike Windows, Linux's multiprocessor kung-fu is superior, and would probably like the Ps3's 18 processor architecture in a way that nobody else would. It might even make it a bearable system to work on.
In short, this guy doesn't have a firm grasp on the industry. It would be great to push Linux to the people who control the standards, but pushing the OS without codifying it into the gaming ecosystem somehow is suicide. At least Sisyphus got near the top of the hill before the boulder rolled back down.
The ______ Agenda
I was going to moderate this discussion, but somone has to say this:
/usr/bin or /bin or /var/usr/bin confusion. If one distro took over by having all the features that desktop Linux needed, which in my view is basically Fedora to unify toolkit look across gtk, gtk2, and qt, but with better hardware detection (ala binary non OSS drivers) and better package management (ala automatically installed apt-get), the standardized directory layout would encourage more Linux ports of games.
A standardized Linux distro is needed. Not another obscure niched one except built just for games. Because a standardized distro would be inherrently best for games.
Imagine if Bruce Perens' UserLinux came with nvidia and ati's binary drivers and automatically installed them during the distro installation. Currently no distro that I know of does this, the drivers must be manually installed.
One could argue that in most cases you have to do the same thing in Windows, but in Windows all that requires is double clicking an install file. In Linux you have to usually exit X, check dependencies, and all kinds of other cryptic stuff.
Finally, the one thing that we most need that a standardized distro can provide, is a standardized directory layout. None of this
As a software author, most authors only release their software as source when dealing with Linux, because it's the only way to ensure that it will work in every distro. But if there was a standardized directory layout and package management system, every dependency could always be found in the same spot and there'd be no need for third party package management and binary compilation.
This may seem like nitpicking, but many companies don't port their games to Linux on the sole basis that they 1. don't want to release source and 2. don't want to take the time to write an installer which can accomodate every distro's different package management, directory layout, and dependency tree.
So that, my friends, is what Linux needs. Create that and gaming will follow.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Any game that has spare cycles isn't worth playing :-)
You just need to get out of the "if you want something, compile it yourself" mentality. I am a software developer myself, but I hate downloading source code that I have no interest in reading. I hate looking for Mandrake RPM's on the net, too. I hate when RPM's require other RPM's. I just wanna be able to download whatever binary and run it as soon as the download finishes. And no, I don't even wanna know about apt-get, rpm, or whatever else is the proper tool.
Just like it's in the Windows world, when I click on an application's Setup.exe, it should just install. I don't care if you'll have to statically link everything, or implement another scheme.
In the OSS world, the itch that gets scratched is the one that the developer has. This is the itch that belongs to people who either don't have the time or the talent to solve it.