OS Independent Games?

Jakyll asks: "Why aren't there [more] games for the PC that come on a BOOTABLE CD-ROM? Use Linux and autodetect the hardware - it would make DirectX and Microsoft irrelevant. Boot the disk just like your PC was a Playstation or an XBox - what is the main reason this isn't happening?" A few publications have been released like this: Gentoo has done this for UT 2003 and America's Army (they have their own site but it appears to be broken at this time); and there are the ScummVM Live CD ISOs, out there. Does anyone know if the major game studios have plans on doing something similar, or if not, the reasons why they aren't?

Comments

what about patches?

[AresTheImpaler]

yeah.. but how are you going to apply patches?

Re:what about patches?

[DA-MAN]

Hell it would just suck.

1) Game Patches, Extended Levels, and add ons would be gone
2) Saving Games, maybe network, still slow when I have a 120GB hd sitting around empty
3) Network Configuration for Dialup (WinModumb Support), PPPoE, 802.1x, Wireless (Drivers?), will be a hassle for playing games.
4) Ventrilo Support?!?! How am I gonna talk shit to my buddies when they snipe me?
5) Load Times... HD is way faster than CD/DVD
6) Drivers, even if you include all the drivers up until this point... what happens next year when you upgrade to the nVidia GeForce Ubberfast 6000 or the ATI Radeon 10,000,000? You're shit out of luck...
7) Always gotta have the CD/DVD on hand...

Well you get the idea, this would stink on a PC. XBox and PS2 can do it because they have one type of hardware that doesn't change. On a PC that would be a PITA.

It's because...

[timothv]

nobody wants to reboot their computer. Rebooting often takes a while because you have to save, close apps, and it can sometimes strain hardware such as harddrives.

Re:It's because...

[BladeMelbourne]

Most people save their work and close applications before starting a game for performance reasons (to free memory for example) and to reduce the possibility of data loss in the event of a crash.

Rebooting takes very little time, even on my [old] P3/450. Granted it takes longer to shut down Fedora than Win98, but not much longer.

I like the idea about bootable games, but intense FPS games require fast disk access, or gameplay can become jumpy. CD access can also be noisy compared to HD access.

Data persitance is another reason for not having bootable CD games. Where will you store your saved games? Your preferences? Do you need to manually enter the disk/partition location each time you want to play? (or is it automatically the first FAT breed of partition found by the bootable game?)

Offering games targeted at specific platforms (such as Windows) makes game development simpler. Microsoft provides layers such as DirectX - without it most games would need to code similar functionality themselves (increasing the cost).

A bootable CD would require the game developer to maintain the code for their bootable OS. Most FPS games also require more than one CD worth of data - changing CDs during play would be a hassel.

Drivers?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

The reason consoles do it so well is because one X-Box has the same everything as the next X-Box. This isn't so with computers.

Drivers?

[schmink182]

I would think a large factor in the decision against making games on bootable CDs is that the companies would have to provide a lot of drivers: for video, sound, networking - you name it. Even with basic drivers, people couldn't use there gaming machines to their full capability without the installed drivers from nVidia and ATI. To the game publishers, it's much easier to release a game for PS2, GameCube, or XBox.

More than one game?

[Nice2Cats]

I started my usual game today, again, but I hope to be finished soon:

After the Creation, the cruel god Moloch rebelled against the authority of Marduk the Creator. Moloch stole from Marduk the most powerful of all the artifacts of the gods, the Amulet of Yendor, and he hid it in the dark cavities of Gehennom, the Under World, where he now lurks, and bides his time.

Once I find the amulet and complete Nethack, I might take a look at those other games. I've heard about this thing called PacMan that seems to be quite popular with the young crowd...

I was wondering too

[mnmn]

and then I realized, part of the issue is standard drivers are not bundled with bootable CDs for damn legal issues.

Knoppix is the best one for hardware detection, but uses the nv driver which is not accelerated, and nVidia for some reason wont allow redist of their nvidia drivers. Same is true of ATI and others. I dont know if there are binary drivers from creative and others for linux,

DirectX is still relevant. Too many companies have invested in DirectX rendering and cannot just move their sources to OpenGL. For now theyre stuck with win32 and XBox, but with enough games released using opengl under Linux, the momentum will weigh towards Linux. Right now we just have to line up and cuss at Sierra for refusing to release halflife linux binaries.

Why

[Hythlodaeus]

Why isn't it done? Because most people would feel inconvenienced by having to reboot, but only a few people become aroused at everything involving Linux.

Missing a few obvious faults

[obeythefist]

You could quite conceivably do this. You could effectively turn a PC into a mediocre abnormal console by using a bootable CD to apply an O/S and then execute the game.

But just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea.

Here are the flaws:

1) This is advocating using Linux for gaming on a PC. Linux is a great O/S in that it's open, free, and functional. But it has never, ever exceeded Windows in terms of gaming performance, even for OpenGL games that have optimisations for Linux. Linux doesn't have any API's that get close to the tight HAL/driver/API system that Windows uses so smoothly. Ahh, you say, but a bootable linux CD would be streamlined to run the game! Less overhead! This is true. But you'd also have more overhead because, as you know, Knoppix doesn't run nearly as tight as a properly optimised Linux install because it needs to be robust rather than sleek for compatibility purposes.

2) The reboot factor that people have mentioned

3) Windows XP boot time on my system at home: ~15 seconds. Redhat boot time on my system at home: ~20-30 seconds. Knoppix CD boot time on my system at home: ~120 seconds.

4) The no-patching problem that people have mentioned

5) Hardware support. There was another thread recently that mentioned the good, but not excellent hardware support under Linux. It's always getting better, but it's still not perfect.

Having said all this, once Linux starts supporting DirectX, there will most likely be a full scale revolt amongst gamers against the beast of Redmond. It's good to dream, isn't it?

Some good reasons.

[_aa_]

1) The operating system would take up a significant amount of space on the disc.
2) A read-only filesystem makes saving preferences, screenshots, etc. difficult
3) Extreme variances in architectures and hardware would limit the playability.
4) Liscense violations against non-free components (nvidia).
5) Slow load times.
6) Game patches and updates would require the download of an entire new disc.
7) CD/DVDs deteriorate rapidly. Constant inserts/removals can lead to irreversible damage.

Just to name a few.

Because it's a bad idea

[0x0d0a]

I can't figure out why so many Slashdotters seem stuck on the merits of this idea.

Here are a couple of reasons why this is a bad idea:

* Complete lack of forward-compatibility with hardware (huge -- effectively kills the idea, and the reason why this scheme works in the console world with a standard set of hardware but not in the computer world).

* Forced rebooting and no other apps running

* Poor access times

* No patches

Basically, even if you overcame all the obstacles, you'd have little more than an expensive console (abeit with a lot of RAM), but without the standardized hardware and input devices that benefit console developers.

The benefits of the PC are pretty much different from those of the console. Trying to turn a PC into a poor copy of a console is just a bad idea. Leverage the strengths of the PC -- more memory, big, fast writeable storage devices, keyboard and mouse input devices (many buttons, good text-input capabilities, rapid and precise aiming), very commonly available network access, forwards compatibility, patchability, game extensibility, good toolkits -- widget sets and the like -- for producing things like editors.

There are TONS of OS-independant games out there

[larrylemur]

They're are called "board" games