Slashdot Mirror
The State of Linux Gaming
Srikant_Chaudhry writes "CTZ has an interesting article that talks about hardware and software problems, along with others, that is limiting Linux gaming as a whole. Here's a quote from their concluding paragraph: "As of this moment, gaming on Linux is still a little like the Wild West. It's somewhat chaotic, random and empty, but it can be very exciting too. As time progresses and the market matures, we will see a plethora of games on Linux. Right now, many distributions are concentrating on other materials, like making their distributions easy to use, and making sure they work well with all the different hardware. Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux. That's when the Linux gaming market will really take off."
Give me tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six and I'll get rid of Windows on my home computer.
The owls are not what they seem
I swear I read this EXACT story 3 years ago.
Nearly half of all people are below average
All that matters is I can play Quake 3 just fine... well, the game plays just fine... :)
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
With LiveCD's from Knoppix and Gentoo, things are already heating up. I usually recommend a LiveCD to my all-Windows-users friends, who then get a thirst to learn the rest of Linux.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
The Apple OS has been "stabilized" for 20 years now; still no games. Sorry dudes. It just ain't gonna happen.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Well while we are here - I think it has been shown to stem from a) drivers b) opengl only c) user base and portability vis-a-vis drivers and opengl only.
:-(
Microsoft owns about 60% of opengl.
In good news, flash games and java games all fly like shit out of a teflon coated colon. Which is kinda cool.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
OpenGL, OSS and X is about all you need to make game [well timers and IP networking]...
You don't need some large ass complicated DX API to make a game in linux. OpenGL + OSS covers graphics and sound. X [motif, etc] cover your window dressing, keyboard and mouse.
This is just another "pander to the concensus" bullshit article. The only thing plaguing "linux gaming" is that people make games with the DX API... Use OpenGL in windows and you save yourself quite a bit of trouble.
Oh no, you won't have the latest doo-dah and VTX shader... well learn this. Doom3 does and it's a craptasticular game.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
First invalid assumption: the same people developing desktop stuff are NOT going to be the people typically developing games.
So, having said that, whats holding back the people developing the games ? It can't be the desktop, they can code around that....
Let the Linux developers work to solidify the gaming platform on their end, and let's start pushing these game companies to start releasing more Linux binaries for their games.
Sadly, there's not much incentive for the latter, as Linux gamers doesn't really encompass a significant portion of the gaming market.
Oh, and anyone relevant who may be reading this, I can't switch to Linux until I can run EQ2 on it!!
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Well already I have about 75% of my windows games working with transgaiming cedega. But I do not see many more game developers moving over to a Linux native option. They see it costing them to much money because most of them use the directx platform. Although I here Microsoft doesn't support direct play any more. But I doubt this will discourage them.
Linux is like a teepee. It has no windows, no gates, and there's an Apache inside.
As time progresses and the market matures, we will see a plethora of games on Linux.
I'm not so sure about this. I don't think there is enough incentive among game developers to actually make their products run on Linux. The way I figure it is that every Linux user who is also a gamer is dual-booting Windows (or running Windows on another box). Developer makes a Windows game. Linux guy buys it and runs it on Windows. That's one sale. Now what happens if the developer incurs the cost of developing a Linux version? He sells one game to Linux guy who then runs it in Linux and goes "cool!" That's one sale. Where does the developer gain in this scenario?
Contrast this with the Macintosh game market. Developer makes a Windows version and Mac guy doesn't buy it. Developer incurs the cost of making a Mac version, Mac guy buys it. that's one sale - one sale he wouldn't have had before. There's an actual business case to be made for doing a Mac version, as long as the expected sales revenue is going to outpace the development/support costs of the new version. Not so with Linux. Too many Linux gamers are running Windows for them to count as additional sales.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Find a way to split the drivers into high(open source) and low(prorietary).
Let the gfx card comps do the easy low level harware interface stuff, let the open source community implement the high level OpenGL interface on top of it.
Well it is not just gaming the whole 3-D thing on linux seems to be a dead duck Other than that the fact that there has to be a stable platform for developing games on linux. Lastly it's the GPL again which will prevent commercialised production of games on linux. But stil there must be some.
convincing more gaming houses to actually publish games for Linux might help too. Maybe this will be easier when the distros are more stable; more likely it will not happen as long as the desktop market is uni-OS.
OS X has been stable for several years, and gaming houses still won't release natively for OS X, Blizzard excepted.
PC gaming 'Took Off' without PCs being easy/simple to use devices. Just remember back to the days of DOS with games like the original Wing Commander, not necesarily very easy to get running, when compared with installing and getting modern games to run under Windows.
Linux gaming shouldn't be an afterthought, it should be a current thought, going along with the development of an easy to use desktop operating system.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
xGates prefers monopoly.
Call me an optomist if you liek but I really think there is potential for a linux based live cd that specifically targets games. If implemented in the right way it could some respects start to rival not only windows but also consoles. It woudl probably involve some emulation of DirectX though.
Now that ATI have finally got some linux drivers there is no technical reason why linux couldn't become a serious gaming platform.
Who wants to pay for a service that may or may not allow you to play games you've already paid for? What they SHOULD be doing, IMHO, is cutting deals with game companies to make Linux binaries for them, so they can A. guarantee that the games works and is supported, and B. don't need to rely on income from the few people who to pay twice (or more in the case of MMORPGs) for thier games.
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
"It's somewhat chaotic, random and empty, but it can be very exciting too."
Yes, and there will be no more life in 100 years than there is now.
Linux gaming lacks 'critical mass', required for justifying the huge game development investments. And I don't see how it could acquire the critical mass, some great independent developers don't count compared to the Nintendo's, Sony's et al of this world.
I've been playing AA:SF on Linux for a couple of weeks and it is rock solid. I was amazed to find that there was a Linux version, and there is one single guy in the credits who is credited with both the Linux and Mac OSX ports. The only problem is that I couldn't signup on their web site with Firefox, had to use IE.
Anyway, good FPS, absolutely free, and downloadable via a torrent (check out the 3dgamers link for download).
Do you have ESP?
I think the biggest asset to open source gaming would be for that open specs video acceleration card to become widely used. Sure, it won't get high frame rates on the very latest commercial games, but if it can do tuxracer, bzflag, and other such games with GOOD drivers there will be a lot of happy linux game fans (myself included.) And perhaps if the first card succeeds future versions will be state of the art. If crystal space tunes for it, and somebody ports the genesis3d engine to run on Linux, perhaps we could see real interesting developments.
I like bzflag, and find it as interesting as Quake nowadays. But my graphics card is so old it's not up to proper display of 2.0 without turning off a lot of stuff. So I'm hoping the open graphics card becomes real, since it's time to upgrade anyway. I think good, consistent, stable support of a decent, open spec card would be a big, big asset to Linux gaming. Then we can all quit fooling around with nvidia kernel modules, slap in the open spec card and start playing.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
With the redistributable nature of Linux it wouldn't be so far fetched for Linux games to just be a live CD with the whole environment on the disc. Ok this would be slow but it might be possible to make these hard disk installable and have the live CD just perform the boot process.
:)
The advantage of this system would be the OS files could all be the ones used by the game maker, there would be less problems with older and new OS files. Of course research is needed, these are just theories
If you take a look at the size of the Linux desktop market, and compare it to the size of the Windows PC market while assuming that percentage of game sales is going to remain constant, you're talking about a miniscule number of purchases. They'd be better off spending their times on the next expansion pack or sequel.
When you're talking about killer apps for Windows, there ain't much of a better one than Direct X.
Firstly Bringing a game to market is extraordinarly expensive, and you won't see game development on the scale or quality of Windows games for Linux until a large number of users (read: not /.ers) Switch to Linux, it's not profitable to do so. Secondly, Linux needs a strong abstraction layer that's as powerful and easy to use as DirectX. The ones out there now aren't up to par yet. One day perhaps, but not one day soon. While some people are satisfied with Quake 3 and a handful of others for Linux, most people want to be able to run the gamut.
BUT! The good news is I think people have recognized it and have started "breaking the cycle". Here's the situation:
"No one wants to develop games on Linux because of lack of hardware support, and no one develops good gaming hardware support, because there is no* games support in Linux"
That being said, I was excited as hell to see UT and UT2003 among others being released on the Penguin Platform.
Better yet, if companies continue to release Linux ports/builds despite mediocre hardware support, it's only going to drive hardware support.
It's a good situation, with the innate potential to be bad.
What do you all think?
There's
Project Starfighter
Blob Wars
Virus Killer
Give them a try. After all, they're completely free.
Summation 2
UT2004 (and the older UTs also)
The Battle for Wesnoth very good freebie.
These are the ones I'm focusing on right now. I've played lots of others. Quake III, Frozen Bubble, I saw someone complain about lack of tacticle shooters, I did have Soldier of fortune. Now that Loki is gone ports don't happen quite as often, but they do still happen. Right now Blizzard is probably the biggest gaping hole in the Linux game library.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
but i think gaming is fairly well covered by consoles (cheap, easily accessible) and PCs running windows (highly optimized hardware support, abundance of games).
why linux? (other than providing competition... which i won't dispute is a bad thing.)
Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux.
But my question is when? I mean how long has the linux desktop been around? I mean xfree86 was first ported back in 1989/1990ish.. the KDE desktop in 1996, the gnome desktop in 1997.. I mean it's been around 8 years for the desktops and around 15 years for xfree. How long is it going to take to "stabalize" in order for game makers to begin either porting their code for linux or creating specifically for it.
This is the only reason I still run a dual boot system for the most part is because of the games that I play. Yah, I could use an emulator, but what I really want are games that are made specifically for linux. And unfortunately the unholy m$ has made programming games in windows much easier than in linux with all of their "standardizations".
Just my nickel..
The Nomad
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."-da Vinci
I remember when lots of "Windows" games just booted into DOS, for performance and stability. That's when Windows gaming really started to take off. Linux is so much more flexible, the OS is freely available and hackable by any game developer, and "LiveCD" and other subinstance techniques are now widespread. Why wait for the Linux desktop to stabilize? Why not just take a lesson from "Windows" gaming, and develop Linux games embedded in a complete, bootable Linux image? The increased use by demanding users (without developer fetish for touching the bleeding edge tech) will instead pressure the Linux desktop to stabilize. It worked before, on Windows, and such "bootable Linux games" can even be run on a "Windows" box, helping convert them to the Light Side.
--
make install -not war
The entire premise here is misguided. It's not like Windows gaming is going strong - it's a dying market, and with good reason. People are turning to the consoles for their gaming, and console games sell many, many more copies. Half Life 2 sold 1.7[1] million copies at retail, whereas Halo 2 has topped 7.5 - companies will go where the money is, and the money is not in developing for Windows. If you think there's anything that can be done to make a linux game sell 7.5 million copies, you've got rocks in your head - and *that* is why developers won't be developing for linux based machines - it has nothing to do with the development environment, tools, etc. To put it in context, the PS2 is universally considered a bit of a bitch to develop for - nasty pipeline and memory constraints. Compared to it, linux is a breeeeze. But for some reason, there's a million games avaliable for the PS2. [1] Yes, plus Steam sales, which may account for another 500 K, max. That's why I said retai.
Excuse me, but what exactly is this Linux Gaming you speak of? Tux Racer and Frozen Bubble? Yet another Nethack clone?
Sigh... Sorry, but we really need to at least match the quality of the comercial games relesed within like the last 2-3 years to even compete out there. Either that or make the commercial companies interested in developing for Linux.
People want to play the newest flashy games in which you shoot stuff and blow up things. And they want finished, shiny products - not a game that never seems to get finished. To little of good quality modern games are out there.
So untill I can grab a game box of the store shelf with the newest commercial hit and install in on my linux box, I will still keep a fairly juiced up windows box in the corner for gaming purposes.
It actually is a preaty nice distinction - I use my Debian for school, work and anything serious, and that ugly winXP for playing games and occassionaly running some stupid windows only crap that I might need...
I'm teminally incoherent
It isn't that games, when programmed for linux have a hard time. Quite the contrary, they work great. The real issue is something much more difficult.
First there are the 3d video driver issues, once almost impossible to set up properly, it is now a matter that is only moderately difficult on some distributions. This is partly due to lack of free fully functional nvidia drivers (and I'm not entirely certain about ATI stuff--don't use ATI).
Second, and even more difficult, is the problem of GETTING COMPANIES TO PUBLISH FOR LINUX. Like the Mac, which does have games, just not always concurrently with PC, linux does not have as much market share. Thus, when it comes time to crunch numbers, the accountants realize that it doesn't make much sense to spend $300,000 to develop a linux version, when you only get $30,000 in sales. Granted, I made those numbers up, but you get the picture.
This problem is even more noticeable, when you realize that companies can't tell what OS you run under (unless we are talking about MMORPG's where you have to use their servers, but they would have to code that separately) unless you tell them. Based on the company, or the individual, having no clear idea of who is using the game for linux, and who is using it for windows (especially since no one wants to buy the linux-only version), there is little clear idea of how many people are actually running the game under linux. Less financial incentive all the time.
There is no clear solution to this, and there is a third problem. The perception by many folks that Linux is either a hobbyist OS OR for servers, many bean-counters don't see the market at all.
Want to fix this problem? Make sure that you write the company you like and ask, very politely, for them to publish a linux version of the game. If they get a thousand or so emails, they will, if they are smart, realize that for everyone that sent an email, there are probably five or ten more that feel the same way, but didn't email. That will get them thinking about linux as a gaming platfrom.
BTW, while we are at it, would everyone email Square and tell them to publish ALL the final fantasy games for the PC (windows and linux--maybe even Mac)? I REALLY want them all on the PC. While their at it, updating FFVII and FFVIII to be able to use a modern video card would be a wonderful thing as well!
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Remeber the Wild West soon produced Las Vegas. Talk about gaming! =)
So where are the Open Source Games Projects? Really, the OSS community has tackled massive projects like new kernels and a fantastic browswer. Why are there now OSS game prjects that could set up Linux games. Perhaps even make the 'Killer App' to promote migration.
Well, actually it would also be nice to have graphic artists, animators, musicians, writers, professional voice-actors, people who understand how to create an immersive game experience and so on...
The owls are not what they seem
Game developers will not port their games over to Linux because we want them too. Firstly, they believe a couple things:
- Linux users are such a minority they are a drop in the bucket
- Linux Users won't pay
- No DRM on Linux
The commercial game industry isn't going to buy that. The best thing to do is for F/OSS Developers to knuckle down and develop their own games. Thats right.
We need more Freedroids, we need more Vega Strikes, we need *Good* Versions of LinCity, Wesnoth and what not.
Our focus should be driving the game companies out of power.
The only way we will get the commercial gaming industry to even look at Linux is to make games that bite them in the wallet.
However, as an experienced Gentoo Linux user, I have not yet found a way of running "native" Unreal Tournament 2004 at any reliable speed on my ATI Radeon cards - it's fine playing alone but network it and the FPS drops so its virtually unusable.
From chat on the Gentoo forums, it looks as though it's simply because even using OpenGL in Linux, UT2004 is optimised for Windows and DirectX and that's it.
I view most games companies as scum-sucking bottom-feeders anyway who are just not prepared to innovate or take any risks where money is involved. To expect them to develop specifically for a (unfortunately) minority OS like Linux is unrealistic, not to mention the graphics card manufacturers writing properly optimised drivers for Linux.
It's a real shame but it won't happen any time soon - I'd love to be proved wrong!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Once 10% or more of CONSUMERS start running Linux, games will be published for it. The larger the market share, the more games that will be published. Heck, 10% might not even be enough.
I also think that systems like TransGaming are a real bad idea. They give gaming authors an excuse NOT to publish to Linux. They know someone else will get it to work.
It's like the Black people who supported Jim Crow laws by willingly sitting in the back of the bus. Linux should not be a treated as a second class citizen. We should demand real gaming support from publishers and nothing less.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
With all the previous comments about LiveCDs with games I felt it might be prudent to mention the Linux Live Game Project which was recently mentioned here on /.
Another useful link for people looking for Linux games is, of course, linuxgames.org
It's 19:11:42. Do You Know Where Your Meat Body Is?
Not to mention what the console market is going to do to PC games anyway in the next few years. When the next Cell based PlayStation comes out (and I assume the next-gen Xbox too) their game specific performance advantage over PC's are likely to be so great that I can't see much future in PC gaming after that.
By the time Linux developers turn their full attention to Gaming (and that's one huge assumption anyway) they will probably have missed the boat.
GAME COMPANY CEO: That's that OS used by those people who are rabid about not paying for anything involving software, right?
GP: Yeah.
GCC: Get back to work, dumbass, or I'll cut your balls off.
Hey! I tease!
--- Ban humanity.
In windows, graphic drivers run in kernel mode and in Linux they are only in user mode (that's why you sometimes see the blue screen of death).
Games will run much faster when the driver is integrated in the kernel, so as the situation is now, you will always need a faster computer if you want to run the same game on linux compared to windows.
Buy a Mac. Seriously.
The linked article is just bad, even beyond turning one page into four for ad purposes. Linux is not a game market, plain and simple. It isn't really even a desktop market. The only commercial alternative to Windows you can expect to make a statement is a Mac. With a Mac you don't have driver issues or the possibility of emulation for games. A Mac port will involve technologies that are also mostly available for Linux.
No game company with a clue would target Linux before they target the Mac, so you can count on the Linux game market always trailing that of the Mac (which isn't exactly stellar). CoolTechZone is beyond deluded to suggest that buying Linux games is going to do anything significant for the platform. It makes sense only on the surface; the real market dynamic points to the Mac as your best bet for eventually seeing more major games on Linux.
The OS that takes a gig of HD space and a hundred or two megs of RAM while still providing no true real-time responsibility does not a good gaming platform make. Be it Windows or Linux. Witness a _great_ decline of PC gaming quality during the move away from DOS games. Also - it is _much_ harder to program something like a game these days. Amazingly, despite the interfaces that were supposed to "protect" you from learning your hardware, you have to learn much bigger amount of stuffs these days to do it. Not to say that super-high-res graphics is harder to make than what it was in low-res days. Also - 3D is not the answer for everything, hear that gaming companies! Polygon-composed human models suck incredibly when compared to old-school animations (and blurred textures suck on everything). In short - to make _a_ game nowadays one should invest a huge amount of man/hours -> large stuff working on it -> big money -> no risks allowed -> PHB-style management -> crap. I dunno, maybe if we have some better game programming facilities provided to everyone than maybe there's a hope of revival of these sector. Come to think of it, it does apply not only to games.
I Wouldnt say its that bad...UT2004, DOOM3, RTC, that keeps me happy enough for the moment. The rest of the developers just need to make everything OPENGL and let someone port it too linux!!!
This was obviously written as propoganda (i'm not saying that's a bad thing, forget you're preconceived notions about the word) for linux. someone who likes linux wrote it for all those windows users who know they hate microsoft (for reasons they're not sure about) and don't feel computer confident enough yet to switch to anything else. They will always use gaming as their number one excuse why not to switch. This is just another article trying to alleviate this concern.
"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, and comedy to those who think." -- Shakespeare
I had been using a a linux machine in DMZ on my home network for the last two years but World of Warcraft didn't run on Linux. I decided to install Windows on it to play my game. So I popped an old 40G hard drive and installed Windows while it was still connected to the network.
Funny thing the install took 3 and half hours instead of the 54 minutes it said it would install in. Upon bootup well... hahaha I'll let you guys what happened then...
So is (or was) http://reaper3d.sourceforge.net. flightgear is striving to become an extremely accurate flight simulator, if memory serves, so it's a bit lacking in gameplay unless virtually flying around looking at stuff or maintaining schedules is your thing. reaper3d was a no-nonsense fly around and blast stuff game. Unfortunately it seems there hasn't been any active development in a while. I'll have to take another look at it. I remember being sad it didn't attract more game developers, since what was there showed potential. It had wide open ranges and combat simulation :-) (Come to think of it I guess it was the closest thing I found in open source to the original Starsiege Tribes, or at least the flying around in a scout part.)
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Oh.. Diablo 1 doesn't play, I don't think... But Diablo 2 and the expansion, StarCraft + Expansion, World of Warcraft, warcraft 2 (dunno about the expansion for that), Warcraft 3 + expansion... They all work. I know, because I play them in linux with cedega.
I wouldn't consider that a "gaping hole."
Okay, some background; up until November last year, I worked in the games industry, coding for Windows and Xbox. I'm now working as a (non-games) developer under Linux. This article utterly fails to get a handle on the size of the gulf between the Windows games platform and the Linux one.
Firstly, and this is a cliche, but hardware support under Linux is poor. Yes, I know you can get drivers for NVidia (and more recently ATI) video cards, but in terms of technological development, these drivers are way, way behind the Windows equivalents. Support for sound under Linux is a complete joke - it's still at the level of playing back PCM data on one or more channels. Fuck, even the GBA can do that; consumer soundcards these days are massive DSP monsters; most of them support at least EAX 2.0, which provides a massive range of reverb, occlusion/diffusion and other environmental effects. EAX 4.0 is incredibly powerful and complex - it allows detailed environmental modelling with up to four simultaneous environments and a complex mixer/router model to allow you to, say, stand in a metal room and listen to an explosion coming from a padded room joined to your room by a stone tunnel. All hardware accelerated.
Secondly, software support is poor. SDL is getting better, but frankly, DirectX is a bloody marvel. It's a standardised, extensible interface that presents a consistent API to an enourmous range of hardware; it's still flexible enough to allow you to optimise for certain cards whilst remaining consistent enought that all hardware will function to some extent.
Thirdly, there's no incentive for publishers to publish games on Linux; Linux represents a tiny fraction of the desktop market, and most Linux users run Windows or own games consoles anyway. They've got nothing to gain from publishing Linux conversions, and with the costs of games development spiralling to Hollywood-esque levels, the extra cost of developing for a minority platform like Linux just doesn't make sense.
Fourthly, PC gaming is dying on its arse anyway: consoles are where the real money is at. Publishers are now considering Windows to be a risky platform to publish on, because the market is hyper-saturated, and unless you get a guaranteed number one, you might as well just throw your money down a big hole and bury it. If *Windows* is a risky platform, then Linux doesn't even get a look in.
If I'd have bounced the idea of doing a Linux port of our game off our publishers/producers/management, they'd have just laughed at me. Linux isn't a serious platform for games, and I can't see that changing in the short-medium term. Sorry.
-- I reserve the right to be completely wrong --
ATi/Nvidia --> game expansion card --> monitor
Such boards should be cost-effective to manufacture, since the expansion card would be able to leverage peripherals already found in most PCs such as the optical drive for reading game CDs, and the hard drive (and/or USB storage keys) for storing saved games.
Comments?
When developers move away from the proprietary directx format or at least allow the game to work with either directx or opengl I think there will be more games developed for linux.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sure this has been said at least 10 times already, but there is absolutely no incentive for game developers and publishers to make games for Linux. First, the market is too small. How many people have a Linux gaming machine as their desktop? Not many. Those that do are probably working on a PC 2-5 years old. Second, available Linux distributions/desktops are still FAR from ready for a layman (a large % of gamers) despite what Slashdot articles lead you to believe. Conclusion? It's a tiny market that's not growing. I'll repeat what I've learned throughout the years about which OS is right for you. If you want gaming, use Windows or a Mac. If you're doing server stuff use FreeBSD. If your needs fall somewhere between or you simply don't know any better, use Linux.
Time to kick it up a notch and start pushing a bit more to get things developed. Looking for a darn good Reason?
Granted it won't be a mass exodous, and as well that pirates don't make good Poster Children when it comes to gloating about how many people are using your Distro, but hell, it's users, and that's what MS has, and Linux as a whole is still suffering a lack of.
The problem with development on Linux, especially in a GUI desktop, is that it keeps changing too often! Its frusterating to be a developer on linux, because you waste so much time trying to ensure that your products work properly with all the new distros, which ship library X as apposed to library Y, and very often break compat.... One thing windows has going for it, is that software written 10 years ago will still run, and software written today will still run on a windows box many years old... The same cannot be said for linux... Try running something on RH 6.2 nowadays..
Right now, many distributions are concentrating on other materials, like making their distributions easy to use, and making sure they work well with all the different hardware.
They can only go so far, seeing as more and more hardware manufacturers are playing hardball and not releasing specs.
If it doesn't work out, do NOT blame the distros.
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
Mac fanboi-ism aside, Mac's still aren't going to do much better. Don't buy a Mac. Seriously. It's all about market share and Apple just doesn't have it.
From the Operating System Wiki entry:
Today, Windows is the most popular desktop operating system, enjoying a near-monopoly of around 90% of the worldwide desktop market share.
Now for arguments' sake, pretend we divide the remainder between Linux and OS X evenly. If you are EA or Valve and you want to make a game, do you begin writing for the 5% market share under Linux (whose mainly composed of servers anyway), the 5% that OS X has, or do you write your game for the 90% of computer users that use Windows? Any rational human being can make the simple decision to go with Windows. To make this process even easier for Windows, I believe Microsoft has made the tools so you can make a game for Windows or Xbox and in no time produce the title under the other name to cater to the console game market or computer gaming market.
I can say that I will most definately not be switching to Linux until (if ever) it can be a true multi-media desktop OS. I've got WinDVD running hooked into SB Audigy 2 ZS with 7.1 surround sound, and BFG's 6800 Ultra. All multi-media components run perfectly under Windows XP.
Why is the incentive for me, or anyone else, to switch to Linux where I will have to give up my 7.1 surround sound and fumble around with manually setting up drivers, etc.? The average PC user is like the average car driver - just turn the thing on and it works. For myself, and 99% of the other computer users out there, Windows XP is the gamer OS. There is no comparison to Linux.
Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux. That's when the Linux gaming market will really take off.
WTF does a "stable desktop" have to do with gaming support? There's X and there's ALSA. Why should a game developer worry about what WM I running?
Kinda the point of running Linux as a desktop is the ability to run things how you see fit. Thus, the desktop environment is modular. So, developers just need to write in interfaces to specific pieces ( X, OpenGL/DRI, and ALSA ). How hard is that? That's essentially what the Transgaming folks do; write a software layer to interpret DirectX calls to ALSA and OpenGL.
--Chemguru
Introversion Software http://www.introversion.co.uk/ are performing small miracles. Uplink was great, and Darwinia looks to be fantastic.
Best of all, they're available (at least Darwinia very soon after Win/Mac release) for Linux. If you've not seen em, go on over and take a look. If anything, it's people like Chris Delay and the rest of Introversion that might just be Linux gaming's "future".
What killed OS/2?
OS/2 died because it could run Windows programs, and thus nobody wrote any for OS/2. Okay, fine we can shell out a ton of cash for OS/2 and Windows, then we can run OS/2 programs AND Windows programs. Wait, why don't we just right Windows programs since OS/2 can run them anyways? We don't need to write OS/2 programs. Thus, the OS/2 software library did not grow. Know anybody still running OS/2? We shell out cash for Windows games and run them on Linux. As far as the developer is concerned they just sold a game to a Windows user. They just made more money on Windows, not Linux. Sure, encourage them. For the record I have had Starcraft running on Linux, but not for several years, and I used plain old WINE to do it. Using WINE just makes me feel dirty, and Blizzard is still a gaping hole. I wont even buy a Blizzard game for my GameCube until they fix their Linux problem.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The answer has been obvious since Loki went under. Apparently Linux users just don't like to use their systems for playing games. Probably the same goes for Mac users as well. Linux isn't poised to explode onto the PC gaming scene. There's nothing functionally wrong with it with respect to gaming.
I know this has been a source of personal insecurity for a lot of Linux users, or they wouldn't be writing these articles every year. Don't be insecure, there's nothing wrong with Linux. Linux users just don't like games.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
nt
I'm thinking we need someway to motivate hackers
and then create a game which demonstrates what can be done in Linux that you just couldn't possibly ever do in Windows.
What about building a custom GPU card say with 4 CPUs as a project and then get OpenGL to use it. Then demo it with Flight Gear/Half Life or something. Or perhaps not a GPU I'd bet their difficult to get holdof but a DSP chip which we could hack to do intensive stuff. After all Linux is built for handling multiple CPUs without stressing out why not exploit those foundations.
Or what about using Linux's great shrinking ability to make a mini gaming Linux which lives as an image file loading just the absolute necessary stuff almost converting our PCs to playstations via a boot option in LILO/GRUB.
Then with such a small footprint no firewall no virus scanners no instant messenging or any other crap in the way the memory that is left over we divert to texture buffers cdrom cache or whatever makes things fly so that the same game when run side by side Windows and Linux with exactly the same spec PC Linux comes out a clear winner.
Any thoughts...
Exactly. Companies don't avoid OSX (or Linux) because they are such huge fans of win32 that the though of releasing software for anything else is abhorrent (Microsoft's first and second party studios aside). It's simply not worth the time and effort to do so for relatively few sales.
The huge popularity of consoles relative to the PC games market is already cutting in to the number of Windows compatible titles. If companies aren't willing to develop for Windows, why on Earth would they port their games to a platform with 1/50th the potential market?
There will always be games for the Mac and Linux. But they are going to be few in number and (mostly) behind the curve due to the time it takes to port them. Crappy video drivers for Linux and Apple selling machine with sub-laptop video performance isn't helping the matter either.
well, Medal of Honor IS coming to linux. just, slowly.
http://www.icculus.org/ - Porting MOHAA for EA. I know it's not pacific assault but still...
This is my opinion. Everyone has a right to my opinion.
We can divide the games themselves into two categories, mainstream (i.e Windows) games and games developed for the Linux platform.
To be fair, they do muddy the waters some later in the article but I consider games with a distinct cross-platform emphasis a class in themselves. Torcs, Flightgear and Cube on my machine.
it doesn't mean Linux won't continue to see a few good games. Wildfire Games are developing a 3D real-time strategy game, 0AD. Just like we enjoy free/open source software applications such as openoffice and the mozilla suite, there will be free games worth playing. America's Army has a large fanbase, 0AD most likely will have one when released, more will come :).
OGRE3D a very high quality 3d engine is reaching 1.0 this week. Open source middleware shaves years off of development time and is generally overlooked.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
There was a post John Carmack made here on Slashdot a few years ago stating that even having given away the linux executables for free with Quake 3, their master server showed like 0.1% of the players were playing the Linux client.
1 2
Here's one post of his on the topic (albeit from 5 years ago...): http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=7003&cid=8689
Maybe someone with some more time would care to track it down: http://slashdot.org/~John%20Carmack
rooooar
It isn't because that is where the games are. I sell Macs and PCs. The reason most people stay with the PC is they don't want to learn anything more than what they already know. If they have to learn a whole new platform, they aren't interested. If, however, they bothered to learn a little more about Windows, they might switch to something else. Many people are surprised about the state of security on Windows. Same goes for the state of video editing software. These are the people who are easiest to switch. People who want to play games tend to stick to Windows. People who are comfortable in and aware of their ignorance tend to stick to Windows. People who have a desire to expand their knowledge tend to find alternatives to Windows.
Games Knoppix
The Linux Game Tome
------
insert sig here,here, and here
The solution is to make Linux games ourselves, and to sell them. We don't need to wait for large game companies to start supporting Linux. We can also MOD existing games with Linux version. With games engines like Torque available, and with moddable games aroung like Quake3 and UT2004, there is really no excuse for not making good Linux games.
No data, no cry
Here's an idea: what if a group of dedicated Linux gamers got together and petitioned a developer to let them port one of their old Windows-only titles for free. It wouldn't cost them a dime, they wouldn't have much to worry about otherwise, since the game wouldn't still be in the stores, and they may get some extra support from the community. It would probably mean signing an NDA, but it would be a step in the right direction.
WeRelate.org - wiki-based genealogy
Let's take a look at what IS out there: The Doom series, the Quake series, RTCW and Enemy Territory, Tribes 2, Neverwinter Nights, Tux Racer.. The list goes on, but there still has yet to be a MMORPG (that works well) for linux. Untill I can play DAOC, SWG, Evercrack, etc natively on linux I will not switch. Most devs nowdays are focusing on DirectX compatibility and not opengl. I personally feel that opengl is superior in the terms of speed, but lacks the stability and ease of implementation of directx.
As I remember, we said exactly the sametime four years ago too, when Loki started porting and selling Linux ports... I haven't noticed much of an improvement. In fact, since Loki shut down, Linux gaming has gotten less coverage than before. Loki could at least push out their ports quickly. The few companies still porting gamesfor Linux are too slow, and can't seem to get licenses for any of the bit names in gaming. The exception is Icculus. Without him, Linux gaming would be an even sader story than itis today...
... or is everyone ignoring the fact that the icon for games or linux games (not sure which) is a MICROSOFT Sidewinder joystick? It seems oddly out of place.
UT2K4-demo is about the only game I play anymore when I need to relieve stress. I have an athlon xp 2800+ with Radeon 9600se graphics card. Under winxp I can turn up all the graphics details and at 1024x768 it runs very smoothly. Under (2.6.10-gentoo) Linux using ATI's latest FGLRX drivers and xorg 6.8 (yes direct rendering and all agp 8x are enabled and I can run fgl_glxgears at 100fps full screen 1280x1024) the game is very choppy at the same resolution. So naturally I turned down the resolution in the game to 640x480 but it's still choppy like
Before you try getting new games on nix try fixing the ones already available.
AFAIK there are more Mac desktops out there than there are Linux, also the Mac offers a nice development platform where the support departments doesn't have to worry about a fantasillion different OSX flavours. Despite this, the game developers doesn't seem very interested in porting to Mac. Why should they be interested in porting to Linux?
:p
Personally, I don't think gaming will ever take off on the penguin platform. Or as a viable multimedia desktop platform for that matter.
This will most likely get me flamed into oblivion, but seriously try and look at the multimedia applications offered on Linux. For tasks like multimedia/DVD authoring, video editing/painting, 3D modelling/rendering we are light years behind OSX and Windows(heck, a Amiga 4000+A old toaster(and the video painting/editing/3danimation software bundled with it) + ScalaMM would offer possibilities way beyond what Linux has to offer).
The only "mulitmediaish" department where the penguin is on the ball is sound editing/production(even though, things like creating a DVD-A disc is still a huge problem(yea yea, patents patents. The users don't care)).
We got a unholy amount windows managers and text editors though
Recently I found a couple of real gems:
. net/
http://openttd.org/
http://ufo2000.sourceforge
not only they run on Linux, but free software themselves.
Will it be much worst than paging?
Part of the problem with gaming on Linux is the derth of open source graphics drivers. Furthermore, closed-source drivers for Linux tend to be substandard compared to their Windows counterparts. As such, I'd like to point to the Open Graphics Project.
Just one story because I am bored to search more
Here is the text:
News broke last week of Microsoft having quietly bought patents from SGI last year that include major core 3D technology. A strange item in SGI's SECC listing for last year shows an income of $62.5 million for "intellectual property" paid by Microsoft.
Representatives from SGI, when they are willing to comment, claim that the properties sold were "non-core" technologies, but The Register received evidence proving otherwise. A reaction to the initial story gets a bit heated, including The Register being called the "closest thing you can get to a computational version of the National Enquirer."
Experts point out that Microsoft is not in the PC hardware industry, but acquires assets like this for the advantage of influence. OpenGL, a competing technology to Microsoft's, depends on hardware manufacturers' loyalty.
insightful for showing an inability to google, I don't have to quote everything I write!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Depends on what you call a "plethora" ("Jeffe, do you know what a 'plethora' is?"). For me, Linux *does* have a plethora of games. I'll admit, I'm no hardcore gamer, but I bought a lot of Linux games when Loki was still around (I still miss them), and I *still* haven't had time to play through them all.
BTW, ever since Loki went away the state of Linux games has been getting _worse_, not better, IMHO. Sure, we at least have companies doing ports on their own these days and Carmack is one of my heroes just for porting Id's games to Linux, but without Loki porting games and so-called Linux companies like Transgaming snatching up titles and "porting" (I use that word in the loosest sense) to Linux, games on Linux are in dire straits.
And yet still, I persist, and refuse to pay for games that aren't ported to Linux. Mainly because, like I said, it works for me. I still have plenty of games I can play *legally*, that I *paid* for, under Linux, as opposed to the flavor of the week pirated games on Windows.
Nathan's blog
clickety click
But in the minutes of the OpenGL developer meeting, it's clear that Microsoft has staked an IP claim on portions of the OpenGL spec, and it's willing to license it's patents on RAND terms.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Me: I have been reading that Microsoft have been buying patent rights from SGI over OpenGL specs, not developing them, just buying themi tch-.n et: Erm oh, erm
:-) :-) :-0
Poor-Asshole-Microsoft-Employee-Trying-To-P
Me: So what is the plan? kill all completition in graphics libraries? stop all development of hardware accellerated 3d on linux?
PAMETTP.N: Erm oh erm, why would we do that?
Me: *stabbing ball point pen into eye socket of PAMETTP.N* die mother fucker die die die! DIE!
And they say games make people violent, tsk!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
and I can run fgl_glxgears at 100fps full screen 1280x1024
Here's news for you: that loooow framerate shows your 3d acceleration isn't working at all. Take a good look at your setup.
I think what the author is trying to get across is that over time the base of linux users will grow, as it is growing today, as the base grows the market for linux games will grow. Therefore, as the linux market grows there will be companies who see this market as an opportunity to make a profit. For businesses its all about ROI (Return On Investment). And considering that game development is happening even today on linux by developers large and small I think the only thing holding it back is the market size.
You did state your belief that linux gamers dual boot to play games on Windows therefore there will never be a linux market for games, but I thoroughly disagree with this, and as a linux gamer I can debunk your statement.
You see, I don't dual boot to Windows and I don't play games in Windows. Yes, my choices are limited, but I currently play Neverwinter Nights, I purchased the Windows version after bioware released the linux client, Unreal Tournament 2004, the shrinkwrap box includes AND advertises on the box the linux client along with the Windows client, Quake 3 Arena, for which I purchased the retail linux shrinkwrap version, and Spacetripper, I purchased online from Pom-Pom.
So I agree that current incentive for developers is very limited, however, I also agree with the article that the future of linux gaming is bright.
burnin
Um, you are using an ATI card.
Use nVidia and Unreal Tournament 2004 will be as smooth as glass.
There is NOTHING wrong with the game, and ATI is well known for putting out shitty Linux drivers.
so stop buying ATI? Even as a windows user I stick with Nvidia simply on the off chance that if i decide to slap on a *nix next to Windows I want it to run properly. Voting with my wallet and all.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The Loki installer could be used with any Window environment and from my experience with Loki games would run perfectly fine under several different Windowing Environments.
The important thing is to have a standard underlying Multi-media programming API for sound, graphics and what-not. Whether that should be one single monolithic Multimedia API, several Multimedia APIs covering various aspects or many Multimedia APIs that use a set of 'standard' calls to produce similar effects covering various aspects of Multimedia, remains to be seen.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
two words: Vendetta Online
More frames per second because it's a more efficient OS? Most of the rabid gamers I know would run a Linux version of a game just for that.
imagine:
... but i think it's worth a shot!
liveCD or liveDVD of a barebones linux, just enough to autoconf and run the game on it. it can also install on the users computer.
a cross between the console experience of games and the pc experience of games playing.
save game data to a spare partition or usb solidstate memory device.
*maybe* there's limits here
AFAIK the ATi drivers still sucking. Try a nVidia card and you'll see the diference.
The no cd patches which work on windows suddenly don't work on linux. I'm not going to install linux if I can't test drive it and play some games. That means I'm using knoppix, I even downloaded that game oriented knoppix version. The problem is IT DOESN'T PLAY ANY BLOODY GAMES. They all require the cd to be in there, like most people I don't have 2 cd drives. So what the hell is the point if I keep having to shove in cd after cd after cd when windows lets me do away with this garbage after a patch from gamecopyworld.com ? The games which don't require a cd to be inside are of such low quality, or so outdated that they're laughable and craptacular. I shop at EB, and they don't sell games just for linux, that means that I'm not using linux unless it's running windows games, and able to run them with functional no cd patchs. After that I'll see about doing other things with the operating system like office documents and other work related stuff.
Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux.
:-/
/.), said that "Linux had trouble with a very basic task: installing new apps".
"Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent"... isn't this what we've been waiting for, all these years?
After all, the recent comparison of operating systems (published also on
No wonder...
I know everybody here is talking about native Linux games, but you should't discount emulated games through Cedega/Transgaming too quickly.
My machine is a P4 2.6 with 1 gig of memory. I've been quite happily playing World of Warcraft now for 2 weeks. Right before that I was playing Doom 3. The games just seem to work. I don't have to mess around with a lot of configuration settings.
I haven't been playing games for very long, but their list of supported games is looking quite nice for someone who doesn't know any better.
I tried FlightGear last week (under Windows) and it was awful! My machine is no super computer (3.2Ghz P4 and a Ge4600Ti) but I expected more than 2-8fps.
I would expect it too. Most FlightGear Windows users get framerates comparable to what the Linux users get; and your framerates are well below what they should be. I have a comparable or slightly less powerful machine than yours (XP2000+, GF4 Ti4600) and typically get framerates that are an order of magnitude higher than what you're getting (it depends, of course, on the plane, the area, etc.). So something's wrong on your end. Apart from all the usual "check your driver" crap -- I don't think that's it, you've said FS2004 runs well, but it doesn't hurt to make sure -- I'd check the default configuration for FG. People who have complained of absurdly low FlightGear framerates in Windows in the past have often turned out to have FG configuration issues like their visibility turned up to an absurdly high range (e.g. 200km, causing FG to have to worry about all ground structures within 200km, which takes a lot of memory, which causes thrashing, which slows down the machine). I'd also check your version; old versions of FG and the libraries on which it's based (especially plib) were much less powerful than the current. If you still can't solve the problem, and you're feeling helpful, please do subscribe to the flightgear-users or flightgear-devel mailing list and post your problem. Your framerates are abnormally low, and if the problem really is with FlightGear rather than with your setup, then the FlightGear developers would certainly like to get it fixed.
By comparison MS Flight Sim 2004 runs smoothly and looks great
No argument. FS2004 is a great piece of work. I have some knocks on it, but they're mostly because it's not fundamentally the software I'd want it to be, rather than what it is (see below). Compared to its goals, it's fabulous.
- as well as having well regarded flight dynamics,
This is one thing I'd take a bit of exception to. Among real-world pilots who have moved to FG from MSFS, including FS2004, the most common complaint about MSFS has been the realism of the flight dynamics modelling. Among non-pilots who try FG after MSFS, the most common "complaint" by a wide margin has been "the Cessna keeps pulling to the left as I go down the runway and try to take off! FlightGear has a bug!" -- which is, in fact, not a bug.
That's not to say that the modelling of flight dynamics in FlightGear has no problems -- it does. But on the whole, I'd pick it over MSFS. A large fraction of the core FlightGear developers are aero engineering types (some with Boeing and NASA), so it's no surprise that this is where it'd do best. On the other hand . . .
a excellent weather modelling
Yes, here's an area that FG really lacks. It draws clouds well as scenery; but flying through/among the clouds isn't done well. And all the rest of weather -- rain, snow, icing, etc. -- is really nonexistent, and these are important things, especially for pilots. It's not like the FG developers aren't aware of this, and this is an area where slow, halting steps are finally being taken.
and a pretty comprehensive ATC system.
This, too, is an area where FG lacks; but it's an area of current development, even more than the weather issues, if I'm following people's conversations correctly.
The problem is that producing a game requires much more focus and many more resources than 99.9% of OS projects have access to. What's really needed is a high quality, high level OS game engine. Something that hides all the OpenGL/SDL details, that's easy for programmers to pick and use, that's easy extensible, that's cross platform, that builds with multiple compilers and that doesn't require hundreds of lines of code just to initalise.
I'm sure you know this, but what's needed from a g
An extensible flight engine using public domain mapping data could catch the imagination of the MS Flight Simulator fans -- let's call this Open Air -- and the other firm favourite that should be fairly straighforward would instantly have a catchy name: Open Golf.
First person shooter engines, RTS engines, Turn-based map/strategy engines.... Once you have all these available for free, the the average home-coder gains the ability to generate a decent game quickly and easily, and the profit for those who chose to make a commercial game increases dramatically.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
That large ass complicated API is many times better than having to futz with APIs provided by multiple vendors. It also reduces if not eliminates the worries that they may have bad versins of all of these independant APIs. It also provides you with several known levels of feature support.
In other words it is LESS COMPLEX to deal with.
On a side note, your entire comment is very hostile to the current game development community and its standards and you wonder why this platform is ignored? Your type are the ones they notice and guess what, they don't want'em.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
.NET is replacing Win32 in the next Windows version, with Win32 programs being translated do .NET (probably adding overhead), and .NET offering very nice libraries (and C# being a very good language), I believe it's a safe bet to say that new games will be written for this framework. And with mono (or perhaps other .NET implementations) we will probably be able to run most of these games on various *NIX flavours.
In 2002, a comprehensive study on web browsing clients (which reports browser OS in the HTTP request) stated "Windows now controls 97.46 percent of the global desktop OS market, compared to just 1.43 percent for Apple Macintosh and 0.26 percent for Linux".
Of course, this is before WindowsXP and MacOSX, but I doubt that much has changed. Its funny that for all the preaching I hear on SlashDot, it's incredibly difficult to actually get hard numbers on how much market share there actually is for Linux... I personally gave up on it back at Slackware7 due to hardware incompatabilities, and haven't looked back. If I was going to jump from WinXP now, it would be to OSX, not Linux... but thats a story for another day.
Wow... you're impressively uninformed. Have you even bothered to use Linux?
Audio Software for Linux, well, let's see, Audacity, that's it. Windows, Audacity, Goldwave, SoundForge, etc.
Check PlanetCCRMA once in a while. Personally, I personally use Ardour + Hydrogen + Jack often. You mentioned Audacity and there's a bazillion 'nothing special' recorders along the line of goldwave.
Video Editing Software for Linux, well, let's see, none that I can think of. Windows, Adobe Primere, Video Explosion Deluxe, Dazzle DVD Complete.
Kino, mencodeer, AVIDemux, DVD-Create...
Image Editing Software for Linux, The Gimp, and that's it. Windows, PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro, NeoPaint as well as the Gimp.
Photogenics, X-Paint, Artstream, if course Gimp. If you really can't live without the comfort of Photoshop, 7 runs perfectly under wine.
Email Software, Thunderbird, none other that I can think of. Windows it's Thunderbird, Eudora, Outlook/Outlook Express.
Evolution, Thunderbird, KMail, Balsa, GMail, Aethera, Mahogany...
I understand you're trolling and I'm just feeding you but if noone replies to crap like this average people might actually believe the shlop this guy says. If it weren't for games, there would be a lot more converts.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Multiplayer game, both the client and the server run on linux AND windows: Outgun
:-)
NOTE: Outgun needs servers! help linux AND windows gaming and host an Outgun server today
The thing is the fact that I'm hesitant on installing Linux on my computer because I want all my classic game software to run properly on the computer at the right speed. Not too fast and not too slow.(Ex: Sonic CD, DooM, SimCity 2000, Final Fantasy VII, and maybe some DOS games on a Linux-based DOS Emulator) Just call me old fashion
Once id released the Doom 3 client for linux, I could stop going back to windows to play it. It DOES run at the same speed as it does in windows, and I didn't have to muck around at all. It just worked.
.NET. This isn't flamebait; it's common knowledge.
No, it doesn't, and performance benchmarks have been done to prove this. id's own Linux guy explained it:
1.) GCC doesn't optimize for x86 as well as Visual Studio
2.) The Linux port doesn't use SSE instructions, because they are written in assembly that would need to be ported over.
My own benchmarks also confirmed Doom 3 for Linux is much slower on the same hardware than for Windows XP. Also, I'm sure drivers come into play here.
I haven't played it in a few months, so I don't know if the latest patch is available for Linux.
..........FULL STOP.
I'll get modded down for this, but it's sooo obvious part of the reason is due to rampant and widespread PC piracy. Nobody gives a second thought anymore to pirating Doom 3, Half-Life 2, or anything else.
Consoles are harder to pirate, and in some cases like the Gamecube, impossible.
The article is wrong in many places (the fact that nvidias drivers are non-GPL does _not_ mean they can't be distributed; there _are_ other means to get DX-games running than paying money to transgaming (free CVS from transgaming, wine(!))
What about RTFA before submitting it to slashdot?
--
Douglas
Interesting. Thanks for the hint. I'll give it a try.
The owls are not what they seem
I'm an independent game maker who recently started his own company.
- Nobody pays for linux. Big game companys are afraid no one will pay for linux games, either.
- Up until OSX it was just too much of a PITA to make games for Mac.
- Big game companies, by and large, are playing it safe. Since almost nobody made a fortune with a non-windows game, they don't see the benefit in giving it a try, either.
- Big game companies that make console games, by and large, release PC titles because they did a lot of their testing & debugging on PCs, so it's a freebie for them. A happy coincidence. Porting those games to linux & Mac is not in their budget (for the previously stated reason)
- Many independent game makers (myself included) make games for linux and mac. I myself hope to obtain a mac of some kind in the near future so I can start making OSX ports.
- Independent game makers are usually groups of 1 or 2 people and know their limitations. That's why they don't make games like System Shock or Operation Flashpoint or SimReligion or what have you. They *do* make smaller games full of the innovation that everyone says is so lacking these days. Of course... these are all just IMHO.
That's when the Linux gaming market will really take off.
That's also when Linux on the Desktop will take off. Say it any way you want, if the average home user can't play games they won't use the desktop. Period.
Games have always pushed hardware, pushed software and pushed more people to spend too much money on a new computer so they can play the latest game. Why else does Intel, ATI and nVidia give early releases of their new chips to top game manufacturers? So they can develop games that will bog down the current hardware and make people want to buy new.
Don't agree? Then ask yourself this: if you could only choose one OS and could not switch, which would it be? What about your family?
Until gaming is prevelant on the Linux platform, the Desktop Domination Dream will remain just that: a dream.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
I've also started an indie gaming company, FunPause, with the normal stuff (free game downloads and then you can get the full version).
.. at the bare minimum.
Our first strategy game for everyone (the casual gamers), Garden War, is up, here. At the moment, it is Windows-only, but the game wouldn't be a massive effort to port to Linux. As a self-assumed geek and early Linux fan (hello GGI guys if you read me!), I'd love to, but as a business person I am stopping myself from doing it. There's a wealth of hardware issues, multiple distributions, and the fact that fellow indie game producers reported abysmal sales.
If I was to start out, I'd need AT LEAST:
* hard sales data that a Linux version is worth it
* a cross-distro fancy (graphical) installer?
The intention is there, if I could get some convincing info that I'd better make a Linux version than spend equal amounts of time on promoting my already selling Windows version !
Games like Doom, Max Payne, NFS, etc are not on Linux and are not expected to be in the near future as well. Along with that softwares like Photoshop, Page Maker are missing too. Moreover, most games now use Microsoft's Direct X technology to render its graphics which (I believe), is not possible to be ported to Linux now.
In the DOS days every game had their "own-way" of doing it. There were no API's, not Direct X, etc...
Games were possible, and usually fun. Why doesn't that happen now in the linux camps? I assume it's better* (tm) to build & use an API, then the work is easier for everybody else, but what about just doing your own thing and making what you need?
Disclaimer: I don't know anything about programming, and I can't understand why REM doesn't work anymore.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
meh?
---- This is the real future of
|$.| Linux gaming.
|.@|
|%.+##### We all know that the best
|..| # games rely in imagination
---- # and not on graphic special
# effects.
#
Fixed width font please
Check out this poll that GameFAQs is having today.
Rob
Starcraft single player is worthless :-P
The common idea is that Linux users are not willing to pay for software, rather share with the community. Now, would a game distributor try this? LokiGames didn't make it either, cannot remember why, but it wasn't due to its large sales. Furthermore, ID games have always offered Linux versions of their games that work splendidly.
Exactly, who says that Linux is going to mature and grow as a platform? It doesn't seem to be any more popular now than it did five years ago in 1999. It's not like it's this years iPod where all of a sudden everybody's talking about Linux and getting new Linux rigs for Christmas, and people are standing in line at Starbucks with their little Linux laptops. Linux is pretty much just popular with web designers and programmers because it's cheap and fairly reliable. I don't see any major changes coming in the public sector.
I agree with most of the negative comments about Linux gaming. It's pretty obvious that support and not having a "purchase" or protected game would be an issue. But network or subscription games are an option, and a developer could create a distribution OS for it. So the entire OS and application could be devoted to just the game and given away for free in hopes to capture revenue for peopel using the game server (which would implement the important aspects of the game like AI to which the free game would be useless without).
What do you think?
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
That there aren't a lot of games for Linux isn't the fault of the community, or the system. There are really great online FPS (first person shooter) games available for Linux (Unreal Tournament 2004, Wolfenstein -Enemy Territory and Americas Army come to mind). They support OpenGL, are fast, and (at least with Enemy Territory) support 64 simultanious players and expandable (my old version of ET has 397 different scenerios, and my list is old and not up to date). The community has some good non-professional games, but more would be nice. It would be better though, if games companies stepped up and provided more Linux games.
Direct X is not the issue. OpenGL + OSS is not the issue. Game development has been moved to game engines for some time now.
The substantive questions are:
1. Why hasn't the OS community done a game engine yet? (sounds like a really fun project to be in on)
2. Why do all you linux fans keep shelling out money for the monopoly OS? Are you really so addicted, so enamored, so impatient that you can't sit tight, write the company and demand the linux version?
This battle is well worth it, but don't forget the significant cost self sacrifice!
-Dan
Tux Racer 2 Super Tux Racer 2 Super Tux Racer 2 Turbo Super Tux Racer 2 Turbo Championship Edition
I think that Linux has a unique advantage for PC games.
:)
The entire OS could be bundled along with the game, because it's free, doesn't require hard drive installation, and doesn't take up much space. The PC game CD (or DVD) could be made self-booting, and it would automatically load and run a working Linux system from the disc, like Knoppix! It would not need to touch the hard drive at all.
Use a bootable CD, and Linux support for USB thumbdrives for game saves: instant game console
Advantages:
* Ability to try out the game without needing to install it first
* OS can autodetect and configure all hardware automatically, so user doesn't need to spend hours getting OpenGL working
* Developers have complete control over the OS image (no danger of Microsoft introducing DirectX incompatibilities with version updates, for instance)
* Brain-dead easy for computer novices to get the game running (just put in the CD and reboot, just like a game console)
* Allows game to be played on systems where users aren't allowed to install software or change things on the system (businesses, schools, hotels, etc.).
* Works without regard to whatever Linux distribution is installed on the system, since it doesn't touch the hard disk
* Disc can be given to children and they can play the game, without needing to install stuff all over Dad's computer
* Game state can still be saved, as Linux supports USB thumbdrives and memory cards
* As with all Linux software, no royalties or code signing needed in order to get a bootable disc that can be commercially sold
I'd love to see Linux game discs be bootable like this, so that I have the option of running the game directly from CD in addition to installing it on my hard drive. I'm probably not the only one who thinks this would be a boon to the Linux community....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
I play UT2004 on my Gentoo AMD64 box all the time...super speedy, great graphics. They even have a binary just for 64 bit Linux.
Its your ATI card, dude. If you're using Linux, there is only one graphics card manufacturer: nVidia. I've only bought nVidia for a few years now (4?) and have never been unhappy with the performance and ease of use.
It seems like it might be possible for some company somewhere to make a console that uses linux as the OS, using commodity hardware. Have a special distribution preinstalled on the box (or even on flash memory or something) that has very limited functionality. Games written for this platform would have to run in a very standard way, and run with very standard libs and resources. There would be no installation of games, they would just run off the CD like they do on the playstation or whatever. If such a device could be popular, then games written for it might also run on regular PCs, kind of as an afterthought. But the main market would be the kind of folks that don't ever want to install anything, just put in the disk and start playing. Anyway, wouldn't it be neat if there was a major game console out there, and all its games just happened to run on linux.
was the day Enemy Territory appeared. It's the only PC game I play anymore (I tried AA, but didn't really like it, got through sniper training and everything), and I play it every chance I get, sometimes for upwards of 8-10 hours. It rocks. New maps come out constantly.
So I guess it's true -- if I hadn't found the one game that grabbed me by the balls, and then dixocvered the Linux version, I'd still be dual-booting.
For pretty much any popular multiplayer game out there (BF1942, HL2, Doom3, etc) there are dedicated multiplayer server files available so you can run a server on linux, but yet getting the game for linux to just "play" (client version) is near impossible?
Seeing as how the difference between the server and client installations are basically null, I don't see what the problem is in releasing for both platforms...
We are never going to get anywhere while the GFX card manufacturers are only releasing closed source drivers, because of the diversity of distro's they are always going to be (compared to blows) shit unless some _really_ major work is done on GLX, DRI and the Kernel to make it so that one binary can be used anywhere, or alternatively the manufacturers release OSS drivers.
I don't know too much about bare bones programming but it should be possible to have OSS drivers without giving away industry secrets about how your hardware works, heck the specs for processors are open and can be used by any OS, but the internals certainly aint.
Really this is the same old shit that people have been shovelling about linux gaming for the past 2 or more years.
Who gives a shit?
People who really want to play games on linux will find a way to do it. If that means coding them from scratch then good on 'em, but if that means going back to 'Effing Windows (tm)' good goddamn riddance. I'm all for ousting the poseurs anyway.
Several years ago people were saying that they couldn't get rid of Windows because of games. There is still some truth to that today but as you point out, those who are gamephiles are now buying consoles. The billions that Miscrosoft accepted as financial losses to break into the game console market merely accerlerated the decline of Windows.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
As the article states, lets finish GUI first, then worry about gaming. A average user who just installed the latest K0ol App still has to bang his head to get it into KDE menu structure.. yes, it has gotten alot easier, but, I just wanna play the game, not read faqs and howto's. IN my opinion - You wanna play games, you got M$.. along with those games, you will play shoot the virus, run from the trojans, and endless game... never ends. Replay Value - **** stars. You want security, you want applications, dont feel like rebooting every 30 days, welp, you have 'Nix.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
Dude... what you previously posted was intentionally and obviously wrong. You didn't even bother to inform yourself in this recent post either.
...no legal Linux DVD software...where Windows has software to play DVDs legally, and even illegal software that will allow someone to copy DVDs. There's only partial support for the Audigy and Live in Linux...
I saw the Audio editing software, and overkill for someone that just wants to copy their old record over, and does it even have any options for cleaning the audio? on top of that, there are so many dependencies that it makes my head spin.
So there wasn't enough Audio software in your previous post and now there's too much? I guess I can't compete with that. For future reference, Audacity, a program you used in your own example, works well for recording from an analog source... like a record.
Mencodeer doesn't exist, the rest either the interface sucks or no screenshots. And Linux doesn't support video capture other than from a lousy Hauppauge Video Card that crashes after so many seconds of video capture, no matter what OS is used.
Sorry, it's 'mencoder'. And I have no idea where you're getting your video capture information. BT8x8 cards, the most popular capture chips are well supported. The more advanced hardware encoders are also supported very well. Capture over firewire works very well but since you couldn't find screenshots of Kino (nice methodology, btw) you wouldn't be aware of that.
Artstream is now gone, possibly forever; X-Paint is a ripoff of Microsoft Paint that comes with Windows, hell, NeoPaint for DOS can do more than that. Photogenics is for both windows and Linux so that means only 1 good image editing Application for Linux, the Gimp has a lousy interface. And Yes, Photoshop may run in Linux under wine, but, how stable is it, and how much configuring does someone have to go through just to get it at least somewhat runnable?
So if something runs on both Linux and Windows it doesn't count for Linux? I gave those examples because it included a simple image editor, an advanced and well supported image editor, and the venerable Gimp. Photoshop 7 runs damn near flawlessly under wine with wine's default config. If you can install the rpm, you can run PS7.
Thunderbird and Mahogany are the only two that looked any good, but, they are also available for windows.
Wow... noone uses Mahogany but Evolution is so popular they're working on a Windows port. Thanks for doing the research before posting.
Any software for Linux similar to Quicken and Quickbooks that will allow someone to import the data from Quicken and Quickbooks?
Can't comment on that... Never tried any of them. I used GNUCash once upon a time but I don't think it's the same.
The Audigy line is supposed to be very well supported in Linux although I don't have first hand experience with it so I'll have to comment on it no further. In fact, in your entire 2 post rambling the single valid point I can pick out is the comment on DeCSS and DVD decryption. The fact of the matter is the licensing costs of a DVD decoder is so prohibitive that you probably will only find it in FOSS that has a huge bankroll with money to burn (like SuSe) behind it. It's a huge ripoff that's unfairly skewed to those making decent profits off of selling whatever is doing the encoding. It's not in the spirit of FOSS and it's not in the spirit of open standards. At this point, I'd prefer a vagabond distribution that give me DeCSS illegally than one that supports the creatons that try to lock away our culture for higer margins (btw, it's just as illegal to copy a DVD using Linux software as it is using Windows software). Regardless, point well taken... but we'll probably never be able to tackle it.
It's obvious that the problem isn't your inability to decrypt a DVD without a proper license... you just don't want to take the time
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Most open-source hacker could code a mean game engine, or awesome physics. But very few of them could make visuals like those in HL2. And most artists could care less about oss. SO, sadly, the best we can hope for from open-source are fun, but fugly games, that most people will dismiss (unfairly).
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm not an obsessive gamer by any stretch of the imagination, but I still like to play some games. Where it's more important is for the portion of the market that NEEDS Wintendo to play their games (remember, these are not geeks we're talking about, just ordinary people that don't need to know how to dual-boot). There have been commendable attempts at porting Doze gaming to Linux, but they're still not ready yet. Case in point: I've had only one or two successes with Wine EVER, and from reviews of Cedega (commercial Wine with a DirectX wrapper), it's no walk in the park either. It's true that some games written in OpenGL have been ported to Linux, but you have to admit that those are miniscule in number when compared to the number of commercial Windows games. Introduce high-end games to Linux (not KPong, please!), and you may find yourself popping up on the front page of pcmag.com or such in an article saying "Is Linux ready for the end-user? We think so."
Do, do not, or delegate to someone else: there is no try.
I think the ultimate solution to gaming on Linux is for a few key industry players to get together and create something like DirectX, only open, cross platform and Microsoft free.
An industry standard interface including the latest 3d graphics features as well as sound and input which would run on Linux/MacOS/Unix(Well it would even if nobody cares) and idealy playstation and Gamecube (substitute latest consoles when available) and XBox (Yeah I don't see it happening either but perfect world...).
The players I see as needed would be:
-Nvidia
-ATI
-Creative (Love 'em or hate 'em they make most of our sound hardware)
-Via, Realtek, CMedia (the rest of the sound boys amongst other things)
-IBM (Processors for the PS3, Macs etc)
-Linux groups (RedHat and others)
-Apple (Almost not needed but give them a seat)
-Microsoft (Maybe these guys don't need a vote but they should probably get a look in... Or not)
Well that list is not exhastive and would be subject to a fair bit of conversation but you get the idea.
Nvidia and ATI gain the advantage of securing their possitions in the console markets as do the sound and chipset manufacturers. IBM gets to move towards Linux as a desktop environment in homes which means the potential to compete with Intel and AMD with their Power and Cell processor lines. Linux moves into the mainstream. Apple ends up running all PC software and can start competing with Dell et-al. Microsoft... Well Microsoft get what they deserve, real competition which can basically blow them out of the water... Maybe we should scratch them off that list...
I have had no problem installing or running any of the top PC games on Linux. I have been using Linux (In my case, Debian GNU/Linux since 1996). I have purchased Linux versions of game applications that include:
/
:-)
Quake
Quake II
Quake III Arena
Unreal Tournament
UT 2003
UT 2004
Myth II
Medal Of Honor and it's expansion packs
Neverwinter Nights
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Civilization: Call To Power
Rune
Descent 3
Heretic 2
and Linux ports/installers for games such as:
Alien vs. Predator
Unreal Gold
Kingpin
Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition
Freespace
Freespace 2
Most of the games I have purchased through Tux Games. I like to support not only games on Linux but Linux gaming sites like Tux Games. Tux Games does a great job of including the Linux version of these games and Linux installers for these games.
http://www.tuxgames.com/
Many of the games that do not have not have a Linux version available may have a Linux installer or port created for them. My favorite site to look for Linux ports and installers for popular games is icculus.org and Ravage's page.
http://icculus.org/
http://icculus.org/~ravage
IMPORTANT!!!!: If you want to get more game developers and publishers to take Linux as a serious gaming platform purchase only games that include a Linux version from a site like Tux Games and support the developers of these Linux ports and installers (many of whom actually work for these game publishers on official/unofficial Linux ports of their games). IMHO using WINE or Transgaming Cedega to play games built for Windows only hurts Linux as a gaming platform. No publisher will put the time and effort to create a port or native version of their gaming applications until they see a real $$$$$$ dollar demand for Linux products. Purchasing Windows versions of these games and running WINE and Cedega only reinforces Windows gaming sales.
Support Linux Porting Petitions:
http://www.tuxgames.com/petitions/
Just to show you that I am not totally against Microsoft, I did give them $149.00 for a Xbox. Of course, I soldered a modchip, replaced the 10GB hard drive with 120GB drive, added USB converter cables (Xbox game controller to USB) for the keyboard and mouse, a VGA converter box (so that I can use a monitor or my televison set) and installed Xebian Linux (Debian Sarge ported for the Xbox). I now have a cheap Linux box compliments of Microsoft. I currently have 4 of these Xbox's configured as a Linux cluster. Looks really cool.
******I have NEVER purchased or rented a Xbox game.*******
The fact is that no console has managed to maintain a lead over PCs in terms of hardware, simply due to the fact that PCs have much faster release cycles than consoles
Ah, but have you read any of the reviews recently about the new IBM-Sony Cell architecture. Try reading this one and lets see if you're still singing the same tune:
Btw, that's the conclusion
If this guy is right, no one who develops games for this puppy is going to cross-platform it with a PC, cos the PC architecture will be way too slow (and employ different programming techniques) to make it worth their while.