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."

Comments

I'm willing to change

[October_30th]

Give me tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six and I'll get rid of Windows on my home computer.

Re:I'm willing to change

[SilentChris]

Give me tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six that run at the same speed reliably, without having to futz around with X-Windows or sound card drivers, and I'll get rid of Windows on my home computer too. Heck, if they can do it on Mac, I'd be just as happy.

Re:I'm willing to change

[kg_o.O]

There you go

Re:I'm willing to change

[Second_Infinity]

Agreed. Gaming is the only thing that's holding me to a Microsoft product. All the other applications I use have exact (or better) linux/unix counterparts, and they're all freeware.

The article may be poorly done as some have stated, and it may be something that's posted about once a year, but it's still good to have a recent update of status.

If the video card manufacturers would really start supporting linux drivers, maybe that would change the face of linux gaming. Until then, we're stuck with tuxracer and sub-par video gaming quality.

Re:I'm willing to change

[Total_Wimp]

As much as I agree with you in theory, it's a little more complicated than that in reality. Even though both my daughter and I have mid (her) to high (me)-end gaming computers, and even though we have tons of games on the PC that we like, I still bought her a PS2. Why? Because I've never been able to get Dance Dance Revolution on a PC and that's the game she really wanted.

On the other hand, I've never considered buying her a Mac for gaming because all of the good games are just late ports of PC games.

If you want to have people going to Linux for the games, you need more than just late ports of great PC games. You need some great games that come out for Linux FIRST and stay only on that platform for a significant amount of time. No one bought a PC to play Halo, but plenty of people bought Xboxs for it.

TW

Re:I'm willing to change

[plover]

Seconded! America's Army is The One True Game.

The gameplay is brilliant: no "instant respawn". You die, well, you get to sit there and watch your buddies try to complete the mission. Since your opponents are also equally motivated to stay alive, they're usually much more challenging. The weapons and ammo aren't unlimited, you don't find Big Kegs O' Health laying on the ground, and you don't get powerups. There's no such thing as turning friendly fire on or off -- don't shoot your buddies or you'll get booted from the server and wind up in Leavenworth (worth exploring in cheat mode once or twice, by the way.) The graphics (especially since the 2.x release) are among the best in the industry -- great attention to detail. Most of the maps are fairly well balanced. And while you don't play an ongoing "character", your performance is still tracked, and counts for a little bit in selecting your position on each squad.

Relatively few bugs, and PunkBuster to keep the cheating reduced to a playable level. All that and it's free -- you don't even have to sit through a "Join the Army" lecture to get it.

I've played all the other FP shooters, and I keep coming back to AA for every one of those reasons above. I've not played it on Linux, so I can't swear to the performance on that platform, but if it can run on a crappy Windows box, it should run fine for you.

Re:I'm willing to change

[plague3106]

Why is this insightful?

My SB Audigy 2 worked fine OOTB with Mandrake 10. I had to install the drivers for my Nvidia 5700 (whihc you have to do in windows too).

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.

I even run it thru KDE, with my IM client still going. Seriously, what is the problem? If it doesn't run reliably or fast, its probably the game developers fault (or possibly yours, for having a bad setup).

id can do it, its not impossible...and the fact that it did 'just work' really impressed me (i've been trying to game since '98 on linux).

Re:I'm willing to change

[DenDave]

Who cares about gaming? When you have a linux box you can have fun resolving dependancies, building packages and simply netcatting your little brothers porn traffic!!!

Re:I'm willing to change

[Contact]

...I've never been able to get Dance Dance Revolution on a PC and that's the game she really wanted

Check out Stepmania. It's an open source DDR clone, runs under windows, and can import third party songs and patterns (there are *cough* allegedly *cough* lots of these available on various file sharing networks).

Without wishing to sound like flamebait, Stepmania is head and shoulders above most homegrown software - it's much better than most commercial stuff. I'm not a huge DDR fan, but I was incredibly impressed by how well this was put together. Best of all - it's available for Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows.

Just add a USB to Playstation adapter, and you can plug a playstation dance mat into your PC and get going...

Dupe!

[nicholasharbour]

I swear I read this EXACT story 3 years ago.

All that matters

[Sfing_ter]

All that matters is I can play Quake 3 just fine... well, the game plays just fine... :)

Current state of my Linux gaming

[JamesD_UK]

----+--
|`....|
|..f?.|
|..@..|
-------

Lameness filter be gone! Lameness filter be gone! Lameness filter be gone!

I don't think so.

[Chess_the_cat]

Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, that's when Linux gaming will take off.

The Apple OS has been "stabilized" for 20 years now; still no games. Sorry dudes. It just ain't gonna happen.

Re:I don't think so.

[feldsteins]

The "Apple OS" does have games. the Linux community would cut off it's arm to have the games that the Macintosh has. Obviously it's not the Windows market, but it's lightyears ahead of Linux.

Another state of games article?

[tod_miller]

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.

bullshit

[tomstdenis]

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

I'm worried

[feldsteins]

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.

Re:I'm worried

[Minna Kirai]

Developer incurs the cost of making a Mac version, Mac guy buys it. that's one sale

It's true that the revenue boost from a Mac version is far greater than what a Linux version would provide today. However, if a company has already decided on releasing a Mac port, then the additional effort required for a Linux port is far less.

Once the codebase is platform independent, adding 3rd or 4th platforms is far simpler than adding the 2nd.

Consider: to port a game to Mac, you must reprogram the internals to function in a Unix-based OS, and change the graphics engine to output OpenGL instead of DirectX. And of course, those two things are also the greatest obstacles to a Linux release.

Further reasons why porting to Linux can be relatively cheap: 1) Unlike the Mac port, the Linux version will usually run on the same hardware as the original, meaning there's no CPU-specific optimizations to change. 2) If the game is online multiplayer, it probably already had a partial Linux port for the dedicated server, so some of the work has been started.

Re:I'm worried

[GreatDrok]

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?

I have bought a fair number of games for my PC now and some of them will only run on Windows but others run on both. For the ones that run on both I have hardly played the Windows version (UT2004, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom III). They are the games that I enjoyed and got through quickly, the Windows games I have require me to reboot so it takes me longer to get through them. More to the point, the native Linux games play better than their Windows version, especially Doom III which is noticibly smoother.

If the Linux version comes out at the same time, or very shortly after the Windows version I think there is definitely a point, if it comes out at the same time as the Mac version then just forget it. In the end, the developers should make sure that their games work on Linux too and they can ride the wave as Linux inevitably becomes more popular. It took Windows gaming years to get where it is today, Linux will catch up. Mind you, I think the PC, whether Windows or Linux, is going to have to watch out as the next gen consoles look likely to finally be capable of unseating the PC as the high end gaming platform of choice.

I can't agree with the statement...

[cnelzie]

...that once the Linux desktop is easier to use that LInux Gaming will 'take off'.

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.

America's Army rocks

[Trailer Trash]

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).

Re:America's Army rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

AA:SF is cool. Can someone help me with the later missions. I've toppled the statue, and am holding my own against the insurgents, and I've seen the "Mission Accomplished" splash screen... but I can't seem to find the WMD anywhere? Is there a secret button I need to push somewhere?

God be with you,
George.

Plenty of small free games

[Rik Sweeney]

There's

Project Starfighter

Blob Wars

Virus Killer

Give them a try. After all, they're completely free.

LiveGames

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Let's pick on the Linux community today!

[HarveyBirdman]

GAME PROGRAMMER: How about we do a version for Linux?

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!

+5 Insightful

[vrai]

The same thing that's holding back gaming on the Mac: Marketability / Userbase.

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.

Re:+5 Insightful

[bersl2]

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.

If companies knew to write them in a portable way in the first place (OpenGL + SDL), porting would be relatively trivial, cost-effective, and beneficial to both parties.

we might not get good commercial games but...

[vivehosting]

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 :).

Re:How the fuck

[LilMikey]

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.