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Total Conversion HL2 Mod
bbzzdd writes "A comprehensive total conversion of the Half-Life 2 game has been released. Crafted by students from SMU's Guildhall, Eclipse is a beautiful change of pace from the average FPS. From the site: 'You play as a young Sorceress named Violet whose father went missing five years back. After learning the secrets of Telekinesis, you are teleported into Auld-Haven, a lush and fertile land where Violet grew up. Your objective is to return to Violet's home where she last saw her father years ago and dig up any clues to his whereabouts. In the broken down tower of her home you discover a journal left by her father. The journal unlocks a handful of secrets that ultimately leads you on a quest to find the ancient teleportation device - the Standing Stones.'"
Steam's weekly update talked about this and another Source Engine mod done by the students at Guildhall, Samurai Legends (same url, but /samurailegends/, link also dead), a couple of days ago. The samurai game was multiplayer and from the screenshots looked very pretty. I couldn't find the link to the Valve page, but I found the relevant text on a bulletin board:
"Next Saturday, Valve's CEO and founder, Gabe Newell, will be giving the commencement speech at Southern Methodist University's Guildhall, a university program offering course work in game design. Two groups of students enrolled in the program will be releasing the Source MODs they produced during their term."
Interesting. That must be why more games get ported to Linux than the Mac, because Linux has a bigger desktop share... Oh, wait...
This is a pititful excuse by game developers who don't want to change their attitudes or outlooks. All that make your game easily portable requires is dumping all the DirectBlah BS and using an API that doesn't make you Microsoft's whipping boy.
Heck, if the API is inadequate, you could even add a bit to it for whatever it is you needed and release the changes back. It might make it easier to make games, which would make a bigger market, which would probably make things better for everybody.
As it is, I tend to buy games from small independents (Garage Games, Guild Software, Introversion Software, the list goes on) instead of the big publishers because the game developers who work for them have minds of their own and tend to make Linux versions of stuff. As opposed to people like you who stick their fingers in their ears and chant 'Marketshare' over and over again.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I'd argue we're still apes in caves, our spears are just semi-balistic now, and our caves are above ground.
More impressive is the fact that if you stop walking mid-step in Halo 2, your character will actually move slightly as he readjusts into a standing pose. It's a small thing compared to all the bugs Halo 2 shipped with, but we need more things like this in games. Certainly nothing is an funny as the way kneeling characters slide around when they move while crouched in GoldenEye, though :-)
English is easier said than done.