LGP Opens Beta Test for X2

zborgerd writes "Linux Game Publishing has announced the opening of their beta test for X2: The Threat. X2 was featured on Slashdot last month in LGP's mystery game contest. Linux gamers can apply for the beta at LGP's beta testing site. Per their usual policy, everyone who pre-orders the game from one of their resellers is automatically qualified to enter the beta test. X2: The Threat is Egosoft's epic space simulation that is often said to be greatly influenced by the the classic games of the Elite series. A third game in the series, X3: Reunion, will soon be available for Windows (and hopefully Linux and OS X as well, if the X2 ports attract a reasonable number of fans on these platforms)."

Comments

Choose a better game?

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

Couldn't they have chosen something easier to port? And a bit more recent?

The X series (iirc, I could be wrong) uses Direct 3D, porting it would be quite difficult. Surely porting a game that uses OpenGL would at least give the programmers a bit less trouble in porting?

On a different note, I've yet to see any Elite clone equal the greatness that is the Elite trilogy. Here's hoping for the ever elusive Elite 4 that David Braben has been working on since the dawn of time to appear, if at all.

Re:Choose a better game?

[orkysoft]

Don't be pissed for missing X: Beyond the Frontier. It's got submarine physics, not spaceship physics, i.e. you can turn around, and your velocity turns with you. Totally ridiculous. Also, those graphical backdrops of huge planets and stuff just looked fake. It looked like I was flying in badly simulated space and those giant matte paintings supposed to be far-off scenery were floating close by.

Luckily I didn't waste too much money on it, but it's still a waste, since I put it away not long after purchasing it.

And for the record, I also bought Elite II, over ten years ago, and Elite III, about ten years ago, and I played those games a lot, because they were very very good, even though they, especially Elite III, had some bugs.

I wasn't impressed at all with X: Beyond the Frontier, so I'm not expecting X2 too be any good either. Am I very wrong here?

Wow

[FlipSideXp]

These games just look awesom, I cant believe I haven't heard of them before. I wasted so much time playing Elite in my youth and still think it is one of the greatest games ever. I loved the idea of endless flying/trading/pirating in a huge universe with endless possibilities, all that on a 64k commodore. Amazing times!! If these games are anything as good as the screenshots, I think my free time will be used up for the next few months. Anyone have played these gems yet?

Re:Wow

[sporadic]

Yup, it's a really great game. I needed a Space-themed RPG fix after EA took Earth & Beyond offline, and X2 was it. I've always enjoyed the genre (played the original Elite on my Apple IIe) and X2 in the tradition of enjoyable games like Privateer 1/2, and the WC franchise to a certain extent. I'm looking forward to X3 and I hope I get to beta X2 on Linux, should be fun. Hope this helps.

Loki ported DirectX games without problem.

[CyricZ]

Loki ported SimCity 3000, which uses DirectX under Windows if I'm not mistaken, to Linux a while back. The Linux release of SimCity 3000 played just as well, if not better, than the Windows release. No stability problems of any sort.

So while perhaps not a fun task porting from DirectX to SDL and OpenGL (or some other non-DirectX graphics platform), it is more than possible.

Re:Performance?

[michaelsimms]

We always take the time to port properly. Often that can mean it takes a lot longer than we would like to do a port, however, we never take shortcuts.

Re:Elite type game

[FLAGGR]

It says Tiger compatible, but does it retain 10.3 compatibility? I hope so, it looks neat.

Re:What technologies do these games use?

[michaelsimms]

Technologies. We are porting the Direct3D to OpenGL, we use SDL for some things, GCC is the compiler. ffmpeg for video, openAL for audio.

Re:Using DirectX from Wine?

[michaelsimms]

Not at all, we use purely ourown code, and libraries such as OpenGL and SDL. If you follow our company history you will see that I am very very much against any kind of emulation of Windows software on Linux for many reasons I am not going to go into here cos Id be ranting on on this thread for pages (google for my reasons, they are findable, if you are rerally interested).

Re:freelancer

[CaptnMArk]

I tried X2 once but the controls we really strange. Not to mention that my favorite requirement -- mouse control Wing Commander style wasn't supported.

I wonder how much of it they fixed since and how much could be done in the linux port. I'd buy the game instantly if it had properly working mouse control and working F1 key to get the list of keybindings.

Re:What technologies do these games use?

[michaelsimms]

Many Linux users pay for what they are supposed to. Many dont, however.

This is a VERY VERY hypocritical position. How many of the Linux users that illegally copy games are the same ones that rabidly defend the GPL? Probably a lot. And lets examine that. They get offended when people break the GPL because those people have broken the license the software was released under, and get all upset that their work which was done for free is being used in a way it shouldnt.
Hold on, thats exactly what happens when people take our games and give them away for free.
Our games arent trying to lock people into our products, we dont force people to use them or try and stifle competition. Quite the opposite, weve tried on several occasions to support open source projects and to even give assistance to competing companies, to try and increase choice and competition. We arent evil. I believe in open source and open standards. I have YET to see an open source game that even comes close to the level of closed source games. We play on a level playing field where you can only win by being better.

The fact is that if people keep on *stealing* our games by copying them and never paying for them, then Im going to decide that its just not worth my spending 14 hours a day working on this kind of thing for what is effectively a negative salary (I put far more money into the companies than I take out). And then when nobody is making games for Linux any more, then people can't complain that a) the games are all old, b) the games cost too much, c) the games should be open not closed source - or whatever - because there wont BE any games.

Sorry, rant over, I just get tired of people who do nothing but complain and do nothing to help the situation (not aimed at anyone in this thread, its just where it finally dumped from brain to keyboard). I'll take genuine complaints from people that have put their money where theie mouth is (there are a few but not many). Ive dumped over $200,000 of my personal money into Linux gaming - thats my level of dedication to getting games to Linux. But I cant stand it when people stand on the sideline complaining that they could do better, and then go back to dual booting and playing all their games on their xbox.

Re:Available for PPC Linux?

[michaelsimms]

its a fair question. Now, Ive never done any of the PPC building so no flames if I make some slight errors, but these are some of the things my dev team have mentioned to me:

1) The GL drivers for PPC are rubbish for the most part
2) endianness issues. The way data is handled internally breaks
3) build environment issues. The right combination of static libraries to work on all systems.
4) random unexpected quirks between systems

Also there is the fact that we only have a single G3 imac in the company, so we couldnt test a 3d ppc game even if we wanted to, and really, for the level of return we'd get for porting to ppc, it wouldnt even cover buying a new mac to test it on, let alone pay for the developer time. Sorry.

Re:Copy protection

[michaelsimms]

Well, the copy protection we are aiming at is effectively:

A registration key

This does online verification with a keyserver

If the keyserver is not available it simply drops back to being a non-online key system so people without net access can use the game.

You can have as many installs as you like on the same key. However each key will allow you to lock out other users of that key, so sure you can put your key online, but if someone locks you out after you do it, dont come crying to us.

Knowing it is an online protection system some people will try and kill their net connection for each time the game starts, but if people wanna do that then thats fine, its a lot of hassle to keep your stolen copy but we cant stop people 100%. Also some clever people will reverse engineer it and get a crack, we know this, and we cant stop it, there is no way to stop every workaround. Hopefully though, we'll stop most of it.

For the legitimate user, however, it will simply look like: Enter a CD key once. Play the game, forget it. No CD-in-drive required. For multiplayer games (X2 isnt) install copies on your home machines, play away, no locks. We *ask* that people buy one copy per install if they can afford it, but we wont stop people installing around their home if they cant.

The system is one that needs to be tested thoroughly however and we will probably do that in the X2 beta. If it looks like causing problems for users, we will simply release with no protection, as I dont want people having 'issues' with it. Then we'll fix stuff and try again next game beta - till we get it right {:-)

As for people that want to download a cracked version and try it out, and then buy it later if they like it, they can do that too with our cd key system. I funny support that idea, as it means we dont have to ship the game, its much easier for us {:-)