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?

[michaelsimms]

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

OK, Soomething easier to port, maybe, but we pick the games we port carefully with regard to what people want. X2 is widely regarded as the best space game of all time, and IF it sells well for Linux, you can look to see X3 soon too.

As for more recent. *sighs* Well, sure, send me $100,000 and I'll get the license to port any recent game you like. Or, alternatively, we will port games that are realistic to port to linux.

Also X2 isnt exactly old, it has been out for 18 months. X3 is yet to be released for Windows.

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?

Sure it would, but just because a game is easy to port doesnt make it any good. We pick games that are GOOD, not easy. If I wanted easy, Id be making games for consoles and driving a ferrari right now. As it is, I make games for Linux and catch a bus, cos I want Linux to have the best games it can. It means more work to get them out there, but its worth it. Easy and non-direct3d, well, pretty much all windows 3d games now use direct3d except for games by id, and they are covered for Linux versions. So that leaves 2D windows games. I hear there is yet another tetris clone for windows, but you know what, I really dont think Im going to waste my time having my company port that game to linux.

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.

Well, speaking as someone that played elite from 2 months after its initial release on its first platform (the BBC micro) for 6 solid months, I can tell you, X2 is the first game I have seen in the genre that passes Elite. It is better in every aspect. I loved Elite, I really did. X2 beats it. For those Elite die-hards, there is even a small in-game homage to elite in X2. The control to activate the SETA time compression system, is J. It does exactly the same as the old Elite J Jump did.

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.

Elite type game

[Anonymous Coward]

Oolite is another free Elite type game. They have OSX, Windows and Linux versions.

Re:Elite type game

[Alioth]

Runs on 10.2.8 and upwards. The Linux version runs on most Linux distros trouble free.

Re:What technologies do these games use?

[footissimo]

..or Oolite as long as you don't use Windows.

Its quite good!

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: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:What technologies do these games use?

[Alioth]

No! If you want an open source Elite rip-off, try Oolite. Available for OS X and Linux. See my sig!

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:Available for PPC Linux?

[michaelsimms]

Im afraid not, only x86. There are a few reasons for this. Partially because of the size of the market (sorry PPC guys, we will do a port when we can but this one would be a LOT of extra time to get it available for you all and the numbers in this case just dont work). and also for the state of 3D hardware accelleration for linux ppc is in most cases just not up to the job.
We'd love to, but not this time. Sorry.

Re:Good to see a port, but...

[michaelsimms]

While Im not saying anything official here, but it would be a logical assumption that if X2 for Linux does well, X3 will follow some time in the early part of next year.
Of course, Im only the CEO of the company doing the ports, so I may not have all the information, but taking an informed guess, Id say that thats the likely path.
{:-)

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 {:-)