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A WoW Player's Guide To Warhammer
With Warhammer Online just around the corner, Zonk wrote up a guide which compares it to the current top dog of the MMO market, World of Warcraft. He highlights the fact that despite the appearance of "War" in both names, Warhammer is much more focused on the struggle between factions, in gameplay and artistic style. Warhammer's open beta started on Sunday, doing well in the US but stumbling in Europe. The full version launches on Sept. 18th, but people who pre-order the game will be able to access live servers up to four days before, thanks to Mythic's head-start program. Mythic CEO Mark Jacobs recently launched a blog to answer questions about the game.
I'd phrase that differently:
Except under certain circumstances where DRM is platform-dependent, OS just doesn't matter all that greatly. I certainly won't let an application dictate the OS I use under most circumstances, and it doesn't slow me down any.
WoW works on Linux fine.
Although I have given up WoW for Guild Wars now.
and I have given up Guild Wars for Real Life
I will develop games exclusively for Linux as soon as the linux platform can supply me with a complete programming solution that can complete and can provide me with a support contract that is at least as good as XNA support contracts.
If I am developing XYZ and I need a a patch to the DirectX dll to accomidate testing and I need that patch dll in the next 4 hours to make the regression build by 5pm. I simply do not have time to wait around and hope l33tMan4 has time to get that in before heading out to the next Make Faire. I help test ArcEmu for fun and my day job I work with 2000+ programmers across 4 continents.
Seriously, developers run on deadlines and OpenGL and Linux doesn't have anyone in position to provide actual support. Linux as a gaming platform is not capable of handling this idea call "deadlines." Look at what OpenGL gave us after a few years... minor tweaks. The Windows platform gets better with age.
better yet, lets do the TETRIS test:
Ok, you have 8 people, 4 to a team.
You need to code a PACMAN, SUPER MARIO BRO., and a TETRIS clone.
You have 48 hours to do all three.
Team 1 gets to use Windows and DirectX as a platform to work with.
Team 2 gets Linux.
Which team is going to get them done quicker and more importantly which team can actually TEST their programs effectively? On the Windows platform I have a slew of QA tools for testing and test automation.
Which team has better and faster development tools?
I've done this test to students back when I taught. Time and time again, the Windows team gets a better product quicker.
Photoshop and Illustrator was quicker then GIMP in getting the game art pipeline completed.
Windows as a platform had more reuseable libraries to get the game up and running quicker.
The Windows team had better tools for generating and creating sounds for each game.
and to really piss of the Linux folks, they finished early enough to add multi-player in the mario clone and tetris clone. The Linux team never even finished the Tetris clone (Hence why I call this the TETRIS test.) The reason they didn't to be fair was there were few automated test tools for Linux and thus they had to code in, under Linux some testing tools and do a lot of use cases by hand. The entire Windows PACMAN clone had full automated testing as each intersection was coded as a pathing point and they could do automated permutation testing while they coded the Mario clone.
Having a robust and complete programming solution is critical and Eclipse has come a long way (The Tibco process modelling tool is neat!) but now Linux needs common libraries and tools that CAN COMPETE with the offerings under Windows.
Yeah yeah Linux has port of X,Y, and Z gaming engines (Quake, Torque, etc.)
That's the problem, if Windows has it and Linux ports it, you have no argument to switch from Windows to Linux.
PEOPLE DO NOT LEAVE THE ESTABLISHED SOLUTION FOR AN EQUAL SOLUTION, THE MIGRATE TO A 'BETTER' SOLUTION.
Matching Windows blow for blow is useless, you have to BEAT them as the platform of choice.
You need a good project management solution
You need a solid QA management solution
You need a solid IDE
You need pipeline management tools (art, sound, code, assets)
And all of that needs to talk to one another so I can link code revision 0.0.3 to Defect # 1011242 and th QA tool needs to link Use Case 40442 as the test. And once Use Case 40442 is run on Rev 0.0.3 successfully then we can close defect 1011242 and commit that correlating change made in 0.0.3 to promote into the next release code base.
Linux is ahead in technology and GNU in general is DECADES behind in overall solution providing for the rapid pace that gaming evolves in tools (where unlike other industries that still code in COBOL).
Linux is like a stero-typical scientist, really smart and socially inept in communicating with others and dressed in an excentric fashion.
Linux = Bill Nye the Science Guy
Linux needs to become Robert Downey's Tony Stark now to get AHEAD!
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-