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Linux Port For id's Tech 5 Graphics Engine Unlikely
DesiVideoGamer writes "John Carmack, the lead developer for id's Tech 5 graphics engine, does not plan on making a Linux port for the new engine. From his e-mail: 'It isn't out of the question, but I don't think we will be able to justify the work. If there are hundreds of thousands of Linux users playing Quake Live when we are done with Rage, that would certainly influence our decision.' One of the reasons for not making a Linux port was due to the fact that the new engine 'pushes a lot of paths that are not usually optimized' and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work."
so fuck him
Unfortunetly Linux is still a complete no go for a serious gaming enthusiast. Despite myths of technical superiority common on slashdot, Linux performace lacks in many fundamental key areas, in order to get acceptable performance on Linux, Nvidia didn't just write a regualr binary driver, they had to rewrite a large chunk of Xwindow and package the resulting mess in a large drop-in binary blob, unstable and heavily dependant on the kernel version. It's a nightmare. In addition, the multitude of overcloking and stability testing tools that arre bread and butter to windows performance gamers are completely non-existant on Linux and windows (non)emulation can not keep up with Microsofts technical progress on directx. So many recent AAA games in every genre are listed as 'bronze' or 'garbage'. The PC gaming market is small enough to justify p[orting to a platform that is a tiny fraction (about 1%) of users. Aspyre may port the idtech5 games to Mac, who will port it Linux?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Not sure if you've noticed, but the retail price on computer components is far higher than the cost of buying a box and upgrading it.
I guess if you're a serious computing enthusiast, the pride and enjoyment might surpass the increased cost. I'm a bit more pragmatic and will always choose to just purchase and upgrade if/when necessary.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Reason being he says fully half his sales are on MacOS. You do NOT get those kind of numbers with retail games. So either he's a fanboy and making stuff up, or more likely he has atypical results because his game is poor quality. That game is extremely poor quality, even by the standards of indy titles. As such, it isn't likely to find a very big market. 50% of his sales might be 100 copies. This leads to skewed results for all sorts of reasons.
With a major title, most of your sales on the PC will be for Windows. That is just guaranteed based on numbers of ownership. Windows has a better than 90% market share. So even assuming Mac people bought your game at the same rate Windows people did, you'd tell less than 10% of your Windows copies.
So while it is fine for him that it works out, trying to generalize it to the whole game industry is silly. He should know from the fact that his numbers are vastly off base that his results are not what you'd typically get.
Over all, the Mac and Linux game markets are extremely small. Not a lot of people use those OSes on their desktop, and of those that do, a non-trivial portion aren't gamers. Thus for many companies ports don't make economic sense. A good deal of it depends on how much work you'd have to do on the port. Some games, it might be pretty easy. This could be the case if you have built on an engine that is quite cross platform already. Other games it might take a good deal of man-hours, enough that you aren't likely to make your money back.
In the case of an engine, maybe they decided there just wasn't the interest in porting it. After all they are already dealing with maintaining more than one port, in addition to the Windows engine there is going to be a 360 and PS3 version. Perhaps they decided the resources necessary to maintain an OS-X and Linux branch weren't worth it. This would mean, of course, they'd also be dropping game ports for those OSes.
Regardless, what that blogger believes to be true has little to do with the realities of the retail game world. I'm quite sure the decision wasn't made arbitrarily. It may have been made by ZeniMax as an economic one. When they bought iD, they most certainly went over the books to see what was making money and how much. They may have determined that the minority OS ports were a money-losing proposition, something iD engaged in because they liked it, not because they were making money. They then may have said "Well, that is stopping, we want you on projects that make money."
That kind of thing happens all the time in acquisitions. Pet projects that the old company had, even whole divisions, that weren't pulling their weight get spun off, shut down, reassigned, whatever. ZeniMax may be very interested in licensing out iD Tech 5, as there's a major market for good engines these days. UE3 has been licensed like 150 times so far. However, part of doing well in that market is having a top notch engine and tools for it. So they may want more developer time being spent on that for the big 3 platforms (Windows, 360, PS3) than on an OS-X and Linux port.
"Yeah, but ID should have given the game away for free because, you know, other people's copyrighted information want to be free. So we're just helping them make the right choice by taking away their choice.".
Whatever the circumstances, piracy will always find an excuse to justify itself.
p.s. AFAIK, a "near-90% piracy rate" is pretty low.
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I'm sorry, but your link is just another disguised RMS style "Source code or nothing!" rant, and you know what? if you tell the vast majority of hardware manufacturers "source code or nothing!" then you get what you have now-absolutely nothing.
Isn't it funny how Linux is supposed to be better than Windows thanks to the "community" model, yet I can write just FOUR drivers and cover FIFTEEN YEARS of Windows operating systems, and without opening up myself to risk from patent trolls or giving away advantages my code might give to my device. Will RMS indemnify me if I get sued in East Texas? Didn't think so. Watch how easy it is- Win98/ME, Win2k/XP32, XP64/Vista64, and Win7 32. Tada! I have just covered EVERY Windows currently in circulation, even the niches. No need for more development, stick a fork cause I'm done.
The problem with RMS and his little "Source code or nothing" style rants is this-it simply isn't in most companies best interests to release source. It is just not. Take a look at ALL the companies that have-IBM, HP, Intel, AMD, what do they have in common? All have big interest in the server, HPC, or enterprise desktop niches. And all have giant patent warchests to protect them from trolls. That describes maybe 5% of device manufacturers. Mark my words you will NEVER EVER see the majority of hardware manufacturers release source code. There is risk from a legal standpoint, and Linux simply isn't worth the trouble. What they WILL do is release a "Linux 32/64" driver if the developers would actually make releasing one possible, because nobody wants to cut out a potential market, and releasing a binary driver would add a trivial cost.
But go right ahead and keep the "Source code or nothing!" attitude, and mark my words in 2015 we will STILL see less than 25% support for devices sold by major retailers and Linux will still have the "research your living ass off" before buying anything problem. Me? I'm gearing up for Win7, which by Xmas I have no doubt that every device sold in Walmart, Staples, and Best Buy will have a nice "Win 7 32/64" folder on the CD. Right now for me, the same as Walmart and any other retailer, carrying Linux is suicide. The lack of stable ABI makes shopping for Linux compatible devices at retail virtually impossible and selling Linux boxes with giant lists that say "Here are the devices you CAN NOT" buy doesn't make for good marketing, you know?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
A while back Slashdot pointed us to this blog, in which the blogger pointed out how having Linux and Mac ports attracted a lot of attention and even boosted the sales of their Windows versions.
Because clearly, the only thing stopping iD games from being popular is that nobody's heard of them, and those extra few hundred sales will double iD's total earnings.
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment