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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."
I've come to count on id porting their games, so I'm disappointed over this bit of news.
I use the proprietary Nvidia blob (version 180) for my Nvidia 8400 and I have no qualms about it. Windows users use proprietary drivers for practically every card that I've seen over the years, so how is it any different in principle if you replace Windows with Linux? While I take open stuff when I can get it, I would rather have a video card and wireless device that works on Linux. Not every Linux user sees things the same way that RMS does by insisting on a 100% FOSS operating system. While you can have that if you want it, I prefer the freedom of being able to mix and match as I see fit.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
But it is a market with very little piracy of native games. Also, very little competition, so you have a better penetration rate. Not sure if it is enough, but it is substantial.
100% of "very small" is still "very small"...
"and that the Linux port would have to use the binary blob graphics driver in order to work"
From TFA, it seems that Carmack believes it would be hard to get the necessary performance without using the NVidia drivers. It's somewhat surprising to me if it wouldn't be possible to get it running acceptably on anything else, even if the game does use a lot of advanced features - but if Carmack says so!
However I'm not so keen on his assertion that if you're using the binary drivers you might as well run the code under Windows. I guess this probably *does* make sense for most people, since there are relatively few people who don't have a Windows license available somewhere. However, it would be *nicer* not to have to reboot into Windows for a specific app even if that were unnecessary.
Unfortunately I saw a fair few quite negative reactions in the linked thread and I expect we'll see others here. Carmack has not ruled out a port for sure. But even if he does, that's not exactly evil or a betrayal of open source or anything else negative. Many gamers here will have benefited in some way from the GPLed code he's released to the OSS community in the past at some point, pretty much all gamers will have benefited from his position as a developer pushing the games industry forwards. He's not done anything *bad* here, he's just not necessarily doing something we'd hoped for.
Hopefully the Rage code will - one day - be GPLed and get ported to Linux. I think that's a fair way down the road at this point, though.
Linux users never pay for anything, so it doesn't even matter.
100% market penetration for yet another first person shooter. A cutting edge first person shooter. On an OS whose users like to brag about how shitty and old their PC is.
Linux users never pay for anything, so it doesn't even matter.
Nope. I didn't buy all those iD games the day the Linux port came out. Never happened.
;)
And Red Hat and Crosover Office really don't make money at all... It is all a myth.
Linux users never pay for anything, so it doesn't even matter.
Do Windows users??
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
On what do you base that first assertion? Because you wish it were true, because Linux users are somehow better?
I would have said a similar thing about indie games once, particularly those who support their fanbase well and opt for no-DRM releases. Then World of Goo, which calls home for one of the online features in the game, reported a near-90% piracy rate. They even gave out the first world as a free demo, for chrissakes.
The fact is, there's nothing unique about Linux that's going to somehow reduce the piracy rate. I mean, let's face the facts: it's a group of users savvy enough to get their hands on a distributable (possibly via torrent), who have opted for a free OS with tons of free software, and who tend (if this very site is to be believed) statistically towards antiestablishmentarianism. We're hardly ideal customers for anything we can't recommend for purchase at work.
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.
The plural of "anecdote" is not "proof".
Right, because Linux runs on air and penguin droppings.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
You don't need a "plural." A singular positive anecdote is enough to disprove a categorical negative assertion.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
I think the bigger issues with Linux gaming, and this will probably get me modded down for daring to say this, is that MSFT is pretty much the only game in town thanks to DirectX. OpenGL just hasn't kept feature parity with DirectX in quite awhile, and last time i read anything about OpenGL development they seemed to care more about CAD than gaming.
So when you talk about making a cutting edge DirectX FPS and making a native Linux port, you are really talking about taking a DirectX 9-11 level game and trying to make it work with a DirectX 7-8 level API, which is what OpenGL is about at last time I checked. They are simply more worried about the CAD sector than they are games, which leaves Linux out in the cold. maybe it is too late to start a new API, but short of simply having to run Wine constantly (which of course will always be behind because they are trying to reverse engineer a VERY complex API that is constantly improving and undergoing revision) I just don't see how the newer games won't be prohibitively expensive to port considering the state of OpenGL VS DirectX.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It is not about piracy, trust me, it is all about Linux not being viable as a platform. That is what TFA is about, they would do it, BUT Linux "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".
Basically what they are saying here is that after over a ten years of Linux development they are unable to effortlessly and painlessly port the game to the platform, or without taking some hard measures that could backfire, being nasty or buggy.
There is little criticism in the Linux community in general, so you would never really hear the X-windows system is probably the worst piece of software ever written or that Linux drivers do not really exist as the frequent kernel changes makes vendor software drivers invalid, lots of people got alienated over the years and even enthusiast now say something like that they've stopped worrying about Linux and love Windows. A sad story.
Very little piracy for Linux games?
That is absolutely false. The piracy even worse because the market is small enough as it is, a small percentage will push the product from barely profitable to absolute loss.
The problem has got so bad that Linux Game Publishing (Major porter of games to Linux and a successor of Loki) were forced to implement DRM for their releases:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=lgp_copy_protection&num=1
And they didn't like doing it one bit. Here is a quote from the above linked article by LGP's CEO Michael Simms:
When this game copy protection system became known with LGP's closed testing community, it had enraged some users. In response, the CEO of Linux Game Publishing, Michael Simms, had a few things to say. "Trust me, I don't like it, I'm not happy about it, but we HAVE to do this. I've fought for 6 years against the need for any kind of protection system and all that's happened is that for every legitimate copy of an LGP game out there, there are probably 3-4 pirated copies. That's the difference between success and failure."
Now I know everyone here buys their Linux games, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to the number of pirates out there that care not for it.
The big issue is the stability of the OpenGL 3.x codepaths on Linux. You'll need some relatively up to date drivers(binary blobs) to get all those new calls working. And no guarantees it won't break, later.
Since OpenGL 3.x and DX10/11 share a lot, it should be more straightforward than it was in the past porting from one to the other. The major differences between OGL and DX have partially been eliminated. Thanks to The Khronos Group, they're both moving in the same direction.
a few years ago I had to use project 2003 for a class. I was attempting to run only linux on my laptop at the time. It didn't support it.. I put down my pledge. 1.5 years later I get an email saying "This now works on crossover office, pay up!" I no longer needed it, but went over to check out its status. Their definition of "it works" was several users claiming "garbage won't even start" and one user claiming "I got it to run..but you can't open anything, save anything.. or pretty much do anything" and they considered that delivering on their end of the bargain.
They want to make linux appealing, they need to work just a tad bit harder than that.