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Unreal Tournament 3 For Linux Is Officially Dead
ndogg writes "There is no longer any uncertainty surrounding the release of Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux. It's official: the port is now dead. No reasons were given, but no one should be waiting for it anymore, if anyone still was."
I hear all 3 of their potential customers are outraged...
Well, that's a coincidence: It's officially dead for Windows too. And has been since almost three months after launch.
I really liked the Unreal Tournament games (even though I'm an id Software fanboy), and definitely the first part was a lot better than its counterpart at the time; Quake 3. Whereas Quake 3 had obvious masterlike AI-bots, the AI in Unreal Tournament always seemed to resemble a bit more humanlike play-style.
UT2004 was great too, and had some awesome new gametypes, which really worked well. They were planning on releasing a new update for it every year (hence the 2004 addition to the title), but failed at doing that (probably because they discovered their new cash cow; Gears of War).
Unreal Tournament 3's figures were very bad: Already after a month of release, the servers got less and less. As of today there's only a handfull of servers left (for the UK at least), with even less players.
I must admit myself that I also didn't play UT3 as much as I played the previous titles.
So to be honest, I can't really see too much of a loss in this (except that it would have been easier for other Unreal engined games to be ported over to Linux).
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
That is kind of a bummer, although after such a long time of silence, it was certainly quite expected (also, I guess that the Mac version of that game, which was also announced a long time ago, got axed quietly as well).
:(
What I would find more interesting however, would be whether the Unreal Engine 3 itself was ported into a workable state, so it could be used for other porting projects in the future. Because although I do not care too much about the Unreal Tournament 3 game itself, having the Unreal Engine 3 on Linux could at least open some interesting possibilities either for other games being ported or for a developer studio using the Engine in a future game and then doing simultaneous cross-platform development.
Because if you look at the list of games using the Unreal Engine 3, that list of projects is rather impressive (for example, the entire Mass Effect series uses the Engine) and having such a widely used Engine available on Linux would be a boon, I think, maybe even for smaller Indie developers willing to do Linux development (depending on how expensive those licensing terms are).
Technically, porting should be possible, as the Unreal Engine 3 already runs on Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 and even MacOS X and iOS now, so it has shown that it is portable. And before you ask, I am not concluding that because Epic did an iOS port that it automatically runs on Mac OS X as well, although those two share a decent amount of similarities making the jump between those two platforms a good deal easier. No, actually, with Borderlands now having a Mac port, there are already two titles on Mac OS X using the Unreal Engine 3 that I know of (the other one being Star Trek DAC), so there is proof it runs on the Mac. I know that those are only two titles and only one you could possibly call an AAA title, but sadly, as far as I know, that is still more titles available than on Linux
So I hope Ryan Gordon at least got the Engine ported, so future projects can use it on Linux. Because although losing the game sucks a little, having the Engine could at least give some hope for some better future developments in Linux gaming. It sure could use some.
Commercial games are, for the most part, dead on the Linux desktop. There are some occasional exceptions but for the most part, if you want a big-name game to appear on Linux you're gonna have to go use WINE as native builds probably won't exist. That said, there are still quite a lot of decent older games which have Linux ports and Ryan does continue development on ports for commercial when he can.
I think if you really want to avoid disappointment with regards to Linux gaming and want to continue enjoying gaming on Linux... get used to indy games, and forget the big-budget commercial stuff. Indy developers need all the audience they can get and as the Humble Bundles have shown, Linux users are often the most generous per purchase due to a desperate need for games. :)
Big-name commercial studios like EPIC and iD have abandoned Linux (unlike his previous games John Carmack has expressed a certain doubt about supporting Linux with Rage). It would certainly be NICE if we could get more commercial support, but until that happens, it's less depressing to just aim for indy games.
I tried, man, I tried. But there's so many dependencies...