Will the Star Citizen Project Fund Linux and Mac Ports For CryENGINE 3?

Mr. Jaggers writes "Chris Roberts, game designer of Wing Commander fame, has had great success with his new crowd-funded Star Citizen project — so much that the $2m base goal has been smashed with weeks to go on the Kickstarter portion of the campaign. Now Chris is floating a list of stretch goals for fans to vote on, with Linux and Mac support both listed as stretch goal candidates. Since Star Citizen is based on the popular CryENGINE 3 game engine, these stretch goals are equivalent to funding Linux and Mac ports of CryENGINE. Chris couldn't make any absolute promises yet, since he doesn't own the engine, but CryENGINE 3 already supports Android, so at least there is existing OpenGL ES support to be leveraged towards adding Linux and Mac OpenGL support. If there is enough outpouring of cross-platform support from fans in this poll, Star Citizen could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities — analogous to the role played by Wasteland 2 in bringing official Linux support to the Unity 4 engine popular among so many Indie developers."

Comments

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

For the same reason you are sitting in front of a television set cheering steroid laced multi-millionaires and feeling proud of someone else's ability to move a ball across a field. Because we like it, just like you like your idiotic sports.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Hatta]

Because the pussy is at home, the same place where all my video games are.

Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Zobeid]

If there was ever any thought of wanting the game to run on Linux or Mac, why did he base it on CryENGINE to begin with? Isn't that sort of stupid? Really, isn't that all kinds of stupid? I should think that developers would have learned better by now.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[gbjbaanb]

I don't think there was - he chose an engne to work on the platform everyone makes games for - Windows. then he adds the poll option "d'ya want it on Linux?" and 21% of responders have said "yes".

That does mean 79% think other factors are more important.

so whilst I think it would make sense to think linux at the start of every project, especially now that Steam's opinion is known, it wasn't the position he started from. I wonder how much work has already started with CryEngine, and whether its too late to change, or too late to get CryEngine updated to work with Linux proper (if it already works on Android, I can't see it being too difficult a task).

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[eugene2k]

Familiarity with the toolset could be one of the reasons.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Zocalo]

Because Chris felt that consoles couldn't deliver his vision for the game and originally wanted the game to be PC only. There was a lot of call from fans on the game forums asking about Linux/Mac ports, so now he's looking into the possibility of providing support for those platforms. It's called listening to your target audience, and it's nice to see a company that is actually prepared to do that these days.

What I find far more interesting is the current poll standings for the additional platform support; 23% of the voters want a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS. Seriously? Almost a quarter of space/flight sim fans run Linux? I know FlightGear is good, but who knew?

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of their budget, they can't justify creating a new engine, and CryEngine currently does everything they need in order to create the game they want to make. While it doesn't currently support Linux, the engine may be ported because of this game, which is the point of this article.

Are you one of those people who only uses sporks because you never know if your mom might be serving soup with your meal and don't want to look "all kinds of stupid" for having to get up and get a spoon out of the utensil drawer?

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Chris felt that consoles couldn't deliver his vision for the game and originally wanted the game to be PC only. There was a lot of call from fans on the game forums asking about Linux/Mac ports, so now he's looking into the possibility of providing support for those platforms. It's called listening to your target audience, and it's nice to see a company that is actually prepared to do that these days.

What I find far more interesting is the current poll standings for the additional platform support; 23% of the voters want a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS. Seriously? Almost a quarter of space/flight sim fans run Linux? I know FlightGear is good, but who knew?

... game consoles can't deliver this vision of a space flight sim?
Not saying such a thing is impossible, but I understand why such a project would have to be funded through kickstarter.

Car analogy would be a vision for a car that can't be delivered in say, North America. Possible. Rrrrrrrisky investment.

and.. I'm not going to touch your dubious extrapolation.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find far more interesting is the current poll standings for the additional platform support; 23% of the voters want a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS.

That's just because Mac users are smarter than wasting there money on kick starter scams.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Sir_Sri]

If there was ever any thought of wanting the game to run on Linux or Mac, why did he base it on CryENGINE to begin with?

Because for most projects those are nonsense pipe dreams. 90% of the desktop market is windows, and a large portion of the mac and linux gamers have windows installs already. Doing a Mac/Linux port is good press and good karma, and sometimes a way to keep the linux/mac nerds on staff happy, but from a business perspective it's usually mind numbingly stupid, and throwing money away on bad ideas is a way to find yourself looking for work.

Now this is where kickstarter comes in. Developing a linux port is a fixed cost basically (it doesn't increase the more linux users there are), and on kickstarter you can have people pay 400 or 500 dollars for basically a copy of your game and some novelty junk because they really want to see it happen. And if you fuck it up and the linux port sucks... well you already have their money!

Now the thing here is they're banking on the press this gets them. I bet the 1% of desktop users who are on linux lean gamer more than the general windows population, but odds are they aren't going to sell 20% of their copies to linux. I'd be pleasantly surprised if they do, but I wouldn't count on it. On other hand, this got them free press with nerds who can afford decent computers, and it makes a nice addon to their fundraising efforts.

Also, it's not like the the game is half written in C++ and you're buying it. At this stage of the game they can probably change engines or any number of things. It's still at least 2 years away (officially). They've got a lot of stuff done, but it's not too late to change some or all of it and re-use all the art, or just port the whole engine. I'm sure CryEngine is looking at multiplatform support beyond just PC and Android (PS4 and XB3), and once you're going 3 or 4 platforms adding another is not nearly as bad as adding a second. It's not trivial, but with enough interest I'm sure they can pitch that to actual investors as worth trying. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the CryEngine people are some of the few who actually know what the PS4 and XB3 will really be and already have deep multiplatform support working that us small time indy developers don't get to know about.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[wormo]

I don't think there was - he chose an engne to work on the platform everyone makes games for - Windows. then he adds the poll option "d'ya want it on Linux?" and 21% of responders have said "yes".

That does mean 79% think other factors are more important.

From the Star Citizen FAQ on kickstarter:

Star Citizen is a PC game through and through and could never be played on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or WiiU. We currently plan to support Windows and are examining our options regarding possible Linux and Macintosh releases. The Cloud Imperium team includes many Linux and Macintosh fans!

Even with some core team members who are Linux and Mac fans, they picked the engine they thought would make the game most outstanding on Windows, since that's their only mandatory platform to be successful on a large scale. However, if there proves to be enough interest in the game on other PC platforms, then they have good business reasons to invest some of the additional money to extend their market to these new groups, and boost team morale as a bonus. How many Windows gamers are going to say "well this would have been an *excellent* game worthy of purchase if only there were a few more ship classes but with merely 5... forget it (no way am I going to wait for an expansion)"? Whereas it appears that they will add a significant amount of presales by helping sponsor full OpenGL support for CryENGINE -- the Linux category alone is bouncing between 21% and 23% of votes, and the Mac category is probably not entirely overlapping. The main question now is how much Crytek would charge for the porting effort; ideally they will not be too unreasonable, since adding more platforms should make their engine even more competitive.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[the_bard17]

X-Plane (http://www.x-plane.com) is also supported on Linux.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[westlake]

What I find far more interesting is the current poll standings for the additional platform support; 23% of the voters want a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS. Seriously? Almost a quarter of space/flight sim fans run Linux? I know FlightGear is good, but who knew?

I don't understand why the geek gives an online poll any credibility whatever.

The online poll is trivially easy to manipulate. It is not a random sampling of the potential market for anything.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

It all depends on how stripped down the Android version is compared to Cryengine proper.

The elephant in the room though is how you are gonna get the driver stability and performance out of Linux, thanks to the totally fucked up relationship Torvalds and the devs have with GPU manufacturers (Yeah I'm sure flipping off Nvidia because they won't jump through your little hoops is the mature way to handle dealings with a billion dollar corporation that millions of your users depend on, smooth move there) because there is a reason guys like Yahtzee at ZP make jokes about how Cryengine is "the altar that gaming nerds make sacrifices to the gaming gods upon" because that thing will slam the living shit out of even modern systems, so every drop of performance is gonna count. Between Nvidia just ripping out the guts of the system and replacing them with their own fork and AMD stuck between a rock and a hard place (since they can give the docs to the graphics part of the chip, but NOT the UVD parts since that controls HDCP) its really not a great time for Linux on the gaming front.

Maybe Valve will solve the problems by simply forking Linux for their Steambox project, that would probably be the only way to get true unity and focus on gaming since you have so many devs working on different subsystems its gotta be like herding cats to get them focused, but until then trying to turn Linux into a truly solid gaming platform is gonna royally suck. We have seen companies in the past try, Loki and Cedega just off the top of my head, but Linux changes so damned quick when it comes to internals...well you just can't keep up. By the time the product is ready for shelves they've come out with 3 new kernels, a couple of major subsystem changes, the pace is just nuts.

So I just don't see it working long term unless someone does like Google and just forks the whole thing away from the devs, you've got to have a stable foundation to build on and Linux is frankly at such a breakneck pace of change right now that is practically impossible.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Zocalo]

Perhaps you missed the skepticism in my second point - you know, all those question marks and the use of the word "seriously"?

Of course on-line polls are often easy to manipulate, as Slashdot's poll box likes to remind us, but given the options on this particular poll why would the manipulators apparently single out the options for supporting Linux or MacOS when there are other, more entertaining options? There is also the complication that you need to pick three options, so if someone were poll stuffing then they are being quite clever about it, because there isn't much sign of any obvious anomalies with the other options. Combine that with the fact that, so far at least, RSI's forums and polls seem to be remarkably free of trolls and griefers, etc., I suspect that the results are probably fairly close to an accurate reflection of the voting. Hence my raised eyebrows and somewhat skeptical nature of my second point.

Sure, I can see a number of PC (MS or Mac) users might dual-boot Linux, and I can certainly see both Linux and Mac users wanting a major game that doesn't require Windows or a console to play, but those percentages just seem plain weird, even for such a specific demographic as space/flight sim fans. Has the recent drought of flightsims on Windows really pushed so many flight sim fans to Linux for their fix? Then there's the 23% wanting a Linux port vs. only 8% for MacOS, despite the latter being by far the more popular choice of the two according to all of the online statistics I've seen.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Nikker]

Ahhh all bullshit. If whomever sees that Linux wants to pay, will make the companies make (at the very least) better drivers to support their engine, then it will happen. Look at the state of ARM. Set top boxes, phones, tablets of all sizes will be able to run it. 2 million in cash makes its it even better. Now a Linux, Android port makes even more sense. They can now make a Linux port an be compatible with virtually all machines and OS's. I can set up a S4 Pro chip or a host of others that can play the same game. No NDA, I don't have to "clear" it with anyone. I just have to come up with a *nix compatible hardware setup to get it to run.

Now as a hardware manufacturer what would you side with?

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

Are you being obtuse on purpose, or are you just a damned fanboi? Because you can NOT be seriously comparing AN EMBEDDED SOLUTION where the OEMs control ALL of the hwardware AND the code to an actual general purpose operating system, can you? Surely to God you can't be making such a pathetic comparison? That is like saying "Linux is ready for grandma's laptop because her router runs Busybox"...yeah, great analogy there, a hardened embedded OS that for 99.995% of the population will NEVER change one single bit as far as drivers, OS, or underlying software for the life of the device...yeah that REALLY compares to getting a couple of new kernels a year, and dozens if not hundreds of major subsystems changed yearly which will leave you vulnerable and out of date if you don't keep up.

I've heard of "moving the goalposts" but you aren't even talking about the same sport, next time try to at least make an argument that can hold SOME kind of logical sense, mmmkay?

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Hal_Porter]

Yeah I'm sure flipping off Nvidia because they won't jump through your little hoops is the mature way to handle dealings with a billion dollar corporation that millions of your users depend on, smooth move there

It's even worse than that. When NVidia did assign someone to work on Optimus support he was told the kernel API he needed to make it work, and had been introduced specifically for Optimus like set ups was GPL only. If I were NVidia I'd just EOL the closed source driver on the groups that the open source and community maintained nouveau driver is now "mature enough to replace it". Smirk.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

Thanks for the link, which just proves what I have been saying for years, which is you CAN NOT build ANY commercial software and have ANY interaction with FOSS. This is why Canonical is doomed, why Valve will fail with Steam on Linux, because unless you are willing to suck down the koolaid and be a 100% FOSS company the devs will go out of their way to fuck you and break your stuff.

There had been a split for years in the FOSS camp, with the pragmatists that wanted to give people a more open (but still usable) third choice in operating systems, and the ones I call "FOSSies" which treat RMS as a God and the GPL as their ten commandments and who don't care if its the most obtuse, fiddly, constantly broken mess on the planet as long as it remains "Pure to the ideology of the Open Source movement".

Now I think we are getting close to seeing a clear winner of the battle...and sadly its the FOSSie camp that is gonna end up torpedoing any chance Linux had at mainstream. I have no doubt Nvidia will give them a few more binary blobs, simply because they have a good deal of HPC customers that use Linux, but I have a feeling that many will wash their hands or do as AMD did and just hand them the specs and let the devs fall flat on their faces. Google had to fork Linux away from the devs to make Android, Valve I have a feeling will run into enough sabotage from the FOSSie devs they'll either make their own fork for the Steambox or maybe even go with one of the BSDs as Apple did, and once Canonical closes its doors most will just write Linux off as a fiddly obtuse PITA only good for those which believe in the FOSS "religion" and nobody else will care.

Its a shame, many of us retailers really don't like the direction MSFT is going, which makes them look more and more like an ersatz Apple, but its the FOSSies that make sure the damned thing just won't work by refusing to even recognize their "ideal" is physically unworkable. You have maybe 200 devs (probably closer to 50, but benefit, doubt, yada yada) that have the experience and skills required to do low level driver work, and over 100,000+ drivers, oh and Linus and pals constantly fucking with subsystems and causing major breakage while they futz. Logically anyone with a functioning brain could see that 200 guys can't support 100,000 drivers with ANY level of quality, yet all we here is "We don't need no steenkin ABI, the devs can handle it" when the math shows its impossible.

So things will continue to suck, drivers that work in foo will be broken in bar and maybe not fixed in bar+5, if they EVER get fixed, and retailers and most hardware ODMs will ignore Linux because you have to pay a dev team for the rest of the life of the hardware just to keep the damned drivers working, it sucks but thanks to the FOSSies MSFT could put out WinGoatse and it'll sell, because their alternative is a broken mess of an OS.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[Nikker]

Lol wut? All I'm saying is the deversification of the engine will lead to wider range of support by more hardware vendors.

As for this

"comparing AN EMBEDDED SOLUTION where the OEMs control ALL of the hwardware AND the code to an actual general purpose operating system, can you? "

all I can say is, did that really make sense to you as you wrote it?

Really?

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[chrish]

Apple didn't "go with" BSD for OS X, it came as part of the NeXTStep bits, which predate Linux by several years (first commercial release in 1989 for NeXTStep vs 0.1 or whatever in 1991 for Linux).

NeXTStep was a microkernel, with a BSD "personality" module (so people could run portable software), and an advanced (at the time) GUI. IIRC there were plans for other "personality" modules, but I don't think any were ever built... people wanted NeXT GUI software for everything that wasn't "good enough" on the BSD command-line.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[wertigon]

You can use closed-source software in an open source ecosystem, whatever gave you the idea that you can't? Also, commercial is not the same as open source - look at Quake 1, 2 and 3, totally open yet the games themselves still cost money.

However, Nvidia is a special case - their drivers are NOT their core business model, and developing Open Source ones (or even better, join the Nouveau effort) would, in the long run, gain them so much. Right now it's a bit of a "Meh" situation - but imagine 10 years down the road, when the Nouveau drivers are up to par to the latest and greatest graphics. Where new hardware get full support within six months. And where the current drivers have been optimized out of the wazoo. Even now, the case for staying closed source for nVidia is shrinking, especially as their biggest competitors - Intel and AMD - already went FOSS. In a few years there will be rational reason left to stay closed source.

What Linux devs has said is that, if you develop hardware, and you want to play nice with Linux, then you must go Open Source drivers. However by going open source you do not need to worry too much about driver development in the first place, since 90% of your work will already be done.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

Except they CAN'T go Open Source, which you and every dev on the damned planet refuse to fricking accept! Let me make this clear, there is PATENTED TECH in ALL graphics cards which they CAN NOT SHARE, not because they want to keep it closed, but because its connected with the DRM used in HDCP, which is the ONLY way the *.A.As will allow High Def video on the PC!

Besides why the fuck should they care WHAT the FOSS camps want when they've shown themselves to be hypocritical self serving douches? AMD did EXACTLY what you asked, did their sales go up? Not only did their sales NOT go up but every. damned. article. you see here on Linux has dozens posting 'LOL use Nvidia". yeah, great job fellas, make damned sure every company on the planet sees its a total waste to support your precious "FOSS ideals" because obviously you care so much about them.

So whether you like it or not they CAN NOT DO what you are asking, so instead of accepting this is reality and allowing Nvidia the hooks they need while writing their congressmen and trying to change the REASON why they can't open up the FOSSie devs...punish Nvidia by being douchebags and making sure everything they need is GPL V3 so they'll have to open up...which isn't possible for them to do, great job acting like 6 year olds guys.

So your choices are 1.-Accept that there are companies that HAVE TO be closed because of legal reasons, man up and work to change those reasons while accepting for the time being compromises will HAVE to be made, or 2.- Act like spoiled children and have little hissy fits and flip off companies and generally act like ADHD teens and make things worse for everyone...wanna guess which one the devs ALWAYS pick?

So waste mod points ALL you want, it won't change reality and reality is this: The FOSS team is having to work around OVER ONE THIRD of the hardware thanks to the fact AMD had to redact ALL of the video hardware from the specs and CAN NOT allow that to be open since it would risk breaking HDCP, Nvidia is in the same boat only worse because tesla and CUDA both use that very same hardware for GP-GPU, yet the FOSSie devs will break drivers rather than accept not everybody on the planet can open their code. NOW do you see why the ONLY times Linux has gotten anywhere is when someone, like say Google, took control away from the devs?

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[wertigon]

First off: Nvidia can choose any GPLv2 compatible license they want, including GPLv2 itself. It CANNOT choose GPLv3 because it's incompatible with GPLv2 (though not GPLv2+, but kernel is GPLv2 and not GPLv2+).

Secondly: Why can't those few, specific parts that must be closed be pushed into a binary blob with hooks in the more open source core? Sounds to me it should be possible especially with a BSD-style license. It could be possible, for instance, to just keep the encryption closed while everything else is open.

Thirdly: nVidia WAS the best choice for Linux. Now AMD and Intel "just works" on Linux (atleast with OSS drivers) while nVidia requires some maintenance. This gap will only widen further and further, the more nVidia persist with their closed source strategy. This is starting to translate to direct sales to both Intel and AMD. The fact that some nVidia fanboys are recommending the hardware does not change that fact.

Fourthly: Linux has gotten along just fine on servers and other types of devices. And no, I don't count Android as Linux because Android is a platform that happens to use the Linux kernel as it's base, but virtually everything above that is proprietary and/or reworked. Therefore one could rather easily replace the Linux kernel in Android for, say, BSD or Windows kernels.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

/facepalm/ Did you not even read the very first sentence before you replied? which part of CAN'T DO IT is so damned hard to understand?

As for why they can't just "put those parts" into a binary...because it won't fricking work? you are talking about gutting the very HEART of the system, what would that accomplish? Would it make the devs quit acting like douches and breaking the drivers? Nope because its not GPL V3 so they wouldn't be "supporting the spirit of Open Source" and the devs would go right on being douches.

And sure AMD "just works" if you mean "Works like a card from 7 years ago" because again a HUGE section of the chip CAN NOT be accessed because UVD, which if you'll go look its actually a pretty damned big component of the APUs especially, simply can't be accessed without risking breaking HDCP and getting AMD chips blacklisted. You know what the FOSS devs are doing? You can go and look it up, its an UGLY hack that is using the shaders for hardware acceleration, like the old X19xx cards did. So you will waste MORE power on Linux than in Windows, make MORE heat, and will have a lower battery life, all because the devs won't quit being douches and breaking the damned binary drivers!

And here we go with the classic "moving the goalposts" by dropping servers into the mix. You know what every Linux advocate sounds like when they do that? Well my truck gets 20 miles to the gallon, well my car gets 34.../Linux user/ Well my rowboat gets a billion!...WHAT THE FUCK does that have to do with the conversation? Serious WHAT does servers have a damned thing to do with desktops, which was the SUBJECT?

Its actually very simple, Linux works on servers in spite of the devs not because of them, because Windows licensing is a hedgemaze of restrictions and they keep raising the costs it is CHEAPER to pay some guy 6 figures to deal with all the Linux bullshit, maybe even hire the guys that broke the subsystems to fix it. That is NOT a credit to Linux, that is just how greedy and stupid MSFT runs the WinServer division. If they were to switch to a three tier license and no user CALs? Mark my words they'd slaughter Linux, but they make so much money as it is they simply don't care, not with Ballmer wanting to be the head of Apple and caring only about phones and tablets.

so I'm sorry but not only can Nvidia NOT go GPL but the suggestion you have would fix absolutely nothing, because if anything was made perfectly clear on past statements its that the FOSSie camp in the devs will accept nothing less than 100% GPL compliance, and your idea would be like having the first and last line of a book in free print and the rest redacted. The only way they could "open" shit would be to do like AMD and just leave the most powerful parts of the chip completely black box, which would make the performance difference between a new Nvidia chip and a 4 year old one negligible, and would be completely pointless since ALL of the major parts that people actual run Nvidia cards on Linux for, the GP-GPU support, would be gone anyway.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[wertigon]

BSD. License. Is. Compatible. With. GPLv2.

Linux. Kernel. Is. Not. And. Cannot. Ever. Be. GPLv3.

"As for why they can't just "put those parts" into a binary...because it won't fricking work? you are talking about gutting the very HEART of the system, what would that accomplish?"

Spoken like a person who haven't ever refactored code. Yes you can move those business-critical parts into their own functions, and then move those specific functions into a binary blob. BSD allows for that. But seems you can't comprehend this, since it seems UMPOSSIBLE.

Now if the code is spagetthicoded all over the place and thus this isn't possible, then that's a whole other ballpark entirerly. And yes, OSS drivers just work while proprietary needs some love. Even though most of them suffer a bit of performance.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

What the fuck...you no spek the english? They DO NOT OWN the guts, its patented by several companies that are NOT Nvidia so they can't change SHIT when it comes to licensing, okay? They DO NOT OWN HDCP and it is THOSE parts being used in GP-GPU to cut down on waste and to keep from having to double the size of the die, but they DO NOT OWN this, okay? What part of DO NOT OWN is so damned hard to grasp? I don't care what fucking license you name, BSD, MPL, fucking ABCD, they CAN NOT DO IT anymore than you can make The Lion King a GPL movie because YOU DO NOT OWN IT...get it now? No own? Its licensed tech from half a dozen companies, baked into every chip.

And again WHAT FUCKING DIFFERENCE would having ALL of the code binary VS having a header and footer be GPL and the rest redacted? NOTHING, it would change NOTHING. What you would have is ugly nasty ass hacks like AMD (which I notice you won't even touch on, because guess what? Its nasty ass and sucks compared to Windows where the devs aren't douches) where it wouldn't matter if you had a new tesla board or a Geforce 6600 because it would BOTH SUCK as you'd have this huge chunk of the chip that will never ever work in the FOSS driver. And again because they weren't "100% GPL compliant" the devs would keep right on being douches, drivers still get broken, and Nvidia gains not a single sale, why the fuck should they waste all that money? To make some license nazi happy?

Watch as I make a prediction, ready? Linux gains NO SHARE even though Win 8 is more hated than Vista, because the douchenozzle devs refuse to keep breaking shit like spoiled 14 years olds and between them and the FOSSie camp, which overlaps a lot, you simply won't get the stability and solid drivers required for ANY OEM to look at you as more than a joke. BTW before you dare bring up Dell you should know they have to run their own damned repo even though they ONLY have a dozen models, because the damned drivers break otherwise (surprise surprise) and they refuse to tell you how much profit they have made on Linux sales, why? Because the cost of running their own repo kills any profit, that's why! Its strictly a PR move, designed to make the FOSSie faction STFU, which is why they bury it on a back page and try like hell to warn people away from the Linux systems!

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[humanrev]

You should know by now that the only thing accomplished by dealing with a FOSS fanboy is an increase in blood pressure. Let them live in their own little reality - so long as it's insulated from the rest of us, they can be as deluded as they want to be. :)

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[hairyfeet]

Actually as a retailer I consider it a public service to show what religious morons they are and what an absolute failure their OS is, so that others will see its a waste of time and completely pointless.

Year after year it gets worse, NOT better, because at the end of the day the FOSSie devs make damned sure to break every single thing that isn't "pure GPL"which since there isn't ANY hardware that is GPL on X86 all they do is fuck shit up for everybody.

But hopefully anybody that saw that post now knows how fucking clueless the FOSSies are, and how their way of doing things simply leads to failure. As far as they are concerned there is never a reason to compromise, even if the result is a completely broken system, that's just fine with them. meanwhile MSFT could put out Windows Goatse and not lose any users because Linux will ALWAYS be worse than anything MSFT puts out. Hell Vista is a dream compared to your average distro, at least the drivers that are installed at RTM will still work at EOL, something not a SINGLE Linux can boast.

Re:Why is it using CryENGINE???

[wertigon]

"why the fuck should they waste all that money? To make some license nazi happy?"

No. To not lose market share.

Wing Commander

[Hatta]

I played Wing Commander all night last night on my Tandy 2500SX/20. Down to the last mission at Venice. Beat it a couple times but my wingman keeps dying. I also played it a few years ago on Dosbox. Somehow it's much more fun on the Tandy, even if it's a little slow when there's 8 ships in play. I'm building a 486 for the rest of the series. WCII should play just right with the turbo off.

Re:Wing Commander

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

When you build your 486, get Red Baron also. Other games I enjoyed from that era but you might not be interested are Quest for Glory series, Stunts, Xwing, and a really under appreciated game: Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. I have fond memories of flying a B-17, and after bombing my target, doing strafing runs on it so my campaign advanced further :P Eventually I got so slick that I'd do a 1/2 barrel roll and strafe the targets with the top turret as well :P

Re:Wing Commander

[Hatta]

Red Baron is on my list. I already have boxed copies of Aces over the Pacific and Europe that I found at Goodwill. Visited the same Goodwill today and found a Thrustmaster FCS joystick. Score!

Luftwaffe sounds like something I'd be interested in. Also on topic, also looking forward to Strike Commander, another Chris Roberts game.

Re:Wing Commander

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Ah, Strike Commander... good times.

They don't make games like that no more.

Re:Wing Commander

[VortexCortex]

I played Wing Commander all night last night on my Tandy 2500SX/20. [...] I also played it a few years ago on Dosbox. [...] I'm building a 486 for the rest of the series.

I'm building my own OS. The x86 bootloader starts in Real Mode - Just like "DOS". Right at boot on any of your x86 machines you can write text/attributes and/or graphics directly to video memory (@ B800h for EGA/VGA text). No drivers needed because modern BIOSs, and GPUs provide the old interrupt table and CGA/EGA/MCGA/VGA video modes for backwards compatibility. You can use int 13h to do your disk services. Play sounds to the PC speaker. It's just like writing assembly back in the good 'ol 286 days -- include an instruction override byte and you can access the 32 bit instructions too while in "16 bit" mode. Hell, I can even load some old games (that didn't rely on MS DOS supplied interrupts) directly into memory and run them just fine, hell, this even works on a quad core x64 I have because it doesn't require (U)EFI, and uses the 8086 (16bit) boot mode.

Intel, AMD, GPU, and BIOS makers have all gone through some serious fsck'n pains to provide complete backwards support in instruction set, DMA, and interrupt interfaces all the way back to 8086 / 8087. Hell even though CHS (Cylinder Head Sector) geometry is completely irrelevant on today's drives, the drives still support that addressing mode for compatibility....

And here you are running AN EMULATOR. Building A 486?!?! For Shame. If only SOMEONE would create an OS that didn't switch to protected mode right away so you could actually run your classic games on your current hardware...

Re:Wing Commander

[Hatta]

That's great, but Wing Commander runs too fast on anything other than a 386 or slow 486. There are also no ISA slots on modern boards, and DOS has never been real happy about PCI sound cards.

Re:Wing Commander

[Tolkien]

Aces over Europe! I loved that game!

I don't remember getting very far in it, but I had so much fun!

2m? Not even close

[wisnoskij]

It has a $500,000 goal, and has so far only gotten $886,252.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Anonymous Coward]

The article didn't mention the website RSI almost has 2m on its own.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Zocalo]

Kickstarter is only providing part of the funding. The bulk of the funding has been made at the main site for the game, and the combined total of both sites is currently standing at just over $2.7m.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Seumas]

It's at about $3.8m right now, $900k of which is just from the Kickstarter page.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Seumas]

Nevermind. I hadn't realized this whole time that the website's tally was already including the Kickstarter funds. WOW. They're doing far worse than I thought. This whole time, I was thinking "holy shit, they are going to reach most of their extended goals by the end, with almost four million raised already!".

With only about $3m raised, I would hope they would just focus on one solid game and worry about a fucking linux port when and if the main platform is successful and justifies the expense.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Luckyo]

They also have private backing, apparently around 10 million USD total at the moment according to article on ars: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/star-citizens-chris-roberts-discusses-upping-the-ante-on-pc-gaming/

That said, for a project of this size, that isn't that great of a budget. We're either looking at something rather mediocre in the genre that has been stale for ages (so even mediocre will look great), or they will go looking for more funding at some point.

That said, I was a huge fan of freelancer, and I'd love to have a sequel to that.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Nemyst]

The goal was $2M, which would unlock additional investor money. Anything above $2M is going to help fund additional elements, but the game is already funded.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Seumas]

The basic goal was $2m. The extended goals were $3m, $4m, $6m (it looks like they've since added them at every 500k, though).

At any rate, having the extended goals seems a little unnecessary. They're going to have a hell of a time accomplishing even the most basic concept at three million bucks -- even considering that this funding isn't to create the whole game, but just to help get a showing of support to then reach out to more traditional investment (as they already stated at the beginning of the fundraising).

Re:2m? Not even close

[Baloroth]

Not really. The kickstarted is currently trending towards 1.6 million alone, about double what it is now. Getting 5-6$ million is impossible, I'd expect them to hit around $4m based on the usual patterns for these games. If it trends like Project Eternity did, it'll hit around $5.5m, but that would take a large last minute rush... which an announcement of Linux support might do.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Mr. Jaggers]

Oh, how do you figure? The traditional investment portion was to be some $8M (to bring the budget up to ~$10M), and is supposedly already lined up, modulo the initial funding goal (I believe Chris stated as much during one of the Reddit AMA's).

Moreover, of all the extended goal possibilities in the poll, which do you seriously believe would go toward bringing in new backers? More missions than before? More NPCs? I suspect that the lion's share of backers who would be swayed by those (and the "improved FPS mode"...) have already pledged. Also, are you Seumas on Kickstarter as well? If so, then of all people, you should realize that Linux support has a greatly different level of importance on a crowd-funding campaign (where the Linux community is heavily active) than the wider gaming world.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Mr. Jaggers]

Pardon, the outside funding is around $10M, not the total funding goal, crowd-sourcing included. I think there is enough funding to extend the goals beyond the original scope (which I agree would have been impossible to meet, even in the $4-5M range).

Re:2m? Not even close

[wormo]

of all the extended goal possibilities in the poll, which do you seriously believe would go toward bringing in new backers? More missions than before? More NPCs? I suspect that the lion's share of backers who would be swayed by those (and the "improved FPS mode"...) have already pledged.

That's me! I'm only going to pledge if there are at least 20 more NPCs! I don't know how many there are now, but there must be more!!!

J/K. In this household we're holding out for Linux support, and strongly hope for Mac for the sake of a couple other friends. The windows gamers in our group are also not likely to pledge without platform support, because they are busy engineers who nowadays mostly just play online games with our group.

Re:2m? Not even close

[Mr. Jaggers]

Replying to self... I was right the first time, it's $8M from the silent partner(s), for a total of $10M before stretch goals.

Summary is a bit off, poorly worded

[Anubis350]

But they have raised over 2M, 800k of which is on kickstarter, check out their website in the summary link

Good News for Linux Gaming...

[dryriver]

When the original "Wing Commander" was released for DOS, many hardcore Amiga/Atari ST gamers bought PCs just to be able to play it. No game before it had the kind of graphics, story or space combat that Wing Commander offered. And this one game (plus the hugely innovative Ultima Underworld perhaps) turned PCs into a potent gaming machine overnight. ---- Star Citizen may very well do the same for Linux. A Chris Roberts Space Game + Internet Massively Multiplayer + Cryengine 3 graphics + Newtonian Physics simulation on everything in game + Linux = Nerd Heaven!!! ------- I say "Go, Chris Roberts, Go! Bring SC and CryEngine 3 to Linux!!!"

Re:Good News for Linux Gaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

A Chris Roberts Space Game + Internet Massively Multiplayer + Cryengine 3 graphics + Newtonian Physics simulation on everything in game + Linux = Nerd Heaven!!!

Not so much for this one.

The Christ Roberts part ok.
MMO not so much. If its 'popular' there are tons of griefers. If its unpopular its a ghost town.
Cry engine 3. Could care less so long as it looks good and plays cool. Plus whatever he does will not be ported over to the real engine anyway...
Newtonian physics. This will *suck*. This has been tried many times. It usually makes for a painful game to play. Its realistic but usually makes for a pinball machine sort of gameplay. I have played several of these games all the way thru. With a story as good as the original WC. But they were a horrible exercise of fuel management and strafing.
Linux part ok thats cool but will probably never happen. They will run out of time having to rejigger the physics part as they will quickly realize its not fun.

Re:Good News for Linux Gaming...

[Baloroth]

Newtonian physics. This will *suck*. This has been tried many times. It usually makes for a painful game to play. Its realistic but usually makes for a pinball machine sort of gameplay. I have played several of these games all the way thru. With a story as good as the original WC. But they were a horrible exercise of fuel management and strafing.

Depends, if he was going full 100% real physics I'd agree, but he isn't. He's going mostly accurate, but with enough leeway to actually make it fun, which is very much possible (I've played several games that have done it). And it isn't a full-on MMO, it's more of an instanced persistent set of servers, so griefing is unlikely to be an issue, and even if it is a "ghost town" you can still play the single-player story without caring. Besides, a game like this, the players themselves will be able to band together to shut down griefers, which is itself pretty awesome.

Re:Good News for Linux Gaming...

[am 2k]

Newtonian physics. This will *suck*. This has been tried many times. It usually makes for a painful game to play. Its realistic but usually makes for a pinball machine sort of gameplay.

From his descriptions, he's found a cheap way out of that: The physics are real, but your ship has so much intelligence of its own, that you tell to what you want to do, and it will fire the correct thrusters at the correct time for the correct duration to do it. Thus, steering is still easy to do.

This is even dynamic, so if one of your thrusters gets shot down, the computer tries to compensate for that as far as it is possible.

Re:Good News for Linux Gaming...

[lordholm]

Presumably, one of the newtonian physics games you played was Terminus. While some do not like this, others do. Personally I found Terminus so nice, that whenever I play a non newtonian space "sim", I end up stopping being interested very fast.

The only problem is that if you want to run a newtonian space combat sim, you more or less need two joysticks, one for yaw and pitch and one for vertical and horizontal strafing, and most good joysticks only come in right handed variants.

Re:Good News for Linux Gaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

He has lied about the Newtonian physics. To my knowledge in Newtonian physics velocity is subjective and there is no limit on it. Roberts said that in Star Citizen each ship will have a different maximum velocity relative to an absolute frame of reference.

Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Zombie Ryushu]

The Linux Gaming community is a different audience than the Windows Gaming community. It has to be marketed to Linux gamers properly.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[cupantae]

I'll tell you one big difference between them: Windows gamers mostly wait for games to be presented to them, Linux gamers actively pursue their options.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Luckyo]

This fundraiser seems to be directly contravening your rather bold claims.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[wormo]

Being on slashdot frontpage is a decent first step to letting Linux gamers know about the existence and possible relevance of Star Citizen; my guess is a lot of us read slashdot (I have for many years, though only recently converted from anonymous coward)

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[cupantae]

No, it does not at all.

This game appeals to a large portion of the population. The number of Windows users greatly outweighs the number of Linux users. Of those who run Linux, few lack the access to Windows or ability to use it. Even if the backers WANT to have Linux support, it isn't surprising to prefer other additions to the game. Given all that, 22% is a really large proportion to see for this work-intensive effort which will not improve the quality of the game.

I think that is a great sign for gaming on Linux, but I do also think it's a sign that Linux users tried their very best to get it.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Luckyo]

Asking for something that is a nice, slightly easier way to use the product doesn't equate to demand. Most of these people will simply boot windows to play. In the end there is little to no lost audience to this issue regardless of "would you want one" poll numbers.

It's nice to entertain thoughts about windows not being the only game in town when it comes to PC gaming. But that is simply the reality at the moment. And as long as windows can be easily booted on the same PCs that runs linux when needed, there is little to no incentive outside ideology to make ports.

In this regard, apple has actually managed this particular feat by being "cool". Companies get easy PR by announcing and releasing OSX versions of their games, which often outweighs the downside of having to develop a port, especially when you can make a shoddy semi-automated port like they did with GW2 for example, and get bright-eyed clueless folks preach that their company is awesome and buy their products for embracing the apple way when it basically shat on their faces.

Linux doesn't have this path available either.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends on who you ask. I personally couldn't be bothered to dual boot for *any* game. Either it runs on Linux, with or without wine, or I don't buy it. Sure, big titles are few and very far between, but I do buy them when they get released, and frequently pay for indie titles.

Currently holding out for Planetary Annihilation, and will be buying two copies if they have native Linux support. If not I'll just keep playing Zero-K or BA. If Star Citizen comes for Linux I'll buy that too, if not they lose a sale. Granted people like me are probably a minority, but we're a minority willing to pay for what we want. (compared to the Windows "gamer community" which will copy&crack any game they can.)

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Luckyo]

That's the whole point. To you, the product isn't valuable enough to spend a minute booting windows. Consider how that makes you look in the eyes of the developer/publisher.

As for paying, let me remind you of the very noisy "it should be open and free" linux community.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Confusador]

To me, the game isn't worth its list price *plus the price of Windows* in order to play it. I can't see why a developer wouldn't understand that, even if they choose not to market it to me.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Luckyo]

These offerings are aimed at people who are hardcore enough to invest money into something that isn't ready and not even guaranteed to ever come out. If you haven't invested into a current status quo gamer OS, how can these projects possibly target you? They'd likely have to shake every one of your kind for four-five digits EACH to break even and you can't be bothered even spend two digits to play huge game libraries available today.

You're gutting your own point.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much the time spent booting Windows that is the problem with dual booting, it's having to close and not being able to instantly access my other applications, having to dedicate large amounts of hard drive space to it, installing and maintaining it, and not the least, paying for a glorified bootloader for my game.

It's like the difference between playing games on a console and going to an arcade. Sure the arcade may have games you don't have at home, but you pay extra for food and drink, and if you need something you didn't bring you have to walk back home to get it. Possibly, I could live at the arcade but then I wouldn't get much work done. It's simply a matter of convenience. Frankly, if I wanted Windows, I'd rather get a separate computer for it.

As for the vocality(?) of the open&free fanatics it does easily drown out us quiet pragmatic Linux users. I guess we're too busy getting work done and playing games. ;)

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Luckyo]

Question: doesn't modern linux have hibernation just like windows does? I rarely if ever boot windows since XP SP2 times other then for updates that require full restart. Instead I just hibernate the machine when leaving it. So no need to close any of my programs, they're all immediately available upon restart/resume in the state I left them in.

Re:Linux users have to know the game exists.

[Confusador]

I was agreeing with you, actually, hence the implication that "they choose not to market it to me."

If you believe phoronix article at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

Supposedly, there is already a Linux port of the CryEngine 3:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA4Mjk

Again, its from Phoronix, so take it with a grain of salt.

Re:If you believe phoronix article at all...

[Hsien-Ko]

HLSL>GLSL probably carries a lot of overhead, and considering , a multi-platform (well, multi-api really) CryENGINE3 would be extremely convoluted from its lack of material nodes.

Re:If you believe phoronix article at all...

[Gwala]

Unity does this actually - all shaders are written in Cg/HLSL, then cross-compiled to GLSL for OpenGL & OGLES. It's a surprisingly pleasant workflow - especially with their Surface Shader framework.

Re:If you believe phoronix article at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

HLSL>GLSL probably carries a lot of overhead

Less than you would think, actually.

Re:If you believe phoronix article at all...

[Hsien-Ko]

But can it run Crysis?

Re:If you believe phoronix article at all...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's from Phoronix what that really means is that it hasn't even been started on at the current point in time, and that the beta will come out 2-4 years from now.

See: Phoronix Steam on Linux scandal

OpenGL ES is not the same as OpenGL

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a good deal of differences between OpenGL and OpenGL ES. In reality Direct3D9 is closer to OpenGL ES than OpenGL is. The syntax and grammar may be more compatible between OpenGL and OpenGL ES, but the more important quirks and behavior are completely different. When I took my renderer from Direct3D9 to OpenGL ES 2.0 it only took a couple weeks, the two were very similar in all the ways that count. But then moving to OpenGL things got very complicated very fast. For any one thing you may want to do with OpenGL there are multiple ways to go about doing it, each with their own pros and cons that must be taken into consideration else you shoot yourself in the foot.

Not saying it isn't possible, anything is possible for an experienced coder. Just saying it's not as clean cut as you would believe given both share the OpenGL name and have similar design philosophies.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Gordonjcp]

Do you realize the NFL is on TV right now?

Oh, is that what it is? I thought it was the Teletubbies. All I could see was a bunch of guys in fat suits waddling up and down until one of them falls over and starts to cry, and then the others run up and give him a hug.

That looks like a pretty weaksauce "sport", to be honest.

AAA Title?

[TheRealQuestor]

I pretty much doubt this will even be CLOSE to a triple A title. Starlancer was no Wing Commander. And even though much of the problem with that game was Microsoft buying it and rushing it out the door. Though if they hadn't it would have been a case like 38 Studios, where the game never gets finished, and the devs go tits up.

Re:AAA Title?

[wormo]

Stepping aside from whether there is significant reason to be skeptical about the success Star Citizen itself... the OP claim was that the *game engine* is AAA class. Are you going to dispute that CryENGINE 3 is not being used for AAA titles? How about the first two Crysis games which have each sold in the millions? I suspect some of the other stuff currently in development will also qualify as AAA titles.

Re:AAA Title?

[TheRealQuestor]

An Engine does not a good game make. The engine is great, what is being done WITH the engine is what I'm talking about. Roberts did Wing Commander 22 years ago and was AWESOME, then came WC2 and it was no longer his baby and instead he made Strike Commander which was pretty meh in 93 [19 years ago] WC3 and 4 [as well as privateer] were decent games if you don't put too much into the "Acting" that went into the cut scenes. Roberts wanted to do movies, but it SUCKED and now is back trying to make a couple games. I would like to think they are going to be good, but the track record doesn't bode well. 20 years of meh doesn't leave me with a lot of confidence that either of these 2 are going to be worth my 100 bucks.

Re:AAA Title?

[wormo]

Those are all legitimate opinions. It looked like you might be arguing with the original post, but I guess you're not. Regardless of whether Star Citizen is an awesome game like original Wing Commander (as some of us hope), the side-effect of having a sweet game engine be ported to non-windows desktops could be enough for some Linux/Mac gamers to pledge some money to the project (those who don't dual-boot and who are fortunate to have some discretionary money to throw around).

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Type44Q]

It actually looks to me like it might be kind of fun to play... but the thought of watching other people play?! How the fuck that is supposed to be fun, I'll certainly never understand...

Re:Who gives a shit?

[aekafan]

If joining society means I have to put up with loudmouth twatcuddles like you, no thanks

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pussy's play NFL, men play rugby.

If it doesn't run on my OS I don't buy it.

[RocketRabbit]

I am finished with dual-booting just to slurp up the latest and greatest games. The last console I purchased was a Playstation 2, and that was about a decade ago. I have the tablet that supports the most games (guess what one!) and a computer that runs a non-Windows OS.

It is a pretty simple thing to use one of the many multi-platform game development engines that are kicking about these days. If a game producer decides not to release a game on my OS, they will not see a sale. It's as simple as that.

The problem with using Wine for games, and dual-booting, is that you are basically telling manufacturers that you don't really care if they actually release their product for anything but Windows, and this sends a signal to Microsoft - that they should try to make Wine less and less useful on the newest games.

If you don't release a game on the OS that I already have and use, then I will just keep playing Dwarf Fortress instead. DF is surely better anyway.

Re:If it doesn't run on my OS I don't buy it.

[wormo]

A sensible policy! Supposing your non-Windows OS is either Linux or Mac OS, are you interested in increasing the number of titles available by having another big game engine support it? Or is CryENGINE just not your style (it is rather different than DF after all).

Making out that it's the first?

[ewanm89]

"could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities"
Is he trying to make out CryEngine 3 will be the first AAA game engine on Mac and Linux? I guess the Quake, ID Tech, Unreal and Source (been on Mac for a while, Linux is in Beta now) engines done count?

Re:Making out that it's the first?

[wormo]

"could turn out to be the high-profile game that brings a AAA game engine to the growing Mac and Linux gaming communities" Is he trying to make out CryEngine 3 will be the first AAA game engine on Mac and Linux? I guess the Quake, ID Tech, Unreal and Source (been on Mac for a while, Linux is in Beta now) engines done count?

No, the point is that this game could bring *another* AAA game engine to Mac and Linux, namely CryENGINE. There was no mention of the word "first", but some of us are still excited at the prospect of another former Windows** gaming stronghold going cross-platform. It is not a frequent event that this happens, but your examples are all good ones as well!

** yes I know CryENGINE runs on consoles and android too, I'm discussing PC platforms here

Re:Making out that it's the first?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Portal? Half-life 2? Valve on the Mac says hello. (Linux probably before this crap, if it actually happens)

Re:Making out that it's the first?

[ewanm89]

Are Source engine, or a variant of it.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[jedidiah]

Aren't those two mutually exclusive forms of diversion?

If I wanted to consume some sort of televised spectator sport, I wouldn't do it in an manner that forces me to be a slave to a network schedule. This is 2012. I can skip through the commercials and annoying time outs.

Linux even makes football better. Doens't matter if the rubes know it.

Don't believe the hype

[OhANameWhatName]

Chris Roberts, game designer of Wing Commander fame, has had great success with his new crowd-funded Star Citizen project

Success? What success? He's raised a bunch of money by promising a whole lot of people something that it's probably going to be impossible to deliver on. When you raise people's expectations this much, you can only fail.

The Chris Roberts retirement fund is looking very dubious right now. New gaming engine for Linux? I'd be shocked just to see a new game.

Re:Don't believe the hype

[Anonymous Coward]

Success? What success? He's raised a bunch of money by promising a whole lot of people something that it's probably going to be impossible to deliver on. When you raise people's expectations this much, you can only fail.

Impossible? Why impossible? He's using Cryengine, has additional private investment funds, and has already designed a very impressive prototype. Check the videos on the site sitebar: http://www.robertsspaceindustries.com/star-citizen/

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually looks to me like it might be kind of fun to play... but the thought of watching other people play?! How the fuck that is supposed to be fun, I'll certainly never understand...

Watching is playing, if you just believe!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN1WN0YMWZU

I built the machine hes making this on

[Anonymous Coward]

About a bit over a year ago, I had Chris Roberts him self find me via Craigslist about some issues with his machine. I did not know at the time it was Chris Roberts or my childhood hero that was coming over. While I worked with him looking over my shoulder and a trip to Frys, we found out it was a faulty board. I told him I could not charge the man who nearly caused me to get a TCS Victory tattoo for just telling him the board was bad after the years of enjoyment he had given me. Still one of the best days of my life.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse, the watching has become an identity for some folks. They live for the season. Scary shit.

Other Kickstarter game using Unity

[the_arrow]

The developers of the futuristic racer Distance (12 days to go on Kickstarter) has tried a beta of Unity 4 on Linux, and now says that they will definitelly bring the game out on Linux as well.

Other space-flight-sims on Kickstarter

[the_arrow]

If there is such a large support for the space-flight sim. genre in the Linux community, then they might consider Strike Suit Zero, with a stretch goal of $180k that will make them deliver a Linux version.

Re:Other space-flight-sims on Kickstarter

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

Or you could just go with the brilliant open-source version of FreeSpace 2 http://scp.indiegames.us/.
Actually this is several games include a fun Bablyon 5 game and at least two Battlestart Galatica games along with both FS1 and FS2 ($6 each at gog.com) which with modem graphics stand up very well. The is even a really good new Wing Commander game http://www.wcsaga.com/ (still needs Wine at the moment, but they are working on it)

Cheap hardware, Wing Commander and Ultima

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

AFAIK, it was more because a new PC clone/parts were cheaper than other platforms while still offering equal or superior sound/video abilities. (My family switched from Apple IIgs to PCs back then in part so I could play the latest Ultima games, but we wouldn't have been able to do it without favorable pricing.) You're conflating two separate years & shifts in computer ownership, though:

--In 1990-1991, PCs were just starting to dominate the market, and Origin Systems released Wing Commander, Wing Commander II, Ultima VI, and Worlds of Ultima, which were all developed (for the first time) on DOS PCs, with major improvements in graphics/sound as a result.

--Ultima Underworld came out in 1992 alongside Ultima VII, at the same time CD-ROMs became affordable and a bunch of games started coming out that used them to offer greater sound/graphics. Contrary to our preferences, though, the games most often credited with driving consumers to DOS (and making the PC a major gaming platform) were Myst and The 7th Guest.

I'm not sure whether we can draw parallels with support for Wing Commander & Linux today, though... Back then, consumers were switching to PCs because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find new games for their older computer systems -- unless MS really sabotages its own market with Windows 8, that dynamic won't be at work here. I do think that Kickstarter could be used to make developers more aware of the many people that are using Linux and only booting into Windows for games, however, and somebody like Chris Roberts taking notice would put out a pretty strong message in the game dev community, I would think.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[mwvdlee]

NFL. Isn't that like rugby with padded clothing, helmets and breaks every 10 seconds?
Seems to me the pussies aren't in the pub, they're on the field.

Not exactly so

[DrYak]

The main problem between mr torvalds and nvidia, is that up to that point nvidia has never ever wanted to collaborate with them, nor even try to use whatever already exist in linux.
nvidia wanted the lazy way and share as much code as possible. their current way to do things is throw everything in the garbage and do things their own way. the problem is that this doesn't play nice with everyone else (including Intel hardware) and thus some functionality is completely broken (Optimus only works though third party hacks) although the necessary functionnality is alread in the kernel (but ignored by nvidia).

recently they've started to wisen up. they are open to collaborate better and try to use what exist. but now the situation has reversed and currently the linux developpers aren't playing nice (the necessary technology has been licensed as GPL only from the beginning)

Maybe Valve will solve the problems by simply forking Linux for their Steambox project

and that would be stupid.
Instead valve went the hard route and started collaboration between their own developers, and GPU drivers developers (both official binary at AMD and Nvidia, and official opensource at Intel and AMD). All this leading to several improvement.
Thanks to them, binary driver are being improved, and even the opensource stack (the Intel driver is officially opensource, and AMD officially supports opensource efforts in addition to their own in-house binary drivers. All these based on the same standart Linux infrastructure) has seen an increased pace of development (among other Valve is responsible of adding several debugging related extension to Gallium 3D, paving the way for future OpenGL 4.x).

And these efforts do indeed pay back: Source engine with an opengl back-end is much faster than with direct3d... even on windows.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[eugene_roux]

Do you realize the NFL is on TV right now?

Oh, is that what it is? I thought it was the Teletubbies. All I could see was a bunch of guys in fat suits waddling up and down until one of them falls over and starts to cry, and then the others run up and give him a hug.

That looks like a pretty weaksauce "sport", to be honest.

Never really quite understood American Football...

Now Rugby, that is a game I can respect: all of the full-contact fun of American Football but none of the armour nor any of the all-too-frequent breaks... And a damn site more fun to play in either its full-contact or touch versions.

Touch-rugby on the beach with breaks for beer... Hmm. I loved summer!

Pity I'm a tad too old for that now.

Thank you for sharing!

[Anonymous Coward]

Just bought Quad Damage (Title: Scout) package as I want to support sandbox games with co-op (drop in / out), private servers (host yourself), and maybe Linux support.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[kamapuaa]

NFL isn't my favorite thing to watch, but there's something to be said for a spectacle that brings the biggest, strongest, fastest athletes in the world, and puts them in direct physical contact.

Vernon Davis, for instance, is 6'3", 250 lbs. with abs. Bench Presses 225 for 33 reps, vertical jumps 42 inches, runs 100m in 10.7 seconds. You won't find any athlete in any other sport who is more of a well-rounded athlete than that.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Gordonjcp]

What a weird mixture of units you're using there! So, where's the exceptional bit in these numbers? That guy is a bit taller than me, not quite as heavy, sounds like he can't lift as much but is distinctly faster in a sprint (but I do wonder how he'd cope with a lengthy bike ride, or even a day's walking).

He'd be dead in the first ten minutes in a shinty match.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[eugene_roux]

Vernon Davis, for instance, is 6'3", 250 lbs. with abs. Bench Presses 225 for 33 reps, vertical jumps 42 inches, runs 100m in 10.7 seconds. You won't find any athlete in any other sport who is more of a well-rounded athlete than that.

Two Words: Beast Mtawarira

Have a quick look at the man here, on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1nCe9iZ2u0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0hOxFH3aC8

Then realise that this is Rugby, where a forward will tackle someone at that speed, put him down hard, and then bounce up to tackle his mate since the other bugger probably got a pass in before he went to ground.

And 6'3" and 113kg? A bit of a piker, no? <evil grin/>

Re:Who gives a shit?

[kamapuaa]

You're kidding, right?

6'3' 250 lbs with abs is like a bodybuilder. You are guy with a gut.

I guarantee you can not like 225 for 33 reps (~100kg/2 plates). It's similar to a 380 pound bench press for a single rep according to strstd.com. That would be enough to win powerlifting competitions, for instance the Arnold http://www.usapowerlifting.com/results/2012/2012_Arnold_Results.htm has people his weight lifting less than that.

A 10.7s 100m run would be an Olympic record for men 100 years ago. It's faster than any woman has ever run a 100m, for instance.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Gordonjcp]

I guarantee teletubby guy cannot carry 70kg of equipment up 24 flights of stairs. Well, maybe he can, but I bet he'd have to stop a few times.

Re:Who gives a shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, fat firemen are in the best shape.

Unity, Linux and Wasteland

[AngryAnt]

Just to clarify a common misunderstanding in the original article: Wasteland was not a trigger factor in getting Unity ported to Linux. The project Kickstarter happened to coincide with the announcement of the platform support, but did not cause it. Dedicated developers had been working on the port for a long time before it was announced. One does not simply walk into Linux.