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Draeker speaks on Linux Game Development
Stargazer writes "Scott Draeker, of Loki Entertainment Software (the company porting Civ3 to Linux if you haven't been paying attention) has an article featured in Game Developer Magazine (sorry, no online version). While most of the article focuses on the strengths of Linux, he does go into the power open-source can give to games -- namely, well-designed developer kits and the ability to modify the OS to the game's needs. Heavy stuff, considering all the craziness among distributions that could cause... " BTW, having recieved my copy of the beta for Civ:CFP. Wow. I'm salivating for the review/final version.
Which issue month of this magazine has the article? Magazines anymore come out with dates on em so far in the future, I want to get the right one. I was at a bookstore a few days ago, and they had some dated June 99. It's a crazy industry.
TedC
Many (if not most) game developers will tell you that they need to get the OS out of the way so they can fulfill their need for speed. However, they also want their games to work transparently on multiple hardware platforms, which is what the OS layer is supposed to do for you, so they find themselves wanting it both ways.
It turns out that it is possible to get high-performance out of even heavy OSes like Linux, but the libraries need to be designed very carefully. A lot of thought needs to be devoted into isolating the bottlenecks, characterizing them, and then designing the library so that the bottleneck vanishes or is substantially diminished. This is not easy or quick work. It requires four people (at most) to sit and think a lot. (I know; I'm in the middle of something like it right now.)
I also posted a Roadmap for Linux Gaming to Slashdot some days ago, which I think may be applicable here.
I'll read the article when my copy of Game Developer arrives.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
A **BETTER** strategy might be to make a low-end
.then show how much .and then,
LINUX with a wide variety of supported boxes, an
idiot-proof setup program, and an auto-configured,
auto-running XFree86 or KDE. . . drop the
compilers, extra configurability, etc, for a fixed
version. . .
(I realize I'm advocating a Win-95'ing of LINUX,
to get newbies into it. .
BETTER it runs, when you learn to customize
it to your individual system. .
they're suddenly one of us. . . )
No shame in that.
You want an auto-configuring "Linux lite". Sounds like a very good plan to me. Reproduce the one piece of MS software that actually works better than anybody else's; the install-time configurator. As far as minimizing the system, you'd just want a stripped-down kernel and fewer daemons running around.
The alternative is to put together a software spec for a Linux game machine. Power users and geeks would download the video drivers and other software to make their systems compliant, while comopanies could make money building miniature Linux boxen that just meet the software spec, and selling them alongside the Nintendo consoles.
Which game outfit wants to make a Linux console? Show of hands, please.
--The basis of all love is respect
I haven't read the article (I will), but is he actually suggesting that developers will modify the OS to their own ends?
No comments so far on that little tidbit, but that seems like a pretty damned big deal to me; what exactly does he mean?
If I were going to run Quake XIII on my 2Ghz Linux box, is he implying that I would optimize my experience by booting with a recompiled QuakeLinux(tm)?
I guess that might actually be sort of a possibility, once we all move to Solid State hard drives or are in some other manner able to reboot almost instantly.
Far out. Does anyone else find the idea of an application-optimized OS as weird as I do?
\
Now that somebody posted the article, I see that the writer wasn't actually going that far, but:
My point was, what if it got to the point where we could reboot on the fly--cf: solid state hard drives--and thus, application writers could AT THEIR OPTION, use the entire (open source) OS as reusable code.... like a really huge source code library.
Thus you would still get the no-need-to-rewrite advantages of having an OS, but you COULD rewrite the parts that were slowing down your app, if you wanted to maximize performance.
In other words, if the standard Linux methods for addressing video memory were a compromise that allowed all sorts of applications to run on top of them,(they are) you could just rewrite them so that your 3-D FPPSEU game ran insanely fast, although the resulting OS would suck at running spreadsheets.
Just a thought, but it is one possible outgrowth of the open source phenomenon.
\
Posted by Jobu3D:
Re-typed from my magazine. GDMag is kind of hard to find, so I figured some of you might still wanna read it. yes, I typed this all, so excuse the typos.
Making a case for Linux Games:
Great ideas seem obvious in retrospect. nearly eight months after founding Loki Entertainment Software, putting games onto Linux is starting to seem obvious, too.
For those of you recently returning from the outer rings, Linux is a free, open-source operating system. It's fast, stable, reliable, and responsive - technically equivalent and often superior to commercial OS's because Linux development is driven by technology, not marketing. Think of the Linux development community as the world's only functioning meritocracy. Only the best code survives. A solice estimate of Linux users is difficult to come by - it's perfectly acceptable to download the OS or copy it for a friend - but the most reliable figures put the '98 Linux installed base somewhere between 12 and 15 million.
Still, you might ask, isn't Linux just a server OS? Well, International Data Corp. estimates that Linux held about two percent of the worldwide *desktop* market in 1998. Quite remarkable for an OS which has only recently begun to see desktop applications. The trend is familiar. New technologies often trickle down from high-end applications, such as servers to the consumer desktop.
It's true that most of the applications are beginning to appear. There are two very good GUI's for Linux already availabl: KDE and GNOME. There are also several good Linux office applications, including Corel's recently released Wordperfect 8.0. Wordperfect was downloaded over 250K times within two weeks of its release. Who's to say games aren't next?
Not only will linux became an increasingly viable dekstop OS - I beleive that it's also going to be the gaming OS of choice. because Linux is open source, it's possible to make changes to the OS itself to enhance game performance. By developing on Linux, the game industry will further Linux development - and build in superior game play.
That's why we chose to port Activisions Civilization: Call to Power to the Linux platform. At Loki, we license the rights to pirt successful game titles to Linux. The original developer provides us with the source code (which we do not release). We then port the game. Loki tests, publishes, and supports the Linux port - and pays the original developer royalties. This way, we're able to deliver the best titles the PC game world has to offer to our customers.
All developers could potentially benefit. Gan-related software libraries are also oen source in the Linux world and this gain all the benefits of the open-source model. In our own company, we are currently sing the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) to support input, graphics, and sound. The changes we make to SDL in our porting work will be publically available - source code and all. Eyes will begin combing the code. With thousands of developers scrutinizing SDL code, bugs will be found and fixed faster than they would in any single company's product.
Open source also encourages open standards. And open standards translate into lower costs for developers and fewer headaches for users. linux is far more likely to standardize on a particular 3D API, for example. By contrast, Windows developers struffle to support competing 3D, sound, and other propietary formats.
The combined benefits of an open source OS, open source libraries, and open standards add up to a superior gaming environment. In the near future, the same game running on the same hardware will be faster, more stable, and more responsive on Linux. Hardcore gamers will pick up on this quickly. What about game developers?