Loki selecting beta-testers again

Faizout writes "Lokisoft is once again selecting beta-testers, this time for `Myth II: Soulblighter'. There are a few spots that are already taken; some of the people are those who failed to make it onto the beta-test list for Civ:CTP. "

Comments

Problems with their last port

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if I am the only one having these problems so I'll post here and see what y'all think.

I bought CivCTP from the Loki booth at Linux Expo this year. I was pretty excited but the excitement ended shortly after I got the wrapping off the box.

There were no installation instructions. Oh sure I figured it out myself in short order but really there should have been some kind of sheet or card telling you how to install the product. That was problem #1.

Problem #2, nearly 400MB got copied to my hard disk. Is that really necessary? This is a CD ROM game; why can't I play it off the CD ROM?

Problem #3: The install script has a flaky parser. If you put a trailing slash on the install path, the result is that the install script tries to use a double slash (DOH)

Problem #4: None of the symbolic links placed all over my filesystem worked. They weren't flagged as executable by the script (DOH!) This was just plain sloppy of Loki, IMO.

Problem #5: Start the game up, no sound. Seems this requires OSS sound drivers to run. It says so on the fine print on the box so I can't be too mad at Loki for that. Had to recompile my kernel though.

Problem #6: I can't play the game under KDE or Gnome. Even with the panel hidden, enough of it is still there to sufficiently block a good bit of the game. I started X with no window manager in order to play the game.

Problem #7: This is the big one. After many hours of gameplay, the game burps. Segmentation fault. This has happened to me three times in a row. Seems to happen after many hours of play, but I haven't been watching memory or anything to know if there is a leak.

For reference, my system is based on a Cyrix M2 233MHz CPU, 64MB SDRAM, Adaptec AHA2940UW SCSI controller with 1.5GB of hard disk. Sound card is a Sound Blaster AWE64 "Value". Network card is Intel Etherexpress 100B. Video is S3/ViRGE PCI with 4MB. OS is Red Hat 6.0 with out-of-the-box kernel source recompiled for OSS support.

I tried going to Loki's web site to see if there were any patches to fix this but their site was dead (it was before this story was posted so it wasn't /. effect)

There is no sign-up...

[Steelehead]

From the Main Page:

We are selecting 50 from the list of users whom we were unable to use for Civilization: Call to Power, and adding a few of the testers who contributed many reports and sleepless nights to that cause.

Read the details, people.

Re:It's not vaporware, as you imply

[dmorin]

First off, I implied nothing about vaporware. If I didn't make it clear that I was referring to the retail availability of the game, I apologize. But I intended to imply nothing about vaporware. I know the game is available. I read slashdot, linuxgames and all the others just like the rest of us.

Second, if I can't be bothered to order it online? How dare thee, sir. I don't know about everybody else, but I'm tired of Linux being a geeks OS. I'm tired of explaining to people "Oh, the best stuff is 'out there', but you have to go find it, you can't buy it on the shelf." For months now we've said that one of the inroads to making Linux a desktop OS is the availability of games. To me, that doesn't imply games that you can order online, it implies games that you can go to the store and buy. If we all go off and be geeks and order our game online, CompUSA will have that many fewer sales of the retail game, and how will that look to them? Will they bother to carry the next one that comes out? I would love to be playing Civ:CTP right now. Hell, I already had Quake and QuakeII, but I went out and bought them when they hit the shelf. I am attempting to wait patiently for Civ to hit the shelves, so that I can "vote with my dollars" and do my part to let the retail world know that there is a market for Linux games.

Can't be bothered indeed. Sheeesh!