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Gamecenter on Linux and Gaming
Ant was among a number of people who alerted us to the latest Gamecenter feature Linux and the Gaming Community. It's a bit sparse but attempts to bring the gaming community up to speed, and what it's good for.
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I ordered my copy from gamecellar.com. It was around $45 and I received it 4 days after I placed my order (which was on a Sunday).
Other than Quake III are they any 'new' or coming soon games for Linux? The ability to play a game I played 3 years ago isn't all the facinating.
It should be possible to ship Linux with the game. Either make the CD bootable or include a utility to make a boot diskette from an image on the CD from Windows. The advantage of this would be that you'd have total control of the environment. Currently you have to worry about the various shared libraries that the user has on his Linux box or if the user has Linux at all. Shipping a small Linux implementation with the game would allow you to avoid all those questions. Just stick the CD or boot disk in and reboot and the game starts right up.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
http://www.golgotha.org
;)
It'll be interesting to see how this goes - a GPL'd game developed on the net for OpenGL 3D.
crack.com went out of business but they released the source (say Yippee! for Dave Taylor).
One reason this project will be quite interesting is because game design may be quite different from open source system/networking software - storylines, gfx, etc. are more like making an interesting movie, and individual taste counts a lot more since the outcome is so vivid and subjective.
Hopefully it will also catch the eye of major gaming companies and build momentum. I know when I spent my $50 on Quake II, linux was facing the negative impression that its users were some kinda hippie deadbeats who were not going to BUY any software. id was among the few pioneers willing to buck the trend, and they are at least 50 bucks richer for it.
Oh, yes, that's right...you hate Microsoft because they're successful!
I don't hate MicroSoft because they're successful, I hate them because they distribute bloated crap software that occasionally invades both my privacy and my legal rights.
I don't hate Intel for making a business of faster, bigger chips, but I do dislike those ID numbers they want all their Pentium !!!'s to broadcast.
And Red Hat doesn't bother me, so long as they don't try to make their Linux the only Linux out there...which is a monopolistic practice that calls up shades of MicroSoft's marketing practices, and hints that the quality of the software will degrade when the choice of software is lacking.
"Such a well-thought-out and thoroughly mature rationale," indeed.
Anyone else notice the line: "Whatever the reason, more companies, Microsoft included, are jumping on the open-source bandwagon."
All MS had to do was invite ESR to speak, keep anouncing that they're "thinking about" opening up Windows, and invest in an open source project that focuses on the Windows-only version of Perl and now they're beginning to be included in all of the good press that open source is getting. And this article is really just about games on an open-source platform and MS still gets some good press.
All hail MS PR.
It's good to see Commercial Games coming to the market. I know a lot of people cringe at the word Commercial, but it's a fact of life that most "quality" games have commercial roots, and for good reason. The cool thing about Linux is a Game can be commercial, but developers from different companies can all work on the same open source API's and drivers. They can even delve into the Kernel if they need to. So yes, the game engine and graphics and story line are all proprietary, but the framework that talks to the computer and its devices can all remain open source, and benefit from it too.
On the lighter side... I asked my father 17 years ago for an Atari, and ended up with a computer. I was devastated, but in retrospect, it was the best damn investment he could've made. Although he must of cringed when I was going to Radio Shack every week spending his money on upgrades. Games are important to me. Even though I don't use Windows anymore, and don't want to, I sometime miss some of the Games I use to fire up after going buggy (pun not intended) from coding after 6 or 7 hours...
Long live Linux Games....
Fantus
The following are a few quotes from this article. Exact copies -- the typos are theirs.
"The creation of Linux began nearly a decade ago, in 1991, by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student at the University of Helsinki in Finland, and was completed in 1994 with the release of version 1.0 of the Linux Kernal."
So Linux was finished in 1994?
"Red Hat is definitely leading the distribution pack, and it's easy to understand why. As far as Linux goes, Red Hat's distributions are relatively simple to configure, and the $79.95 that the latest distribution, 6.0, will cost you gets you not only the OS but also a gang of other goodies as well."
People should stop talking about Red Hat like it's the only distribution worth considering.
I guess I should stop being so negative...
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This article should win some new linux converts. Not only did they say the magic words "faster" and "more stable" that will bring the power gamers into the fold, but they showed a bunch of X screen shots too. This might bring some rabid "windows customization" people (as if that's really possible)over as well.
Interestingly enough, the screen shots were not E/Gnome or KDE. At least one was WindowMaker. That was cool. I myself use E/Gnome, but its nice to see the other folks get some press for a change. The more options the better
Skippy
"False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent." - The Stainless Steel Rat
Maybe I'm just a f'ing ( use fucking or friggen ) old hag... I don't get it anymore.... A BBS (if this is one or not) used to have replies on the subject.... What does Unreal have to do with anything. I was in my glory days for a second and nobody can say anymore... Sorry... Computers suck really bad... and my rapid use of periods mean I am pissed. Get Off my thread....
Yeah, get off my thread... (To the Stones tune get off my cloud...)
Because I'm a pissed off drunk old hacker who can't take anymore of this global non conformist bullshit....
Fantus... Mail Bomb me if you must... I hate my ISP (and job that it may be).....
that's why on almost the first try a beta project like WINE ran it almost flawlessly.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
I know when I spent my $50 on Quake II, linux was facing the negative impression that its users were some kinda hippie deadbeats who were not going to BUY any software. id was among the few pioneers willing to buck the trend, and they are at least 50 bucks richer for it. ;)
It felt a little odd for penny-pinching me to spend $50 on the linux box of quake2 when the windows version was sitting next to it, at half the price, and I knew it'd be easy enough to just download the linux binarys and save $25. But this is one of those cases where voting with my wallet felt right. Keep it up, Id, and pay attention, other software companies.
Remember when windows came out and a lot of people were saying it was "The best game of solitaire $90 could buy"? Solitaire MADE windows and a lot of people still play it today.
Retail or Open-Source? Last I read, their FAQ said they had no intention of making a client for anything but 9x.
there ought to be a permanent test thread on slashdot
<blah>
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Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
This article mentioned that Origina Ultima Online is availble for Linux. This is the first I've heard of this, and is the reason Linux is sitting on a 486 in my corner instead of on my PII 400. I've already E-Mailed Origin for more information, but would like to ask you folks: First, is this a hoax? Is there really UO for Linux? Second, what OWO will never tell me: what is the qualtiy of the UO client for Linux. I mean UO even sucked on NT; Win9x were the only platform it ran well on.
According to the Loki web site, the wholesale price of the Windows and Linux versions of Civilization: Call to Power are the same, but Loki has no control over retailers' pricing and expects the Windows version to be sold for less by some retailers. I was pleased to see this was not the case at Beyond, which is selling the Linux version for $46.45 and the Windows version for $48.95. The downside is that the Windows version is shipped right away while the Linux version takes up to 2 weeks.