Loki to Distribute Quake III Arena

Everyone in the known universe has been submitting the news that Loki Software will be publishing and distributing Quake III Arena for Linux. The game will be published Dec. 27. The box will be a limited-edition collector's tin box and will include SuSE Linux 6.3. Asking price is 50$.

Comments

Shipping Info

[MichaelKVance]

The game will be in *stores* on the 27th, but we're shipping CDs as soon as we possibly can, by 2nd day Fed-Ex. You'll get your box later. See

http://quake3.lokigames.com/ship.html

m.
Programmer, Loki Entertainment

What I'd like to see...

[bjb]

What I would like to see is the Linux version of Quake III released on a bootable CD which would detect your configuration and just 'run'. You know, that ancient concept which goes back to the Apple ][ days when you'd just stick a disk in the drive, turn on the machine and the program would just load and run automatically? I think it's certainly feasible, as long as there is at least 100MB available on the CD.

Of course, you'd also have to be able to run it from your booted system, but it would be a very cool thing (and powerful message?) if the most popular game of 2000 was just boot-and-run, and was powered by Linux.

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OT: Yet another game going Linux

[TheFitz]

Slashdot doesn't seem to want to run this story, so I'm going to point it out here. Tribes2 (being developed by Dynamix) is going to be ported to Linux. If you go to the URL here you will see that they have plans to make a Linux and Mac port and are looking for help on the sound systems for those platforms and such. I am a HUGe fan of Tribes and am EXTREMELY happy that Tribes2 is going to be on the Linux platform.

Mesa on non-hardware-accelerated computers

[Forkenhoppen]

Now that we're getting more OpenGL games than ever coming out for Linux, I think it might be a good time to address the problem of video card hardware support.

Many of us don't have 3D accelerators that work under Linux. While I'd like to have my hardware working under Linux, I realize that it's probably not going to happen any time this millenium.

So instead, I have a suggestion. Mesa currently has only one mode for software rendering--high quality. Is there any way that a low-quality software rendering mode could be introduced into Mesa? How difficult would it be to add this to the libraries, maybe have it switched on/off by an environment variable? How much of a slow-down would it introduce into the libraries, by having forked logic like this?

Because honestly, if I were to buy a copy of Quake III right now, I'd have to buy the Windows version because I haven't the "right" hardware 3D-accelerator. A sped-up, but much less visually correct, version of Mesa might make it easier for someone like me to bite the bullet and buy the Linux version, so that when I upgrade/if I upgrade to a 3D accelerated card, I'll have it under the OS I prefer.

(I realize this is pretty selfish, but it's also one of the reasons why you're not going to see many Windows users switching over to Linux any time soon. If I can't install Linux on someone else's 600Mhz Athalon, and be able to show them a kick-ass 3D game with a frame rate higher than 1.5/s...)


James

Re:Quake, Privacy & Piracy

[Zoid]

We thought long and hard about CD Key issues before we decided to go with them. With a game like Quake3: Arena where multiplayer is an essential focus of the game--protecting against unlicensed use is a necessity.

I'd like to address some of your points directly tho.

1. The authentication code only denies when we are sure you aren't using a valid key. If the authentication server can't be reached, we allow the player on. We only deny when we're sure you're not legit. This may allow some unlicensed people to play, but overall the idea is to only annoy (and mostly deny) people who didn't buy the game.

2. Stolen keys can be a problem. However, we have a pretty long key string and the chances of guessing (generating) one are several billions to one. The biggest concern I have is people ripping open boxes in stores and writing down keys (it happened with Half Life). I think there's a return policy for that. Activision would have more information about that.

3. Yes, it can be viewed you are mostly at the whim of the producer. It is our game and you license it, not purchase it from us. You get unlimited play when you spend that one time purchase fee.

In regards to LAN play, no keys are used when playing on a local LAN, so you can spawn LAN games with your friends.

CD Key systems are a necessary evil. I'd wish we could go without one, but in the era of digital copying and licensing, it's one of the best solutions out there right now.

Honestly, I think key based solutions for network specific software (The keys in Q3 are only used in multiplayer) is probably the way the future is heading.

DIVX is an interesting comparison. The problem with DIVX is that it would track much more general information that we can with CDKeys. DIVX would tell them not only that you watch movies, but what movies, when and how many times. With CDKeys, all we know is that you bought our game and play it sometimes.

As for privacy issues, sites like the CLQ, http://www.theclq.com, do much more tracking than CDKeys do. They poll all the servers everywhere and keep track of players and generate stats. We don't have any ability to attached a CDKey to player name (the name is not sent with the authorization request).

I will agree that the privacy issues with unique identifier (key) based systems can be a little scary. We'll do our best to make sure that our system is used for what its intended for--to stop people from stealing our game.