... as of the last Mesa benchmark I rememeber reading with a Voodoo3, the differences on equal systems were within 2%.
And what's more, as a 3D game developer, I can confirm that yes, the Linux drivers are well within my acceptable tolerance levels. (Just FYI: I get 20 fps running Aftershock (a free Q3A clone) on a P/233 with an original series Voodoo Graphics, with full detail, including lightmapping and shaders. So don't tell ME that that's not pushing the hardware limits)
... hopefully it'll surface. Time to port SDL over, I think.:-) On a side note, if we want a Linux powered console, why don't we just put Linux on an X-Box? Sure, might mean a few chip replacements and some reverse engineering, but you ought to be able to do it.
Well, I didn't actually see anything about tubular design on the page, maybe I missed it, but if they were actually using a Scotch tape dispenser, wouldn't that lead to alarmingly poor performance on non-sequential reads? You'd have to move the strip forwards and backwards... of course this is a problem with conventional tape drives.
Just make sure you de-frag your tape roll once in a while and everything'll be alright.
I'm going to have to take serious issue with this, even though it's blatant flamebait. As an adolescent, and a game developer, I see a wide variety of things wrong with your post... sounds like you're just trying to attract attention and get yourself moderated down. Here's my rebuttal.
1) The attempt to popularize Free Software has not been an unmitigated disaster. The fact that we do have, as you put it, "ten million adolescent morons" is an indication that we have succeeded. The computer in today's society, at least in the home-desktop market, is rapidly moving towards being a tool for entertainment.
If it wasn't for that "ten million adolescent morons" busy increasing Linux's desktop share up to 4.9% or whatever it is, Linux wouldn't have many of the new and wonderful features that I'm sure that you, as a man who seems to consider Linux totally unsuitable for anything besides hardcore server use and mathematical calculation, simply because not as many companies would have jumped on the band wagon.
2) Not all adolescents are morons. I am sixteen years old, and do know C, as well as C++, Perl, Pascal and x86 ASM. I've worked on and with a wide variety of open source software, from SDL to Mesa, doing everything from ASM hacking to documentation. My best friend, 17, spends his weekends fixing GNOME. And we are both avid gamers, programming as well as playing.
3) The developer pool has increased. Just look at Freshmeat these days... and look at all the people that I'm converting. Just a month ago, I ran into a guy at a bookstore (Chapters) happily reading a book on Graphics Programming with Visual Basic. We started chatting, and I asked him why the hell he was doing graphics programming in Visual Basic. Turns out he was actually writing a game in Excel, since that was all that he could afford. He was completely blown away when I said that if he just switched to Linux, he could enjoy free compilers, free GUIs, free debuggers, free everything. Another developer, just converted like that.
4) Not just game obsessed morons play games. As a measure of this, I doubt very many adolescent morons would play "Eric's Ultimate Solitare", which recently got a Loki Software port.
5) Linux video drivers are NOT bloated. Mesa and Utah-GLX are extremely tight. You want bloat, go look at DirectX.
In conclusion, may you get your fingers caught in your server while replacing the case, and may they be severed at the joints so that you may never again post this sort of drivel to Slashdot.
That's a bit of a misrepresentation. The reason that I want more control over my software is because I don't want some commercial game company taking it, doing cool things to it, and then using it for their own products and making a killing without even releasing the source so that it can be integrated back into the mainstream. Seeing as how they conceivably would get a free 3D engine, extremely versatile, complete with scripting language, the least they can do is put code back into the stream so that other people can use it.
I have no objection to the commercial part. As far as I'm concerned, that's kind of cool. (I can put it on my resume -- "My engine was used by FooBar Game Technologies!", plus it means that we actually get some quality engines in online games as opposed to some of the recent garbage I've seen masquerading as game engines). But I do object to them not sharing the goodness that they've added with everybody else.
Everybody is posting that this is a major test case for the GNU GPL to see how well it will stand up in court. This it is. This is the first major conflict over GPLed source code, and its enforceability. Granted, he's not trying to make any money off of it, which most of us thought would be the reason that the GNU GPL would be taken into court, but he's still in violation of the principles of the GPL. It's a good thing that it's John Carmack, who has enough energy, time, and money to attack this thing fully. We're guaranteed a good advocate. Give 'em whatfor, John.
The second thing that this concerns is what I'd eventually like to see: games released under the GNU GPL. The outcome of this affair, if Carmack wins, may convince some game company out there to experiment by releasing their source under the GPL and then selling the data on CD-ROM. If Carmack doesn't win and this mod maker guy does, then I'm very likely going to change the license agreement on the game I'm making (which does operate in this manner) from GPLed source code to either closed source or some license agreement which gives me more control.
It'd be interesting to see RMS's reaction to this.
It strikes me that perhaps we're looking at this problem from the wrong angle. We need to promote Linux as a gaming platform if it's to become a viable, competitive operating system. Microsoft Windows is _THE_ platform for games coming out; if there was a situation where you could get even 25% of the new hot titles for Linux only, and advertised, got them hyped, and reviewed. Never mind this porting stuff.
Let me put it this way.
If a company, like Nintendo, wants to advocate its gaming console, then it doesn't take all the old Playstation games and port them over. It releases new ones, and hypes them up, and says "Only for Nintendo 64!" That's what we need to do. To that end, I'd like to see Loki Software developing original titles, and I'd like to see companies start up to provide new titles for Linux. Anybody doing this, if you're looking for a games programmer, look my way.:-)
Suffice it to say, this is just plain nasty. I suspect that IF this passes and becomes a de facto standard in the United States, then Canadians and other US Trade partners are going to be seeing government attempts to enforce similar legislation, assuming that the idiots are foolish enough to try and pass this thing in the first place. Obviously, software marketers are going to want to be able to sell software overseas and be able to enforce the same lucrative conditions that they have at home, and I bet they'll be pulling the strings in an attempt to get this happening.
Since it does have to be approved at the state level, hopefully we can see some boycotting in action and some public awareness happening. If not, well, then, as everybody says, looks like GPL'ed software's gonna skyrocket. Thank goodness my latest GPL product, GNOME Armpit (ARMPIT: A rewritten mikmod-powered impulse tracker) is nearly done.
Technically, all that 3Dfx has done AFAIK for Linux 3Dfx support is to port (and then open source) Glide, and to create the/dev/3Dfx driver. They haven't attempted to integrate their code into other existing environs, like X, which is something that NVidia seems to have done (If I'm reading this information correctly) As a result, anything that wants to use the 3Dfx card has to call Glide, which adds ANOTHER level of redundancy. If they had integrated 3Dfx support directly into glx, or Mesa, or whatever, than that would have been nicer. Instead, they supplied us with a proprietary API which you then need to wrap. IMHO this is a Bad Thing. It means that since we can't see what's going on, our undertanding of how the card works and of all its hidden options is limited by what we can see from Glide. Besides which, Glide sucks.
What's more, if memory serves, they didn't write the original Linux version... somebody else did (Daryll Strauss?) and they later took control of it.
Kind of offtopic, but: If you're interested in this sort of thing, nip down to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of "High Tech Heretic" by Cliff Stoll. (A fellow who I personally would love to receive a/. interview, if he hasn't had one already) Stoll basically states that computers have no place in the classroom (amongst other things), and backs up his points convincingly. Definitely a very interesting and enlightening read.
Why don't we nominate the penguins for the "Most deserving to win $2000.00" beanie thing? That'd certainly help them out, and they'd probably put it to very good use. Even if the awards are distributed after the crisis is over, the association which is taking care of the penguins will be in the middle of a major cash crunch and I'm sure that they could use it.
I (Mordred) have a wonderful idea about how to deal with this award:
How 'bout donating it to MY open source project, Kosmos Online? Most people/projects only have ONE reason to receive a prestigious award like this... here's ten!
1) The developers are known as KODPIECE (Kosmos Online Developers, Proprieters, Instigators, Engineers, Creators, Etc.)
2) Money awarded as prizes will be used to further the project (an open-source online RPG) by buying things like hardware and bandwidth.
3) KOSMOS stands for Kinky Online Sex: Mordred's Only Salvation. I came up with Kosmos first, but we needed something for it to stand for... and this one won.:(
4) The main coder (me) is only 15. His mental age is 3.
5) I just got my age wrong. (I'm really 16) What's even worse is that I had to have it pointed out to me.
6) We have better makefiles than Verge 2.
7) I'm running low on Coke, and the Chinese take-out next door is threatening to seize possession of my computer. If this happens, it would be a tragic blow.
8) We're based in Canada, so $2000.00 US is really $4000.00 for us!
9) ESR doesn't need any more money after the VA Linux IPO, and if he doesn't win one of these Beanie awards I'll eat my hat.
10) Think of it as Charlie Brown's Christmas tree... "All it needs is a little love". (But money will do in a pinch)
Seriously, folks, Kosmos Online is a mildly cool project, which seems to be spawning more work on "spin-off" projects than on Kosmos Online itself... cool stuff like turning Loki Software's SDL into a GL Context selector, rewriting POV-Ray to double as a texture generator, research into real-time raytracing engines for use in games, and all sorts of interesting stuff... so think about it. For more information, drop me an e-mail at vining@pacificcoast.net.
Slashdot Mirror
... as of the last Mesa benchmark I rememeber reading with a Voodoo3, the differences on equal systems were within 2%.
And what's more, as a 3D game developer, I can confirm that yes, the Linux drivers are well within my acceptable tolerance levels. (Just FYI: I get 20 fps running Aftershock (a free Q3A clone) on a P/233 with an original series Voodoo Graphics, with full detail, including lightmapping and shaders. So don't tell ME that that's not pushing the hardware limits)
Nicholas
... hopefully it'll surface. Time to port SDL over, I think. :-) On a side note, if we want a Linux powered console, why don't we just put Linux on an X-Box? Sure, might mean a few chip replacements and some reverse engineering, but you ought to be able to do it.
Well, I didn't actually see anything about tubular design on the page, maybe I missed it, but if they were actually using a Scotch tape dispenser, wouldn't that lead to alarmingly poor performance on non-sequential reads? You'd have to move the strip forwards and backwards... of course this is a problem with conventional tape drives.
Just make sure you de-frag your tape roll once in a while and everything'll be alright.
Nicholas
> It take years of ignorance, closed mindedness, > and lazyness to make a moron. Glad to see Slashdot is populated by highly trained people. Nicholas
I'm going to have to take serious issue with this, even though it's blatant flamebait. As an adolescent, and a game developer, I see a wide variety of things wrong with your post... sounds like you're just trying to attract attention and get yourself moderated down. Here's my rebuttal.
1) The attempt to popularize Free Software has not been an unmitigated disaster. The fact that we do have, as you put it, "ten million adolescent morons" is an indication that we have succeeded. The computer in today's society, at least in the home-desktop market, is rapidly moving towards being a tool for entertainment.
If it wasn't for that "ten million adolescent morons" busy increasing Linux's desktop share up to 4.9% or whatever it is, Linux wouldn't have many of the new and wonderful features that I'm sure that you, as a man who seems to consider Linux totally unsuitable for anything besides hardcore server use and mathematical calculation, simply because not as many companies would have jumped on the band wagon.
2) Not all adolescents are morons. I am sixteen years old, and do know C, as well as C++, Perl, Pascal and x86 ASM. I've worked on and with a wide variety of open source software, from SDL to Mesa, doing everything from ASM hacking to documentation. My best friend, 17, spends his weekends fixing GNOME. And we are both avid gamers, programming as well as playing.
3) The developer pool has increased. Just look at Freshmeat these days... and look at all the people that I'm converting. Just a month ago, I ran into a guy at a bookstore (Chapters) happily reading a book on Graphics Programming with Visual Basic. We started chatting, and I asked him why the hell he was doing graphics programming in Visual Basic. Turns out he was actually writing a game in Excel, since that was all that he could afford. He was completely blown away when I said that if he just switched to Linux, he could enjoy free compilers, free GUIs, free debuggers, free everything. Another
developer, just converted like that.
4) Not just game obsessed morons play games. As a measure of this, I doubt very many adolescent morons would play "Eric's Ultimate Solitare", which recently got a Loki Software port.
5) Linux video drivers are NOT bloated. Mesa and Utah-GLX are extremely tight. You want bloat, go look at DirectX.
In conclusion, may you get your fingers caught in your server while replacing the case, and may they be severed at the joints so that you may never again post this sort of drivel to Slashdot.
(sorry if I seem grumpy, I've had a bad day)
Nicholas
OK, but has anybody tried dialing the number?
That's a bit of a misrepresentation. The reason that I want more control over my software is because I don't want some commercial game company taking it, doing cool things to it, and then using it for their own products and making a killing without even releasing the source so that it can be integrated back into the mainstream. Seeing as how they conceivably would get a free 3D engine, extremely versatile, complete with scripting language, the least they can do is put code back into the stream so that other people can use it.
I have no objection to the commercial part. As far as I'm concerned, that's kind of cool. (I can put it on my resume -- "My engine was used by FooBar Game Technologies!", plus it means that we actually get some quality engines in online games as opposed to some of the recent garbage I've seen masquerading as game engines). But I do object to them not sharing the goodness that they've added with everybody else.
Everybody is posting that this is a major test case for the GNU GPL to see how well it will stand up in court. This it is. This is the first major conflict over GPLed source code, and its enforceability. Granted, he's not trying to make any money off of it, which most of us thought would be the reason that the GNU GPL would be taken into court, but he's still in violation of the principles of the GPL. It's a good thing that it's John Carmack, who has enough energy, time, and money to attack this thing fully. We're guaranteed a good advocate. Give 'em whatfor, John.
The second thing that this concerns is what I'd eventually like to see: games released under the GNU GPL. The outcome of this affair, if Carmack wins, may convince some game company out there to experiment by releasing their source under the GPL and then selling the data on CD-ROM. If Carmack doesn't win and this mod maker guy does, then I'm very likely going to change the license agreement on the game I'm making (which does operate in this manner) from GPLed source code to either closed source or some license agreement which gives me more control.
It'd be interesting to see RMS's reaction to this.
It strikes me that perhaps we're looking at this problem from the wrong angle. We need to promote Linux as a gaming platform if it's to become a viable, competitive operating system. Microsoft Windows is _THE_ platform for games coming out; if there was a situation where you could get even 25% of the new hot titles for Linux only, and advertised, got them hyped, and reviewed. Never mind this porting stuff.
:-)
Let me put it this way.
If a company, like Nintendo, wants to advocate its gaming console, then it doesn't take all the old Playstation games and port them over. It releases new ones, and hypes them up, and says "Only for Nintendo 64!" That's what we need to do. To that end, I'd like to see Loki Software developing original titles, and I'd like to see companies start up to provide new titles for Linux. Anybody doing this, if you're looking for a games programmer, look my way.
Microsoft already has an NDA in their standard EULA. Wonder why all the NT vs. Linux benchmarks look so good? :-)
.. thank god I live in Canada.
Suffice it to say, this is just plain nasty. I suspect that IF this passes and becomes a de facto standard in the United States, then Canadians and other US Trade partners are going to be seeing government attempts to enforce similar legislation, assuming that the idiots are foolish enough to try and pass this thing in the first place. Obviously, software marketers are going to want to be able to sell software overseas and be able to enforce the same lucrative conditions that they have at home, and I bet they'll be pulling the strings in an attempt to get this happening.
Since it does have to be approved at the state level, hopefully we can see some boycotting in action and some public awareness happening. If not, well, then, as everybody says, looks like GPL'ed software's gonna skyrocket. Thank goodness my latest GPL product, GNOME Armpit (ARMPIT: A rewritten mikmod-powered impulse tracker) is nearly done.
Technically, all that 3Dfx has done AFAIK for Linux 3Dfx support is to port (and then open source) Glide, and to create the /dev/3Dfx driver. They haven't attempted to integrate their code into other existing environs, like X, which is something that NVidia seems to have done (If I'm reading this information correctly) As a result, anything that wants to use the 3Dfx card has to call Glide, which adds ANOTHER level of redundancy. If they had integrated 3Dfx support directly into glx, or Mesa, or whatever, than that would have been nicer. Instead, they supplied us with a proprietary API which you then need to wrap. IMHO this is a Bad Thing. It means that since we can't see what's going on, our undertanding of how the card works and of all its hidden options is limited by what we can see from Glide. Besides which, Glide sucks.
What's more, if memory serves, they didn't write the original Linux version... somebody else did (Daryll Strauss?) and they later took control of it.
Kind of offtopic, but: If you're interested in this sort of thing, nip down to your local bookstore and pick up a copy of "High Tech Heretic" by Cliff Stoll. (A fellow who I personally would love to receive a /. interview, if he hasn't had one already) Stoll basically states that computers have no place in the classroom (amongst other things), and backs up his points convincingly. Definitely a very interesting and enlightening read.
Why don't we nominate the penguins for the "Most deserving to win $2000.00" beanie thing? That'd certainly help them out, and they'd probably put it to very good use. Even if the awards are distributed after the crisis is over, the association which is taking care of the penguins will be in the middle of a major cash crunch and I'm sure that they could use it.
I (Mordred) have a wonderful idea about how to deal with this award:
:(
How 'bout donating it to MY open source project, Kosmos Online? Most people/projects only have ONE reason to receive a prestigious award like this... here's ten!
1) The developers are known as KODPIECE (Kosmos Online Developers, Proprieters, Instigators, Engineers, Creators, Etc.)
2) Money awarded as prizes will be used to further the project (an open-source online RPG) by buying things like hardware and bandwidth.
3) KOSMOS stands for Kinky Online Sex: Mordred's Only Salvation. I came up with Kosmos first, but we needed something for it to stand for... and this one won.
4) The main coder (me) is only 15. His mental age is 3.
5) I just got my age wrong. (I'm really 16) What's even worse is that I had to have it pointed out to me.
6) We have better makefiles than Verge 2.
7) I'm running low on Coke, and the Chinese take-out next door is threatening to seize possession of my computer. If this happens, it would be a tragic blow.
8) We're based in Canada, so $2000.00 US is really $4000.00 for us!
9) ESR doesn't need any more money after the VA Linux IPO, and if he doesn't win one of these Beanie awards I'll eat my hat.
10) Think of it as Charlie Brown's Christmas tree... "All it needs is a little love". (But money will do in a pinch)
Seriously, folks, Kosmos Online is a mildly cool project, which seems to be spawning more work on "spin-off" projects than on Kosmos Online itself... cool stuff like turning Loki Software's SDL into a GL Context selector, rewriting POV-Ray to double as a texture generator, research into real-time raytracing engines for use in games, and all sorts of interesting stuff... so think about it. For more information, drop me an e-mail at vining@pacificcoast.net.
Kosmos Online... the *very* alternative choice.
... we now return you to your regular Trolls.