If memory serves me correctly, the game was written around Voodoo 3 cards and GLIDE. The rest of the 3D accelleration was kinda just a cheap add-in. Software 3D mode will suit nearly all other cards best in that game. I don't think that it is something that Blizzard has ever addressed.
You are comparing OpenGL to DirectX, which is a no-no. Perhaps you meant to compare it to Direct3D, a component of DirectX. OpenGL is crucial to the development of 3D on all platforms except for Windows. It provides a standard, platform independant 3D API for people to develop software. What else is there that is so widespread? What do you propose?
Linux already has its own DirectX-like wrapper system. It is called SDL and it is multi-platform, unlike DirectX. It allows you have "low level access to a video framebuffer, audio output, mouse, keyboard, and joysticks across a wide variety of operating systems." (from the libSDL page). With that, it supports plugins and addons, and a full rewrite is going into SDL 2.0 to make it much more robust and flexible. It is a proven and powerful method of producing games on Linux, and is nowadays seen in most commercial apps.
Honestly.. I hate to say it, but you seem to be doing nothing more than talking in circles. I honestly wonder how some of you people on Slashdot make these things up. While I agree that there aren't nearly as many gamers that use Linux, there is still a userbase- and a growing one. As for your suggestion of mimicing DirectX- that's already been attempted. It's called WINEX. It's a layer between a layer between a device. Work is being done on attempting to create an Open DirectX-like library and API, but don't count on it working out. It only provides a wrapper for existing OpenGL devices right now. There is a reason that Microsoft changes DirectX every year. It isn't just about adding new features. Backwards compatibility is shady at best.
Reading the documentation makes it seem a lot tougher than it actually is. It would seem that all of the information there is to actually help you set up specific videocards for overlays and accelleration. Most binary driver installers seem to do this automatically for you though nowadays, so it isn't really an issue.
It did take me some tweaking to figure out what worked best. It seems that in most cases though, XV (video) and SDL (sound) are the best choices. Make sure thatyou are using XFree 4.2 and have the best drivers for your card. nVidia, PowerVR, ATi (with GATOS drivers), most S3 cards, Neomagic (with a modified driver), and Trident cards work. OpenGL output can work with just about any OpenGL card, but it is slower. There is also a framebuffer driver for Matrox cards.
This means that those trailers can be played full-screen now. Never thought about that one. I always hated how you had to upgrade Quicktime to get that feature. Is it still the case? If so, not on Linux.;)
Extract the codec pack to the specified directory. I think that it is something like "/usr/lib/Win32" or something like that.
Download the MPlayer source from the MPlayer homepage.
./configure --enable-gui (optional) make make install (as root)
Is that different than any other program that you compile yourself? It has a makefile, and it works perfectly. The only thing that you need to know is your video output, which is usually XV for nVidia and other cards like PowerVR Kyro products.
Executing MPlayer is pretty simple
mplayer -vo xv -ao sdl *filename*
You can also add the -vo and -ao formats to the config file, so you never have to enter them. This is all that the documentation really covers. It is the difficult part. The video output method varies depending on your videocard, but XV is the most common.
Are you sure that WINE isn't only needed to install Quicktime to leech the codecs? There hasn't been a single codec that has required WINE for anything that has played through MPlayer.
I know that they've been halfway there to achieving Sorenson playback for a while. Video has worked very nicely. It is the audio that didn't play back. Doing this in a bass-ackwards sort of way with WINE wouldn't really seem like something that they would do.
I can't imagine how it would be any different than how they implemented WMV support and the likes. I think that the MPlayer guys are just really good coders/hackers. They seem to be able to take a Windows codec and find out what makes it tick. Maybe they make modifications to the codec file. I do know that the MPlayer codec pack is not designed to work in Windows, despite it's inclusion of hacked Win32 codecs.
As far as I can tell, this was the last major codec that didn't work. Well, it kinda worked before, but sound was unplayable. As of yet though, I've not come across any other file that didn't play.
If you get MPlayer, the codec pack, and configure it for XV video output and SDL audio output on a properly accellerated system, the playback produces virtually no CPU load. It is an incredible program. I really like the fact that the GUI is completely optional, and you can just use keypresses to manipulate movie playback.
This rocks! Now I can play those Harry Potter 2 trailers for my girlfriend. The interesting thing is that I just downloaded Pre-10 last night, hoping that this codec was complete. Unfortunately, it wasn't. But the guys at MPlayer cracked the code. You rock! Thanks for making the best video player for UNIX/Linux. No thanks to Apple for being a royal pain in the butt when it comes to their video format.
Speaking of MPlayer, has anyone tried this? It is a plugin for Mozilla that uses XV overlays and MPlayer to show movies in Mozilla. I'd imagine that it works with plugin compatible apps like Opera also. I haven't tried it yet. Can anyone offer their opinions? I am looking forward to a time when I can finally play those annoying streaming WMV videos in my browser, without having to fight with some ASX file that redirects.
It may work, but some drivers have specific tweaks for specific LCD displays on certain notebooks. They don't suggest that you use generic drivers for them, even though they will probably work.
Not to mention that for a while, it was *the* platform for video apps. I can still remember Toaster and Lightwave 5 on those things. We probably have a few of these boxes around here, somewhere.
A lot of these inexpensive DVD players have standard IDE drives inside. I could pull the drive from my Apex AD-660 for instance, and pop it right into my PC if I desired to.
These are some of the most flexible and hackable DVD players on the market, and their price point is pretty low. I love my region-free AD-660.
I don't understand how people consider KDE 3 to be slow when 128 MB of RAM is not a significantly large amount by any means. What do they expect- should a modern GUI run on 32 MB of RAM still? I don't think so.
My experiences are the same as yours. 128 MB of RAM with a properly accelerated videocard will let you run KDE 3 just fine on a lower end CPU (we're talking as low as 200+ MHz). I've run it on a notebook with 32 MB of RAM, and granted, it's slow, but with 128 MB of RAM the swap file work is cut to a minimum. Really, you couldn't run Windows XP (or 2000) on the same system with better results.
I'll refer you to my reply to a post of similar nature, in which another troll (such as yourself) stated the same thing without backing it up with fact.
Please! Not more of this "X is bad for desktop machines" BS. Why is it that you trolls can talk about how bad it is, yet you can never offer viable explanations as to WHY there is a problem with it.
Give your machine a proper installation. Give your machine proper drivers for accelleration. Then come back to me and tell me what is wrong with X. I'll be waiting.
It is looking like there will be a bit of a delay for the Linux and BSD versions of Presto, until some time after the Windows release. That is probably why they are trying to get 6.1 as stable as possible- to gear up for 7.0.
Actually, I don't expect Presto to arrive on Linux until December or January, at the earliest.
The newest versions of Opera for Linux are really good about working with QT 3. I have mine set up and skinned with Mosfet's Liquid just fine. In the past though, that wasn't the case. They used to use QT 2, but about a month ago they switched. There were some problems at first with black boxes on certain windows when you would apply QT skins, but that seems to be fine now. Also, linking to libqt-mt would also couse a few incompatibilties, but that may have been corrected.
They are trying to keep the binaries as small as possible, and that is tougher for them to do on Linux, due to the subtle differences between some of the distributions. At least, that is the impression that I got from the programmers.
Originally, when my service was installed, I was running Win2k. I've had to make a service call or two because the morons didn't properly label my connection out in the box, so they kept disconnecting my cable. When I make a service call and they ask which OS I use, I just say "Windows 2000". The tech came out and reconnected my line. I fired up Slackware 8.1 and asked him if it would be a problem. He said that it wasn't a big deal as long as we could test that it was active. Everything seemed fine, and he went on his merry way, seeming to be actually be kinda impressed with my Linux setup.
It's good to have a crappy old drive laying around with a Windows installation on it just in case. I mentioned to the installer that if Linux was a problem, then I could swap it out. Generally though, they don't want to wait, so they deal with it so that they can get on with their service calls.
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If memory serves me correctly, the game was written around Voodoo 3 cards and GLIDE. The rest of the 3D accelleration was kinda just a cheap add-in. Software 3D mode will suit nearly all other cards best in that game. I don't think that it is something that Blizzard has ever addressed.
You are comparing OpenGL to DirectX, which is a no-no. Perhaps you meant to compare it to Direct3D, a component of DirectX. OpenGL is crucial to the development of 3D on all platforms except for Windows. It provides a standard, platform independant 3D API for people to develop software. What else is there that is so widespread? What do you propose?
Linux already has its own DirectX-like wrapper system. It is called SDL and it is multi-platform, unlike DirectX. It allows you have "low level access to a video framebuffer, audio output, mouse, keyboard, and joysticks across a wide variety of operating systems." (from the libSDL page). With that, it supports plugins and addons, and a full rewrite is going into SDL 2.0 to make it much more robust and flexible. It is a proven and powerful method of producing games on Linux, and is nowadays seen in most commercial apps.
Honestly.. I hate to say it, but you seem to be doing nothing more than talking in circles. I honestly wonder how some of you people on Slashdot make these things up. While I agree that there aren't nearly as many gamers that use Linux, there is still a userbase- and a growing one. As for your suggestion of mimicing DirectX- that's already been attempted. It's called WINEX. It's a layer between a layer between a device. Work is being done on attempting to create an Open DirectX-like library and API, but don't count on it working out. It only provides a wrapper for existing OpenGL devices right now. There is a reason that Microsoft changes DirectX every year. It isn't just about adding new features. Backwards compatibility is shady at best.
Reading the documentation makes it seem a lot tougher than it actually is. It would seem that all of the information there is to actually help you set up specific videocards for overlays and accelleration. Most binary driver installers seem to do this automatically for you though nowadays, so it isn't really an issue.
It did take me some tweaking to figure out what worked best. It seems that in most cases though, XV (video) and SDL (sound) are the best choices. Make sure thatyou are using XFree 4.2 and have the best drivers for your card. nVidia, PowerVR, ATi (with GATOS drivers), most S3 cards, Neomagic (with a modified driver), and Trident cards work. OpenGL output can work with just about any OpenGL card, but it is slower. There is also a framebuffer driver for Matrox cards.
This means that those trailers can be played full-screen now. Never thought about that one. I always hated how you had to upgrade Quicktime to get that feature. Is it still the case? If so, not on Linux. ;)
There is also a GUI for mencoder. It requires QT3 (a KDE app).
http://sourceforge.net/projects/kmencoder/
Extract the codec pack to the specified directory. I think that it is something like "/usr/lib/Win32" or something like that.
./configure --enable-gui (optional)
Download the MPlayer source from the MPlayer homepage.
make
make install (as root)
Is that different than any other program that you compile yourself? It has a makefile, and it works perfectly. The only thing that you need to know is your video output, which is usually XV for nVidia and other cards like PowerVR Kyro products.
Executing MPlayer is pretty simple
mplayer -vo xv -ao sdl *filename*
You can also add the -vo and -ao formats to the config file, so you never have to enter them. This is all that the documentation really covers. It is the difficult part. The video output method varies depending on your videocard, but XV is the most common.
Are you sure that WINE isn't only needed to install Quicktime to leech the codecs? There hasn't been a single codec that has required WINE for anything that has played through MPlayer.
I know that they've been halfway there to achieving Sorenson playback for a while. Video has worked very nicely. It is the audio that didn't play back. Doing this in a bass-ackwards sort of way with WINE wouldn't really seem like something that they would do.
I didn't know that it existed. Here's a link that I found
http://fredrik.hubbe.net/plugger.html
Says that it works with Opera, so it has my attention. Does it work with streaming of WMV files?
I can't imagine how it would be any different than how they implemented WMV support and the likes. I think that the MPlayer guys are just really good coders/hackers. They seem to be able to take a Windows codec and find out what makes it tick. Maybe they make modifications to the codec file. I do know that the MPlayer codec pack is not designed to work in Windows, despite it's inclusion of hacked Win32 codecs.
But a player would be nice. Even Real Networks has a community supported player for UNIX/Linux.
As far as I can tell, this was the last major codec that didn't work. Well, it kinda worked before, but sound was unplayable. As of yet though, I've not come across any other file that didn't play.
Here is a codec status page: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html. It is updated frequently.
If you get MPlayer, the codec pack, and configure it for XV video output and SDL audio output on a properly accellerated system, the playback produces virtually no CPU load. It is an incredible program. I really like the fact that the GUI is completely optional, and you can just use keypresses to manipulate movie playback.
http://www.webfreetv.com/linux/
I haven't tried this plugin yet, but I noticed it last night. Perhaps someone here can tell us about their experiences with it?
This rocks! Now I can play those Harry Potter 2 trailers for my girlfriend. The interesting thing is that I just downloaded Pre-10 last night, hoping that this codec was complete. Unfortunately, it wasn't. But the guys at MPlayer cracked the code. You rock! Thanks for making the best video player for UNIX/Linux. No thanks to Apple for being a royal pain in the butt when it comes to their video format.
Speaking of MPlayer, has anyone tried this? It is a plugin for Mozilla that uses XV overlays and MPlayer to show movies in Mozilla. I'd imagine that it works with plugin compatible apps like Opera also. I haven't tried it yet. Can anyone offer their opinions? I am looking forward to a time when I can finally play those annoying streaming WMV videos in my browser, without having to fight with some ASX file that redirects.
It may work, but some drivers have specific tweaks for specific LCD displays on certain notebooks. They don't suggest that you use generic drivers for them, even though they will probably work.
Not to mention that for a while, it was *the* platform for video apps. I can still remember Toaster and Lightwave 5 on those things. We probably have a few of these boxes around here, somewhere.
A lot of these inexpensive DVD players have standard IDE drives inside. I could pull the drive from my Apex AD-660 for instance, and pop it right into my PC if I desired to.
These are some of the most flexible and hackable DVD players on the market, and their price point is pretty low. I love my region-free AD-660.
Finally, tech-based legal advice that doesn't begin with "IANAL".
I don't understand how people consider KDE 3 to be slow when 128 MB of RAM is not a significantly large amount by any means. What do they expect- should a modern GUI run on 32 MB of RAM still? I don't think so.
My experiences are the same as yours. 128 MB of RAM with a properly accelerated videocard will let you run KDE 3 just fine on a lower end CPU (we're talking as low as 200+ MHz). I've run it on a notebook with 32 MB of RAM, and granted, it's slow, but with 128 MB of RAM the swap file work is cut to a minimum. Really, you couldn't run Windows XP (or 2000) on the same system with better results.
I'll refer you to my reply to a post of similar nature, in which another troll (such as yourself) stated the same thing without backing it up with fact.
Enjoy...
Please! Not more of this "X is bad for desktop machines" BS. Why is it that you trolls can talk about how bad it is, yet you can never offer viable explanations as to WHY there is a problem with it.
Give your machine a proper installation. Give your machine proper drivers for accelleration. Then come back to me and tell me what is wrong with X. I'll be waiting.
Except at Sun.
It is looking like there will be a bit of a delay for the Linux and BSD versions of Presto, until some time after the Windows release. That is probably why they are trying to get 6.1 as stable as possible- to gear up for 7.0.
Actually, I don't expect Presto to arrive on Linux until December or January, at the earliest.
The newest versions of Opera for Linux are really good about working with QT 3. I have mine set up and skinned with Mosfet's Liquid just fine. In the past though, that wasn't the case. They used to use QT 2, but about a month ago they switched. There were some problems at first with black boxes on certain windows when you would apply QT skins, but that seems to be fine now. Also, linking to libqt-mt would also couse a few incompatibilties, but that may have been corrected.
They are trying to keep the binaries as small as possible, and that is tougher for them to do on Linux, due to the subtle differences between some of the distributions. At least, that is the impression that I got from the programmers.
You sir, are an idiot. Congraduation!
Originally, when my service was installed, I was running Win2k. I've had to make a service call or two because the morons didn't properly label my connection out in the box, so they kept disconnecting my cable. When I make a service call and they ask which OS I use, I just say "Windows 2000". The tech came out and reconnected my line. I fired up Slackware 8.1 and asked him if it would be a problem. He said that it wasn't a big deal as long as we could test that it was active. Everything seemed fine, and he went on his merry way, seeming to be actually be kinda impressed with my Linux setup.
It's good to have a crappy old drive laying around with a Windows installation on it just in case. I mentioned to the installer that if Linux was a problem, then I could swap it out. Generally though, they don't want to wait, so they deal with it so that they can get on with their service calls.