SDL is a great and sound idea but it takes time to train people to use something like that and maybe even if it is easy to learn that still costs money. Design companies are strapped as is for cash and are usually cutting it close. So that pretty much requires a company to use directx for the low level stuff. Remember windows is a crap OS and you need someone like directx to get around it for even changing the screen resolution.
That is why you see every game in the store requiring directx. Even if they do choose to go the opengl route directx is required to setup the screen settings and what not. Fact of the matter is too that coding for opengl and direct3d at the same time is still pretty common. In fact I suspect contrary to the questioners beleif opengl is just getting more common. A couple years ago opengl was an iffy thing to program for because a lot of cards in peoples computers were crap and didn't have opengl support. Remember games have development cycles of years and when the games that are out today were in the works opengl wasn't on nearly every card out their.
If your hoping to peruse through the game section at your local EB and see the words "sdl and opengl required" on the box anytime soon don't hold your breath. Your forgetting the faster version of sdl requires directx anyways.
A lot of people have been dissing on diablo (understandably) but I'm sure some of them have forgotten that diablo is not CREATED by blizzard. They market and distribute it and call the shots on some issues in it but diablo is blizz north's baby and obviously blizz north has never cared about balance because both the diablo games have been horribly imbalanced.
Blizzard itself is another story all of their games have concentrated on balance HEAVILY. If you've played all the games and take a deeper look you'll see theirs a big difference in design quality. The only thing the two companies seem to share in common is a boss who's been dedicated to only releasing AAA titles.
Don't let the past fool you though companies are out to make money and blizzard has changed owners now and those owners have doubtless made changes of some sort and may not be as dedicated to quality (notice how fast the d2 expansion came out and how bad it sucks). If your pinching your pennies you might want to wait for a review of war3 instead of taking your chances on blizz's sterling reputation. All and all though the delay is probably a good thing(TM).
I don't think the problem is that Linux users a cheap I think the problem is they are impatient. I mean cmon we have a community of people who foam at the mouth for the latest and greatest version of one of the most boring parts of the OS (the kernel). It's likely these people if they play games carry over the same tendency. I might be a win users because of games primarily but when I see something about Loki releasing a game all I ever think is "god that game is oldddddd". If it's worth my money guess what it's already sitting on my shelf and I played it tons when it came out for windows.
Ontop of that I really feel most of the games Loki ports were only subpar in the first place. The fact of this buisness is that games don't make real money unless they hit that big top 10 list. Who else but Id and Blizzard are consistently finacially successfull? Don't go spouting off a designer of your favorite deer hunter clone either because they're prolly owned by someone like Interplay or Sierra and those companies arn't doing well either.
Loki's current buisness model is doomed untill they start getting the big games like starcraft and diablo II that won't have hardware problems and will be easy to port.
Loki's biggest obstacle is simple though. They have no way to show the potential in a linux market because gamers expect their sole copy to run on mac linux and windows all at the same time and they expect them to come OUT at the same time. Without large sales of boxes that say "linux only" on the front companies won't believe they can increase sales by including linux ports and ya know they might be right. Most people can hardly avoid getting a copy of windows in the first place so if they want to play games made for windows only they can. Its a sucky possibility but maybe we should just deal with it and try and find some solutions instead of crying foul for people wanting to put food on the table.
Jartan
People running by your house scanning what items you have? Just go buy a couple thousand of those tags (there only a penny right?) and program them to the id of a popular "vibrating muscle relaxant device".
I dont know what kind of broadband connections you've seen but 1gig every 3 minutes would brake down an entire neighborhood on @home. There obviously talking about pushing this data down a digital channel which has huge bandwith and is available in many places.
Im not sure which expierement you might of been reading about but the ones used to find the purpose of CD45 were genetically engineered mice and not infected with some sort of viral strain specially engineered. Genetically engineered specifically means they were changed in an embryonic state and henceforth they probably have no way of blocking CD45 if they had to actually create a mouse without it. And since genetically resequencing already living animals is well out of humanity's reach for quite a while your still safe.
I see a lot of discussions over spechs and branding and what not but I think a lot of people just passed over what seemed to me the real ace in the hole for the Xbox.
If you missed it at some point in the article (sorry not gonna dig up the quote) it was stated that royalties would not be required to produce games for the Xbox. This isnt the same thing as those liscencing fees just to make a game. For a company like squaresoft 20k to buy a design platform is pocket change. But the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions they pay out to Sony in liscensing fees is a BIG DEAL.
History has shown that when you cut to the chase the console with the best games wins. So when you ask the big guns like Squaresoft and Konami and Capcomm if they are excited about Xbox right after you tell them they don't have to pay a dime to sell their games on it. I think its a no brainer that they are gonna say yes. So if enough of the box's actually sell the games will come flooding in.
Jartan
I know most of you have seen an install shield program. I also know most of you see that custom button and go right for it everytime. What you all need to remember though is that most users are AFRAID of that button. So while the custom button seems awfully limiting to us it's dangerous to them. Another thing that needs to be realized is that the MAJORITY of people who will use an instalation program will be HOME users. All those people in cubicles arn't installing tons of programs. A few IS people are doing that on a massive scale for them.
All that said and done I think most people who don't want these installshield type programs are happy with whats out there or what it will evolve too. The windows users though just won't accept anything less than an installshield type program where they click it and hit next next next finish and they're done. I see a lot of people getting annoyed at this but theres really no reason to get annoyed. That next next next finish is just an interface. Windows uers don't care whats going on behind the scenes.
So the question really is how do we make this next next next finish interface secure. I know enough to know I don't know enough to answer that question but I've seen some isntall programs out there that are trying to do this already maybe we should throw support to them in helping to make those systems secure.
Jartan
Slashdot Mirror
SDL is a great and sound idea but it takes time to train people to use something like that and maybe even if it is easy to learn that still costs money. Design companies are strapped as is for cash and are usually cutting it close. So that pretty much requires a company to use directx for the low level stuff. Remember windows is a crap OS and you need someone like directx to get around it for even changing the screen resolution.
That is why you see every game in the store requiring directx. Even if they do choose to go the opengl route directx is required to setup the screen settings and what not. Fact of the matter is too that coding for opengl and direct3d at the same time is still pretty common. In fact I suspect contrary to the questioners beleif opengl is just getting more common. A couple years ago opengl was an iffy thing to program for because a lot of cards in peoples computers were crap and didn't have opengl support. Remember games have development cycles of years and when the games that are out today were in the works opengl wasn't on nearly every card out their.
If your hoping to peruse through the game section at your local EB and see the words "sdl and opengl required" on the box anytime soon don't hold your breath. Your forgetting the faster version of sdl requires directx anyways.
Jartan
A lot of people have been dissing on diablo (understandably) but I'm sure some of them have forgotten that diablo is not CREATED by blizzard. They market and distribute it and call the shots on some issues in it but diablo is blizz north's baby and obviously blizz north has never cared about balance because both the diablo games have been horribly imbalanced.
Blizzard itself is another story all of their games have concentrated on balance HEAVILY. If you've played all the games and take a deeper look you'll see theirs a big difference in design quality. The only thing the two companies seem to share in common is a boss who's been dedicated to only releasing AAA titles.
Don't let the past fool you though companies are out to make money and blizzard has changed owners now and those owners have doubtless made changes of some sort and may not be as dedicated to quality (notice how fast the d2 expansion came out and how bad it sucks). If your pinching your pennies you might want to wait for a review of war3 instead of taking your chances on blizz's sterling reputation. All and all though the delay is probably a good thing(TM).
I don't think the problem is that Linux users a cheap I think the problem is they are impatient. I mean cmon we have a community of people who foam at the mouth for the latest and greatest version of one of the most boring parts of the OS (the kernel). It's likely these people if they play games carry over the same tendency. I might be a win users because of games primarily but when I see something about Loki releasing a game all I ever think is "god that game is oldddddd". If it's worth my money guess what it's already sitting on my shelf and I played it tons when it came out for windows. Ontop of that I really feel most of the games Loki ports were only subpar in the first place. The fact of this buisness is that games don't make real money unless they hit that big top 10 list. Who else but Id and Blizzard are consistently finacially successfull? Don't go spouting off a designer of your favorite deer hunter clone either because they're prolly owned by someone like Interplay or Sierra and those companies arn't doing well either. Loki's current buisness model is doomed untill they start getting the big games like starcraft and diablo II that won't have hardware problems and will be easy to port. Loki's biggest obstacle is simple though. They have no way to show the potential in a linux market because gamers expect their sole copy to run on mac linux and windows all at the same time and they expect them to come OUT at the same time. Without large sales of boxes that say "linux only" on the front companies won't believe they can increase sales by including linux ports and ya know they might be right. Most people can hardly avoid getting a copy of windows in the first place so if they want to play games made for windows only they can. Its a sucky possibility but maybe we should just deal with it and try and find some solutions instead of crying foul for people wanting to put food on the table. Jartan
People running by your house scanning what items you have? Just go buy a couple thousand of those tags (there only a penny right?) and program them to the id of a popular "vibrating muscle relaxant device".
I dont know what kind of broadband connections you've seen but 1gig every 3 minutes would brake down an entire neighborhood on @home. There obviously talking about pushing this data down a digital channel which has huge bandwith and is available in many places.
Jartan
Im not sure which expierement you might of been reading about but the ones used to find the purpose of CD45 were genetically engineered mice and not infected with some sort of viral strain specially engineered. Genetically engineered specifically means they were changed in an embryonic state and henceforth they probably have no way of blocking CD45 if they had to actually create a mouse without it. And since genetically resequencing already living animals is well out of humanity's reach for quite a while your still safe.
I see a lot of discussions over spechs and branding and what not but I think a lot of people just passed over what seemed to me the real ace in the hole for the Xbox. If you missed it at some point in the article (sorry not gonna dig up the quote) it was stated that royalties would not be required to produce games for the Xbox. This isnt the same thing as those liscencing fees just to make a game. For a company like squaresoft 20k to buy a design platform is pocket change. But the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions they pay out to Sony in liscensing fees is a BIG DEAL. History has shown that when you cut to the chase the console with the best games wins. So when you ask the big guns like Squaresoft and Konami and Capcomm if they are excited about Xbox right after you tell them they don't have to pay a dime to sell their games on it. I think its a no brainer that they are gonna say yes. So if enough of the box's actually sell the games will come flooding in. Jartan
Woops forgot the end tags on that sorry ;)
Jartan
I know most of you have seen an install shield program. I also know most of you see that custom button and go right for it everytime. What you all need to remember though is that most users are AFRAID of that button. So while the custom button seems awfully limiting to us it's dangerous to them. Another thing that needs to be realized is that the MAJORITY of people who will use an instalation program will be HOME users. All those people in cubicles arn't installing tons of programs. A few IS people are doing that on a massive scale for them. All that said and done I think most people who don't want these installshield type programs are happy with whats out there or what it will evolve too. The windows users though just won't accept anything less than an installshield type program where they click it and hit next next next finish and they're done. I see a lot of people getting annoyed at this but theres really no reason to get annoyed. That next next next finish is just an interface. Windows uers don't care whats going on behind the scenes. So the question really is how do we make this next next next finish interface secure. I know enough to know I don't know enough to answer that question but I've seen some isntall programs out there that are trying to do this already maybe we should throw support to them in helping to make those systems secure. Jartan