Bluetooth would be good for this. Wear the mike on your lapel/headset/helmet/whatever, the wifi transceiver sits in your pocket/utility belt/backpack/whatever.
iRiver machines use a database to store metadata too. It would be nice to have this integrated into Rhythmbox as well. I have talked to the developers and it may be possible. Unfortunately I'm not much of a C programmer.
Good, except that some kind of industry consortium still needs to be behind Linux Gaming Base. Some profit-making org to integrate Nvidia and ATI (etc.) binary drivers, plus possibly other proprietary things like Miles Sound System, etc. into the distro. As I said in another post, there also has to be a good solution to the data storage problem. Internet, or USB key flash ROM perhaps? I don't want to have to tell the game where my savegame files are every time it boots. It has to be seamless.
It might, just might be doable. The best kinds of game to play this way are probably console-style multiplayer games though - not the sort of thing we see getting ported commercially to Windows, let alone Linux (a Linux port of Double Dash, anyone?). Here's hoping.
In the vein of giving away something free - see also Puzzle Pirates, a nice cross-platform Java based MMOG, developed on Linux (the free trial is free!). The in-house game toolkit will be open-sourced soon, apparently.
For such a funding drive to be effective the resulting game would have to be cross-platform. Blender is a niche product but it promised to run on loads of platforms, and loads of people donated.
Cross-platform development of a closed-source game is just too expensive for this kind of fund raising idea, IMHO. It would have to be an open-source product, including the artwork, sounds, level designs, textures, dialogue, models, yada yada.
Is this really feasible? There are already lots of open-source cross-platform game engines, libraries, SDKs etc. out there (of varying quality). But artwork etc. is not cheap to make at all.
I've thought about this, and although it's a nice idea I'm now pretty sure it won't happen.
The basic problem is that the publisher of a bootable game has to support not just a single binary, but a whole operating system, bootloader, etc. Not going to happen. Such support could possibly be outsourced, but it still costs money.
People will expect tech support if the publisher is shipping an OS - after all, any software problem is their fault. At the moment, Linux users neither expect nor receive any support for games, and we like it that way as long as it gets us the goods.
Whereas Windows became the operating system for gaming because of its raft of original titles like... Solitaire?
No, seriously, you're wrong. PC Gaming started with DOS, and a great many DOS titles were also available on the Amiga, etcetera. There was jno compelling originality in these DOS games. But PCs are cheap, and became very popular. That's when games developers began to target it exclusively, and games like Doom came out for the PC only. Windows accelerated the trend, and when Win95 came out, it was incompatible with many DOS games. Windows was simply the most popular platform, cheap to develop for, and it was uneconomical to port games to other architectures and OSs.
If Linux becomes popular (for whatever reason) then games will be written for it. This is already happening to a certain extent. But we can't expect to see big-budget, original, Linux-only games until it becomes uneconomical to keep supporting Windows. That possibility is still a long way off.
On a console, you put in the disk and your system boots straight into the game. Why not have such game disks for PC systems? The (stupid) reason is that Windows can't be distributed cheaply enough, and everyone writes their games for Windows.
Linux is free. It can be included on a bootable disk with your game. So while hardware remains an unkown, at least your game can run on a known kernel, known libraries, optimised X server etc. Swap space (if needed) can be automatically found in Linux partitions or Windows swap files.
Managing players' saved data is the biggest problem here. A nice solution might be to save it over the internet to central servers. Now they can load their saved games from anywhere, and play on any PC.
Of course the hardware detection would have to work more flawlessly than Knoppix, not an easy task. This method of distribution would not suit all games.
That's all fine and dandy, except that Moore's law was a prediction of exponential increase in the number of transistors on a chip, not the clock rate.
Now that's a trend I think is broadly continuing. Multi core CPU's are a part of it. We may also see async processors coming out with zillions of transistors, but no central clock.
In the interests of distro impartiality I'd like to point out that MandrakeLinuxDotComStopSuingUs have also hooked bash-completion up to their 'urpmi' package tool.
Does Fedora have a similar thing going on? It is pretty useful.
Besides I have a little sympathy for Real, QuickTime etc. because I'm sure that once they'll be in they'd try to be every inch as monopolistic as Microsoft.
But none of these, barring Apple, are operating system manufacturers. The only reason MS can manage to push its media player, browser etc. so effectively is that it has an OS monopoly.
I agree about the need to force the specs out into the open though. This is crucial for office document formats and could quickly strengthen the competition.
I think you're missing grandparent post's point. AFAICT they meant that in ROTK the fires scene makes it appear that the distance is 5000 miles, when we know it is in fact a lot less. I agree to an extent; I think the endless snow and ice looks like overkill given that we know Shadowfax can get round the mountain range in the matter of a few days.
As I try to remember my first reading of LOTR ~8 years ago, I don't recall ever having particularly clear images of the characters or places. I also didn't retain an especially strong grasp of the plot.
I reread it after seeing the first 2 films and I really enjoyed having a 'visual reference' for the locations and characters. It made reading much more immediate and fun. (Of course I still had to imagine some things.) I may be just a lazy reader, but it helped that I could tell the characters apart 'visually', as well as understand things like the shape of Helm's Deep and its geographical relationship to Isengard. Visual impressions of places like the Shire, Bree, Mordor, etc. were useful as pegs to 'hang' the various plot elements on.
The films have made the plot of LOTR stick in my mind. I'm sure that in another 8 years I'll still have a pretty good understanding of the story.
I think Tolkien believed in the power of myth as a sort of linguistic tradition. To an extent, the films have overwritten that aspect of LOTR, replacing it with a canon if images. I don't really know if that's a bad thing.
is that not what video editing is? Removing portions of the film before it goes to theatre.
Continuity errors and inconsistencies are not necessarily editing errors. Editing is not about determining the flow of the plot, but of camera shots. Good editing means pacing each scene right and cutting between scenes properly. It's the 'tempo' part of good cinematography.
Your quibbles are with plotting errors, which are marks against the direction of the film, I would say. Editing is not concerned with plot logic; it is part of the visual language of film. I think that ROTK's editing was very well done for such a huge production, and considering the vast visual scope of some of the shots and scenes. Whether it was worth an Oscar, I can't say.
Ha, you got me there. Front page/. story and all. Let's hope PPC/Mac gets more games, they might lead to releases for PPC/Linux as well! It's all good.
I wouldn't normally buy overpriced/late Linux releases, so I think I fit your description of a Linux user. I don't dual-boot but if I really wanted a Windows-only game, there are plenty of Windows machines around to play it on. I guess there are more Mac than Linux users who just refuse to use Windows.
OTOH there is a packaging issue here. UT2004, like UT2003 will be released with Linux binaries in the box with the Windows ones. Other games have had freely downloadable Linux binaries which can be used with the original install disks. Doom 3 will apparently be released simultaneously on Windows and Linux. If these trends continue, Linux gaming could be much 'nicer' than Mac gaming seems to be. However, Linux is less of a 'supported' platform right now. Linux users will put up with this, which is probably one reason why they get these packaging and release date breaks.
I still think Linux gamers have a big advantage in that developers tend to favour x86. Over time we may see devs taking the Linux port 'in house' a lot more often, just because they can. For large publishers which already have to push a game onto consoles as well as Windows, the addition of a Linux port should look like a small task. I'm optimistic about the prospects.
(N.B. you are partly right about the trend of 'crippling' non-Windows releases. For example, there are no Linux tools for map editing/modding on the UT2003 disks.)
OK, we're on the same page. But you seem to think getting people gaming on Linux (creating the market) is more important, while I think getting the developers on board ('mindshare') is key.
I don't know if anyone knows which part of this process is really more crucial. For one thing, there were certainly Linux ports coming out (like Quake 3) when the market was very small. That kind of thinking by developers has to be encouraged. On the other hand, there are some publishers that are immune to mindshare and might never OK a native Linux port; Vivendi and EA spring to mind.
We need to get the developers to recognise the potential of Linux and move to cross platform tools. winex hurts this mindshare growth because it effectively promotes DirectX! So buying winex is bad.
If I were trying to convince a gamer to use Linux I would sell them on UT2004. I would say, "OK, you can't play Counter-Strike on Linux. But it does run UT2004, and you can bet it'll crash less, look nicer, be more secure, etc." The hardcore gamer (you?) only needs Windows to run their other games and will be prepared to dual-boot (or possibly run winex). The casual gamer (me) might be prepared to just drop CS and live without his Windows titles. To me, winex makes Linux look like a crappy Windows replacement. To grab peoples' attention I think it should be sold as different (as Macs are).
So it comes down to this: is the negative developer mindshare of promoting DirectX worth the potential Linux growth winex gives us by stopping dual-booting?
According to my argument, the answer is 'no', because there aren't very many hardcore gamers who are pissed off about dual-booting and so won't use Linux.
I agree with what you say about dual booting, but this is wrong:
OS X users are used to pay for software, there is piracy of course, and open-source and free software, but companies, including Microsoft, are making money selling OS X software. Linux software by default is free.
That's stupid. Linux people aren't into warez. If anything it's the Windows gamers that are more likely to be used to getting stuff for free (like Windows and Office). I know gamers that swear by Windows 98, because it's lightweight and doesn't have any of that crappy product activation.
As a Linux user who doesn't dual boot, I feel richer than a Windows user because I didn't have to shell out for an operating system. Thus I have more money to spend on games!
OK, that's anecdotal. But so is your insistence that Linux users won't shell out for games. I will and I do.
P.S. Remember also that porting games Windows->Linux x86 is a hell of a lot easier/cheaper than doing it Windows->OS X PPC. Indeed, some developers will already have some kind of Linux x86 toolchain because their dedicated multiplayer servers run on Linux.
If the only game someone plays is Half-Life and WineX lets them play Half-Life in Linux, that's somebody who now uses a Linux desktop. How does that hurt anybody else?
That's not the general case. As has already been discussed, someone who just wants to play their already purchased Windows games almost certainly has a Windows install around, letting them do this without hassle. They might perhaps pay up for winex, but if they want to pick and choose their games, they are going to spend quite a lot of time gaming on Windows. (E.g. lots of new games are DirectX 9 - no play on winex for them.)
In the general case, we have quite a few Linux users, some of whom are willing to spread some cash to get games on their Linux machine (I'm one of them). I could either buy winex + some Windows games, or I could buy Linux native ports. Which is better?
I think it's much better to give my money to the people selling Linux native ports:
Some of my money may go towards maintaining and popularizing open source/cross platform gaming tools and libraries - in particular, OpenGL.
My money 'tells' the developers/publishers that there is demand for games on Linux.
The native ports run better and cost less (figuring in the cost of winex). (What I want to see is Doom 3 on Linux playing just as nice as on Windows - not Half Life 2 on Linux through winex, and sucking royally, if it runs at all.)
I don't think the scenario of winex bringing gamers to Linux is very realistic. (I certainly didn't switch over because of games.) In a situation where people are already dumping Windows, what is needed is to spend money on Linux ports and thereby give feedback to developers.
But buying winex + Windows games gives no positive feedback to games developers at all. Therefore, winex doesn't bring developers over to Linux either! As we have seen, TransGaming can't be relied on to push cross platform development strategies, because they make money by implementing DirectX. They want developers to use DirectX!
Numbers are the only thing that matters to publishers when it comes to ports.
Do you think that software houses continually carry out usage studies to figure out whether they should put out Linux ports of their games? That's not how it works. AFAICT, if one of the lead developers has a nice feeling about Linux, then it will get done. Otherwise it won't. If the developers are all in love with DirectX, it definitely won't get done (and neither will a Mac port). The story of Linux gaming is being played out in developers' heads, not in usage statistics.
Slashdot Mirror
bleep.com, magnatune.com, enough said
I imagine this is only a hardware revision away.
(Check out iripdb for relevant code.)
It might, just might be doable. The best kinds of game to play this way are probably console-style multiplayer games though - not the sort of thing we see getting ported commercially to Windows, let alone Linux (a Linux port of Double Dash, anyone?). Here's hoping.
In the vein of giving away something free - see also Puzzle Pirates, a nice cross-platform Java based MMOG, developed on Linux (the free trial is free!). The in-house game toolkit will be open-sourced soon, apparently.
offtopic -- how did your post get to 0?
Cross-platform development of a closed-source game is just too expensive for this kind of fund raising idea, IMHO. It would have to be an open-source product, including the artwork, sounds, level designs, textures, dialogue, models, yada yada.
Is this really feasible? There are already lots of open-source cross-platform game engines, libraries, SDKs etc. out there (of varying quality). But artwork etc. is not cheap to make at all.
The basic problem is that the publisher of a bootable game has to support not just a single binary, but a whole operating system, bootloader, etc. Not going to happen. Such support could possibly be outsourced, but it still costs money.
People will expect tech support if the publisher is shipping an OS - after all, any software problem is their fault. At the moment, Linux users neither expect nor receive any support for games, and we like it that way as long as it gets us the goods.
I think compiler/IDE optimisation might be a bigger issue for small shop developers. Is gcc as slow to compile as it sounds from TFA?
I doubt that! It was kernel 2.2 back then, no ext3 support (and I don't think Mandrake compiled any other experimental FSs either).
No, seriously, you're wrong. PC Gaming started with DOS, and a great many DOS titles were also available on the Amiga, etcetera. There was jno compelling originality in these DOS games. But PCs are cheap, and became very popular. That's when games developers began to target it exclusively, and games like Doom came out for the PC only. Windows accelerated the trend, and when Win95 came out, it was incompatible with many DOS games. Windows was simply the most popular platform, cheap to develop for, and it was uneconomical to port games to other architectures and OSs.
If Linux becomes popular (for whatever reason) then games will be written for it. This is already happening to a certain extent. But we can't expect to see big-budget, original, Linux-only games until it becomes uneconomical to keep supporting Windows. That possibility is still a long way off.
Linux is free. It can be included on a bootable disk with your game. So while hardware remains an unkown, at least your game can run on a known kernel, known libraries, optimised X server etc. Swap space (if needed) can be automatically found in Linux partitions or Windows swap files.
Managing players' saved data is the biggest problem here. A nice solution might be to save it over the internet to central servers. Now they can load their saved games from anywhere, and play on any PC.
Of course the hardware detection would have to work more flawlessly than Knoppix, not an easy task. This method of distribution would not suit all games.
Perhaps you meant 'hover' as in 'cushion effect', rather than as in 'stay in place'. In which case, I think you're out of luck.
Now that's a trend I think is broadly continuing. Multi core CPU's are a part of it. We may also see async processors coming out with zillions of transistors, but no central clock.
Does Fedora have a similar thing going on? It is pretty useful.
But none of these, barring Apple, are operating system manufacturers. The only reason MS can manage to push its media player, browser etc. so effectively is that it has an OS monopoly.
I agree about the need to force the specs out into the open though. This is crucial for office document formats and could quickly strengthen the competition.
Read the article. This feature can be turned off.
I think you're missing grandparent post's point. AFAICT they meant that in ROTK the fires scene makes it appear that the distance is 5000 miles, when we know it is in fact a lot less. I agree to an extent; I think the endless snow and ice looks like overkill given that we know Shadowfax can get round the mountain range in the matter of a few days.
I reread it after seeing the first 2 films and I really enjoyed having a 'visual reference' for the locations and characters. It made reading much more immediate and fun. (Of course I still had to imagine some things.) I may be just a lazy reader, but it helped that I could tell the characters apart 'visually', as well as understand things like the shape of Helm's Deep and its geographical relationship to Isengard. Visual impressions of places like the Shire, Bree, Mordor, etc. were useful as pegs to 'hang' the various plot elements on.
The films have made the plot of LOTR stick in my mind. I'm sure that in another 8 years I'll still have a pretty good understanding of the story.
I think Tolkien believed in the power of myth as a sort of linguistic tradition. To an extent, the films have overwritten that aspect of LOTR, replacing it with a canon if images. I don't really know if that's a bad thing.
Continuity errors and inconsistencies are not necessarily editing errors. Editing is not about determining the flow of the plot, but of camera shots. Good editing means pacing each scene right and cutting between scenes properly. It's the 'tempo' part of good cinematography.
Your quibbles are with plotting errors, which are marks against the direction of the film, I would say. Editing is not concerned with plot logic; it is part of the visual language of film. I think that ROTK's editing was very well done for such a huge production, and considering the vast visual scope of some of the shots and scenes. Whether it was worth an Oscar, I can't say.
Ha, you got me there. Front page /. story and all. Let's hope PPC/Mac gets more games, they might lead to releases for PPC/Linux as well! It's all good.
OTOH there is a packaging issue here. UT2004, like UT2003 will be released with Linux binaries in the box with the Windows ones. Other games have had freely downloadable Linux binaries which can be used with the original install disks. Doom 3 will apparently be released simultaneously on Windows and Linux. If these trends continue, Linux gaming could be much 'nicer' than Mac gaming seems to be. However, Linux is less of a 'supported' platform right now. Linux users will put up with this, which is probably one reason why they get these packaging and release date breaks.
I still think Linux gamers have a big advantage in that developers tend to favour x86. Over time we may see devs taking the Linux port 'in house' a lot more often, just because they can. For large publishers which already have to push a game onto consoles as well as Windows, the addition of a Linux port should look like a small task. I'm optimistic about the prospects.
(N.B. you are partly right about the trend of 'crippling' non-Windows releases. For example, there are no Linux tools for map editing/modding on the UT2003 disks.)
I don't know if anyone knows which part of this process is really more crucial. For one thing, there were certainly Linux ports coming out (like Quake 3) when the market was very small. That kind of thinking by developers has to be encouraged. On the other hand, there are some publishers that are immune to mindshare and might never OK a native Linux port; Vivendi and EA spring to mind.
We need to get the developers to recognise the potential of Linux and move to cross platform tools. winex hurts this mindshare growth because it effectively promotes DirectX! So buying winex is bad.
If I were trying to convince a gamer to use Linux I would sell them on UT2004. I would say, "OK, you can't play Counter-Strike on Linux. But it does run UT2004, and you can bet it'll crash less, look nicer, be more secure, etc." The hardcore gamer (you?) only needs Windows to run their other games and will be prepared to dual-boot (or possibly run winex). The casual gamer (me) might be prepared to just drop CS and live without his Windows titles. To me, winex makes Linux look like a crappy Windows replacement. To grab peoples' attention I think it should be sold as different (as Macs are).
So it comes down to this: is the negative developer mindshare of promoting DirectX worth the potential Linux growth winex gives us by stopping dual-booting?
According to my argument, the answer is 'no', because there aren't very many hardcore gamers who are pissed off about dual-booting and so won't use Linux.As a Linux user who doesn't dual boot, I feel richer than a Windows user because I didn't have to shell out for an operating system. Thus I have more money to spend on games!
OK, that's anecdotal. But so is your insistence that Linux users won't shell out for games. I will and I do.
P.S. Remember also that porting games Windows->Linux x86 is a hell of a lot easier/cheaper than doing it Windows->OS X PPC. Indeed, some developers will already have some kind of Linux x86 toolchain because their dedicated multiplayer servers run on Linux.
That's not the general case. As has already been discussed, someone who just wants to play their already purchased Windows games almost certainly has a Windows install around, letting them do this without hassle. They might perhaps pay up for winex, but if they want to pick and choose their games, they are going to spend quite a lot of time gaming on Windows. (E.g. lots of new games are DirectX 9 - no play on winex for them.)
In the general case, we have quite a few Linux users, some of whom are willing to spread some cash to get games on their Linux machine (I'm one of them). I could either buy winex + some Windows games, or I could buy Linux native ports. Which is better?
I think it's much better to give my money to the people selling Linux native ports:
I don't think the scenario of winex bringing gamers to Linux is very realistic. (I certainly didn't switch over because of games.) In a situation where people are already dumping Windows, what is needed is to spend money on Linux ports and thereby give feedback to developers.
But buying winex + Windows games gives no positive feedback to games developers at all. Therefore, winex doesn't bring developers over to Linux either! As we have seen, TransGaming can't be relied on to push cross platform development strategies, because they make money by implementing DirectX. They want developers to use DirectX!
Do you think that software houses continually carry out usage studies to figure out whether they should put out Linux ports of their games? That's not how it works. AFAICT, if one of the lead developers has a nice feeling about Linux, then it will get done. Otherwise it won't. If the developers are all in love with DirectX, it definitely won't get done (and neither will a Mac port). The story of Linux gaming is being played out in developers' heads, not in usage statistics.
ITYM wxWidgets....