...there are plenty of higher end 3d animating and modelling apps availible
Isn't this partially due to the fact that many of these apps were already available on a Unix platform, i.e. IRIX on SGI hardware? A port from an arbitrary flavor of Unix is not necessarily trivial, but a heck easier than an outright dissimilar platform. It seems to me that it's not that these software companies are specifically focusing more on Linux but instead continuing to evolve their apps to match the way the *nix space has evolved because it's what's good for business.
Like Doom 3 before it was actually released and still submerged in hype, UT2K7 is a game that will also drive hardware sales. Granted, I don't think those specs are anywhere close to the actual minimum requirements, but still, that's a lot of hardware for lot of..."pretty colors". Hopefully, it will actually be a fun game, instead of a demonstration in 3D game engine design.
I had played this game since 2000, back when I first started college. I finally managed to put the game away a little bit over a year ago, and nearly caused me to fail out of college as an undergrad. I was part of the game's competitive scene, as in online leagues and tournaments. It was a bit more than just a game; it was really a community, which is either dead or slowly dying now. When I say community, I mean the people that played team deathmatch or capture the flag, without any mods. That may be a bit biased, but the truth is the greatest players that played the game in its "golden age" came from either of those competitive backgrounds at least in North America, though some good ones were from the insta-gib scene too. The rest were generally considered to be scrubs.
With the arrival of 2K3 and 2K4, the UT community somewhat forked, with half going to the new generation and basically starting the end of the UT99 competitive scene. That was nearly four years ago, and it took all that time for it to really die. I would say that is attributed to the quality of the game, which could not be said of 2k*, whose competitive scene lasted much, much less than seven years.
Personally, I had liked 2K4, but not 2K3. Both were different games than UT99, and that was the main reason for the split. Originally, the competitive community only wanted 2K3 to basically be UT99 but with better graphics, not a different game all together. When 2K3 was released, the competitive community felt betrayed, as if Epic Games didn't listen to us, and those that didn't like the new game and failed to accept it stayed with UT99. Epic tried, or at least seemed to try, to fix the situation with 2K4, which had been developed to play more like UT99. More people were accepting of their efforts this time, but again, for most of the UT99'ers, it was not what they wanted.
Now, we have 2K7 in development. From what I understand, Epic wants to go back to the UT99 roots with that game. Hopefully, they won't fuck it up, and the community can pull together for a change and have some fun. Along with the new gametypes and potentially the most advanced 3D game engine ever made, it should be really fun. I must admit, onslaught in 2K4, which will hopefully mature a bit in 2K7, was very entertaining, but I wouldn't play that competitively. It's just not my style I suppose.
Anyway, this is one thing that I understand about games: great games have great communities around them. It seems that that's more of an accurate measure of the quality of the game than anything else. UT certainly had one, and so do/did the other great ones.
Sorry, but you forget one thing: this article wasn't about 2D art (as in "Photoshop, Illustrator, and Painter"). Its geared toward the 3D artists and workstations for these artists, which require way more processing power. Yes, Macs have been used by 2D graphic artists for ages, but in the 3D world, SGI has dominated for quite a while, either on the IRIX or NT. What this article was about trying to do was show that one could build inexpensive, yet powerful, systems that could provide the sort of capabilities without shelling out $5000 on an SGI.
(Note: Though SGI was never mentioned in the article, its basically what the writer was hinting at.)
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Isn't this partially due to the fact that many of these apps were already available on a Unix platform, i.e. IRIX on SGI hardware? A port from an arbitrary flavor of Unix is not necessarily trivial, but a heck easier than an outright dissimilar platform. It seems to me that it's not that these software companies are specifically focusing more on Linux but instead continuing to evolve their apps to match the way the *nix space has evolved because it's what's good for business.
Suggested Unreal Tournament 2007 Hardware Requirements for Running in High Graphical Settings:
o urnament_2007/system_requirements.html
http://unreal.freakygaming.com/pc/action/unreal_t
Like Doom 3 before it was actually released and still submerged in hype, UT2K7 is a game that will also drive hardware sales. Granted, I don't think those specs are anywhere close to the actual minimum requirements, but still, that's a lot of hardware for lot of..."pretty colors". Hopefully, it will actually be a fun game, instead of a demonstration in 3D game engine design.
I had played this game since 2000, back when I first started college. I finally managed to put the game away a little bit over a year ago, and nearly caused me to fail out of college as an undergrad. I was part of the game's competitive scene, as in online leagues and tournaments. It was a bit more than just a game; it was really a community, which is either dead or slowly dying now. When I say community, I mean the people that played team deathmatch or capture the flag, without any mods. That may be a bit biased, but the truth is the greatest players that played the game in its "golden age" came from either of those competitive backgrounds at least in North America, though some good ones were from the insta-gib scene too. The rest were generally considered to be scrubs.
With the arrival of 2K3 and 2K4, the UT community somewhat forked, with half going to the new generation and basically starting the end of the UT99 competitive scene. That was nearly four years ago, and it took all that time for it to really die. I would say that is attributed to the quality of the game, which could not be said of 2k*, whose competitive scene lasted much, much less than seven years.
Personally, I had liked 2K4, but not 2K3. Both were different games than UT99, and that was the main reason for the split. Originally, the competitive community only wanted 2K3 to basically be UT99 but with better graphics, not a different game all together. When 2K3 was released, the competitive community felt betrayed, as if Epic Games didn't listen to us, and those that didn't like the new game and failed to accept it stayed with UT99. Epic tried, or at least seemed to try, to fix the situation with 2K4, which had been developed to play more like UT99. More people were accepting of their efforts this time, but again, for most of the UT99'ers, it was not what they wanted.
Now, we have 2K7 in development. From what I understand, Epic wants to go back to the UT99 roots with that game. Hopefully, they won't fuck it up, and the community can pull together for a change and have some fun. Along with the new gametypes and potentially the most advanced 3D game engine ever made, it should be really fun. I must admit, onslaught in 2K4, which will hopefully mature a bit in 2K7, was very entertaining, but I wouldn't play that competitively. It's just not my style I suppose.
Anyway, this is one thing that I understand about games: great games have great communities around them. It seems that that's more of an accurate measure of the quality of the game than anything else. UT certainly had one, and so do/did the other great ones.
Sorry, but you forget one thing: this article wasn't about 2D art (as in "Photoshop, Illustrator, and Painter"). Its geared toward the 3D artists and workstations for these artists, which require way more processing power. Yes, Macs have been used by 2D graphic artists for ages, but in the 3D world, SGI has dominated for quite a while, either on the IRIX or NT. What this article was about trying to do was show that one could build inexpensive, yet powerful, systems that could provide the sort of capabilities without shelling out $5000 on an SGI.
(Note: Though SGI was never mentioned in the article, its basically what the writer was hinting at.)