Regarding id Tech 5 and Rage, id titles are usually ported to Linux relatively late in the development process when the programmer has the time, but they've always been ported. There were also these statements from Carmack at QuakeCon last month:
Carmack: No, not currently. We're not expecting to. We're not sure if we're going to be a Vista title or not. There will be some support benefits by being Vista only. It depends when we get the game done what the adoption has been. But it's a OpenGL title on the PC and Mac right now, obviously D3D on the 360, and the PS3 it's kind of an in between where it's Open GLES but we do a lot of direct command buffer writing there. If necessary we can move the PC version over to DX10, but there's not much strong pull for us to do that. All of the toolset is in OpenGL, I wouldn't want to convert everything over.
Q: I wanted to say thank you for open-sourcing the Quake 3 engine, it's made a huge difference to the community. I wanted to ask your opinion about the future of Linux and open source gaming.
A: I do take a great deal of personal pride and satisfaction with what I've been able to do with getting so much of the stuff out. Sometimes I think about it, and while I know it's not something I'm generally considered for, I may be one of the most prolific open source authors considering all the code that I've written over the last 15 years that I've made open source, or have made open source there. I do think it's very valuable. I'm very happy when I see both user gaming community stuff, or research universities, or people doing simulation tests, or bringing up things. Every new piece of hardware ends up having Doom or Quake titles used as an early form of test application. So I'm very happy to have done that. It's certainly going to continue. I mean I won't commit to a date, but the Doom 3 stuff will be open source. We still make those decisions even today when we're doing the Rage code when we have decisions about "do we want to integrate some other vendor's solution, some proprietary code into this". And the answer's usually no, because eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release. We can argue the exact pros and cons from a pure business standpoint on it, and I can at least make some, perhaps somewhat, contrived cases that I think it's good for the business, but as a personal conviction it's still pretty important to me and I'm standing by that.
The id-produced title coming out at the end of the month, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, will have a Linux dedicated server and client as well:
When it's done. We have beta testers, they are doing a great job, you don't need to apply. There is still some work to be done before it matches id quality standards, and we won't commit to any dates.
Here's an exchange from the QuakeCon keynote last Friday:
Audience member: "I wanted to say thank you for open-sourcing the Quake 3 engine, it's made a huge difference to the community. I wanted to ask your opinion about the future of Linux and open source gaming."
John Carmack: "I do take a great deal of personal pride and satisfaction with what I've been able to do with getting so much of the stuff out. Sometimes I think about it, and while I know it's not something I'm generally considered for, I may be one of the most prolific open source authors considering all the code that I've written over the last 15 years that I've made open source, or have made open source there. I do think it's very valuable. I'm very happy when I see both user gaming community stuff, or research universities, or people doing simulation tests, or bringing up things. Every new piece of hardware ends up having Doom or Quake titles used as an early form of test application. So I'm very happy to have done that. It's certainly going to continue. I mean I won't commit to a date, but the Doom 3 stuff will be open source. We still make those decisions even today when we're doing the Rage code when we have decisions about "do we want to integrate some other vendor's solution, some proprietary code into this". And the answer's usually no, because eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release. We can argue the exact pros and cons from a pure business standpoint on it, and I can at least make some, perhaps somewhat, contrived cases that I think it's good for the business, but as a personal conviction it's still pretty important to me and I'm standing by that."
That scene was cut over a year ago - it was mentioned in the Making of ROTS book published in March; moreover, Lucas' daughter was in the same scene and it was still cut:
How is the camo system annoying? You mention it but then fail to explain what bothered you about it.
If you're in the Cure menu frequently, you're doing something wrong - this is a stealth game, not a first-person shooter. You don't want to be getting shot at constantly, much less removing bullets every area.
As mentioned by someone else, food does not cure you - it restores stamina.
You're entitled to your opinion on the game, but it sounds fairly ill-informed. Did you get to the boss fight with The End? Did you beat the game and see the conclusion of the story (which won best story of 2004 from Gamespot incidentally, with the Boss winning best new character)?
Direct3D to OpenGL is far less of a hurdle than convincing a publisher to budget the time for a developer to spend porting for a niche market unfortunately. From what I've read, porting MFC-based utilities (such as game editors) is more of a pain than switching 3D APIs.
FPS games tend to get ported because developers/publishers see the value of having user-run Linux servers, and it's easier (although by no means guaranteed) to get a client port from a dev team that's already porting the server code.
I still play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri via e-mail; the only crappy part is when the game gets stalled by one team taking forever to get to their turn:)
I think the article would be a lot more accurate if it replaced all instances of "open source" with "hobbyist", as they're not totally interchangeable terms. Any project being done in the developers' spare time is going to hit this problem of time constraints on content creation (it was *the* major issue that was discussed at the QuakeCon mod roundtable), and although the vast majority of game projects using the open source model are indeed hobbyist, a commercial developer creating a game full-time isn't going to magically see their content creation timeline get longer if they use open source (such as Saga of Ryzom, whose developers open-sourced the game's engine before the game has even shipped). Moreover, a lot of modern commercial game projects use open source projects such as OpenAL or Ogg Vorbis without seeing their dev cycles balloon (id's Robert Duffy even mentioned Ogg as saving them time on DOOM 3).
Regarding AvP and Homeworld, those *are* full source trees that compile on Linux, not add-ons, that are based on full source releases from the original developers.
The EAX announcement pertained to future DOOM 3-engine titles, not DOOM 3 itself. DOOM 3 generates its 5.1 audio without utilizing any EAX-specific code.
Also, there's been earth-penetrators in the stockpile for a while now (there's been bunkers around before Tora Bora you know... the Soviets had their equivalents of NORAD, SAC, Mt. Weather, and Raven Rock).
They first hit the media when the US announced that Libya was constructing a chemical weapons production facility (which the US dubbed "Rabta II"), and the idea was floated to take it out with the aforementioned earth-penetrating nuclear weapon... anyway, you can read more about it here:
...this is just the Nuclear Posture Review, which is similar to the Quadrennial Defense Review, but applied specifically to the strategic forces; i.e., it's a required report to Congress, and some elements are unclassified (and can be found here).
As to the specific recommendations, the only really worrying thing would be the insinuation that the DoD is investigating ways to utilize nuclear weapons in conventional tactical scenarios, but there's a hell of a lot of hurdles to clear before that can even be seriously considered, much less implemented. The nations listed in the LA Times report, the US' usual rogue's gallery of nations, were for the most part already included in the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan, which is highly-classified even God needs SIOP-ESI clearance to see it) as smaller attack options (Selected/Limited), going back through the Clinton Administration, so that isn't really some kind of groundbreaking new policy.
Furthermore, an understated policy of the US since the Gulf War has been to keep the nuclear option open in the event of some other mass attack (biological/chemical) as deterrence, so again, this isn't terribly new. I do find interesting that the DoD is looking more closely at new ways of neutralizing agents besides blowing up the factories and spreading them to the four winds though...
Can anyone get to g2-forward.org? That's where the Access Intel mailing list seems to be based on a quick googling (there's scarce mention of it as it is...), but the domain's nameservers aren't being very helpful. Does anyone know if the list has moved (and to where)?
I'm pretty sure all of the above titles received A-category reviews across the board, so out of those four you should be able to find one you at least like.
That's not true unless you lack cable television (I'm assuming you're in the USA).
Sci-Fi (http://www.scifi.com/babylon5/) has been running Babylon 5 episodes (and the movies, and the 13 episodes of the follow up series Crusade on occasion) in order for over a year now. I missed it during the original run, but have since seen the vast majority of the show during this new run.
Moreover, they funded a new B5 movie which will air in January, B5: Legend of the Rangers (http://www.scifi.com/b5rangers).
Yeah, it does sound like most of the features were introduced in Alpha Centauri (aside from the Culture aspect, which sounds like an interesting new tool for asymmetric warfare;))...
For those that don't know, Alpha Centauri (and it's add-on pack) were ported to Linux by Loki and released earlier this year:
It works rather well (I ordered the commemorative edition of Wolf3D Activision released a few years back) with both the original Wolfenstein 3-D and the sequel, Spear of Destiny.
Two Lost Over Iraq...
on
Robots Go To War
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Two Predator UAV's were lost over Iraq in just the past month:
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding id Tech 5 and Rage, id titles are usually ported to Linux relatively late in the development process when the programmer has the time, but they've always been ported. There were also these statements from Carmack at QuakeCon last month:
http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200708/N07.0803.1731.12214.htm?Page=1
http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.php?identiferID=9374&action=flatview
The id-produced title coming out at the end of the month, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, will have a Linux dedicated server and client as well:
http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/linux/etqw/
In summary: Don't panic.Here's an exchange from the QuakeCon keynote last Friday:
n _carmack-quakecon-keynote-2007.mp3 (about 1 hour 25 minutes in)
Audience member:
"I wanted to say thank you for open-sourcing the Quake 3 engine, it's made a huge difference to the community. I wanted to ask your opinion about the future of Linux and open source gaming."
John Carmack:
"I do take a great deal of personal pride and satisfaction with what I've been able to do with getting so much of the stuff out. Sometimes I think about it, and while I know it's not something I'm generally considered for, I may be one of the most prolific open source authors considering all the code that I've written over the last 15 years that I've made open source, or have made open source there. I do think it's very valuable. I'm very happy when I see both user gaming community stuff, or research universities, or people doing simulation tests, or bringing up things. Every new piece of hardware ends up having Doom or Quake titles used as an early form of test application. So I'm very happy to have done that. It's certainly going to continue. I mean I won't commit to a date, but the Doom 3 stuff will be open source. We still make those decisions even today when we're doing the Rage code when we have decisions about "do we want to integrate some other vendor's solution, some proprietary code into this". And the answer's usually no, because eventually id Tech 5 is going to be open source also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release. We can argue the exact pros and cons from a pure business standpoint on it, and I can at least make some, perhaps somewhat, contrived cases that I think it's good for the business, but as a personal conviction it's still pretty important to me and I'm standing by that."
Source: http://www.3ddownloads.com/Action/Rage/Movies/joh
That scene was cut over a year ago - it was mentioned in the Making of ROTS book published in March; moreover, Lucas' daughter was in the same scene and it was still cut:
d s_To_Bai_Lings_Claim_92024.asp
http://theforce.net/latestnews/story/Lucas_Respon
You're not Solid Snake in MGS3.
How is the camo system annoying? You mention it but then fail to explain what bothered you about it.
If you're in the Cure menu frequently, you're doing something wrong - this is a stealth game, not a first-person shooter. You don't want to be getting shot at constantly, much less removing bullets every area.
As mentioned by someone else, food does not cure you - it restores stamina.
You're entitled to your opinion on the game, but it sounds fairly ill-informed. Did you get to the boss fight with The End? Did you beat the game and see the conclusion of the story (which won best story of 2004 from Gamespot incidentally, with the Boss winning best new character)?
Direct3D to OpenGL is far less of a hurdle than convincing a publisher to budget the time for a developer to spend porting for a niche market unfortunately. From what I've read, porting MFC-based utilities (such as game editors) is more of a pain than switching 3D APIs.
FPS games tend to get ported because developers/publishers see the value of having user-run Linux servers, and it's easier (although by no means guaranteed) to get a client port from a dev team that's already porting the server code.
I still play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri via e-mail; the only crappy part is when the game gets stalled by one team taking forever to get to their turn :)
Linux users can unzip and copy the folder contents into their UT2004 directory to use the new content as well without issue.
I think the article would be a lot more accurate if it replaced all instances of "open source" with "hobbyist", as they're not totally interchangeable terms. Any project being done in the developers' spare time is going to hit this problem of time constraints on content creation (it was *the* major issue that was discussed at the QuakeCon mod roundtable), and although the vast majority of game projects using the open source model are indeed hobbyist, a commercial developer creating a game full-time isn't going to magically see their content creation timeline get longer if they use open source (such as Saga of Ryzom, whose developers open-sourced the game's engine before the game has even shipped). Moreover, a lot of modern commercial game projects use open source projects such as OpenAL or Ogg Vorbis without seeing their dev cycles balloon (id's Robert Duffy even mentioned Ogg as saving them time on DOOM 3).
Regarding AvP and Homeworld, those *are* full source trees that compile on Linux, not add-ons, that are based on full source releases from the original developers.
i ferID=4471&action=flatview
i ferID=6359&action=flatview
You can read about the source code releases here:
AvP: http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.php?ident
Homeworld: http://www.linuxgames.com/news/feedback.php?ident
The EAX announcement pertained to future DOOM 3-engine titles, not DOOM 3 itself. DOOM 3 generates its 5.1 audio without utilizing any EAX-specific code.
http://www.3ddownloads.com/Action/Unreal%20Tournam ent%202004/Mods/AlienSwarm
There's also a Loki Setup-based Linux package here:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/liflg/alien.swa rm_1.0-english.run?download
Duh I'm tired, I just read the commentary in the topic which point that out also :)
IGNORE ME.
Read the SITREP at the America's Army site: it says Linux server port, not client.
They first hit the media when the US announced that Libya was constructing a chemical weapons production facility (which the US dubbed "Rabta II"), and the idea was floated to take it out with the aforementioned earth-penetrating nuclear weapon... anyway, you can read more about it here:
http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/FP/PROJECTS/NUCWC
As to the specific recommendations, the only really worrying thing would be the insinuation that the DoD is investigating ways to utilize nuclear weapons in conventional tactical scenarios, but there's a hell of a lot of hurdles to clear before that can even be seriously considered, much less implemented. The nations listed in the LA Times report, the US' usual rogue's gallery of nations, were for the most part already included in the SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan, which is highly-classified even God needs SIOP-ESI clearance to see it) as smaller attack options (Selected/Limited), going back through the Clinton Administration, so that isn't really some kind of groundbreaking new policy.
Furthermore, an understated policy of the US since the Gulf War has been to keep the nuclear option open in the event of some other mass attack (biological/chemical) as deterrence, so again, this isn't terribly new. I do find interesting that the DoD is looking more closely at new ways of neutralizing agents besides blowing up the factories and spreading them to the four winds though...
Do you have the subscribe addy/formatting handy, if at all possible? Thanks!
-Crus
Can anyone get to g2-forward.org? That's where the Access Intel mailing list seems to be based on a quick googling (there's scarce mention of it as it is...), but the domain's nameservers aren't being very helpful. Does anyone know if the list has moved (and to where)?
Thanks in advance.
Doh... must've been tired last night... that should read "out of those *five*".
Apologies.
- MindRover - Publisher: Loki - Robot Programming Puzzle Game
- Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns - Publisher: Loki - Fantasy Real-Time Strategy Game
- Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri - Publisher: Loki - Sci-Fi Colonization/Civilization Turn-Based Strategy Game
- Uplink - Publisher: Introversion - Sci-fi "Hacking" Sim
- Return to Castle Wolfenstein - Publisher: Activision - Modern remake of the classic 3-D shooter, now with suberb multiplayer
I'm pretty sure all of the above titles received A-category reviews across the board, so out of those four you should be able to find one you at least like.Another note: Linux Game Publishing is shipping a port of Creatures Internet Edition which should reach resellers after Xmas.
Sci-Fi (http://www.scifi.com/babylon5/) has been running Babylon 5 episodes (and the movies, and the 13 episodes of the follow up series Crusade on occasion) in order for over a year now. I missed it during the original run, but have since seen the vast majority of the show during this new run.
Moreover, they funded a new B5 movie which will air in January, B5: Legend of the Rangers (http://www.scifi.com/b5rangers).
For those that don't know, Alpha Centauri (and it's add-on pack) were ported to Linux by Loki and released earlier this year:
http://www.lokigames.com/products/smac/
http://wolfgl.sourceforge.net/
It works rather well (I ordered the commemorative edition of Wolf3D Activision released a few years back) with both the original Wolfenstein 3-D and the sequel, Spear of Destiny.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010911/ts/iraq_u sa_plane_dc_4.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A457 0-2001Aug27.html
FAS has some more info on the bird here.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/en/s erve/multiwp.asp
http://service.real.com/help/library/guides/doc/4m ulti.htm
Gamestop
The lowest level is 600 dollars, which seems a tad insane, even for the hardcore players who usually pre-order...