Wow that sounds like it came straight out of the Daily Mail*. Immigration isn't a real issue, it isn't hurting the economy and we aren't being stretched by it. The real issue is that under the cloak of 'the nice guy' Blair has brought increasing levels of state interference which make it all but impossible for anyone to make money. Not to mention a continuing series of tax raising meassures.
The ID card scheme will cost me and you more than immigrants will ever cost us and yet people want ID cards to stop immigration. It's just a reality that there is still a racist element in Britain and a lot of people who can't see the wood from the trees.
Anyway I'm still waiting for a Libertarian party for Britain. All the current idiots just want to interfere in my life more.
*For non Brits the Daily Mail is a disreputable paper that only the most stupid Brits read. They take the same alarmist nonsensical lines over and over again with nothing ever coming of any of them.
Yes but try explaining to a suit that copy protection is totally irrelevant to those that want to bypass it. Even Starforce can be bypassed quite easily. The worst part is while you can bypass Starforce by unpluging IDE cables and such you still get the negative effects of the junk drivers. The best part is hacked binary copies have no damaging components so don't smash your computer in the slightest making piracy very attractive to the gamer that wants to protect their expensive investment.
I still get annoyed by the fact my legal right to backup my programs has been bypassed though.
They could of course spend 5 seconds at install compiling the shim and then all is good. I'm suprised more distros don't do this given the rise of live cd installers. Prehaps thats why Ubuntu is moving to a live cd, next release will detect then compile the correct module for you. You haven't distributed a pre-compiled binary then.
Personally I think it would be better if someone released a non crippled distro. The EU is very staunchly against software patents at the moment so the conflict would only bring the problem into the eyes of the public elsewhere.
Amazing I've heard that comment on at least a couple of thousand occassions. How many users does a games company lose sleep over. Given that most games companies are borderline in terms of profit I would have thought that any extra sales would be appreciated.
I think proving the market is more important than technical issues at the moment. If Cedega/Wine/Xover reaches a reasonable level it will still be the case that SDL games will run better than DX games (most SDL games run well in them now). So it will still encourage people to go SDL and that will eventually mean more native ports anyway.
So a limited Wine facility to improve the position is a great first step as long as it never becomes perfect.
Re:Speaking as a Game Marketer and Linux User...
on
Cedega and Linux Games
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· Score: 3, Interesting
It could be done via the current methods of releasing a binary online and offering no official support. You can make clear that the game is Windows only officially. Linux users will support each other, we're good generally at making up for companies that give no support so companies that give the tiniest amount (in terms of releasing a patch 'as is') would bring us half way there to begin with. The linux mentality is do it yourself and if its possible the Linux community would help make it happen.
You'll probably find Linux users will write their own installation script if you don't provide one and then there is no problem.
From the development point of view theres no disadvantage to using SDL over DX apart from maybe devs have more experience with the MS platform (it's a rare one that has no SDL experience though, its usually the first port of call).
Another way of looking at it is this, plan for portability even if you have no intention of a Linux release. It costs nothing more to write portable code if you plan correctly and you at least then have the option. Then if a million Linux users cry "this game is SDL please port it" then you can judge the market from there.
It can be done simply by running #sudo apt-get update then #sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop but that will install the standard ubuntu desktop which is a bit bloated. Personally I'd drag in the x server then run fluxbox if I had to run a desktop.
I'm not so sure, there are a lot of new people (in terms of non programmers/admins) switching to Linux at the moment and while they aren't contributing code they are trying to do something about the inherent uglyness of everything within current theming standards with varying degrees of success. It's one thing Ubuntu definately did right, they made everything brown so people worked like mad to get rid of it.
Only time will tell if these non-geeks will stick with the platform though. I know a few who setup (amazingly without much help but we are talking Ubuntu here) and they're pretty determined to stick it out if a bit clueless of how far they have to go (assuming they want more than playing their MP3's and looking at free porn).
This is what Linux needs to do though, it needs to attract artists to solve these problems. The current devs could spend a million years on theming and not get it right so they need to make it easy for others to do the work.
Anyway I'm certain technically XGL will have moved on by then but the question of whether it will have the required artwork is as of yet unanswered.
I've run WinXP in VMware and I found it to be acceptable when I got VMware tools installed (it's worthless without them though). I never tried it under any extreme loads though and you don't get and hardware accelerated GFX AFAIK.
Well I think poor products are easier to improve anyway so the gap should decrease dramatically over the coming years of Vista beta testing.
I fancy its the lastest leg of Bills charity work. He's giving an OS away for free but is disguising it as a beta test to hide the fact from the shareholders.
Could they not use BSD drivers since they have a reasonable level of hardware support. I thought that might have been a small factor of them going BSD anyway, it makes doing things properly easier since they'd have a reasonable hardware support base rather than starting from scratch.
He means they talk utter crap on a very reliable basis. They release those legal papers like clockwork as well though they seemingly use the 1m monkeys on type writers approach. One day they'll claim to own all the works of Shakespear.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow that sounds like it came straight out of the Daily Mail*. Immigration isn't a real issue, it isn't hurting the economy and we aren't being stretched by it. The real issue is that under the cloak of 'the nice guy' Blair has brought increasing levels of state interference which make it all but impossible for anyone to make money. Not to mention a continuing series of tax raising meassures.
The ID card scheme will cost me and you more than immigrants will ever cost us and yet people want ID cards to stop immigration. It's just a reality that there is still a racist element in Britain and a lot of people who can't see the wood from the trees.
Anyway I'm still waiting for a Libertarian party for Britain. All the current idiots just want to interfere in my life more.
*For non Brits the Daily Mail is a disreputable paper that only the most stupid Brits read. They take the same alarmist nonsensical lines over and over again with nothing ever coming of any of them.
Yes but try explaining to a suit that copy protection is totally irrelevant to those that want to bypass it. Even Starforce can be bypassed quite easily. The worst part is while you can bypass Starforce by unpluging IDE cables and such you still get the negative effects of the junk drivers. The best part is hacked binary copies have no damaging components so don't smash your computer in the slightest making piracy very attractive to the gamer that wants to protect their expensive investment.
I still get annoyed by the fact my legal right to backup my programs has been bypassed though.
As I understand it they are nowhere near profitability.
They could of course spend 5 seconds at install compiling the shim and then all is good. I'm suprised more distros don't do this given the rise of live cd installers. Prehaps thats why Ubuntu is moving to a live cd, next release will detect then compile the correct module for you. You haven't distributed a pre-compiled binary then.
Personally I think it would be better if someone released a non crippled distro. The EU is very staunchly against software patents at the moment so the conflict would only bring the problem into the eyes of the public elsewhere.
LAME is free software anyway. The code is there.
Seriously, can you link the steam version to a version you already have. I have a copy but I'm very cautious when it comes to starjunk.
This is a good thing. The day we have starforce for Linux is the day I start using BSD.
Amazing I've heard that comment on at least a couple of thousand occassions. How many users does a games company lose sleep over. Given that most games companies are borderline in terms of profit I would have thought that any extra sales would be appreciated.
I think proving the market is more important than technical issues at the moment. If Cedega/Wine/Xover reaches a reasonable level it will still be the case that SDL games will run better than DX games (most SDL games run well in them now). So it will still encourage people to go SDL and that will eventually mean more native ports anyway.
So a limited Wine facility to improve the position is a great first step as long as it never becomes perfect.
It could be done via the current methods of releasing a binary online and offering no official support. You can make clear that the game is Windows only officially. Linux users will support each other, we're good generally at making up for companies that give no support so companies that give the tiniest amount (in terms of releasing a patch 'as is') would bring us half way there to begin with. The linux mentality is do it yourself and if its possible the Linux community would help make it happen.
You'll probably find Linux users will write their own installation script if you don't provide one and then there is no problem.
From the development point of view theres no disadvantage to using SDL over DX apart from maybe devs have more experience with the MS platform (it's a rare one that has no SDL experience though, its usually the first port of call).
Another way of looking at it is this, plan for portability even if you have no intention of a Linux release. It costs nothing more to write portable code if you plan correctly and you at least then have the option. Then if a million Linux users cry "this game is SDL please port it" then you can judge the market from there.
Neverwinter is a great game with the expansion packs. The original campaign was a bit so-so* but the second expansion was fantastic.
*it was good but not as good as HOTU
Emacs still needs a text editor to be considered feature complete ;).
Thats an old complaint, why don't you you mention the pornography in one of the earlier versions as well.
Fair enough it was pure madness but isn't a current problem.
Does it run the HURD though.
It can be done simply by running #sudo apt-get update then #sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop but that will install the standard ubuntu desktop which is a bit bloated. Personally I'd drag in the x server then run fluxbox if I had to run a desktop.
I'm not so sure, there are a lot of new people (in terms of non programmers/admins) switching to Linux at the moment and while they aren't contributing code they are trying to do something about the inherent uglyness of everything within current theming standards with varying degrees of success. It's one thing Ubuntu definately did right, they made everything brown so people worked like mad to get rid of it.
Only time will tell if these non-geeks will stick with the platform though. I know a few who setup (amazingly without much help but we are talking Ubuntu here) and they're pretty determined to stick it out if a bit clueless of how far they have to go (assuming they want more than playing their MP3's and looking at free porn).
This is what Linux needs to do though, it needs to attract artists to solve these problems. The current devs could spend a million years on theming and not get it right so they need to make it easy for others to do the work.
Anyway I'm certain technically XGL will have moved on by then but the question of whether it will have the required artwork is as of yet unanswered.
I've run WinXP in VMware and I found it to be acceptable when I got VMware tools installed (it's worthless without them though). I never tried it under any extreme loads though and you don't get and hardware accelerated GFX AFAIK.
Could you not apt a desktop environment. It doesn't have to be spectacular to be functional.
I love Windows, making hardware cheaper for myself at the expense of morons since 1995.
Well I think poor products are easier to improve anyway so the gap should decrease dramatically over the coming years of Vista beta testing.
I fancy its the lastest leg of Bills charity work. He's giving an OS away for free but is disguising it as a beta test to hide the fact from the shareholders.
Could they not use BSD drivers since they have a reasonable level of hardware support. I thought that might have been a small factor of them going BSD anyway, it makes doing things properly easier since they'd have a reasonable hardware support base rather than starting from scratch.
What if they, you know, kind of built their own or got an untainted box, no MS tax then.
He means they talk utter crap on a very reliable basis. They release those legal papers like clockwork as well though they seemingly use the 1m monkeys on type writers approach. One day they'll claim to own all the works of Shakespear.
By then of course most the alternatives will have left it in the dead. How much will XGL have surpased the Windows equivalent by then.