GarageGames Starts IndieGoGo Campaign To Port Torque 3D To Linux 71
Open source (as Torque 3D recently became) is one thing; cross-platform is another. Now, reader iamnothing writes "GarageGames is heading to IndieGoGo to port Torque 3D to Linux. The campaign is centered around hiring a dedicated developer or team to port Torque 3D to Linux. The primary target is Ubuntu 32bit with other flavors of Linux as stretch goals. All work will be done in the public eye under our Github repository under the MIT license."
interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Not a lot of offerings in Linux game engines so far, so this would be a nice addition. Afaik, the only real options are various derivative of older open-sourced Id Software engines, and Ogre3d [ogre3d.org]. Plus Unity recently added the ability to export builds to Linux, but not to develop on Linux.
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Yeah, Unity and Shiva both have export options, which is an awesome thing for gamers. But for developers, you still have to use Windows or a Mac with those engines. I love that they've added the export option, though. That means more games on Linux, which is always a good thing!
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Big "Pro" graphical design apps like Adobe CS or Maya have no signs of getting linux ports
That's surprising, given that Maya's system requirements page [autodesk.com] lists Red Hat and Fedora as supported operating systems.
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Wow. It's probably been about 10 years since I used CS. It was really rough around the edges at that time, mostly just a rendering engine. I'll have to take a look at it again. I'm sure it's improved by leaps and bounds over the years.
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Not a lot of offerings in Linux game engines so far, so this would be a nice addition. Afaik, the only real options are various derivative of older open-sourced Id Software engines, and Ogre3d [ogre3d.org]. Plus Unity recently added the ability to export builds to Linux, but not to develop on Linux.
I suppose Cube [cubeengine.com] counts.
Why 32bit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why 32bit? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easy to run x86 binaries on x86-64, but vice versa is not possible. I don't know of any x86-only CPUs being sold anymore, the last ones I remember were the early Atoms, so maybe in a few years we can bury the arch.
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Drive a stake through its heart, decapitate it, bury the body under a cross-road and burn the head.
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I don't know of any x86-only CPUs being sold anymore, the last ones I remember were the early Atoms
Also, the early Core Duo. But who do you know still running one of those? There's probably way more Atoms still in use.
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I am on my work laptop (running a 32 bit Core Duo, that is). Obviously not relevant in terms of game development, but more so in enterprise software development. My company has somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 PC units out there in the wild at the moment, and a non-trivial number of them will be running 32 bit processors and/or OSs, and will be for a flipping long time yet.
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64bit binaries are also larger, meaning that for the same hardware configuration the CPU can cache more 32bit code than 64bit. 64bit binaries also take more RAM, increasing swap times.
This is why I'm running a 64bit kernel with most of the userspace being 32bit, the exception are numerical computation tools (numpy and friends) which live in a 64bit chroot. This is my personal laptop, office computers are fully 64bit.
Re:Why 32bit? (Score:5, Interesting)
64bit binaries are also larger, meaning that for the same hardware configuration the CPU can cache more 32bit code than 64bit. 64bit binaries also take more RAM, increasing swap times.
This is why I'm running a 64bit kernel with most of the userspace being 32bit, the exception are numerical computation tools (numpy and friends) which live in a 64bit chroot. This is my personal laptop, office computers are fully 64bit.
If you want "the best of both worlds", you have the new x32 ABI which gives you 32bit pointers and the extended 64bit CPU register set:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI [wikipedia.org]
Gentoo is already publishing release candidate stage tarballs [lwn.net] for x32, official support should be coming pretty soon..
PS: Parent is also me, I forgot to login.. sorry about that.
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The only thing you get out of running x32, apparently, is saving a little memory on pointers. And meanwhile it will almost certainly cause problems as compared to amd64. And amd64 finally works properly for me on Ubuntu, for example I can install wine and lsb-base at the same time. IOW, a not-too-bad idea whose time has already passed.
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And what does that have at all to do with porting and compiling your software for x86_64 machines? You really think people have to license the processor patents to do that?
I already donated a few years ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I already donated a few years ago... (Score:5, Informative)
That was IAC, not GarageGames. This company bought GG and renamed the sub-company Torque, jacked up prices and devoured souls. I'm sure the CEO also ate babies, but I have no picture evidence. People close to the company can testify this is the sort of thing they would do, though.
I have more hope for the engines now than the IAC days, especially after having seen the improvements on the 2D side. There is still much work left, but people who are really interested in more platforms (like Android) are free to contribute. Please somebody start on Android ports of both engines so the whine can stop ;)
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I bought Torque and Torque2D before they were IAC [according to my GG account, I purchased it on 2004-10-19]. Linux support was the reason I bought Torque, and T2D was filthycheap and could be built into Torque [it made an awesome overhead map widget]. Looking at my GG profile, I also purchased TGEA on the promise that Linux would be supported eventually.
Then they summarily dumped Linux support; the code already existed and mostly worked, and GG made the pre-meditated decision to expel Linux, despite it tak
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Huh, I posted as AC by accident. Well, to make up for it, here's the post where they officially gave Linux the finger: http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/9244 [garagegames.com] . The post was titled "Linux Expectation Management"
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Jeff had to make a hard business decision, and posted the reasoning behind it. I don't think his intent was to give the finger to Linux.
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Aye, I understand that. Eventually a fiscal decision was made, rationally, by a company teetering on the edge. And that's OK.
But speaking as a developer, I keep going back to my earlier statement; each moment when you're working on code and you have to make a decision, you weigh up the pros and cons of each option and pick the one that you want. The decisions they were making back then were, each time, to choose a windows-specific choice.
Somewhere along the way, the small marginal improvement in development
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Jeff had to make a hard business decision, and posted the reasoning behind it. I don't think his intent was to give the finger to Linux.
That might not have been the intent but that was clearly what happened. Should you be able to use the excuse that you didn't originally set out to shoot someone in the face? They took people's money and they didn't deliver. Don't overpromise is one lesson to take away from this. Another is, don't pay for stuff that doesn't exist yet. Which is why anyone who puts any money into this that they cannot afford to lose and not care is a dumbass.
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Actually, that post is about managing expectations, which leads to discussing how things happened. The post was about transparency. It was actually about delivery and letting people know what they weren't getting, which is hard in any business. And it's something that you have to mitigate with any commercial release.
We don't have to do that now since Torque 3D is open source. We can be transparent in ways that we never could before.
This campaign is about accelerating Linux development by hiring a dedicated
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You can call anyone who wants to develop games on Linux natively dumbasses all you like.
I may well be an asshole, but you're a disingenuous douchebag for attempting to put these words into my mouth. I hope you get all that is coming to you for your bullshit.
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This is awesome! +1 for GarageGames (Score:1)
The year of Linux Gaming? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't help but notice all the gaming-on-Linux news popping up recently with Steam coming to Linux, the first Unreal Engine 3 game for Linux and so on.
Not worh your $. (Score:4, Informative)
Torque is just bad software that was abandoned by developers when much better alternatives (such as Unity) appeared, despite it being much cheaper.
Even with source code fully published under MIT license, developer interest towards it is almost non existent. I mean, I welcome this move, but even when free and OSS, developing a game with this engine will cost you more time and money than pretty much any of the closed alternatives.
Re:Not worh your $. (Score:4, Insightful)
I shelled out for TGE at a time when that was alot of money to me, and alot of time went into learning it. I hated the script, which was about the only thing thoroughly documented. The actual engine itself was poorly documented and questions about the engine usually got no attention. Then when they basically abandoned it and started creating more products instead of improving the existing engine, I had enough. This created fragmentation in the community and help system, such that some people move to other engines and no longer participate in the community of the original engine. Rather than improve the documentation and flesh out the details of the engine architecture over time, attention was turned to other $ generating products with new marketable names.
This really left a bad taste in my mouth. I believe there were other paths they could have taken to making 2D and RTS games easier, in a way that would have leveraged a single core engine to ensure the entire community was focused on improving the core.
Obviously I recognize it's their engine to do with as they please. They claim to be a different kind of company now, and I think some of the moves they've made show this to be potentially genuine, so good luck to them. I think the only thing that would really give me renewed interest is to see them do some self-reflection, publicly admit past problems, and talk about what philosophy they will have going forward to avoid those past problems. Are they going to have a long term commitment to this engine?
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I think the only thing that would really give me renewed interest is to see them do some self-reflection, publicly admit past problems, and talk about what philosophy they will have going forward to avoid those past problems.
I'd want something for my previously-expended money, too. You bought a product and they never provided it. I don't care if they're owned by the same people or not; the company made promises and if you won't keep them, don't buy the company, or at least change the name. You want to ride the coattails of their success but don't want to make good on their promises? That just means that you've maintained them in a state of not keeping their promises. And they bought a legacy of unkept promises, was it worth it
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Last ditch effort. (Score:3)
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After all, a common reason developers used to give for not developing for Linux was the vast number of competing distros they'd have to deal with (tweaking their program such that it was able to run on each one, and each one had a different set of default libraries, configurations, media locations, etc...). That argument has a
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any who are interested can make it run on other distos.
No, they can't. Ubuntu runs with bleeding edge libraries. While Linux has great backwards compatibility, its forwards compatibility is (obviously) not so great. (Whose is?) If these people would just port to Debian stable, for cryin' out loud, it would run on Ubuntu, and practically everywhere else! You'd think they'd get the hint that Ubuntu, like almost half the distros today, is based on Debian. But nooooooooOOoooooo.
Why IndieGoGo (Score:1)
For good or bad, everyone else seems to use KickStarter.
Already the IGG website seems to be lagging, and would require yet another signup etc etc.
Also, 32-bit only? Really? 64-bit is really a shining star for Linux in general
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One of the key reasons was that IndieGoGo has better international support, and some of the best teams who are using Torque and looking to target Linux are from countries not supported on Kickstarter.
We're starting with 32b Ubuntu since that's the common dev target that most engine and game developers target first. We need a solid base target to start from and we can branch out from there.
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Title Correction (Score:2)
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I'm so sorry you are so out of the loop. It really pains me to see you in this terrible state. Reading the article might help. Not that I have any faith that you will.
Seems genuine (Score:1)
32 bit? (Score:2)
Why is anyone targeting 32 bit in this day and age? The inertia is absurd.