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Games Software Entertainment Linux

LGP brings back Loki, Kind Of 200

Posted by timothy from the games-are-a-good-indicator dept.
michaelsimms writes "Linux Game Publishing has announced a publishing deal with Epic Interactive to publish Northland for Linux. What's this about Loki, you ask? Well, Northland is a game featuring the Norse god Loki, and a group of heroes battling to save the world in the time of Odin and the gods of Nordic myth."
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LGP brings back Loki, Kind Of More

LGP brings back Loki, Kind Of

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  • Anyone remember them playing Loki on Nick Arcade? I do :(
    • I predict they will have to stop publication of this game, because Mythic Entertainment (the creators of Dark Age of Camelot) owns all the rights to Norse mythology.
  • I want loki back so they can finish porting Deus Ex (The original) to linux.

    • Re:Bah fuck that (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kramer ( 19951 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @09:50AM (#8520842) Homepage
      Hell, I'd settle for them releasing a 'best of lokisoft' collection. I can't find a damn copy of alpha centauri / alien crossfire other than the used copy selling for $145 on amazon.com.

      Anybody got a copy they're not using? Please?
      • Last time I was at tuxgames.com that had Alpha Centauri and the Expansion pack in stock. Trying to get there now but tuxgames (which is slow under the best of circumstances) is crawling right now...
        • I got through - they seem to be sold out. Sorry - rough luck. I don't want to part with mine, makes great entertainment on my aging Thinkpad....
        • Alpha Centauri/Alien Crossfire is the only reason I'm not going to put Linux on my laptop. I've been playing that game since 2000, on and off, and although I want to convert my desktop box to Linux, I'm not even going to try with the laptop. All my good games (AC, Homeworld...) run on it ;-)
          (well, that and I need a Windows machine to do my coursework...)

      • Re:Bah fuck that (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I haven't played mine in several months, and YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!

        BWA! HAHAHAHAHAA!
      • If you left a good Email I would sell you mine. I don't play it and can easily let it go for a small fee.

      • Re:Bah fuck that (Score:5, Interesting)

        by JustKidding ( 591117 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @10:31AM (#8521209)
        Which begs the question: is it immoral to pirate a game when you can no longer buy it legally? (because the publisher went bankrupt)
        And, is it legal? (who's going to come after you for doing it?)

        • Re:Bah fuck that (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:57AM (#8522058)
          Sorry for the upset, but no it isn't legal.

          Remember that the consumers are not the only people who "lost" in the dissapperance of Loki. Loki's investors were also harmed, and although they will have better luck getting water from a stone, they feel that even a dollar from Loki's residual property should be made, it should go to them. The footed the bill for Loki's downfall, and they should reap any (even a miserable) profit.

          Morally it is less decided, but legally you are still depriving Loki's investors of money they lay claim to. But these guys won't want to loose another dollar in ressurecting Loki, they are holding out for a (phantom) company to realize what they have is valueable (and buy it off of them for millions).

          The main reason this hasn't happened yet is probably because what they have isn't nearly worth what they want. In other words, they're dreaming.
          • (yeah, this is pretty much all opinion)
            Respectfully:
            Fuck legality. The law ain't always right.

            If nobody's going to give you a legally-permissable avenue to satisfy a demand, go ahead and satisfy it "illegally," as long as it does not infringe on anyone's life, liberty, or physical(1) property(2), and do so at market value. In matters of trivially-replicable things (like bit patterns), this cost is naturally negligible.

            If it's matter, it's physical; its recipient-owner can do with it what he wishes. If it'
        • Actually, I've always thought that would be a possible solution for the whole prepetual copyright argument. Anyone can maintain copyright for as long as they want, provided that they continue to offer the copyrighted material for sale (at fair market price, that is, no [Dr Evil] "sure you can buy it, for $100,000,000" [/Dr Evil]

          My basic line of reasoning here is that if copyright is prepetual and the copyright holder can simply stop selling the copyrighted material than it can easily be erased from exist

      • I got mine for $10 in the discount bin before Loki officially went under. $148, you say? Perhaps it's time to put mine up on ebay.

      • If you're willing to deal with a Windows version, there's a boxed set called [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/- /B0000CE1L7/qid=1079028421/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0 524318-5144849?v=glance&s=videogames]"The Laptop Collection"[/url] that includes SMAC, Alien Crossfire, Red Alert and Tiger Woods golf. It costs $15 - $20 and can be found at Walmart and Babbages, among other retailers.
    • That would of been great...too bad they had it completed but couldn't release it because of some minor licensing issues...then LokiGames went under =(

      • Well it wasnt really completed, but most of the porting was done. There was a major bug that made the game unplayable, and would have been fixable if they could have gotten the source for the "game code."

    • This may or may not be what you want to hear but Deus Ex works fine under Wine with full OpenGL support.

      It needs no special configuration, it just runs. I've nearly played it half way through again and only come across one little bug.

      Before another Wine thread kicks off, then forget it. If you like the game and want to play it you can.

      • I'm curious. On my 1GHz system, Deus Ex ran like shit on Windows. Do you think that on a 2GHz system it might run reasonably through Wine? Or still like shit?
  • ...so I can figure out if I can finally buy a copy of the Alpha Centauri port. Thanks kids.

  • Look ma! Article text! (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @09:50AM (#8520841) Journal
    Northland coming to Linux

    Nottingham/Tuebingen - March 4, 2004 - Linux Game Publishing and e.p.i.c.
    interactive today announce a cooperation to bring award winning RTS game
    Northland to the Linux platform. RTS game Northland, originally developed by
    Funactics Software from germany, was ported by e.p.i.c. interactive and will
    be available to Linux retailers from Linux Game Publishing soon.
    The Linuxversion of the game is in beta stages now and a demoversion will be
    available prior to the release of Northland. Northland can be preordered now
    .

    Northland, which only recently has been published for the PC, tells the
    story of Bjarni the Viking.
    The story begins where the plot of "Cultures 2 - The Gates of Asgard" ended.
    After perilous adventures our four heroes defeated the Midgard serpent and
    thus saved the world. A great celebration began and everyone was happy and
    content.
    But only a very short time later the peace was disturbed by a call for help
    from their friend Hatschi. Hatschi's homeland was plagued by mysterious
    monstrous serpent creatures, which spread chaos and destruction through the
    country. Without hesitation Bjarni and Crya hurried to help him and stumbled
    right into a new adventure, in which the sly god Loki will play an important
    role...

    Northland features:
    * Stand-alone Adventure Strategy game.
    * Single player campaign with 8 missions including several sub missions.
    * The exciting plots tell the story of Viking God Loki who tried to take
    revenge on Godfather Odin for his banishment from Asgard to Earth. For that
    he abuses our four human heroes with his intrigues and traps.
    * 8 additional free single player missions (non campaign).
    * 3 difficulty levels to make the game fun for everybody from beginners to
    experts.
    * Special effects like weather effects, fog, ghost units etc.
    * Based on the enhanced technology of "Cultures 2 - The Gates of Asgard";
    enhanced AI.

    System requirements:
    PC@800 Mhz or better, 128 MByte RAM, graphics board with 16 MByte RAM, CD
    drive, Linux kernel 2.3 or better.

    About e.p.i.c. interactive

    Founded in 2000 to port and publish games for niche platforms such as the
    Apple Macintosh or the Commodore Amiga. The first releases were the classic
    adventure game "Simon the Sorcerer II" (2000) and real time strategy hit
    "Earth 2140"(2001) for the Mac. In 2003 e.p.i.c. started adapting its
    porting API to the Linux platform.

    About Linux Game Publishing

    Founded in 2001, Linux Game Publishing was formed to help companies
    bring their games to market. Combining extensive Linux knowledge with
    a solid business foundation, Linux Game Publishing is partnering with
    a number of other companies to bring to Linux both ports of games from
    other platforms and original titles.

    For more information please contact
    Linux Game Publishing Press Department
    press@linuxgamepublishing.com
    • > Northland, which only recently has been published
      > for the PC, tells the story of Bjarni the Viking.

      I would definitely go buy several copies if only it were Bjarni, not Loki, who was the insidious creeping threat of the Northlands... and if he were a big purple dinosaur instead of a Viking. Or maybe even a big purple Viking dinosaur.

      Solomon Chang
      • I would definitely go buy several copies if only it were Bjarni, not Loki, who was the insidious creeping threat of the Northlands...

        Is it just me, or do the words "insidious creeping threat of the Northlands" bring the name "Darl McBride" to mind?
  • I hadnt hear of Loki ever !
    Is is by any chance similar to Black and White (without the creature of course) or is it more like Warcraft ??

  • Brings back Loki from where? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Since it has been established that the title does not refer to the recently-deceased Linux game porting company, where is it exactly that this Loki has been brought back from? Age of Mythology?

    Don't bend over backwards next time trying to conjure a clever title. You either got it or ya don't.
  • How well does WineX work in allowing Windows-platform games to work on Linux? What are the limits of this program? And finally, how much do you have to pay for it?
    • There was a news [slashdot.org] on /. a few days ago basically there is about half a dozen of games that are advertized as working perfectly and about 250 with some glitches. You can get a prepackaged download version of WineX from $15.

    • Re:WineX (Score:4, Informative)

      by PhoenixFlare ( 319467 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @10:38AM (#8521292) Journal
      How well does WineX work in allowing Windows-platform games to work on Linux?

      It really depends what kind of game you want to play. Looking at their supported titles list:

      5(Works perfectly): 7. One of those being Diablo 2, which has been out for almost 5 years, and 2 of the other being Warcraft 3+expansion. And another being a Hoyle Card Game collection.

      4(Playable with minor irritations): 278. Including such gems as "Blair Witch, Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock", "Putt-Putt and Pep's Balloon-O-Rama", "Revenge of Marjorie the Chicken", or "Hello Kitty: Cutie World".

      As you can see on closer inspection, the vast majority of the games with these ratings fall into one of two categories:

      1) FPS games.

      2) Games from at least 2-5 years ago with massive followings, like Star/Warcraft, or Everquest.

      3) Obscure games that almost nobody does or would ever want to play.

      The rest of the list, ranging from "Playable with major irritations" to "May install but there is no gameplay", down to "Does not install and does not work" contains, at last inspection, around 591 titles, or more than twice the amount of working titles. Take from that what you will. If all you want to play is games on their "5" or "4" lists, then it may be worth it to you.

      And finally, how much do you have to pay for it?

      $5 per month with three month minimum for access to updated binaries of the software. I believe only the subscription version contains code to work with stuff like special CD copy protection, but that may be different now - I subscribed a couple years back, and cancelled my subscription when I couldn't get any game I owned working to satisfaction.

      And yes, if someone is looking at my post history, this is stuff I posted a few weeks ago [slashdot.org].
  • Anyone remember shareware "Thor: God of Thunder?"

    That was rad.

  • Bastard! (Score:5, Funny)

    by mahdi13 ( 660205 ) <icarus.lnx@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @09:57AM (#8520905) Journal
    Had me excited there for a minute...I thought they were going to reserect http://lokigames.com
    BUT NNOOOOOooooo!!!!
    It's a game featuring the Norse God, Loki...Next time someone pulls a posting stunt like that, they should be drawn and quartered!
    • Here, Here!
    • Although i have no doubt that we will see more Loki like game companies in the future i suspect they will avoid the Loki name like the plague. it would be the curse of death due to their unfortunate demise. it would be like taking a washed up OS comapny and renaming it SCO and expecting to get customers based on that. oh, wait.

      seriously, i wish Loki was still was still around just to maintain the old ones that have already been ported. in the mean time we have LGP and i'm sure more will follow.
    • I personally thought that it was funny. Some may consider it a "publicity stunt", but it seems to be more like a play on words to me. LGP has nothing to gain but your attention, by associating itself with Loki in a joking fashion.
  • I haven't played Northland, or even heard of a game of that name for that matter, but the initial description reminds me of RUNE...

    Anyone else get that feeling?
  • I guess it's true...mention ANYTHING to do with Linux and it's hailed as newsworthy here.

    This just in. Books have been written about Loki.
    This just in. A movie has been produced about Loki. (the Mask)

    I don't normally whine about goofy blurbs, but fer chrissakes!

    • I know! I got so excited that I not only skipped the article but the news post as well. I got started on the comments and was like "what the fuck? these guys aren't talking about Loki Games".

      After scrolling back up and reading the news post, I must say that I was very disappointed.

    • Books and the mask have nothing to do with linux, this does because there's a game being ported to linux. I think any time a major game (well I dunno if this is major or not) is ported to linux, it's news worthy since most people are that much closer to installing linux.
  • Sort of off topic, but anyone know the status of Angry Pixels, the LGP sponsored linux game development company? Their site, www.angry-pixels.com, is down, and haven't heard any news in a LONG time...
    • As a former Angry Pixels "developer" I think I can say: project is and (almost from beginning) was dead. Months of wasted time from my point of view :-/
      • Out of curiousity, what caused the project to go "wrong?" Although it was evident from the news we saw about it that they had the wrong focus -- more worried about the name and logo than the game -- the general idea of the project seemed like a good idea to me.
        • IMHO problem was bad set of people and terrible organisation of whole project. From selected 8 coders only Steve Baker and I were experienced in graphics - and in 3D at all. There were people experienced in mud programming, Bill Kendrick is great coder, but experienced in 2D arcades, there was also guy experienced in audio...

          Steve Baker left, when it was clear that LGP wasn't able to give us good artists (porting!=creating). Then even discussions on mailing list dissapear. And I think it was exact moment o

          • Re:OT: Angry Pixels (Score:4, Interesting)

            by reborn ( 224970 ) <matt@mattsscripts.co . u k> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:50AM (#8522010) Homepage
            IMHO problem was bad set of people and terrible organisation of whole project.

            A bad set of people? I think not, the group were a talented bunch. I would not argue that organisation was a problem either, though it is hard to organise a distributed group of people on a major project.

            From selected 8 coders only Steve Baker and I were experienced in graphics - and in 3D at all.

            Whether or not the group were experienced in graphics or not (I forget who had experience in what), how many developers do you think need to be experience in graphics on a game project? A game's graphics are only it's visual representation and is a very small part of development.

            Steve Baker left, when it was clear that LGP wasn't able to give us good artists

            I think, although Steve may say differently, that he left due to lack of progress and not lack of good artists.

            Then even discussions on mailing list dissapear. And I think it was exact moment of death.

            Interesting. I received 1,147 e-mails from the list after Steve left (of a total of 2,809). This wasn't the moment of death, though it didn't help.

            In all honesty the project was going to be incredibly difficult to make work due to the lack of regular monetary motivation (as in a wage), which meant maintaining motivation for the project was incredibly difficult.

            On the topic of motivation, it didn't help to have a person who is quite possibly the most pessimistic (sic?) and most difficult to work with ever (certainly of all the people that I have ever worked with). Oh, that was Jacek btw.

            Oh well, c'est la vie.
            • Yes, I know... Don't be posting mod requests...

              While I can't verify either side of the story- the parent presents a different side to things from the Angry Pixels' apparent demise...

          • PS. I was really, really mad and irritated, because result of all that stuff was few months delay of my master thesis :-( At least I will not make similiar mistakes in future. Always double check project you will be working on.

            I just can't envision a project that never really got off the ground as, you describe it, providing enough of a distraction to delay a Master's Thesis. Better yet, I can't envision myself delaying a Master's Thesis for much of anything of that nature- you'd be in a much more robu

  • Loki? [euweb.cz]

    No, waitaminute...

    Loki? [dte.uma.es]

    That's not right...

    Ah, here we are! Loki! [animenewsnetwork.com]

    Chris Mattern

  • Coming Soon: KNorthland (Score:3, Interesting)

    by randomErr ( 172078 ) <ervin,kosch&gmail,com> on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @10:13AM (#8521047) Journal
    I can see it now Knoppix Northland! This is what everyone was talking about a year ago: Bootable Linux game CD's.

    • Re:Coming Soon: KNorthland (Score:5, Insightful)

      by arcanumas ( 646807 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @10:42AM (#8521324) Homepage
      The bootable game CD concept is interesting because of the very high Geek Coolness factor.
      Apart from that , however, i don't see it as a viable solution because no LiveCD could ever work flawlessly (3D acceleration and all) on EVERY computer.
      Plus, games today often span ultiple CDs and are decompressed on the hard-drive. Even if we could fit the game on a CD with on-the-fly decompression, it would probably be very slow in reading data. Not to mention that when storing data was needed (eg save games), it would prove problematic.
      Coolness grade A+ Feasibility: F
      • Seems like it'd be a perfect solution for demos though.
      • I can't possibly imagine why so many people seem to think that live CDs are good for games.

        I remember the days when I had to boot off a floppy, and had to have a differeny floppy boot disc for each game. It was awful and annoying.

        Now we have these fancy operating systems, that let us *shock* run multiple applications at once, and *double shock* get the latest drivers for our systems when they are updated.

        And you want to go back to every game having a fix boot system, having to reboot to play any of them,

    • This is what everyone was talking about a year ago: Bootable Linux game CD's.

      Ugh, that's got to be the worst idea ever. What's one of the biggest things that most people hate about Windows, and that *nix users love to crow about? The fact that you have to REBOOT Windows all the time....

      Don't encourage the game manufacturers to come up with some silly mini-OS (linux-based or not) just to play their games - that's a horrendous concept. *ponders* although it definitely would make SOME groups happy, sin

  • But does anyone know whatever happened to the Angry Pixels group? Did they dissolve?
  • "Northland.... tells the story of Bjarni the Viking." I know this guy... he's that purple dinosaur-like mascot they use in the Metrodome for the Minnesota Vikings... ... any word on whether "Ratatusk, the Squirrel Tale bearer" made the cut?

  • You got my hopes up :( (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 4b696e67 ( 670803 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @10:32AM (#8521220)
    I was looking forward to a flood of game ports to Linux. I guess one more is better than no more. Why companies don't release executables for Linux (like Id for quake(1-3) and Bioware for NWN)? Most of the games today are datafiles anyway (ie. pictures and sound that would work on any platform). Are game companies so locked in to using Microsoft's APIs like DirectX that they can't program a game to be portable anymore?

    Electronic arts probably pisses me off the most as they make a few changes to Id's engines (MOHAA) and neglect to release binaries for Linux. Yes, I am aware of the port on icculus.org, but EA could have done a port of MOHAA long ago.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:48AM (#8521990)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Do you want to know why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @12:42PM (#8522600) Homepage
      It's a combination of things...

      Some of it is using Microsoft API's.
      Some of it is using things like Bink, which didn't have a version for Linux until recently and it will cost you another $2k or so to provide a Linux version for sale or download (Both of which was the reason there were no in-game cutscenes for NWN...).
      Some of it is that they have to provide testing and, at minimum, deal with support calls even if they explicitly state that it is unsupported.
      Some of it is that there is a perception that writing to Windows is cross-platform enough since it's "portable" to the X-Box. (Which is flatly wrong...)
      Some of it is that there's the perception that writing to just Windows is easier and that writing cross-platform code is more difficult because it requires careful dilligent work to make the game work on all platforms (using the argument that there's different capabilities on each of the same and you have to code for each... Again, all of which, is pretty much wrong...)

      With all the obvious and percieved expenses, most of the publishing houses don't really see any profit in producing Linux versions of anything. In the case of Id, Bioware, S2 Games, and Epic (not to be confused with Epic Interactive of the main subject...), they are studios going out on a limb and taking extra risks because they believe in Linux or they think that it's got some potential.

      We can't fix the real expenses and risks- the studios and publishers will have to weigh those risks against potential profits and decide if they're going to do the version, let someone like LGP handle it for them, or not do one at all.

      I'm endeavoring to talk to the percieved expenses and risks that are opposite to the way things really are. I'm scheduled to be giving a 30-minute talk this month at GDC on the subject.

  • Link Ho (Score:3, Informative)

    by qbert911 ( 751066 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @10:38AM (#8521290) Homepage Journal
    Linux link getting ./ed

    Offical Site: Here [northland-game.com]

    Blurb:
    The overall gameplay element from Cultures 2 that still exists in Northland is in the "Godsim" style of play.
    You are responsible for watching over and assigning professions to your Viking civilians and building their culture up.

    -I can't believe my boss pays me to do this... *SNAP* (@$^#ing daydreams)

  • future of Linux gaming.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by SQLz ( 564901 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:02AM (#8521509) Homepage Journal
    The future of Linux gaming is in the hands of the original developer of the game. Epic, Bioware, ID, etc. Those guys put out excellent Linux releases. Maybe the execution was botched on a couple but Epic LEARNED alot with UT2003 and the UT2004 port is being perfectly done. You gotta cut developers some slack on their first try at Linux. (ie. stop mouthing off in forums like you know what your talking about)

  • What is out there as far as native Linux games (commercial or not) that are actually good?

    Is there a list of commercial game publishers that make native Linux games?

    • Re:Where to look? (Score:3, Informative)

      by NullProg ( 70833 )
      Try here:

      http://www.tuxgames.com/

      I've purchased three loki ports (Heroes3, Myth2, and Heavy Gear 2) and all three are excellent. Checkout http://www.happypenguin.org/
      for links to some great opensource games.

      Enjoy,

  • Wow, misleading. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Repugnant_Shit ( 263651 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @11:11AM (#8521591)
    This is a very, very misleadingly titled article. Shame on you editors!

  • Have you played this already? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by almaon ( 252555 ) on Wednesday March 10, 2004 @12:15PM (#8522213)
    Everyone's boat floats in some kind of water, but Northland's kind of water doesn't float mine.

    The game is a case study of the effects of extreme co-dependency. All the villagers need you too badly, they need you to tell them to get shoes, where wood is, where tools and weapons are, takes a few hours just to get the tech-tree up enough to be able to survive some battles.

    Detailed to the nth degree, but I don't think having some things being autonymous would of been so bad. Like let them find their own mates instead of the player being forced to play cupid, things like Populous were successful in achieving that. Have a Norse god cast a decree "Go forth and hump like rabbits!" to have more children. Instead of telling each female in the village to produce an offspring.

    I played the demo for a few weeks, it's not a bad game, just too tedious for my tastes.

    If you only buy one game for linux this year (you're lucky, you've got more than one to choose from this year ::tardcasm:::) I'd put my 2cents towards UT2K4.
  • Ah, crap! That's the worst type of BAIT AND SWITCH.
    Bastards.
  • In my own Viking tongue, Swedish, it's Loke and Oden, not Loki and Odin. Thor is called Tor and Frey is Frej or Fro. Tor's horse is called Sleipner and his hammer Mjolner. And so on. Just to set the record straight. ;)
  • I would give my left testicle... and a kidney for a Linux client of Battlefield 1942.

    Shit, over half the servers are on Linux server anyway.

  • Last of Loki (Score:2, Interesting)

    by twostar ( 675002 )
    I was lucky enough to beta test for Loki on Tribes 2 and the most frustrating thing was the release. No it wasn't that we had problems making the deadline and getting all the bugs worked out for release, it was that Loki wasn't allowed to release at the same time as EA. We were ready before the windows release. We had better performance and stability then the win guys.

    I remember reading the listservs and hearing all the win guys bitching about frame rates and how they had to turn everything down while

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