Dark Horizons: Lore Available for Linux

Thanks to Garage Games for their submission of "Dark Horizons: Lore is available for all Linux distributions. Dark Horizons is a breakneck-speed first-person shooter based in a universe where the unfolding history of a war-torn Earth is revealed before the player's eyes."

Interesting game

[Pluvius]

It reminds me a lot of that multiplayer Battletech 3025 game that Microsoft canceled sometime during its beta (though a fan group is supposed to be remaking it [is3025.com]). Is there anyone who has played this game and can offer some opinions on gameplay, the ranking system, the community, etc.?

Rob

Re:Interesting game

[FozzieCDN]

I will try to give an objective (though probably slightly biased) feedback to your questions...

GamePlay - The game is a FPS-Mecha hybrid game. So essentially it's the fast paced action and easy controls of a FPS game with some of the more mechanical feel of a simulator. We intentionally did this so that the game would be more about action and team combat than wandering about aimlessly in some lumbering mech on your own.

Community - As an independantly developed game, Lore doesn't have the massive multi-million dollar marketing campaign. Instead we have word of mouth and whatever kind support that the online news sites for Linux, Apple and Windows gaming provides us. The community itself is small but always growing as time goes on. Everyone is very helpful (to one another and us devs) and loves competition. Overall based on my past experiances in other communities it really is one of the best experiances I have seen.

Ranking - Ranging is done bunch of different ways in that any Core Server (a machine we authorize to report to our battle system) will report the results of each mission to our DB. From there you can sort via kills, deaths, kill to death ratio, points, etc.. As you gain more experiance with the system you are allowed to increase your influence (one example would be being allowed to have a larger squad that you are in command of).

Moding - Yes you can mod to your heart's content.

Similarities to BT 3025 - Yes we have heard this comment from a lot of people who have played Lore. This game was very inspirational to us and did influence us a lot with our online Comcent system that one uses to keep track of how the online faction war is going.

Other - As mentioned this is an "Early Adopters" version of the game, as such there is still room for it to grow and expand (much of that is based on the feedback we get from our community). We have a lot of cool features that are always being added to help keep the game fresh and entertaining.

If you have any other questions, just feel free to ask.

Welcome to Lore

[FozzieCDN]

As one of the developers of this product I just want to say that it's good to finally have a Linux release candidate available. It is something that we promised long ago and I am certain that many of you will appreciate it what this game offers and the many great things that are to come in the future.

I certainly hope that you enjoy the "Early Adopters" release of Dark Horizons - Lore, please let us know [darkhorizons-lore.com] if you have any questions, comments or suggestions (as Indie developers we are actually allowed to listen to, communicate with and fine tune the game based on what you guys tell us).

I (and probably others) will be lurking here to answer any questions you guys have, I hope that no one is offended by that.

Re:Welcome to Lore

[Spoing]

1. I (and probably others) will be lurking here to answer any questions you guys have, I hope that no one is offended by that.

I'm not...though I'm sure someone will think of a reason to be offended! :/

Here are two questions;

1. Is there a demo?
2. Is this similar to Heavy Gear II? [tuxgames.com]

Re:Welcome to Lore

[FozzieCDN]

You can download a unlimited time demo (some features are limited though) for Dark Horizons Lore for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows. Download demo from GarageGames.com [garagegames.com].

In regards to Heavy Gear 2, it's been a while since I played it. From my recolection there are definately similarities between the two in the sense that they are very much FPS games more than Simulators. I feel that Lore plays a bit faster than Heavy Gear though.

OK...got the demo...can't login...

[Spoing]

First off, I had to use this command...

1. export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.4.19

...to avoid this error;

1. libgcc_s.so.1 must be installed for pthread_cancel to work

Second, attempting to login I do the following;

Load the game.

Click "Create new account".

Type in information;

User: a_user_name
Password: a_password
E-mail address: [e-mail]

Click "Create Pilot".

Check mail...nothing. OK, let's try.

Punch in;

Login: a_user_name
Password: a_password

Click 'Remember password' and press Login.

Error: "Login failed: Unnown error, please try again Denied"

Hmmm. Maybe I did it wrong. Punch in;

Login: [e-mail] (instead of a_user_name)
Password: a_password

Click 'Remember password' and press Login.

Error: "Login failed: Unnown error, please try again Denied"

Re:Welcome to Lore

[Longwalker-MGO]

While HG2 is considered part of the mecha genre, I would say that the similarities end there. Lore is much faster paced, and as a dev, I feel we are much more connected to our community. Lore also has peristent stats which affect the universe directly, so every battle counts. I dont know of another game where this happens. The devs are usually on the gaming channel to help with technical problems and to answer other questions.

Re:Welcome to Lore

[digime]

Getting the Linux demo is an experience. A BIN file by itself just appears as (45 MB of) text in Mozilla, what I'm sure the majority of us use here. To actually "Download Now!" you must right-click the link and "Save Link As...". But maybe it's just my set up, but I doubt it. I also didn't get a progress bar because of "File Size Unknown...". That's always annoying.

So I finally got it, and ran it. It complained about me not having such and such *.so file, and quit. Not before it conveniently changed my res

Re:Welcome to Lore

[npsimons]

I (and probably others) will be lurking here to answer any questions you guys have, I hope that no one is offended by that.

I know I won't be offended by that. Most slashdotters assume that the companies they discuss have representatives, either official or otherwise, at least listening in to threads here. Is it ego? Maybe, but anyone with some common sense can tell you that it's good to listen to your customers if you want to stay in business. Actually responding to customers on their "home turf" m

MW Fans Rejoice

[torchdragon]

If you guys liked MechWarrior, this is definitely something to check out. A little faster paced and more arcade style but a blast. Definitely one of the best independent projects out there. Support the devs, they deserve it. Hopefully more game devs will take a look at the market and realize Linux CAN be viable.

Good mech game

[17028]

I've tried it... It's a good game if you like mechs and FPS combat. If you like it, I'd buy it, it supports both indie game development and putting games on Linux.

Re:Good mech game

[17028]

Oh yea, there's going to be an event pretty soon called the MAVlympics. It's different sports themed competitions.

http://www.mavlympics.com/ [mavlympics.com]

Re:Good mech game

[Flunitrazepam]

"I've tried it... It's a good game if you like mechs and FPS combat. If you like it, I'd buy it"

you'll buy it for me? you sweet heart!

Re:Good mech game

[17028]

Sure! Just send me your name, address, credit card number, and expiration date, and I'm sure I can find some way. >:)

Re:looks old fasioned..is there a b/w version??

[xgalaxy]

Like graphics are a sign of a quality product? gameplay > graphics If you think otherwise you've been brainwashed.

Re:looks old fasioned..is there a b/w version??

[17028]

They're not that bad, I think. Definately worth downloading the demo and checking it out.

Re:looks old fasioned..is there a b/w version??

[FenrirWolf]

Have you actually played the game?

It's easy to bash indie game developers because they don't have the latest graphics, or the most extensive content. Yet at the same time, people like to proclaim that they value gameplay over graphics. Well, okay, if that's the case, don't immediately bash new indie games just because they don't support per-pixel realtime radiosity gooberlicious jabberwonky buzztrendword. Lore was made by a dedicated but small team. I think they've done an awesome job with their availa

Re:looks old fasioned..is there a b/w version??

[Quobobo]

Well, I downloaded it and tried it (the Mac version), and I was anything but impressed. Never mind graphics or gameplay, but the performance was horrible (especially considering the aforementioned graphics). Brand new Powerbook, and it played like ass. To top it off, the sound code is damn buggy (very choppy during loading, and laggy/buggy in-game). Oh, and don't forget that it takes FOREVER to load.

Doesn't play well on new hardware, has bugs that I spotted in the first few minutes of playing it, has medio

Re:looks old fasioned..is there a b/w version??

[ACPosterChild]

Yeah, not worth trying out if their independant development team couldn't afford a million-dollar graphical art budget.

Sure, it might be fun as hell, but how could you torture your eyes with such images!?

#end Sarcasm

To be fair, I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Unless, of course, they were to challenge the views of people who have judged a game by actually playing it, rather than by just looking at the screenshots.

Re:looks old fasioned..is there a b/w version??

[FozzieCDN]

Yes we don't have a multi-million dollar budget and we cannot blow smoke up your ass, but we have done a good job (IMHO) of giving you an enjoyable game and really at the end of the day that is what counts.

Top that all off with the fact that we are always developing and adding new enhancements (including visual) to the game, and I don't think that you can honesty beat the value that you get here, but that's just my opinion of course.

Looks impressive

[justin_speers]

Just want to thank you guys for putting out a linux version, and I think the screenshots look really impressive personally. Definitely worth downloading the demo (at least), which I'm already doing :)

Curious to hear about anyone's experience working with Garage Games as their publisher... any success stories? Horrible failures? It's a great concept, plus they're located about 30 miles away from me. So I'd like to hope they become something really big eventually...