Does Linux Have Game? 729
kwpulliam writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting writeup, discussing the difficulties in bringing games to Linux, and the dilemmas faced by the graphics card developers."
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Does Linux Have Game?
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E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
Direct3D on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Big releases (Score:5, Interesting)
Tried & failed already. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why pay when Linux users use a free OS. Everybody expects their games to be free.
What game companies should do is like linux companies make money: release the game for free but charge for tech support. Of course, when someone figures how to do the MUST-HAVE exclusively on Linux then things will change... not likely.
Linux needs to penetrate (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenGL is the Future (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenGL makes Linux, BSD, MacOS X and other ports practical as well as not having to deal with Microsoft's arbitrary API's.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think so. It's been almost 2 years since DirectX is available for MacOS, developed by British company Coderus [coderus.com]. So far, no major breakthrough was achieved this way - main Macintosh game ports are done "the hard way" by companies like Aspyr Media [aspyr.com], that's why it takes so long. Only a handful of Mac ports actually use MacDX. It's probably because when you move a game from Windows to Unix-ish environment, you still have to change so many things (Unix privileges etc.) that the 3D API is only a fraction of it.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a look at what Apple did with OpenGL and Aqua. Perhaps they should adopt the it like they did BSD and give it a similar overhaul, providing source and giving back to the community. That way, not only Linux gaming but Mac gaming could seriously improve.
MS is using their OS and browser monopoly to create their own standards and maintain control. They're doing it with ActiveX and their poor CSS support in IE, and they're doing it with DX9 by getting hardware designers the make their graphics cards specifically for their API. Something's got to stop them, and porting DX to Linux (which would never happen anyway) is not the solution.
Re:Big releases (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tried & failed already. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think the argument of Linux users wanting everything for free holds, either. Cedega seem to be doing quite well. DooM 3 suddenly sold out on amazon.co.uk the day the Linux binary was posted on the web.
Games must be treated as entertainment, NOT software. They are far more similar to going and buying a DVD than purchasing a database app.
~phil
Re:call me stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
Winelib [winehq.com] aims to do something like this, and for simple apps, it works. It still has a long way to go, and everytime MS adds or changes an API, it just adds to the to-do list.
In general, though, it isn't translating the source code itself, but compiling it on the target platform, where the APIs you use have to be available in some form. Winelib provides many of the Win32 APIs to Linux, but Direct3D is not among them [slashdot.org].
Direct3D is a minority (Score:4, Interesting)
Therefore any sane producer should use OpenGL which makes it very easy to bring a product to any console, any computer and after some years to PDAs and Mobile Phones.
Today a productive sellcycle for a game should be:
1. sell on consoles - they have less problems with piracy and people are more willing to pay (overpriced) prices.
2. after the first hot sellcycle - three to twelve months - port the game to Desktop-Computers. There are million people which do not want a console but still want to play a game. Also those games are a bit cheaper which gets you more customers. Your game gets pirated though but as sales for (1.) already are over you simply live with it.
3. Meanwhile port it to Unix-Desktops or in other words, MacOS and Linux. It is a piece of cake, given you planes porting through all cycles means you gave some thoughts right at the start about portability and this pay off now. 10-20% additional sales for maybe 10 working days.
4. After several years portable gameconsoles, PDAs and Cell-Phones are becoming a target - your game outsold on the desktop and consoles, people knew your game and have good memory. People actually are willing to pay for Mario/PDA after having played Mario/Console. So now you recompile your game to those portable plattforms, sell it for a real low-budget-price and most likely you are outselling all earlier sales.
All portings only take some days of work, yes this can be done with some planing.
This cycle and no other will give maximum earnings. And it simply forbids use of Direct3D.
Re:ATI video drivers (Score:4, Interesting)
Amen to that. ATI, give us a usable binary driver, or give the community the specs!
At this time, my recommendation to those who want 3d gaming is either:
I got bit hard by that when I got my laptop; I dropped the money for an ATI card, thinking the only problem was that they were a bit slower than the nvidia drivers. After kernel horkage and lockups and filesystem damage due to this driver, I've sworn off ati unless it's an old, well-supported card. I shoulda just given my money to NVidia instead. From what I've been reading, ATI is very ambivalent about making good Linux drivers, whereas NVidia seems to be bending over backwards to give us great support.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody have any experience with running HL2 on linux? How does it fare against the Win version on same hardware?
I haven't tried it yet. But I did read a review that claimed it was quite good. The reviewer had some trouble at first, but after a bit of tweaking said it worked perfectly, albeit at a very few frames/sec slower than it ran on Windows. My guess is that even that will ultimately be fixed; I basically quit gaming a couple years back, but I used to have a dual-booting box that ran counterstrike several fps faster in Linux than it did in Windows. Same hardware.
games on Linus is fact... ho ho ho my first post (Score:1, Interesting)
From the article: Drivers need to support the game (Score:2, Interesting)
From page 2:
Doesn't support of OpenGL imply support for that game? Or are game makers adding proprietary OpenGL extensions?
Gaming on a PC is going away (Score:3, Interesting)
There are lots of great Linux games! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Mac user base is used to paying for software. It is a definable market with a predictable return. How many of those Linux desktops you described were ready for gaming? Not the ones sold off Walmart.com, surely.
Open Graphics Project to the rescue (Score:4, Interesting)
Check out the mailing list [duskglow.com].
Nvidia does like Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
NVIDIA does have alot of third party extensions and other third party IP in their code...so if they open sourced that it would piss off alot of other companies.
Needless to say, I hope one day they can provide a nice driver that doesn't taint the kernel, however I am grateful that they are actually giving us something that is fully functional in Linux (x86, AMD-64) and FreeBSD.
of course not (Score:2, Interesting)
the other major commercial Linux game... (Score:1, Interesting)
However, they're probably not going to make NWN2 or other upcoming games for Linux. The initial Linux release did not happen at the same time as as the Windows release, and all the Linux zealots went postal on Bioware. They learned their lesson about trying to support Linux I think from all the rabid flammage they received for their efforts to support our miniscule market. Thanks guys, good job
Re:JC's comment (Score:1, Interesting)
People should stop making excuses and simplay look at the facts about why there are hardly any (native) games for Linux.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=20503&cid=2
Especially be carefull about this comment from JC:
All linux games sales EVER don't add up to one medium selling windows title. We are one of the creditors that aren't likely to see money that Loki owes us, so we have some idea just how grim it is.
That isn't saying that it can't change in the future, or that doing linux ports isn't a Good Thing, but it isn't an economic motivator at the present time.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Standards that update themselves... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not really a standard save by Microsoft- everyone else uses OpenGL, even MS offers it. That, my friend is the definition of a standard.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. I'm a linux user, and an avid gamer (ut2000/2003/2004, q3a, RtCW, doom3 etc), but I don't dual boot, and don't even have a windowspeecee among my half dozen computers. I do pull out the wallet and buy linux games. So, a linux version is most definitely going to yield additional buyers, and I seriously doubt I'm the only one who runs linux 24/7...
Why ruin my uptime just for a game? If there's no linux version of a game, I don't buy the game, end of story. There's already more native linux games available than I can ever hope to find time to play, so if having fewer titles available for linux than for ms windows is my biggest problem, life is good.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've used Crossover to great effect to run Office 2000. As long as you stick with what they say runs well, you'll be fine. However, when someone from their company says that in a short while, they'll be running 95% of all Windows programs, I have to laugh. They can't even run Office 2003 yet.
Frankly, I wish wine would just go away, and let what tiny, little volume of air there is in this space be breathed by another Loki-type effort. Loki died because of bad management, not because of technology.
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
If it's really just a home workstation, dual-booting into Windows when you want to play a Windows-only game doesn't seem like such a huge deal?
I run an HTTP server on my machine, mostly so that I can easily make images to be displayed on web boards.
Re:Linux does not have game. (Score:5, Interesting)
Long story short, it turns out this "bug" was actually a feature. [arstechnica.com] You see, if Windows XP is connected to a network that isn't broadcasting its SSID, and it sees one that is, it'll try to disconnect and join the other one. This happens even if the non-broadcasting connection is the only one in your "preferred networks" list. What had happened, of course, is that our neighbor had just got a wireless network, and forgot to turn of SSID broadcasting like you're supposed to. This particular machine was the only one within range, and as a result, freaked out.
Come to think of it, this is probably the same problem that plagued another one of my XP machines. I spent months trying to figure out why it'd randomly drop its connection, and finally gave up, assumed it was a hardware problem, and replaced the PCI wifi adapter with a small USB keychain one. Since it worked, I assumed that the USB dongle got better reception. Now I realize that the problem was just the opposite --- since the USB dongle got *worse* reception, it was out of range of a competing network.
I have lost tens of hours to this single damn bug, as well as $60 bucks buying new hardware I didn't need. All because some idiot programmer at Microsoft thought he could make a piece of software smarter than me. Whoever wrote the "Wireless Network ZeroConfiguration" for XP deserves a special place in hell!
Re:Direct3D on Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)
"If it's really just a home workstation, dual-booting into Windows when you want to play a Windows-only game doesn't seem like such a huge deal?"
It is a big deal for me given that I don't want to add all the crap that a prudent Windows user has to add just to hook the damned thing up to the net. Today's games are increasingly requiring online access and the moment you hook a Windows box up you had better have antivirus, firewall, spyware checker, etc... It all adds up. Also you forgot one BIG reason why loads of folks have left Windows. I'll add it below:
#3. Some people actually disagree with the Microsoft EULA, their philosophy, and their business practices. This is the reason I left and won't ever go back.
As to Transgaming, I really do believe they are doing both good and bad for gaming in Linux. The good is they are making it possible to play those games. The bad is it is taking away a movement to push game developers to make NATIVE Linux ports of their games. This may change as more and more people make the switch. Who knows what the future holds.
B.
Games: The Most Important Asset (Score:3, Interesting)
The reason for this is simple. Just as a country's most important asset is its children, so too an OSes most important asset is its new users. Without new users, any OS would quickly crumble. And what's the best way of getting newbies to flock to your OS? Good question, but games would be my first answer.
Everyone begins life as a clueless newbie. Yes everyone! From Anonymous Cowards to Stallmanesque gurus. We all learn our skills bit by bit, and computer games play their part. Through playing and using computer games and other "lesiure" applications, like instant messengers, P2P apps and browsing "kewl" internet sites, the clueless newbie slowly learns new skills and gradually evolves to a script kiddie and onto the 311t h4ck0r!!11 and then onto regular tech head status. Those that don't, simply become more proficient and comfortable with their OS, and hence the OSes future is secured.
I think that games play a vital role in the lifecycle of a mainstream OS. I can safely say that because of games, I learned the basics of computing years before I would otherwise have. As a simple example, consider solitare and minesweeper. Sure they cost the economy millions in lost time, but without them millions more would be wasted training people how to use the mouse. Give anyone solitare to play and they will be a wizard with the mouse in half an hour. Aunt Tillies included!
A trivial example perhaps, but give a teenager Doom III or Command and Conquer, and they'll soon grasp extremely basic concepts like, "You need to save your progress", "Your files go here", "Computers (AI) are not smart. Computer needs to be told what to do" and "You need to install a program to get it to work". Seem absurd? Ask any Helldesk frontliners if they'd like their users to know this. Simple basics, but many may go on to download patches and updates (users familiar with updates!!), expierience crashes (computer isn't "broken") , fiddle with ini files, or even mess with the ingame console commands, if they exist. The social aspect of computer gaming is also helpful, as young people will learn quickly if some 311t is scoffing at them because they cannot zip a file (many teenagers can't you know). And so they learn. The regular PC gamer considers him/herself a regular whiz at the computer, is much more comfortable with their OS, and will need far less training in later life. Neat eh?
But there's a downside to eight year olds being able to email and browse the net. They learn on one OS, and guess what OS they'll gravitate towards in later life? Windows will be dominant for the next 30 years! At least! Why? Because an entire generation has grown up on windows games, windows messangers, windows emails and windows apps! A whole generation! These users view Linux as a scary, dark place filled will danger and elite hackers, just as new windows users view ALL computers as scary, dark places filled will danger and elite hackers. I fear that the generation that grew up on winamp, kazaa and half-life is lost to Linux. They have grown up on Windows! Grown up on the windows paradigms and concepts. They understand C:\ not / , 'Program Files' not 'usr', installshield not rpm. I doubt if these people will ever leave the Microsoft fold en masse. Some might, but the majority will stick to what they know.
Linux needs to be newbie friendly! It must have games! Killer app games, big hulking 3D extravaganzas, with all the driver support FOSS can offer. Plug and play needs to be standard. We need distros like gaming Knoppix now! If Linux doesn't get game, then it will lose another generation of potential penguins to the bitter chill of a OS devoid of gaming richness. Standardise Linux Gaming Now! Get P2P on the penguin!
People have to be able to have fun in Linux!!
Re:Tried & failed already. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:OpenGL is the Future (Score:1, Interesting)
And the vast, vast majority of OGL code is unchanged from 1.2 to 2.0, or from 1.0 to 2.0 for that matter. What changes are the extensions, which get pulled into the main codebase. So, at worst, you had to write two versions of the extensions, one for NVidia and one for ATI. As if developers don't end up writing multiple versions of their code in Direct3D to provide support for older cards.
Wow, you're a really important fellow! When you speak, MS, NVidia and ATI just sit right up and listen. What a crock of shit.
10% linux market share? What about the MacOS market share? What about porting to any of the consoles except for the XBox?
The one true thing is that DX9 finally got ahead of OpenGL. Except that it's pretty much equal again, now that OGL 2.0 is out.
Re:Linux does not have game. (Score:3, Interesting)
feeding time.
let's see how well you do, shall we?
there are numerous stories in this story alone that talk about how easy it is for "newbies" to use linux. i still consider myself a newbie, but i've discovered that i'm also experienced enough already to administrate a server.
this is a misconception on the part of the publisher. in fact, the developers may be quite prepared for a linux release. the problem is that marketing isn't seeing linux advertisements or other games on linux, nor are they seeing much evidence to show that people are quite actively playing games on linux. they're not going to get much statistical data from Cedega users, since Cedega fools the software to think it's actually runnign on windows. most polls are biased, listing only Windows and Mac operating systems - ignoring any other platform that may be viable. i've even seen console gaming polls that ignore one or two of the big three consoles!
hardly. C++ has more language features that meet and exceed the demands of most current paradigms than "more advanced" specialty languages - including Java. even if you could prove that C++ is obsolete, consider this: the Microsoft platform API is obsolete. it's bloated, inefficient, and has far too much redundancy. (CreateWindow() is CreateWindowEx() with 2 arguments set to default values, for example.) the vast majority of the API exists only for compatibility with old software, with new functions being bolted on to fix deficiencies that repeatedly show up with each new iteration of the OS.
meanwhile, the POSIX API has remained largely unchanged due to the nature of the fact that POSIX implements only the core of the functionality that is needed to implement a program.
why? when i can write software more easily on linux than i can on windows, get feedback from my users that make my product better, and can do so with better reliability on linux than on Windows, why should i use proprietary software like Windows?
because Microsoft is becoming irrelevant and they know it. linux can't compete with Windows - that much is true. it's because Windows is dying. Netcraft confirms it!
*cough*bullshit*cough* i could write an OpenGL application entirely in assembly language, crafted by hand, conforming to object-oriented methodologies, that would kick your C#/DirectX program's ass. next-generation programming languages are for weenies. you can have your Visual BASIC.NET, and i'll keep plugging away in C++ without worry about platform incompatibility because i know i can compile 4 times and support the vast majority of platforms in use today (x86/Win32, x86/Linux, PPC/MacOSX, PPC/linux), adding two more compiles just for a speed boost on two more (x86-64/Win64, x86-64/linux), with only marginally extra work.
conclusion: you're a troll.