Company Seeks To Boost Linux Game Development With 3D Engine Giveaway 140
binstream writes "To support Linux game development, Unigine Corp. announced a competition: it will give a free license for its Unigine engine to a seasoned team willing to work on a native Linux game. The company has been Linux-friendly from the very start; it released advanced GPU benchmarks (Heaven, Tropics, Sanctuary) for Linux before and is working on the OilRush strategy game that supports Linux as well."
Not quite as exciting as the headline sounded (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's what I thought. Nice advert for the company, I guess. It's going to boost Linux development by precisely one game, in 18 months time, maybe....
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
When I read the headline I thought "why would anyone care?" There are plenty of good, free engines out there already.
ioquake3 [ioquake3.org]
XreaL [xreal-project.net]
Cube 2 [sauerbraten.org]
Irrlicht [sourceforge.net]
OGRE [ogre3d.org]
Crystal Space [crystalspace3d.org]
Blender [blender.org]
Panda3D [panda3d.org]
And if John Carmack doesn't go back on his word, id Tech 4 will soon be free.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
have you even checked out a modern version of cube2?
It may not be up to par with the latest, but to call it 90's is a bit of a stretch.
Re: (Score:2)
OGRE stands for object Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine. So yeah, it's an engine, it's simply not a game engine however.
Re: (Score:1)
Bleak future of PC gaming? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bleak future of PC gaming? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah no. You have no idea what you're talking about. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see Steam be released for Android/iOS/mobile, and get a chunk of that market.
Re:Bleak future of PC gaming? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Bleak future of PC gaming? (Score:5, Informative)
Support for the notion that PC gaming is dying: Civilization V, Spore, Supreme Commander 2, Dragon Age 2 (maybe). All dumbed-down versions of their predecessors. The current selection of PC games at retail stores. The trend of UI for PC games. Mandatory online DRM for single player games. Lack of innovation in the past decade/consolidation of genres. Games run like shit even on modern PCs. "Ship now, patch later". Shift towards netbooks/phones/tablets.
Support against the notion that PC gaming is dying: Steam holiday sales (AAA titles for poverty prices), wide-berth of indie games, probably more AAA titles released per year now more than ever, digital downloads, nearly the entire back catalog of PC games available to play (GOG) on modern hardware. Integrated graphics are good enough to play games from several years ago on minimal settings.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, one thing is for certain: PC gaming is definitely not like it used to be.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
What would steam bring over existing app stores? Play and sync Plants vs Zombies on your phone and your pc?
Buy once, play everywhere? That's better than the iTunes+steam model where you have to buy once for each platform. Of course, iTunes makes more sense than steam since if Apple dies, your iPhone is quickly worthless. If steam somehow dies, your computers still work, but you can't install your software anymore.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your Mac isn't iOS.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Laptops, which are more than capable gaming platforms, won't be going anywhere for a long time. Your iPad or Galaxy might be fun and might be a good substitute for some tasks, but I've yet to meet a single soul who has ditched their main PC for a tablet or smartphone.
And while we're on the subject, tablets aren't exactly "low spec". Compared to the PCs of only a couple of years ago, these tablets can hold their own quite nicely. Maybe PC game devs might be forced to hold back on the bloat a little for the n
What surprises me... (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of effort gets dumped into Linux and the software ecosystem that people generally mean when they say "linux"(gnome, KDE, prominent programs for both, etc.) A fair percentage of it is paid for(kernel work that makes it more suitable for vendor X's servers and vendor Y's embedded platforms, some Freedesktop consortium stuff, etc.); but much of it is purely voluntary, even the sort of thing that corporations might shy away from under the advice of their lawyers(swift reverse-engineering of iPod and MTP syncing, that one French physicist who single-handedly built support for about a bazillion pre-UVC webcams, etc.).
Similarly, a lot of purely voluntary effort gets dumped into the modding scene. On occasion, a very prominent and successful mod team gets snapped up and goes pro; but that is a sucker's bet. There is a lot of hard, sometimes tedious, modding/art/game balance work going on around commercial games purely voluntarily.
On the Linux side, support for cutting-edge, just-released games and engines is rather sparse; but there are a number of fully free engines and generic asset packs that have been kicking around for a while. All of ID's older engine properties have been cleaned up and open-ified, some from-scratch engines have as well, as well as a few other scratch developed or commercially abandoned projects.
There exist the engines(not cutting edge; but adequate enough for reasonably pretty graphics), there exists a talent pool, as proven by the modders, and their exists a reasonable amount of volunteerism and paid-for-by-people-unconcerned-by-free-riders paid work in the linux ecosystem generally. Why does that so seldom come together on the Linux side? Are the modding tools with contemporary-release proprietary games just that superior to the tools available to the freed engines? Is the mass of potential gamers to turn into modders just that much larger on Windows? Something else?
Mod Parent +Insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
Right on: you nailed it, clearly and succinctly and thoroughly.
Although you didn't take an outright "call to arms" tone, I hope the ideas you are propounding get the attention and action they deserve.
Re:What surprises me... (Score:5, Informative)
I have a copy of HoMM3 bought from Loki before they went belly up, unfortunate since the produce was quite well polished and plays just as well as the Windows copy I now own.
More than that though, there's an awful lot of free Linux games out there, and Linux hasn't really drawn enough attention from either games or developers to make it a gaming platform. Crossover Games helps, but it's really not anywhere near good enough. Not to mention that the developer has no way of knowing that it's being played on Linux and that DRM schemes often foil it.
Re: (Score:2)
Their freebies do not work in 64bit Fedora 13.
Re:What surprises me... (Score:5, Insightful)
For one most of the people that are paid have employers that want them to focus on specific things, not in detail but I doubt they'd could sit around making games on company time. The other thing is that it's much easier to envision a mod of an existing game than a new game, and on Linux you're mostly talking about a new game. There's few existing communities today. The open source model has proven much more effective when there is a clear rally flag, the way FreeCiv is a clone of civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The motivator for (most) people doing creative work is to have people see/experience their work.
You can make a mod for a PC game, which thousands of people share and talk about, or make a game from scratch on Linux, which not only has a significantly smaller audience, but is actually a harder development process (modding on an existing game lets you re-use a *lot* of stuff you'd have to make yourself on Linux.)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most open source projects are only developed by one person. X.org for example has only 12 main contributors even through it's a 20+ year old project.
This is why open source games never go anywhere because a game needs far more then one person working on it, people quickly get bored due to lack of progress and the project dies. I've seen it over and over again on open source games.
Also I think this is a good guide that sums up the situation too.. http://cube.wikispaces.com/How+not+to+start+a+mod [wikispaces.com]
A nice gesture (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a nice gesture but, I don't really see it jump starting linux game development. I don't think linux will be considered a viable gaming market until a gigantic name like Blizzard starts releasing native linux clients. In fact, I think Blizzard could single handedly make linux a gaming platform. They already release OpenGL versions for the Mac so technologically, they are a short hop from a linux client rather than a giant leap. I wonder if thousands of e-mails to release Diablo 3 with a native linux client would be enough to persuade them to do it.
Re: (Score:2)
s/Blizzard/Valve/g
Re:A nice gesture (Score:5, Interesting)
World of Warcraft and many of their games run fine on Wine already. Eve Online officially supported their game in Linux for a while, and that was just Wine + their Client bundled together. If Blizzard officially recognized and supported their clients on Wine, that alone would be a huge win for Linux.
And if Google is really pushing for greater success of Linux, helping advance Wine would help them.
Re: (Score:2)
This seriously deserves some modpoints. While I'd prefer truly native GNU/Linux ports, I'd be a happy ducky if we could see "Made for Windows XP/Vista/7/Wine" on game boxes in the future.
Re:A nice gesture (Score:5, Insightful)
Official Wine support would certainly be a step in the right direction. I played WoW under Wine long ago and I got the impression that while it wasn't officially supported, it wasn't such an unsavory configuration that Blizzard would tell you to bugger off if you asked for support for it. I have no evidence to back this up but, I also got the impression that the desire to play WoW on linux gave the Wine project a very tangible flagship kind of "This Must Work" application. So, while I would love to see native linux clients, official Wine support would still be amazing and, possibly more beneficial to the linux community because of the side effects of having a better Wine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A nice gesture (Score:4, Interesting)
Valve is another company that could do it. Importantly, they're currently porting all their major games to the Mac, which is a very good halfway point for porting to Linux. More importantly, they've been releasing Linux ports of their dedicated server software - no renderer or client software, meaning you can't actually play it, but that means a good chunk of the code is already there. Most importantly, though, Valve is pretty much in control of digital distribution, which is the ONLY way commercial games are going to come to Linux (many shops don't even stock Windows games anymore, let alone Linux) - and their current push onto the Mac is causing other companies to port there as well.
Looking through my current Steam gamelist, I see 20-odd games that already have Linux ports, and another 30 or so that could be ported with less effort than normal. Now, not all of them are guaranteed to get a port - but even if half of them do, that's enough for 35 games on launch day, probably more (I used my "purchased games" list instead of the full "all games on Steam" list). That's enough for a pretty good launch, which would probably push other developers to either release ports, or hire someone to port it.
Re: (Score:2)
They already release OpenGL versions for the Mac so technologically, they are a short hop from a linux client rather than a giant leap.
That brings up an interesting point. If a developer knows they're going to make a Mac port, why in the world do they still write their game in Direct3D first?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That brings up an interesting point. If a developer knows they're going to make a Mac port, why in the world do they still write their game in Direct3D first?
It's not an either/or problem. You can easily write your game engine to use either, and it's been done before. (For example, pretty much every game engine that exists ever in the last decade.) That way, you get higher performance on DirectX-supporting machines, and compatibility with more platforms, without having to change your core game code. This is
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not really sure how to say this without using stereotypes but, linux users and mac users are generally very different types of people. While the installed user base of OSX is larger than linux, the percentage of hardcore gamers is probably much, much higher on linux. I think when you target OSX for games, you are targeting a platform. If you target linux, you are targeting a demographic: Nerds with copious amounts of free time.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I may not have made my point well but, I think a love of gaming and a curiosity of technology are attributes you'll often find together in a person. I admit that this is again generalizing but, buying a mac is practically a declaration of "I have no interest whatsoever in understanding how my computer works. I just want it to work" (In fact, that's basically what Mac ads say). If a curiosity of technology and gaming go hand in hand (which I think they do), then mac users are the most abysmal gaming marke
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the percentage of hardcore gamers is probably much, much higher on linux.
Hardcore gamers who (generally speaking) don't see anything wrong with pirating software. That little detail is pretty important.
Re: (Score:2)
the percentage of hardcore gamers is probably much, much higher on linux.
Hardcore gamers who (generally speaking) don't see anything wrong with pirating software. That little detail is pretty important.
That seems a bit disingenuous. There are philosophically crazy open source users and there are practical open source users. The latter almost certainly outweigh the former and they don't mind paying for a game. I've met far, far more "This just works better" linux users than I have "Fuck the man!" linux users.
Re: (Score:2)
Possibly, but the perception is the part that matters. It doesn't help that Mac game releases also generally have > 50% piracy rates if they're priced more than $15.
Re: (Score:2)
You do know that the WoW beta included a linux client as well as the windows one yes?
Apparently the official reasons it was dropped for release were 'legal reasons'. Nobody knows if the port is kept up to date, however it is known that one point some of the developers were using the linux build on their own machines.
Re: (Score:2)
The Source engine does OpenGL on the Mac now too, so Valve is in the same position. The Steam client partially runs on Linux (natively, that is, not under Wine) too, although Valve is denying there's an actual Linux client for end users now. (Of course, Michael Larabel of Phoronix claims otherwise.)
Time will tell
Re: (Score:2)
This is a nice gesture
No it isn't. It's completely self-serving (free publicity) and limited in nature. It costs them nothing to license an engine people weren't going to buy anyways, and get this: The first place team gets to keep using the engine for free for their game, but the runner-ups have to buy the license to keep working on their game:
"The winner team will get a free binary license on Unigine engine for a single project on PC platform (Windows / Linux) with full access to technical support and updates.
The teams that wi
No Thank You (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, Interesting)
Technology wise, Ogre3D is not behind, at least on the 3D engine front. Unigine might offer a few features that fall outside the strict 3D engine category, but I doubt the 3D part is any more advanced than Ogre's. Not being able to fix bugs or customize the engine is a major downside.
Still, it's good that whoever might be using it for a game can now release a linux binary with minimal cost.
Nexuiz, Tremulous, etc. (Score:2)
If you already have a fairly successful Linux game now, why wouldn't you put in a bid for this? It would take less work for you to port your game than one designed from scratch. And you can prove that you already know how to deliver on the Linux platform.
That being said, shooters come and go. Their are 10 million. Even with shooters being the most popular genre typically, I think a great platform game would be more likely to steal headlines and gain attention.
Retro-style platform games (New Super Mario Bros
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even with shooters being the most popular genre typically,
Here in the Real World (i.e. outside of Slashdot and our parents' basement), sports simulations are the most popular genre of game. I mean, no doubt shooters are popular, but Halo 3 has nothing on Madden.
Re: (Score:2)
Halo 3 broke all the video game sales records. So yes, it does have something on Madden.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202102318 [informationweek.com]
meh (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's getting a lot better than it used to be, the commercially available Linux games are far better than they used to be in every way.
Re:meh (Score:4, Funny)
Zealots like you are exactly what is wrong with Linux right now. Linux can be free and open all you want, but when you expect software vendors to strictly do the same and badmouth those who don't, you're driving developers away. Less software = less users, plain and simple.
Re: (Score:1)
Yes, cry that someone is trying to help Linux development. Get pissed because they're not doing it in a way that YOU want.
I know it's easy to point out that "but it isn't GPL! waah!" is not exactly a good argument. Obviously.
But I think it'd be much easier to say "but we already have GPL engines! waah! How does this contest inspire us to do something we were already avoiding doing?"
The problem with open source games, or Linux gaming in general, isn't the lack of 3D engines. It's the lack of budget (time, effort, talent?) for creating nice game assets and developing the content. An engine donation isn't going to make the game i
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Reason for that is that open source lacks artists and modelers and other designers.
Uh, game engines aren't written by designers, they're written by programmers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Please point me to a GPL game engine that supports DirectX11/OpenGL4 features.
Re: (Score:1)
Mutually exclusive items. Drop the DirectX part and you might have a little better luck, but lets face it, no self respecting GPL zealot is going to have anything related to Microsoft in it.
Re: (Score:2)
Please point me to a non-GPL game engine that supports those features and has actually produced a fun game.
Re: (Score:2)
Uhm, what good does it do to have the game engine supporting DirectX11/OpenGL4 features, when the drivers don't support those features?
AFAIK we don't have Linux's drivers with those features..
I really don't understand... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Not Linux friendly at all... (Score:2)
In my opinion, being Linux-friendly *cannot* exclude being Open-Source and GPL-friendly, as these are really the heart and soul of Linux. Releasing a free *license* is not like releasing the source code. This should not be applauded.
Re: (Score:1)
Yep, turn away any help you can get because you have a retarded political agenda that says if you don't get the keys to the entire hotel, you won't spend the night there.
You'll continue to be looking for a room while you stand in the rain, more or less alone.
Linux can't make progress with ignorance like yours. You should probably learn to accept that people can use Linux for things you don't agree with, thats what FREEDOM is about.
You don't want software freedom, you want free software because you're too c
Re: (Score:2)
You don't want software freedom, you want free software because you're too cheap to pay for it. OSS and GPL are just the mask you hide behind.
What an odd thing to say to someone who just dismissed a free-as-in-beer offer!
Re:wonderbar.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
How is he yelling at Linux devs? He's pointing out this engine licensing doesn't do much for the main bottleneck facing 3d gaming on Linux.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:wonderbar.... (Score:5, Informative)
Provide a stable binary interface,
This is wrong on so many levels in linux land.
For starters, unlike windows land, in linux drivers tend to have common things that many drivers need put into modules and re-used. For example the mac80211 stack. In this example all the actual card drivers have to do is basically tell the kernel where the registers are and what they do and bam, working wifi.
Bug fixes in used modules fix bugs in all things that use it. Code re-use to the extreme.
It also helps with portability, can you run your nvidia binary driver on mips? Hell no, could you run neauvou which exposes the hardware through gallium and uses GEM etc.
As long as the drivers need to be rewritten every few months because the kernel was changed (often for no other reason than to break compatibility), linux will have crummy drivers.
Linux by far has the most in-built driver support of any operating system that has ever existed. To call it crappy is a bit of a farce.
All hardware vendors need to do is give a kernel dev specs and a driver which will be indefinitely supported is created. I can still use a tv tuner card from 2001 on my machine now, could you do the same with windows 7?
Having a stable ABI limits improvements to the kernel, and loses a great deal of flexibility and usefulness. So really, screw that. If you 'want' a stable ABI, it is a good sign you are doing it wrong anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, driver for my Asus WL-167g wifi was created and worked, but now I can't compile it anymore, because someone thought that net_device struct is no longer needed (starting from kernel 2.6.31). Driver is still open source, but I'm not good enough at driver programming so I can't use this with newest kernels. Now imagine normal user, which buys a card which has "Compatible with linux" on
Re: (Score:2)
This is a perfect example of why having drivers in the mainline kernel tree are a good idea.
If it was it would get automatic updates as the other parts of the kernel are changed. What tends to happen though when there is an open source driver not in kernel, people study the source and within 3-6 months create an in kernel driver that supports it.
So typical worst case is you are stuck using an old kernel version for maybe a year until the new proper drivers are ready for prime time.
Had this happen to me with
Re: (Score:1)
FTFY.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the political and other agendas that go along with Linux essentially result in it fucking itself over in this respect.
So who REALLY do you expect to care that you can't run it on a reasonable obscure OS ... with a rather obscure (these days) processor? You might care, and maybe some guy in Europe ... but no one else does, so you're not really doing anything to help your argument
Re: (Score:2)
Really? You're using an analog tuner to receive what?
Actually I'm using it to capture the composite output of various consoles. But you missed the point, this is one example of many I can give.
The fact that you think this way shows that you have no concept of how proper software development works. Its not even unique to software development, standardized interfaces are considered one of the major innovations that brought us to where we are today as far as production is concerned.
Standardised interfaces are a great thing for enabling functionality between discrete projects. Remember that this is the kernels INTERNAL functions we are talking about.. You would essentially be mandating the codebase to freeze.
I think it has been well and truly established that having a release every few years as opposed to consistent incremental improvements is a ba
Re: (Score:1)
Re:wonderbar.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Please hell no. If windows is an example of doing this right then I don't want it. The ABI for windows hasn't changed in 20 years and it's horrible riddled with bugs and simply a PoS. All one has to do is look at how lame their visual c++ compiler is because it has to compile down for their archaic abi to realise that's not the way to go.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, fanboys modded you up fast didn't they?
The ABI generally maintains backwards compatibility to a good extent, but if you think it hasn't changed you're completely ignorant and blind.
If it hasn't changed ... why do drivers designed for Win7 not work in XP or Win3.1? How do applications now take advantage of more than 640k? How do these Windows apps interact with the new security bits of Windows 7. Why did AV makers shout and scream about the changes made that screwed over their 'ability' to provide vi
Re: (Score:2)
No YOU are the troll. Ever wonder why developers think STL vectors are slow? You can thank visual c++.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Provide a stable binary interface, and the manufacturers will provide drivers, at least for common processors.
Are you sure it's all about binary interfaces? Hardware vendors lose control of whatever runs under linux, while a slightly incompatible windows release/service pack every now and then ensures forced obsolescence.
That would change a bit with binary interfaces but not that much.
And it would get in the way of kernel development.
But I could be wrong so somebody could mantain some kernel with a fix
Re: (Score:1)
Provide a stable interface.
Here NVIDIAs (you know, those who actually do the drivers) opinion on the topic:
The lack of a stable API in the Linux kernel. This is not a large obstacle for us, though: the kernel interface layer of the NVIDIA kernel module is distributed as source code, and compiled at install time for the version and configuration of the kernel in use. This requires occasional maintenance to update for new kernel interface changes, but generally is not too much work.
Srouce: phoronix interview [phoronix.com]
Re:wonderbar.... (Score:5, Funny)
To those marking the parent as insightful, I'd like to see one single link that backs up what he says about video cards being "just framebuffers" under Linux. You realize that most of the OpenGL driver code is shared with the Windows implementations (which is why Heaven pretty much has the same framerates in both OSes), right?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There aren't any characters in those images, or videos... just an empty landscape. How does the engine perform with 300 armed ogres running around?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I use Unigine on Linux at work. Everybody else uses it on Windows. OpenGL performance is slightly faster on Linux than Windows but DirectX11 runs a bit faster than OpenGL/Linux I think this is down to DirectX11 multi-threading better thus the CPU becoming less of a bottleneck.
This is with the nVidia drivers.
Unigine is really targeted at DirectX10+ class hardware and is one of the first engines to support new DirectX11/OpenGL 4 features. Our most recent project involves perhaps 100kms of Railway track with a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
now if video cards run under linux were more than just framebuffers we might go someplace.
Linux already had pretty solid 3D support going all the way back to the Vodoo1 days. Yeah, sometimes you needed to take a little care to buy a card that actually worked in Linux and not just the next best random piece of junk, but that isn't really that that much different from Windows where when you don't take care you might be stuck with some unusable on-board graphics solution.
If 3D hardware would be the problem of Linux gaming, it would have been solved ages ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Overall problem with accelerator card support in Linux is that it's several layers "thicker" than in Windows, and those layers tend to be uncontrollable by neither user nor even developer. E.g.
Re: (Score:1)
now if video cards run under linux were more than just framebuffers we might go someplace.
Linux already had pretty solid 3D support going all the way back to the Vodoo1 days. Yeah, sometimes you needed to take a little care to buy a card that actually worked in Linux and not just the next best random piece of junk, but that isn't really that that much different from Windows where when you don't take care you might be stuck with some unusable on-board graphics solution.....
Well, given that ATI and Nvidia make the only video cards that can go faster than 20 FPS It is even easier since ATI's 3-d support has never worked in their proprietary driver.
.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It will be interesting to see how this turns out, but it definitely could work. The downside is that since only the winner gets a free license, I'm interested to know how many people are going to be willing to work on that, knowing that t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)