SoulSe Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Ok, so as most of you know, I have recently changed jobs and I now work at a magazine. Now, the said magazine is owned by Intelligence Publishing and one of the many mags they own is PC Format. I met the editor of PC Format today and I chatted to her about Linux gaming. She was very excited and wants me to write a feature article on the subject for the mag, which would be a priority article for that month. If the article is good enough, it will be syndicated to PC Format in other countries, such as the UK or America. So I need your help! I have a pretty good idea of what I'll put in the article, but I want to know from y'all what you think I should say? I want to make sure to mention tuxgames.org and list the bigger releases while providing some tutorials for games that are a little tougher to get going, such as Neverwinter Nights. All your input would be greatly appreciated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Well http://icculus.org/~ravage/ would be great place to point. I have been playing with this and although many people disagree with it. WineX. I tried to get many games workin with standard wine with no success and i used a few diff versions. Warcraft 3, CS/HL, both are working and as do a lot of others. Mention, Americas Army, RTCW and ET too. Theres a lot of stuff you can cover. iphitus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 One thing I'd like to be mentioned is the abandonment of users by whoever it was theat ported it.... I had a lot of hassle trying to get the SIMMS working for a friend. This involved trawling the user boards and what I discovered was unpleasant. Many people had it seems bought in becuase of the SIMMS, but (apparently) the SIMMS is boring and the option packs are where the action is! Previously Id been pretty undecided on whether winex was good or bad.... What I noticed was hundreds of people were requesting the options packs be ported to linux and they official line was NO. I understand its a sorta voting process but this is like releasing the LOTR I on DVD and then only offering the 2nd and third films on VHS. Basically its pretty much cashing in without following up...... This in particualr led to not only disatisfaction with winex but linux overall. Many people felt ripped off, they already owned the option packs AND the SIMMS and then payed AGAIN for the Linux version.... After investing they were then told they could only have the inferior product under Linux. I feel this is bad! If the original WORKS and they sell it then they should keep going.... personally Im not interested anynmore but it was dismaying to see how many people blamed linux overall for this!!! I have a freind who's a devloper for a BIG name online game (actually I have a couple but one uses Linux :D) I tried converting him for ages until he switched company, now he's a total linux head!!! Ill ask him if he can do a chat or something with ya SoulSe !!! how about that!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phunni Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 My only thinking on this would be that simply listing a bunch of games that work (either natively or in wine) isn't a great idea, Talk about the state of linux gaming - the stuff that really works. The issues - directX or OpenGL etc. The fact that many games have many server side version that run on linux/unix Mention the future - what games are being released (Doom 3 and one other game, I foget the name but it's a sneak around set around the cold war (might even be called Cold war) - looks cool) The main problem with Linux gaming is that games manufacturers do not want to release games for Linux for commercial reasons. It's a chicken and egg thing. When lots of people use linux then there'll be more games - but a lot of people won't use linux until they can play their games on it... Having said all that- it's worth mentioning the games that work on linux... ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 You may want to mention the free games too, and not just tuxracer and frozen bubble... for instance: pathological, etcetc. Also, I think it is important that people realise, if they want to support and or have more linux games, they have to go out and buy those, not win games. You may want to touch the issues in that respect on wine/wineX, mention that that is an intermediate solution, the final one being native games. Be sure to mention all games that are available in a native version on the native side, and DON'T mention those on the wine(x) side, they work crappy in most cases anyway. LPG seems like another site you have to mention... BTW DOlson wrote a large article some time ago on linuxhardware.org/com about the state of linux gaming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 links: tuxgames.com (not .org) happypenguin.org linuxgames.com icculus.org linuxgamepublishing.com topics to cover: porters/history of ports: loki's downfall, lgp - the new porter native games - NWN, UT2K3, UT, the big ports and some cool native games. for MMORPG fans, http://www.planeshift.it emulators: wine, winex (cover differences-try to avoid the winex is "bad" discussion, readers will get bored and think you're trying to make a decision for them-stick to the facts), and any of the gaming system emulators the future: what needs to be done, using open standards (such as opengl) over proprietery (directx) if i were writing it, that's the basic outline i'd have to start with. just take it as advice, of course :) and make us proud, man! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zero0w Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Yes, DOlson's article at here: Gaming and Linux in 2003: http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?si...03/04/18/169209 Linux Gamers' FAQ: http://icculus.org/lgfaq/ Linux Game List: http://www.icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php Programming Linux Games PDF book released by the author: http://happypenguin.org/newsitem?id=3016 SDL articles by Bob Pendleton at Oreillynet.com: (Notice the latest article about setting up OpenGL in SDL) http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/1205 I think the core matter of concern is to get more games to port to Linux. The most popular genre of games that got ported were FPS, or games that relied on Linux Server, such as NWN. Most of them are developed with OpenGL and SDL, so to be familiar with such APIs will have developers reaching Windows, Linux and Mac OS X market. OpenML and OpenAL are maturing nicely, with ALSA finally reached stable 1.0.x state. I think the audio support of the Linux platform is more or less complete in 2004 (though with SDL, you probably don't need to access ALSA API directly). The upcoming games to be released in Linux will be UT2004, and if rumor were correct, Doom 3. However, I personally feel that a great MMORPG is missing for the platform, such as EQ or Dark Age of Camelot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lets-eat-gary Posted February 6, 2004 Report Share Posted February 6, 2004 Make sure that you mention CUBE, http://www.cubeengine.com/ It's a really good open source multiplayer FPS (Q3 clone), the download works in both linux and windows (different executables). On my machine the Linux verison is faster,smoother and works better online! The graphics are very good (it is still being worked on), and cube 2 is in development (a doom 3 clone!). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michel Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 (edited) Tell something about the state of the 3d-video drivers: nvidia, ATI, XGI: it seems xgi is going to support linux, but there is no data available about their performance on linux, opengl support, ... http://www.linuxhardware.org/search.pl?topic=10 http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?si...257&mode=thread Like mentionned tell something about the commercial games on linux. I believe ID ports all their games to linux, but not sure. about UT2004 retailbox and linux-support: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...lease_id=170724 Say something about the free games like enemy territory, america's army, ... Mention some thing abou opensource games. there was a post abou this recently, but there is ofcourse more and happypenguin is a good start indeed. Here is the recent thread on this board: http://www.mandrakeusers.org/index.php?showtopic=10718 Ofcourse it may be important telling something about the performance of the 3d-cards under linux also. Maybe use the new 2.6.x kernel for this? Maybe even the multi-media-version of it ....? But don't know anything about it's stability. Mentioning some links for people who might be interested like : http://www.linux-gamers.net/modules/news/ and like others mentionned above. If you're allowed to ..adding the morphix Gamer ISO?? It's already nbice you may write about linux and gaming... http://morphix.sourceforge.net/modules/new..._id=119&forum=1 You can find it here http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...lease_id=170724 it also cobntains UT2003 demo(but there is also a UT2004 demo for linux I think) end quake3 I believe ... If you know how to add stuff, you can even add others if you would liek toofcourse. I don't know if you sell a cd with it, else you could mention the download location, but MENTION THAT IT RUNS FROM THE CD AND IT IS NORMALLY SLOWER THIS WAY instead of running it from yoru computer ... Ofcourse, it would be cool if it also contains the new linux kernel .... but maybe it isn't stable enough yet? For the rest ... maybe something about what is linux (couple of sentences or so: short anyway I suppose). Ok this last part was optional and since the ISO dates from half a year ago, it won't include the 2.6 kernel I suppose :). So, I have here: 3d-drivers, benchmark of 3d-drivers (preferably under new kernel I suppose, maybe not since it is not in the real distributions yet, but I think they are going to be from this year on, not? ) commercial games, free games, opensource games. What else? hmm the amount of ram used, ... :) if you do a benchmark ofcourse :). I don't know anything more at the moment, but will post if something comes up ... Edited February 7, 2004 by Michel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted February 9, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Wow! I've really got my work cut out for me. Mainly because I do not have an in-depth understanding of APIs and the porting process. I'm going to have to do a lot of reading and deliberating. I want the article to be interesting as well, so it is important to give the whole picture without going to indepth as to the actual workings of engines, drivers, etc. I want to do this though... thanks for all the help so far ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted February 9, 2004 Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 I would give the basics and provide website addresses for more in-depth information. Again, most readers aren't going to want the article to be to extremely technical. Just give them a taste of the process and give them the ability to research it further if they are interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest anon Posted February 9, 2004 Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Best person to ask on this board about games is Dolson. I will let him know about this thread. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted February 9, 2004 Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Best person to ask on this board about games is Dolson. No doubt. I'm surprised he hasn't posted yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ShadowFoxLSU Posted February 9, 2004 Report Share Posted February 9, 2004 Come to think of it. I havent seen Dolson around in a while. But SoulSe good luck on the article. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOlson Posted February 15, 2004 Report Share Posted February 15, 2004 Hahaha. Okay, here I am. I don't have much time to post on here anymore, that's why I'm not here. Now, I would beg you don't use this opportunity to promote WineX, but I can't stop you and I don't really care much anymore. I'd rather see PC gaming die off altogether, but unfortunately, it won't happen soon. I have my reasons, and they aren't that hard to think of, so I'm not going to list them here (email me if you're enraged at this, and we can talk about it). Feel free to use my article as a basis. I'm glad some people remembered about it too. That's very cool. Also, UT2K4 had a demo release yesterday for Linux, if you weren't already aware. Not sure what else you want me to say. Don't go looking in the WineX threads for advice on this... Some of the WineX users seem to be misinformed about some things. I can give examples: Quake 3 Arena can be played natively with the Windows CD. Soldier of Fortune was released by Loki and can still be purchased from various sources. WineX does not run hundreds of games. A dozen or two, tops. There have been ports killed off by WineX's existance - Sacrifice is a prime example. And so on. Anyhow, I'm not a guru or anything these days, but I would be willing to proofread your article for you, if you want. Drop me a line at dana@xboxaddict.com and we can talk. Anyhow, I should go. I have to do a review for a new game coming out next week, and I have only played it for about an hour. The review is due by tomorrow night. Look for it next week sometime, probably on the 17th. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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