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Seeing static's article on Newsforge made me remember this thread, and I read over the responses.

 

I have to hand it to you people. It never ceases to amaze me how some people simply refuse to see the broader picture...

 

Look at Loki. What was their strategy? Pay $100K and sell 1000 copies. Smart move.

 

Where is that going to get us? NOWHERE. Why? Because the company will die, just like Loki did. Think about it. There are many good games that Loki ported, such as Kohan and Soldier of Fortune, but they are not the latest patched version - and they won't be patched either. Why? BECAUSE LOKI IS DEAD.

 

Loki's titles were big at the time. But their strategy was backasswards.

 

/ skip ahead to the now /

 

If a company comes along, and ports these so-called "crap games" for a fraction of the cost, they actually stand a chance at making any kind of money - which they will use to fund more ports. As time goes on, they can get bigger games. But it all has to start somewhere.

 

I don't know where you get off saying that a game is "crap" just because it's not made by Blizzard or EA. I REALLY don't understand that.

 

Obviously, you haven't tried Majesty or Disciples (I assume the second one will be like the first). These games are top-notch, and are a PERFECT change from the FPS games that get pumped out by id and Epic and whoever else. IF they aren't your style of game, then fine, but to dismiss them all as "crap games" is just ignorant and unfair.

 

Notice that LGP is the only major company out there right now, aside from Hyperion, who was going to port Tzar (but everyone again bitched that the game was a "crap game"), who still does native ports of games that otherwise wouldn't be ported. In many ways, LGP has replaced the beloved Loki. They exist to make Linux work on the desktop for gamers.

 

If you don't want to contribute to the success of the Linux operating system as a gaming operating system, then I must say a big thank you from those of us who do give a shit.

 

When the day comes that LGP ports the biggest title that you've been waiting for, you'll have people like me to thank for it, since it will be my money paying for that one game that you want.

 

I'll support them with my money now, because I know that 5 years from now, LGP will still be there, to support me and my operating system.

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DOlson,

 

A better solution to a company is to make porting utilities and let the developers port them themselves. That coupled with buying rights to good but old games is a better way to proceed.

 

I for one would have shelled out some $$$ to have a Linux copy of Freespace 2. I'd pay even more for a Linux native version of X-Wing and/or TIE Fighter. Hell, I'd settle for X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, Rogue Squadron or even Episode I Racer. And while I like WineX (I know you don't). It's far from perfect trying to run emulated titles. It's much superior to have Linux native copies of games.

 

I personally own Quake 3, Sim City 3000, Terminus, Descent 3 all Linux native. I'd love to have copies of my favorite games in boxes with TUX on them.

 

However, I can't see a company making good money by simply porting new titles. It makes much more sense to port popular, existing titles, knowing there will be a market for them. It also makes sense to develop tools for developers to use in making native ports easier to produce. THAT will save Linux gaming.

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And now for something completely not different.

 

This is a reply directed only to SoulSe. He gets twice as much reading as the rest of you.

 

That's a great idea! - I'll buy games online and pay in dollars! So that if they don't get lost in the post (which they will), they'll take 2 - 3 months to get here! Hey, I can even pay in dollars, which, plus the postage = three times the price it would cost in a shop!

 

Oh, but it gets better, I should just buy any game cus it is written for linux, whether I like it or not. Luckily University students have enough money to buy tons of games that they will never play instead of beer.

 

Clearly, you haven't actually EVER ordered from TuxGames. How you could say a game takes 2-3 months to get to your place is unfounded. Have you tried it? Tell me your name, so I can verify with Michael that you did in fact order from them, and I'll believe you.

 

If you care more about beer than the future of the Linux operating system's gaming market, then so be it. But remember that while you were out getting drunk, some people were putting their money where their mouth is.

 

Games can't just get ported magically - it costs money. And the Linux ports cost more than the Windows verisons, normally, and yet Linux users bitch about that too. It seems all they do is bitch about the gaming situation, but yet, when faced with the choice to do something about it, they turn and run screaming.

 

WineX sucks ass. It is stupid, but if people are sitting with old windoze games they bought and still want to play, they have a right to. Who cares?

 

That's a great idea - in theory. The problem comes in when Transgaming doesn't focus on older games, but the new games. Don't believe me? Look at their focus on MOHAA and BF1942.

 

Buying crap games will encourage people to make more crap games, whether they are for Linux or not. Send email, protest, demonstrate, burn shit - get their attention.

 

That has happened already. And what came of it? Do you even know? Of course you don't. I'll tell you. Blizzard decided that Linux users suck and are nothing more than a bunch of whiney little brats who won't put their money where their big mouths are. Is that what you REALLY want? I sure as hell don't. But thanks for ruining all chances we had of getting Warcraft III ported - now I'll never know how good that game is. Oh well.

 

Don't just buy a game because it's written for Linux. So what? Does that make it a good game? What does that say about Linux users - we'll just buy stupid crap until one day people decide to make good stuff?

 

Don't talk shit about games you know nothing about. Did you ever play Kohan? No, probably not. I hadn't until I got it from TuxGames. Is that a crap game? **** no. That game is better than - YES, BETTER THAN - Age of Empires 2. Who are *you* to judge what games are good and which ones aren't when you HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED THEM? I find it hard to believe that the media still has the mindnumbing effects on people these days... I thought humans were beyond that by now.

 

And that is all. If you REALLY want to play a variety of games, go buy a Playstation. Otherwise play Quake :twisted: and stop complaining.

 

Re-read that sentence and see how dumb it sounds.

 

And please read other people's posts with your tounge in yer cheak. I think I pissed off DOlsen again by posting what I thought was a humourous comment. touchy.

 

I don't know what you mean by this... Because I haven't responded until now? Well to be honest, I hadn't been coming to the forums frequently anyhow. But I'm back now, and I'm only in the games thread. Purely to make your life a miserable, living hell.

 

Oh, and for the last time, spell my name right, damnit. How hard is it to look down on the page a little bit until you see how it's spelled?

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A better solution to a company is to make porting utilities and let the developers port them themselves. That coupled with buying rights to good but old games is a better way to proceed.

 

The old games are already in the hands of those who wanted them. There is no money in a new port. The games that are worthwhile are being open-sourced and ported by the masters at icculus.org.

 

I for one would have shelled out some $$$ to have a Linux copy of Freespace 2. I'd pay even more for a Linux native version of X-Wing and/or TIE Fighter. Hell, I'd settle for X-Wing versus TIE Fighter, Rogue Squadron or even Episode I Racer.

 

I could just step in and say that all those games are "crap games" since I've never played them before, but I won't. I'd buy them JUST because they had Linux versions. I will buy nearly every Linux port EVER until it gets to the point, IF it gets to the point, where most games get ported. Why wouldn't I? It will only help Linux. Having more software options won't hurt. After all, Linux is about choice, is it not?

 

That said, I assume you know that you can play Freespace 2 natively in Linux.

 

And while I like WineX (I know you don't). It's far from perfect trying to run emulated titles. It's much superior to have Linux native copies of games.

 

WineX itself isn't *that* bad. What IS bad is the way the company behind it flaunts it - they advertise games like Max Payne, Warcraft III, and Diablo 2, as if they play flawlesly and they advertise their "porting" capabilities. Let me tell you this: Transgaming will NEVER see one cent of my money until they start getting porting contracts for true porting houses. I won't buy another Wine'd crap product so long as I live.

 

The success of Linux should not be hinged upon the success of Windows.

 

I personally own Quake 3, Sim City 3000, Terminus, Descent 3 all Linux native. I'd love to have copies of my favorite games in boxes with TUX on them.

 

However, I can't see a company making good money by simply porting new titles. It makes much more sense to port popular, existing titles, knowing there will be a market for them. It also makes sense to develop tools for developers to use in making native ports easier to produce. THAT will save Linux gaming.

 

Tools? There are tools. That's why SDL runs in Windows, Linux, BeOS, MacOS. So does OpenAL and OpenGL. There are options! Companies just don't use them. It takes more than tools to get native ports. How can a company port a game to Linux if they don't know anything about the platform? They end up taking 7 months + to port the game and all the Linux users rebel. Don't believe me? Point your browser to http://nwn.bioware.com/ and look in the Linux client threads.

 

As I said earlier, if you already have a copy of Jedi Knight II, why on earth would you pay AGAIN for a native Linux port?

 

And that begs the question, if you are a real Linux user, why the hell are you buying Windows games?

 

Let LGP do their job. They learned from Loki's mistakes - and they will do just fine. People just need to let go of their screwed up ideas about games that they have never played.

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Tools? There are tools. That's why SDL runs in Windows, Linux, BeOS, MacOS. So does OpenAL and OpenGL. There are options! Companies just don't use them. It takes more than tools to get native ports. How can a company port a game to Linux if they don't know anything about the platform? They end up taking 7 months + to port the game and all the Linux users rebel. Don't believe me? Point your browser to http://nwn.bioware.com/ and look in the Linux client threads.

 

You made a good point DOlson.

 

The realistic goal, I think, here is that to encourage companies to engage a multi-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) development strategy from the beginning using OpenGL and SDL. There is no way one can convince any companies to make games only for Linux with a goal of reaping (big) profits. I believe, however, more resources, efforts and "marketing" must be made to encourage cross-platform developments. Such as books, sample projects, compiler choices (such as MinGW/Dev-C++ on Windows) and other considerations to be made when one wants to support multiple platforms.

 

Indeed, cross-platform development (as an important issue) is relatively new since the wider adoption of Linux literally began in 2002 (with mozilla.org and OpenOffice.org 1.0 being the major factor - and KDE 3.1 + XFree86 4.3 + kernel 2.6 will be the pushing factor in 2003). More awareness and education must be provided on this - think about it, where you can find a good book on SDL (except the PLG book)? Make the computer book publishers aware of this, and game developers will have more accessible resources and hence more confidence and experience to enter into a new platform. Using Linux as game servers is no news, now the effort remains on encouraging cross-platform development, and we all need to focus on this.

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Well, for one, there exists a wealth of documentation on the INTERNET.

 

Secondly, that PLG book is fairly good, and it is even freely downloadable in PDF format. I prefer the hard copy to it though...

 

Thirdly, there are other books about SDL. But it's not only SDL that companies need to look at - it's OpenGL, for which there is a ton of information both online and on shelf, and OpenAL, which was used in games like Jedi Knight II and Soldier of Fortune II, and UT2003.

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846

 

I don't know if that link is session specific or not, but if it is, just search for SDL on Amazon.com, and you'll find that book. It's not the PLG book. But surprise surprise, none of the guys who currently port games had heard of it before I pasted the link in the channel.

 

I don't think that it's a lack of tools or documentation that is stopping ports.

 

It's lack of money. If companies can't turn around and say, wow, they are making money on that game, maybe we should port games too... then they have little reason to produce games for Linux. Unless, like Mark Rein, they say that if the Linux OS is to be used for the server, then the Linux users should be able to play the client, there won't be many in-house ports.

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I'm completely with you on this, every step of the way, which is why I posted this thread (note the link vs wineX in the article). But just so ya know, I actually posted it to Newsforge the same day as this - it just takes that long to get published! I would've included some of these great points you've made. Don't half the people who reponded on newsforge tick you off??

 

Anyway, Merry Christmas man; I wish you all the best. And to the rest of you, too.

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Well, for one, there exists a wealth of documentation on the INTERNET.

 

Not that they did not exist. SDL was around since 1999, being discussed from IBM's developer guide. But for published books (those that you can find it on bookshelf) SDL is significantly outnumbered by DirectX books. If I am used to make games on DirectX and I did not browse that much around the web .... how am I supposed to know that SDL existed at all? (Not to mention the book link you posted (Focus on SDL) is published on Nov 2002, not that readily available). Yes we can search to download the PLG book - but not everyone knew SDL is available on cross-platform (meaning developers don't need to create different codes for Win32 that they MUST support) - in such case developers might think the PLG book is entirely for Linux only - that didn't serve a good purpose when supporting Win32 is a must.

 

If one wants to confirm about the supreme importance of Win32 support, check out these sourceforge.net project: GAIM, SIM-ICQ . They both have Win32 and Linux version - and they are both free. But the amount of downloads for Win32 version is 5-10 times of that of Linux version! That's why I say supporting Win32 is a must. The revenue is too big to miss - even for free software Win32 support has a bigger demand.

 

It's lack of money. If companies can't turn around and say, wow, they are making money on that game, maybe we should port games too... then they have little reason to produce games for Linux. Unless, like Mark Rein, they say that if the Linux OS is to be used for the server, then the Linux users should be able to play the client, there won't be many in-house ports.

 

Agree. But to promote further on coding in SDL, say in book publishing; or some direct comparison report of SDL+OpenGL against DirectX, and most importantly - illustrate clearly that SDL is available on Win32 as well as Linux are of utmost important for now. And man, fund raising to donate to the SDL Project so that it can be improved further and better is another thing we can all work on. Considering SDL has 17 lanugage library bindings, it can be a significant effort to promote the freedom of choice in language selections, and might stand a chance later on to counter .NET with its support on so many languages like .NET does.

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Oh, and for the last time, spell my name right, damnit

I don't care how your name is spelt, after your little outburst in your post it'll always look like "arse" to me, so this is directed at "arse" - excuse my spelling.

 

Don't talk shit about games you know nothing about. Did you ever play Kohan? No, probably not. I hadn't until I got it from TuxGames. Is that a crap game? **** no. That game is better than - YES, BETTER THAN - Age of Empires 2. Who are *you* to judge what games are good and which ones aren't when you HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED THEM?

I feel no need to defend myself against such infantile arguments. I never said that any of the games you mentioned were crap. I never mentioned a single name of a game.

 

It is a matter of opinion - some people will love a game that other people will think is crap. No one is going to buy something they don't like.

 

Clearly, you haven't actually EVER ordered from TuxGames. How you could say a game takes 2-3 months to get to your place is unfounded. Have you tried it?

I have made 23 orders on the internet from stores all over America - the quickest package took 6 weeks. It's the postal system, NOT tuxgames that is responsible. The World is bigger then America, ya know?

 

Anyway, you're obviously a highly strung person that sees anything they want in a statement. So blow it out your ear and calm the f**k down. We are all on the same side. I've got better things to do then argue in circles with sensitive freaks. I'll stick away from the games part of this site so you can sit on your little thrown in peace without the likes of me bothering you.

 

Purely to make your life a miserable, living hell.

Make my life a living hell? My, aren't we mature. I _have_ a life and it doesn't get affected by what some loser on a forum says to me. So go right ahead, it should be good for a few laughs. Say what you want. People with real integrity will read it and see you for the tragic little man that you have now proven yourself to be.

 

You really didn't have to get personal. But I suppose that is in the nature of a true arse. So go on, rip me off, get me banned, throw some shit around your little castle - I won't be back to read it, so it makes no difference to me. And to think I really thought you were an ok guy for a while. Until you got raw in the posts. If I was a moderator I would kick you the **** out of here. Go take a cold shower, have a coke and a smile and get back to the point.

 

So long, it was nice speaking to you all while it lasted....

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Now if Linux also got more articles and resources like these:

 

1. Slashdot: Porting to Mac OS X from Windows Win32 API

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=0...2/12/24/1650216

 

2. Slashdot: OpenGL Widget Set Recommendations?

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/...2/12/24/1813219

 

EDIT: Another article I've found:

 

3. Linux GUI Application Development for Windows Programmers

How do you get started?

http://xminc.com/linux/wxpython.html

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<a bunch of stuff here>

 

Calm down guy. You're too new to this board to get my sense of humour, I suppose... Well, whatever. Most of my reply was in jest, but you didn't pick up on that. If you're going to hold a grudge based on that, then that is very sad. It's not what I meant, and I'm sorry you took it that way.

 

In fact, I believe it was you who said "please read other people's posts with your tounge in yer cheak. I think I pissed off DOlsen again by posting what I thought was a humourous comment. touchy." I could say the EXACT SAME THING in this situation.

 

---

 

In any event, no matter what you say, there are things that remain true to which you haven't bothered answering:

 

You can't say that games that LGP are porting suck if you haven't tried them, and you made it clear that you don't want to even bother trying the games.

 

TuxGames shipped Kohan to me from the UK to Canada in 5 DAYS. Not weeks, not months, but DAYS. Who is to blame for that?

 

Transgaming focuses on new games, not old games. This is bad.

 

Oh, and on top of that, you still haven't addressed how you think that companies are supposed to make money off of a nearly non-existent market such as us - and how groups like LGP are suppost to afford AAA titles without pulling a Loki.

 

You said: "Buying crap games will encourage people to make more crap games, whether they are for Linux or not. Send email, protest, demonstrate, burn shit - get their attention."

 

So, in your reasoning, it is more important to kick up a fuss like whiney little bitches rather than support companies who support Linux. That's smart, to say the least.

 

You don't have to reply to this, and I don't expect you to. I've private messaged it to you as well, so that I hope you will actually read it at least once, so you know that I wasn't just trying to be an asshole.

 

Oh, and by the way, thanks for the advice. Thanks to you, I will be buying a Playstation next week.

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Fortunately you private messaged me, so here is my last post:

 

Calm down guy. You're too new to this board to get my sense of humour, I suppose

Dude, what you said wasn't funny. I think our real problem is a personality clash.

 

In fact, I believe it was you who said "please read other people's posts with your tounge in yer cheak. I think I pissed off DOlsen again by posting what I thought was a humourous comment. touchy." I could say the EXACT SAME THING in this situation.

Hey, just like being in Kindergarten again: "no, you!" Not to tit-for-tat but I kept my cool 'til you got raw. Lucky it was a "joke" when you said you wanted to make my life miserable, right?

 

You can't say that games that LGP are porting suck if you haven't tried them, and you made it clear that you don't want to even bother trying the games.

You are right, I can't. And I didn't. Now read carefully -> I DID NOT MENTION LGP, KOHAN NOR THE NAME OF ANY GAME. I JUST SAID 'CRAP GAMES' I DID NOT REFER TO ANYTHING, BECAUSE IT IS A MATTER OF OPINION.

 

TuxGames shipped Kohan to me from the UK to Canada in 5 DAYS

I live in AFRICA! AFRICA! I don't THINK it will take 2 months, I KNOW it will. I have done this before. You can DHL or UPS it quicker, but that would double the price of the game.

 

Oh, and on top of that, you still haven't addressed how you think that companies are supposed to make money off of a nearly non-existent market such as us

You are right, I haven't. Because I do not know the answer to that one. Maybe you do?

 

Thanks to you, I will be buying a Playstation next week

Great, now you can play games without any error messages, GL drivers, etc. It's not better or faster or more powerfull, it's just.... oh wait, yeah, it is better.

 

Look, I respect what you are trying to do. You rock and all that.

No hard feelings. In Fact, no feelings at all. Good luck and Good Bye.

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