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Games Entertainment

Loki may port Starcraft and Diablo II 112

Posted by CmdrTaco from the oh-god-please-yes dept.
Michael Simms writes "According to an article in the Loki Requests newsgroup, Sam Lantinga, lead programmer for Loki Games states that 'We are going to try to do Starcraft and Diablo II as soon as we sell enough units to make it interesting to Blizzard' One way to help to persuade Blizzard that they should work with Loki on this is to sign the Games Petitions Page run by Tux Games. "
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Loki may port Starcraft and Diablo II More

Loki may port Starcraft and Diablo II

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  • This is why you need to play _people_. I played through one of the campaigns back in 1996 when I first played War2 - it was ok, but nothing even remotely approaching multiplayer. I'm glad to see there are some posts here where the age of a game doesn't disqualify it as a good game. I don't think I could ever get sick of War2.

  • Dollars are better than signatures! (Score:3)

    by maynard ( 3337 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:52AM (#1308746) Journal
    I've bought five games from Loki and Unreal Tournament because of the Linux support. Profit is the only real development which will prod games makers into supporting Linux over the long haul. I earn a good deal of money from my UNIX and Linux skills, so I'm in a position to use this to support those projects and companies promote those values and products I desire. If you're earning a good salery from this you should put your money where your signature is as well and go to the Loki web site and plunk some money down for that game you've always wanted under Linux.

    There's one depressing problem with this... unfortunately Civ: Call To Power has kept me up to all hours destroying my daytime productivity. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! :-)
  • I the case of "Diablo II", I'd be willing to send a check for $49.95 to Loki right this minute that they can cash the second they ship me the game. Perhaps that sort of thing would convince Blizzard that they'd get sales.
  • We need NEW RELEASE games damnit.

    Exactly! Which is why we need The Sims on Linux ... and Pokemon ...

  • Just because Loki isn't giving the sales figures to the public doesn't mean they aren't giving them to Blizzard/other game publishers under a NDA.

  • Blizz will never port.

    The reply that I got when I bothered them was "Well, all the Linux users have Windows too, so there's no reason to do a port."

    Well, I don't have Windows, and I'm not going to buy any Windows games. The only O/S I've got is Linux, and so I'll just be happy with CIV:CTP until there's other good games avalible. (Yes, I know there's Quake III, but I don't like FPS's)

    If all you other Linux gamers could do this too (only buy Linux games, ditch Windows or MacOS), then we'd see some more Linux games.

  • <i>
    Anyway, the guys at the store thought Linux was a waste of shelf space for awhile at least until the base grew larger. I tried to explain but they were clueless.
    </i>

    Not, how many people buy Linux games compared to windows games? 0.001%?
  • Yeah, surely Linux will fix all her problems. She'll never have to ask you any computer related questions again!
  • <i>
    First, I have top convince my MS-addicted friends that yes, there are such things as *spreadsheets* and *web browsers* for Linux. I find this gap in understanding amazing.
    </i>

    Yes, but StarOffice5.1 is no where near as advanced as Office 2000 still! Lack of antialising makes documents look horrible and ugly. And well, no need to coment on the web browsers available.
  • But you presume that Windows is unstable....so how is it that the games are stable? When it crashes, how do you know it's windows and not blizzard's games.
  • PC World has some Linux games but I can't remember if they have any Loki stuff. They don't put them with Windows games, but next to their copies of Linux.

    However The Linux Emporium [linux-emporium.co.uk] has lots of Loki games mail order.

    Enjoy
    j

  • I'm pretty extreme (No Windows here) but I make an exception for proprietary games because it's not obvious that we could support similar Free products NOW or possibly even in the future. This just isn't true for application classes like the Office Suite or IDE where high quality Free equivalents are already in progress, and I don't expect that to change.

    Also, Games just aren't going to stand in the way of World Domination, there's no way that Bill Gates could have steered a Games company to the point where it makes headline news every time he sneezes. So I spend $65 importing Q3A for Linux and Myth II but I don't expect that to make me any less Free.

    Finally, I can see money spent on ID games, at least, as a future investment in Free Software, they've released Doom and now Quake as GPL software, and there's no reason to think this policy will stop for as long as they're profitable.

    Nick.
  • I have always found it an interesting concept so many Open Source people will pay for a game :-) hehe I guess everyone has to bend there ideology a little for QIII :-)

  • EverQuest? (Score:3)

    by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @07:02AM (#1308768) Homepage
    Everquest's cool, but if Wolf Pack pulls off what they're aiming for (and it's looking like they might...) you're going to want it over EQ. I'd be petitioning for EQ, but I'd also be petitioning for ShadowBane. There's a petition going on at one of the news sites [drtwister.com]. Go over there and put your vote in.
  • For all those out there bitching over the $50 price tag on some of these Loki games, I note that EBWorld [ebworld.com] has several Loki titles [ebworld.com] for between $25 and $29... very reasonable. The games are Heretic II, Hero's of Might and Magic, and Railroad Tycoon. They did have Myth II for $25, but it looks like they've sold this out! Good.
  • I doubt porting OLD games would be successful. I wore out my interest in Diablo and Warcraft so long ago I can't even remember who was president! Just kidding...it was only 2 years ago. And Diablo II wasn't even a consideration, since I thought Diablo I was pointless. The "engine" and way it played were awesome, but it was like almost completely in the dungeon and the plot was the same almost the entire way through.

    Personally, a lot of games suck. Warcraft really was good, but it's old and other games have copied it's idea so many times I can't even bare to play them. I bought Civ:CTP from Loki, and I played it for a few days. But I probably won't buy Quake 3. I bought Q3 for Windows, and honestly, I played for 10 minutes and it's boring. TeamFortress was what made Quake1 so great, and that it was free. Deathmatch is just dumb.

    I would rather see some GPL games come straight from the linux community for linux. I have caught a glimpse of Golgotha on http://www.golgotha.org/ [golgotha.org] but I couldn't tell what they were really up to. =) The real question is: "Can you make a game GPL and it be successful like linux, or will the same idiots that post asinine things about natalie portman spend their worthless lives exploiting those games with things like the modified Quake1 clients?"

    And for those of you who post the most useless posts here, you will get a standing ovation someday. Unfortunately for you, it will be at your funeral.

  • YES!!! Imagine how good EverQuest would be with a non-crappy IP stack!
  • At about 11:12am, Feb. 03, a couple of eyeball-checks showed 12 new signatures for Starcraft per minute.
  • My room mate keeps asking me her damn DOS questions (It's windows 98 but it's still DOS) and I got sick of dealing with the environment YEARS ago. Port Dungeon Keeper 2 and I'll be able to wipe 'doze off her system and install Linux. Please please PLEASE!
  • But isn't Starcraft a little old? Does it still have a huge number of players? I dunno, but I would imagine that there are probably more profitable games Loki could do.

    Starcraft's pretty old, but then again, so is chess. Quality strategy games have this habit of hanging around for a while...


    --
    "HORSE."

  • Got a petition for it and everything.

    http://sb.drtwister.com/linux/

    Wolfpack Studios, which is developing the new massively-multiplayer game (screenshots at http://sb.drtwister.com/sb-media.html) acknowledged the petition, at the very least. Got 300+ entries so far, sure could use more!

    This is the one that's being developed with OpenGL as its primary graphics API, with Windows and Mac versions. All they want to know is that Linux users are a viable market.

    Thanks to TuxGames for the plug.

    J.
    damned vulpine
    http://sb.drtwister.com/
  • ... is coming [slashdot.org], young grasshopper.

    Slashdot is a good place to start looking on what is coming next...

    Lea

  • I will never "buy" Starcraft for Linux. FGS, it's two years after they relased the game. That's an eternity in the gaming world. We asked Blizzard b4, and they said, "No, no market". Now that Starcraft is showing it's age they want to milk every single last ounce of profit for it.

    NO, NO WAY....

    I have my CD-KEY, and I bought Starcraft once it got out. So, if Blizzard really wants to show some goodwill, they better release the game binaries free to people who already have the windows version (Just do a CD-KEY check).

    Most probably they won't since they got bought out by that big firm (that had a little problem with their accounting, hehehehe).

    Then again if Diablo II for Linux is good, I might consider buying it, but I will never ever buy the same game twice so I can run it on two platforms.

    Games I can do without, especially those from companies that don't give about anything other than their bottom line.
  • Loki tests their games to run with FreeBSD/x86. I'm going to assume that you are using an Intel processor, because if you aren't, you are SOL.

    The game should run fine with any of the 3 BSDs on x86 with linux compat. As for the people running Free/Open/Net on a non-x86 platform, I think you are going to have to bite the bullet. Unless you get bochs :)

  • Actually, they're trying to see if there is a market for it. You can't seriously expect them to port the game and then say "oh well we're just going to give it away now"... Cd Keys? HA! There was a key generator out not long after the game.

    Some kind of rebate program would be nice, but unlikely. I don't think they should port Starcraft at all, and instead focus on Diablo II.

    (and for the record Starcraft is still a very well selling game, especially considering its age, so its not dead yet by any stretch of the imagination)
  • If you look at the news thread here, it suggests that Blizzard wants Millions of copies, not hundreds, not thousands -- one thing that the post on Linuxgames neglected to point out.

  • Re:NetHack (Score:3)

    by Shadow Knight ( 18694 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @12:12PM (#1308786) Homepage
    (It's hard enough avoiding "nethack".)

    Tell me about it! NetHack is the best game ever made. Well, it would be, if it were multiplayer... I've thought about tackling that challenge, but then I realize it's like 3MB (compressed) of source code... hmmm... no, not right now... Though, I've also heard of efforts to do nasty things like add a 3D graphical interface to nethack, which makes me sick. That defeats the purpose! As I envision multiplayer nethack, each player would simply be an @ symbol, and you'd have multiple @s on the screen at once (provided you could see each other). I have no idea how difficult this would be to implement. You'd have to have some sort of server keep track of the maps... and the fact that the game is basically turn based makes things even more difficult. Oh well, probably never happen.


    Supreme Lord High Commander of the Interstellar Task Force for the Eradication of Stupidity
  • Tunnel through it with ssh.

    However, you need access to open up the port for ssh on the firewall itself, so if it's not your network or you don't get along with the administrator, you can't do it.

    Given the average security of most networks, it's already turned on.
  • But why not? That's my question. Why would Loki have an NDA about sales figures? I might be able to understand if sales sucked, and they want ed to cover it up, but I have a feeling sales are at least moderately good, if not exceptionally good. And if so, why not brag about it? What's the big secret?
  • Uh....how can a first post, especially an ON TOPIC first post, be "redundant"?

    Will people please just use a little bit of thought before they moderate?

    (Is it just me, or does (html tags to text) no longer work)?

  • sorry about the time, but i just read this once. Now i know i can see which posts got replied... But you presume that Windows is unstable....so how is it that the games are stable? When it crashes, how do you know it's windows and not blizzard's games. Thats a good point. But Diablo has never crashed me or made windows crash either. thats why. And, when windows crashes, there is the need of restarting the OS, and the well known blue screen. When the app crahses, you only need restart the app.

  • drunken gamers (Score:3)

    by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:03AM (#1308794) Homepage Journal
    I was just thinking how I need to use less wine with my games. This would help a lot... :)
  • I love their work, but Blizzard has longer development cycles than Microsoft. I can't believe that NT 5 (err, sorry, Windows 2000) is going to beat Diablo II out the door... Then again, there's nothing worse than a game with great potential being ruined by a rushed and flawed release.

    Kudos to Blizzard for all their great work and here's hoping that they decide to support Linux gaming.

  • Port Everquest and I can wipe this virus masquarading as an OS from M$.
  • I ran StarCraft under wine, it worked very well except that I never got the multiplayer to work, but that was with wine about a year ago. I'm sure that it would work now.

    But isn't Starcraft a little old? Does it still have a huge number of players? I dunno, but I would imagine that there are probably more profitable games Loki could do.
  • I think some people already got starcraft running on linux using wine, see the Starcraft under Wine howto http://www.linuxgames.com/starcraft.shtml. You wont have to buy the linux version if you got this working.

  • Bastards (Score:5)

    by ucblockhead ( 63650 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:17AM (#1308801) Homepage Journal
    You know, I put together my Linux box because I kept telling myself "Self, you should really stop wasting all that time playing games, and do some real programming and stuff". So I get the linux box. I download egcs. I start throwing some stuff together.

    And what happens?

    I download a bunch of demos from Loki. Have I done anything worthwhile since? No...

    Now they are porting the sequel to one of the most addictive games I've ever played ("Diablo") and the successor to one of the other most addictive games I've ever played ("Alpha Centauri", the true successor to "Civilization II").

    Bastards. Now I'm never going to get anything real done.

    All I can say is that it is a damn good thing I can't play these things in a telnet session, or I wouldn't get anything done at work, either. (It's hard enough avoiding "nethack".)
  • ...is Sim City 3000. Sure, it's a challenge, but it is the best game EVER.
    --
    Matt Singerman
  • Hey if anyone is interested in Rumors like this my message-board for the Loki Portal page a has a Rumor Section. So check it out! Go to the Loki Portal Page! [linuxgames.com]
    Natas of
    -=Pedophagia=-
    http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
    Also Admin of

  • Its about time Blizzard (and other good game companies) got on the clue-train. We've been after them for years.

    Bowie J. Poag
    Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org [themes.org])

  • Games and Mass Appeal (Score:3)

    by Hnice ( 60994 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:20AM (#1308806) Homepage
    First, I have top convince my MS-addicted friends that yes, there are such things as *spreadsheets* and *web browsers* for Linux. I find this gap in understanding amazing.

    Then I have to convince them that, while some dists are very hard to install, others will hold your hand. This, to me, is a very valid concern from the point of view of Joe AOL and Marsha MS. [Ed: May not be actual people, but demeaning archetypes.] But there are answers here, too.

    But it's very tough to come up with a satisfying response to the people who won't switch over until they can get some games. Games are as important, in terms of comforting the average user, as many other features they think about when they compare two oses (even when the comparison isn't accurate). The more games that get ported, the better it is for us, of course, and the better it is for the general acceptability of the os.

    Of course, the trick is not to be as snobby as we sometimes are with regards to other issues. Sure, starcraft is the greatest rts game in history, and unreal the greatest fps, but those deer-hunting games sell. Point being, we should watch the snide remarks when Game Hunter XLVII gets ported, cause it's a stupid game, but it's indicative of the fact that Linux is winning market share, which, i think we can agree, is a good thing, relatively speaking.

  • of Blizzard and begging (Score:3)

    by Raleel ( 30913 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:20AM (#1308807)
    Well, basically this means that we need to by loki games and let them get some figures to show Blizzard. Now, personally, I think Quake3 will be the vehicle. It just has the best chance, not these (sorry, Loki, I still love you guys) older, almost second tier games. Heavy gear 2 will be a good one, but it is not a Quake game. It might also be time for us to revisit the linux advocacy how-to and not say mean things to Blizzard demanding games. A tasteful email to them would be in order, something to the effect that you are a gamer and you have bought such and such games from blizzard, and love their company, and would like to see them have linux ports, or allow Loki (who has done an excellent job) to. In some sense we need a CONTROLLED slashdot effect on blizzard.

    You have no idea (well maybe you do) of how much I want Diablo 2 for linux. As with everyone and his brother, I swore to remove windows from my machine if they ported it. The reason is because it is big enough that Linux will have a slew of games out by the time I am done ;)
  • The local bookstore/software outlet here actually had an all-Loki display rack last week. Had. It got wiped out in just a couple of days. Somewhat surprising, since I live in what has to be one of the most technically challenged regions in the country. I just hope it wasn't a bunch of illiterate windoze users who bought them by mistake.

    But at least I got my copy of Railroad Tycoon II while it was in stock.

    "Honey, you have to go to work tomorrow. Why don't you shut that game down and come to bed?" Sound familiar?
  • Strategy games aren't for everyone. One of my friends played Warcraft, Warcraft II, and Starcraft almost nonstop when they were released. I can get through a few missions, and while it's fun, to me it gets old after a while... basically, build as many troops as possible, and hit the enemy in one big rush.

  • Old news.. (Score:3)

    by larien ( 5608 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:20AM (#1308810) Homepage Journal
    This is somewhat old news for anyone who's been keeping track on the loki.requests. The line has been "Blizzards want sales figures". However, Loki aren't telling (a) how much Blizzard want or (b) how much they've sold.

    For anyone interested in linux games, point your news-reader to news.lokigames.com and keep track there. You can also get some good support on install/running problems on their games.
    --

  • Starcraft and WINE (Score:4)

    by Skinka ( 15767 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @07:55AM (#1308811)
    Looking at the WINE app database [winehq.com] it appears that Starcraft runs pretty well under WINE. This makes me wonder if the port could be done simply by using WINElib and fixing the few remaining bugs (mainly multiplayer stuff) that may be left. Any thoughts?
  • Does anyone know where I can buy Loki's games in the UK?
  • I'm a longtime regular on the Battle.net (aka Blizzard) forums, and I guess this means that someone was paying attention. Its quite a regular thing seeing requests posted in the War Room [battle.net] asking for Starcraft/Broodwar/Diablo II to be ported over. The usual answer they get is "When there is enough marketshare, I'm sure Blizzard will", because they always port stuff over to Mac, eveuntally. Honestly, Diablo II is one that seems a lot more likely then Starcraft, considering how old Starcraft is now. But its still the best RTS game out there, no matter how old it is. Does anyone remember the game that was supposed to kill it? No? It was called Tiberian something... well whatever it was called isn't important. The problem with porting Starcraft is that a lot of the playerbase of people who want it ported already have Windows versions and either dual boot or play in WINE. So are these people who are asking for it actually willing to buy it *again* just to have a native linux version? Thats the real question with Starcraft.. not how many new players you can get that way (which isn't enough), but how many existing ones will buy it again to get a linux version. Its the existing ones who ask for a port. Diablo II on the other hand is another story, and could very well get ported happily. (ps - I saw another post where someone complaiend about how long DII is taking... all I have in reply is this: Do you want a bug riddled game released now, or a kick ass one released later? Personally, I'd rather not have to download an 18mb patch just to make the game playable out of the box)
  • Simcity, Diablo, Starcraft, all cutting edge games
    that will bring Linux around as a viable gamming platform... heh, if those games weren't OLD.

    Listen to what Im saying, please. The PC gaming market is driven by the hardcore gamer, 80% of the typical games revenue is made in the first few months of release, and the people who buy games when they come out are hardcore gamers. If you don't have those types of people on your gaming platform, then the game companies don't have as much of a reason to write the games.

    Starcraft, and Diablo are both excellent games, I'm a huge Blizzard fan myself, but porting old games isn't going to turn Linux into the mainstream gaming platform we want it to be.

    We need NEW RELEASE games damnit.

    Look at http://www.neverwinternights.com
    For what I consider to be the most exciting example.
  • You have to like Strategy games to like Starcraft... if you like action oriented games (like quake), look elsewhere. Personally I find quake to be interesting for about five seconds. But a good hour long game of Broodwar (thats the Starcraft Expansion) just leaves me wanting a rematch.

    The reason why Starcraft is considered by many as the best RTS ever is a combination of things... the game comes with a kick ass map editor. Combined with other tools, you can make entire campaigns and do TC's and the like, not many other RTS's even come close to the level of editing you can do to Starcraft.

    They actually managed to create three totally different yet basically equal races, so that as any one race you have a chance of beating any other race (assuming the players are the same skill level).

    The game is actually *strategy* oriented. Try using a strategy that involves simply making lots of units and attacking (like you can do in C&C type games) a good player. They will absolutly shread you if they use any kind of actual strategy. Thats not because defenses are really strong, actually they are rather weak. Its because massing units doesn't work that well against experienced players, you need to actually have some level of strategy to beat them.

    The singleplayer storyline actually exists and is actually good (especially in Broodwar). I know the idea of a storyline might be a stretch to any first person shooter fans, but it certainly adds something to the game.

    Thats about all I can think of right now. But you really do have to be a fan of RTS games to like Starcraft, there is more then just killing stuff involved, so FPS fans will probably not like it.
  • I ran starcraft under wine with a 266 a while back. It ran slightly slower but still useable. Once every hour or so it would eat all my memory and crash.

    Also, you can't simply fix wine to support the multiplayer, the only way to play on battle.net would be to provide the full winsock library on top of linux. The last time I read anything on it, wine hadn't even started implementing winsock. So multiplayer would be a long way off.

    [ot] I need a company that would host my domain on a unix box with a useable c++ compiler, about 20 megs, for under $20 a month.. i'm tired of looking at all the hosting companies, its all the same generic deals and when I sign up, something is always wrong with their compiler. any help?

    --Ryan
  • >All I can say is that it is a damn good thing I can't play these things in a telnet session, or I
    >wouldn't get anything done at work, either. (It's hard enough avoiding "nethack".)

    SSH with X forwarding is your friend.... (*evil grin).
    --
  • Ya Blizzard takes a long time to finish thier games,but at least when Diablo II does ship it will be a good game. Look at ion storm. They have been developing Dakitana for 3 years and it looks horrible!

  • Best strategy? StarCraft is a very pretty and well executed game, with nicely balanced sides and a great storyline.

    However it has no 3D terrain, no true line of sight, sucky limited resource model, no water units, no sub units, planes don't land, maps aren't big enough for good 8 player games, and you have to micromanage constantly.

    Time to acknowledge the one true greatest RTS of all time ... Total Annihilation. I would pay good money for a Linux port of TA. How 'bout it, Loki? Linux port of TA Gold edition (ie, including Battle Tactics and Core Contingency) for $50?

    (Well, maybe not the greatest of all time. After all, Homeworld is out now. Just gotta wait for XFree4 and Loki can port that too. :)

  • Upon reading this article, the following two words immediately entered my mind, in the following order:
    • "Kick", and
    • "Ass"

    I know, I know, they need more sales until Blizzard will even think of it, but still, just the idea that they're aware of the Linux audience is a good sign.
    I recall that, of the games mentioned in the recent "What games would you love to see ported", Starcraft and Diablo were right up there, as well as future Blizzard endeavors. There's definitely a market.
    And finally, on a more personal note, I got back from Electronics Boutique today, and I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic III all day :)
    Ahh, the beauty of games for Linux....

  • I guess it really doesn't matter. I got starcraft working under wine months ago, BUTTT, multiplayer crashed wine. Since I ran wine as root, I think it also might have crashed my whole system. You have to run wine as root to get direct video access, I think.
    It just ain't worth mentioning unless you can play online.

    PS.(but back then, I didn't know that the background console may still be working, so I could log into root, do killall -KILL X, then startx again to get a display. Just in case you didn't know)
  • Alright, I love Loki. I bought MythII and Eric's Ultimate Solitaire (EUS was just for my wife I swear) from Electronic's Boutique. Anyway, the guys at the store thought Linux was a waste of shelf space for awhile at least until the base grew larger. I tried to explain but they were clueless.

    Anyway, how much money is Loki making? Are they on sound footing? The article mentioned Blizzard only wanting in after so many boxes shipped from Loki. I would hate to see a good company with sound business and demo release policies :-> fall by the wayside. Nobody seems to be talking about in the era of the big IPOs about how well the big gamer company is doing in a tough market.
  • If you like Windows for gaming, disregard this post. :)

    I bought Myth II for Linux a month ago and loved it! It runs fast, the graphics are great and best of all, no crashing! I am planning on buying one Linux game a month.

    If you want to game on Linux _now_ is the time to buy a Linux game. You know you want to...

    And just think that you can justify the purchase to your significant other. "But I have to buy a Linux game to help all the other people out!"

    Buying a Linux game is alturistic, because if Loki sells enough games, then future games will come out for Linux at the same time as Windows. They don't care what OS they sell their games on, only that the games that they sell make money.

    So help everyone out and buy a Linux version of a game today. (And have fun playing those games!)

    Look out Civ, here I come!
  • I know a large number of people who still play Starcraft regularly. Its one of the best multiplayer strategy games ever. Blizzard is a great company. Its one of the few game companies whose software I have felt was worthwhile to purchase.

    I know my name is on the list. :)

    I need to try starcraft under wine sometimes soon though.

  • Oooh, Blizzard always makes really cool games. If this works, maybe some other companies will start porting games to Linux. ID's doing it, now if Eidos would start porting games...

    PS. Eidos, let's NOT port anything to do with Tomb Raider...

    kwsNI

  • Wonder if there will be a patch or binary that will let ppl w/ the windows CD play it on linux w/o having to repurchase the game.

    (alas, i have a copy from when i used to dual boot way back when...)

  • A few months ago even I'd have laughed at the thought. Sure, it would be nice if I could play a couple games under Linux, but it's going to be a long time before most games will appear (or so I thought). But I'm amazed about how fast Loki seems to be pumping them out (and also at how they seem to be good at getting some of the better games).

    Now I'm seriously wondering if I can shuffle off the windows box to the side. Give that to my wife and never touch it myself.

    I hope they're profitable. It'd be even better to see a couple other companies operate on the Loki model. (Or for publishers to port their own games.)

  • Try using vnc and ssh to create your own "Private Virtual Network" and then play it remotely from work.

    Ain't technology great.

  • > This is somewhat old news for anyone who's been keeping track on the loki.requests

    I emailed Loki this week asking what the sales of Linux games was, and they said it was under NDA. :-(

    I'm still trying to convince management that its a good thing to port our game to Linux though ... but without the sale figure, its hard.

    Cheers

    Michael
    3d game programmer
  • > I can't believe that NT 5 (err, sorry, Windows 2000) is going to beat Diablo II out the door.

    Win2K has already shipped. Its just not available until Feb 17.

    Diablo II won't be out till the Mar-Jun slot.

    Cheers

    Michael
    3d game programmer
  • Unfortunately... best bets are to play on an alternate server like x-force.dhs.org, fsgs.com, or to just play in private channels with people you know.
  • Its rather fun to refresh the petition page during the first 5 minutes after this story got posted and seeing the number of signatures on the popular games jump by up to 40 sigs. :)

  • I've tried (unsuccessfully) to ge one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE games (i.e DIABLO) to run under WINE. Anyone had success? I also tried ATF GOLD unsuccessfully. About my only WINE success is Solitaire... for about five minutes till boredom bounced my head off the screen and woke me up. At least Quake, Quake2, LXdoom, and linux-hexen work great. DIABLO2 would be great. I like the ability to run Quake1 & 2 under both. I hope Diablo2 includes that.
  • Don't forget that there are other porters out there, as well. Apparently Sir-Tech's _Jagged Alliance 2_ and its to-be-released expansion pack "Unfinished Business" are both being ported by a company called Tribsoft [tribsoft.com]. They don't appear to have announced any other projects yet, 'tho, although they're taking suggestions.
  • While I have read a few reports about running Starcraft succesfully under Wine I am yet to actually meet a person who has done it succesfully. Wine seems to be a strange beast working terribly for some and wonderfully for others. Are there lots of other people who've not got anywhere with Wine and Starcraft?
  • Great, but i would have thrown away my windows partition if i had an utility to "convert" it into ext2fs, without loosing data a long time ago =) Or if i could get a cheap storage media, like a tape drive or something to back up all my images and mp3 and avi, mov and mpegs there ...

  • How Many Units is Blizzard Looking For? (Score:3)

    by HomerJ ( 11142 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @08:49AM (#1308843)
    I remember reading, dont' know if it was from Loki's newgroup, linuxgames.com, or maybe even a slasdot post. But Blizzard said they would have linux ports when Loki's sales reached 50,000 units a game.

    Whether that's true or not, I don't know. But it does bringup and interesting question. How many games HAS Loki sold? I mean, I'd assume 50,000 linux users(me being one of them)bought Quake 3 Arena. And I know there has to be 50,000 linux users in the world that want Sim City 3000.

    It also brings up a second question. Do linux gamers buy games they wouldn't have normally bought JUST to get the sales figures up so games they DO want get released? That's a big weight on a comsumers sholders. The idea of "If you don't buy game x which you don't like, you may not game y which you been waiting for for over a year" is not one many people want to be put in, including myself.

    I've bought Quake 3 Arena, I'm looking forward to Sim City 3000, and I'll buy what good games come out for linux that I want to play. I won't be forced into buying a $50 game that I don't like to "maybe" get a port of a game I do.
  • the point here is, Blizzard has always released very good , pretty and nice games, and very stable too. while MS has always release very buggy OSs that keeps unhappy to almost everyone.
  • So what was this talk from the Carmack about how we should buy the Linux version of q3a to show the industry there's a market for Linux games?

  • Prices suggested.... (Score:3)

    by Psychofreak ( 17440 ) on Thursday February 03, 2000 @06:31AM (#1308849) Journal
    I look at some of these games and the average suggested price of many are over $50!!
    This isn't flamebait, but my opinion, I am not able to pay more than about $25 for ANY game, or for that matter any software in general. I am a student, and on a budget. The end result of this is I get a game that's been out for a while and everybody else has mastered it already, I get my A** kicked a few dozen times at it, then I am a competitive player, if I play networked, or I play the scenarios and then decide I don't want to play any further. In this case I pass the game on to one of my friends, lock, stock and barrel.
    This is my opinion, there are laws against being killed for having one.
  • The server is being slashdotted badly. I mean it is a Dual P3-500 with 384 megs of memory, but it is hurting {:-)

    Keep trying though, the voting isnt going anywhere!

  • Yes! For God's(aka Linus) sake! I don't want to boot Windows anymore!
  • When StarCraft first came out (in 98 I believe), it probably was the best strategy game at that point. And, like some of the people that posted here, I kept my windoze for no other reason than to play it.

    Eventually I got tired of rebooting into windoze for it, and now I haven't played it in almost 6 months...

    So for me, this port (when and if it's going to come) is too late. But it's still good to see that games companies are starting to develop for Linux...

  • It's hard to say. I've paid $50 for many games, and felt royally screwed afterwards, getting only a few hours of gameplay. But if you total the number of hours I've gotten out of things like "Civilization" or "Diablo" or "Half-Life" or "Duke Nuk'em", they would have been dirt cheap for twice the price. The average movie costs $8 for two measely hours of entertainment. I figure I got something over 200 hours of entertainment out of "Civilization" for only $50. That's about $.25/hour!

    But if you are broke, there are alternatives, like <A HREF=http://www.freeciv.org>freeciv</A> or discount bins.
  • If I can replace all my sons games with Linux
    versions, will I get a discount?

    I mean really, I've got a lot of money tied up in
    MS based games. Plus, I don't want to buy
    Win2000.

  • I know they are pretty pricing (I'm a student too), but its worth paying the extra money to support the linux games cause. I've bought both Quake3 and HeroesIII and they work great. I play them more than any of my other games because I don't have to reboot and they never crash. (I'll be getting RailRoad Tycoon from my girlfried hopefully) Remember you have to vote with your wallet it is the only thing that a business like Blizzard takes seriously.

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