UT2003 Gone Gold, Ships with Linux Support

SiW writes "This announcement should be music to a Linux gamer's ears: Unreal Tournament 2003 has just gone gold, and supports Linux (client and server) out of the box!" It's not often that I get to play a new game without rebooting. I'm really looking forward to this.

let's hope...

[sheean.nl]

let's hope that this will hapen more often, one of the most frequently heard arguments for not running Linux is: "but, I can't play my games on it"...

Unreal...

[Traser]

Kudos for the unreal team - it's about time more software was released first run with linux/bsd support.

great for linux gaming

[jonsen]

I think that this is great for linux gaming. I'm sure that other gaming companies is going to follow, and maybe this is going to be a common trend in gaming. If it is, I think linux's popularity is going to rise even more. Maybe we can finally microwave our win cd's now...

Re:Unreal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Now lets all do our part and buy it.

No gaming on Linux here

[ekephart]

I don't know how most people set up their computers but I have one Windows (1.4ghz) machine and 3 Linux machines (600mhz, 350mhz, 166mhz). The Windows machine is the fastest of the 4 basically because most games are played in Windows and they need the speed.

The limited number of people that just have a bunch of uber ninja boxen spells slow growth for the Linux gaming world.

You can argue that people dedicated to Linux gaming are already using it. Well, yes, but where does it go from there? To attract new customers you have to provide something they desire at a reasonable cost. For me giving up Civ3, EQ or Warcraft3 isn't worth making the switch (yet).

Re:support

[Cyno01]

yeah, i havn't seen a switch ad with some LAN d00d saying "I switched to mac because of the hundreds of thousands of neeto games out there for it"

Register IT!

[wowbagger]

Remember, if you buy UT2003, and you are going to run it under Linux:

SEND IN THOSE REGISTRATION CARDS!

Make sure that when the vendor tallies the results that Linux is well-represented.

Allow me to compare and contrast UT2003 with QuakeIII in this regard:

• 
  QIII: Windows shipped first. Linux shipped later. Justification: "We need to be able to track the Linux shipments."
  Result: hard-core games bought Windows version, waited to download Linux version.
  
• 
  UT2003: Both versions are in the box.
  Result: Hard-core gamers can get whatever version they choose to run now.
  

Re:Linux support???

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why no gaming company wants to support linux

Re:Linux support???

[jvmatthe]

Comparing UT2003 to RtCW is really poor. UT2003 really is pushing the system much harder than RtCW, simply in terms of the textures, polygons, and physics. To get the performance they needed for the textures they're using, Epic needed to use some texture compression and they chose the standard that's available by every major Windows drivers, S3TC/DXTC. This is available in NVIDIA's drivers, XiG's drivers, and PowerVR's drivers (although there are other issues with the PowerVR drivers). All of these already have a license for S3TC/DXTC in their Windows drivers and therefore can implement that in their closed Linux drivers.

The DRI drivers, on the other hand, are by their nature open and getting a license is a much trickier proposition. Steps have been taken to work with the patent holders to get a license for an open implementation in DRI, and some of those steps are being taken by Daniel Vogel of Epic (see DRI mailing list in past two days for an email from Brian Paul about this). So even though the DRI drivers are currently crippled and unable to use the required technology, Epic hasn't given up and has been working to help the DRI team get what they need to support UT2003.

Yes, only closed drivers currently work. The open solution is trying to move forward in a legal manner. Yet S3TC/DXTC is required because there isn't another solution. Epic is trying to help.

Getting bent out of shape and spewing ill-informed vitriol as if they were all conspiring to screw you isn't going to help the situation.

Linux going mainstream

[InodoroPereyra]

There is a quiet and steady trend for GNU/Linux to go mainstream. It is not happening at the exponentical rate some of us thought it would. But every little step helps. This is an egg and chicken problem and we all know it. If more people used Linux there would be more apps available, and the other way around. Whenever we achieve "critical mass" we are in :-)

Things are happening. Governments considering/adopting open source solutions here and there. Mass media covering Linux/Open Source every now and then. The world's biggest computer chain selling computers with Linux preinstalled online for now. Not to mention the impressive inroads in the server market.

Now imagine all these win* gamers opening their UT boxes to find a "linux version" in there. They won't give a damn, but deep in their minds they will start to get to the idea that Linux is there, that it exists, that it is as "normal" as "win*".

One more step. Many Thanks to the UT team !

Re:I wonder who will actually use it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They probably collect OS information when you connect to the master server to join a game.

Re:Linux support???

[dinivin]

WTF? Epic spent a good deal of time getting this game up and running under Linux and all you can do is bitch!

You should be thankful that they've done what they have. It is not up to Epic to make the game playable on every Linux system. It is up the video card manufacturers to make sure their cards can support the latest games.

Dinivin

Re:Linux going mainstream

[King_TJ]

Of course you're not wrong in these beliefs... But just to play devil's advocate for a minute, the fact that UT2003 has a Linux version in the box doesn't seem *that* significant to me.

Honestly, about the only mainstream games that have had Linux support have been 1st. person shooters with Quake or UT type engines. (I guess "The Sims" was a notable exception to the rule.) If they didn't release a Linux client for UT2003, I'd say that would be more of a "big step backwards" than anything else. I mean, you'd have to ask if Linux support has really backslid so far that there's not even interest in porting the latest 1st. person shooter to it anymore?

I mean, let's see here: Kingpin, Descent, Quake 1,2 and 3, Soldier of Fortune, the last version of UT, Tribes .... if all those ran as Linux clients, why is it a huge leap to think the new UT wouldn't also do so?

No one is going to get this, methinks

[0x0d0a]

Yes, all of us with hardware capable of running this.

I can't figure out why people are so obsessed with *new* games. Do games suddenly suck because they're a year old? I like my Linux box because I *don't* have to constantly upgrade it to keep it nice and usable. I have an old PII and a Matrox G450 that work nicely in Linux, but would never be able to play this at a reasonable clip.

Let's work this out:

a) People that dual-boot. They can already play this in Windows. Little reason to use Linux to play UT2003.
b) People that don't dual-boot -- are they going to upgrade their graphics card and processor to play a single game? Plus, most of them already can live without games pretty well, or else they wouldn't be using Linux in the first place, so there's a significant cost to doing lots of hardware changes for one game.

Now, don't get me wrong. I bought Quake 3, Alpha Centauri, and Jagged Alliance II for Linux. But those *run* reasonably on computers not built for gaming. UT2003? Riiight...

Ah, well. I'm sure others won't agree. However, IIRC, SimCity 3k and Alpha Centauri were Loki's biggest sellers...

Now, I don't mean "retro" games like Asteroids. I mean, what about Close Combat? Command & Conquer? Fallout (okay, this *does* work in WINE, so less draw)? What's wrong with porting these? Does the port cost so blinking much to do that it's not worth it?

(Exile III did get ported, which was great, but the widget set used was absolutely unbearable. Try it and see what I mean.)

on the other hand ...

[timothy]

I think he's just saying that many / most of his games live on a Windows partition, and to reach them he must reboot the machine into Windows.

Tim

Re:But what about dependencies ?

[Espectr0]

Perhaps you need to buy a desktop pc instead of playing high quality games on a laptop? Stick to solitaire

Re:Unreal...

[modecx]

If you're not a gamer, then why even bother? Do you want to see more games ported to Linux, so that you will buy, but not play those, as well?

It's a great thing if you're some kind of Linux evangelist that has wads of money to throw around, but don't be wasteful. Want to help the cause? Donate the $60 to the EFF [eff.org] that would have bought your game that you would have never played anyway. Or, perhaps find a project that you like and use, and support them monetarily. I on the other hand, will buy this game, play it to death, tell my friends and cow-orkers how much better it runs on my minimal Linux PC, and rave about it (if the game itself warrants it.)

I swear, if everyone in the world put as much energy into stuff they didn't want, this place might be pretty screwed up. As if.

Re:Register IT!

[wowbagger]

... release a good game with Linux support, and I'll buy it.

And how will the marketroids know that you bought the game because it had Linux support? ESP?

Or are you asking them to sell the Linux version of the game seperately from the Windows version? As I pointed out in my previous post, that won't work. Even if the games are released at the same time, a store only has so much stock they can afford to have. Given the choice of stocking a Linux version that will sell 2 copies, or stocking 2 more copies of the Windows version that are guaranteed to move, what do you think the shopkeep will do?

And if the game has the Linux version in the same box as the Windows version, then the marketroids will have no idea you aren't another Windows user.

Thank you for being a strawman I could knock down. It really helps me make my point.

Re:Linux going mainstream

[krmt]

I mean, let's see here: Kingpin, Descent, Quake 1,2 and 3, Soldier of Fortune, the last version of UT, Tribes .... if all those ran as Linux clients, why is it a huge leap to think the new UT wouldn't also do so?

Because, like he said, UT2003 comes with it in the exact same box. None of these games did. The only example that you could even use the same files for was Q3, and even that didn't come in the same box. You had to know about it and go download it.

Having right there alongside it means that suddenly Linux is much more valid. It's not something you have to go out of your way to download and know about, it's right there for you. It's not in some separate section of the store either, right next to the keyboard extension cables, it's in the box at the front of the store underneath the giant poster. It's not a huge leap that UT2003 has a linux client, it is a huge leap that it's right there alongside the windows client out of the box. NWN was supposed to have this too, but backed out. It's a very important step.

Re:Linux support???

[StillAnonymous]

You obviously don't know anything about reverse engineering. The only people who would be interested in "stealing" their designs would be rival video chipset makers. You honestly think these people need nicely formatted source code in order to determine what's going on?

Just run the binaries through a nice disassembler like IDA, ponder over it for a few weeks and you'll learn all you need to know.

If you know your assembly, you ALWAYS have the source code!