Is LGP Going the Way of Loki Software? 124
An anonymous reader writes "After the demise of Loki Software, Linux Game Publishing sprouted up in its place, and for the past nine years has ported a number of games to Linux. But LGP may now be sharing the same fate as Loki. Linux Game Publishing hasn't updated its blog or news pages in months, has stopped responding to e-mails, and its only active ports are games they began work on in 2002/2003."
Old news (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.gamingonlinux.info/news.php?view=26 [gamingonlinux.info]
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:4, Informative)
"As long as WINE has to reverse engineer Windoze there's going to be a demand for porting various games to Linux to run them natively."
On the other hand, I just installed a Windows game from 1998 on my Linux laptop and it ran fine -- heck, it even let me select the correct widescreen video mode -- whereas I doubt you'll find many Linux binaries from that era that will still run on an up to date distro.
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, the Battle.net lobby doesn't render correctly in Starcraft, but it's still completely usable. More importantly, the actual game renders and plays flawlessly, and I've never used anything but a vanilla install of Wine to play it in the past 5+ years.
Certainly, Wine isn't perfect, but Starcraft is hardly a good example of that.
LGP Still Lives! (Score:5, Informative)
News post update from the site: (Score:5, Informative)
Is grateful to Slashdot for finally noticing that LGP exists, after militantly ignoring any game release we have made for the last 5 years, as soon as reports of our death come through, we get a front page story. Slashdot - Your support of Linux is inspirational. For others who wonder, we are very much alive. We have had a couple of staffing issues, but work is progressing on more than one unannounced title. We will offer furether updates as and when there is news to update you with."
Seems like ya'll have hit a nerve! For me, I've bought 2 LGP games in the past, and enjoyed them, though they were certainly not AAA titles. I do wish they were more forthcoming with information though.
Re:Phoronix (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Conspiracy theories from an AC aside (Score:2, Informative)
http://web.archive.org/web/20020418225227/http://www.linuxandmain.com/features/lokistory.html [archive.org]
I think the GP is doing a bit of hyperbole but it did come out of the bankruptcy proceedings that there was financial mismanagement and a few times they pulled from the company's budget for personal purchases.
Also in January, Draeker was subject to a second deposition, this time in a Federal 20-04 examination as part of the bankruptcy proceeding. In it, he testified that Loki did not retain such basic business records as bank statements or even keep careful track of the checks written by the company. After having testified in July that Kayt was and always had been chief financial officer, he now testified that she was not and never had been, and that he, Scott, always had been. And yet, Draker said, "there were several occasions where my wife mistakenly transferred money to our account prior to issuing money orders as opposed to issuing them from Loki's account." Asked if Loki had recorded these erroneous transactions, Draker replied, "We didn't have anyone keeping records at that time. It was -- it was in the bank statements, the record of that." Those bank statements had not been kept by the company. Additionally, the company was apparently unable to produce any financial records for the period from September 1999 to May 2001. The deposition took on a surreal air at times, with Draeker refusing to say whether or not he is a lawyer and in one spectacular moment testifying that as president of Loki he could say how much had been paid to Scott Draeker and when, but as Scott Draeker he could not say whether he actually received the money. Yet when asked if, shortly before the bankruptcy filing, Loki had paid him $13,000, he replied, "Uh, as I said before, there are several occasions on which Loki did pay me. And I don't recall specific dates or amounts."
Short answer (Score:3, Informative)
No. [linuxgamepublishing.com]
Longer answer:
LGP News
Wed, June 23 2010
Is grateful to Slashdot for finally noticing that LGP exists, after militantly ignoring any game release we have made for the last 5 years, as soon as reports of our death come through, we get a front page story. Slashdot - Your support of Linux is inspirational.
For others who wonder, we are very much alive. We have had a couple of staffing issues on the admin side of things, which explains most of our silence, but work is progressing on more than one unannounced title. We will offer further updates as and when there is news to update you with.
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:2, Informative)
I downloaded MOO 1 and 2 through GOG. I ran the installer via WINE, then copied the files and ran them with linux dosbox. GOG supports MOO 1 and 2 in windows via dosbox, so I only needed WINE to extract the archive, and then run as I see fit in Linux.
Any DOS game that GOG supports would probably run the same way. I'd check the DOSBOX compatibility table first: http://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?letter=a [dosbox.com] and if you want to check WINE compatibility with your GOG windows only game, you can check it here: http://appdb.winehq.org/ [winehq.org]
Re:Is this really surprising? (Score:3, Informative)
As a side note, the installers are slow to start over SMB shares on Windows too. I think it's probably to do with the installer's self-verification functionality.