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Games Entertainment

Three Axis Promises Nanosaur For Linux 90

Posted by timothy from the step-away-from-the-iMac-sir dept.
lvillalt writes: "Three Axis Interactive is porting Nanosaur (a 3D Mac game) to Linux, using the Quesa 3D graphics library." Nanosaur seems like one of the best reasons to buy a Macintosh -- smooth action, good controls, nice textures, and action suitable even for small kids. But if you can put Nanosaur and a close-enough-to-Aqua theme on a Linux box, the premium for The Real Thing suddenly looks a little steeper. However, no release date yet.
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Three Axis Promises Nanosaur For Linux More

Three Axis Promises Nanosaur For Linux

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  • | Soon programming corporations like Pangea
    | Software will need to make 3 different versions
    | of the same game to satisfy all their customers.

    It shouldn't have to be that way. That's what standards are for (e.g. ISO/ANSI C, which does a fair job of making text based programs portable). Hopefully the need will advance the adoption/development of the relevant standards, and the computer industry will be all the better for it.

    --
    James Gasson

  • My only question about that and the Quesa 3D library is if it's so fast how come they are only using 3/4 of the screen to actually display the game?
    Nanosaur was originally written for iMacs with 4Mb of VRAM, hence had to run in 640x480 to have enough space left over for textures (along with the back-buffer and z-buffer needed for rendering). Now that VRAM isn't so scarce, there's no reason why you couldn't increase the size of the rendering window.
    As to the speed of Quesa (or QD3D): it's a high level toolkit, which sits on top of lower-level APIs like OpenGL. The OpenGL layer is where you spend 80%+ of your time on any given frame, so the overhead of using Quesa is pretty small.

    -dair (project lead for Quesa)

  • If everyone did set their level to 2 how do you suppose that new messages would ever get moderated to a higher level? You will not see level 0 and 1 messages so nobody will moderate them up.

    When you get moderator points, the system advises you to set your browse level down to -1, to catch abuses.

    I normally browse at 2, with high scores first, but when I have moderator points, I browse at -1, with new messages first.


  • I'm totally addicted to this game on the Mac test machine at work. My best score so far is around 514,000. Yes, I've solved it many times, and have resorted to playing 'Nanosaur Extreme', the version with 5 times dinos roaming around (and 5x the weapon powerups).

    The above poster is correct - they DO need to add more to the game, or release the game level editor at the same time - I'd love to be able to make my own levels for the game.

    I was rather hoping they could improve the graphics, though - I don't know what the above person is smoking - the engine on it blows, but the game itself is very fun and addictive, so much so that the bad engine & graphics don't much matter.
  • From Webster's

    sac (noun):
    "a pouch within an animal or plant often containing a fluid
    (generally or often considered vulgar)"

    As an Anonymous Coward, I didn't expect you to know this.
    Grow some balls, then try another rebuttal.

  • Wow, I'm really gonna take an insult from an anonymous coward.

    Lick on my nutsac.

  • Well, you're right, I didnt put too much time into it. I can see how, technical merit aside, a simple premise can be fun or addictive (ex: the whole windows/solitaire thing.)

    I was less then underwhelmed with nanosaur, but I wish it luck.

  • I worked at CompUSA a while ago, and in spare time we'd play around with various pre-installed games. Believe me when I say Nanosaur is NOT cool. The graphics are primative even by Quake I standards, the controls are tricky, and the game is little more then shooting missles at the same 2 dinosaur types over and over....

    Now, I'm happy that another company is interested in Linux gaming, and if a demo is made available I'll probably try it out,

    but don't get your hopes too far up.

  • It's very unlikely to be open source, given the restriction Pangea [pangeasoft.net] place on the already available source [pangeasoft.net]:

    "YOU CANNOT...

    [...]

    4. ...port any of this code in any quantity, shape or form to Windows/PC. Nanosaur and the code are happily Mac-only and we want to keep it that way."

    With an attitude like that, I sure as hell won't be checking the game out.

  • Bahahaha..good one!

    Bowie J. Poag
    Project Founder, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org [themes.org])
  • Sure you don't want to be in the next story about heavy rockets? This one is for Mac-bashing, I mean discussion of Naunosar's linux port......

  • Go buy one. Putting up a flashy desktop theme and a few games isnt going to give you the same experience as a real Mac will. Cheaper yes, but hardly the real thing. Fvwm95 gives you a start menu and task bar, but no one will tell you that by using it you will get the same results as running win95. Themes only go so far. I think that overselling the free unicies abilities to mimic other interfaces wont help them much.

    Of course, whether Linux is better than the real thing or not is another question which should be left to the individual.

    ~~~~~~~~~
    auntfloyd
  • If everyone did set their level to 2 how do you suppose that new messages would ever get moderated to a higher level? You will not see level 0 and 1 messages so nobody will moderate them up.

    Greetings,
  • I own a Mac and my new one came with nanosaur on the restore disk, though not the system CD. Anyway, I installed it, played it, and trashed it before I ever got past three eggs (a refrence to the game, if you've played it). Anyway, the game has poor masking, polygons with many large, flat surfaces, and strange controls. The map is confusing, too, since the whole game is a 20 minute romp around this one giant map to collect some eggs. That's it! One level! After just a few minutes of play, I could see why the folks at Pangea were giving it away. I usually like their games, but this one is rediculious!
  • Yes, it is a sad thing that apple pulled all their old QD3D stuff from the website. At one point they had a new version of Gerbils that had (sit down, hold on) tunnels, water, about about 8 new track pieces! I misplaced my copy of it however, so sad.

    I do have my "page of ancient QD3D stuff" which has some of the demo apps from the "QuickDraw 3D - The Glitz, The Glamor, The 1.0 Demos" CD, along with partial gerbals source which was in a development kit a while back. This page can be found at inio's page of ancient QuickDraw 3D stuff [inio.org].

  • I'm not sure that 'replaced' is the right term. Nanosaur is still included, it just isn't installed initially. (Probably not to different for first time computer buyers)

    I definitely agree that Bugdom is more entertaining. It would be nice to see that ported to Linux. More commercial childrens games can never hurt.

  • But if you can put Nanosaur and a close-enough-to-Aqua theme on a Linux box, the premium for The Real Thing suddenly looks a little steeper.

    "Close-enough-to-Aqua"? Aqua is a lot more than those pretty gumdrop buttons and translucent windows...it's a vector-based UI system based on PDF technology that no Elightenment theme can simply emulate. Yeah, your knockoff themes might *look* similar to Aqua on the surface, but the powerful capabilities that make Aqua so amazing aren't skin deep...and of course, an Aqua window theme doesn't give you the Cocoa support OS X has. That's right people, there's a lot more to OS X than the gumdrop buttons.

  • Surprising as it may be, not all of us PREFER OS X, and if we can emulate those features we want, Linux is an acceptable replacement.

    Yes, "close enough" is relative...but this guy is talking about a game that's 3+ years old, and using cheesy gumdrop-button themes, acting like this is somehow a viable alternative to "the real thing". It's not even close...call linux "stable, powerful, and robust" all you want, but old games and gumdrop themes don't make it anything like the Mac OS, or Windows2000, or whatever...

    As for emulating features you want...sure, you can do that, but sometimes you'll be 2 years behind the real thing. If you don't mind using knockoff products that arrive late, that's fine, but not everyone wants to wait around for certain technologies to filter down to the "community" level. And btw, there's a mac proggy that does that rotating-cube-with-a-movie-playing-on-the-sides as well...it's nothing insanely impressive

  • This recycled bit of NeXT technology is not the great leap you make it out to be and will likely go unnoticed by most users not interested in maximizing the number of buzzwords that they can use in a dickwaving contest.

    Wrong, pal. Quartz (the engine behind Aqua) isn't recycled NeXT technology...it's completely new and different. Yes, much of the foundation of MacOS X is recycled (and updated) OpenStep stuff, but the UI skeleton is not. There are things you can do with Quartz that no other UI currently available supports. Yes, a lot of this new functionality is aimed at graphics houses and the publishing industry, but it goes far beyond throbbing default buttons and translucent windows. Read up on Quartz a little before you make such idiotic statements...

  • i've played nanosaur, and i'll admit it can be entertaining, but, in the grand scheme of things, is it really that worthwhile/fun a game? Then again, numerous games have that effect on people; it depends upon the person.

    Therefore, my official idea is, "yeah, this is a good thing."

    More software for linux always seems like a good idea to me (unless you want to get technical and talk about viruses, etc........)
  • It's not a question of just the newest revolutionary buzzword OS of the minute. It's a question of being willing to make trade-offs for the cost effectiveness and freedom that comes with Linux. When I made the switch from Windows to Linux it was a very carefully weighed out decision. I gave up a lot in that first FTP install of Debian... It was terribly configured, had loads of bugs, looked ugly as sin, and had half the functionality. And, as much as the /. crowd hates to admit it, I gave up a lot of other nice features when going from Windows to Linux. The biggest, MS word is pretty much a universal standard in the world, and until recently I couldn't even think about opening a Word doc, let alone viewing it properly. BUT, I got an open, free (speech and beer) OS that I could muck around with to my heart's content, and it did everything I needed it to do. So, I guess you could say my first FVWM interface was, for me, a "close-enough-to-Windows" interface.


    Remember, "close enough" is relative. My vt320 terminal is "close enough" to sitting at a console for basic programming... I wouldnt want to write a few thousand lines of code on it though.


    Now for my next question... since you are so quick to attack someone for not knowing all you do, oh mighty Mac God... do you honestly KNOW what a "vector based UI system based on PDF technology" is? Or did you cut and paste that directly from MacOSRumors? I mean, honestly, WHO CARES? So it's got different guts behind it. Does that change what I see on the end? My buttons don't animate themselves... DAMN IT TO HELL!!! You are absolutely right, OS X does have better technology, and yes, there is some revolutionary stuff in there. For years Mac hardware has been superior to PC hardware, yet the linux crowd has migrated mostly towards PC... do you wanna know why? Because of COST. I built myself a dual pIII box for way less than a G3 would have cost me at the time, and it was faster than anything Apple had on the market. At to that a free and open OS, and my needs were met pretty well. You are absolutely right, there is a lot more to OS X than buttons, but to me, there is not ENOUGH more to justify the extra cost. It is a matter of what is important to you. I once saw BeOS on ancient hardware rotating a cube with mpegs mapped onto all the faces... it was absolutely amazing. BUT, how in the hell does a rotating cube help me get work done? It's beautiful eye candy, and a great toy, but until I have money to spend on that particular toy, I will wait. To me, having the latest Apple buzzword crammed down my throat is not my primary concern. If you like apple, more power to you, run your G4 and be happy, but don't attack others for wanting a more cost effective and community minded solution. We all have our priorities, don't try to push yours on others.


    In this case, the priority is a specific piece of software. I knew a guy who didnt switch to Linux till he saw Gnumeric, because Excel was the primary program he used on windows. In this case, the availability of a popular game makes the need for this specific platform less an issue. The only reason I have windows sitting around on my laptop is for Starcraft. If tomorrow a starcraft port were announced, my Red Hat cd would be in the drive faster than you can say "Stable, Powerful, and Robust." Surprising as it may be, not all of us PREFER OS X, and if we can emulate those features we want, Linux is an acceptable replacement.


    Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you

  • On a G3, maybe not, but on a 486... that's pretty goddamned impressive.


    Tell a man that there are 400 Billion stars and he'll believe you
  • ahh crap.. that's what I get for posting at 2 in the morning... :)
  • The web site states:

    The BA-2 has a restarting third stage, which enables multiplt satellite deployments, Hohmann transfer orbit injections, and GTO targeted Earth-escape missions. (their spelling)

    So I guess they lauch several sattelites at once, drop one off, move to a different orbit, drop a few more off, etc.

    I wonder if you put an androgynous docking unit on one of these if it would be good for lifting space stations into higher orbit? Or if you docked two of them together, nose to nose, and went twice as far... (for that telescope on the L3 (?) Lagrange point on the far side of the moon (yea I know it's not stable...)
  • Nanosaur is a cheesy 3D game that comes in dozen packs for free. That's about as close to being the primary reason for buying a mac as Notepad being the primary reason to buy a Windows PC.

    For the love of pete guys, post some real news...
  • : Apache?

    I don't know about the microdrones, but Mac OS X Server comes with Apache, and some nice GUI configuration tools. Tho you can still configure it the old fashioned way too.

    : Perl?

    I've got Perl on my Linux box and MacPerl on the Mac. MacPerl adds some MacOS specific functionality BC of the lack of a accessable CLI, but by the large, they're the same. Regular Perl will run on OS X client/server as well.

    I don't KNOW what the collective has in the way of scripting languages, but I THINK that they have a port of Perl too.

    : Extremely customizable desktops?

    Have you read the latesr Ars Technica article about DP3 of OS X? It was featured on /. last week. Mac will have this when OS X is out this summer.

    Tho, yeah, the minions of bill are getting left in the dust here.

    Overall, I think that a GOOD product/feature WILL crossover eventually. And usually, only the crap gets left on a single platform (unless the developer collects his 30 peices of silver from gates to keep it propietary).

    After all, no one *I* know in either the Linux OR Mac community has shed a single tear that Battlecruiser 3000AD never got ported from windoze.

    And do we really want AOL assimilating Linux?

    MS Word macro viruses spreading on our boxen?

    Get the good stuff, who gives a fsck about the crap.

    john
  • http://www.briangreenstone.com/files/tools/nanosau r_source.sit

    IK system in the code is good starting point for ideas, so is the Texture Handling.
  • I'm just sick of never having anything of our own that is so great that Win/Mac users can't wait for a port so they can get in on the action.

    What about Apache? Perl? Extremely customizable desktops? I'm sure there are many others but I can't think of any right now. Maybe even include Slashdot in that list. I don't know of any other similar phenomenons for the win/mac communities.
    Anyhow, I think that we have many things of our own that win/mac users would love to have.
  • Nanosaur is just a goofy demo game really. Not a reason to buy a computer.
  • May i ask what the fuck crawled up your ass and died? Jeeeze man, calm the fuck down. He maybe a newby but you were one too, or were you born a beligerant asshole?

    -----
  • Wow. I was expecting to just get flamed for that post. My main reason for making that post was the senseless mac bashing, and the fact that many things that are newsworthy don't get on slashdot anymore; they are however replaced by a *demo* game being ported to linux. Many times my room mate and I have posted news stories relating to new medicines or research that is going on only to have the story rejected. Guess this one just rubbed me a little wrong but /. used to be my one stop news source for everything technical or nerdy that I wouldn't find on cnn [cnn.com] or some other news source. Now most of the news posted is fodder like this. I get the feeling the guys behind /. don't care anymore, and why should they, they get paid either way.

    -----
  • Can some one please explain to me why Nanosaur, a demo game, being ported to linux, can be news. Hmm.. and yes its the only reason to buy a mac? I guess the fact that it is still one of the premier desktop publishing and graphics arts workstation. Guess Nanosaur is realy that selling point.

    -----
  • I'd second this one! I loved the original gerbils demo, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever when it first appeared. True 3D! Wow... the awe... Although I haven't played Nanosaur for more than a couple of moments on demo machines, I spent hours watching that stupid little gerbils demo :) A gerbil roller coaster! How cool is that? Now if someone got a hold of it and used Tux models instead of gerbils it'd be a fantastic demo for to show off some of Linux's fun side :)
  • Yeah, Nanosaur is a nice little game, but I agree. Half-Life is the kind of game you would blow $3000 on a computer system to play. Nanosaur is a nice little shooter for kids, but lacks any real depth to it.
  • 1) Any roguelike. Angband seems to be my favorite
    Amen, comrade. I firmly believe in NetHack's superiority, though. I love the game, and at the same time hate it because I can spend two hours playing and not notice the passage of time! It's so bloody addictive!
    Behold, from the nethack site [nethack.org]:
    quote {
    "Thank you for the latest release of gradewrecker. My GPA just went in the corner and shot itself."
    -- USENET posting, author unknown
     }
    -Ravagin
    "Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"

  • > I'm grateful for what we've been given so far, but it's time to innovate.

    Actually, I think Linux (and *BSD) have quite a number of innovative programs. Just look at Freshmeat [freshmeat.net] or SourceForge [sourceforge.net]; there's tons of stuff there.

    I believe part of the problem is that there are so many half-finished innovations and programs. Not to say half-finished projects are bad, I'm just saying that since they are not 'complete', people may ignore them as opposed to a program advertised as 'release quality'. That, and the sheer number of projects, keeps them from being recognized anywhere else than a small circle of developers and users.

    Also, many programs are developed to scratch an itch on a *nix-like system, and are not really applicable to DOS/Windows/MacOS. Case in point: this morning I got an e-mail from a guy wondering if psdoom [capital.edu] would be ported to DOS. I told him that DOS had no concept of processes, so it couldn't be done. But this does show that (at least in this one case) there is interest in porting OSS programs and innovations to traditionally closed-source platforms.

  • I've played Nanosaur. Quite a bit, actually. It came bundled on the Macintosh G3 I bought to run the One True OS [linuxppc.org] on. It's beautiful -- or it was at the time, over a year ago. Expectations in computer graphics, of course, follow Moore's Law as well. But it runs very smoothly even on lower-end 3d hardware.

    But the game gets old fast. There's really not much to do besides run around enjoying the scenery, and killing the odd dinosaur with rocket launchers. Hopefully they'll add some more plot and strategy to the game -- because it really is a great underlying engine. Or maybe if it's open source, it could become the base for something Very Cool.

    Oh, by the way! When it's available, try climbing up onto the tall dormant volcano near the beginning and jumping off. If you time it right and get to the maximum possible height, well, you'll get a neat reward. Hee hee. Maybe I'll boot into the MacOS tomorrow and play this thing once more.

    John
  • I am relatively new to slashdot, and I like Linux as much as your next geek but; the answer to this is simple. The people were drawn to computers because of games. Even Bill Gates stared out that way. These people want to find that same desire in their new vice Linux. That way they can regain their childhood ideals. That is why they get so geeked out when any game news what so ever is posted.

    I am still a child (legally at least) so I don't need that any more. But there are many for whom it does matter. That is why it is news here.

    Best regards,

    Nate Custer
  • Whats with the attitude shown here? Is there no respect for freedom of choice anymore? I just happen to be an AOL and MAC user, and last time I checked, I wasn't the gay one here.

    I have an 8500/200. Most of the parts were taken from ebay, though I did end up buying a refurbished motherboard. I ran into a few problems upgrading to macOS 8.5 because most everything I have is non-apple and so require third-party extentions. I am now running linuxppc and macos 8.6 and have no problems. :)

    As for nanosaur, I've played it a little, and think it a cute and amusing game. It certainly wouldn't be the first game I would port, but as an experimental game for the quesa [quesa.org] library, i think its an awesome choice...

    and if nothing else, its free... for both platforms... if you dont like it, deal with it... then get on with your life.

    .sigs are dumb!

  • Nanosaur is a cheesy 3D game that comes in dozen packs for free. That's about as close to being the primary reason for buying a mac as Notepad being the primary reason to buy a Windows PC.

    nanosaur is a FREE cheesy 3d game that demonstrates apples QD3D library.

    nanosaur is about to become a FREE cheesy 3d game that also demonstrates the quesa library.

    nanosaur was never a reason to buy an apple computer, but is a nice qd3d demo, and will shortly be a nice quesa demo. perhaps this isnt "real news" but what is? and i do think it calls some attn to the quesa library. which is what all this is really about, isnt it?

    .sigs are dumb!

  • According to the info. page at three axis interactive this game is using "cutting edge 3D technology." My only question about that and the Quesa 3D library is if it's so fast how come they are only using 3/4 of the screen to actually display the game? And don't even try to agrue that you need size 26 font to display how many egg's you've collected or what "attack mode" your in. :)

  • ahem, the game is better than that. just expore a bit and u find some more dinos, taken on the pterydactyls yet? the controls are ace, you can really "throw" your little rocket firing dino around. i don't think the game is that good but its quite decent. this doesn't seem a very newsworthy article however, just troll bait.

  • Although the gap is closing between macintosh computers and Windows computers with advancements like virtual PC and the like, the never-ending holy war of computers seem like it will never end. Microsoft comes out with something new, Mac imitates it, Mac comes out with something new, Microsoft imitates that. But now *nix platforms are getting their share of the scene, and that means a third party on the battle field. Soon programming corporations like Pangea Software will need to make 3 different versions of the same game to satisfy all their customers.

  • Just wandering what you thought about Nanosaur? It seemed to be a really crappy game to me, one that takes some lines of OpenGL and a lot of drawing for the textures + some pain at creating the 3D objects. But anyway, the game far from being a marvel of technology, did anybody find it interesting? I think it sucks compared to "Moon Patrol" on the old Apple IIs :)

  • That does it, buster. No more opium-soaked joints for YOU until after November.
  • pangeasoft has their priorities WAY, WAY out of line. what they REALLY ought to be porting is "gerbils [pangeasoft.net]".. NOT nanosaur. :)

    of course let's keep in mind this is why Quickdraw 3d was originally created; so that people could _do_ things like porting a 3d app crossplatform ("crossplatform" at the time meaning "windows and mac os", of course) without massive rewrites (although i never saw anyone do this except for the makers of the game "Havoc"). Of course, then OpenGL came along and made QD3D irrelivant, but we didn't _know_ that was going to happen when QD3D first came out.. at the time, sitting there staring for hours at pangeasoft's gerbils demo, and to a lesser extent their (still very cool) 3DTicTacToe and Wormhole 3D demos.. oh man. it just seemed like the coolest thing in the world. Esp. right after we were recovering from Quicktime VR.. we may never find a use for quicktime VR, but damn, it was nifty. :)

    Oh well. Maybe someone could get hold of the gerbils source or something-- i dunno. i can't even find a place to download the binaries anymore, nor can i find a 3dtictactoe or wormhole 3d, or for that matter any of those small yet at the time mind-blowingly cool (3DCalc!!!) original Quickdraw 3D apps.. they used to all be linked from apple's website but now that's all gone. What happened to all this stuff?

  • The king of all simple, addictive games:

    TETRIS!!!

    Heck, a friend of mine back in school even programmed a version of it for the old TI-81 caculator after seeing the version I had on my HP-48. I still can't believe he made a fully functional (if simple-looking,) version of Tetris in just 2400 bytes of memory, in a programming language that makes BASIC look as powerful as C++.

  • It's apparent that Nanosaur was an experiment in 3D game programming that focused on the tech, not the game (and, relevantly, the tech was mostly QuickDraw 3D based). It's very impressive that one person did this in his spare time, but it isn't something you'll want to ever spend more than an hour or two with. Remember, this game was given away free for the Macintosh, because the author knew it wasn't enough for a commercial product. A port to Linux would be an interesting comparison of the state of Linux 3D vs. Macintosh 3D.
  • Pangea's new title Bugdom [pangeasoft.net] (which has replaced their earlier Nanosaur in the software bundled with iMacs) is actually a much more entertaining (not to mention cute) game, as well as being a decent demo of the graphics hardware.

    Both games seem intended for fairly young children; neither kept my attention for very long. However, it is interesting to at least one game company doing something other than car racing, one-on-one fighting or shoot-em-ups with modern 3D hardware.

  • > I'm just sick of never having anything of our own that is
    > so great that Win/Mac users can't wait for a port so they can get in on the action.

    Well, the reason that's not likely is because all our best innovations come from Open Source. And when you're open source, there's no waiting for a port. Furthermore, look at the two biggest APIs in use for Linux gaming right now, SDL and OpenGL. Both of these libraries make ports to other platforms TRIVIAL, a matter of a few hours worth of bug chasing and recompiling. Yay-rah, I say, I'm personally liking the games that are 'simultaneously developed' for different platforms, like Parsec for instance. (BTW, if you haven't checked out that demo yet, it's well worth the download time.)
  • Nanosaur seems like one of the best reasons to buy a Macintosh -- smooth action, good controls, nice textures, and action suitable even for small kids. But if you can put Nanosaur and a close-enough-to-Aqua theme on a Linux box, the premium for The Real Thing suddenly looks a little steeper.

    Dude, I totally just slapped a Porsche sticker on my 98 Eclipse and now noone can tell the difference. Thanks for the advice.
  • This is a bit off topic, but oh well...

    Set your browse level to 2. That's where mine is and you filter out about 98% of the /. crap. Of course, you won't be able to see your own posts, but that's a small price to pay.

    Of course, all that childishness would probably discourage visiting emissaries. Perhaps the default browse level should be 2 unless you explicitly change it. If you don't want to have a cookie, we don't really care what you think anyway, right?

  • I've never played this games, but something I've found about games in general is good graphics or complex gameplay don't necessarily make a great game. The most addictive games can be amazingly simple. Fire up mame and you'll see what I mean. Those older games have incredibly weak graphics but they're still a blast to play a decade later. Do you think we'll be able to say the same thing about the latest fighting, FPS, or racing game that comes off the shelfs today?

    5 of the most addictive games I've ever encounterd in no particular order:

    1) Any roguelike. Angband seems to be my favorite.

    2) Ogre. There was an implementation of this for SCO about a decade ago.

    3) Mille Bourne. This was another one I was introduced to on SCO. You can get it for Linux or the Palm Pilot, too.

    4) Ski. This was an incredibly silly character mode game for DG/UX a while back. It was so simple you could play it on a paper teletype.

    5) Robots. This is an old classic and has been implemented on nearly as many platforms as Emacs has. Hmm. I should write an implementation in E-Lisp...

    Lets not forget Solitaire, either. For a while my favorite quote was: "Windows: The best game of solitaire $90 can buy!"

    So for all you people who ask why it's important that a cheesy mac demo game gets ported, maybe there's an answer in there somewhere. Maybe not, too.

  • Good for Quesa (Score:3)

    by Straker Skunk ( 16970 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @10:10PM (#1223892)
    One thing mentioned on the Quesa maillist is that this may allow for more resources to bear in the completion of the library. Progress on Quesa hasn't been too bad (although you wouldn't guess it from the rather infrequent releases-- there are just a small cadre of developers working on it), but a few hard snags still remain before the current goal of QD3D 1.6 compatibility (e.g. NURBS equations, according to Joe Strout)

    By the way, for anyone not familiar with Quesa [quesa.org], check it out. It's an incredibly well-designed 3D scene graph API, roughly the equivalent of Inventor. (Or is it Performer? I keep getting those two mixed up). Apple dropped support for it in OS X (they went OpenGL-only), so right now the API is in that same eerie twilight zone as the old OPENSTEP API, where you have this very clean, well-architectured standard basically abandoned by its parent company. (The cool thing being, of course, that future development of such a standard falls into the hands of "the community," a la GNUStep)

    I've heard wonders of the elegance of this API. Definitely superior to Inventor. (or Performer). And the nice thing about Quesa is that the implementation is sweet-- the structure, even the commenting is beautifully done. Quesa is going to be one hell of a graphics library when it is finished. I'm hoping it will become the cross-platform standard 3D scene graph layer, much as OpenGL already has for low-level 3D. I'd be hard-pressed to name anything better.

  • come now people (Score:3)

    by abryden ( 98211 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @10:11PM (#1223893)
    I am very dissapointed to see the lack of support that most have shown so far in the discussion of this forum. Most of the posts have either been useless trolls or simply stupid. Do you think what you are doing is at all helpful. Did you even follow the links. Looking at this it is probably not the type of game that I would play now as I am more into the first person shooter genre. It is however something that I would have loved when I was younger and anything that broadens the scope of linux is a good thing so rather than criticizing stop and think what you are doing. So far their have been very few worthwhile posts. Slashdot is going downhill and only the people that are causing the problems can fix this.

    When you are hitting the submit button pause and think for a second. Is what you are doing in any way helpful. Is it even going to help you or are you behaving the way you are simply to be cute or because you want attention?

    On another note people that actually read the article would have noticed that this is a good thing not only because linux will get more software but because the developers are embracing a concept called "charity ware" in which people who like the software give money to a charity instead of paying the developers.

    Aaron
    Aaron Bryden

  • i hate to sound bitter, but... (Score:3)

    by Nastard ( 124180 ) on Sunday March 05, 2000 @10:20PM (#1223894)
    This is just another example of the endless stream of hand-me-downs the Linux community has been given. It's great that companies are giving us anything, and I certainly don't blame them. I'm just sick of never having anything of our own that is so great that Win/Mac users can't wait for a port so they can get in on the action.

    Isn't it about time we did something monumental instead of just porting and cloning apps from other OSes?

    I'm grateful for what we've been given so far, but it's time to innovate.

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