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Games Entertainment

Heavy Gear II for Linux Goes Gold 85

Posted by Hemos from the getting-new-games dept.
jvmatthe writes, "I've gotten confirmation from Loki that their latest game, Heavy Gear II has gone gold and will be in retail stores soon. You can read our preview of it here at LinuxGames. "
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Heavy Gear II for Linux Goes Gold More

Heavy Gear II for Linux Goes Gold

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  • Strange considering... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The amount of grief people in the HG2 community went through trying to get Activision to even PATCH this game... HG2 gaming leagues crumbled due to the extremely inconsistent netplay which directly effected the outcome of matches requiring buildings to be destroyed, and most people were left with an empty feeling while playing online due to the same bugs. Sure this is another sign how companies are porting things to linux, but the original release was perhaps THE game that "most needed a patch." Did Activision deliver? Nope. It's strange how a company decides to port things when the original did not really work. Like mecha? Go grab the pen-and-paper Heavy Gear stuff... money better spent.
  • Yup, it's pretty cool.

    Now to get it ported.....

  • As if! The money-grubbing tight-asses at Sierra Interactive doesn't give a rat's ass about us, or the Mac market for that matter. All they want is numbers, which (Sadly) only the Windows world can supply right now... I saw Homeworld. I played the demo. I was blown away. But I'm not going to reboot every damn time I want to kill three hours drooling over eye candy.
  • Quake3 slow? What are you running it on? I'm running Quake3 on a P3/450 w/128mb RAM and a Voodoo2 video card and I get over 40fps. It's rock solid anywhere and it doesn't chew up every spare slice of RAM I've got.

    Hello? Is this thing on? The Voodoo[123] cards are the BEST supported 3D cards on Linux. They ARE supported both by Glide_V2 and _V3 and by Mesa, and by XFree86! Linux's hardware support is growing by leaps and bounds. nVidia, Diamond, Creative Labs, 3Dfx, Matrox, and others are releasing specs and drivers for their cards for Linux on a regular basis. Hell John Carmack is working on the Utah-GLX drivers! We couldn't ASK for anything more.

    p.s. Linux has had software raid for more than two years now... Better than NT's.
  • You're right, we do have a problem, but you're putting the blame in the wrong place. It's not Loki's fault that were isn't a StarCraft or Diablo for Linux. If you want to bitch, bitch at Blizzard [blizzard.com]. They're the stingy bastards who don't see enough of a Linux market to ALLOW Loki to port StarCraft, WarCraft, Diablow(2) to Linux. As for the makers of Bioware, they consider Balder's Gate a lost cause (As all game companies do once they've shipped a title and gotten their initial revenue). But in their defense, they're developing Neverwinter Nights for Win, Mac, and (wait for it) Linux all at the same time.
  • Tux Games [tuxgames.com] is selling Heavy Gear 2 for, as far as we have found, the lowest price. We charge $37 INCLUDING shipping anywhere in the world. This compares to $38 to buy from Loki if you are in the USA, or $46 elsewhere in the world.

    If you find a lower price, let us know!

  • > Of course, it's a little less cool that we're
    > getting games way way past their release.

    There are two large problems:

    1) Most Windows developers aren't interested in the overhead of co-development. I don't know if there's much we can do about this. As long as a Linux port is an afterthought to a developer, we can't possibly ship on time.
    2) These ports can be very hard. Heavy Gear II, for example, required alterations to:

    - gcc (local static objects in DLL register destructors with atexit, various other issues)
    - glibc (new version of atexit to handle fixes above)
    - Mesa (FX driver initiates atexit handlers even if manually dlopen())
    - Glide (never unmapped PCI address space until process exit)
    - gdb (didn't properly reload symbols after dlclose()/dlopen(), making debugging very difficult)

    Finding these problems in the toolchain and then solving them have been very challenging. Hopefully the changes we made can be leveraged in future titles that will get to market faster. Also, all of the above fixes were folded back into the master tree. I'd like to thank the various people involved in those fixes: Mark Mitchell of CodeSourcery, Joseph Kain of 3DFX, Brian Paul of Mesa, and our own Sam Lantinga for the gdb fixes, which were given to HJ Lu.

    Regards,

    m.
    Programmer, Loki Software
  • When I popped open the review window, I saw the old Battletech screenshot and was hoping this was a re-write of that classic game! It was one of the few good ones available for my DOA Laser128 back in the 80's.

    I'd really like to see more basic RPG for Linux, maybe a re-write of the old Wasteland engine with updated graphics and sound. Or a Fallout-style engine upon which we could build good story-based old-school RPG campaigns.

    --
  • Oh, man... mecha and Linux... does it get *any* cooler?

    On a somewhat related note, are there any figures anywhere for sales of Linux-based commercial software? I'm wondering how many of us actually bought WP8 and the like.
  • I don't know about MW 1 and 2, since I never played them, but 3 is clearly the best mecha game out right now on Windows. I admit the storyline in 3 was a little on the dull side, but the graphics, sound and gameplay were top-rate, especially multiplayer. I always love DM Mech3. It's a lot more tactical than a pure reflex game like UT or Q3, which I also enjoy, don't get me wrong :), but it rewards the team leader who can make quick, good decisions.

    BTW, does HG2 have a multiplayer mode? If it does, I think I'll preorder it...
  • >Why buy a Windows or a Linux box when your
    >PS2/Dolphin plays DVDs on the TV and allows you
    >to browse the web and send emails ?
    Because, believe it or not, email, the web, and games/movies are not the only reasons for owning a PC. I want a *real* computer, one that I can tear down and rebuild myself, one that I can completely reconfigure on a whim, one that can burn CDs, store a few thousand MP3s, and that I can do some coding on. I want the power to customize, not to be given a preset configuration by Sony or Sega or Nintendo.

    The whole reason that console systems, which are notoriously weak in power when compared with a moderately-priced PC, are even alive today is because they're cheap. If someone just wants to play games, and not get a $1300 computer, you can pick up an N64 for about $100. If the price of PCs falls, and the price of consoles goes up as it's doing now, I suspect that more people will think a year or two down the line that it's worth it to spend a few extra bucks and get that $700 PC instead of that $500 console.

    This is one reason that the Gameboy is still going strong. It's over a decade old, an eternity for a gadget in the modern world, but it's always been a cheap system with cheap games. As long as consoles remain cheap, people will buy them. When they become too much like crippled PCs, people will just say, "Hey! I can get a real computer for a little bit more money!"

    Please spare me the "but consoles are getting faster and better" argument. I know they are. But remember: so are computers. The oh-so-hyped Dolphins and X-Boxes of the future will always be miles behind the average home PC.
  • These days just about everyone wants to play games. Games have been a driving force in advances in computer hardward mostly video cards. Just about everyone loves some type of game it doesn't have to be video games. Games are how we all like to unwind. Though out the years society always seem to enjoy events surounding competion. Olympics, Soccer, Gladitators, etc. This is why games are some of the first thing being ported to linux because we all love to play games


    http://theotherside.com/dvd/ [theotherside.com]
  • The important thing that these developments are bringing out is the technology. Loki is developing a suite of porting tools for making Windoze games work under Linux. This means that A3D and D3D and other stuff will work under Linux without having to rewrite everthing every time.

    Now *that's* the important part.
  • Note you're naming mostly Blizzard games - Blizzard have bought the Microsoft line in return for early access to API's etc. and have stated they have no intention of porting to any other platform, and will definately never port to Linux or assist anyone else to port to Linux.

    I recommend that nobody buy titles from Blizzard until their backwards attitude changes. It's not too difficult to write portable software. I do it for a living. But of course the difficulty isn't the point - it's the M$ deal.

  • DEMO? (Score:1)

    by Khan ( 19367 )
    From the sound of it, I'm sure they did a great job. Now, the real question is: When are we going to see a DEMO of the game? I'm not going to go and blow my $$ on a game that may potentially suck. Gamewise that is.

  • If they were following how large games were, they would of ported Diablo, Baldurs Gate, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament.

    Actually, UT [sourceforge.net] has already been ported, it's loads of fun to play, and plays better on my Linux box at home than my NT box at work. (Interestingly, you can even play most of the Unreal levels [linuxgames.com] using UT under Linux.)

    The rest are Blizzard games, as already noted, and Blizzard has been quite reluctant to allow ports of their games until the sales results of other games justify it.

  • was one of the beta testers for HG2 and I have to say that Loki did a GREAT job getting this game to Linux.

    Seconded.

    However, if anyone is considering purchasing this game make sure you have Mesa-supported 3D acceleration first! The current (3.3.x) nVidia drivers are not up to the task, but the Matrox and 3Dfx cards have been quite successful.

    (Boring, standard joysticks are fairly easy to configure, too. Got me a cheap-o $10 joystick, and d/led the current driver. Did the insmod, and it Just Worked. I was quite impressed.)

  • I was one of the beta testers for HG2 and I have to say that Loki did a GREAT job getting this game to Linux. They had to port it from D3D to OpenGL, SDL had to come up with joystick drivers (which they did), plus they had to work with the Mesa people and the GCC people to make some changes to the base tools. It's this kind of work that is only going to make Linux better.
  • Linux would, I think, be a good platform for the server end of the game, if not the client. It could use a more real-time scheduler, such as this one [mit.edu], but even without that, I think it beats Windows.
    --
    Patrick Doyle
  • Loki does have to wait until they get the Ok from activision though. I believe Heavy Gear 2 for Linux was just announced 2-3 months ago, and the porting and testing process is complicated. Maybe we should be complaining that they aren't being given licenses soon enough. Of course if Loki was involvd in the process from the beginning than it's a whole different ball game. Deals like getting the rights to port don't just happen overnight though
    treke
  • Actually there is an answer to that: Open Source. A small gaming company can safeguard against being clobbered and at the same time ensure external development help by going OSS from *early* stages (rather than OSSing old titles that aren't profitable any longer), and then make money by charging for gameserver access and selling packaged games (i.e. things that are added to the sources themselves: scenarios, graphics, etc).

    I'm talking from the experience - there will be an announcement soonish (can't go into details right now - wouldn't do for our website to get slashdotted before there is anything to download :) ).
  • ..and not just us Linux Gamers? I hope so, cause if not we could all see Loki's nice ship of gold melted down for scrap this time next year.
  • i'd do it quick, before someone else takes your name too.
  • Pure wank...

    and yeh, the early consoles were gonna kill home computing... and then those consoles with attachable keyboards were gonna kill home computing... yadda yadda.. Ive heard this about a hundred consoles ever since the Colecovision.

    Wake up n smell the coffee....pc gaming isnt going anywhere soon....

  • Being that this game was released a while ago for the PC and I haven't heard about it since, I wonder if a Linux port will even matter?

    Of course for you Linux-heads you'ld say, "everything matters", but I just don't see this as the case. How big is the Linux gaming market anyways? Sure there are plenty of Linux servers, but how many of those are equiped to play a 3d-accelerated game (3dfx only?), and what percentage of those make up the home market? Mighty small I immagine.

    I'd dare to say there are probably 10x as many 3d-accelerated Mac's and they're probably a tiny numbered compared to comparably equipped Win PCs.
    It'll be pretty funny tho if Linux (game) releases start happening before Mac releases do.
  • ... as of the last Mesa benchmark I rememeber reading with a Voodoo3, the differences on equal systems were within 2%.

    And what's more, as a 3D game developer, I can confirm that yes, the Linux drivers are well within my acceptable tolerance levels. (Just FYI: I get 20 fps running Aftershock (a free Q3A clone) on a P/233 with an original series Voodoo Graphics, with full detail, including lightmapping and shaders. So don't tell ME that that's not pushing the hardware limits)

    Nicholas
  • Personal computers will always have a good market share in the gaming industry so long as console developers persist in charging massive licensing fees for their development platforms. The situation that you describe would be possible only if that playing field evens; otherwise, it's very cost effective for companies to market games for the PC. And with 3D hardware in the computer looking to catch up to 3D hardware on platforms like the PS2, (which you can't upgrade, I might add), I think PC hardware will be in use as a gaming platform for a while yet.

    Nicholas
  • I've thought of doing this with several game designs I have. But the question is - Where would I find people willing to work on this project and would they be able to commit enough hours so that a playable demo is finished in a reasonable amount of time?
    I'm not trying to play devils advocate, I'm really interested in doing this.

  • Yeah. I understand. I'm not saying the Loki guys are to blame...I'm just saying it's going to be really hard for Loki to ever compete if they're months behind with every game.

    Gamers want their games like they want their money...now.
  • Your fucken clueless

    obviously your a newbie, had you been around with linux about 4 or 5 years ago with the rest of us , then you would have realized what the word 'nonexistant' really means, Get a clue pal

    the above post was not 'insightful', and it was rude to Loki software..

    Thank you Loki for porting these games, Now I can enjoy some entertainment on Linux ;)
  • oog make hadlock laugh.
  • Everyone who's ever had a feel for the Battletech universe which MechWarrior was based on knows Mech 1 was the greatest while 2 and 3 were so so. It's no coincidence the games went stale when Microsoft bought out FASA, the company that developed Battletech in the first place.
    Now Heavy Gear is pretty much trumps in the mech gaming world (subjectively speaking of course) and HG2 for Win32 was awesome. Can't wait for the Linux version and finally let these old Gear cards and playing boards slip quietly away.
  • ...if OOG lives in a caveman who lives in cave, where does he get his Internet access? :P

  • From the screen shots of this game it looks to me just like another FPS...sure it has all the new features and multiplayer and whatnot, but is it really anything more than a SuperDoom?

    What I'd like to see is some really new ideas for gaming coming out...I can't think of any off of the top of my head...If anyone has read Ender's Game, the Battle School simulator would be a beast of a game! (For those who haven't read it, it was a really advanced 3d space battle game, except you have true 3d power...rotating views and seeing different viewpoints...in addition to really advanced multiplayer team capabilities.)

    Anyway, what my point is is that rather than coming out with the same game over and over that I can spend good weekend mastering, why don't the game companies come out with some truely innovative ideas? Combining different ideas and technologies is always a good starting point.


    Josh
  • Let's hope Activision lets Loki repeat its LokiHack contest from the Atl Linux Showcase. Letting hackers tweak the code for 48 hours isn't quite "open source," but it's more than most game companies are willing to do. Loki is good people and they're fulfilling a vital role.
  • Don't call me a moron just because I'm right.

    The best supported 3d cards in linux? Don't make me laugh. I've been using Linux since near the beginning, and I'm very familiar with how it works.

    When you compare the framerates you get under Linux to the framerates you get under even win2k.

    It becomes more and more obvious to me just how linux will *never* be a viable desktop operating system, when we can't even make things like 3d cards work.

    I mean, at least the other free OS's have support for printers.

  • I'm not really excited about Linux games that much. I mean, I bot quake3, but it's *so* slow.

    You'd think with the money people are sinking into them they'd support decent 3d cards like the voodoo3, but they don't even support that. How do they expect linux to ever get to be a popular gaming system without decent hardware support?

    Someone needs to sink some money into supporting hardware. I guess that's about all I want out of Linux. Support for my Voodoo3 (which *nothing* supports, trust me) and perhaps software raid.

  • OOG LIKE PLAYING GAMES, THOUGH OOG ALSO HOPE FOR MORE VARIETY AND QUALITY!!! OOG AGREE HEAVY GEAR II IS OK GAME, BUT MEDIOCRE COMPARED TO MANY OTHER!!! OOG GLAD LOKI TAKE TIME TO PORT, BUT OOG WANT LOKI TRY GET LICENSE TO PORT MORE SIGNATURE GAMES SUCH AS FINAL FANTASY, STAR/WARCRAFT SERIES, THE SIMS, ETC. OOG HOPE FOR MORE DISTINCTION IN GAME LIBRARY FOR LINUX TOO!!! OOG AGREE CONVINCING GAME PUBLISHERS HARD, BUT GROWING LINUX SUPPORT AND SALES SHOULD HELP!!! ALSO OOG THINK MORE EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO GET GOOD GAME SUPPORT FOR LINUX AND MAKE LINUX MORE FRIENDLY TO HOME USER!!! MANY PEOPLE STAY ON WINDOWS FOR SOFTWARE SUPPORT, AND MORE GAME ON LINUX HELP CHANGE THAT!!! OOG GLAD FOR LOKI, BUT WANT LINUX GAMING GO BEYOND POINT WHERE EACH NEW GAME PORT SEEN AS MAJOR NEWS ITEM AMONG COMMUNITY!!! BUT OOG GLAD LOKI TRYING, SO OOG NO BREAK LOKI HEAD!!!
  • who is to say he doesnt have a T3 or better line connected to his cave? or perhaps he lives in a cave but works elsewhere?

    it is not up to us to dictate the way he lives and works. if he wishes to live in a cave, he has every right, and we support him all the way.

    he is the one to lay claim to his status, and he obviously uses a computer... what can we say?

  • you are smart too...

    we believe you qualify to become another of great OOG's followers. please contact us for information regarding your induction into our elite OOG fanclub.

  • we would very much like to see this dream come true. the only reason most of the people we know use windows is just for the games. we use linuxppc on mac, and use the macos for gaming, but we are far behind in the game market too.

    direct us, great OOG, and we will work wonders. if you wish, we will storm the hidaways of game developers demanding they port them to linux.

    praise Loki, for they have received the coveted good will of OOG

  • troll lovers always support trolls. dont tell me you are suprised by that.

    However, let me also take this time to point out that OOG is not a troll, he is an intelligent human being who happens to live in a cave. He may be a little uncouth, uncivilized, and maybe even a little unevolved. But he does happen to be at leat a little educated, and we love him for that.

  • Unite for OOG!!
  • Homeworld is a 3d space strategy/action game in full 3D.

    Check it out...

  • D00D, that is excellent, I completely agree.

    (especially since I couldn't get Wine to install FF7... blah. It isn't fair, I can play the other six under Linux! :)

    Rumor has it that Starcraft is playable under Wine. If I had a copy, I'd try it out, but that's more than you're going to get from Blizzard anytime soon. Does WarCraft run under DOSEmu? (StarCon2 does, yeah! :)

    Loki rulez. Except that I've been playing too much HOMM3 lately, instead of, say, sleeping. :|
    Oh well, it's something to do, especially since Masters of Magic will probably never have a decent sequel...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Look closer. Yes, it's still first person aim and shoot. But it's a lot more tactical than id games. You are a mechanized warrior with all sorts of armorments and implements of mass distruction. It's more of a First Person Simulation than anything else.

    As for a really new, innovative game... Don't hold your breath. Game companies don't want new, innovative, or different. They want proven money-makes that they can churn out in a few months (Why do you think they like using game engines made by other companies? Saves on the R&D cost.

    The little companies that are operating on venture capital and dreams are the ones to watch out for. The problem with that is that the big companies do watch out for them. They snap them up when they have a promissing title, and they clamp their iron fists around it. They only allow it to go to markets that THEY deem worthy (Read: "Lucrative").

    I'm not bitter. Honestly.
  • After buying Civ CTP which is unplayably slow for me with on a 300MHz celery, 64 MB ram, and a G200 due to excessive redraws (Apparently the problem also shows up in the Windows to a lesser degree) I will need a lot more convincing before I buy a game to "support Linux".

    I'd much rather show that Linux users are willing to pay for quality rather than show that Linux users are willing to buy substandard crap.
    --
  • Seen much Linux software for sale at Staples and Best Buy. Staples even had Civ:CTP for Linux.

    If this trend continues, we will get more games and even better support from major ISVs.
  • to quote Loki president Scott Draeker from a recent slashdot interview:
    5) Reject ratio
    (Score:5, Interesting) by FascDot Killed My Pr

    I'm assuming that your (current) modus operandi is to call up a company and say "Hey, can we port your game to Linux?"
    Given that assumption:

    1) How many companies have you talked to? 2) What percentage of them rejected the request? 3) Of those that rejected, what
    were their reasons? (fear of "open source", lack of demand, etc.)

    Scott:

    I'm going to respond in general terms, as many of your questions apply to ongoing negotiations.

    We've spoken to the majority of game companies. When we complete a deal, we turn that into product fairly quickly. Other deal
    negotiations are ongoing.

    The single most important factor for getting a game ported is market size. Everything else is easy to address. If a company feels
    that they will see sufficient unit sales, then they are quite happy to discuss having a port done.
  • One line on the website made be laugh the power of the future with the power of the future's operating system. Now come on guys Linux is a good OS but the saddest thing about the rise of Linux is that the competition was so poor for an adaptation of a 1980s OS.

    Some people have said here that Linux must be able to play games to compete with Windows, in part this is true, but when the PS2 and Dolphin come out it will change the perception of the home games machine. Why buy a Windows or a Linux box when your PS2/Dolphin plays DVDs on the TV and allows you to browse the web and send emails ?

    The market is about to change and while a supply of games does give Linux some credibility it doesn't mark the OS out as happened with Windows v Mac 10 years or so ago. Linux is a long way from competing with Windows as a gaming station, and MS-Linked it may be but DirectX, Sound and Video are very powerful tool kits for the developer. Linux needs those sorts of kits and intercommnication in order to really push itself as a gaming platform.
  • Very true, and I've never seen a case where it would happen until now. PC Gaming will continue, but whereas now people will buy a PC for gaming as certain types of games are only available for the PC the next generation of consoles are lining up as category killers. PC Gaming will remain, but the importance of it as a distinguishing mark will diminish as the consoles cease to become pure gaming machines and become PCs hiding under a pretty case.
  • Ive read a few (negative) comments here... I just dont agree.

    LOKI are doing a sterling job... most people dont give a shite about the age of the title, but the quality of the title. And LOKI are pulling some great quality titles out of their bags.

    Hell, I still play c64 games (on a real SX-64) on occasion... a good game is a good game...

    Go for it LOKI!

  • Of when it came out for Windows...9 months ago.

    Gameplayer.com [gameplayer.com]

    If Loki wants to start making significant headway for the future of Linux gaming, they're going to have to start cranking these things out faster.

    Maybe it was because Heavy Gear II had a bunch of features that were shoddily implemented in the PC version, and hopefully the Loki guys fixed them...but I doubt it.

    Maybe it was because they had bigger titles to port. That too is excusable for me...but it doesn't mean that I'm going to wait 9 months to play the new, big game. Linux gaming isn't going to be able to survive on pity purchasing for long. Either gaming companies have gotta start working with the Linux guys sooner, or Loki's got to get a bigger staff...but let's face it...neither seems very likely, eh?
  • From the Interview from the president of Loki:
    Seriously, after lots of hard work things are really coming together for Linux gaming. Take, for example, Heavy Gear II, which has just gone gold. We ported the Direct3D rendering to OpenGL. We ported the inline assembly. We created a standard way to play 3D positional sound, OpenAL. We added joystick, gamepad and mouse wheel support. We hacked gcc, gdb, glibc, Mesa and Glide. If we can pull off a game like this, I figure we can pull off just about anything.

    No I am not just jumping on the praise and promote all things linux Bandwagon. The efforts they had to make to port a game that was DirectX is impressive!!

    I love how in one sentence he just says ported Direct3d Rendering to OpenGL. Wait a minute here? Heh Heh.

    Okay what do ya do? Need 3D positional Sound System? Code one and release it. Not bad not bad.

    Need Mouse wheel support? Hack it!!

    Alright it just seems they have a team of rather talented programmers over there and that they are doin a good job. And on technical merit as a company they impress me.

    I must say not many companies impress me now a days. :-)

    Jeremy

  • Ever notice an activision trend with the games they have ported? Well... thats because there is one! WHY ARENT THEY PORTING MORE POPULAR GAMES? If they were following how large games were, they would of ported Diablo, Baldurs Gate, Starcraft, Unreal Tournament... etc... games that have gotten ALOT more sales and that are ALOt more popular. The only reason I have windows on my computer is 1) Diablo. 2) Nox. 3) Baldurs Gate Really, we are finally realizing we need to compete with EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of windows to actually become successful! If we just make an OS that has excellent spreadsheet applications but everything else is nonexistent, uh, we have a problem. Right now, linux gaming is almost nonexistent. If it wasn't for companies like Noki we would be ever farther away from nonexistent, so don't take this as a flame towards Noki. If Noki started listening to people and poring better games.. then we'll have something to work with.

  • hmm, alrighty. I'd just like to quote from memory here, somthing i read in one of the old id finger files, went somthing along the lines of this:

    "while we know it's entirely possible to port the win98 version of Q3 to linux using a tar ball or two, but if you linux users get out there and buy the linux distro instead of the win 98, that way we can flash the numbers of linux distros made/sold to other big wigs in the industry, and we can get linux even more mainstream"

    ok, so that's probably biased a tad, but you get the gist of it, I think that going out and buying a great game from activison, and getting somthing out of the game, isn't half bad, even if the technology in the game is becoming a tad antiquited; plus you're still casting your vote for other makers to start putting out an entire library of (future) great games on linux. don't get me wrong, but minesweeper clones get old *real* fast.

    ~Hadlock

  • The above posted about the importance and relevance of this game. It has been deamed as one of the highest rated Mech games to date for the PC. It is also very fun to play...much better than the MechWarrior series so far (although MechWarrior 4 looked pretty promising). The relevance to this game and Linux is simple...more games on this OS would make it more suitable for the home user. Games help push technology to a new, higher level. They also allow for home users to be more comfortable with the OS. Two main issues I have heard of Linux (other than support of hardware) is the user-friendliness of it is still immature (although we can hope that RedHat stops with the Windows-like popup clouds and helpful hints) and the lack of game support. Quake III marked the first major, post-Quake II title to hit the Linux OS that was a hit...it was the first title to sell a distribution strictly for this OS, to be marketed towards this OS, and to actually do well in doing so. Applaud Loki and Activision for making this game possible and don't question the importance...this is just another stepping stone that Linux is conquering. Loki games is remarkably becoming a large company...their recent HOMM3 port is quite good. acidmax

  • We all start somewhere.. (Score:3)

    by Tarnar ( 20289 ) on Monday March 20, 2000 @08:24PM (#1188055) Homepage
    Loki must have some deal going with Activision, most every title they've ported is an Activision one. Which is good, I like what they put out.

    Of course, it's a little less cool that we're getting games way way past their release. They may still be fun now, but if a better game of the same genre has come out, buying an older one just isn't worthwhile. Unless it's the sort of timeless game that plays well a year or 3 later, like Civ:CTP :-)

    But as my subject says, we have to start somewhere. As more and more people realize Linux is gaming friendly (I have a neighbour in residence who asked to borrow my Civ:CTP.. his reaction to hearing it was the Linux version was 'They make it for Linux?!?!?') then the demand will be for games to be developed on both platforms for release.

    Which is good, it promotes portable code and lets developers know that locking yourself into a proprietary API (DirectX) is not profitable if you can write, say, the graphics engine in OpenGL and have it port (and sell) to many many platforms.

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