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BSD Operating Systems Entertainment Games

Loki And BSDi Team Up For BSD Games 108

Posted by Hemos from the and-skin-tight-devil-suits dept.
I just got word from the fine folks at LokiSoft announcing that they are partnering with BSDi to produce games for BSD. Very cool -- my hat is off to all involved. Here's the press release.

Loki and BSDI Partner for FreeBSD Games
Loki to Certify Games for Use with Linux Compatibility Features

San Jose, California -- August 15, 2000 -- Loki Software, Inc., the leading publisher of best-selling games for the Linux operating system, today announces a strategic alliance with Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI), the foremost supporter of the FreeBSD Project.

Loki introduced fully-supported, shrink-wrapped commercial games to the Linux community in 1999. While Loki has released Alpha and PPC versions of their games whenever technically feasible, FreeBSD users had been left to their own devices to make the games function on their open-source operating system of choice.

Through this new partnership, Loki and BSDI will work together to ensure Loki's gaming titles are compatible with FreeBSD using the Linux-compatibility features. Certified games on this configuration will be fully-supported by Loki.

"Many people do not take games seriously, and this is a mistake," said Jordan Hubbard, Vice President, Open Source Solutions. "Availability of Loki's industry leading line up of Linux games is a huge win for us, as we realize full well that games drive a large part of the overall acceptance of any operating system, even a serious operating system like BSD."

"We are excited to be announcing our official support of FreeBSD's Linux compatibility libraries," said Scott Draeker, president of Loki Software. "FreeBSD users have been enjoying their Open Source operating system for years, and many of them have been playing our games."

Loki is now preparing several A-one titles for certification, including the highly-anticipated SimCity 3000 Unlimited and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri with the Alien Crossfire expansion pack. Other popular programs to be certified soon include Quake III Arena, Soldier of Fortune, and Descent3.

Specially-marked certified games will be available from The FreeBSD Mall in addition to Loki's Web site store.
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Loki and BSDi Partner for BSD Games More

Loki and BSDi Partner for BSD Games

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  • If it's simple to support an existing Linux port of a game using the compatibility libraries, then this is a can't lose for either Loki or BSDi. It raises the BSD profile a little further, and helps Loki sell a few more games with no real effort (they aren't repackaging or recoding).

    I'm not sure either Linux or BSD is mature enough to be a viable gaming platform yet, but that is an issue best covered in this thread from Sunday. [slashdot.org]

    - -Josh Turiel

  • Why are more games needed? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The BSD_GAMES.TGZ in the Slackware distro is enough games for anybody. Aren't all those humdingers already available on BSD? I thought the ones on Slack were just ports from BSD.

    I mean, come on.
  • Generally the the less popular OS will seek to run the binaries from a more popular OS. Support goes up (like gripes to management), not down.
  • I am not a user of FreeBSD, but I am really glad to see Loki expanding their porting of games. Games have helped to drive hardware progress and I can see that they could also help popularize an operating system as well. Kudos to Loki and BSDI for knowing that it isn't just Windows users that want to play games!
  • It's not any harder to program for Linux. In fact, due to a greater number of freeware shared libraries, it might be easier depending on what you're doing.

    My experiences with programming games under Linux has gone quite well. It is true that full screen graphics don't seem to move as fast under X11 as they do under Win9x, but the actual coding is very intuitive (using GGI to target X and SVGAlib).

    Programming for Macs is also easier than programming for Windows. Have you tried all of them? Macintosh has hands down the best programming interface for graphics. Windows can not match its ease of use (unless you program in Visual Basic... i guess...)

    I was just wondering if you had ever actually written any code or whether you were just speculating...

  • Unfortunately for your idealism, there are certain times when closed source is a good thing. I will provide two certified Karma Whoring examples:

    1)distributed.net/SETI@Home These systems would be of any use (in the real world) if any schmuck could come along and start sending in fraudulent/random data, just to get a higher score.

    2)Windows 2000 Just imagine the results if Microsoft were to opensource windows, we'd have an epidemic of programmer suicides...

  • Great! (Score:3)

    by tealover ( 187148 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @10:07AM (#853364)
    I assume that they'll be released under the BSD license, so that means I can repackage and resell.

    Just what I needed to start my own gaming company! Thanks BSD!

  • Linux "emulation" really just causes the dynamic linker to use a different set of shared libraries when loading Linux binaries. FreeBSD and Linux system calls are more or less the same. There is no performance loss due to emulation in most cases.

    The real problem is that some programs make Linux-specific assumptions; for instance, the (open source) Loki Setup program used to use Linux-specific CD-ROM detection code, meaning that FreeBSD users had to hack the setup configuration file.

    I'm not speaking for Loki here; this is just based on my own experience.

    -John
  • Hear Hear. I love Lokisoft. I think they have their hearts in the right place, with a lot of brains too. ...

    And a big medal for Courage. 8^)

    ... I used to keep a WinDoz partition to play games, but now I've deleted that away.

    Loki is a big reason for that, and everybody to chip in and buy their stuff. Because they deserve our support.

    Dern straight. I bought a copy of every Linux game they released, and look forward to the ones they are about to release.
    --

  • Re:Linux games w/ emulation? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    windows

  • In which case I see your point. Your initial posting sounded like you were encouraging people who wouldn't normally buy the game to do so.

    BTW - is it generally possible to buy the Linux version and then download the Windows executable? (I know it's technically possible - my question is is this current practice?) So I could support Linux developments, but let non-linux savy people (e.g. younger siblings) use the game under Windows when I'm not about the help them?

    -- Michael

  • I just saw Scott walking by the Compaq booth at LWCE. I'll have to run stop him and shake his hand. Sometimes I doing development in BSD and I don't have to have to reboot to Linux to do some catching up on my Civilization.

    It's open source, it's unix, so there's no reason it can't be running on every free unix platform.
  • BTW - is it generally possible to buy the Linux version and then download the Windows executable?

    I think in pricniple yes. But probably not in current practice : (a) the window version is so much more accessible (b) I don't know about the legality of it (I don't think there are "free" window executables).

    Look, somebody just mod my previous comment Flamebait. Hehe.

  • You miss the point, we FreeBSD'ers are supposed to run the Linux version. All Loki says is that they are going to make sure the game also runs in the Linuxator in FreeBSD as well.

    ...which misses the point the person to whom you were replying was making. He said:

    I just can't see serious demand for FreeBSD games if they are released so much later than the Windows counterparts. Then when we find out that Linux software games have light sales it won't help the cause to create Linux/BSD versions of these games at the same time as the Windows version.

    which should perhaps have been stated as "I just can't see serious demand for FreeBSD/Linux games" to make it clear that it's not Linux vs. BSD he's talking about, it's Windows vs. everything else lumped together.

    I.e., he's saying that releasing games for non-Windows platforms - regardless of which platforms those are, and regardless of whether the version for FreeBSD is native or just the Linux version made to install and run on the Linuxator - later than the Windows version could lead to lower sales for the non-Windows versions, leading to less incentive for developers to make games run on those platforms.

  • Most people have found that Linux applications run a bit faster under FreeBSD.
  • That's ReBirth, isn't it?
  • Please tell me you're joking.

  • repeating OS/2 mistake (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Oh no. Running emulation? Bad news.

    Lack of native apps killed OS/2. ISVs said "use Windoze version". Emulation killed OS/2. It could kill FreeBSD too. I don't think this is a good idea. No incentive to write for FreeBSD, then no native apps. My 2 cents, based on experience.

  • Uhm they do, try researching a bit before you post. BSDi's LAP [bsdi.com]and Sun'S lxrun solution [sun.com]. Now go and do some research on your own.
  • In terms of os ports Yeti@Home [slashdot.org] has Loki beaten hands down.

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • Won't running the install scripts built for Linux (essentially) put the files in the right place?

    Unfortunately, life is not easy when it comes to install scripts. 99% of it is due to extremely small stoopid things, that are easy to fix if the Linux developer has a FreeBSD or BSD/OS box available to just test and fix it. To fix it as an end user, the bar is raised much higher.

    Two infamous examples that everyone seems to run into:

    • Linux uname is subtly different from BSD uname. For example, a lot of Linux install scripts install an optimized version if uname indicates you have a PentimumII, and refuse an install if you have a lowly 386. Unfortunately, neither BSD/OS nor FreeBSD care about the processor and report i386.
    • Lots of Linux scripts assume /bin/sh is implemented as Bash.

    Harder stuff to port is code that uses threads or advanced system stuff, but games tend not to use those. The fact that Xfree86 drivers are binary compatible between Linux and FreeBSD these days will surely ease portability!

    Is this a great time or what<sm> :-)

  • utah-glx does support FreeBSD, I used it to get Linux Q3A working on my machine (AMD300 w/ RIVA TNT) its not as fast as the Nvidia drivers but it works

    -daniel

  • Was just thinking that Linux seems to be heading off into the gaming market, making it more and more popular. BSD seems to be taking a similar road, just taking longer to get there.
    Maybe we are seeing the early beginnings of gradually phasing out Windows in general? Or maybe a more balanced differece between users using certain OSs (IE: Each OS holds a good portion of the market)
    If this is done well, we'll definately see a market shift, just hope not too many Linux users head for BSD. :)
  • Especially considering this article [slashdot.org]. A lot of Linuxers have said that if people like Lokis start selling games, they'd buy them, but it looks like not enough people are that.
  • Would Slashdot make an article out of that?
    Like, for example, this [slashdot.org]? Or this [slashdot.org]? Or this [slashdot.org]?

  • BSD seems to be mainly used for servers. While it might be cool to have a quake server or unreal tournament server, or for some other type of game, I don't really see why someone would want to play games on BSD. I'm not a big expert on BSD, but from what I see, linux has support for more hardware than bsd as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.

    Linux seems to be mainly used for servers. While it might be cool to have a quake server or unreal tournament server, or for some other type of game, I don't really see why someone would want to play games on Linux. I'm not a big expert on Linux, but from what I see, Windows has support for more hardware than Linux as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.


    ---
  • I'm using a Voodoo3 under the DRI support in FreeBSD. It works OK - q3a, quakeforge and quake2 work. I've tried SOF, but it's rather slow, and Descent3, which really needs joystick support of a decent level. I've been meaning to finish the port of the Linux joystick driver to FreeBSD for sometime. This ought to get me off my rear.
  • You know, I'm still kind of new to these alternative operating systems, but I'm becoming a BIG fan of BSD (FreeBSD in particular).

    Aside from a little bit of "REAL Unix" snobbishness, I'm finding that the BSD communities are very friendly and eager to help out. I had some questions about setting up an old 486 as a firewall and I found documentation right away. When I got stuck, the experts on the newsgroups helped me out right away. Now, my home network is connected to @Home through a FreeBSD firewall that also does NAT. As long as I don't call in a tech, they'll never know how many machines I'm running.

    I think that's the important thing for new operating systems to remember -- a kind and helpful community goes a long way. When you provide instant help to newbies, you can take over the world. Look, for example, at how well Perl is doing. Were it not for the help available in the #Perl IRC, I'm sure the language would have never gotten off the ground.

    I'm still a Linux fan, of course. Right now, it's a little easier to use and there's still more software for it. Nevertheless, I think the BSDs are up and coming with tremendous potential.
  • If this Wired article [wired.com] is to be believed, open source software is going to take over the world. Closed is bad and will fail!

    (Note: that was sarcastic)

  • I think one big problem for (GNU/)Linux games is that game ports like those Loki has made are harder to get your hands on than the MS Windows versions.

    I may be wrong, but I've never seen any Loki stuff anywhere over here (in Sweden)...
    Then of course I'm hardly buying any games at all (I'm simply hardly playing any games at all)... but when I was looking at the shelves filled with games together with a friend not too long ago I extra looked for (GNU/)Linux ports... and there were none!

    --
  • Then again, are there really that many people gaming under BSD?

    There will be [apple.com] soon enough, although I'm guessing most games for this system will not be fully compatible with FreeBSD due to differences in kernel architecture, the whole PPC vs. x86 thing, and the graphic libraries available. Still, BSD is about to get a huge (in relative terms) boost in marketshare.

  • Everyone and their dog is mis-quoting John Carmack, who clarified his statement that he made at QuakeCON (twice) on /.

    QIII didn't do quite as well as they'd hoped.
    I think the other titles are doing pretty good (otherwise Loki'd not be in as good a business position as they are right now...). However, if I were Scott D., I'd be a little miffed at Macmillan- they're not doing them any favors...
  • I love Loki, because to me, they're the perfect business model to follow for an Open Source/Free Software company.

    The games are themselves closed. Whats cool is how they open up every other piece of tech and have a great support system in place - I've had usenet conversations with their developers about installation problems, Mesa compilation/optimization, and so forth. Thats sure worth my $, as opposed to "Well, did you download the latest drivers? It still doesn't work? Sorry, wait for the patch".
  • Reading this, I must conclude that Linux gaming _is_ profitable for Loki.

    This step means that Loki believes there can be a return on investment for BSD, which has - no offense - a lot smaller user base than Linux, especially on the desktop.

    There is no way Loki would believe in a BSD market if the Linux market wasn't already working out for them.

    It seems like desktop UNIX is no longer in its infancy.

  • FreeBSD 4.x has Soft Updates

    FreeBSD 3.x has them too (although I think at that point they were under a restrictive license, and weren't compiled into the kernel by default. I remember recompiling, rebooting into single user mode, and enabling soft updates on most of my partitions).

    There are JDKs native to FreeBSD, and you can always use the Linux JDK on FreeBSD with little fuss.

    Yeah, 1.1.8 is the latest FreeBSD native JDK I've heard of. Have you tried any of the Linux Java VMs under FreeBSD's linux emulation? I never got around to it. I'm particularly interested in IBM's JDK 1.3.0 for Linux - if that runs fine, I'll have to reconsider BSD :-)

  • Yes, it is possible and quite easy (at least with quake 3). In fact, if you look at lokisoft's quake3 page under the FAQ, it tells you how to do it. All you need to do is download the point release for your particular platform that you intend to run it on (whether it me MAC, linux, or windows), and copy the pak0.pak (I think that's the name of the file) to your pak directory in your quake3 directory (I'm not positive all the directory and file names are correct, but it tells you how to do either in the point release or loki's site, I don't seem to recall which.
  • Anyone feel this is a practice run for them, to help getting a feel for coding under the Mac OSX architecture? Not that I know enough about Mac OSX to say anything...

    ... and not that I care, it's all good. I'm happy not having to hope that binary runs under the LINUX emulation as well as acrobat does ( no sarcasm, it actually runs surprising well considering the fits I've seen under windows... )...

    kudos, boys, Loki just went to the top of my gaming companies, you can rest assured when the ports come out I will buy them...

    I remember when Terminus LINUX demo came out I downloaded it, wrestled with it all night, but it just kept exiting... that was a real low point for me...

    If anyone suggests I should dual boot to LINUX, they will be fired upon. That's not a solution, that's a strategy for coping with a problem.

    and I do run Linux at home, but on other boxes ( without decent graphics cards in 'em. )

    plus it cuts into my uptime... which is precious to me...

  • Ummm, Roblimo? Come in, Roblimo! Ground control to Roblimo...

    Wait a minute - if you're the real roblimo, why are you user #196470? I smell a rat...

  • Life will be very happy on FreeBSD when some of the Xfree 4.0 DRI drivers are complete. In the meantime: A binary package of Utah-GLX for FreeBSD can be found here: http://www.matroxusers.com/Driver/FreeBSD.html A port also exists: http://people.freebsd.org/~3d/distfiles/glx/linux/ Take a peek at Loki's newsgroups for some other useful information.

  • Linux games w/ emulation? (Score:3)

    by Mr.Phil ( 128836 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @09:13AM (#853398)
    Can BSDi use the Linux binary emulation wizardry and play existing Linux games from Loki?

  • How about 3d support, though? (Score:4)

    by Masker ( 25119 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @09:20AM (#853399)
    Now, with games like Quake III Arena being produced for Linux, we have pretty decent 3d acceleration support from 3dfx and (shudder) nVidia. But what about the *BSDs? I don't think that I've seen anyone (including utah-glx [sourceforge.net], which is what I use) claim to support *BSD. I wonder who will step forward first to add 3d acceleration support (I'm imagining that the hardware vendors will have to at least help out a bit...).

    Anyone know (or care to guess)?
  • If the editors thought that their readers might find it interesting, YES.

  • Daemon? (Score:4)

    by Signal 11 ( 7608 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @09:20AM (#853401)
    Call me cynical, but why is it that the first game they ported has pictures of daemons chasing linus torvalds and his evil team of ninja penguins?

    I have to admit, however, the "Code Dungeon" looks kinda cool... fight flaming perl zealots and FUD-wielding slashdotters. Can't wait for the playable demo!

  • Sometimes, although having Loki actually test the software and SUPPORT it will make it worth paying the $50.
  • That would fscking rock! I've still got my GEOS disks from the mid-80's!
    --
  • Games...ha...hope they can outdo ASCII Quake.
    --
  • I hope this turns out better than the attempts at making linux games....according to an earlier article, the Linux games didn't do so well....I still use MS for gaming and such....I think it will probably end up that way with the majority of the gaming population using Windows....for everything else...Linux.


  • Well...the same could almost go for linux but it's a done deal that there are games and such on linux, but it's still not even as good as games on M$ Windows. I really think the home appliance that does the job of a PC, video player, stereo, and game system all in one is the ticket. Someone needs to design the hardware first, and then the OS will follow. It just needs to be easy to use like a mac, and not as powerful as something like bsd or linux. That is why linux doesn't make a good desktop platform for anything right now. It's too complex for the average user. I like linux myself and use it, but it won't work with my TB2000 sound card, which sounds beautiful in windows, and thus my game controller doesn't work, and various other things.
  • Through this new partnership, Loki and BSDI will work together to ensure Loki's gaming titles are compatible with FreeBSD using the Linux-compatibility features. Certified games on this configuration will be fully-supported by Loki.

    This is definately good news for BSD, although it would be even better to see Loki producing BSD native binaries, or even Linux binaries 'certified' to run under the Linux emulation of other BSDs. Then again, are there really that many people gaming under BSD? I personally really like BSD, butI tend to use it 90% of the time as a server (which is what the BSD people want, anyways).

    It's also good to see BSDi (and thus, FreeBSD and Walnut Creek) becoming more 'commercially' acceptable. This attention is long overdue, IMHO.

  • When is Loki gonna release this one?

    And will is work on the 486 that I'm running FreeBSD on.

  • While that certainly is an option, this is about preference. I, for example, prefer to use Linux, I prefer to not have to pay $400 for Windows 2000 (in Canada).

    Unless of course you prefer to send me a free Windows 2000 CD with license, I might test out your suggestion, until then, I cannot, and will not give Microsoft a god damn dime.

  • Everybody should chip in and help them out. (Score:3)

    by efuseekay ( 138418 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @09:19AM (#853410)
    Hear Hear. I love Lokisoft. I think they have their hearts in the right place, with a lot of brains too. I used to keep a WinDoz partition to play games, but now I've deleted that away.

    Loki is a big reason for that, and everybody to chip in and buy their stuff. Because they deserve our support.

  • Now, this is basicaly a support announcement. They aren't doing a native FreeBSD port. Now, I haven't used FreeBSD (yet ^_^), but have heard about this Linux compatability feature.

    My question is: How does this feature compare to running native code? Would FreeBSD users benefit a lot from a native port, or will the Linux binaries run with similar performance?

    Second Q: Why doesn't linux have a FreeBSD compatability feature?

    Oh wait, it does... it's called "make". ^_^
  • I hope that never happens. With one software manufacturer, they can change thier marketing to whatever they like. (its called a monopoly)

    Like $75 for Internet Explorer.
    Like $25 addon for Outlook Express.
    How about $89 for Fat32 support as an addon.
    Or $3000 for the operating system.

  • Fact: There is no Microsoft Office for Linux
    Thank God. There also isnt Outlook for Linux either, but none of us are complaining. There is however Star Office, koffice, and Gnome Office.

    Fact: All the good games come out for Windows first, then Linux and MAC
    They beta test on windows... you know test it out of the week platform first.

    Fact: 99% of computers in the home are based on Windows
    actually that statistic is incorrect. True-- more than half, most even. but- give us time, we're still young.

    Fact: It is easier to program for Windows than for any other OS
    thanks for proving to the world you never coded a line in your life. Fact: linux comes with its own compiler and source code. how much easier does it get.

    Linux has a long uphill battle and I'm sad to say to all you linux freaks out there, your OS will end up like MAC: obsolete.
    since when is the mac obsolete?

  • Loki's port of SC3k is *not* vapourware. Maxis just recently released an update to the Windows SC3k called Simcity 3000 Unlimited. Loki decided to hold off their release of SC3k so they can include all the enhancements in this "Unlimited" version and those of us who ordered SC3k (I am in that group...) will get the newest version.

    siri

  • It's nice to see games being ported to linux, but it would be even better if they opened up their source. If every company (AOL, RealNetworks, Corel, etc.) releases commercial software for linux without opening the source, then true freedom of operating system won't arrive.
  • Unsubstantiated, yes, because you haven't come to my place and seen it for yourself. There are indeed some apps that run faster. But there are probably just as many that run slower on "emulation" than run faster. Most apps though will *not* show a noticable difference. That some apps run faster is not miraculous or even demonstrate any BSD superiority. It just goes to show that some parts of FreeBSD are faster/better than Linux, while some parts of Linux are faster/better than FreeBSD.

    Linux-binary apps that run faster (that I have noticed): Acroread, and parts of StarOffice 5.1. I haven't run any Loki games on FreeBSD yet...
  • linux has support for more hardware than bsd as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.

    In terms of graphic cards, *BSD has *exactly* the same hardware support (excepting a few beta SuSE drivers). That's because *BSD and Linux use exactly the same XFree86 :-)

    Sound card support is still kind of shoddy under FreeBSD though.
  • It's nice to see games being ported to linux, but it would be even better if they opened up their source. If every company (AOL, RealNetworks, Corel, etc.) releases commercial software for linux without opening the source, then true freedom of operating system won't arrive.

    My thoughts, exactly. If these are binary distributions, I can do without. I understand their side of the coin, tho, as they each are probably clutching some proprietary piece of engineering they'd just as soon keep away from competitors as long as possible.

    After all, who wants to be the next SubLogic?
  • agreed... i wonder if interplay *COUGH* will *COUGH* follow in the steps of Loki *COUGH* to produce Descent I, II, III and all for *BSD... guess it's time to take some cough medicine ;)
  • The problem of running Linux programs most often lies not in the implementation of Linux' syscalls, but in how the program(often the installation scripts) use things like:

    • /proc, Imagine how silly it is to access your command line string using /proc/self/cmdline.
    • scripts executed by /bin/sh but uses special BASH oddities. (bash != sh on FreeBSD and most other systems)
    It's not much extra work(sometimes it's less work) to make a program portable once you know how to.

    Regards, Tommy - FreeBSD enthusiast

  • Great, now Loki is going to help those poor BSD guys fix the 'issues' that crop up when BSD does it's Linux twist. (I hesitate to call it emulation, BSD just twists the linux calls to something BSD can deal with, rather than actually 'emulating' a linux system. This is why there are NO performance hits running linux binaries on a BSD system)

    What does this change? Now BSDers can get support for those linux games. Does it change anything for Loki? Probably not. Maybe a few more FAQs, but honestly, probably zero recode.

    Good marketing, though
  • Just so y'all know, I offered this guy a copy of Windows 2000. Good folk, here. :)

  • > ...everybody to chip in and buy their stuff. Because they deserve our support.

    Why not buy their stuff because it's good? Loki seem esablished enough now that they should survive off people wanting to buy their games because they want the games. If they can't survive on that alone, then perhaps they're barking up the wrong tree. A company based on sympathy sales isn't going to go very far!

    Loki seem to be doing a good job - go buy their stuff if you want to!

    -- Michael

  • But that has been months. SC3K unlimited has been available from Maxis for a considerable amount of time, and Loki made their announcement of the addition on May 18th; the core game was in beta in mid-April.

    A posting on 20 May claimed the additions would delay the game "by a couple of weeks"...

  • I want to play games under BSD. A number of my coworkers also want to play games under BSD.

    What's the point of having an Open Source operating system if you're going to restrict what's developed for it?

    "keep BSD clean?" It's not like Loki announced they were going to start contributing to the source tree. They said they were going to ensure that their software was compatible with the linux emulation libraries in FreeBSD. That is to say, they would change their stuff, not the other way around.

    Go away, troll.
  • Please. The guy has some points. Linux will never have the game developers priorities that Windows has. Linux is basically for Geeks who like to tinker and should be kept that way: a hobby. All serious work is done on a PC (Intel compatible running Windows95/95/NT/2000/ME).

    You want choice? Here's choice:

    Windows95 on Intel
    Windows98 on Intel
    WindowsNT on Intel
    WindowsME on Intel
    Windows2000 on Intel
    Windows95 on AMD
    Windows98 on AMD
    WindowsNT on AMD
    WindowsME on AMD
    Windows2000 on AMD

    Thats all the world needs.
  • I currently don't buy games to use on my FreeBSD system, but this isn't because I wouldn't if given the chance, it's because it's a freakin' pain in the butt to get any of the current commercial Linux games running under it. And sure, I use FreeBSD as a server OS. I prefer, though, to have the same OS on my desktop as I do on my server so I don't have to stop and say "Wait, which unix am I in now?" before beating on any settings.
  • This is great news indeed!

    With games being ported on more and more different platforms, the whole gaming industry should learn to make games portable. It doesn't really matter if it's an in-house group of external company who does the porting. It benefits all consumers since ports mean less product lock-in and exclusives. Let's hope this continues and gets expected instead of special.

    By the way, this shows very well how Linux is the foremost open source OS, but not the only one. While Linux/X86 is getting the goodies first, once they are there, they can be easily made available to the other systems as well. Even if the other markets are smaller, the smaller the effort, the easier and faster it will happen. Standardization is good.
  • Is games that don't start on windoze. Think about it. Nothing could bring more Linux/BSD users than Company X realesing this product will first be released for BSD/Linux (including Mac OS X). Suddenly if this was something hotly anticipated, everyone would realize how nice these things were, all the Electronics Boutiques etc would carry more Linux/BSD CDs, and hundreds of thousands would be installing and learning just so they can have their computer ready when Hot Title comes out.

    Just imagine if Blizzard had announced last Christmas that they've thrown away the Windoze code for Diablo2 and if you want to play it, you'll need Linux/BSD.

    Of course, while some may see this as commercially unviable, it could work. But it would mean taking chances which Blizzard, etc aren't likely to do. But what is likely to happen is for some new company to do it.

    Someone will. Just wait, you'll see.

  • BSDi has merged with/bought into/assimilated/what-have-you FreeBSD, which, if I'm remembering aright, has the largest user base of the *BSDs. Also, really, it's not going to take much money at all to do this - making sure their install scripts speak both FreeBSD and Linux and like that.

  • Re:Linux games w/ emulation? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can't say for BSDi, but on FreeBSD I have had mixed results...

    The demos for Railroad Tycoon and Civilization:Call to Power work fine, but the Myth II game dies on me any time it tries to play (what I assume would be) a cinematic.

    This was all on FreeBSD 4.0, I have not tried since I updated to 4.1.

    Another AC

  • What's next? Amiga ports? Quake for Plan9? Soldier of Fortune for CP/M? Railroad Tycoon for GEOS?
  • In my experience, Linux apps run under FreeBSD at almost exactly the same speed as native BSD apps (or Linux apps on Linux). Some Linux apps might even run faster under BSD than under Linux (not terribly likely, IMHO). I haven't tried the Linux emulation capability of the other BSDs though.

    Why doesn't linux have a FreeBSD compatability feature?

    Because there are very few (or zero?) apps that are available for FreeBSD and not for Linux. If this ever occurs, I would imagine it would be fairly easy to write a BSD emulation layer for Linux - definately easier than something like WINE (I know, different technically, but that's the whole point).

  • I don't know if BSDi can run the games, but I've had experience with running QuakeIII on FreeBSD. Once it is installed, it runs great, but getting it installed is the problem. QuakeIII's install script is very Linux centric and does not run under FreeBSD. I ended up having to download a perl script*, chop off the shell code, and then unpack the archive. Then I had to mod the unpacked install script (I hardcoded the library location part). After that it installed an ran just fine.

    This new deal sounds great... saves me a bunch of troubles (hopefully).

    * http://www.supa-fly.org/quake3.html

  • Is another Mac-like cycle of game development. Game comes out for Windows, everyone buys it. 6 months to 2 years later they release it for Mac/Linux/FreeBSD, and most who wanted it already had it.

    I just can't see serious demand for FreeBSD games if they are released so much later than the Windows counterparts. Then when we find out that Linux software games have light sales it won't help the cause to create Linux/BSD versions of these games at the same time as the Windows version. I wish Loki good luck at selling their FreeBSD games.

  • Re:How about 3d support, though? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    > I don't think that I've seen anyone (including utah-glx, which is what I use) claim to support *BSD.

    Some of the drivers in utah-glx run on BSD, but full support can't be found on the utah-glx site. You'll probably have to pull the relevant stuff out of a BSD CVS site.
  • But, as several people have pointed out, porting to FreeBSD is essentially a trivial task. They are both ELF binaries, and with the "emulation" (it isn't really emulating at all) Linux binaries run as well as native. They just need to tweak a few things to insure that it _will_ work, not probably works.
  • All the power to them. We need companies like this to keep the diversity of games and programs current.

    Even the samurai
    have teddy bears,
    and even the teddy bears

  • BSD seems to be mainly used for servers. While it might be cool to have a quake server or unreal tournament server, or for some other type of game, I don't really see why someone would want to play games on BSD. I'm not a big expert on BSD, but from what I see, linux has support for more hardware than bsd as far as graphics cards, soundcards, etc.

    Also, I think rather than trying to get our server software to be on the desktop, we need to make a new OS and interface for the desktop. I see further into the future that desktops will probably be replaced with something more low key, more like a cross between a game console and a PC. Anyways, with that in mind...we should work more towards developing that, and improving our servers to do their job better.

    I don't mean this as a troll and I don't want to tell anyone what to do...but I think that would be more helpful in the cause of better software. I would much rather have a kickass pc/console gaming system that uses a HDTV and a dsl connection and a device to write on that works similar to the palm graffiti so I don't need a keyboard, and a game controller, which may have that built in. It also should have a dvd player/cdrom on it and an OS that is only for doing basic things and you can't crash without running it over with your car.

  • FreeBSD and Linux do not have the same directory structure, although with the FreeBSD Linux compatibility layer, most of the Linux directory structure is created in a special portion of the file system.

    Code libraries for FreeBSD and Linux can be compiled from the same source, but I think have different directory locations where they want to call home.

    Also, a lot of the code (mostly commercial and non-open source software) for Linux are tied to the Linux hierarchy and calls, thus making them hard to port over to FreeBSD (like the Java port).

  • Re:Linux games w/ emulation? (Score:3)

    by Fervent ( 178271 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @09:30AM (#853441)
    Or you could have just inserted the CD in Windows 2000 and had it install in seconds.

    Food for thought. :)

  • I would honestly love to run FreeBSD on my desktop, but it doesn't (currently) have a 1.2 or 1.3 Java JDK - until that point, I'll stick with Debian, thank you. I enjoy using FreeBSD as a server (when I don't need Jserv), but that's where it will stay.

    That, combined with FreeBSD's inferior SMP (for now anyways - I know FBSD 5.0 will be good), is enough to convince me to stick with GNU/Linux. I would also like to see a journalling filesystem for BSD - there are at least 5 in development for GNU/Linux (Reiser, ext3, JFS, XFS, and GFS - although GFS is of course much more and a different concept altogether, it does do journalling and you can run it as a 'local machine only' FS). Do any BSD hackers know of any similar development efforts for BSD?

  • Well, my point is that you can get to play the games without buying their stuff by

    (a) Have a WinDoz partition
    (b) Buy the Windoz version and get the free linux executables

    Instead of that, you can just buy their games straight.

  • You miss the point, we FreeBSD'ers are supposed to run the Linux version. All Loki says is that they are going to make sure the game also runs in the Linuxator in FreeBSD as well.

    Regards, Tommy

  • Yes, you always have to make sure you don't mention the word "Windows" around here, or you are instantly branded "flamebait" without rhyme or reason.
  • Bareword found where operator expected at -e line 1, near "74696d40746572612d627974652e636f6d"
    (Missing operator before d40746572612d627974652e636f6d?)
    syntax error at -e line 1, next token ???
    Execution of -e aborted due to compilation errors.

    --

  • I don't have any experience with BSD, is this really exciting news? What is driver support like for BSD and how well can we expect these games to perform?
  • If you want us to buy your CDs, give us a link to where we can buy them.
  • I mean, SimCity 3000 is great, and I'm sure I'll buy a copy, but I really want The Sims.

    Especially since I was the person who cracked the dual byte encoding used for SimCity originally, when everyone else was just looking for the money cheat. They owe me.

  • Or you could have just inserted the CD in Windows 2000 and had it install in seconds.

    A hell of a lot more expensive, as I would have to buy windows 2000 first. And not in a few seconds either, as I would have to re-partition and install windows first. And then I would have to reinstall windows 2000 now and then when it breaks, possibly reinstalling the games, and so on. Until a new windows version comes up, and new games "runs better" with the newest windows. More money to microsoft.

    Food for thought indeed.

  • there is 3d support utah-glx works fine on FreeBSD, i have been using it on riva tnt. there are now kernel drivers for AGP support (patches on utah glx site). on my riva tnt quakeforge works fine quake2 is playable i havent tried q3 but i heard that it is working too. unfrotunately for riva tnt there is no direct rendering support. Dominik Behr

  • Re:Linux games w/ emulation? (Score:3)

    by AntiBasic ( 83586 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2000 @11:46AM (#853452)
    If you're referring to BSDi as in BSD/OS 4.1 then probably. LAP (Linux Application Platform) enables a BSD/OS system to execute many dynamically linked Linux ELF binaries (both libc5 and glibc) with no significant loss of performance. This release has been tested with the following Linux applications: Adobe Acrobat, ApplixWare, Informix and Word Perfect. It works about as well as well as BSD/OS's SCO shell (sco sh).

    LAP works by inserting an interface library in between the Linux application and the Linux libraries, and the BSD/OS kernel. This library interface translates Linux data structures and other system call parameters to and from BSD/OS equivalents. For example, the library replaces the Linux stat(2) call with a translation function that calls the BSD/OS stat(2)call and converts the BSD/OS stat buffer into a Linux stat buffer. No special preparation is required to run Linux programs with LAP; there is no seperately invoked emulation program (with SCO/iBCS2 you run sco sh). LAP should be roughly as efficient as the native Linux glibc library.

  • well, performance is the same (or better ;-))
    linux emulation in freebsd is just another set
    of entrypoints into kernel.
  • I must be bored- I'm arguing with an Anonymous Troll.

    I don't HAVE to use links... You use terrible logic to argue with.

    Fact: The presence of Office does not make for superiority. If you use that reasoning, MacOS is as superior as Windows is. I don't think you're going to go there... (While I think that MacOS is great- I don't think it's superior to everything else; it's good for what it was designed for...)

    Fact: All generalizations are false- including this one. When you make such generalizations as "Windows comes out first, and Linux and MacOS come later..." you set yourself up for immediate failure. Vicarious Visions, makers of Terminus, recently released a single SKU box that had support for Windows, MacOS, and even Linux. Furthermore, your premise is flawed- the reason why Windows versions come out first is that currently the market is something like 80-90% Windows for gaming machines. Even if they have a superior gaming platform that's different than the dominant one, a company would be commiting suicide to not produce first for the dominant platform.

    Fact: Windows is still sold on pre-install agreements with Microsoft. The modified settlement that MS had with the DOJ didn't change that. It just made it across product lines offered from the OEMs.

    Fact: Claims of Windows being easier to program for than Linux without any proof is NOT a fact. Furthermore I know for a fact that the Windows APIs are laiden with vast amounts of booby traps. A prime example is the GetTempFileName call. In Win16, the first parameter is a number, with the default being 0, for the Windows system drive. In Win32, the first parameter happens to be a pointer to a string so that you can hand it the canonical path ("\\machine\share...") to where you want the temp file to be put. If you pass a zero to the Win32 call, it's behavior is "undefined" and produces garbage in the return string. No "...Ex" version for 32 bits. Nothing other than a warning in their MSDN disks. There's myriads of other landmines like this like thunking and some things in COM- I could go on and on.

    I honestly think you haven't a clue about what you're spouting off about.
  • Anyone feel this is a practice run for them, to help getting a feel for coding under the Mac OSX architecture?

    Perhaps some people do, but I don't, because

    1. the article said "Through this new partnership, Loki and BSDI will work together to ensure Loki's gaming titles are compatible with FreeBSD using the Linux-compatibility features";
    2. MacOS X may have a BSD-compatible kernel and much BSD userland, but the native window system is quite different from the native window system on most UNIXes, and I suspect most native MacOS X desktop applications will use either the "Classic" API/ABI (i.e., be generic MacOS apps), the "Carbon" tweaked MacOS API/ABI (also not particularly UNIXish, as far as I know), or the "Cocoa" API/ABI (which, as I understand it, is NeXTStEP), even for those functions you can perform with a native UNIXish API - even if they were doing native FreeBSD versions of the games, that'd probably largely be minor portability tweaks, not the sort of changes you'd need to make a native MacOS X application that uses the MacOS X window system, etc., etc..

    I.e., whilst there's BSD-compatible stuff "under the hood" of MacOS X, I get the impression that the BSD-flavored UNIX APIs there are not what most MacOS X desktop applications (and maybe not even most server applications) will use, so porting an application that runs on one UNIX-flavored OS (e.g., Linux) to *BSD (the BSDs are also UNIX-flavored OSes) doesn't make the application much more friendly towards the non-UNIX-flavored APIs that I suspect most MacOS X appls will use.

  • Of course, you have the problem that no code is truely portable if it takes full advantage of all the feature of the OS. For example, write anything to take advantage of ALSA, and you're limited to Linux. And it's not just people writing non-protable code. If you code just for POSIX, then you end up with a game that really doesn't take full advantage of the user's machine.
  • SDL is pretty limited though. For some games, it's enough, but for a real commercial game it's not that great. (Yes I know real commercial games have used SDL.) For most platforms, SDL is just a wrapper for the native services with less features. That leads to lower performance, and a "least common denomenator" API. What is really needed is for some smart cookie to get a bunch of people together and work on a portable API like DirectX.

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