Rune for Linux Review 106
Woody Hughes sent a
review of Rune for Linux thats running over at Reactive Linux. Rune is based on an enhanced version of the Unreal engine which has been ported to Linux by Loki. It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.
Huh? (Score:2, Funny)
It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't ALL polygons 3D?
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Other than that it could be argued that, as the game is displayed as a flat image on a 2d screen, no the polygons are not 3d.
Cheers,
Tim
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=pol ygon
It features a 3rd person perspective and the ability to make other polygons dead.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't ALL polygons 3D?
But what I have to ask, is what the hell does your question have to do with the line you quoted?
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I gues I should have bolded the "Other" part. Make what "other" polygons dead? The ones that aren't 3D apparantly. And what does making a polygon dead mean anyways? The post makes no sense to me at all.
Re:Huh? (Score:1, Funny)
Apparently Taco still isn't funny.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
Square deal (Score:4, Informative)
A polygon, and thus 2d (not three). The previous poster was off base saying a polygon has three points (in the biz, we call those "triangles"; all triangles are polygons, but not all polygons are triangles).
Polygons are by definition two dimensional.
-- MarkusQ
Re:Square deal (Score:1, Informative)
Of course, it depends on which definition
Main Entry: polygon
Pronunciation: 'pä-lE-"gän
Function: noun
1 : a closed plane figure bounded by straight lines
2 : a closed figure on a sphere bounded by arcs of great circles
Definition 2 certainly doesn't give 2D polygons (as measured in the same coordinate system that you use to measure the polygon defined in definition 1).
Re:Square deal (Score:2)
I'm not really convinced by your argument about the 'same coordinate system', because even if you only accepted definition 1, its easy to find coordinate systems that require 3 or more dimensions to represent valid polygons.
And for my next trick, I will tell you how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
Re:Square deal (Score:1)
Hey - the surface of a sphere is very much a two-dimensional coordinate space. Therefore a polygon on a sphere is a two-dimensional object.
The fact that it can also be described using a 3-D (Euclidian) coordinate system is entirely beside the point. After all, a Euclidian planar object could be described using 3-D coordinates in some non-Euclidian system.
(I'm an expert. I live in Kansas, which for the most part is mind-numbingly flat, even though we are technically mapped on a spherical surface. A wheat field around here is definitely two-dimensional, as anyone can see.)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Drivel. A polygon has as many points as you like. A triangle has 3 points. Just because 3D programmers and artists get lazy and refer to triangles as "poly's" doesn't make it true.
If you're going to be a smart arse, at least have the common courtesy to be a correct one.
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Yes it is true, a triangle is a polygon. Obviously the converse is not true (the point you were apparently trying to make) but if you can take people to task for verbal pedantry, I can too.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Sorry, I read 3rd as 3D. But still.... How do you make a polygon dead? What does that mean???
how to kill a polygon (Score:1)
Re:Huh? (Score:1)
Rune is cool, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure the whole swinging swords around and lopping heads off is a fun idea, but the combat is so basic and ping based that you never really have any fun.
Basically the guy with the lower ping will swing before you do and kill you before you kill him. In the event that two peoples' ping is the same, it's just a matter of jousting around each other until someone gets a lucky strike in. Shields? Forget it. Even the best shield won't stop a killing blow if you just stand there defensively.
Again, a nice diversion, but it has the staying power of wet toilet paper. Liken it to a game of quake where everyone comes equipped with a BFG and unlimited ammo.
Now if someone incorporated the combat lessons taught in Oni and made it multiplayer, THEN you'd have a close combat game worth getting excited over.
Re:Rune is cool, but.. (Score:4, Informative)
Now, we always play on a lan, so I can't really speak to the ping issues. However, I can say that I have used a shield effectively many times. You just can't stand there and expect it to protect you forever!
Being the lone linux user of the group, I was greatly looking forward to Rune for Linux. I own the Windows version, but I am ready to pay for the Linux version as well. However, after reading some comments about the poor performance and the high memory requirements, I may have to take a second look.
no, it's not that bad (Score:2)
Just grab a 256MB ram chip for $21 at Bunta.com, it's cheaper than the game is!
Re:Rune is cool, but.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that because this is no longer a shoot-em-up, there's no ammo problems. With HL, you could choose to try to mow down headcrabs with a rare hand grendade, or slowly but precisely pick them off one by one with common pistol bullets. With Rune, you chose if you want to slash, hack, or bash, and work from there. Yes, sheilds could be damaged, but I rarely used it; once the big weapons were present, I forgot about the sheild as I could run forward, attack, then run back better than defending by blockign the attack. So there was little incentive to play 'cautiously' in the game.
Also, the SP levels were rather poorly laid out. After you got past the setup, the first several levels were all wimpy enemies with the worse being the tube-claw monsters that were a pain to kill because of timing. This went on for *several* levels. Then you come across the netherrealm with *very* hard enemies that you have to decapitate in order to kill, and the only way to decap them was to jump up and slice or hack; you couldn't easily decap at ground level with them. This got tedious very very fast. However, after that set of levels, the game becomes a bit more interesting, but you've already done 1/3rd of it without a lot of exciting payoff, IMO.
Interesting when you talk about Oni; it has a small ammo/efficiency aspect, since you can choose to use weapons instead of fistdecuffs to win (and in some cases, that was a better solution), but again, the end portion of the game got boring since it was simply using the same moves on the same types of opponents, just in increasingly larger numbers. Great idea, but the SP just got boring particularly with the overly-large levels.
Re:Rune is cool, but.. (Score:2)
No jumping, no fancy aiming.. It decapitates 70% of the time in one hit.
I disagree (Score:2, Interesting)
It takes a while to get into the swing of Rune, but once you've gotten down the basics of timing and facing, you can slug it out with another player for several minutes. Each weapon requires a different offensive strategy, and each opponent weapon requires a different defensive strategy.
It's a lot of fun. My only beef is with some of the cheesy powerups, which can mercifully be mutated out of the game.
It's bad if your having latency problems, but if you can keep it below 200, there should be little problem. Keep trying.
Re:Rune is cool, but.. (Score:1)
Server already dead... :(( (Score:1)
Dammit, even a dumb "mirror of the text" post to get some karma would have been good.
I'm definitely not fast enough
rune for linux.... (Score:1, Informative)
Loki's Rune for Linux page (Score:4, Informative)
here [lokigames.com].
Games I'd like to see on Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Games I'd like to see on Linux (Score:2)
I run a P-II 266 and play UT and the Half-life series of games along with Quake, Quake II, and QuakeIII in 640X480 mode (Gotta love my Nvidia AGP Geforce2 video card
All of the above games run nicely in linux, dboot out to win98 and then play KFDM, ThiefII, and a host of others based on the QII and QIII engines. (they all are just copies of the base ID engines arent they
you have plenty of horsepower to play the games, just not at 1600X1200 with 32 bit depth and 6.1 surround sound. and on a good 3d card the low res looks dammned good .
Re:Games I'd like to see on Linux (Score:1)
Re:Games I'd like to see on Linux (Score:1)
Playing in Madison (Score:3, Insightful)
I took a trip to Madison, WI this past summer, and got the opportunity to play a deathmatch test with the developers. Needless to say, I got my arse kicked, but that's how most games go for me. Playing with the guys who made the game was a very unique experience, though.
As multi-player goes, I'm getting sick of all the 3D shoot-em-ups out there; there's really a lack of creativity in that field. I was drawn to Rune simply because it was a change of pace to get to fight hand to hand.
Graphics and sound for games nowadays all seem the same, too, and Rune was like any other there. But the gameplay was very different, and it really sets it apart.
We had about 20 people playing a map at any given time. Seems that Rune wasn't prepared for or designed for that. The maps were too small for that many people, and it created a lot of lag, even on a hefty server. Of course, this was just a test game, too.
I haven't played any single player parts yet, but I think I would be more intrigued by that. The game sorta has that feel of being made for single player, and multiplayer was just thrown in hastily to make it complete. I'm sure this would go well at a LAN party for a while, but unlike some other games, I don't think we could play it all night.
-WetDog
Re:Playing in Madison (Score:2)
here in Calif, we ran RUNE for a while, it was fun at the lan, for about 5 hours, then we moved on. It did not last long on the NET servers either, being voted out in less than a week. I really liked the single player version, and I understand they've done some net tweaking but all in all I prefered Heretic2 to Rune.
Great, but there are some issues (Score:5, Informative)
Game requires 512M of ram+swap to start. If you dont have that much dedicated for the game itself (dont forget to add on the RAM requirements for Linux itself), it'll kill your system at level transitions/whenever kernel can catch up to the allocations.
It is running piss slow on P3 450M system with 680M of ram (even on the 800x600 res).
These are my two main concerns with it, not to mention the fact that Loki only acknowledged the NEW ram requirements after a bunch of people expressed their concern in the mailing groups.
The 3D engine is ok, but still not bug-free.
Re:Great, but there are some issues (Score:5, Informative)
Not true at all... Certainly the added RAM helps, but before I bought more it ran just fine with a total 128 Megs RAM + 256 Swap (though it did take noticably longer to switch levels).
The 3D engine is ok, but still not bug-free.
Which is true of nearly every 3D engine.
Dinivin
Re:Great, but there are some issues (Score:2, Interesting)
It ran, but took forever to cache the levels in the swap file. The graphics were a little choppy as well. I later added an extra 128M of RAM (for a total of 256M RAM), and both these problems went away.
Once I made it past that hurdle, I enjoyed the game so much I went back and ordered the expansion pack. Go Loki!
Re:Great, but there are some issues (Score:1)
> forced me to allocate an additional swap
> partition (so I stole a gigabyte from my
> Win98SE paritition 8-P).
Just so you know in the future, you could've made an additional swap file with dd(1), run mkswap(8) on it, then did a swapon(8) on the file to dynamically add more swap space in addition to your swap partition.
- Arcadio
Re:Great, but there are some issues (Score:1)
It's very true. From Loki's page [lokigames.com]:
RAM
64 MB RAM minimum, 128 MB RAM recommended
512 MB combined RAM and swap required)
Re:Great, but there are some issues (Score:1)
Perhaps that's what they say, but it's still not true... As I mentioned, I ran Rune with considerably less.
Dinivin
Linux game development taking Mac model? (Score:2, Redundant)
The drawn-out death of Loki [ridiculopathy.com] is a great example. How far can you get asking people to buy a game they probably already own on a different platoform? And a domographic that isn't used to paying for software, either?
Re:Linux game development taking Mac model? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason for the problem with Loki's multifaceted- there's the delay, there's the fact that a majority of the Linux crowd's impatient (yes, that's the word for it) and has the luxury of dual booting (unlike the MacOS crowd...), the relative dearth of driver support for 3D cards until recently, and how expensive it is to license AAA titles (I personally think they bit off more than they could safely chew in a year's time...).
Re:Linux game development taking Mac model? (Score:2)
But in most cases, you're right. By the time the Loki port gets out, the game is old news.
But then there's people like me who are still playing Baldur's Gate and won't buy BG2 until I finish the first. I bought q3a for linux in a store for $10 about a month ago. I'm just not in to games enough to buy them when they come out. I rarely have time to play them, so by the time I get around to buying them they've been out for a while already.
Also, even though I am a linux user, I don't mind paying money for a good game. In fact, every time I upgrade my linux distribution, I make a point to buy a boxed version at CompUSA or Best Buy. I know I could download it, or get one of those budget CDs, but I like to support linux companies by buying their products. $40 for SuSE Personal is money well spent, in my mind.
It's also a source of great amusement for me to converse with CompUSA salespeople about linux distributions. That's more fun than any video game.
Re:Linux game development taking Mac model? (Score:2)
Re:Linux game development taking Mac model? (Score:2)
You mean after proving that they are profitable?
Face it -- most games are Windows only and die a quick, unprofitable death. The games that are really popular (UT, Sims, HalfLife, Railroad Tycoon) have a shelflife of a year or more.
Maybe the hardcore gamer types run out and buy/warez a game the day it ships, but the vast majority of the market doesn't operate that way. If Linux is indeed a big enough desktop platform to support the game market, they can do it with 6 month old games.
I've had it for months (Score:1)
Death to all polygons! (Score:2, Funny)
It's slow on both platforms (Score:1)
When I read that the Linux version needed tons of memory, that turned me off. What do they need the memory for? Storing textures? I thought the vid cards did all that? It uses the Unreal engine so it shouldn't be memory hoggy at all. UT: GOTY runs nice and fast on my machine, Tribes 2 isn't half bad either.
Perhaps they should be working on trimming down those memory requirements, it would boost the game performance overall.
Re:It's slow on both platforms (Score:1)
Scenes are slow to load, but the gameplay is fine.
I laughed, I cried... (Score:2, Funny)
Not really, but I laughed at the "ability to make other polygons dead"...that was cute.
I cringed because I had this discussion before with an editor before.
3d, 3D, 3-d all mean (ok, to me) 3 dimensional.
3rd means third, but I was told by this person that to "the average reader 3d means third".
The fact that I laughed at this person did not endear me to them, nor pointing them to 3dfx.com helped much either.
But, I digress.
I thought Rune was a good game, personally.
If my memory is correct, it uses the Unreal (tourney?) Engine.
Good game play and interesting idea in melee combat, but tedious at times.
I did like some of the minor humorous bits sprinkled in. (the fscking lizards on one level gave me a laugh)
The grfx, I have to admit were excellent...remember the original Unreal's first level of looking down the waterfall to the valley below? Even at 640x480 it was absolutely stunning. This is how most of Rune is...just stunning.
I never had the chance to play Rune online, but I have heard it is quite amusing.
So far in my online experience the best replay values so far for online/offline game playing are any Quake (Q3 above all) and a tie between Kingpin and Descent (especially Descent 2) and Carmageddon2.
Personally I think Rune was a Heretic/Hexen wanna be...almost. Sure you could throw hatchets, but it needed more projectile weapons (crossbow (heretic), spear, sling {F.A.K.K2}...something).
Rune like Oni was a good game, but it was such a radical departure from the norm it did not 'trip a lot of people's triggers, literally and figuratively' in the way that Thief did as an "anti-shooter".
I guess it was *too* different, if that is possible.
Re:I laughed, I cried... (Score:1)
Ok, I played through the game twice (once at medium, and again at hard), and I don't remember seeing this. What level was that on?
Re:I laughed, I cried... (Score:2)
Mode of combat and 3rd person... (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the things I noticed the other guys I was playing with at the LAN party were just running and banging on keys and they generally got lots of kills. Utterly amazing. Maybe if I programmed lots of key commands in on one of those monster joysticks and just ran around swinging, I'd get a lot of dumb kills too.
Re:Mode of combat and 3rd person... (Score:1)
This is exactly why I never got into Jedi Knight. It was too hard for me to figure out the 3rd person views for the lightsaber battles. Maybe, I'm just lame, but I've avoided most 3rd person view "shooters" since. I guess the only exception would be Diablo 2.
Another Rune site (Score:2, Informative)
Rune is a Great Game (Score:2)
Mind you I have not played with the death match much but it does indeed look like quake with all bfg's.
Correction (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Correction (Score:2)
Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sound: The SoundBlaster Live! is the soundcard of choice. And it's cheap too.
There are many soundcards better than the SB Live which have solid Linux support.
That's pretty much it. If you don't own an NVIDIA-based card, then I can't help you out since I don't own anything else.
This from a review site? What really do they review?
Heavy Metal: FAKK 2 was the first game I ever picked up that was in third-person, with Rune being the second. So, you can no doubt believe me when I say that my eyes actually hurt a bit until I got used to the gameplay.
Are you 15 years old? Never played Tomb Raider, Diablo, (War|Star)craft, any EA sports games, Oni, Shadows of the Empire, MDK, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Armagetron, Tuxracer etc? Exactly why should I trust the opinion of someone who DOESN'T PLAY MANY GAMES?
Mod me as flamebait, but it's true.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues (Score:1)
If you don't mind me asking, what would you recommend? I've been extremely pleased with my SB Live and the Alsa drivers... They support a great deal of the hardware of the card, and have really nice quality, IMHO. Also, just because there are better soundcards, doesn't mean that the SB Live isn't the soundcard of choice, as the article claimed. It's not uncommon for an inferior card to be the more popular one, and given the frequency of questions on the Alsa mailing list, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that the SB Live is the most popular one under Linux.
Dinivin
Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues (Score:1)
I liked the comment, but I resent the above.
I'm 15. And I've played most (not Shadows, MDK, Armargetron, Tuxracer) of the mentioned games. Age has *nothing* to do with gaming. Unless you're under a certain age, you can have played many great games.
Furthermore, age (or lack thereof) does not mean tendency towards playing shooters; many of my friends have played, say, Monkey Island, Wolfenstein, etc.
So don't discriminate against us young people.
Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues (Score:1)
Re:Rune is pretty fun, but the reviewer has issues (Score:1)
However, you can't go blaming people for being young.
Purchase from... (Score:3, Informative)
Why Bother? (Score:1)
...ability to make all other polygons dead (Score:1)
Another review (Score:2)
Fun single player.. think "Norweigan Tomb Raider" (Score:2)
It's a fun enough game to play single player, I think. The levels are interesting to look at, and kind of fun to play through. Combat's not all that, but getting to see the next level and cutscenes have proven to be enough of a motivator to keep me playing. The game is very well done from a thematic perspective, and it's big.. lots and lots of levels to satisfy your idle 'hm, i should be gaming right now' urges. Easy to pop up the game and work through a level or two before going back to whatever you were doing.
Worst game ever (Score:1)
This is definitely the kind of games Linux doesn't need (I think Rune is actually a perfectly valid argument against Windows). I'd much rather see conversions of Chris Sawyer's games (Transport Tycoon Deluxe, for example) or the Ultima series (up to Ultima VII / Underworld II anyway, Ultima VIII and IX were crap).
Um... (Score:1)
Re:Um... (Score:1)
Bought it, completed it, got the expansion pack (Score:2, Informative)
- Initial impression was - sweeet, nice graphics, cool weapons and a decent(ish) plot.
- Unfortunately there is too little variety in the creatures you meet - you spend about 4 hours of it just beheading zombies - and when you can't find a sword - that gets very frustrating.
- Lack of variety of attacks was also a bit dull. Need some special combos or something. However I did like the rune idea to get cool attacks, makes up for the lack of combos.
- Some good puzzles to get round, but not so hard as to bore me, but some were too simple (like being able to strafe round the edge of big swiping blades, instead of the jumping them)
- Expansion pack (same price as game) is a mere 70Meg install, with a bunch of extra maps and a couple of new multiplayer games. Whilst cool, I feel a little conned out of my $30. But I only installed that bit today, so maybe there's some surprises waiting.
Overall a good game, but maybe not worth the cumulative $72 I paid for it. It was my first commercial Linux game, and I'm sure it won't be my last. Thank goodness Loki are still around!
controling melee combat (Score:1)
http://www.sca.org [sca.org]
there's alot more to manuvering in melee combat than strafeing and attempting to duck behind a shield. for this reason i, personally, think that first person games with a melee base will not take off until another sort of interface is developed (or a revolutionary control set). anyway my two bits.
daniel
till then on with quake 3!!!