Tribes2 Patch for Linux Out 139
Tom writes "After Dynamix went under, Tribes2 was unsupported for a while, then Sierra signed a contract with GarageGames (the company formed by several Ex-Dynamic guys), but only for the Windows version.
Those of us who bought the Linux version ported by Loki were left out in the cold -- until today. Linuxgames has the story. Sam Lantinga of SDL fame did the port/patch."
Interesting.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyways, Im glad that support for Tribes 2 has continued for Linux (Can you still buy it?)....But are there any other companies that are doing what Loki did?
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1, Informative)
explanation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1)
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1)
Yes, you can still buy it at Tux Games: www.tuxgames.com
This game is worth it! I upgraded my system just to play this game.
Petition (Score:4, Interesting)
The Tribes 2 community has proven very, very strong, and even long after Dynamix (the creator) was closed by Sierra, Tribes 2 still lives on.
Tribes 2 is a game that is VERY different from most other 3D shooting games - it's almost closer to football than Quake once you've learned to play it right. Teamwork is everything, and it's almost unsuitable for playing without a clan membership.
Dybdahl
-=EEF=-Offence leader
http://www.euroeliteforce.net/
Re:Petition (Score:1)
Tribes 2 is a game that is VERY different from most other 3D shooting games - it's almost closer to football than Quake once you've learned to play it right. Teamwork is everything, and it's almost unsuitable for playing without a clan membership.
Yeah, the teamwork is very important. It sucks when you get in a public game with a bunch of people who just can't get their act together. On the other hand it also sucks when you get in a clan that can't get its act together.
Re:Petition (Score:2, Informative)
There are lots of Porting Petitions [tuxgames.com] on Tux Games [tuxgames.com] website: "Tux Games is determined to see all of the major commercial games ported to Linux. But before this can happen, the major game companies must be made aware of the demand. That is where we come in."
Re:Petition (Score:1, Informative)
Try asking politely, and with reasons. Petitions from spotty teenagers "demanding" things (especially free things) are just begging to be ignored.
Re:Petition (Score:3, Informative)
It's got great balance to it; there are no powerups or BFG's or invincibility to mess up the game dynamics. And people who focus on deploying and repairing equipment can make as much or more difference than people who act like cowboys.
And the 3-D nature of the game, the ability to fly around with a jetpack and head as far as I want in any direction across the terrain, means I'll never again play one of those games where I'm stuck to the ground in a claustrophobic dungeon.
Tribes 2 is a terrific game. I'm really disappointed Dynamix was scuttled. I'm ticked at Sierra in general for lots of other bad decisions, such as killing off the Mac versions of Tribes 2 and Half-Life when they were all but ready to ship, and also for cancelling Babylon 5: Into The Fire.
(If you play Tribes 2, look for me! I'm 'wow! scotfox'. My tribe, 'wow!' aka Wookies Of War, has been the #1 ranked Siege tribe for most of the time since T2 was released.)
Re:Petition (Score:1)
Re:Petition (Score:2)
Sorta OT (Score:2)
Ah, nostalgia.
Re:Sorta OT (Score:1)
Hats off to Sam (Score:2, Offtopic)
Hats off to Blizzard (Score:5, Interesting)
But Blizzard gave the goahead for Sam to work on the Tribes 2 Linux patch during work hours. So Blizzard supports the Linux community! But they're Evil! But they're Good! *smoke*
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, they're evil for shutting down a service that let unauthorized people play Battle.Net games and leaked copies of the Warcraft 3 beta.
They are such bastards for creating AAA games and taking steps to protect them.
You are far better off hating the DMCA than hating Blizzard. Is the real problem that Blizzard sued to stop a questionable service, or that the DMCA gave them the power to do it?
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, I just wanted the +1 Funny, 49 is such an ugly level for Karma
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:1)
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:1)
Everyone who wanted to pirate Blizzard games already had the bnet code anyway. The only people who were hurt by this legislative crap was the Blizzard fans who were using the code to run their own servers to play their legitimately purchased games.
Oh, and people were playing Warcraft 3 beta early. The company lost... oh wait, the company didn't lost ANYTHING because of this other than building better anticipation for the actual release of the game. Cry me a river blizzard.
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:2)
You realize that you're generalizing a whole lot in there, right? The truth is, you have no idea who was using it or why. It would have made WC3 a lot easier to pirate as soon as it came out sine BnetD doesn't check the keys.
You don't want Blizzard losing interest in making good games. Trust me on that.
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:1)
Re:Hats off to Blizzard (Score:2)
Re:Hats off to Sam (Score:2)
I don't think Irix is one of the targets now, but I don't care - I don't use it any more either
Simon
Re:Hats off to Sam (Score:1)
It's stopped crashes in the ingame community screens for me. FPS are back up to pre 24834 levels.Can't say much about the reduced firing delay, the closest patched server is pinging 200ms away.
Thanks to all those involved in getting this done.
Dynamix & GG (Score:2, Informative)
Because the Torque Engine (used to be called the V12 Engine, but someone had previously trademarked it) is based on the Tribes2 engine, many of the fixes require very little work to make it back into the Tribes2 tree. A great amount of work is going into the Torque Engine for cross platform support, and thus the Tribes2 linux patches are born. =)
Will
Re:Dynamix & GG (Score:1)
- Rohan
Re:Thanks... (Score:2)
Only if it's a Linux version of an ancient game.
Re:Thanks... (Score:2)
no, only if it's an AAA game for Linux that was going to the trashcan because of lack of updates, and now doesn't.
Re:Thanks... (Score:2)
That's why companies that make console games do so much better even though a console only has 5-10 million people on average that own one.
Re:Thanks... (Score:2)
Oh, you're right. You found one rare example (afterall, we don't live in a world of absolutes) so my point is 100% negated. Every single game is a classic forever and people buy millions of copies every day.
Re:Thanks... (Score:1)
Shelf life or no, be glad the good games are supported.
Teamplay, huge maps, vehicles, excelent physics... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Not in Loki_update? (Score:2)
don't know) that interactively downloads patches for any installed loki games,
plus Unreal Tournament for linux and applies them. I couldn't find this. I
had to go directly to the ftp site and grab the patch. Does anyone know if
this will be placed for the loki_update app to work, or is it discontinued?
It's a very useful app, seeing as how you can just run it, select what games
you want to check for update and leave. I hope that they don't discontinue its
use.
SealBeater
Re:Not in Loki_update? (Score:1)
Went under? (Score:3, Funny)
It's a beta (Score:4, Insightful)
Dybdahl.
-=EEF=-Offence leader
http://www.euroeliteforce.net/
WIndows version is bug central (Score:3, Insightful)
REQUEST: Somebody code a T2 mod for UT2003 engine, PLEASE!
Once its out sierria can do nada.
This is a *beta* patch (Score:1)
Re:uhh (Score:2)
page news."
Somebody made a "it's not newsworthy!' post without considering the ramifications of the article. That was worth reading.
Re:uhh (Score:1, Flamebait)
A rather large chunk of the Slashdot population are Linux enthusiasts. The other chunk (and there is a lot of mixture here) is anti-MS.
So we see everything that is anti-MS and everything that sounds like Linux may gain a larger share of the market.
The result? We get idiotic stories like "An e-mail from an executive proves that MS intends to assymilate the world!" and "Walmart sells cheap-o computers nobody will want with Linux installed!"
My answer to your post was more like "That's the way things work, make the most of it" rather than "I found this interesting!". Don't give me shit about it.
FINALLY (Score:1)
We should have bought a new copy. We should have helped them along. We failed them, they didn't fail us.
Re:FINALLY (Score:4, Insightful)
Never. Not unless they make new games for Linux.
The problem is that the game market is a novelty market. Lots of companies make games that will be interesting for about a month and then move on. If memory serves, Loki ported games that had already been out for a while.
The problem is that this means Loki will never really hit mass market. The people who buy the games buy them right away. If it takes a year (for example) to port the game, then it's lost nearly all of it's value, even if it's a classic like Quake 3.
What we need is for a couple of risk taking companies to start making games strictly for Linux. (Maybe port to PC a little later...) Get the game market started on that OS, and you'll start to see more concurrent development.
As the Mac has already proven, an OS is not going to get lots of 'me-too' games. If Linux users really want to play games, I'm sorry to say it, but they're going to need to build a Windows box.
Re:FINALLY (Score:1)
Not that i was a port like the stuff Loki did, but why did they bother to make one at all?
As we all know, the linux crowd is not exactly notorious for being willing to pay for software.
Re:FINALLY (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the only absolute in our world is that all humans require oxygen to survive.
*sick of people acting like I'm either extremist or absolute.*
Re:FINALLY (Score:2)
the only reason we do a Linux port is because Linux gives me a hard-on. We make absolutly no money on this version and please don't send us bug reports because it costs us money and I get ragged on for doing Linux ports anyways
please don't take this as being even close to the origional wording but I believe that I've transmitted the idea pretty well. Suffice it to say the wonderful people at Id are the exception and as a result they arn't the best example.
Re:FINALLY (Score:2)
Yes, Loki did port established titles. But a better question is whether their failure was caused by this, or the fact that Scott Draeker, the guy in charge, was funnelling money out of the company into his own account (as reported over at linuxandmain here. [linuxandmain.com])
Thank you for rehashing the same argument that was beaten to death on here for months.
-transiit
Re:FINALLY (Score:2)
A.) I don't care if it's talked about as much as making beowulf clusters out of everything, I didn't participate in that argument. I have no interest in Linux as a gaming platform so I don't know why you think it's a prerequisite for me to know what agruments have gone on about it. Thank you for rehashing the argument that arguments are rehashed when they could be avoided by dedicating your life to knowing about it.
B.) A game that sells 10,000 - 40,000 copies is not a success. It's pathetic. I don't care how much money was funneled away into somebody's account, those #'s are scary to somebody saying "Let's start a Linux game company!".
C.) Regardless of Loki's internal problems, they had 0 chance of becoming big if they established themselves as a port company. You could replace 'Loki' with any other company/management, the poblem is the exact same.
To summarize, no matter what happened to Loki, my comment still stands: Linux is not a market for the game industry to cater to. If you're going to argue with me, argue that since it was my point.
Re:FINALLY (Score:2)
Maybe this is true if you're somebody like EA, or Blizzard, or ID, or whatever. You never hear about people complaining about Ferrari not having the same sales volume as Volkswagen. 40,000 X $50 really isn't that bad if you're a company of around 10 employees, especially considering they didn't really have to do the hard parts: design, art, etc. And when they were selling games through their site, yes, they were getting $50 a copy, so a cut for the distributor isn't really an issue in that case. Pay off the title's original owner, and the rest can go back into the business. Sure, 40K units isn't a lot for the Windows game market, but how does that compare against the Mac games? Or other Linux games? Different market, different yardstick. Really. So companies don't fail because the management is stealing all of the money, they fail because they didn't get the memo that porting companies have no chance of success. Do you think you could provide a few more examples of similar companies that have failed? Maybe you could also throw in some about all the other Linux-centric game companies that have failed, thus proving there's no way to pull off such an endeavor? So where was that point again? You started off on the original post I replied to that Linux needs platform-specific titles, and then concluded with Linux users should just use Windows instead. Would Linux exclusive titles be a good thing? Sure, but they still stand about as much chance of success on their own as any other game thrown into the market (the vast majority of which aren't big-sellers).
I think there are a couple flaws in your basic premise. First, things like what Transgaming is trying to do makes porting relatively trivial. Second, the gaming industry is a big nasty place, and one company's failure (which easily could be attributed to more fundamental problems) is hardly enough to use as a precedent. Third, there's a vastly different culture associated with the different platforms: Linux and Unix tend to be used by engineers, scientists, programmers, other researchers, and generally anyone who wants a stable machine, but isn't afraid of the learning curve. The Macintosh is often used by designers, content creators, pretentious artists, etc. Windows has long been used for business/home desktops as a general purpose environment, and as a toy.
-transiit
Re:FINALLY (Score:2)
You never hear about people complaining about Ferrari not having the same sales volume as Volkswagen. 40,000 X $50 really isn't that bad if you're a company of around 10 employees, especially considering they didn't really have to do the hard parts: design, art, etc...
there's a vastly different culture associated with the different platforms: Linux and Unix tend to be used by engineers, scientists, programmers, other researchers, and generally anyone who wants a stable machine, but isn't afraid of the learning curve...
In other words, the best they can do is ride on the success of another game and market it to people who aren't big game players. How do they decide which game to port? Well. it sold a million copies. Dontcha think the people who really want the game already have it? If a Linux user (who can't/won't run Windows) wants the game, why isn't he/she equipped to play other games too? Either that game in particular strikes a chord with them, or they're very masochistic with respect to playing games.
First, things like what Transgaming is trying to do makes porting relatively trivial. -- Obviously it's not that trivial. Even if it's as simple as 'press this button and a Linux version will get pooped out', there's still the issue of packaging it up for sale. That's where significant money goes. There's new boxes, a different run of CD's burnt, customer support for Linux users, and so on. Given what I said earlier, most companies really won't care to go through that just to 'appease noisy Linux users' because it's not clear that they represent a significant number of gamers. Is it good logic? I don't think so, but this isn't about what I think.
So where was that point again? You started off on the original post I replied to that Linux needs platform-specific titles, and then concluded with Linux users should just use Windows instead. -- No, I didn't conclude that Linux users should run Windows. I said that as long as Linux gaming is going to be ports, gamers are better off using Windows. I suppose I could have made that a little clearer. *Shrug*
"Maybe you could also throw in some about all the other Linux-centric game companies that have failed, thus proving there's no way to pull off such an endeavor? -- Don't need to, it's common knowledge if you're a gamer. (Macintosh... Sega Saturn...)
Why don't you show me a success? You're arguing with me in concept, but you're conjuring up nothing to give me any clue why porting games will ever be successful on Linux.
Meanwhile, the most successful game companies (Nintendo, for example...) build dedicated audiences by continuously providing innovative games. The N64 did very well against the PSOne. But the Saturn, which had several months head start, died miserably. This isn't because the Saturn was underpowered (Remember Virtua Fighter 2?), but because the games were mainly ports of games that had been out for a year.
Sega lost a system to that. So why should I believe that a company like Loki had any chance of entering Linux into the gaming market? Provide information, not theory.
Persuading companies to use SDL? (Score:2)
I think there are enough Linux games players now who would buy a Linux version of the game, but of course only if it comes out at the same time (and is as good) as the Windows version. The problem at the moment I think is that SDL is not up to the capabilities of the DirectX suite, am I right?
I don't quite get it. (Score:2)
I literally was checking
Re:I don't quite get it. (Score:1)
Re:I don't quite get it. (Score:1)
New patch not widely used yet? (Score:2)
Only saw 7 games running when I went online with this new patch. I'm assuming it's only showing servers running with the patch beta?
Anyone know?
Woohoo! (Score:1)
Requiem for Dynamax (Score:1)
However, I would like to say, that asides from Bioware/Blizzard, Dynamax made some of the best games ever. The one that most sticks out in my mind was Betrayal at Krondor. This was one of those games that came out right around the migration to CDs for games in general, when you could still get the floppys instead of the CDs. I didn't have a CD drive yet, so I got the floppy version, and it was great.
While most games of the time had bad stories, graphics, and even worse music, Krondor beat everything. It had large duengons, good wordlock puzzels, and a nice storyline. The music was great for the time, and I hear it was even better on the CD. In addition, many of the CD games at the time were pushbutton movies that you choose something every few minutes, and then watched a movie- not Krondor. I still love that game and wish that someone would update it as they have the Ultima series. Anyway, I am sad to see this company gone. Tribes/Tribes 2 was a great game as well, because it broke up the FPS genre a bit, and added some more strategy to it. The only other FPS that I like better are the Rainbow 6/Ghost Recon series.