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PC Games (Games) Software Linux

The State of Linux Gaming 540

Posted by CmdrTaco from the games-people-play dept.
Srikant_Chaudhry writes "CTZ has an interesting article that talks about hardware and software problems, along with others, that is limiting Linux gaming as a whole. Here's a quote from their concluding paragraph: "As of this moment, gaming on Linux is still a little like the Wild West. It's somewhat chaotic, random and empty, but it can be very exciting too. As time progresses and the market matures, we will see a plethora of games on Linux. Right now, many distributions are concentrating on other materials, like making their distributions easy to use, and making sure they work well with all the different hardware. Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, you can expect to see developers turn their energies to better gaming support under Linux. That's when the Linux gaming market will really take off."
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The State of Linux Gaming More

The State of Linux Gaming

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  • I'm willing to change (Score:5, Interesting)

    by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:16AM (#11571456) Homepage Journal
    Give me tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six and I'll get rid of Windows on my home computer.

    • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:39AM (#11571684) Homepage
      Give me tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six that run at the same speed reliably, without having to futz around with X-Windows or sound card drivers, and I'll get rid of Windows on my home computer too. Heck, if they can do it on Mac, I'd be just as happy.

      • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:5, Insightful)

        by plague3106 ( 71849 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @10:57AM (#11572624)
        Why is this insightful?

        My SB Audigy 2 worked fine OOTB with Mandrake 10. I had to install the drivers for my Nvidia 5700 (whihc you have to do in windows too).

        Once id released the Doom 3 client for linux, I could stop going back to windows to play it. It DOES run at the same speed as it does in windows, and I didn't have to muck around at all. It just worked.

        I even run it thru KDE, with my IM client still going. Seriously, what is the problem? If it doesn't run reliably or fast, its probably the game developers fault (or possibly yours, for having a bad setup).

        id can do it, its not impossible...and the fact that it did 'just work' really impressed me (i've been trying to game since '98 on linux).
        • "My SB Audigy 2 worked fine"

          Does multispeaker support work fine? How about EAX? Does it eat up your CPU cycles (it did the last time I tried the SB Audigy on Linux).

          "Once id released the Doom 3"

          id is a notable exception. They make some damn fine games, and they run damn fine on multiple platforms. Blizzard (to a certain extent) does the same thing.

          "It DOES run at the same speed as it does in windows"

          I'd be interested in seeing some benchmarks. I haven't seen one comparison of Windows/Linux id soft

    • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:5, Informative)

      by kg_o.O ( 802342 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:41AM (#11571705)
      There you go [americasarmy.com]

      • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:5, Informative)

        by plover ( 150551 ) * on Friday February 04, 2005 @10:26AM (#11572238) Homepage Journal
        Seconded! America's Army is The One True Game.

        The gameplay is brilliant: no "instant respawn". You die, well, you get to sit there and watch your buddies try to complete the mission. Since your opponents are also equally motivated to stay alive, they're usually much more challenging. The weapons and ammo aren't unlimited, you don't find Big Kegs O' Health laying on the ground, and you don't get powerups. There's no such thing as turning friendly fire on or off -- don't shoot your buddies or you'll get booted from the server and wind up in Leavenworth (worth exploring in cheat mode once or twice, by the way.) The graphics (especially since the 2.x release) are among the best in the industry -- great attention to detail. Most of the maps are fairly well balanced. And while you don't play an ongoing "character", your performance is still tracked, and counts for a little bit in selecting your position on each squad.

        Relatively few bugs, and PunkBuster to keep the cheating reduced to a playable level. All that and it's free -- you don't even have to sit through a "Join the Army" lecture to get it.

        I've played all the other FP shooters, and I keep coming back to AA for every one of those reasons above. I've not played it on Linux, so I can't swear to the performance on that platform, but if it can run on a crappy Windows box, it should run fine for you.

    • Agreed. Gaming is the only thing that's holding me to a Microsoft product. All the other applications I use have exact (or better) linux/unix counterparts, and they're all freeware.

      The article may be poorly done as some have stated, and it may be something that's posted about once a year, but it's still good to have a recent update of status.

      If the video card manufacturers would really start supporting linux drivers, maybe that would change the face of linux gaming. Until then, we're stuck with tuxracer
    • Are those 3rd person shooters? Those can stay on the game consoles.
      • Are those 3rd person shooters?

        Yes and no.

        Yes, if you mean that they're (most of the time) played from the perspective of the game character.

        No, if you mean that they're like Doom/Quake/Halo where you run alone through a hail of bullets mostly unscathed (and then go looking for a "health package").

        There's plenty of tactical thinking involved since in all three games control several other characters (up to 12 persons in Operation Flashpoint) at the same time. Setting your troops up for an attack or at

    • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @10:03AM (#11571942)
      As much as I agree with you in theory, it's a little more complicated than that in reality. Even though both my daughter and I have mid (her) to high (me)-end gaming computers, and even though we have tons of games on the PC that we like, I still bought her a PS2. Why? Because I've never been able to get Dance Dance Revolution on a PC and that's the game she really wanted.

      On the other hand, I've never considered buying her a Mac for gaming because all of the good games are just late ports of PC games.

      If you want to have people going to Linux for the games, you need more than just late ports of great PC games. You need some great games that come out for Linux FIRST and stay only on that platform for a significant amount of time. No one bought a PC to play Halo, but plenty of people bought Xboxs for it.

      TW

      • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:5, Informative)

        by Contact ( 109819 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @11:27AM (#11572988)
        ...I've never been able to get Dance Dance Revolution on a PC and that's the game she really wanted

        Check out Stepmania [stepmania.com]. It's an open source DDR clone, runs under windows, and can import third party songs and patterns (there are *cough* allegedly *cough* lots of these available on various file sharing networks).

        Without wishing to sound like flamebait, Stepmania is head and shoulders above most homegrown software - it's much better than most commercial stuff. I'm not a huge DDR fan, but I was incredibly impressed by how well this was put together. Best of all - it's available for Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows.

        Just add a USB to Playstation adapter, and you can plug a playstation dance mat into your PC and get going...

    • Here [strikeforce2004.com] you go.

    • Re:I'm willing to change (Score:5, Funny)

      by DenDave ( 700621 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @11:00AM (#11572660)
      Who cares about gaming? When you have a linux box you can have fun resolving dependancies, building packages and simply netcatting your little brothers porn traffic!!!

  • Dupe! (Score:5, Funny)

    by nicholasharbour ( 648961 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (ruobrahsalohcin)> on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:17AM (#11571458) Homepage
    I swear I read this EXACT story 3 years ago.
    • I swear I read this EXACT story 3 years ago.

      Yep, I thought the same thing when I read the headline.
    • As well as 2 years ago, not to mention last year and 4 and 5 years ago to boot.

      Somehow... I think we'll see this article for many years to come.

      I know what could help, a Linux gamer switch commercial similar to the one that the Red vs Blue guys did when talking about the great gaming on the mac http://www.roosterteeth.com/archive/download.php/? id=499 [roosterteeth.com]
    • Yeah, and the story itself is awful. Google for "Linux" and "Games" or "Linux" and "Hardware" and you get all of the source material.



      Additionally, they manage to blow what would easily fit on 1 page to 4. This story was not worth posting on Slashdot.

    • Re:Dupe! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Sure, but now we have the Cube LiveCD for PegasosPPC [slashdot.org]!. With a game I've never heard of running on hardware I've never heard of we've entered a new world of Linux gaming!
    • Actually, I think you may even have read it 2-3 weeks ago. Can we have a moratorium on "Linux on the Verge of Gaming Paradise" until, say, Linux has a market share that justifies the heavy hitters developing games for it.

      P.

  • All that matters (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sfing_ter ( 99478 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:18AM (#11571467) Homepage Journal
    All that matters is I can play Quake 3 just fine... well, the game plays just fine... :)
    • Damn sound bug with alsa/VIA chipsets results in silent Quake for many...

      I don't think that ID software will fix it, because Quake III is old. Maybe the linux drivers will get fixed...

  • Current state of my Linux gaming (Score:5, Funny)

    by JamesD_UK ( 721413 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:18AM (#11571468) Homepage
    ----+--
    |`....|
    |..f?.|
    |..@..|
    -------
    Lameness filter be gone! Lameness filter be gone! Lameness filter be gone!

  • I don't think so. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:19AM (#11571480) Homepage
    Once the Linux desktop has stabilized to a certain extent, that's when Linux gaming will take off.

    The Apple OS has been "stabilized" for 20 years now; still no games. Sorry dudes. It just ain't gonna happen.

  • Another state of games article? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tod_miller ( 792541 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:19AM (#11571482) Journal
    Well while we are here - I think it has been shown to stem from a) drivers b) opengl only c) user base and portability vis-a-vis drivers and opengl only.

    Microsoft owns about 60% of opengl. :-(

    In good news, flash games and java games all fly like shit out of a teflon coated colon. Which is kinda cool.
    • Oh, and what's this "MS owns 60% of OGL" nonsense? Where do you get that from?

  • bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis&gmail,com> on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:20AM (#11571493) Homepage
    OpenGL, OSS and X is about all you need to make game [well timers and IP networking]...

    You don't need some large ass complicated DX API to make a game in linux. OpenGL + OSS covers graphics and sound. X [motif, etc] cover your window dressing, keyboard and mouse.

    This is just another "pander to the concensus" bullshit article. The only thing plaguing "linux gaming" is that people make games with the DX API... Use OpenGL in windows and you save yourself quite a bit of trouble.

    Oh no, you won't have the latest doo-dah and VTX shader... well learn this. Doom3 does and it's a craptasticular game.

    Tom
    • Umm... Doom3 is famously done in OpenGL.

      The question developers care about is how easy is it to develop in DX vs. OpenGL. I personally have no idea though.

      Is there anyone here who has done both? Is OpenGL just as 'easy' to program as DX?
      • Direct3d is getting alot better than it once was. I'd say now it's about even.

        One thing lots of people underestimate is that (although also getting better) in general video card's directX support is better than their openGL support, and in general users gained by openGL users lost by not supporting directX (although once again getting better).

        The other thing to remember is Direct X is a lot more than just direct3d. While all the bits of directX have open source equivalents, directX has the advantage of h
    • That large ass complicated API is many times better than having to futz with APIs provided by multiple vendors. It also reduces if not eliminates the worries that they may have bad versins of all of these independant APIs. It also provides you with several known levels of feature support.

      In other words it is LESS COMPLEX to deal with.

      On a side note, your entire comment is very hostile to the current game development community and its standards and you wonder why this platform is ignored? Your type are

  • First invalid assumption: the same people developing desktop stuff are NOT going to be the people typically developing games.

    So, having said that, whats holding back the people developing the games ? It can't be the desktop, they can code around that....
    • So, having said that, whats holding back the people developing the games ? It can't be the desktop, they can code around that....

      The same thing that's holding back gaming on the Mac: Marketability / Userbase.
      When you only have a few people to cater to, it doesn't make for a very profitable venture. So what do you do? You stick with the name brand that sells, or at least what everyone owns.

      • +5 Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)

        by vrai ( 521708 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @10:18AM (#11572124)
        The same thing that's holding back gaming on the Mac: Marketability / Userbase.

        Exactly. Companies don't avoid OSX (or Linux) because they are such huge fans of win32 that the though of releasing software for anything else is abhorrent (Microsoft's first and second party studios aside). It's simply not worth the time and effort to do so for relatively few sales.

        The huge popularity of consoles relative to the PC games market is already cutting in to the number of Windows compatible titles. If companies aren't willing to develop for Windows, why on Earth would they port their games to a platform with 1/50th the potential market?

        There will always be games for the Mac and Linux. But they are going to be few in number and (mostly) behind the curve due to the time it takes to port them. Crappy video drivers for Linux and Apple selling machine with sub-laptop video performance isn't helping the matter either.

        • Re:+5 Insightful (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bersl2 ( 689221 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @01:19PM (#11574345) Journal
          Companies don't avoid OSX (or Linux) because they are such huge fans of win32 that the though of releasing software for anything else is abhorrent (Microsoft's first and second party studios aside). It's simply not worth the time and effort to do so for relatively few sales.

          If companies knew to write them in a portable way in the first place (OpenGL + SDL), porting would be relatively trivial, cost-effective, and beneficial to both parties.
  • Well already I have about 75% of my windows games working with transgaiming cedega. But I do not see many more game developers moving over to a Linux native option. They see it costing them to much money because most of them use the directx platform. Although I here Microsoft doesn't support direct play any more. But I doubt this will discourage them.

  • I'm worried (Score:5, Insightful)

    by feldsteins ( 313201 ) <scott.scottfeldstein@net> on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:21AM (#11571507) Homepage
    As time progresses and the market matures, we will see a plethora of games on Linux.

    I'm not so sure about this. I don't think there is enough incentive among game developers to actually make their products run on Linux. The way I figure it is that every Linux user who is also a gamer is dual-booting Windows (or running Windows on another box). Developer makes a Windows game. Linux guy buys it and runs it on Windows. That's one sale. Now what happens if the developer incurs the cost of developing a Linux version? He sells one game to Linux guy who then runs it in Linux and goes "cool!" That's one sale. Where does the developer gain in this scenario?

    Contrast this with the Macintosh game market. Developer makes a Windows version and Mac guy doesn't buy it. Developer incurs the cost of making a Mac version, Mac guy buys it. that's one sale - one sale he wouldn't have had before. There's an actual business case to be made for doing a Mac version, as long as the expected sales revenue is going to outpace the development/support costs of the new version. Not so with Linux. Too many Linux gamers are running Windows for them to count as additional sales.

    • Not to mention what the console market is going to do to PC games anyway in the next few years. When the next Cell based PlayStation comes out (and I assume the next-gen Xbox too) their game specific performance advantage over PC's are likely to be so great that I can't see much future in PC gaming after that.

      By the time Linux developers turn their full attention to Gaming (and that's one huge assumption anyway) they will probably have missed the boat.

      • Actually there is nothing wrong with console games on Linux. I suspect that the text console games, such as the Roguelikes, Adventures (sorry, Interactive Fiction) etc, have much more 'staying power' than most of the 'modern' 3D graphic and sound rich games.

    • Re:I'm worried (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:50AM (#11571787)
      Developer incurs the cost of making a Mac version, Mac guy buys it. that's one sale

      It's true that the revenue boost from a Mac version is far greater than what a Linux version would provide today. However, if a company has already decided on releasing a Mac port, then the additional effort required for a Linux port is far less.

      Once the codebase is platform independent, adding 3rd or 4th platforms is far simpler than adding the 2nd.

      Consider: to port a game to Mac, you must reprogram the internals to function in a Unix-based OS, and change the graphics engine to output OpenGL instead of DirectX. And of course, those two things are also the greatest obstacles to a Linux release.

      Further reasons why porting to Linux can be relatively cheap: 1) Unlike the Mac port, the Linux version will usually run on the same hardware as the original, meaning there's no CPU-specific optimizations to change. 2) If the game is online multiplayer, it probably already had a partial Linux port for the dedicated server, so some of the work has been started.
    • Is it better to make a windows version and a mac version than just not to use proprietary libraries and it working by default on all systems?

    • Re:I'm worried (Score:4, Insightful)

      by GreatDrok ( 684119 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:57AM (#11571859) Journal
      I'm not so sure about this. I don't think there is enough incentive among game developers to actually make their products run on Linux. The way I figure it is that every Linux user who is also a gamer is dual-booting Windows (or running Windows on another box). Developer makes a Windows game. Linux guy buys it and runs it on Windows. That's one sale. Now what happens if the developer incurs the cost of developing a Linux version? He sells one game to Linux guy who then runs it in Linux and goes "cool!" That's one sale. Where does the developer gain in this scenario?

      I have bought a fair number of games for my PC now and some of them will only run on Windows but others run on both. For the ones that run on both I have hardly played the Windows version (UT2004, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Doom III). They are the games that I enjoyed and got through quickly, the Windows games I have require me to reboot so it takes me longer to get through them. More to the point, the native Linux games play better than their Windows version, especially Doom III which is noticibly smoother.

      If the Linux version comes out at the same time, or very shortly after the Windows version I think there is definitely a point, if it comes out at the same time as the Mac version then just forget it. In the end, the developers should make sure that their games work on Linux too and they can ride the wave as Linux inevitably becomes more popular. It took Windows gaming years to get where it is today, Linux will catch up. Mind you, I think the PC, whether Windows or Linux, is going to have to watch out as the next gen consoles look likely to finally be capable of unseating the PC as the high end gaming platform of choice.

    • Whomever it was (I think it was Alex St. John) that convinced Bill Gates that "multimedia" on Windows shouldn't just mean being able to play/edit video but also games (and therefore the impetus for DirectX) should be given credit for the stranglehold on the market Windows has today.

      Why do people stay on Windows? Microsoft Office? Partially, but that doesn't account for why 90% of consumers do. Security? Nope. Stability? XP goes a long way, but nope. The real reason people stay on Windows is because that's

  • I can't agree with the statement... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cnelzie ( 451984 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:22AM (#11571526) Homepage
    ...that once the Linux desktop is easier to use that LInux Gaming will 'take off'.

    PC gaming 'Took Off' without PCs being easy/simple to use devices. Just remember back to the days of DOS with games like the original Wing Commander, not necesarily very easy to get running, when compared with installing and getting modern games to run under Windows.

    Linux gaming shouldn't be an afterthought, it should be a current thought, going along with the development of an easy to use desktop operating system.
  • Call me an optomist if you liek but I really think there is potential for a linux based live cd that specifically targets games. If implemented in the right way it could some respects start to rival not only windows but also consoles. It woudl probably involve some emulation of DirectX though.

    Now that ATI have finally got some linux drivers there is no technical reason why linux couldn't become a serious gaming platform.
    • The whole point is so people don't have to reboot though. People might as well reboot into windows (which most people who have switched in the past year or so have) and run the game from a platform they know will work. Who wants to waste the time of restarting their computer when they could instead just click on an icon.

      I don't think new games are going to be made available on linux for a while. Most gamers should just hope for a "cedega" compatible version for the next few years. And I'm not a pessimi
  • "It's somewhat chaotic, random and empty, but it can be very exciting too."

    Yes, and there will be no more life in 100 years than there is now.

    Linux gaming lacks 'critical mass', required for justifying the huge game development investments. And I don't see how it could acquire the critical mass, some great independent developers don't count compared to the Nintendo's, Sony's et al of this world.

  • America's Army rocks (Score:5, Informative)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:27AM (#11571565) Homepage
    I've been playing AA:SF on Linux for a couple of weeks and it is rock solid. I was amazed to find that there was a Linux version, and there is one single guy in the credits who is credited with both the Linux and Mac OSX ports. The only problem is that I couldn't signup on their web site with Firefox, had to use IE.

    Anyway, good FPS, absolutely free, and downloadable via a torrent (check out the 3dgamers link for download).

    • Re:America's Army rocks (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:46AM (#11571756)
      AA:SF is cool. Can someone help me with the later missions. I've toppled the statue, and am holding my own against the insurgents, and I've seen the "Mission Accomplished" splash screen... but I can't seem to find the WMD anywhere? Is there a secret button I need to push somewhere?

      God be with you,
      George.
  • I think the biggest asset to open source gaming would be for that open specs video acceleration card to become widely used. Sure, it won't get high frame rates on the very latest commercial games, but if it can do tuxracer, bzflag, and other such games with GOOD drivers there will be a lot of happy linux game fans (myself included.) And perhaps if the first card succeeds future versions will be state of the art. If crystal space tunes for it, and somebody ports the genesis3d engine to run on Linux, perha
  • With the redistributable nature of Linux it wouldn't be so far fetched for Linux games to just be a live CD with the whole environment on the disc. Ok this would be slow but it might be possible to make these hard disk installable and have the live CD just perform the boot process.

    The advantage of this system would be the OS files could all be the ones used by the game maker, there would be less problems with older and new OS files. Of course research is needed, these are just theories :)

  • I think not. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Morphix84 ( 797143 )
    Firstly Bringing a game to market is extraordinarly expensive, and you won't see game development on the scale or quality of Windows games for Linux until a large number of users (read: not /.ers) Switch to Linux, it's not profitable to do so. Secondly, Linux needs a strong abstraction layer that's as powerful and easy to use as DirectX. The ones out there now aren't up to par yet. One day perhaps, but not one day soon. While some people are satisfied with Quake 3 and a handful of others for Linux, most
  • BUT! The good news is I think people have recognized it and have started "breaking the cycle". Here's the situation:

    "No one wants to develop games on Linux because of lack of hardware support, and no one develops good gaming hardware support, because there is no* games support in Linux"

    That being said, I was excited as hell to see UT and UT2003 among others being released on the Penguin Platform.

    Better yet, if companies continue to release Linux ports/builds despite mediocre hardware support, it's only

  • Plenty of small free games (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rik Sweeney ( 471717 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:29AM (#11571596) Homepage
    There's

    Project Starfighter [parallelrealities.co.uk]

    Blob Wars [parallelrealities.co.uk]

    Virus Killer [parallelrealities.co.uk]

    Give them a try. After all, they're completely free.

  • My favorite Linux games just for the record. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pecosdave ( 536896 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:30AM (#11571601) Homepage Journal
    UT2004 [unrealtournament.com] (and the older UTs also)

    The Battle for Wesnoth [wesnoth.org] very good freebie.

    These are the ones I'm focusing on right now. I've played lots of others. Quake III, Frozen Bubble, I saw someone complain about lack of tacticle shooters, I did have Soldier of fortune. Now that Loki is gone ports don't happen quite as often, but they do still happen. Right now Blizzard is probably the biggest gaping hole in the Linux game library.

    • Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Azureflare ( 645778 )
      What blizzard game doesn't run in linux?

      Oh.. Diablo 1 doesn't play, I don't think... But Diablo 2 and the expansion, StarCraft + Expansion, World of Warcraft, warcraft 2 (dunno about the expansion for that), Warcraft 3 + expansion... They all work. I know, because I play them in linux with cedega.

      I wouldn't consider that a "gaping hole."

      • What killed OS/2?

        OS/2 died because it could run Windows programs, and thus nobody wrote any for OS/2. Okay, fine we can shell out a ton of cash for OS/2 and Windows, then we can run OS/2 programs AND Windows programs. Wait, why don't we just right Windows programs since OS/2 can run them anyways? We don't need to write OS/2 programs. Thus, the OS/2 software library did not grow. Know anybody still running OS/2? We shell out cash for Windows games and run them on Linux. As far as the developer is con
  • is there a compelling benefit for the players to play (traditional) games on linux? as an OS, i can understand how linux is a great alternative to windows - stability, cost, security, etc.

    but i think gaming is fairly well covered by consoles (cheap, easily accessible) and PCs running windows (highly optimized hardware support, abundance of games).

    why linux? (other than providing competition... which i won't dispute is a bad thing.)

    • Re:why linux? (Score:3, Informative)

      by 10Ghz ( 453478 )
      Well, consoles are not the end-all solutiuon to gaming. They might excel in some types of games, but not all. Ever seen strategy or simulation-games on consoles?

      And I do have one occasion where gaming has been better on Linux than on W2K. I have some old DOS-games that I like to play, like Steel Panthers 2. It wont work in W2K so, I installed Dosbox [sourceforge.net] on it, and ran the game there. It worked, but it was unbearably slow. I then tried installing Dosbox on my Gentoo (running on the same machine), and it was ALO

  • LiveGames (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:31AM (#11571612) Homepage Journal
    I remember when lots of "Windows" games just booted into DOS, for performance and stability. That's when Windows gaming really started to take off. Linux is so much more flexible, the OS is freely available and hackable by any game developer, and "LiveCD" and other subinstance techniques are now widespread. Why wait for the Linux desktop to stabilize? Why not just take a lesson from "Windows" gaming, and develop Linux games embedded in a complete, bootable Linux image? The increased use by demanding users (without developer fetish for touching the bleeding edge tech) will instead pressure the Linux desktop to stabilize. It worked before, on Windows, and such "bootable Linux games" can even be run on a "Windows" box, helping convert them to the Light Side.
  • The entire premise here is misguided. It's not like Windows gaming is going strong - it's a dying market, and with good reason. People are turning to the consoles for their gaming, and console games sell many, many more copies. Half Life 2 sold 1.7[1] million copies at retail, whereas Halo 2 has topped 7.5 - companies will go where the money is, and the money is not in developing for Windows. If you think there's anything that can be done to make a linux game sell 7.5 million copies, you've got rocks in
  • It isn't that games, when programmed for linux have a hard time. Quite the contrary, they work great. The real issue is something much more difficult.

    First there are the 3d video driver issues, once almost impossible to set up properly, it is now a matter that is only moderately difficult on some distributions. This is partly due to lack of free fully functional nvidia drivers (and I'm not entirely certain about ATI stuff--don't use ATI).

    Second, and even more difficult, is the problem of GETTING COMPAN

  • So, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Moby Cock ( 771358 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:36AM (#11571656) Homepage
    So where are the Open Source Games Projects? Really, the OSS community has tackled massive projects like new kernels and a fantastic browswer. Why are there now OSS game prjects that could set up Linux games. Perhaps even make the 'Killer App' to promote migration.
  • Game developers will not port their games over to Linux because we want them too. Firstly, they believe a couple things:

    - Linux users are such a minority they are a drop in the bucket
    - Linux Users won't pay
    - No DRM on Linux

    The commercial game industry isn't going to buy that. The best thing to do is for F/OSS Developers to knuckle down and develop their own games. Thats right.

    We need more Freedroids, we need more Vega Strikes, we need *Good* Versions of LinCity, Wesnoth and what not.

    Our focus should be
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • From chat on the Gentoo forums, it looks as though it's simply because even using OpenGL in Linux, UT2004 is optimised for Windows and DirectX and that's it.

      Err no, it's because you have an ATI card. ATI card support blows under Linux because the company hasn't cared enough to put out decent drivers. So it's no suprised the game runs worse for you under Linux than Windows.
  • Once 10% or more of CONSUMERS start running Linux, games will be published for it. The larger the market share, the more games that will be published. Heck, 10% might not even be enough.

    I also think that systems like TransGaming are a real bad idea. They give gaming authors an excuse NOT to publish to Linux. They know someone else will get it to work.

    It's like the Black people who supported Jim Crow laws by willingly sitting in the back of the bus. Linux should not be a treated as a second class citi

  • With all the previous comments about LiveCDs with games I felt it might be prudent to mention the Linux Live Game Project [altervista.org] which was recently mentioned here on /.

    Another useful link for people looking for Linux games is, of course, linuxgames.org [linuxgames.org]

  • Let's pick on the Linux community today! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:43AM (#11571727) Journal
    GAME PROGRAMMER: How about we do a version for Linux?

    GAME COMPANY CEO: That's that OS used by those people who are rabid about not paying for anything involving software, right?

    GP: Yeah.

    GCC: Get back to work, dumbass, or I'll cut your balls off.

    Hey! I tease!

    • That's probably not far off. The problems are, AFAICS,

      1. support burden; you're fighting a huge number of distros, half-assed drivers from companies who don't really care about Linux, and so on
      (related: QA burden: double the testing!)
      2. cost of port in the first place
      3. less of a framework to implement copy protection; it's even easier to drop stuff into the kernel, libs, etc. to fake it
      4. commercial demand; OK, chicken and egg, but it's basically negligable right now

      I think support is the real killer: ev

  • How to *really* get Linux games (Score:3, Insightful)

    by droleary ( 47999 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @09:45AM (#11571745) Homepage
    Buy a Mac. Seriously.

    The linked article is just bad, even beyond turning one page into four for ad purposes. Linux is not a game market, plain and simple. It isn't really even a desktop market. The only commercial alternative to Windows you can expect to make a statement is a Mac. With a Mac you don't have driver issues or the possibility of emulation for games. A Mac port will involve technologies that are also mostly available for Linux.

    No game company with a clue would target Linux before they target the Mac, so you can count on the Linux game market always trailing that of the Mac (which isn't exactly stellar). CoolTechZone is beyond deluded to suggest that buying Linux games is going to do anything significant for the platform. It makes sense only on the surface; the real market dynamic points to the Mac as your best bet for eventually seeing more major games on Linux.
    • Mac fanboi-ism aside, Mac's still aren't going to do much better. Don't buy a Mac. Seriously. It's all about market share and Apple just doesn't have it.

      From the Operating System Wiki entry [wikipedia.org]:
      Today, Windows is the most popular desktop operating system, enjoying a near-monopoly of around 90% of the worldwide desktop market share.

      Now for arguments' sake, pretend we divide the remainder between Linux and OS X evenly. If you are EA or Valve and you want to make a game, do you begin writing for the 5% mark
  • and I had the hardest time installing it.

    I had been using a a linux machine in DMZ on my home network for the last two years but World of Warcraft didn't run on Linux. I decided to install Windows on it to play my game. So I popped an old 40G hard drive and installed Windows while it was still connected to the network.

    Funny thing the install took 3 and half hours instead of the 54 minutes it said it would install in. Upon bootup well... hahaha I'll let you guys what happened then...

  • So is (or was) http://reaper3d.sourceforge.net. flightgear is striving to become an extremely accurate flight simulator, if memory serves, so it's a bit lacking in gameplay unless virtually flying around looking at stuff or maintaining schedules is your thing. reaper3d was a no-nonsense fly around and blast stuff game. Unfortunately it seems there hasn't been any active development in a while. I'll have to take another look at it. I remember being sad it didn't attract more game developers, since what w
  • Okay, some background; up until November last year, I worked in the games industry, coding for Windows and Xbox. I'm now working as a (non-games) developer under Linux. This article utterly fails to get a handle on the size of the gulf between the Windows games platform and the Linux one.

    Firstly, and this is a cliche, but hardware support under Linux is poor. Yes, I know you can get drivers for NVidia (and more recently ATI) video cards, but in terms of technological development, these drivers are way, way
  • The problem with development on Linux, especially in a GUI desktop, is that it keeps changing too often! Its frusterating to be a developer on linux, because you waste so much time trying to ensure that your products work properly with all the new distros, which ship library X as apposed to library Y, and very often break compat.... One thing windows has going for it, is that software written 10 years ago will still run, and software written today will still run on a windows box many years old... The same
  • Right now, many distributions are concentrating on other materials, like making their distributions easy to use, and making sure they work well with all the different hardware.

    They can only go so far, seeing as more and more hardware manufacturers are playing hardball and not releasing specs.

    If it doesn't work out, do NOT blame the distros.

  • Introversion (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Smiffa2001 ( 823436 )
    Introversion Software http://www.introversion.co.uk/ [introversion.co.uk] are performing small miracles. Uplink was great, and Darwinia looks to be fantastic.

    Best of all, they're available (at least Darwinia very soon after Win/Mac release) for Linux. If you've not seen em, go on over and take a look. If anything, it's people like Chris Delay and the rest of Introversion that might just be Linux gaming's "future".

  • Why don't more developers make native Linux games? Well, it's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Developers don't want to port unless they are convinced that there is a substantial market for Linux games, and that market will not come into being unless there are more games being released for Linux.

    And there's the condensed version of the article. The biggest problem with Linux gaming is Linux users. A number of years ago, pro-MS folks were running around and saying it was a development issue. There was

  • we might not get good commercial games but... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vivehosting ( 825092 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @10:22AM (#11572172)
    it doesn't mean Linux won't continue to see a few good games. Wildfire Games [wildfiregames.com] are developing a 3D real-time strategy game, 0AD [wildfiregames.com]. Just like we enjoy free/open source software applications such as openoffice and the mozilla suite, there will be free games worth playing. America's Army has a large fanbase, 0AD most likely will have one when released, more will come :).

  • What I don't understand is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Half-pint HAL ( 718102 ) on Friday February 04, 2005 @11:58AM (#11573373)
    If the Linux community are so short on games, why don't they do their usual collaborative thing and make game engines.

    An extensible flight engine using public domain mapping data could catch the imagination of the MS Flight Simulator fans -- let's call this Open Air -- and the other firm favourite that should be fairly straighforward would instantly have a catchy name: Open Golf.

    First person shooter engines, RTS engines, Turn-based map/strategy engines.... Once you have all these available for free, the the average home-coder gains the ability to generate a decent game quickly and easily, and the profit for those who chose to make a commercial game increases dramatically.

    HAL.

    • ### If the Linux community are so short on games, why don't they do their usual collaborative thing and make game engines.

      They are doing it, we have Stratagus, Flightgear, Cube, CrystalSpace, Ogre and a whole bunch of other games or engines that are more or less ready to use. However none of them really is up to commercial standards and most of them seriously lack content creation tools. Having a good engine is only half the work, you still need to have a good level editor.

      The free software world simply l

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