More Bioware For Linux? 287
GNious writes "Bioware has a thread about porting the upcoming game Dragon Age to Apple Mac OS X and/or Linux. Debate include such topics as porting houses, physics engines and the value of the market, with an enormous amount of requests for such games as Neverwinter Nights 2. With the potential for selling upwards of 1000 copies (counting individual requests) of a game at possibly $50 each, is the decision to exclude a platform and the associated revenue the correct one, or are the petitioners the ones that have gotten it wrong to think that their ca 1-5% marketshare matters?" I think the unfortunante reality is that in today's gaming market, you find that fewer people are willing to take a chance on the sales for these smaller markets -- too hard to predict revenue, and too hard to (some would say) to do the porting.
Not enough follow through. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not enough follow through. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If they later release a native linux port of nwn2, I'd d
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Well
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At this point there ar
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Same old story. There are no games for linux. There is no game market for linux. Linux users don't buy.
All are bullshit. Linux users buy GAMES. We prefer free but we buy Good Commercial games. Anyone who will continuously fiddle with wine and cedega for MONTHS (Sometimes Years (Half-Life) to get it to work, knows the value, and will pay for a Linux Native Binary.
The real reason we have this problem can be summed up in two words : DirectX
Notice anything about the games at the top
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Then buy a game console?? (Just a thought)
In any case, you CAN have a dual boot machine for such occasions... it isn't the end of the world. For me, if it doesn't exist or run under Linux, I have no interest in it anymore.
My gaming days are now over (RSI), but when I was having fun, there were plenty of good Linux games to keep me busy- and m
It's called the "I'll take two" syndrome. (Score:3, Interesting)
At All.
We've all seen this happen at least one time.
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This is only a rumour, but from what I have heard they were supposed to be paying fixed royalties per year besides the per-game royalties and while their sales of Linux games were good, they were not anywhere as good as they had to be to pay for this model.
This is not surprising - they went for old titles and simply rereleased t
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Does that prove that god and angels don't exist?
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Follow through (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I see it, it's Bioware who have a problem with following through.
Re:Not enough follow through. (Score:4, Funny)
Come on there's Pong, Solitaire (all 30 of them no less), Break Out, uh, Super Break Out, Asteroids, Space Invaders, *Super* space invaders, xBill, Tetris... that game with the sliding penguins, that other game where you can have the sound or the graphics but never both... Oh, and xpilot of course, and ADVENT, and um... Anyway there's lots of great games. There's so many I can't even remember all of them.
I even got Myth II for Linux in a real shop a few years ago (only Linux game I ever saw offline).
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And yet you were successful at it being one anyway!
do the math (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sure you wouldn't want to specifically port a project when 50k is on the line, but if it takes half a day to sort out dependencies and linking then your 50k is looking better and better.
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Re:do the math (Score:5, Informative)
If you're wondering why portable code means a better product, it's simple. Generally speaking, portable code means you're using multiple compilers. Multiple compilers will identify potential bugs and general code problems much more quickly.
Additionally, code which is designed to be portable up front also tends to be designed much better. This is because you have to have a strong low level API on which the rest of your code can sit. Violations of the design by coders is quickly identified once you start to compile on the other platforms as suddenly, it doesn't compile. You can then wrap knuckles as needed. The end is a product which is maintainable, readable, optimal, and well designed. Everyone wins.
If any of these design houses had the slightest bit of a clue, they would already have a portable, low-level API in place which is common to all of their games. This directly translates into faster time to market, fewer bugs, higher quality product, shorter testing cycles, smaller support costs, etc... And as a bonus, they obtain two additional markets (Linux and Mac) for little extra cost; assuming they do something reasonable like OpenGL at the start. Not to mention, this opens the door for the console market as then can continue to add new platform support to their low level API. The only one that becomes problematic is the Xbox because, AFAIK, no OpenGL support.
Let's face it, things like windowing, sound, input, networking, storage, and memory management is generally where the porting issues exist. If you go with OpenGL and a common, reusable library, suddenly the cost becomes moot as it is spread across n-games, as it gets reused. It's not like you have to write n-platforms when the gate opens. Heck, add to the library as you add platforms. Once a platform is in place, the next go-round is a freebe. I have no idea why coding houses are so dumb, but the math is easy to rationalize ad it just makes good business sense. Who doesn't want reduced support costs? Who doesn't want high quality games and happy, loyal customers? Who doesn't want two to three additional markets with greatly reduced effort and shorter time to market?
Let's face it...good client/server games want Linux servers. Supporting networking, storage, and memory is half of the library. Let's face it...this really is a no-brainer but it shows how clueless most coding houses truely are.
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Has it occurred to you that perhaps it's not that developers are dumb, but instead it's that it's not quite as straightforward as you make out?
Developers are always striving for better development practices, and this includes things like reducing coupling which leads to more portable code. However, I think you underestimate the amount of code that ends up getting written by game develope
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If you plan ahead and use OpenGL and OpenAL it shouldn't be too costly to port a game (probably only a month or so of work for a couple of developers) but until there are much better open source libraries (beyond OpenGL and OpenAL) you will require more than a recompile to get your game to work on Linux.
Re:do the math (Score:4, Interesting)
1. A selection of FOSS high performance game engines (for small games that need high triangle counts, an engine for high performance and lower triangle counts, and an engine for maximum network performance - very low triangle counts or other tricks to maximize FPS and network throughput) - designed to work on multiple platforms (linux, windows, et al). If these game engines are the best of breed, they will be used by the game development community.
2. A DirectX to SDL translator to lower the cost of entry into the Linux market for the 99% of development shops that develop for Windows - and have a huge investment there.
These two things would do much toward bringing popular Windows games to Linux.
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OpenGL is a good option. There is another option, however, which may be of use to game vendors: porting with WINE. By developing for Windows, but making sure that it runs fine on WINE, they can get their products to run on other operating systems with less effort than switching to OpenGL. (Also this may ensure that they don't depend on obscure features of the Windows API, which may
porting (Score:4, Insightful)
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And how, pray, do you do things like sound platform-independently? Synchronised with the picture, even?
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Sound: OpenAL
Physics: ODE
Input: SDL (?)
Network: ?
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Graphics: OpenGL
Sound: OpenAL
Physics: custom
Input: SDL
Network: ENet
The source compiles out-of-the-box on Windows and Linux.
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(This is an honest question, not a troll)
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Given that, why would they give half a damn about vendor lock-in? It's not doing anything but helping them.
Frankly, you just sound bitter, and it shows.
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Except the point is that the cost isn't worth it.
The assertion is that the cost isn't worth it. Realistically, pretty much all of the really successful games not developed by a shop MS owns, eventually get ported to the Mac and that has meant away from DirectX. Of course now that there are WINE re-implementation options that will not necessarily be the case. Still, while arguing against maintaining a non-DirectX solution you might want to look at companies like Blizzard. They seem to be doing pretty well
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My suspicion is that the cost benefit (to Atari) came down in favor of not bothering with Linux this time around.
Re:porting (Score:4, Insightful)
Game programmers aren't stupid. The vast majority will use the library that means:
a) The game is written quickly.
b) The game runs well on the largest range of computers.
I am not a games programmer, but I go to the pub with a lot of them. Using OpenGL over directx means writing a fairly substansal part of your game twice, once using nvidia extensions and once using ATI extensions. For things other than graphics, then you end up with two choices:
a) The library you are using is a wrapper over directx, so you are getting extra bugs / slowdown without significant gain or
b) The library is distinct and usually has bugs with all kinds of very cheap cards many people have (in particular sound).
Unless you can be sure changing libraries isn't going to break your game on less than 2% of windows machines, then making it platform independant is going to reduce the size of your overall market.
Excuse me... (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the extensions aren't ATI or NVidia specific that are usable. To be sure, they offer those, but most of the
extensions are ARB or EXT extensions- they're intended to be used by either player and are typically provided by
the same. The reality is that OpenGL 2.1 and DX9/10 are intrinsically identical except for programming style.
Besides, you should abstract out your engine components if you've any aspirations to target the next gen consoles-
DX10's NOT on PS3 or Wii, but OpenGL ES 2.0 IS and it's a clean, easy to use subset that ports back to MacOS and Linux.
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the extension or you'd not have gotten very far calling against it. Sounds like more of an ATI
driver gripe than anything else- did you log the bug with them?
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Because it costs a lot more to do that than you might think. At a conservative estimate I'd guess that targeting Linux would take at the very least 10% more time. If the development budget for the whole game is $5,000,000, then you'd need to expect that you could make back at least half a million dollars from Linux purchases just to make it break even, let alone worthwhile.
Need to popularize Linux as an OS (Score:5, Insightful)
That's how the market works. The fewer people willing to buy something, the less they'll be willing to invest in porting it. If you really want to help get these games ported, work to increase Linux's market share. The more people that use it, the more ports you'll see. That's just the way it is.
-Eric
1000 thats it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way I really see any growth in the Linux games market is either an exponential growth in Linux users or companies adopting an open source partnership to allow games to be ported by volunteers.
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Exactly. After all, it is well known that the only people who would have *ever* bought NWN to run on Linux would have posted to that forum, right? The fact that only 1000 people posted to the forum means that *ONLY* those people would have bought NWN2 for Linux, and they would have only bought one copy.
Why, it's a known fact that only people who know about (and post to) a forum before a game is released will *ever* purchase that game! If someone didn't know that the fo
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More importantly, you're already making boxes for the Windows version in bulk, just reuse those and make a print run of stickers that you can slap over the "For Windows!" on the box.
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That not good for either the producer of the game nor the Linux market.
For the producer you're going to get a load of "They put out this half-assed product" from the customer base when they see the glossy Windows box. Not to mention the cries of not being able to buy it in the local box store. If the game fails to sell you're going to have the entire Linux community pointing
linux (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Indeed. Where other operating systems have an ABI to ensure compatibility between multiple versions of the same operating system, Linux' ABI is only for interoperability with other operating systems. Linux could do with an internal ABI that ensured a standard set of libraries with immutable APIs for the lifetime of the ABI.
Regards,
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*Art
Tell that to LGP... (Score:2)
about to be improved even further in a couple of months as I finish the touches on a
possible new build environment for them.
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OS I know of that doesn't have issues of this nature is MacOS X and above because of the rigid rules they
apply to everything including their runtimes they ship.
The only real reason why you have any problems with Linux deliverables has little to do with the base ABI-
which anyone with the right resources can target properly (All it takes is linkage against libraries of the
version you want to base off of or u
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Common misconception, but badly wrong. Linux is probably the easiest platform of all to distribute binaries for, because the vendors pay particular attention to getting ABI compatibility right, and the system was designed to solve this problem. On Windows, distributing binaries gets you the affectionately named "DLL hell". People "solve" this by assuming that Windows will be used to run only one
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How many copies? (Score:2)
For the last time, YES. (Score:2, Insightful)
Loki happens.
"Hi, I'm looking for ShinyGame."
"Oh, here you are. That'll be $9.99."
"No, wait, I want the Linux version."
"Oh, I'm sorry. There you go. That'll be $49.95."
Any serious gamer already has a Windows partition/second drive/second box for gaming. Thus, the Loki concept is bitchslapped by logic: $49.95, for a possibly mediocre port, with untold problems*? Or $9.95, for the same
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I don't know about the other games, but I know Kohan had a reasonably active userbase. It's a sha
It would be nice (Score:2)
But reality today is that the battle lines is not Windows on one hand and Mac/Linux on the other, it's desktop computer versus console. And apart from a few niche genres, the consoles are winning big.
If I want to do gaming today I would not consider dual-booting, I would just get a console (a Wii and/or DS2 is on the horizon for me; perhaps after the holidays).
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Well, if you want 75+ classes, a real epic spell system, a bunch of new spells, psionics, and everything else, go get it
Well, that and I like my human Wizard 7/Red Wizard 23/Lich 10. Casts necro spells with 65 or so DC.. Momento Mori = you die.
Only 1000 copies !? (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure a decent game for Linux could sell several tens or even hundreds of thousands of copies.
I bought the Linux version of Q3 when it was available. I was planning on buying a few more games from Loki, until they shut down.
With Linux desktop market share constantly increasing, it makes more and more economic sense to start creating cross-platform games.
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And on what are you basing your 10,000 - 100,000 figure? The fact that you bought a game?
The "Linux Game Market" for any given game is the set of people who are all of the following:
How many people is that really?
The Linux market may be the same size as the Mac market, but the vast majority
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Run Linux as a desktop
Are interested in games
Are willing to put non-free software on their free Linux system
Have some $ to spend on a game
Think pirating software is wrong.
Think YOUR game is worth spending $ on.
You missed one. Namely - "Don't already have the game under Windows and can't get it to work under WINE". That's the big one, because people won't spend another $50 if they already have a solution.
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The software that is released changes quicker than WINE improves. It's a catch-up game, and unfortunately, WINE is getting farther and farther behind.
Out of the last few games I bought, how many can you get to run under WINE?
Neverwinter Nights 2
Microsoft Flight Simulator X
Gothic 3
Fable: The lost chapters
Oblivion
GT Legends
X3 -
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The question then arises what is more costly: Supporting multiple platforms directly, or supporting Transgaming occasionally to do all the hard work. Perhaps the executives think that even if a reduced number of L
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Quake III and Railroad Tycoon II were decent games that were released also for Linux, but had abysmal sales. Honestly, how many of you bought them?
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*Art
Why Port (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the unfortunante reality is that in today's gaming market, you find that fewer people are willing to take a chance on the sales for these smaller markets -- too hard to predict revenue, and too hard to (some would say) to do the porting.
The really smart gaming houses that know their titles will be successful (look at Id and Blizzard) also know that coding their titles to be portable is the way to go, even if they don't want to target other platforms. It encourages good coding practices and makes a better program. Most of them rely heavily on OpenGL and do plan to port their games at least to the mac as part of their original strategy. If your game is almost finished and you're just now considering portability and other platforms, you screwed up. You might as well wait till it is out and see how popular it is before going after other platforms.
Some might say the Mac or Linux markets are insignificant, but the truth is a lot of companies make good money from the Mac market. Lets not forget to include consoles as well when considering portability. I've seen some companies cite the practices of MS owned gaming houses as reason not to make games portable, but that is pretty laughable when you consider it. Also, I've seen some people point to horribly botched porting projects as reason to avoid it. Instances where a Linux port came out a year and a half after the Windows version, was buggy, was a game that required a community, and where the port was more expensive than the Windows version and was more buggy than using the Windows version in WINE. That too is pretty sad.
Coding for portability and aiming at Windows, the mac, and one or more consoles can seriously increase the revenue from a game, but it has to be part of the original game plan and you have to code with that in mind. Porting after the fact can make money, and if you have a very successful title outsourcing the port can make some pretty safe money, but not nearly as much of it. I don't see a reason for any big publisher (not owned by MS) to not target multiple platforms from the outset. Anyone want to bet the MMORPG that topples WoW's supremacy is another simultaneous cross-platfomr release?
Lack of options? (Score:2)
I can't afford to own two computers right now, and I chose to buy a Mac because I prefer it for my "work" duties. Having said that, one of the reasons I originally opted to get into World of Warcraft was that I was bored, I wanted a game to get into, and I didn't own a Windows box - which pre-empts me from owning the vast majority of top-tier PC titles. I recall hearing from a videogame podcast at some point where an expansion pack for The Sims for the Mac had momentarily broke into the top 10 selling gam
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Having said that, one of the reasons I originally opted to get into World of Warcraft was that I was bored, I wanted a game to get into, and I didn't own a Windows box - which pre-empts me from owning the vast majority of top-tier PC titles.
The mac platform outperforms most estimates based solely upon market share for several reasons. They include: less competition, larger install share than market share, less piracy, macs are concentrated among those with disposable income, most office systems are Windo
Get a grip folks ... (Score:2)
I dont understand (Score:2, Insightful)
So, what is the major technology that you can't fairly easily replace with some pseudo-OSS libraries?
And: hahaha. NWN2 banner add while posting this.
It's not just a one-time cost... (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not as simple as "just recompile it for Linux, duh". Every time I see someone scream for some MMORPG to release 'the Linux client we know you have', they always forget to include the recurring dev cycle costs.
If the cost to make it + the cost to maintain it > the additional revenue it brings in... then it doesn't get made.
Compare and contrast (Score:2)
Why not pre-order or reserve? (Score:2)
upwards of 1000 copies? (Score:2)
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Now then, having said that, realistically, it's very doubtful that ONLY 1000 copies would be sold on the basis of a Linux port. It's much more likely to be at least 10,000+. Yes, that's a guessimate on m
Neverwinter (Score:2)
They shouldn't because it is EVIL (Score:2)
If they want people to play their games on Linux then they should Open Source them.
Isn't that how RMS feels?
I for one would pay for a good game that runs under Linux but then I don't think that closed source is always evil.
Forget NWN2 (Score:2)
As far as games in general being on Linux, well that depends on the game. If the developer can be sweet talked into openGL you have a much higher chance of seeing it. Perhaps the community should start wooing developers.
The thread had NOTHING to do with NWN2... (Score:2)
"Porting" is not an issue... (Score:2)
It depends on the engine, of course, but it's much more straight-forward than one would think in many cases (unless it's hopelessly wedded to DirectX without any abstraction at all). Thankfully, that's not too often the case any more
id (Score:2)
I *am* holding out hope for id's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. id has a history or providing downloadable Linux versions once the retail PC version is out. Buy the box, download the Linux binaries and you're good to go.
Of course, I'll have to shell out another $400 or so to upgrade my system the play it right... Oh the sacrifices I'll make in the name of fragging alien scum.
Thanks id!
World of...something (Score:2)
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Back on topic, they are a massive exception to the rule. WoW is a AAA title can run OpenGL (mac/windows) and DX (windows), has very few bugs in constant ch
Final Solution (Score:2)
I know most people think it is a crazy idea, but I think it is long past time for games to go open source. Really, the open source model lends itself almost ideally to gaming and there is a lot of money to be made by the early adopter.
Already some games are carried to success by the mod community. Really there are several components to a successful game. Artwork, story, and gameplay. Of those, only the gameplay is at risk of being copied by competitors if a game is open sourced. Gameplay relies upon the e
1000 games is a joke (Score:4, Interesting)
The 1000 number for OS X is a joke though. Seriously, Any decent game should sell more than 1000 copies on the Mac. There are far too many Macs in use in homes for a GOOD game to not sell reasonably well. The Mac has issues.. it's rare to see them with really good video systems. The recent Intel machines have solid offerings but they aren't fantastic ( Elder Scrolls would play like crap on a stock iMac with underclocked X1600 video). I have, however, played Battlefield 2 at native rez with decent settings on a 1st gen Intel 17" iMac and it ran great. It beat the hell out of my Athlon X2 3800 w/ AGP Nvidia 6600GT. The current iMacs are much nicer too.
The bigger problem, as I see it, is that the gaming industry is in a lull. I don't see any really compelling titles. I love WW2 era FPShooters but the Genre has been played out to death. The Battlefield series has been solid but every new version is just a new veneer on the same game. To me and my friends, EQ and WWC MassivelyMulitPlayer games are played out. The frustration of dumping time into them has long since outweighted the enjoyment (I never did try World of WarCraft.. I got burned out before that).
Really, I walk through the gaming isle at Frys and nothing excites me and I've been looking to have another lan party. There's literally dozens of FPS War games but none stand out and I'm not going to try them all so I can tell people to buy one just for a night at my house.
The other problem is crappy coding though this is more minor issue. If the developer houses wrote tighter code, there'd be a larger range of medoicre machines that could run that code. Remember when the big guns were Doom3 vs. HalfLife2.. HalfLife2, to me, looked every bit as good overall and it ran MUCH better on less than cutting edge hardware. Doom3 was the killer benchmark for a while and the lighting system does look nice but the HL2 engine looks great and I really enjoyed the game (more so than the 'turn the corner and shoot' story line of Doom3). IMHO, HL2 is a superior game because the sum of the whole package is superior [visuals, story, environment, gameplay..]. The impressive thing is, Valve pulled this off without forcing everyone to run out and drop $500 on upgrades. If Valve, for instance, started supporting OS X, I'm sure they'd be able to run on a pretty large Mac installed base. Everything over the Mini should run HL2 fantastically. [other noteable crap-tastic games I'd never buy for a Mac.. BF Vietnam.. which crippled my Radeon9800Pro back in 2003, EQ (HORRIBLE CODING) and even EQ2 which seemed un-reasonably slow on decent PC hardware)
If we had good, compelling games.. I'd guarantee that a port of a GOOD game to OS X would sell a hell of a lot more than 1000 copies with annual sales of Millions of computers and poor enterprise market penetration (most macs go home or at least into EDU markets).
maintainability of code (Score:2)
Cadega (Score:2)
Working with Cadega probably makes more sense for most game developers.
Yes you restrict your product to Cadega users, but most of the hassle is handled by Cadega.
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In 10 years computers will be (about) 100 times as powerful as they are today and it will be too expensive to create games which really push these systems to their limits. When that happens I expect most game engines will move to be programmed in Java (or another interpreted language) in order to improve the portability between Handhelds, Consoles and the PC; once a game is developed in Java (or another interpreted language) it should be reasonably
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But would you buy it at, say, $250, if that's what it would take to recover the costs?
Regards,
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*Art
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Not true. NVIDIA's driver supports OpenGL 2.1 with full support for every feature of the GLSL - provided you've got the hardware for it. The latest version even adds a new GLX extension that the X server can use for hardware-accelerated compositing. ATi's driver, while it still mostly sucks, is at a similar level of advancement. OpenGL 2.0 support (last I heard) with GLSL support matching the Windows driver.
The only drivers that would have problems running games like NWN2 (should it ever be ported) are