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Games Entertainment

Heretic ported to Linux 53

Posted by sengan from the no-sound-yet dept.
Linux Game tome is reporting that Heretic has been ported to Linux, specifically to GGI and X. Go get it here!. Link courtesy of LT. (Note: Due to my 28.8 modem I have not tested it yet).
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Heretic ported to Linux More

Heretic ported to Linux

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  • Now when the 32 player tcp/ip deathmatch is up
    it'll blow quake outta the water! :P
  • I downloaded the shareware version of hereitc, but it only has a windows install.bat ...

    What do I need to do to get the wad?
  • Come to think of it, that K6-2 should be able to run 5 or 6 copies of the game at one time. Just need to port it to run under X.
  • Under what license is the source distributed? The README says that all modifications are GPLed, but the orig-license.txt has bits in it about not copying the game. Even if the current license is less stringent, is it GPL-compatible?


    --Phil (Never played Heretic, but I'll give it a shot.)
  • Sorry I have never been impressed with linuxgames.org. Also for the past week or 2 I haven't been able to get into the site. Linuxgames.com may be commercial but they offer a good level of service.

  • Well... The code isn't 64-bit clean. :(
    I'll see if I can do anything about it tonight. :)

    If anyone's interested, I'll reply to (myself) this message tomorrow morning.

  • It would be nice if the source code would compile, or they'd at least provide binaries for my architecture. Yes, I did edit the Makefile for __64BIT__ as the .h files want.

    There are many lines of these sorts of things:

    m_misc.c:485: initializer element for `defaults[41].defaultvalue' is not computa
    ble at load time
    m_misc.c:486: initializer element for `defaults[42].defaultvalue' is not computa
    ble at load time
    m_misc.c:487: initializer element for `defaults[43].defaultvalue' is not computa
    ble at load time
    m_misc.c:488: initializer element for `defaults[44].defaultvalue' is not computa
    ble at load time
    m_misc.c: In function `M_LoadDefaults':
    m_misc.c:600: warning: cast from pointer to integer of different size
    make: *** [m_misc.o] Error 1

    Off to figure out just what it's goofing on, I guess.
  • It's not hard to abstract the hardware rendering layer in a computer game. In fact it's a good idea-- under windoze you can use glide or another accelerated API where possible, with big speed improvements over directx. Many video card manufacturers supply a GL for their cards (GL was originally designed as a hardware API), and you can use that relatively painlessly.

    Once id chooses to support several APIs under windoze, it's no more trouble to run under Linux w/Glide or GL. And enforcing compiler portability (eg between g++ & VC++5) results in cleaner code.
  • Glide is for 3dfx boards. No, it's not open, but there's no real reason for it to be...it's _very_ closely bound to the Voodoo/2/Banshee/3 feature set. So why use it? It's faster that D3D. Like 2x as fast (on Fire and Darkness). Implementing an extra API on a well-designed game is almost always worth the effort (which isn't that much really).

    Porting Heretic to GL would be a bad idea...Mesa is _slow_ compared to the DOOM engine. For 8bit color, low-res, 2.5D games, the original optimized software (Mesa is a software implementation of the GL standard) renderers make far more sense. GL software is just not up to the demands of games, even old ones...

    Mesa is much more general. And can be linked to 3d APIs like glide. Which is the original purpose of GL. So it's not a bad idea for games which expect to run on accelerators to support GL, both under windows and linux.

    Want hardware support under Linux? At this point, your only option is 3dfx, which is supported both by Glide and by Mesa linked to Glide. nVidia has shown support for RivaTNT Linux efforts, hopefully we'll see a GL or something for that eventually.

    I haven't heard from Rendition (literally, they don't answer the phone) or seen any of their V2xxx series boards in 6 months. I wouldn't worry about RedLine at this point.

    Um, "what does it require for 3DFx to allow a GLIDE port?" well 3dfx put Daryll Strauss (http://glide.xxedgexx.com) under NDA and let him port Glide to Linux. So it's there. You just install the SDK and use it. 3dfx wouldn't make this open: it'd reveal all the secrets of their hardware. Not a chance in hell. Reimplementing it would be _very_ hard since 3dfx wouldn't help...I'd call it effectively impossible. A 3dfx is pretty bloody complicated toy.
  • Considering Raven uses Id's engines, I would think Id knows a little bit more about this stuff than Raven.
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • Use Mesa (OpenGL-compatible) and you'll get hardware support on your 3dfx cards by way of Glide (Mesa can be built to use Glide).
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • Not only that, but by porting the Glide you are supporting a proprietary API and limited the audience to your product. Using OpenGL doesn't have these effects, and since Mesa can work on top of Glide, you still can get Glide-acceleration. Hopefully some other chip vendors (NVIDIA, I'm talking to you!) will release their 3D specs or at least provide an SDK like 3dfx did for Glide, so that Mesa and GGI can work on top of those drivers too.

    Hey...if NVIDIA released an SDK to their chip on Linux, we'd pretty much have a port for DirectX 6, wouldn't we, since that's the API that the TNT was designed for. That'd be great because if WINE were built to use it, Baldur's gate would actually be playable ;-)
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • First, off, I only spent 5 minutes with it and sound wasn't working. So, I probably didn't set something up right. . .

    But the real point here. . .
    Porting old DOS based games to unix can yield several problems and heretic shows the most obvious one. The games rely on their own game loop to run. This means they take up 100% cpu for no good reason. The game loop should be made to work inside of the multitasking environment. . .

    My K6II-300 shouldn't be at 100% on a game that can be played on a 486/33. . .

    ** Martin
  • Can anyone sum up the current status of GGI. Is it important to have? Where's it going and what timeframe? I'm using XFree86 on Red Hat 5.2, what kind of things would I require GGI for?
  • The source for the Heretic engine was released under the same terms as the Doom source the other day (i.e. you can do anything you want with it, EXCEPT sell it), so no-one will be selling versions in a hurry.

    Of course, one needs to buy the Windows version for the full .wad files, as these have not been released.

    Still, AFAIK it's a turnaround of less than a week, which is deeply impressive.

    I got the story about the release of source off Blues News [bluesnews.com] .



  • awsome! (Score:1)

    by ARESX ( 9522 )
    now just to get the net code to work so i can deathmatch !@#

    whats really cool is i can even run this on my ol'
    486.
  • Half Life

  • Um, I'd say it's not ported until these are unbroken... I'd be interested in paying money for this when it works at least as well (frame rate, sound, death match, etc.) as the Windows version. Until then, this ain't news...

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