Neverwinter 2, UT2k7, and Linux gaming in general

[bagatonovic]

I switched to Ubuntu about four weeks ago, and I am not looking back; screw XP. That being said, I am concerned about the state of gaming on Linux. Frankly it's never been that great. Though my statement is somewhat subjective, there is a great deal of empiricism behind my opinion. I have UT2k4, NWN, and Doom3 with ROE commercial games installed, and I also have Chromium, Wesnoth, TuxRacer, and Supertux open source games installed as well. Though these are fun, I am noticing far too few commercial Linux games. Recently I read an interview stating that Neverwinter 2 may not be available for Mac or Linux, and that Direct X is going to be heavily used in the production of NWN2 (http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?showtopic=10365 , Question #29). Though the article doesn’t outright deny the possibility of NWN2 for Linux, it doesn’t sound promising either.

I love Linux, plain and simple. I think Ubuntu is easily the best OS that has graced my home since the old GEOS for C64. I also love games, especially RPG’s and FPS games. My question is this – What can we do as a community to show these companies that Linux is a viable gaming platform? I let my money do the talking. I have purchased all the commercial games I mentioned above. What else is a geek to do? ](*,)

[Lord Illidan]

Aye..

Perhaps you might want to install Cedega...

Frankly, I like the open source games.. they are good for a quickie... but I agree, commercial games will always be better. They are made by people who code and design for a living, not as a hobby...

[Stormy Eyes]

Buy a PS2 and a TV tuner card, and then tell your favorite developer in a politely worded letter that you're switching to console gaming because they insist on refusing to go multiplatform. It won't accomplish much, but at least you won't have to waste time f---ing around with drivers.

[Lord Illidan]

Buy a PS2 and a TV tuner card, and then tell your favorite developer in a politely worded letter that you're switching to console gaming because they insist on refusing to go multiplatform. It won't accomplish much, but at least you won't have to waste time f---ing around with drivers.

Or buy an X-box, as MS loses money on each one they sell..

Or get a PS3, when it comes out...

[Nightblade]

As the application market for Linux grows more ppl will migrate, and with like 10% of the users, the companies might consider portin their games. But what do I know.

[bagatonovic]

These are all good points. I especially like the one about getting a PS2 and sending an email. Maybe I'll include a picture of me NOT playing my PC... lol

Anyway, back to Tux Racer! :smile:

[evilghost]

I also kicked XP to the curb along with the rest of the MS shovelware. I don't worry about the future of Linux gaming, I'm an avid FPS player and live on Doom3 and UT2004. I eagerly await Q4, which I'm sure will run without any problems on Linux. Also, Epic/Atari have been good to the Linux community. UT2003 and UT2004 run well on Linux, I would expect the same from UT2007.

I poo poo on D3D-only games. Cedega is a non-solution because in the end you are still supporting companies who choose to provide a single graphics rendering path.

Doom3 proved that OpenGL isn't broken on Win32, so why are companies developing games for D3D-only? Vista is worthless anyways. Another manifestation of an OS for button-monkeys who through trial-and-error point and click they way towards insecurity, malware, and open-relays.

Don't be concerned about Linux gaming in the future, I know many folks who got tired of the Win32 WGA trash they force-fed down their end user base and the pseudo-security the entire MS product-line tries to flaunt is reamed every day. I'm a big fan of the new "hidden" registry keys that will result in a gamut of spyware.

Basically, don't be discouraged. I've yet to see a D3D-only game in the last 2 years that made me say "Well, that's worth all the other BS". HL2 was trash. Typical Black Tuesday is enough to make me vomit in the face of Win32 users.

Stay the course, the Linux ranks are being replinished faster than you think. :)

[Mishura]

Given Obsidian Entertainment's additude towards Linux (First, as Black Isle, they never ported anything, KoToR2 was never ported, and they lock up every forum thread that asks for a Linux port), there will not be one. Bioware has only ported NWN1 to Linux, pretty much a full year after it was released.. and they haven't ported anything else since (KoToR1, any BG game..). My guess is, Bioware/Obsidian Ent isn't the place to look at, unfortunately. They do make great games.

UT2007 will be ported. Icculus has been working on porting Unreal Engine 3 and its Editor to Linux and Mac. Since Epic is the only company, other than S2 Games (Savage) that has released Linux installers in their retail game boxes, I say they are more serious about it than most other companies. Even id Software doesn't release Linux clients on time. (Doom3 Linux came out later.) The one thing that I will say in id's favor is, is that they port ALL their games to Linux, even games that they have slight involvement in (RtCW, ET). Where, Epic hasn't ported all their games (Unreal 2).

The best place to convince game devs to port would be in the indy market I think. Big AAA game companies, unless they already have interests in Linux, will NOT CARE about us, until we breach the 50% marketshare. This is not sarcasm, its pure marketing facts. The indy market, on the other hand, needs to expand their marketbase. By porting to Linux (and Mac), they already get the attention of game hungry ninche-OS users, starved of good games.

Until then, we got Cedega... which isn't perfect, unfortunately, but it is a necessary evil.

[bagatonovic]

I also poo poo on D3D only games, and so does my dog (see avatar). Use open standards, or go to hell. I refuse to run games through Winex (or whatever it's called now). I have given away all of my D3D games to my friends. Over $1000 worth of games have left my home this week including HL2, NFSUG2, Sacred, and Sims 2 just to name a few. I was happy to find out that my Logitech steering wheel works with TuxRacer, so I didn't give that away. I am probably going to buy a PS3 simply because Sony is Linux friendly.

Regarding the market share, I'm not sure we can bust that 50% barrier simply because many people are stupid and lazy. They dont like change, so they will keep using whatever MS shoves down their throughts. For instance, Firefox is an awesome browser, yet I have friends that refuse to switch, so they use IE and keep getting spyware and popups. It's sad really. I charge them $80 every time I have to clean up their PC's. Every time I offer Firefox, and every time they refuse.

As an FYI to you all, this community cheers me up. It's cool to see so many people excited about Linux. Tselliot, Tamir and all the other people out there helping people out for no other reason than "just because". It's just awesome. Thanks to you all for the feedback. Games or no games, Ubuntu is where it's at. I can't wait for UT2k7. I think I'll go put my prebuy cash down this weekend.

[Unix_Wizard]

I also poo poo on D3D only games, and so does my dog (see avatar). Use open standards, or go to hell. I refuse to run games through Winex (or whatever it's called now). I have given away all of my D3D games to my friends. Over $1000 worth of games have left my home this week including HL2, NFSUG2, Sacred, and Sims 2 just to name a few. I was happy to find out that my Logitech steering wheel works with TuxRacer, so I didn't give that away. I am probably going to buy a PS3 simply because Sony is Linux friendly.

Regarding the market share, I'm not sure we can bust that 50% barrier simply because many people are stupid and lazy. They dont like change, so they will keep using whatever MS shoves down their throughts. For instance, Firefox is an awesome browser, yet I have friends that refuse to switch, so they use IE and keep getting spyware and popups. It's sad really. I charge them $80 every time I have to clean up their PC's. Every time I offer Firefox, and every time they refuse.

As an FYI to you all, this community cheers me up. It's cool to see so many people excited about Linux. Tselliot, Tamir and all the other people out there helping people out for no other reason than "just because". It's just awesome. Thanks to you all for the feedback. Games or no games, Ubuntu is where it's at. I can't wait for UT2k7. I think I'll go put my prebuy cash down this weekend.
You are never going to catch me without my micro$oft partion. That is atleast until I figure which damn hardware modem to buy and trash my winmodem. None of you can understand how it feels to download debs and rpms in windows then go to ubuntu and install them. It just plain sucks!

[Stormy Eyes]

You are never going to catch me without my micro$oft partion. That is atleast until I figure which damn hardware modem to buy and trash my winmodem.

I recommend US Robotics model 5610B (http://www.usr.com/products/home/home-product.asp?sku=USR5610B) for dialup under Linux. I've used the 5610 series for years without any trouble.

[Stormy Eyes]

Or buy an X-box, as MS loses money on each one they sell..

For what, Halo? No thanks. I prefer RPGs, and most of the really good ones (like Shin Megami Tensei) are on PS2. What does Xbox have to offer besides KOTOR (I hate Star Wars) and Jade Empire?

[bagatonovic]

For what, Halo? No thanks. I prefer RPGs, and most of the really good ones (like Shin Megami Tensei) are on PS2. What does Xbox have to offer besides KOTOR (I hate Star Wars) and Jade Empire?

Yeah, honestly I prefer a little bit if anime in my RPG's too. I mean I love NWN, but I like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy (except 10 and 11) more.

In all honesty, I didn't think Halo was great. I dont know what everyone sees in it.

I am probably going to wait for PS3, if for nothing more than the hope of a possible FF7 remake. On the Linux side of things, I cant wait for UT2k7.

[Dolphin]

For what, Halo? No thanks. I prefer RPGs, and most of the really good ones (like Shin Megami Tensei) are on PS2. What does Xbox have to offer besides KOTOR (I hate Star Wars) and Jade Empire?

I wouldn't qualify most of what comes out of Japan as RPG's. Story/Adventure maybe.

[Stormy Eyes]

I wouldn't qualify most of what comes out of Japan as RPG's. Story/Adventure maybe.

I suppose that to somebody used to AD&D and the like, MegaTen and Final Fantasy aren't exactly RPGs. But, since I didn't have the luxury of having a circle of geek friends with which to play "real RPGs", I had to make do with Japanese CRPGs -- bad translations and all.

[Dolphin]

I suppose that to somebody used to AD&D and the like, MegaTen and Final Fantasy aren't exactly RPGs. But, since I didn't have the luxury of having a circle of geek friends with which to play "real RPGs", I had to make do with Japanese CRPGs -- bad translations and all.

I wasn't comparing them to pen and paper RPG's. I just meant that most Japanese "RPG" games are more just linear interactive stories. They're most of them missing an actual role playing element to them, which is why I don't call them RPG's. Unless I can go do what I want then I'm just playing through a predefined adventure.

Morrowind would be a terrific example of a RPG video game.

[evilghost]

I also poo poo on D3D only games, and so does my dog (see avatar). Use open standards, or go to hell. I refuse to run games through Winex (or whatever it's called now). I have given away all of my D3D games to my friends. Over $1000 worth of games have left my home this week including HL2, NFSUG2, Sacred, and Sims 2 just to name a few. I was happy to find out that my Logitech steering wheel works with TuxRacer, so I didn't give that away. I am probably going to buy a PS3 simply because Sony is Linux friendly.

Regarding the market share, I'm not sure we can bust that 50% barrier simply because many people are stupid and lazy. They dont like change, so they will keep using whatever MS shoves down their throughts. For instance, Firefox is an awesome browser, yet I have friends that refuse to switch, so they use IE and keep getting spyware and popups. It's sad really. I charge them $80 every time I have to clean up their PC's. Every time I offer Firefox, and every time they refuse.

As an FYI to you all, this community cheers me up. It's cool to see so many people excited about Linux. Tselliot, Tamir and all the other people out there helping people out for no other reason than "just because". It's just awesome. Thanks to you all for the feedback. Games or no games, Ubuntu is where it's at. I can't wait for UT2k7. I think I'll go put my prebuy cash down this weekend.

bagatonovic, I see we are on the same page and it delights me so. I need to give you a beer :) I've already given away my D3D only games. In actuality, they were all garbage anyways. StarWars Battlefront - Worthless, locked at 30fps multiplayer. Total total trash. BF-Vietnam, great game if you want to throw realism out the window. The VC didn't go around flying in soviet helicopters from air-bases in the jungle. FarCry? Nice graphics, worthless gameplay. Chronicles of Riddick? Actually a pretty slick game, but, well...zero replayability.

Unix_Wizard, I'm lucky enough to have 3Mbit DSL in an area where I can **** off my front porch, shoot things in my back yard, and see cows across the street. I have a USR/3Com V.92 External 56K modem that is collecting dust. I don't know why I've not shot it yet with a shotgun/S&W 500. It's yours, if you blow away that Win32 partition. I won't charge you a dime, I'll even pay shipping. But you have to be honest and actually blow away the shovelware. PM me your address.

Product: USR5686E
Model Number: 5686
Bar Code: 2ABL66RD5473

[dude2425]

UT2007 will be ported. Icculus has been working on porting Unreal Engine 3 and its Editor to Linux and Mac. Since Epic is the only company, other than S2 Games (Savage) that has released Linux installers in their retail game boxes, I say they are more serious about it than most other companies. Even id Software doesn't release Linux clients on time. (Doom3 Linux came out later.) The one thing that I will say in id's favor is, is that they port ALL their games to Linux, even games that they have slight involvement in (RtCW, ET). Where, Epic hasn't ported all their games (Unreal 2).


Just a note, Unreal 2 had almost Absolutely nothing to do with Epic Games. Unreal 2 was developed by Legend Entertainment, and published by Atari. If Epic DID make U2, it would have been a game worth playing, and have been put on Linux. Unreal 2 was the joke of the Unreal universe, and shouldn't be on Linux anyway. It didn't even ship with online play, it instead had its few players wait till the multiplayer addon was release a long time after everybody had given up on it. Legend Entertainment has since ceased to exist from last I've heard. Everything in Unreal 2 can be legaly imported to UT2004 as stated once already by Epic Games.

UT2007 will also feature better support for Linux. With UT2007, we will be able to make use of what Windows users had been able to use since the very first incarnation of Unreal. The Editor!

One thing I wan't to know is though, Epic has already stated that UE3 would make full use of Pixel Shader Model 3, but the problem I see is, as far as I know, OpenGL doesn't have it. PSM3 is a DirectX thing. Does this mean the Linux version would be degraded quality when compared to the Winblows version? I was pretty amped about PSM3 in UE3 before I realized it was a DirectX exclusive.

[doclivingston]

Frankly, I like the open source games.. they are good for a quickie... but I agree, commercial games will always be better. They are made by people who code and design for a living, not as a hobby...

Personally I think it isn't having professional coders and designers that seperates commercial from non-commercial games, it's the multi-million dollar art (graphics, sound, etc) budgets. If you look back at the 90's, there wasn't that much seperating commercial games, from freeware and shareware ones - these days games companies spend *lots* of money on graphics designers, sound engineers, etc and open-source games can't compete with that.

[fragmental]

Basically, don't be discouraged. I've yet to see a D3D-only game in the last 2 years that made me say "Well, that's worth all the other BS". HL2 was trash. Typical Black Tuesday is enough to make me vomit in the face of Win32 users.
:)

I think there is some degree of truth to that, but I'm basically trained to deal with "all that other BS" , and I'm addicted to pc games, so it's not too hard for me to deal with. Still, there really are not any D3D-only games that I can think of that really stand out as being totally worth it....except for one. Psychonauts. There are some older games that are probably worth it too, but those will probably work in wine.

Of course, you can get Psychonauts for Xbox and PS2 anyway. BTW, while it may have been true that microsoft lost money on the Xbox's I doubt they do anymore, and they make all their profits from the games you buy, not the hardware.

I think something that would really ensure that good commercial games get ported to Linux is standardization. I mean, there is quite a bit of it to a degree already but I think there should be a linux game standard that includes all the essential libraries and some important functionality that all distros should adhere too, and that way porting a game to work with all those distributions would be much easier. There is that to a degree already with SDL and OpenAL and OpenGL, but I think it could be better. Also, if there is a sort of multiplatform standard, which game designers can program for and then basically just to have to recompile to port to a separate platform, I think that could go a long way. The easier and cheaper it is to port a game to linux, the more likely I think a company would want to do that.

Also important, I think would be more gamer friendly distros. A guy who just wants to play games isn't going to want to hack his command line for hours to get it to work. Some linux enthusiasts might argue that those kind of gamers should just use windows, but that's a selfish and short sighted attitude. Those kind of gamers are the kind that buy and play games, making a linux game more profitable. Therefore making it more likely that commercial games would show up on linux.

It's not just important for games either. I think that it's important that linux distros be gamer friendly because gaming drives computing to a great degree. A lot of the innovations and speed of computers comes from games. I mean, opengl and directx were not created for Word Processing.

Also, if you want to put your money where your mouth is, make sure you buy all your games from tuxgames or some other strictly linux games vendor, because that way it shows up as a linux game sold. If you buy from anywhere else it will show up as a windows game sold. There might also be a way to register the game with the company as a linux game...but I don't know anything about that.

Another thing that needs to be better for linux games to thrive is better driver support from the card companies. This is a difficult thing, though. Also, don't create any animosity about a video card driver being binary only. There is a place for proprietary software and 3d drivers is probably a good one, because a lot of the time the card makers have technology that is good for their drivers, that they can't show anyone else. You can probably blame software patents for that....or America...or microsoft...whatever.

Another thing! that might help put more games on Linux would be more Ryan "Icculus" Gordons. I mean, one man can only do so much. If there was at least two we might already have a Pariah client(I think Epic mostly does the Engine and Digital Extremes does the Graphics for Unreal Tournament 200x...Digital Extremes did Pariah)