Linux has so far failed to establish itself as a gamer’s operating system of choice. Attempts to create multi-OS compatible games and current attempts to build a bridge between Windows-based games and Linux have yet to bear much fruit. How might things change in future?
Nothing will change with Wine. Sure games might be just as playable as they are in Windows (while being more difficult to install). Except what Wine does is it provides the porting for the companies. They can simply release a game for Windows (where it will sell the highest humber of copies) and let those Linux users play it under Wine (whether they have legal access to the Windows libraries that Wine emulates is another question entirely).
As the Linux desktop (desktops?) continue to gain popularity we might see a shift here, but it will probably take years to see any drastic change. Until that point games will continue to be released for Windows.
So what can you do about this? Stop buying games. Stop playing games. I’m serious. Once companies see their market changing they will be forced to sit up and take notice.
The development platform for Playstation 3 games will be Linux because the PS3 will run on Linux. It seems that this would make Linux more accessible for other developers.
Longhorn, by killing the Win32API, and more advanced non-compatible versions of Direct X are going to pile more and more people into the Wine user category.
I currently play all my old windows Dx 3 games with Wine and am thrilled about it. As long as wine keeps on going, I can support newer and newer games.
The longhorn shift is going to be a major one, much more so than from win98 to 2000 since virtually none of the API can be carried to .net.
So unless windows starts writing wrappers for their own older versions, i’m going to be relying on wine more and more.
No, not all the latest and greatest games will be runnable on a linux system when they are released, but unlike most gamers, I don’t run out and buy a game on the first day.
Unless new generations don’t get aqainted with Linux when they first time experience a PC (eg:at school) nothing significant will change.
The OS isn’t the only thing that’s important.Security is especially imminent when gaming online.A lot of games have some version of punkbuster included.Yet they don’t make it the end user any easier to game online as regular user.On the contrary they de facto inspire to game as admin because of the hassle otherwise.I think that most of the sh8t comes from many of the game servers and unaware clients.One of the main reason i quit playing online,because of the services and or acl rights you had to allow in order for even playing the game.There must be a better solution.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21766
This is the future of Windows XP 2 years after long Horn is out.
and no one has mentioned Enemy Territory ?
shame on you !
give it a go, look me up on a UK server, and I kick all your asses
maybe, or maybe I too much of a noob and get killed over and over.
but anyway, this is an excellent NATIVE linux game
OH and I almost forgot
CUBE
try that and I will kick your asses there too
Untrue. As with other PlayStation, the PS3 is likely to use a propreitary OS, if one could go so far as to call it that.
Longhorn, by killing the Win32API, and more advanced non-compatible versions of Direct X are going to pile more and more people into the Wine user category.
I wasn’t aware that Longhorn was going to kill the Win32API. As I understood, it was going to run side-by-side along with WinFX for compatibility with ‘legacy’ applications?
I’d like to see some kind of common application framework (based on something like .NET/Mono, Java, or Parrot), that will allow developers to develop once and run everywhere (OS and hardware independant – it just requires a common API that has the appropriate hooks into the underlying OS and Hardware).
When Sun came up with Java years ago, I don’t think the industry was ready for it. I do think the industry is ready now.
Do your homework. It will run a Cell CPU on an embedded variety of Linux. It will undoubtedly be Sony’s…but it will be Linux.
“Longhorn’s WinFX managed classes replace the Win32 API and do not encapsulate it”
Doesn’t SOUND like side-by-side running. I’m very curious to see how this is going to work. Unless the Win32API calls are WRAPPED, the programs written with MFC or Win32 API functions will crash.
If you know differently, please direct me to where I can find out more. I was fairly certain that WinFX was their NEW API, and did not support MFC or Win32.
I always like to bring this up with Linux gaming posts…
BlitzMax allows compilation of the exact same source code on Windows, OS X and Linux, allowing for ‘instant porting’. This means that Windows and OS X developers who might otherwise avoid Linux due to its tiny market can create OpenGL-based games for it with (literally) a single recompile.
The only thing causing problems for Linux gaming as far as I’m concerned is the difficulty of installing 3D drivers for many cards/distros. Until this is sorted out, Linux gaming isn’t going to be particularly widespread…
QUOTE: “The only thing causing problems for Linux gaming as far as I’m concerned is the difficulty of installing 3D drivers for many cards/distros. Until this is sorted out, Linux gaming isn’t going to be particularly widespread…”
Ditto. So far I’ve had very poor luck in getting 3D support in Linux. Morphix Game LiveCD is the only distro so far to properly detect and initialize my graphic card automatically. Not RedHat, not Mandrake, not Knoppix, not Lycoris…
-Bob
Red Hat is an entreprise product i.e. 3D is not needed.
>They can simply release a game for Windows (where it will sell the highest humber of copies) and let those Linux users play it under Wine
This arguement gets made all the time but I don’t know of a single case where any developer actually took Wine/Cedega into account during thier development process. Wine & Cedega have been around for years. If developers were using it as a default porting platform instead of releasing a native port we’d know it by now.
> BlitzMax allows compilation of the exact same source code on
> Windows, OS X and Linux, allowing for ‘instant porting’.
> This means that Windows and OS X developers who might
> otherwise avoid Linux due to its tiny market can create
> OpenGL-based games for it with (literally) a single recompile.
uhm, blitz is a nice toy and maybe used for some shareware games but thats it. just a simple basic dialect with some gaming related libraries – maybe usable for prototyping …
anyway, usable libraries like sdl exist, but many developers simply (and sadly) prefer the integrated directx package and that is simply not cross plattform
Linux is superior over Windows when it comes to bootable CD’s like knoppix. If a bootable CD automagically loads the right drivers and the game, the user doesn’t need to install anything, and he can play his game on every computer. The only problem is patching games, but some online utility could solve that. The advantages are obvious: max performance (only load drivers and game) and no installation or setup is needed.
Doesn’t SOUND like side-by-side running. I’m very curious to see how this is going to work. Unless the Win32API calls are WRAPPED, the programs written with MFC or Win32 API functions will crash.
If you know differently, please direct me to where I can find out more. I was fairly certain that WinFX was their NEW API, and did not support MFC or Win32.
Longhorn supports all previous Windows APIs. Mainly meaning Win16, Win32 (and MFC).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/support/lhdevfaq/default.aspx#Q4…
Do your homework. It will run a Cell CPU on an embedded variety of Linux. It will undoubtedly be Sony’s…but it will be Linux.
As we previously reported almost eight months ago, the CELL processor will rely on a variation of the of the standard OpenGL library, with plans between Sony and the Khronos Group to develop Open GL/ES, an extension specifically designed for interactive content.
http://www.totalvideogames.com/pages/articles/index.php?article_id=…
Actually Wine is, relatively speaking, a step forward in Linux gaming. You really think a DirectX developer will rewrite the engine to a graphics library Linux supports? Having OpenGL is not the end of all problems. Unfortanently OpenGL is only a graphics library. You still need sound and input. And this is where (IMO) DirectX outbeats it. It has very good sound (DirectSound) and input (DirectInput) control. A good read for anyone concerning Linux gaming is to read a couple of Carmack’s posts regarding it. You can write a whole essay about their problems with Quake 3 on Linux they had. I’m not saying it can’t be done. But it has a big price for development and support, and this is what concernes most game developers.
Be reallistic, if Carmack wouldn’t program for OpenGL no one would ever think about gaming on Linux. You’d be left with Tribes and 3 other games.
btw, for anyone “hating” Microsoft for not opening DirectX should read some history about how all this happened.
I like this idea but if you copy the CD then you’ve copied the game, what about the pirated software?
I would like to see a Linux distro specifically for gaming. For example a gaming rig doesn’t need 1000 video card drivers. but it does need to support ATI and NVidia.
@ Fizzol
I don’t know of a single case where any developer actually took Wine/Cedega into account during thier development process.
Wasn’t Neverwinter Nights ported using Wine?
First: It’s a very nice article and makes alot of good points.
Some comments:
* Having something like wine in general is NOT bad per se. What counts in the end is the usability and stability of the software. It’s a very good intermediate way that simply gives me possibilities to play some games. (However I must admit that I’m not a fan of cedega as they took the existing wine codebase and sold it without giving anything back! Legally it was okay, morally that’s shaby.)
Porting software to linux isn’t that hard. Loki was able to port lots of titles with a handfull of people and icculus is porting lots of games alone nowadays. So technically there is nothing that speaks against linux ports. The question that companies ask is why? The author of that article reminds us on the past with DOS where it was the same problem. The thing that actually made companies change to DirectX was when DirectX offered new possibilities in form of new video resolutions with high bit-depths, new possibilities for hardware acceleration and 3d-support. These are things that actually improve your product and makes people buy the stuff. Linux as I see it at the moment doesn’t inovate in any area important for games. Game technology is not like databases/networking technology a commodity so I don’t see a real chance in the near future for a broad support from game publishers.
Anyway keep your hope up and enjoy the stuff that is already there: The shooters from id and Epic and well wine. Also there are lot of indy-developers who produce linux versions and there are also some open-source games out there which are worth playing (it’s few though…). Go support these things!
@Fizzol
That’s the point. They don’t have to do anything and they’re already hitting the widest market possible. People can quit using Windows and switch over to gaming on Linux. If the use Wine/Cedega they’re still supporting the developpers that release games on Windows.
As far as the developper can see they’ve just sold another copy of their game that was only released for Windows.
I dunno how many of you have played Vendetta Online (1), but it shows how possible it is to make cross-platform games. VO was released silmutaneously on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. All three versions were developed concurrently. They even all have the same features (although the linux/osx ones need a better card for the programmable vertex shader features because of opengl limitations). However, the most amazing thing is that Vendetta Online was developed by four people: Guild Software(2). It’s a really great game, and it supports Linux. Everybody wins!
1. http://www.vendetta-online.com
2. http://www.guildsoftware.com
>That’s the point. They don’t have to do anything and they’re already hitting the widest market possible.
Well the idea behind that claim is that if it weren’t for Cedega we’d be seeing Linux ports of popular games. I just don’t buy that. First you’d have to have a company that was interested enough in the Linux market to look into porting a game. Then they’d have to look at the perfomance of thier game under wine and decide that it’s “good enough”, and that they don’t need to do a port.
I’ve never heard of that actually happening.
>Wasn’t Neverwinter Nights ported using Wine?
Even if true (I gave up on NWN in disgust when their definition of released “soon” after thw Windows release turned out to mean “we’ll start the port after the developers get back from vacation), that’s a winelib port which isn’t the same thing as just releasing the game under Windows and deciding that because of Cedega it’s “good enough” and not doing a port to Linux that they would have otherwise done.
>I’m not a fan of cedega as they took the existing wine codebase and sold it without giving anything back!
This is another claim that’s made a lot and again simply isn’t true. Here’s what Gavriel State, Founder & CTO had to say about this on Slashdot.
“. . . we have contributed and we continue to contribute to the Wine project in a number of substantial ways. These include major contributions or rearchitectures of: 2D DirectDraw, DirectSound, DirectInput, DCOM, RPC, the WIDL IDL compiler, and wininet code, including SSL support. Additionally, we continue to maintain the X11 licensed ReWind tree, we’ve contributed code for a DIB renderer, and the Shared Memory WineServer.
Overall, we’ve contributed tens of thousands of lines of code under Open Source license term.
In particular, our DCOM, RPC, and WIDL work – required for use of InstallShield based installer – is extremely substantial work, and we are actively continuing to contribute that work to Wine and ReWind. We have probably spent as much engineering efforts on this as we have on our closed source Direct3D support.”
The cross-platform Torque Game Engine has been the basis for quite a few nice independent games in Linux. I’ve been hopelessly addicted to BraveTree’s ThinkTanks for over a year.
People complain about how there are no games in Linux, but they won’t make any effort whatsoever to check out what is available. There are some smaller companies making some really fun games.
The real problem is the attitude of people who want to see big corporate Windows games ported to Linux while ignoring some really good games that are already available.
Just because Electronic Arts or the other big corporate players aren’t rushing to Linux, it doesn’t mean that the platform is not viable.
I went looking and found GarageGames.com and ThinkTanks. Not only is the game a lot of fun, in my experience it runs better under Linux than under Windows. The graphics are faster and the sound issues I saw under Windows are absent on Linux.
Not surprisingly, there are a lot of Mac users playing ThinkTanks online. Their attitude about looking for games seems to be a lot better than that of a lot of Linux users.It must be their tendency to think different I guess.
When so many people who use Linux are at least in part attracted to the platform out of dislike for big corporations like Microsoft, why are so many so distraught about the lack of attention from big corporate game makers?
It’s hard to consider Linux as a gaming platform when performance on Ati’s cards is unacceptable. Drivers have to improve, and people have to use it as a desktop.
Hopefully, as the article reads, it’s just it a matter of time.
roman: many developers simply (and sadly) prefer the integrated directx package and that is simply not cross plattform
for this reason, the one thing i believe could help linux grow as a gaming platform, is the creation and development of a set of native libraries with a programming interface and conventions equivalent to direct3d/sound/input/play, (like mesa towards opengl) : if developers are brought at a distance of a recompilation or little more, from the potential market of linux users, it’s unlikely they ignore it anymore…
ARTICLE: Windows 95, as I said earlier, is the perfect example of this; although it was released from Microsoft with much hype and fanfare, users had to logout to MS-DOS mode in order to play their games for quite some time after the OS was released. So what Linux has to do first it to show the world that it is a platform of choice between home users.
windows 95 users being forced to switch to DOS mode to play games (and some titles were really cool, think the first Worms) still developed for VGA/soundblaster16… yeah that’s 10 years ago O_o
Z1XQ: Do your homework. It will run a Cell CPU on an embedded variety of Linux. It will undoubtedly be Sony’s…but it will be Linux.
and then? the kernel may be linux, but the API’s can well be totally different from opengl… and that’s just for the 3d aspect of the gaming affair: as i wrote before, there’s much more in the “platfom” (the software foundation) a game expects to find in order to run… this is valid on a console and on a PC…
I mean . . . there should be many times more active linux-users out there then there are mac-users. Right ?
Can it be that the mac-community actually pays for the software ?
As long as Linux is known for “free” software, there are not many reasons for creating, or porting, games for the linux platform. Most of the game-developers has families, houses, cars and other stuff they must provide money for.
Zon
Can it be that the mac-community actually pays for the software ?
Maybe, maybe not. Linux is not exactly a favourite platform for warez lovers. Plus the existence of companies like Mandrake seems to suggest that “Linux community” (whatever that means) can pay even for software they can legally get for free. But of course there is a perception that developing for Linux is not profitable enough.
The answer lies in cross platform, open source development libraries. The Sourceforge Project of the month for March is OGRE, an open source 3d engine.
The driving simulator I’m working on uses OGRE as well as ODE for physics, SDL for input, all cross platform. We don’t code for a target platform. A few days ago someone stopped by our chatroom and offered to help. Our simulator (motorsport-sim.org) now runs on Linux, Windows and the Mac because early on we chose cross platform libraries. There are some very minor changes required but we figured it out in a couple of days.
In exactly 23 months and five days cross platform open source libraries needed to build high quality games will become an industry standard just as the tools used in the movie industry are now.
“Open Source Rocks Hollywood”
http://www.jahshaka.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=12
My prediction is that the open source movie tools will share code with the open source game tools until we have a common set of cross platform open source media development tools. But that’ll take 28 months.
ogre has got a lot of attention recently now that it has hit version 1.0, but what i want to see is an ogre powered games project hit it big-time. then cross platform gaming will really take off.
“Untrue. As with other PlayStation, the PS3 is likely to use a propreitary OS, if one could go so far as to call it that.”
Sony officially provided Linux for PS2, and PS3 will use a lot of open standards (OpenGL ES, OpenVG, OpenMAX, COLLADA etc.) and IBM’s central processor, so I wouldn’t be surprised if PS3 used Linux as its main OS.
I wouldn’t even be surprised if I heard that PS2 uses Linux. I’m not sure about that.
It does not. On the PS2 you bang the hardware if you want any kind of performance. Probably the same thing on PS3.
The article says it is, and refers to the name as humor, but the fact is it really is NOT an emulator. Its an API, and therefore it also doesn’t have that significant performance hit that all emulators have, which the author mentions. Of course, that doesn’t mean it won’t ever be slower, its not perfect, but it is often faster then Windows as well.
The PS2 and XBOX are now ancient technology. A $400 PC is at least 10 times as powerful as a $150 console. At these prices, not having to fork out $100 for windows makes a big difference. Now I don’t know what kind of person buys the $300+ graphics cards, knowing that in six months it will cost half that for the same thing. Personally I never spend more than $100 (equiv.) on a graphics card, and only upgrade every three years or so.
The gaming scene in general does suck quite badly atm. Only the Sims and GTA series’ show any innovation. Of those, you need a (good) PC to play the sims, and compare GTA on a PS2 with GTA on a PC (even quite an old one) – no contest.
This generation of consoles is dead. Hence all the slimline and handheld novelty devices out now. Everything changes when the PS3 comes out. Until then, the PC rules gaming.
What did the 5 fingers say to the face?
Here’s 20% of my hand!!! (all fingers clench to a fist but the middle.)
As Direct X loses compatibility with older versions, for example Direct X7 is MUCH different than dx3.0a and dx8.1 is much different than 5, WINE will become more and more important allowing users to play their old games ON A MODERN OS THAT IS NOT OPEN TO ATTACK THROUGH A WEB BROSWER FROM 1998.
Unfortunately, not enough people even know that SDL even exists. SDL, DirectFB (great for low-spec computers) make pretty good 2D game platforms or 2.5D game platforms. No real 3D there, but that’s where the engines of commercial games who’ve been open sourced come in.
Cube
Yeti
Rise of the Triad
Duke Nukem 3D
Quake 1, 2, 3
Return To Castle Wolfenstein
Decent
Shadow Warrior
Blood
Doom
Doom2 (same as doom pretty much)
The graphics and levels are not available, but the engines can be used for making new games. Yeah some of those aren’t truly 3d, but they LOOK like it.
How do you know it will run an embedded Linux system?
Not saying it is untrue, I would just like to see a confirming article or something?
Any links?
Its stange there is no market for these kinds of mergers between technologies.
Each platform has its technologies which it think is the best for all different reasons (or maybe thats all they could do at the time) however developers then have the problem of interaction with these technologies. Its less of a problem for users since their interaction does not change much (windows, mouse, keyboard, widgets) but developers have many totally different interfaces which make it such a pain to code for.
There needs to be more environments which thier purpose is taking many technologies and providing a single interface to them. So you would call a single Draw API which would do the calling of either DirectX or OpenGL, or have a single sound API which would call DirectX or a linux alternative.
I understand why thier is a need for choice however some people dont like choice when they need to make multiple choices. If it was a question of windows or linux, it would be different then a question of windows+linux. Thats the purpose that environments would serve.
now thats old hat
to inform everyone, the N stands for nintendo. it was a comic and cartoon hero created by nintendo based on their nes system. he had the classical light pistol (of duck hunt and hogans alley fame) as weapon and the beltbuckle was a nes controller, allowing him to access stuff like super speed and cheat codes
hmm, from what i recall his main nemisis was mother brain, from metroid. he even teamed up with samsus aran at times. heh, in fact i think the only nes universe he didnt visit was marios as he allready had a very developed one.
and for your info, i still have a nes sitting around the house somewhere
Please don’t forget Legends – it recently reentered development for all major computing platforms (*nix, *bsd, windows, and yes, mac is in the works sorta).
There are quite a few problems with Linux as a platform to develope for some pointed out in this thread. Personally i beleive the most important problem Linux has is the lack of any kind of consistent standard to develope for. There really isn’t a single Linux OS as compaired to really just one Windows. Yes most distros are functionally the same but as a developer which one do you develope for? is it cost effective to try and support 50+ linux distro’s with a software release? only to have your entire development effort become broken when a new kernel is released or some other tweak to the OS, 3 months down the road? Linux needs consistency and a standard API before it becomes a commercially viable developer platform.
Proper Linux gaming died with Loki. Sure, Icculus is doing some really cool stuff with Unreal Tourney and such, and I loved the NWN port, but we’re not going to see a major improvement in gaming for Linux. A revival in Linux gaming does not mean Wine and crap like that, but native ports. And for that to happen, we first need real commercial support in the form of 3D drivers, support for said drivers, and a real demand for commercial gaming titles. It’s just not gonna happen. The money is in console games, and some PC and MAC.
If you want to play games and still use *NIX, get a Mac..
ARe not itnerested in a platform which is crippled for gaming such as the Linux platform and since none of the Linux users wanna pay squat for what they use I don’t see why anyone would even consider developing games for Linux….
>>I’m not a fan of cedega as they took the existing wine >>codebase and sold it without giving anything back!
>This is another claim that’s made a lot and again simply >isn’t true. Here’s what Gavriel State, Founder & CTO had to >say about this on Slashdot.
Ok I must admit I wasn’t aware of that. So take my apologize for my hard words then.
Somehow it’s a bit hard to get definite informations about this… You only give back part of your code, don’t you? Though (nearly?) all other companies involved with open source do the same, so I can’t really blame you.
I still have these bad feelings I always have when I see when some people have given away code to be usefull and benefitial to other people and then a company takes it and sells it for money… but well this is another discussion.