Will UT3 For Linux Be Released This Year?

[niniendowarrior]

No kidding. I think, however, that they might actually finish it (finally...) here in the near future- but I'm not holding my breath. Blue's my favorite color- just not on my skin...

What makes you think DNF will actually finish? I mean, it's another trailer, but they rolled out a much more detailed trailer back in E3 2001. I don't know how a short and uninformative trailer can change the picture. :P

And, I agree. Ryan probably means middleware. Assets would have been a strange licensing hold-up in my opinion since I would think it's much easier to replace the assets (if they are holding up releases) than to re-write a game on another middleware.

[Svartalf]

What makes you think DNF will actually finish? I mean, it's another trailer, but they rolled out a much more detailed trailer back in E3 2001. I don't know how a short and uninformative trailer can change the picture. :P

Considering that I know that equally impossible things might come out of 3D Realms, I'm willing to consider that they MIGHT (Note: that is NOT the same as for definite) have pulled it together. I didn't say I was holding my breath on it- I'm with you for the large part on this one.

And, I agree. Ryan probably means middleware. Assets would have been a strange licensing hold-up in my opinion since I would think it's much easier to replace the assets (if they are holding up releases) than to re-write a game on another middleware.

It's very much easier to replace assets in most cases than it is to fix middleware- and it wouldn't involve Ryan doing the rework all that much.

[niniendowarrior]

Considering that I know that equally impossible things might come out of 3D Realms, I'm willing to consider that they MIGHT (Note: that is NOT the same as for definite) have pulled it together. I didn't say I was holding my breath on it- I'm with you for the large part on this one.

Darn. And I was thinking there was some juicy stuff you had tucked in your pocket.


Well, from the looks of DNF in the trailer, it looks eerily like Doom 3. Maybe it's a mod of the Doom 3 engine.

[Thetargos]

[TopicDerail=DNF]

Actually I think I read somewhere (sorry can't remember where) that DNF will run on a proprietary engine made entirely by 3D Realms and not licensed on any other Engine... Remember that DNF has had at the very least three major Engine shifts in the last available media from 3D Realms: Id Tech 2 engine (AKA Quake 2), Unreal Tournament (UE 1.46, I think) and Unreal Tournament 200* (UE 2.0). I'm not sure what engine are they basing their proprietary engine upon (or if they write it from scratch). One thing is certain, though: They've taken their sweet time to get it done (if they ever do)

[/TopicDerail]

About UT3... I'm not sure what could be the middleware that might be getting in the way of its release, nor how it might affect Linux and involve Ryan. We've speculated about PhysX and GameSpy... But what about Sound? I men if the game uses Dolby encoded sounds... AFAIK Dolby doesn't have a library available for Linux (or any legal means to decode DD encoded streams on Linux), but I'm not sure UT3 even uses Dolby at all... All this uncertainty is certainly killing me!

[Huenengrab]

The UT3-sounds are entirely OGG/Vorbis, aren't they?

[Thetargos]

Nope, that's the music (as they are individual .ogg files, just like in UT2K4). The sound backend should have support for ogg files, that's true, but not the whole of it, not especially if ambient sounds, event sounds, voices, etc use other encoding... At any rate, I'm sure Ryan would have used OpenAL and SDL for sound and be done with it, leaving out any other fancy post processing (EAX, etc), unless game sound files required another type of backend (library, i.e middleware) to be decoded which might cause problems with Linux. Mind you, this is all conjecture (in other words, mental jerking off), but of all the "middleware" I can think of that might go into a game such as this, all I can come up with is sound... Which would actually make sense, as the Linux version of the server is out, and it is pretty much the same as the client without two key "subsystems": Sound and graphics. I'm sure it couldn't be the graphics backend, as Ryan is using OpenGL through SDL (most likely) and sound is the only thing I can think of that is not being used in the server (I could be wrong).

We have already discussed about physics, but only focused on the PhysX backend, but what if the physics backend actually has two parts? On the one hand, we have the PhysX, but what if the issue is the actual API, AFAIK this time around Epic gave in and used Havok for the physics engine. PhysX has no problems with Linux, they have stated they support to some extent the platform and will be adding hardware support "soon", but what about Havok? At this point, Havok and Sound would be the only two things I could point my finger to

[Svartalf]

We have already discussed about physics, but only focused on the PhysX backend, but what if the physics backend actually has two parts? On the one hand, we have the PhysX, but what if the issue is the actual API, AFAIK this time around Epic gave in and used Havok for the physics engine. PhysX has no problems with Linux, they have stated they support to some extent the platform and will be adding hardware support "soon", but what about Havok? At this point, Havok and Sound would be the only two things I could point my finger to

Considering that sound's moderately easy to correct, I'm suspecting that it might Havok.

This is taking too long and unless Ryan's got another couple of concurrent gigs (he does that from time to time...), this is taking too much work- it's a moderately major re-work of something critical in the game.

[Thetargos]

Now, the only thing to determine is whether indeed UT3 uses Havok and if Havok has some sort of SDK for Linux or not.

Edit

Well a quick look at the Havok site, didn't turn out quite as I expected, it appears as if UT3 doesn't use Havok... Maybe a visit to UnrealDevelopersNetwork might reveal a bit more about what is causing the actual delay...

[niniendowarrior]

Could it be this?

http://www.speedtree.com/press/PR_SpeedTree_in_Unreal_Tourn_3_Nov_15_07.pdf

EDIT:
This is obviously me trying to dig up info...
What about this licensing problem.

http://www.illuminatelabs.com/press/newsarchive/illuminate-labs-joins-epic-games2019-unreal-engine-3-integrated-partners-program/

[Svartalf]

Doubtful. It's got a Linux version, if I'm not mistaken- and it's mentioned specifically in the Linux server documentation. I'd thought I'd seen some mention that Havok was a possible for things- apparently that's in error on my part. Well, one can't blame me too much for ill recollections on things...the last couple of years haven't been QUITE nice to me, courtesy of my recently made-so ex-wife. Anyhow... I'm still scratching my head on what is the cause of the holdup.

I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.