America's Army 3.0 "May Return" To Linux

Back in September we talked about the possibility of America's Army returning to Linux with the 3.0 release. One of the America's Army developers mentioned that it's a possibility and there may be a way to get the client restored and updated on Linux. It looks like America's Army 3.0 for Linux is still a possibility and Ryan Gordon, the one that was contracted to originally port the America's Army client and servers to Linux (along with hordes of other games over the past decade), has confirmed this real possibility himself.

America's Army 3.0 will utilize the Unreal Engine 3 (the same engine as what's found in Unreal Tournament 3, which still is unreleased for Linux). With this major engine update the graphics should be much-improved along with a host of other advantages. Much of the fundamental game-play aspects from the weapons to maps are also being reworked for America's Army 3.0, which originally supposed to be released in late 2008.

America's Army 3.0 still isn't released yet (or even in a public beta), but Ryan Gordon has signaled that this game "may return" to Linux. Yours truly created a bug report in December of 2005 about a minor issue within the Linux version of America's Army 2.5. That bug was never responded to by anyone until in the wee hours of this morning.

Over three years after the bug was reported, Ryan Gordon responded to this bug report saying that no further work is being done with America's Army 2.x with the clients having been abandoned and the server port being handled by a different group. He did, however, proceed to mention "We may return for ArmyOps 3.0, but no promises." That does sound a bit hopeful -- especially with him saying that directly to an @phoronix.com bug report :).

Perhaps 2009 will be a great year for Linux gaming with Linux Game Publishing working on several titles, the Shadowgrounds series coming to Linux, hope that the Unreal Tournament 3 client will make it out this year, the Steam Client, and now the possibility that America's Army 3.0 may return.