Originally posted by Duo Maxwell
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XreaL: The Most Advanced Open-Source Game Engine?
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Originally posted by dmj726 View Post[*]There are few native commercial or commercial equivalent games for Linux.
[*]Most of the open source games for linux *look* old. They might be good, fun games, but the archaic graphics give a bad first impression.
[*]Most of the quality games for Linux are also available for Windows and other platforms. Most platforms concentrate a great deal on "exclusive titles." When Loki went out of business, they said that porting was the worng strategy: Loki's Draeker: If I had to do it over, I'd create Linux native games
Having said this, LGP has at one time, attempted the same thing (Google for "Angry Pixels", which was to be the first studio fostered this way...) and it didn't get far. Mainly because it's not easy getting games going.
[*]Some Linux games manage to get a good community going, but there are many evolutionary dead ends in open source gaming. This is no different from the proprietary world, but the proprietary world has managed to compensate for it through various techniques for managing risk and maximizing profit on the successful titles.
[*]Most titles are very niche specific and often attempt to create an equivalent of an existing proprietary game on another platform
[*]A lot of games have less than AAA quality artwork, which often looks like an afterthought.
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Thank you for commenting, Svartalf, I am not attempting to place blame or say that the tremendous efforts made so far aren't valuable. I just made some observations about what might be holding Linux gaming back from its full potential. A large part of the limitation is "market share." There's a real chicken and the egg issue here, which is why Linux gaming will need to find some advantage to bootstrap itself.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostIt's not simple or easy to make "commercial equivalent" games- and the dearth of commercial games stems more from a perception that there's no market in it for the players in question. This perception stems from many differing things, including several bad decisions on the community's part (Q3:A...everyone couldn't wait 3 or so weeks and bought the Windows version and "patched" it...).Originally posted by Svartalf View PostThat's because many of them ARE old. They were open sourced a while back. Keep in mind something, though... Retro's something of a new movement in gaming and it's getting very popular- because the games of old were a hell of a lot more fun to play than many of the "cool" games that "look modern".
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostHeh... Loki did many things wrong- only ONE of them was not working at fostering native games for Linux that originated from the platform.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostHaving said this, LGP has at one time, attempted the same thing (Google for "Angry Pixels", which was to be the first studio fostered this way...) and it didn't get far. Mainly because it's not easy getting games going.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostIf you ask me, they've not managed any better. It's just there's more people mining that space than in the FOSS world so it looks like they've managed it better. If you look at all the lurching horrors that get to the store shelves (Heh...including such stinkers as Daikatana...) they're not doing any better...they've just got more financial resources to keep people doing it in spite of it being atrocious.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostThis is more because someone wants to play that proprietary game on Linux and can't because there's not a native version of the game in question- so they make reimplementations.
Originally posted by Svartalf View PostThis is one of the actual problem areas out of the list of things you give. It's going to be a difficult one. How do you attract quality work of that nature for free? You'll have an uphill battle on that front, unfortunately, because Artists want to get paid at some point (Just like coders...) and they're all still mainly in the proprietary mindset in the world they operate from- they don't get the payment in kind thing like the devs do.
In practice, getting the artwork will be a huge challenge. That's why I suggested that the games share a good amount of their artwork to reduce the impact of the lack of artist involvement. That way the art can evolve over time like the Linux kernel.
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Originally posted by Svartalf View Post(Q3:A...everyone couldn't wait 3 or so weeks and bought the Windows version and "patched" it...).
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Originally posted by grantek View PostWait, what? I'm sure I've dragged this argument out for later id games, but didn't Q3:A have a phone-home cd-key check? Automatic update management? Everything you need to identify who's playing it on Linux.
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Great post Svartalf, I agree on all points, there's simply more money in the proprietary Windows game market, more games (stinkers and gems alike) come out on Windows than on Linux, and it's entirely because of funding.
There are few traditional publishers who would be willing to "risk" an investment in a Linux only game, and so far there hasn't even been a compelling argument from the user community regarding the market-ability of such a game even if it was made.
So all we get is cross-platform games to avoid "risk", because it's easy to convince investers that there is a market for Windows games.
So without funding, most games simply choose another platform.
This funding issue is at the heart of the problem for all zero-cost games such as Nexuiz - it's hard to find any artist (or experienced game programmer) willing to work without pay on a game "for the community", it's like being voluntarily unemployed and voluntarily starving.
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Originally posted by Aradreth View PostBut Loki didn't get any money from people using the patched version contributing to their fall (which scared off a fair few publishers I'm sure) as they ended up with lots of "useless" stock as everyone had bought a windows version and weren't buying the Linux version, that's a lot of money (if they made 5000 copies that's ~ ?150000, admittedly some of that would have been profit) lost which a start up company just can't afford.
Just because the titles phone home doesn't mean diddly if the publisher making the Linux version takes a bath on it. They most definitely do NOT pull any version reporting home as Linux out of the Windows proceeds pile and place it in a Linux one. When you bought Q3:A from Activision instead of Loki, you paid THEM and they don't do Linux versions period.
Just as there was a reason Loki got pasted the way they did, there's reasons why I keep telling people when you buy a Windows version of something, you're sending a message- one that I doubt many of the people in this forum would like to send.
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Originally posted by Svartalf View PostJust as there was a reason Loki got pasted the way they did, there's reasons why I keep telling people when you buy a Windows version of something, you're sending a message- one that I doubt many of the people in this forum would like to send.
I think fundamentally the dual-boot crowd are the problem in the equation.
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Originally posted by LordHavoc View PostThe way I see it, multi-platform versions will always cannibalize single-platform versions, but seem easier to sell to the dual-boot crowd.
I think fundamentally the dual-boot crowd are the problem in the equation.
I'm usually one to side with the pirates but if the goal is to send a message to dev houses to make more linux titles then they aren't helping and only pirating for themselves.
I always try to tell them if you must game pirate just grab your windows and your windows only games that aren't going to be ported.
I used to be a Mac guy, same issue there, the ones that whined the most for more Mac games where the ones that had pirated the entire library of Mac titles. Now what do they get? non native hacks of the games using cider. They have nobody to blame but themselves as I'm all for pirating a copy of Maya or Adobe Studio for classes as even with edu discount it can still be ridiculously expensive, but don't pirate games if your chosen OS isn't windows as you're just removing any incentive from the game publishers to ever make native tittles.
As for the dificulty of making other types of games...
Have any of the potential game devs out there ever owned a console? Have they ever played 2d fighters or side scrolling beat em ups like double dragon? Thse kinds of games wth good quality graphics and a decent control scheme with capability of using a controller could prove quite interesting.
IMHO the 2D fighter is a completely untapped market these days, the last game I heard about from this genera was last year's Arcana Heart, yes, the perv game lol: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPVRt9Bg594 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPVRt9Bg594
I think that theres a decent amount of space in the gaming market for some well done 2d games in hd quality. The best thing? since it's 2D you can pay your cousin that can draw good in beer to make some charters for you. Seriously, in a community as large as say the ubuntu forums, it probably wouldn't be hard to find people to make a few chars and draw in a few dozen animation poses for them so that they could look to be moving right.
What about 3d platformers? Wheres the open source equivalent of crash bandicoot/banjo kazooie/spyro the dragon/croc/mario/whatever
We can't have Tux and GNU team up in some epic adventure?
Can't find enough people? Try hitting the Mac users up for help, still not enough? hit every windows gaming forum. Need cash? Then see if you can get the game if small enough ported to the wii or if any size ported to the ps3, last I checked both had online game shops just like the Xbox360 has and they do have some interesting and sucessful titles.
At least as far as 2d goes theres one decent sidescoller in the same vein as the old 2d duke nukems in Metal Blob Solid, too bad the 3d versions don't seem to have that same kind of appeal.Last edited by Duo Maxwell; 13 April 2009, 03:01 AM.
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Originally posted by Duo Maxwell View PostI'm usually one to side with the pirates but if the goal is to send a message to dev houses to make more linux titles then they aren't helping and only pirating for themselves.
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