UT3 For Linux Is Laid To Rest By Epic's Mark Rein

[kickback999]

Does it matter? Not really, UT3 was one of the biggest flops of the last 15 years of FPS gaming.
No one really plays it anymore, you will get better games in ET, ETQW or even the old UT games. Hell the best pc fps game to play online (RTCW) STILL has more players even now after 10 years of relative obscurity than UT3 does.

What you all seem to fail to reflect on is the decline of PC itself as a gaming platform. Sure releases of big name games for linux are getting thin on the ground (even more so lol) but then again its all downhill on Windows too. Console is the way to go now, PC started dying after Doom3/Quake 4/ETQW came out.

For example the only system you can play MAG on is PS3, MW2 there is absolutely no point playing on a pc because it doesnt support the console or user created maps/mods; which were always the 2 main advantages to playing games on a pc, disregarding graphics as to me graphics < gameplay all the way. Also, that said, the difference between pc and console graphics has failed to grow to the same glaring gap as it did in previous generations.

Final point: can you even blame developers when they know Linux users will be getting inferior performance due to the poor graphics driver support by ATI and Intel? (games run noticably faster on windows than linux on this laptop :'( unlike my old Athlon XP 3200+ with Geforce 6600gt where the opposite was true)

But hey, who cares. UT went steadily worse from each release. The Assault mode was always the best too.

[Svartalf]

Why is Epic acting like they are hard-pressed for money?

Because of the sunk costs on UT3 and GoW-PC. They missed the mark on both titles and while they're recouping the costs on the engine licenses, it's not the same thing as the cash injections that would have come from the other titles. They've got to cover the expenses on the new titles they're working on- and paying some of the debts on the previous two or so engines and on UT3, it'd be good money after bad at this point for them.

[droidhacker]

Speaking of iD, I wish Carmack would do Android ports of Doom in addition to the iPhone ports he's done.
Android and mobile Linux probably has the better shot at being a viable gaming platform than desktop Linux at this point.

Something wrong with all the dooms and quakes that are already running on android?

[V!NCENT]

Some countries sit on billion dollar oil fields, yet the people are strugling to get clean drinking water and food. Stupidity is everywhere, including at Epic.

[allquixotic]

Heh... I think you hit it on the head of the nail with this one. MONEY is the reason why this happened the way it did. It's not an RoI that got them in this position- although that's the figuring with what Mark Rein finally told Michael Larabel. Rumor has it they owed him money for prior work done on the previous versions of Unreal Tech. I'd be inclined to work with someone up to a point on things if they owed me money for things (and be even understanding after a fashion if they could show me they missed their mark on a title...)- but if it goes past a threshold, I'd cut them completely off and withhold any further results of my labor and stop doing things with it. The odds are good that they ran out of funds to pay him for past work and now it's no longer in their interests from an RoI position, since they're hurting from all of this, to correct the problem that they made for themselves on this.

What I don't understand is how a company that licenses an extremely expensive, industry-leading engine as Unreal 1 / 2 / 3 can be in a financially difficult position. They must have astronomical operating costs or they constantly work very close to their profit line or give all their profits to their employees or execs.

I mean, I have no doubt that they are getting some money from every copy of Mass Effect 1 and 2 sold, among many others. Why is Epic acting like they are hard-pressed for money?

It's kind of sad in one way, because these guys are very wealthy to begin with and can't spare enough money for a single developer to work on one of their flagship titles.... and it's also sad to see a company unable to manage its finances in a way that is conducive to lower operating costs and better cash flow. I just think they fail at economics or something, because they should be making plenty of money and then some. Is the executive board buying yachts or what's the deal?

[Svartalf]

None of it.

You're very probably right on that score.

The problem with Linux gaming (especially Linux-native gaming) is that development is resource-intensive, and has little to no monetization ROI; development without ROI, in most cases, won't happen *at all* (that is, in fact, why GOW2 for *Windows* didn't happen; instead, it was console-only).

Heh... Your statement there would be correct if your assumptions were correct.

You assume it's resource-intensive. Not much moreso than the actual game's development if you're doing it right in the first place- good design and development lead you to abstract away inconsistencies in the code base where you've got things like D3D, etc. If I were able to do this full time, it'd take less time for me to make the ports I've done.

And, the main reason that GOW2 didn't happen for Windows is that they'd have had expenses within the PC world that they just didn't have cash for to do the only resource intensive work, the extra testing- and didn't have the cash to do another risky (For them at this point...) deal on things when GoW PC didn't make as much money as it ought to have along with UT3 bombing as bad as it did in the marketplace. The big selling point of the XBox is that you have an easy effort going from Windows PC to console (as long as the controls are simplistic enough- NWN2 wouldn't have made it there, even though Atari tried to make it go there initially...) and vice versa. So, I don't buy your reasoning for GoW2...

Also, look at the problems Epic's owners have moneywise - they pretty much *have* to go where the ROI is (and it plain and simply is not in Linux gaming; it also pretty much isn't in Windows gaming, either, not in comparison to console gaming, or even casino gaming, which is Midway's other major platform).

Heh... I think you hit it on the head of the nail with this one. MONEY is the reason why this happened the way it did. It's not an RoI that got them in this position- although that's the figuring with what Mark Rein finally told Michael Larabel. Rumor has it they owed him money for prior work done on the previous versions of Unreal Tech. I'd be inclined to work with someone up to a point on things if they owed me money for things (and be even understanding after a fashion if they could show me they missed their mark on a title...)- but if it goes past a threshold, I'd cut them completely off and withhold any further results of my labor and stop doing things with it. The odds are good that they ran out of funds to pay him for past work and now it's no longer in their interests from an RoI position, since they're hurting from all of this, to correct the problem that they made for themselves on this.

[V!NCENT]

It can't be ported right away an in "Show me the money you still owe me first, kthnxbye?".

Lol I wouldn't either...

[VinzC]

I would wager that they probably didn't anticipate the degree to which Unreal Engine 3 is tied to the Windows / Xbox platforms. If it were really engineered to work on POSIX platforms, releasing most Unreal Engine 3 games for Mac and Linux would be something tangible for most game studios, and they'd do it because of the low investment required to achieve it.

Ryan may be a good porting hacker, but for something that complex, I'm not surprised if it required more talent than was available in that one person, and they simply didn't increase the manpower to compensate for the gargantuan technical effort required.

I really don't believe this is true, i.e. as far as UT3 is concerned, factually. Remember three years ago or so when Ryan said the game couldn't be ported immediately and we couldn't imagine why (actually he couldn't tell). This to me means he probably had all the appropriate technical skills to port the game. But something that was beyond the technical context of porting a game was preventing him from doing that. I'm more likely to believe in ?political? rather than technical [or skills] reasons.

Remember also that Phoronix has shown clues the game was indeed running on Linux. I rather believe the porting project was dropped for a couple of reasons but technical ? without raising the conspiracy theory.

[energyman]

good thing I decided to wait for the linux client before I purchase it.

[PGHammer]

Why UT3/Linux Croaked

part of me wonders how much of the Linux Client being canned can be attributed to Microsoft and Gears of War. I really wonder if one of the stipulations of Microsoft backing Gears of War was the termination of Epic's outright support for *nix.

None of it.

The problem with Linux gaming (especially Linux-native gaming) is that development is resource-intensive, and has little to no monetization ROI; development without ROI, in most cases, won't happen *at all* (that is, in fact, why GOW2 for *Windows* didn't happen; instead, it was console-only).

Also, look at the problems Epic's owners have moneywise - they pretty much *have* to go where the ROI is (and it plain and simply is not in Linux gaming; it also pretty much isn't in Windows gaming, either, not in comparison to console gaming, or even casino gaming, which is Midway's other major platform).