Will UT3 For Linux Be Released This Year?

[Svartalf]

You know what, if you can prove this, you can actually file an Anti-Trust suit over it. If it's going on, it's illegal as hell.


[edit]

Not sure what gives with Serious Sam 2... However, there IS a possibility... X-Box title. The other possibility
is that they never quite got back to it when the Serious Engine 3 project completed- people DO get burned out a bit
after all, you know.


NWN2 was re-worked and messed up on a botched attempt to make an X-Box 360 contender for Obsidian in a Hail Mary type play by Atari. (Oh, by the by, NWN2 wasn't DONE by Bioware. It was done by Obsidian on behalf of Atari... If Atari had any real say in it, I suspect NWN wouldn't have happened either.)

[deanjo]

Svartalf,

First it's extremely unlikely that openAL is the culprit. OpenAL 1.1 for linux is still LGPL.

http://www.openal.org/platforms.html

Kevin,

Nobody, at anytime, promised a Linux client of NWN 2. It was never killed or pulled. It simply never existed despite the extremely wishful thinking of thousands of fans.

[Kevin]

I know the NWN2 Linux port never existed. I merely only listed that since the original was ported to Linux. NWN2 used a totally different engine that was not as easily possible to port to Linux. I'm not a programmer but I believe that NWN ran on Open GL and NWN2 on Directx. Why they moved over to Directx, I don't know.

Not sure what gives with Serious Sam 2... However, there IS a possibility... X-Box title. The other possibility
is that they never quite got back to it when the Serious Engine 3 project completed- people DO get burned out a bit
after all, you know.

Would make complete sense... only except that it doesn't explain why the team is still not giving a reason for it's released. Their is a giant thread over at Croteam with posts all the way through January of this year with people asking what happened. People are asking and no one is talking. If they decided to cancel a project then logically they would give a reason behind doing so. They are completely avoiding the question which is what I find to be strange. The Linux client was almost finished. It has reached release candidate 2 status which means a few minor bug fixes and then it's release. However it was abruptly terminated with no reason given.

I don't know if Microsoft is secretly behind this stuff or not but I can say that Microsoft has closely worked with these companies for support on their Xbox and Epic Games actually said they even wanted to do a Gears of War Linux port but that Microsoft only gave them permission for a Mac port and completely denied them the ability to release a port over to Linux (Microsoft publishes Gears of War).

I seriously wouldn't doubt if Microsoft is somehow behind this stuff. Everyone here knows the kinds of tactics they use. They paid SCO to attack Linux, they tried to buy out companies and lets not forget the Novell deal. Not saying Microsoft is behind this because I truthfully don't know. Either way, something seems at least a little fishy. Specially for the Unreal Tournament 3 client release which has gone MIA alongside the MS buyout rumors and the complete avoidance of the developers giving an explanation as to what has happened to it. Create a Linux topic in the UT3 forums and you can expect to see it deleted pretty quick.

[Pseus]

It's like they are being paid off or something. I bet ID software ends up doing the same thing.

It'll be a sad day if and when that happens.
And yeah, I was disappointed by NWN2, too. NWN was a great game and played wonderfully under Linux. I had my hopes high for NWN2

[marakaid]

The possibility of Microsoft halting some Linux games development coudl be true, but very difficult to demonstrate; see what is happening about their monopoly practices, specially the European Union case, it's a real long legal battle even for an OS; maybe the only way to investigate it is if some lawyer know the affected games and get really pissed off.

[deanjo]

I'm not a programmer but I believe that NWN ran on Open GL and NWN2 on Directx. Why they moved over to Directx, I don't know.

DirectX vs OpenGL isn't the big hurdle a port of NWN2 would face, it was do more to the fact that it was written in C# which makes a port to linux a almost complete re-write. Mono performance and compatibility is still not up to par to pull of such a port. (Using C# also explains the high system requirements to get the game running smoothly as well even in windows).

As far as the Novell quip goes, lets see what has happened since then,

1) interoperability has improved
2) Novell put a dagger into the heart of SCO's challenge
3) AMD and Novell's SUSE Linux engineering team joined forces to release the needed source code and hardware specifications to create open-source graphics drivers for the Radeon chip family.

[Svartalf]

DirectX vs OpenGL isn't the big hurdle a port of NWN2 would face, it was do more to the fact that it was written in C# which makes a port to linux a almost complete re-write. Mono performance and compatibility is still not up to par to pull of such a port. (Using C# also explains the high system requirements to get the game running smoothly as well even in windows).

It was my understanding that only the tools were done in C#. If it was re-worked with C# instead of C++, it would explain the unruly system requirements for the title.

[Pseus]

It was my understanding that only the tools were done in C#. If it was re-worked with C# instead of C++, it would explain the unruly system requirements for the title.

That was my understanding too. In fact, according to the Wine-AppDB entries for NWN2 [1], the toolset fails under Wine, and that is attributed to its dependency on .NET. The game, OTOH, seems to work with some minor glitches, which would mean it does not run on top of .NET.

[1] http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...sion&iId=10552

[para_para_fiend]

Won't forget. Still waiting to buy this game...

[deanjo]

Anybody else waiting for an April 1st announcement? Given Tim Sweeney's scathing review of PC gaming in general, it seems like game development is now a "consoles first, PC's if we get around to it" to the Epic team.

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36390/118/