Valve's Source Engine Coming To Linux

[xav1r]

Well, id games will have a linux client, everybody knows that. Even Rage will, that's because Carmack believes in open source, if only as a hobbyist tool. They are a commercial company afterall. What i see here, with this possible and sudden "change of plans" is money. Monetary interests keep the stakes too high, thus trivial things like releasing a bunch of binaries compatible with linux become national security-like subjects. Maybe the high stakes money driven games industry is just incompatible with the open, modular nature of free software.

[deanjo]

In an ideal world I would love to see intel, now that they have acquired the Project Offset engine, release it as opensource under a license that allows it to be used commercially for free with the stipulation that any engine changes be opensource as well, leaving only the creative content protected. There would be no issues with porting titles then.

But alas, I'm pretty sure intel acquired the engine for only one reason. To optimize it for larabee in an attempt to kill the GPU business. They have closed the sites forums and what was supposed to be a crossplatform game is now Windows and Xbox360 only. Pity the team that created the engine were responsible for Savage which embraced the alternate community.

For those who haven't heard of Project Offset, you can check out the video here in HD.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22926.html?type=flv

[Aradreth]

Well, id games will have a linux client, everybody knows that. Even Rage will

By not announcing the client if they have been making one and then choose not to release it people can't complain because it was never announced. It allows companies to change their plans for whatever reason and means when there are large delays they don't (or their product) become a huge joke (DNF I'm looking at you).

In an ideal world I would love to see intel, now that they have acquired the Project Offset engine, release it as opensource under a license that allows it to be used commercially for free with the stipulation that any engine changes be opensource as well, leaving only the creative content protected. There would be no issues with porting titles then.

But alas, I'm pretty sure intel acquired the engine for only one reason. To optimize it for larabee in an attempt to kill the GPU business. They have closed the sites forums and what was supposed to be a crossplatform game is now Windows and Xbox360 only. Pity the team that created the engine were responsible for Savage which embraced the alternate community.

For those who haven't heard of Project Offset, you can check out the video here in HD.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22926.html?type=flv

Project Offset looked amazing I was really disappointed when they were bought by intel because now they are going to probably become a Ray Tracing/Larrabee tech demo.

[zerix01]

Maybe because it has DRM?

Seriously, I don't know. Wasn't Valve owned or had an agreement with Vivendi? IIRC, it was Vivendi who stopped Blizzard from having a Linux client for WoW.

Say what now? Do you have a link to more information about this? I didn't even think Blizzard was working on a Linux client.

[Aradreth]

Say what now? Do you have a link to more information about this? I didn't even think Blizzard was working on a Linux client.

During the WOW beta there was a working linux client so they definitely where working on it at one stage.

Edit: it might have been when the alpha testing was being done and then got removed when beta hit, I can't remember.

[Thetargos]

Yes, it was somewhere between the alpha and beta process. Remember there was a site setup to gather as many signatures as possible to get a WoW client? Originally it was said that if the Linux community could pull as many as 20K it might just come to be, the page gathered no less than 100K signatures, and then Linux supported was removed (or was it? Maybe Blizzard still has the client laying around, who knows)

[Aradreth]

Yes, it was somewhere between the alpha and beta process. Remember there was a site setup to gather as many signatures as possible to get a WoW client? Originally it was said that if the Linux community could pull as many as 20K it might just come to be, the page gathered no less than 100K signatures, and then Linux supported was removed (or was it? Maybe Blizzard still has the client laying around, who knows)

I wasn't using linux back then so I didn't know about the petition but I was intrested in WOW as I'm a fan of Blizzards games generally (I played D2 way to much ) and read about the linux client and was impressed. (I didn't change to linux before because I was a pretty hardcore gamer back then) I would have thought for 100k signatures making a client would have been common sense. I mean that's a lot of money in subscriptions.

[sundown]

I secretly hope for a SC2 client, how silly of me

[Aradreth]

I secretly hope for a SC2 client, how silly of me

It's not just you.

[Thetargos]

I wasn't using linux back then so I didn't know about the petition but I was intrested in WOW as I'm a fan of Blizzards games generally (I played D2 way to much ) and read about the linux client and was impressed. (I didn't change to linux before because I was a pretty hardcore gamer back then) I would have thought for 100k signatures making a client would have been common sense. I mean that's a lot of money in subscriptions.

Well, no explanation was given why did they cancel the project, and 8 million subscriptions later, I don't think they miss those 100K much, personally. However I find it odd that they do know that a LOT of users use WoW under Linux, plus they worked with Wine and Cedega to make it possible that WoW ran as close as possible to native. As far as I was aware (never looked into that much) Vivendi had something to do with Blizzard dropping native support.


It would be incredible if this time around they did decided to go native for Starcraft 2, but there has been no mention of it (as far I am aware, anyway)