Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[Svartalf]

Thank you for opening this thread.

You're welcome. I thought brain-storming about things (which surprised even me- we've got some good leads here...) would be a more productive use of my and you all's time than bitching about DRM, "crappy games", etc...

I remember Svartalf destroying my hopes of a Deus Ex 1 port in the other thread yet a bit of hope still prevails so I'd like to add


Deus Ex 1 and
Master of Orion 2

to the list. Both are among my favourite games and I'd love to see them ported to Linux.

(I can't seem to get the search function to get working therefore I don't know if the games have already been discussed (haven't read the whole thread yet, I'm somewhere around page 12...))

No, neither have been discussed yet. You're probably not going to like the answers, to be honest...


Deus EX - This was nearly to the Beta phase just as Loki imploded. Eidos "supposedly" got the source back from them. That remains to be seen that this happened even though Loki made that as their public statement regarding all the port work they'd done.

IF you can convince Eidos to part with the Loki derived version (If they even have it...) or get permission from them to allow the developer with the tree to hand it off to someone else or to complete the work (IF they still have it in their stuff by now- they may have nuked it from orbit to reclaim space or to honor IP rights, etc.)- you can have a port. In all honesty, until you show them some proof we're going to make something with this, unless you can convince them to open source the thing, you're going to have the same mess LGP has trying to get AAA titles (Which this one is...). Same story as before, I'm afraid. I'll look into it as a "maybe" but I don't hold out much hope for it or the sequel for us at this time.


Masters of Orion 2 - Not likely. Simtex shuttered its doors in '97. No clear path for IP rights past the published DOS, Win95 (Microprose), and MacOS versions (MacSoft)- I doubt that Simtex relinquished much of any rights past what was given to Microprose or MacSoft on this one, so it's not likely the publishers have anything for us, even if they were still a going interest. Give me a favorable lead and I'll put it in the "being considered" pile. Otherwise, it's just another unfortunate dead end.

[Svartalf]

Ya, that game was fun...even the 5 minute demo was a fun timewaster

Putting that on Linux would be nice IF it is possible...

Not possible at this time- rights holder is defunct. No clues as to whom has code in hand and the rights to allow a port.

[xav1r]

Hey Svartalf! Thanks for considering my suggestions! Regarding 3DR, well, they do own the rights and the source code of 3 of their games, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3d and Shadow Warrior. They even released the source code of all those 3 games as GPL, so I assume it'd not be that difficult to work something out with them. Regarding Witchaven I, II and tekwar, it'd be interesting too, I dont think there's gonna be any ip rights problem, actually, if there's a copyright holder of those games, working with the code might be a way to get their attention. Apparently Capstone/Intracorp wasnt bought out by any other company after they folded.

[xav1r]

Just a quick note, I think someone mentioned Raptor Call of Shadows before, the developer of this cool game still sells the game from their website http://www.mking.com/about.htm, they might be interested in a linux port of it.

Since we are were discussing build engine games, what about Powerslave? It was a fun game when it was released, but sadly its original developer, Lobotomy Software, went boom, and the publisher of that game, Playmates interactive Entertaintment, doesnt have the rights to that game. I tried contacting one of the developers that worked on that game, Ezra Dreisbach, but couldnt reach him. Maybe you could have better luck tracking him down. He later worked on the Champions of Norrath games.

[xav1r]

more random choices : Im on a roll!!!

-Interstate 75
-Syndicate Wars
-Simcity hehehe

[xav1r]

This appears to already be on Icculus.

http://www.icculus.org/rott/

Yea, but that port is sadly very outdated, and it wont compile straightforwardly without major changes. Maybe a commercial official port of it would be better.

[anyone]

Activision is merging with Blizzard...

http://kotaku.com/5023049/activision-blizzard-merger-official

I wonder if this is good or bad for us.

[Svartalf]

Hey Svartalf! Thanks for considering my suggestions! Regarding 3DR, well, they do own the rights and the source code of 3 of their games, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3d and Shadow Warrior. They even released the source code of all those 3 games as GPL, so I assume it'd not be that difficult to work something out with them.

Yeah, I'm thinking this is the case too- but I don't want to drop something into George Broussard's lap from someone that's where Ryan was some 5-6 years back in the porting game. I think I need to get a few of the good prospects out of the way before talking with 'em about anything. Also keep in mind, there might be projects of their own that haven't been published yet. I need to see how that all shakes out before moving forward with them. They're local- I only need to drive 15-20 minutes from my day job to get to their offices. And I didn't know ROTT had been GPLed...checking on Ryan's website, sure enough, it's GPLed and in SVN there at icculus.org.

Regarding Witchaven I, II and tekwar, it'd be interesting too, I dont think there's gonna be any ip rights problem, actually, if there's a copyright holder of those games, working with the code might be a way to get their attention. Apparently Capstone/Intracorp wasnt bought out by any other company after they folded.

Ahh... Unfortunately, what you're describing is willful infringement of whomever owns the rights to that code and the assets. Did you think it was appropriate that Actiontec and Verizon misappropriate busybox? If not, what you are suggesting is no different.

Sorry, not going to dabble in willful Copyright infringement- it might impair my ability to prosecute cases when my work (Patented or Copyrighted- and YES, I do have rights in both worlds...) was infringed upon.

It's easy enough to see if we can't trace the chain of Copyright ownership and get signoff from the person who owns the rights before doing any actual work on the subject.

[Svartalf]

Just a quick note, I think someone mentioned Raptor Call of Shadows before, the developer of this cool game still sells the game from their website http://www.mking.com/about.htm, they might be interested in a linux port of it.

Raptor's already on the list...

Since we are were discussing build engine games, what about Powerslave? It was a fun game when it was released, but sadly its original developer, Lobotomy Software, went boom, and the publisher of that game, Playmates interactive Entertaintment, doesnt have the rights to that game. I tried contacting one of the developers that worked on that game, Ezra Dreisbach, but couldnt reach him. Maybe you could have better luck tracking him down. He later worked on the Champions of Norrath games.

Powerslave's getting added to the list, then... If we can get signoff, we can make a JFBuild variant with the code they have.

[Przeciwko]

Here are my suggestions:

-Ufo: Aftermath, Aftershock and Afterlight (something like X-COM: UFO DEFENSE)- all done by Altar.
-The Suffering 1/2 (horror game) by Surreal
-Fallout 1 (yeah the first done by Black Isle). Bethesda has the rights to whole series.
-Arcanum (very great RPG like Fallout 1) by Troika, probably rights to it has Sierra currently.
- Painkiller (Overdose if it's possible) (FPS) by People Can Fly.

And that's all for now... maybe later I found out other titles.
About some "maybe games":

Dues Ex 2 is rather poor game with bad controls/story and bugs. Really not worth porting.
Gothic 3 team is working on some addon... good would be porting Linux version with that addon.
And beside of that it's nice to see such topic.. shows that you listen to customers
Cheers,