Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[Raven3x7]

Beyond Good and Evil maybe?
Galactic Civilizations 1/2, Sins of A Solar Empire maybe as well? Stardock self-publishes these games afaik and they also dont use drm Oh and if that takes off maybe a port of Impulse(their digital distribution platform might work out as well) BTW they already have games that run nativly on linux(UT agmes) or ones that will run soon hopefully(UT3, Shadowgrounds)

[Thetargos]

I've always wanted to know how the Holmes-Lupin game worked out... mind if you drop a few info on it, Thetargos?

I don't exactly understand what you mean here, but I liked the game. I haven't played it a LOT since I'm still going through a second run through The Awakening, however I do like what they have done with the story. I had my doubts at first as well, but it turned out (at least in my very personal opinion) to be a rather nice game.

[miles]

Sobering, isn't it?

Everyone, this is part of WHY LGP can't arrange deals where you talk about "selling it for 'half price'" and so forth- they want this sort of money for AAA titles in many cases. For the A and B titles they want something like $10-40k for a newer title that did well, and only slightly less for something that broke even. The same rough pricing from the new/newer A and B titles goes for "old" AAA titles.

Svartalf, I already adressed this in one of my posts. The main issue is that LGP does whatever it can to make sure it doesn't sell any games.

Here's the post, you might have missed it.

[Chris]

A discussion thread posting doesn't mean you actually BUY it.

Anyone ignoring an hundreds of requests from people (representing a fraction of the total player base) to port an app to your platform so they can buy and play it, is a damn fool (pardon my language). What, do they think all these people are requesting a version so they can try to cause the developer/publisher to lose money? Sure, maybe not everyone requesting will buy the ported version, but there's those that will buy it that *haven't* requested.

And it's not even like there isn't a precedent, here. id Software and Epic support Linux, and there are various other made-for-Linux/Unix games and for-pay products designed to run Windows games on said OSs, and they're successful (they haven't lost lots of money or gone out of bussiness, at least). What more do they want? How can we show we will support them, if they won't let us support them? How can we provide them sales if they won't provide us a product?
</rant>

And to keep somewhat on topic:

Beyond Good and Evil

Or perhaps Beyond Good and Evil 2

[Svartalf]

Does anybody know whether SEGA is hostile towards linux? Some Total War -title (of course preferably the newest, Medieval 2: Total war) on linux would be brilliant.

Any console title that does not have a PC version planned or sold may be a difficult sale to the publishers. Even IF you have a receptive publisher, you're talking mostly AAA title territory for initial royalties, etc. Total War probably isn't going to be practical for that reason.

Crysis also has it's source code downloadable along with the mod sdk, but the actual engine code isn't there, I think, so it's useless.

No engine code, no port possible without intervention from the studio and/or publisher. Many times, this will mean cash up-front or, at the minimum, when you actually DO a production run of the title. Keep in mind that if you're talking a AAA title, unless you're buddy-buddy with the studio and their publisher (Or, if they're like Id, where they keep the rights to anything that's not part of that publishing run they're doing right now...), you're taking on a Sisyphean task there...

[Svartalf]

Anyone ignoring an hundreds of requests from people (representing a fraction of the total player base) to port an app to your platform so they can buy and play it, is a damn fool (pardon my language). What, do they think all these people are requesting a version so they can try to cause the developer/publisher to lose money? Sure, maybe not everyone requesting will buy the ported version, but there's those that will buy it that *haven't* requested.

Are you talking 10k users? If you're not, you're not talking large enough numbers for them to CARE. Honest. The money involved catering to a couple thousand doesn't outweigh the expenses involved otherwise.

[Thetargos]

What would prevent the use of an open source engine like OGRE, who as an easy model to export to, and who is also still actively developed?

As for the artistic need, Vegastrike proves that's it's a long-time prejudice, but wrong nonetheless. Building spaceships models is really easy (nothing compared to building/animating characters), same for buildings models (for the few cities in FFE). You can also reuse the open source ones, but as I say building new models for the few ships in FFE (there's actually not many different ships in this game) isn't any long undertaking. People have been building Elite/FFE detailed models (for CG) for ages, and the hw is such that you could even just reuse them in a real-time 3D engine.

Don't get me wrong, but if you have ever been involved in an Open Source game effort, you'll know that usually the technical side of things (programming, scripting, etc) have enough people working on them, and usually what projects need the most are artists. I'm certainly not implying that there aren't artists out there, rather that it may be hard to justify for one to spend so much time and effort on a free game from which they won't see a dime. Unlike programmers, artists tend to spend much more time to produce one small piece. While Vegastrike, Battle for Wesnoth, World of Padman, etc all enjoy good graphics art and all, that is not the case with many more projects, and is actually the #1 request from project managers.

[Svartalf]

Or perhaps Beyond Good and Evil 2

Heh... Both are COOL AAA titles from the looks of things. Ubisoft's not openly hostile to Linux right at the moment- so it's not a foregone conclusion. Unfortunately, the song and dance about AAA titles costing a pretty penny is very, very real and unless you have sales numbers or a LOT of cash, I don't know if these are at all doable.

[Svartalf]

Svartalf, I already adressed this in one of my posts. The main issue is that LGP does whatever it can to make sure it doesn't sell any games.

Here's the post, you might have missed it :

Please refrain from filling up the thread with mass cut and pastes- a LINK will suffice here. (BTW- thank you for cleaning it up after the fact... )

And you keep missing what I'm telling you- and while I can't openly go along with what you're claiming, I can't honestly all out deny that either. But things DO NOT work QUITE the way you're thinking.

Inject $25k into the picture.
Add a 3% per UNIT royalty on top of it.
Pay 25% of your sales to your people.

How much money is that?

Advertising costs LOTS of money.
Doing MANY of the things everyone keeps coming up with costs LOTS of money.

Do YOU have it? If you do, step up to the plate- we need to use it to fix part of this mess. If not, come up with something else that's useful as a suggestion because you can't do a lot of the things you and others keep bringing up as a "problem" without LOTS of it.

Now... I mentioned that stuff as an aside, not as to bring back up that discussion; I would ask that you try to keep further posts on topic.

[Thetargos]

From what I've heard a U3 license is over $750K+ for the initial platform and $100k+ for each additional platform. They also take a cut of the revenue.


U2 engines pricing is public here.

A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.
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Wow is like if they DIDN'T want others licensing their engines, as the license fee is not enough and ask for revenue!

I may get stoned for this, but it looks like there needs to be a shift in paradigm regarding games, at least. I looks like the traditional model of developer-publisher (which in the end the tendency seems to be publishers owning studios), studios would be better off cutting the man in the middle and selling directly (I know I may be talking foot in mouth), but it does seem as if those responsible selling the games refuse to do so despite how positive towards Linux the studio might be.

One of the reasons I remember reading about Valve abandoning Sierra (Vivendi) was just that. And the justification behind Steam was to cut the man in the middle expenses from the company and have revenue of their games directly. They eventually allowed Steam to be a distribution channel which others could use, so they also turned themselves into an on-line publisher which all in all, seems to actually be more reliable and cheaper than a traditional one for games... It has a problem, though, if you're a developer and publish only through Steam, you're limited to amount of users who are running Steam, which is certainly less than those NOT running it.