Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[Svartalf]

OKAY...

While I'm not wholly of the opinion that this is going to accomplish something useful (The big players just don't work the way most of everyone thinks they do...it's more akin to the record business these days- keep that in mind...); taking up suggestions and trying to come up with something that is more working towards changing the rules that're in place now strikes me as a better use of MY time and everyone else's time in the long run. I kind of opened the flood gates when I threw it out for suggestions. So, rather than having some of the good ideas go bye-bye, lost in an essentially unrelated thread, I thought it best to move the discussion (and the requests) over to a new thread with that as it's topic.

Ground Rules:

The title HAS to be a practical one. The rights holder HAS to be reachable in some manner. The rights holder has to be at least NOT openly hostile towards Linux use (That means Dungeon Siege is right out... ). AAaaand the rights holder has to have the source code in HAND in it's entirety and be willing to allow a port.

I can help with some projects, but not others. I am NOT going into competition with LGP on publishing or running counter to their porting efforts. I am still under contract for some things and there are business dealings and projects that I kind of need to maintain a good relationship with them for now.

Some suggestions will entail money. Unless someone ponies it up or can manage to pass the hat for it (Unless there's a business involved, though, you're going to find that this will be nigh impossible right at the moment...) there can be no ports of that specific game unless you sell the rights holder on the idea of them doing it themselves.

Don't be too hurt if your suggestion is shot down for any problems with above items.

With that... The floor's open. Falcon 4.0's been suggested and it's being checked into for a serious project however the chips may land in that deal.

[EDIT]

Here's a list of the current prospects and dead ends as of today (05/12/2009) as I've tabulated them up to this point- there may be new ones lurking in the thread and some stragglers in the thread that precipitated this one that I'm in the process of doing the initial checking on.

I'm listing the dead ends first. Keep in mind that these are all in this list for problems with availability of source code or rights access. Some of these were mentioned as dead ends out of the gate by one of the posters in the thread or, under review, were determined by myself to be non-practical requests. If, for some reason, you've got a lead on changing the status on the dead ends, speak up in the thread or PM me (As an example, I offer each and every one of Interplay's back catalog, including things such as Kingpin, Freespace2, etc. as we had someone point us in the direction of Good Old Games, who has current publication rights to Interplay's stuff and have indicated that they're not against the idea, but are understaffed to accomplish the work...)... I'll be putting up more edits to this post as I tabulate all the requests. We've got a nifty list and I need to follow up on some of the realistic ones. Keep the realistic suggestions coming, gang.

Dead Ends:

No One Lives Forever (Lithtech - No Lithtech engine games are practical right at the moment...)
Psychonauts (After finding out what Majesco did to at least one studio, we don't want to deal with them- sorry...)
Wing Commander (EA property...code's likely to not be available at this point with Origin effectively defunct...)
Oblivion (Prime AAA title- not without loads of cash... )
Morrowind (Ditto...)
Portal (Any of the Valve stuff's up in the air- someone may well be doing all of Orange Box and Steam...)
Diablo
Diablo II
StarCraft
StarCraft II
Diablo III (Gimme a break, guys... This isn't a pie in the sky list...)
KotOR
KotOR 2 (Not that anyone would WANT that title... )
Any of the GTA titles.
America's Army (We HAD a version of this guys, but the DoD decided it was not a big enough payoff...)
System Shock (Studio defunct- no clear title to code known, nor do we know if it's available at all...)
System Shock II (Ditto...)
Rise of the Triad (Ryan already beat us to it...go over to icculus.org if you've got the assets. )
Call of Duty 4
Unreal Tournament 3 (Uh, supposedly Epic's still working on this...)
Bussimulator
Syndicate I
Syndicate II
Syndicate Wars
Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Any title from the Tom Clancy series
Stargunner
Any of the Lemmings versions
Dragon Age (If there is going to be a version, it'll be up to EA and Bioware...)
STALKER
Masters of Orion 1 or 2
Slamtilt (Actually, ANY of the 21st Century Entertainment titles are this way...)
Interstate 76
SimCity (Already GPLed and out under the name "Metropolis" in all of it's ancient glory...)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (Atari published property- need I say more?)
Jedi Knights II
Jedi Academy
ST:Armada
ST:Elite Force
ST:Elite Force II
Max Payne (Anything, really, from out of Remedy Entertainment because of close ties with Microsoft... )
Dawn Of War and expansions
Harpoon III (Initial Contacts made, looked promising...then it fizzled for no apparent reasons...)



Maybes:

Soldier of Fortune (Hinges on Raven still having the Loki developed source tree- otherwise it's not worth it.)
Soldier of Fortune II
Gothic 3
IL-2 Sturmovik
Project Offset
Grand Prix Legends
Sam and Max Episodes
Deus EX (Hinges on finding someone with the old Loki codebase that'll be able to grant publication rights)
Deus EX 2
Age of Wonders
FlatOut 2
Battlerealms
Rome: Total War
Tale Worlds (Some DRM concerns there...)
GTR2 (10tacle in recievership- need to find out who is studio, etc...)
Crysis (Initial contact made...we'll see...)
ARMA (Initial contact made...we'll see...)
Falcon 4 (Initial contact made...no word back from them...)
CivIV
(Moved to the "maybe" list because there's no clear title to what we have in hand...checking into it, but
for right now, don't hold your breath...)
Witchaven I
Witchaven II
Powerslave


Being Looked Into:

Freespace 2 (We've got code- need to get rights for assets for commercial release if possible...)
Mechanarium
Achron
Project Aftermath
Hinterland
The Path
And Yet It Moves
Drakensang
Civilization IV
HoverRace (Clean up initial port...)
Raptor
Soldat
rFactor
Sins of a Solar Empire
Enemy Engaged: Comanche vs. Hokum (EECH - Source code being looked at...)
Grotesque
Audiosurf
Track Mania
Earth 2150
Aquaria
Escape Velocity Series
Natural Selection 2
Alpha Centauri
CivIII
Kingpin
Redneck Rampage Series
Freespace
Fallout
Fallout 2
Hostile Waters: Anteus Rising



Deals Closed and in Development

Europa Universalis Engine (EU, EU2, etc...)


Projects now shipping

Caster

[Aradreth]

You might want to mention publishers/developers that are pretty much impossible to work with for whatever reason because most people wont have a clue which develops/publishers are linux friendly/hostile. (aside from the obvious ones like iD, Deck13, Egosoft, et al)

[ivanovic]

No idea if this would be a possible candidate:

Alien vs Predator 2

The game does have an (now ancient) OSX port, so the openGL part should be possible and the publisher (at that time) is/was not hostile to non MS operating systems. Sierra Entertainment / Fox Interactive as publisher is basically nonexistant nowaddys, but Vivendi/Activision should have the rights now. No idea how open they are regarding linux...

I really loved the game for it's great atmosphere. One of the by far better singleplayer shooter out there and I would really like to be able to play it natively under Linux. Since from the first game there was an (at least beta) linux port, maybe this could be a possible candidate.

No idea if it does qualify, but it would be really great!

[Svartalf]

You might want to mention publishers/developers that are pretty much impossible to work with for whatever reason because most people wont have a clue which develops/publishers are linux friendly/hostile. (aside from the obvious ones like iD, Deck13, Egosoft, et al)

Not a problem.

Microsoft Games (Okay, okay...it's LAME, but it needed to be said... )

Atari

Blizzard (They've scuffled with us in the past and are a Vivendi/Universal captive studio... )

Vivendi/Universal (Seems that they had a hand in varying nixings of things in the past- may be/may not be...)

As I remember others, I'll pile 'em in that list...

[Svartalf]

No idea if this would be a possible candidate:

Alien vs Predator 2

The game does have an (now ancient) OSX port, so the openGL part should be possible and the publisher (at that time) is/was not hostile to non MS operating systems. Sierra Entertainment / Fox Interactive as publisher is basically nonexistant nowaddys, but Vivendi/Activision should have the rights now. No idea how open they are regarding linux...

I really loved the game for it's great atmosphere. One of the by far better singleplayer shooter out there and I would really like to be able to play it natively under Linux. Since from the first game there was an (at least beta) linux port, maybe this could be a possible candidate.

No idea if it does qualify, but it would be really great!

Good starting point.

VU having the rights makes it a bit iffy for a publishing deal.

However, if Rebellion Developments used the same basic engine for 2 that they did with the original, then it may be a simple thing to resurrect the engine source over on icculus.org and bring it back to playability based on availability of the game assets.

This one's worth us digging about a bit in the same vein as ioquake, etc...

[Aradreth]

Psychonauts could be a game worth looking into it was published by Majesco Entertainment. It's an adventure/platform game that will make you laugh and well worth the play through (if you like games like Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle etc. you will probably like it). Not sure how open to a port Majesco would be though.

[miles]

1. Stating from the ones that should be not too hard :
   
   Frontier Elite 2 First Encounters - Dabid Braben has already put the game as a free download, and the game and engine have already been worked on by by other parties everywhere. Publishing a Linux version with updated graphics (any resolution, Open GL 2.0 with anti-aliasing, textures, mip-mapping and shader effects) would not just be worth some good money, it would also attract a hudge user base to Linux gaming. Actually any Elite game with updated graphics would be mythical and warrant articles on most (if not all) PC gaming sites and magazine. And it wouldn't even be that difficult - re-use any open source iD Software engine, for example, provided it's recent. Of course, you'll have to provide your own IP (textures, remade videos or animations, new models...), but you'll find many people interested, even for free. And please don't tell me David Braben at Frontier Development would be against it. If you could make that with graphics on-par with modern space operas (X3 Reunion?), even better.
   
   
2. A tad harder :
   
   Any of the indie car races games. GTR2 and others like rFactor. The genre is sorely lacking in Linux, except for Trackmania under wine (you could also get Trackmania native in Linux, but that would mean Nation free and only United to pay for the port.
   
   
3. Hard, but who knows :
   
   A Wing Commander pack (all episodes, one reworked 3D engine, no need to redo the videos. I'd have put old Star Wars games (X-Wings and such) but you might have far more difficulties with Lucas Arts - except that if you know somebody that knows Georges Lucas or any other nice guy working there, that could suddenly become really easy (they could even get the code back and re-sell revamped versions for any of the online shops for PS3 wii and all)
   
   
4. Even harder, but a hudge potential :
   
   Civilization IV. The game is so huge and online, would last hundred of hours and sell like hot cakes in Linux. But it's true there's not much chances for this one.
   
   Sins of a Solar Empire. You've approached them in the past, but how long ago? Linux has a far better penetration now it's sold by OEM, and after all they're the one that advertise on their site that they're indie developers, only a handful programmers and as many artists. They can't really say that, then claim the huge amount of money you've estimating, or they'd just look like a bunch of hypocrites. And they'd never ask you to put DRM (still can't believe Egosoft asked LGP to put a DRM that wouldn't be removed after one year or so).

Oh, and did I mention Frontier Elite 2 First Encounters?

Out of these games, the first seems downright doable (still can't believe SoaSE isn't possible), and it's also the one that would have the highest impact on the market (not including revamped Wing Commander and Star Wars games since they'd be harder to negotiate and to port). You'll have people installing Linux just to play it. You'll have journalist installing Linux just to review the game. You'll have your grandmom learn Linux just to play the game again (except she's already on Linux ).

[niniendowarrior]

Svartalf,

You are so mean to play people's imaginations and work up their hopes.! But, who knows what's happening down there.

[ivanovic]

Maybe "No One Lives Forever" is also worth a try. At least the sourcecode is already shipped on the "Game of the year edition" that is/was sold in Germany. I don't know the license the sources are under, but maybe it would be a good start for a port.

The game was originally published by Fox Interactive and produced by Monolith Productions.


And yes, I would *love* to see Psychonauts ported. This is one of the games that I would be willing to pay 40$ for even now...

EDIT: The sourcecode is even available directly on the official website: http://www.noonelivesforever.com/downloads/

[niniendowarrior]

NOLF is under Vivendi, I reckon... or Sierra.