Status Quo of Linux Gaming
 

Hi,

well this thread can be summarized in 3 questions:

what is the current situation regarding Gaming on Linux?

and

How can the developers/community get more games to Linux?

and

what is the feasibility of developing a standard open source gaming platform that shifts game development from the programming aspect to simply focus on design (levels , scenario , graphics , sounds , events ..etc)

i'm talking mainly about Ogre3d and related projects

hope that my questions are clear

regards

I've been meaning to make a blog post about this for a while, but here's my story.

I built a modest gaming computer over Christmas with the intention of spending as much time in Linux as I could. I left a 200 gig partition blank with the intention of installing Windows if I ever couldn't get something I -really- wanted working in Linux/Wine.

Here I am about six months later with a blank partition and no Windows in sight. I regularly play Starcraft 2, Rift, The Witcher, WoW, Counter Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead 2, Fall Out New Vegas and other in Wine/Crossover Games with only minor issues. It's not for everyone obviously, but it's doable.

Regarding native games, there are a few really excellent Indie games. Trine, Machinarium, Braid, HoN, Amnesia, Penumbra etc. I've had more fun with these games than I've had with major releases like LA Noire and Modern Warfare.

What can you do to help? Well, keep buying games! Buy all the indie releases with Linux clients. Buy the humble bundles. Get on the Starcraft forums and write guides to get it working in Wine. Make a bunch of noise to let them know your there.

Keep having fun :D

aha , nice story !

actually i was thinking about something more engaging or progressive such as making an open source platform for games , something similar to a web browser or interpreter that does 2 things:

1) shifts the programming burden from the gaming developers to this shared consolidated platform .
2) unleashing an open source standard that is platform independent.

btw i'm not talking about graphic or physics engine such as Ogre3d or ODE but i'm talking about a complete gaming solution/platform which can interpret scripts written in a very simplistic syntax (say something JS for instance)

any thoughts?

cheers

Better than you'd think:

http://linuxgamingnews.org/

Make a point of buying Linux games.

Pay generously for each Humble Bundle.

We need more developers bragging about how much money they made from their Linux games:

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/0...-Sales-Numbers

Many already exist. Ren'py and Inform 7 are two examples.

and do they work? i mean are they feasible/pratical ?
is anybody using them? (i mean gaming studios)

cheers

Yes they work, they are feasible, and they are practical -- for the kinds of games they are designed for. As for the question of whether they're being used, well, do a search. The answer is yes, and many of the (free) games written with them were both very ambitious and very good.

Fine then,

seriously , is that it?

okay , i see where this is going , probably to replace flash games and it would definitely suit dialog/puzzle-based games like "The Monkey Island Series" (check it out)

anyways i digress,

what i'm talking about is beyond this stuff , i'm talking about a game engine with 3D capabilities, complete mechanical physics simulation (and particle physics for explosions and smoke) , support XML-enabled config files to develop scenes and levels , remote session support using things like xml-rpc for multi/online player , perhaps even an AI module to streamline NPC's , including of course third party modules extensibility such as foreign language binding .... and much much more!

is there anything like that?
actually i've a full picture in my head regarding such a project but i wanna make sure if it hasn't been done before.

btw , i'm fully aware of Ogre3d , OpenSceneGraph as well as ODE.

cheers

Unity will be on Linux soon, and the Monocle Engine (which is being developed by the same guy who wrote Aquaria) is in development.

There's also PyGame. And the Blender game engine.

So in other words, if you're planning to write your game engine then you have no competition now and can expect very little competition in the future.

There are a couple of proprietary game engines coming up that should be interesting. Namely Unigine and the Id tech 5 engine.

It'll be interesting to see if any big games come out of these..

is that a sarcastic statement ?

Not it's not. Not a single one of the examples I mentioned were anything like what you said you wanted to create.

(yes, I realize I'd failed to make that clear).

Alright then :)

are you a programmer of any sort? if so are you interested in joining my upcoming project ?

cheers

I am indeed a programmer. Your project sounds a bit too big in scope for me though :P.

May I ask how many upcoming projects you have? From your other threads I know that you also are planning to develop a new distribution, don't you think that two projects of that size are too much for one person?

well actually there is a third one also , called NiteCo lol (see the sig below)
but of course i'm not gonna do everything all myself , which is why i'm open sourcing this.

okay , yes it's big (on doubt on that) but we aren't gonna be alone on this , big projects tend to attract big devs too (big as in lots of).
btw once i found interested devs in any of those projects i will be setting up a development platform using open source software to become something like sourceforce or google code.

cheers