While i was at work today, formulating my plans for installing winex to run halflife, Medal of honour, Deus EX, and all those wonderful Windows games. I got to thinking. Why should the linux community, filled with so many brilliant people, spend all of our time figuring out how to get windows games work for us? Think of all the Linux users, who devote their time to programming sourceforge projects, new distros and even just helping users (like this site's moderators and members). If we were all to devote just a little of our time, Linux could have the biggest and the best gaming library out there. And i'm not referring to games like net-hack or zangband (which i may add are stellar games), i mean games to rival the big budget titles of valve, electronic arts, konami etc., for graphics and gameplay.

The whole point of my rant is this: If we can all come together to help make linux the best OS in the world, why can't we all come together and make it the best gaming platform as well!

I'd love to hear everyones, thoughts, suggestions or ideas!

brilliant idea

horse before the cart stuff

Join a project Contribute to the code

There is TuxRacer (got commercial however), OpenRacer (based on Tuxracer), Cube (very cool engine), and a lot more I guess.

hmmm

i don't do code

have done a few hours visual basic,
under guidance

and that's the extent of my coding knowledge

hello,

Linux developers need to unite and come up with standard features underlying the OS.

The theme is "Linux the Power to Create." See discussion on JAVA Based OS in this thread. With that I believe Linux would become the powerful OS and not like Window$ full of convoluted libraries of functions that do the same stuff.

Linux need to have serious Apps (Office Suite) that truly rivals that of M$.

nbjayme

I don't believe Linus wrote his OS to compete with Microsoft. And it shouldn't imho... Both have their place in this world, and Linux always aims to do the best thing for it's users. (such as being compatible, and even be nice to support people using Windows related technology)

Besides, we already have an killer app: Apache...! At 1998, apache was the first web server software, allowing ISP's to host multiple sites. A cool feature none of the commercial webserver packages had! Linux and apache grew hand, and there are alive and kicking in the server market. (you really should see the movie/documentary "Revolution OS" ) With Linux and apache, ISP's suddently had the tools to host multiple sites at a large server complex, and free of charge! They even had the ability to improve the software if they didn't like it!


Linux need to have serious Apps (Office Suite) that truly rivals that of M$.

Why do you want to rival out Microsoft? Is it bad to have a choice?

There is a serious Office suite out there: OpenOffice. 200MB, and completely free. It's swx file format is simply genious. (unzip it, run 'sed', and you can alter the text for a website) I like Mozilla a lot more then Internet Explorer, even though it doesn't display 100% of the IE-based pages. I've been told that Microsoft won't release another IE (7) for 4 years... it's a long time... Imagine how much Mozilla would evolve in that period. Can we expect Mozilla-only websites in 4 years?



I think it's very plain simple:
- If everyone uses closed, propriety software, no one cares about compatibility. (even MS-Office isn't compatible with itself)
- If there is a solid user base for other OS-es, people might start to care about open-standards, and software that works everywhere. Suddenly, OpenOffice, Mozilla, Apache, Jabber etc... become very interesting to use... because they work everywhere!
- thank god everyone is still using TCP/IP, and SMTP to send messages to each other, or PostScript to format their documents.
- Also, I've been told that Linux is starting to reach the critical-mass.. In other words, if more then 5% of the users start using it, we could expect a snowball effect soon.


Linux developers need to unite and come up with standard features underlying the OS.

..standards for gaming? Have you noticed DRI, OpenGL, libSDL, X11? They are all good open source initiatives.. If Microsoft likes pops up with competing technology, such as Direct3D, and DirectX, don't blame us for not being compatible


Linux doesn't 'need' anything. It just sits there for the people that like to use their computer differently.

I'm not sure I understand where you want to go with this. Are you talking about creating new games for Linux (and linux only) or are you talking about porting existing games? Based on the last sentence of your first paragraph I assume you mean create entirely new games.

This would definitely be quite a project. I think it would be extremely hard to accomplish without any type of capital to work with.

Well Risc91, the whole point of this thread is to find out what everyone thinks about the possibilities of native linux game development. I believe that with the whole community attitude behind Linux, their could be some amazing games developed, on par with the commercial offerings of the windows market.

I believe that this can be achieved with a minimum of financial resources, by using things like the tourque gaming engine More info at GarageGames.com , or other low cost avenues for development. Another idea would be the creation of an open source game engine that could be built upon by linux gamers similar to how half-life can be easily mod'd to create great games.

Now i'm not trying to start a development project or anything (i have literally no programming knowledge, just a year of basic turing in grade 11, and would thusly be unfit to start a project), i just want to start people thinking about the possibilities, and sharing their thoughts.

So everyone feel free post your thoughts, flames, rants and insults!

open source game engine? aren't there many open source projects you can look at? ...because open source allows you to look at the internal code? (tuxracer, cube, etc... here we go again)

But why are you so focused on game development? Are you sure this is the holy grail for Linux?

ps. watch the "Revolution OS" movie

Well I guess your right yapp, there are a lot of open source projects to look at. Tux racer and cube both look pretyy cool. It's just that all my windows friends mock my efforts to run windows games in Linux. And after trying for about a week to get my games to run in winex (i think i got it working now!) i just thought, that it might be more useful for the Linux community to spend their time developing their own high quality games instead of spending time trying to get windows games to work.

As for gaming being my holy grail for linux. I LOVE GAMES SO MUCH, but i hate windows SO MUCH. I just want great games!

Abe -

I'm not trying to be a smarta--, but I'd say "go ahead!" what I mean is that almost the entirety of Linux was/is created by people thinking just the same thing you are. "wouldn't it be great if...." turns into starting a project, getting some volunteers, programming, iterating, etc. all (literally) the source code is available and free for you to do whatever you want.

of course, high-level games require a huge amount of work and knowledge, but it's not impossible....

Not meaning to invoke the name of Satan himself, but you probably know as much, if not more programming than bill gates. Remember how ms got started... He bought DOS! (Oddly enough the only ms OS to actually work right. )

I see what you're saying Abe, probably one of the biggest main-stays of ms keeping it's status of majority OS, is the entertainment factor. For many households, it's really just a fancy console system that plays games with the web. I think a better option is getting the porting expanded.

If I have the option of a game on any OS I want, and the play is essentially the same on my system no matter what the OS, the deciding factor on what os to use will fall on where I get the best value/support/stability. Since I'm a fps nut (quake now while I'm drooling over Doom screenies) I made the choice for nix due to it's stability (and value ) Once you get games being released on every platform at the same time, I think nix (and Mac) will grow in the home user market....

Hey,

I've heard so much about this, in so many places, just want to add what I think.
I don't have that much C/C++ expirience, but I am working on an open source game with others. I've I have quite a bit of lisp expirience, and have a few lisp games with SDL done, that I'll release eventually. I'm also writing some AI for civ-like games, and considering contributing to freeciv next summer. Lots of school work to contend with.

Learn programming, learn how to make nice looking graphics. Many games lack graphics, not programming talent. A lot of them fail because of the latter. Heck, if you don't have time to learn the API of a game, to contribute code, try making them a website. A lot of good games aren't getting popular because of lack of a good website.

Write documentation for a game, or make levels. Do any of the above an contribute, and stop telling others to do so. That's the point of releasing the code under the GPL. So that you too can look at it, learn from it, and improve it. There are lots of books out there, for free and not-so-free, about programming/game design/graphics.

Please stop telling people what they/us/we/others have to do, and just do it. Anything you do will be appreciated. Actually.. you even said it. If we all come togeather, so.. by all means. come

I hope this isn't too far off topic, but I don't know where else I'd mention this.

I saw on the news that someone (I believe it was an retired firefighter) doing fundraising and paying a few hundred thousand dollars to some company to make a fire safety video game for little kids.

It didn't look nearly as hard to make as Tux Racer.

There's an idea for someone that wants to start a project.

Lyle

You know teval, you are absolutely right! I think that was the kick in the pants that i needed! I'm gonna go and learn to do 'something' that could benefit open source Linux gaming! You mentioned that you were working on some games. Can i get a link to your website?? Maybe you know some resources (i'm gonna google it and see what i can come up with). Thanks loads!

As for anyone else viewing this thread, please feel free to post your linux gaming projects, or ideas. Wanna form a project? I'd like to know about it, i'd like to contribute whatever negligible talent i have.

As you can all see, I love gaming! And i want linux to become the best gaming distro around!