On Mon, 2002-12-30 at 22:33, Russell McOrmond wrote: > > On 30 Dec 2002, Arko Provo Mukherjee wrote: > > > Companies which make only games can be requested from all the Linux > > User groups to launch their products on Linux. EA Sports should not have > > any sympathy towards any OS and it should be glad to give support to all > > kinds of platform. I agree with u. There should be more native ports, considering the way Linux usage has increased worldwide over the last 4 yrs. > There are also less expensive ways to do porting, as has been proven by > TransGaming which is partly in the business of porting MS Windows games to > Linux for various companies. http://www.transgaming.com/
Yes, Transgaming's WineX is doing pretty well and in fact goin great guns these days. However, we must remember that projects like WineX aint the future of gaming on Linux. Such projects only help killing native ports to Windows games. Say for eg., today we play Warcraft III on Linux with acceptable performance standards using WineX. Blizzard assumes that since WineX is doing fine enough, there is no need to port their game natively to Linux. This is detrimental to the future of gaming on Linux, 'cos emulation is basically a compromise....NOT a solution.TransGaming claims that emulation leads to a faster development process, but many native ports have been completed in a matter of weeks or even days. Also all of us who beleive in the FLOSS philosophy should also realise that Transgaming havent been good Open Source citizens.TransGaming once promised to give back code to what was Wine, before it changed to the LGPL license. After it changed, they removed all mention of giving back code from their website. Note that other companies, like Lindows, and Codeweavers _are_ giving back code, and being good open source citizens. > > People must convince them that the market in Linux Games is not bad and > > their products will sell. [Do you guys agree with me?] > This is a chicken and egg issue. The Linux Game market is bad as there > aren't many linux games. It isnt that there aint many games on Linux. The fact is that when Loki was releasing dozens of games and ports for the Linux platform, most Linux users looked at gaming on Linux in a sceptical manner. Desktop computing on Linux was for lamers. As a result Loki became bankrupt and closed shop. Today Linux on the desktop has matured considerably, and people realise that Linux has better gaming potential than Doze, what with running UT2003 at 10-15% better performance standards. However, today we dont have a Loki to dedicate itself to the sole cause of porting games to Linux. > I'm not a game player, and don't run any proprietary software (there are > very few FLOSS games - games have more artistic content than functional > content so don't map as well onto the FLOSS model), so this isn't an issue > for me to take on. It should be interesting to some of the gamers to help > get that "last excuse to run Microsoft Windows" out of the way. There are a few very high quality FLOSS games around on Linux. Q3 and UT were both FLOSS (only the game...not the engine mind u). Similarly RTCW code was released under the GPL. There still is hope.. DOOM III coming out in March 2003 will be another game to have out of the box gaming support for Linux. Similarly Neverwinter Nights has been released for Linux. But if someone really wants to play games on Linux....buy the original game. Please dont look for a pirated version, for that way u may never see another game for Linux again. > Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/> /Sumeet -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Sumeet Madhukar Moghe | mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] C/O Mr PK Das, Ghola C Block, | Phone:+ 91 - 33 - 2595 1420 Opposite Checkpost, Sodepur, | + 91 - 33 - 2565 7575 Calcutta 700 110 - INDIA | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young man. -- Moms Mabley -- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the body "unsubscribe ilug-cal" and an empty subject line. FAQ: http://www.ilug-cal.org/node.php?id=3
