[mdlug] Suggestions for games for an elderly parent? Starcraft

[David Lane]

I would agree.  When I can walk in to Best Buy, MicroCenter, or even Target and Buy a Linux Game I know We have made progress.


David C. Lane  




________________________________
From: "Ingles, Raymond" <Raymond.Ingles at compuware.com>
To: MDLUG's Main discussion list <mdlug at mdlug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 1:50:40 PM
Subject: Re: [mdlug] Suggestions for games for an elderly parent? Starcraft

> From: David Lane

> Wish List:
> 2. Better Linux Game choice (Maybe EA will see the light).

Actually, I've found things to be pretty good on that score. There are interesting games (Introversion does some good stuff) and a surprising number of Windows games can run under Wine now.

> From what I read the play station is based on the PowerXcell chip a
> project IBM & Sony was a part of, so getting an OS independant game engine
> is not a huge leap.

Well, yes, but not because of the PS3. The bad news is that games written for consoles are written very close to the hardware, and don't even use an operating system as such. There is a development system for the PS3 that uses OpenGL ES, but I don't know of a commercial game that uses it.

The good news is that the above bad news isn't *quite* correct. Most games don't do everything from scratch - most of the time game developers buy a license to use an engine someone else developed. At that point, they don't have to write all the hairy, performance-intensive code themselves, they can let the engine handle that. They "just" need to create all the models, textures, scripts, physics-engine properties, sounds and voices, music, etc. etc. Most of the top game engines are already multi-platform and have Linux variants. (The Unreal engine and iD software's engine for sure. The other major engine, Valve's "Source" engine, doesn't have a Linux variant (though there are persistent rumors they're working on one).

Native Linux games aren't that hard. Once a game decides to go multiplatform, the cost of each new platform drops. (MS tries *very hard* to make Xbox360 development look as much like PC development as possible, to try to limit the multiplatform code in games...) With Windows losing desktops to Mac and Linux, adding a Mac port becomes much more attractive. At that point, adding a Linux port is pretty simple (Linux is just another Unix/OpenGL platform).

For independent games, it's very simple: SDL + OpenGL + OpenAl. That gets input, graphics, and sound, in a very multiplatform way. Windows, Mac, Linux, even the BSDs and others.

Sincerely,

Ray Ingles                                      (313) 227-2317

"If I had a nickel for every time Bush mentioned 9/11, I'd have
    enough reward money to go after bin Laden." - Jon Stewart
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