So, April Resolution..
March 25th, 2012 by CrusaderI’ve been out of the loop a few months, but some things haven’t changed:
-More Humble Bundles, yay!
-Updates to awesome projects like Dwarf Fortress, Minecraft, etc. are still being released.
-Phoronix still swears up and down that, like the Great Pumpkin, Source and Steam are coming, no really this time.
Anyhow, this April I aim to play a Linux game and write about it EVERY DAY. That’s every 24 hours. So. Hrm.
Hi, how are you?
March 25th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Oh how I wish steam was coming to Linux. Problem is; even if it did Mr Simms told me that a few of the older games wouldnt be on there because no one who has the authority to release the source to get them fixed up from modern systems would be interested. Money not a problem, just no interest.
My original copy of Alpha Centauri for Linux is probably my most prized possession! Heh and who remembers builds for older loki games that had Alpha binaries.
/me shows my age.
March 25th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Oh, I remember :)
March 25th, 2012 at 4:50 pm
makes you sad dont it. I learnt of Loki’s demise here actually. Think I mentioned starting a linux gaming company myself I was so distraught haha.
didn’t quite work out that way, still, least I turned Linux from a hobby into a job in that time (AC for Linux made me use Linux since it was my favourite game at the time) happy days
March 26th, 2012 at 3:16 am
Hiho !
You can write about the Open Pandora Rebirth contest :
http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/7600-pandora-rebirth-competition-rules/
http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php?/topic/7353-rebirth-competition-summary-of-entries/
March 26th, 2012 at 7:09 am
Lots of games being funded on Kickstarter these days, and I’m happy to see several of them promising native Linux ports!
FTL
Wasteland 2
Double Fine Adventure (funding period is over)
March 26th, 2012 at 10:38 am
A Linux game a day sounds awesome.
March 26th, 2012 at 6:28 pm
I would like to post an article about the pitfalls of linux games! (and how to release better games)
1) compiling and releasing your game with a much newer (bleeding edge) version of glibc. The linux playerbase is already small and if you are going to release a game, which requires players to switch distros, you alienate potential players. To dates i cant play eschalon 1 and 2 on the same machines. for one, i must use Freebsd with linux emu, (2 has teh above said error) and for 2, i have to use ubuntu linux (upon which 1 crashes, lol)
2) Using too many dependencies. This often triggers dependency hell. Case and point, Dwarf fortress: I don’t understand why in the world you need openAL just to play a friggen ogg file?!? Tested on two distros and i cant get sound to play natively. use the Kiss method please! Note: nwn, used only sdl, opengl glu… thats it!
3) write your sound routines at a higher level, or not for a specific sound driver. some games force alsa/pulse audio/etc which sucks for people using “the other” unless you are doing something fancy why not just use sdlmixer?
4) for open sourcers, besides #2, clean up your code and release something that compiles on something more than just your machine. Often downloads of os projects end in disappointment because the three step process of prep/make/run doesn’t work. throughly document all of your dependencies and don’t assume someone has what you have on your machine at compile time.
March 28th, 2012 at 12:44 am
Who needs Steam when you have Desura? More indie friendly, does not spy on you, and it has been bringing games over to our platform. What is not to like?
March 29th, 2012 at 10:47 pm
Desura is indeed quite awesome. I think people assume that steam for linux also means every game on steam for linux, and that obviously won’t be the case.
March 30th, 2012 at 4:08 am
I’m a big fan of desura and yes I’d still want steam since as a platform it might get a few bigger names interest. Hell, I’d take a native counterstrike still just for old times sake :).
@xmorg I know your pain. I was going through some of the older loki games a couple of months back and the amount of overides I had to do, you practically need a chroot environment of red hat 5 or something for all the old libstdc++5 or whatever it’s called and god knows what else. I was collecting all the information together, should put them on a blog somewhere.
In actual fact, getting older Linux games running on modern distro is harder then getting modern windows games running on Linux. Hell, Mass Effect 3 worked perfectly out the box! <3 wine (hate that its needed but were all realists here)
April 1st, 2012 at 4:51 pm
BTW Crusader, it is April now you know. ;-)
April 2nd, 2012 at 1:00 pm
@Maquis196: try this:
Loki Compat libs
April 2nd, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Might just be easier to suggest he tries this: http://liflg.org/?catid=7&gameid=90
April 3rd, 2012 at 8:01 am
april resolution fail
April 5th, 2012 at 2:08 am
okay, so I can already tell I am going to be playing a LOT of Avadon. It hits that old Baldurs Gate vibe pretty hard.