Lionhead and Linux
August 18th, 2000 by CrusaderIn an IRC chat yesterday held by Voodoo Extreme on Inside3D.net, several developers from Lionheadanswered user questions relating to their upcoming god game,Black and White.I managed to get in a few questions (as did others) requesting clarification on their previousstatements which indicated there would be a Linux port, and that the sourceto the game would be released in some manner:
(ChrisO) (Crusader) Peter stated at E3 that there would be a source release for B&W? Will that happen at release? What license? How much code (all?)? Finally (this was a long one, sorry), can you give a status report on the linux port?
(Jamie-UK) Depends on how many copies we sell, will be completely open source for non-commercial enterprises.
(Jamie-UK) No idea on the linux port at the moment.. I think it’s ‘in negotiation’.–
(ChrisO) (Chromix) how is source-code-based cheating (like after the release of the source for “quake”) prevented when the source is completely open ? When for example someone build his custumised game.exe to make casting spells etc easier
(alexei) our net game is very sensetive to version differences…
(alexei) even when we play different builds here, it doesn’t let you do it.
(alexei) so if they hacked it, everyone playing would have to play the same version
(alexei) we have lots of ingame cheats though
(alexei) :)(AaronL) do we? I dont cheat
(alexei) aaron: ahh, you never pushed Ctrl+C? tough
(alexei) :)(AaronL) lol no
(AaronL) :)–
(ChrisO) (Crusader) With the source available, will there be some sort of central authentication/binary check system in place to prevent cheating in multiplayer games? Even without the source available, cheating is prevalent in FPS’ such as Quake and its brethren…
(PeterM) yes we are making sure cheating is not posible infact if you try and cheat you become a more evil god
(jborthwick) no cheating allowed at all is a good idea–
(PhaseBurn) (Crusader) So, the Linux port is being negotiated for development by a third party?
(DanD) hmm
(DanD) hold on
(DanD) ill just ask peter
(DanD) hold
(Ollie) yeah there is gonna be a linux port
The full log is available from here.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
how at first it is ‘in negotiation’ then to There is one. But who cares as long as it gets done!
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
“in negotiation” means “our lawyers are hashing out the nitty gritty of the contract, but there’s no reason it shouldn’t get made”.
November 30th, -0001 at 12:00 am
Black & White is a game that [b]must[/b] be ported to linux, and it will be eventually whether it is official or not. I think that with some small adjustments the game would run quite well on Linux, because of its strong support of Internet and Networking systems. However, how would the game cope with XFree 4.0? It is well known that Black & White can’t run on many cards on the Wintel Boxes! I know, I tried running it with a Voodoo Banshee…….