Comments on: LGP; Tux Games Back! – Also, X3!

By: Slacker

Slacker — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:24:33 +0000

[q]Why then does it cost over 6 times as much as the Windows version, considering the game data remains the same, and only the binary on the CD differs?[/q]The game is BRAND NEW to Linux. How much was the game when it first came out for Windows? Certainly not 6 times cheaper. The comparison you make simply isn’t valid.

As for the comments about not having to code everything… in addition to what the other guy said about fees,etc, remember this: the number Linux gamers who buy this are still extremely small compared to Windows. Even if it were (for example) 1/20th the cost to code this in Linux, the number of sales would probably be an even smaller percentage of that.

Look at another game Tuxgames will be selling the port of.. Serious Sam 2. That game is more cheaper. Why? It probably has something to do with the fact the the company who made the game are the ones doing the porting, not an outside company which would have to pay extra to be allowed to port it as well as take the time to learn how the engine works.

By:

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 03:17:32 +0000

I love playing games at LAN party’s using Linux. And believe it or not, it is becoming more common to see people with a Linux system at LAN party’s now these days.

These people play:-

Half Life2
Quake3
Quake4
UT2004
Counter Strike
Homeworld2
Battlefield 1942
Doom3
Starcraft
Battlefield 2 Special Forces
Call of Duty
Far Cry
Diablo II
X2
Civilization III
Civilization IV
Baldur’s Gate II
Guild Wars
Command and Conquer Generals
Grand Theft Auto III
Battlefield Vietnam
Grand Theft Auto Vice City
Dungeon Siege
Dungeon Siege II
Quake2
Quake
Unreal
Unreal Tournament
UT2003
City of Villains
Everquest
Sacrifice
Max Payne
Max Payne 2

And the list goes on.

People have paid for the above Games, and they have also paid for WineX (Cedega) as well. Linux users want to play games on Linux. And I also find that Windows users also want to check out the action on Linux too.

I’ve been around when Loki Games was going strong. And I say, I see change.

And now I think its time for everyone to ask.
Would it not be a good idea to ship brand new games that have Linux binary installers?

By:

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 15:50:19 +0000

It’s a bit naff of you, but I’ll bite.

First off, guess you’ve never heard of something called a licensing fee (right to sell/publish/distribute someone else’s product/content).

Another thing is, you don’t know what has or has not been rewritten, and more importantly *to what extent* the code modifications required (in man hours); so don’t pretend you do.

As to performance, that is _always_ how it is. Every game that has been ported that has had ALL the features of the original has varied performance from a small amount to rather large impact. The only post quake 3 game that was technically faster than it’s win32 counterpart was ut2004 – and that was *before* the shadows/shaderreflects/etc. were even added/enabled/fixed.

The only game that is actually faster in Linux than it is in Windows is UT2003, but that is only _after_ upgrading the SDL it uses and then only if you happen to have a hardware-audio-stream capable ALSA card using a specialized OpenAL library replacement. THEN, framerates double.. no joke.

Doom 3, slower. Quake 4, slower. blah blah blah, anyone is damn lucky to get games like these and X3 to their platform. You can either kindly stfu and pay the Linux tax, or just go away if you don’t like it.

Lastly, bugs – people just don’t know how to correctly and adequately REPORT BUGS these days. Somehow they have the time to go-off about it on forums and places like these, but can’t be bothered to speak with the developers. *whatever*

Thank You to everyone who is supporting commercial gaming on Linux.

By:

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:42:20 +0000

Sure, but all they had to do was port the game from DirectX to OpenGL/SDL or whatever they use. They didn’t have to design the game from scratch, hire graphics artists to create all the models, textures and other artwork. They didn’t have to write the actual engine, the missions. They didn’t have to record the voice dialogs, didn’t have to write the scripts to the animated sequences. They didn’t have to tweak the gameplay, optimize the network code, process community feedback and create patches based on that feedback (which egosoft, the creators of the game, did).

In fact, LGP had to do very little; just port the engine from DirectX to something that works under Linux. Why then does it cost over 6 times as much as the Windows version, considering the game data remains the same, and only the binary on the CD differs?

Sure, the engine is the most impressive part of the game, but it’s a common misconception to think that the engine is where most of the work is spent. The bulk of the time (and hence money) goes to the content, not the engine. And considering the engine was already written, and just had to be ported, it’s fair to assume the time LGP spent on porting the engine is far less than egosoft spent creating and tweaking it.

Which would be bad enough if the port performed reasonably well, compared to the original on the same hardware. I downloaded and tried the demo. There’s a reason why benchmarking is disabled in the demo…

By: Slacker

Slacker — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:24:26 +0000

From my point of view, this is a brand new game to Linux. I never did have the Windows version. I don’t play Windows games at all anymore. The price of the game in Windows doesn’t mean anything to me or others who are just Linux gamers & never had this game. Look at the market too… there are so many Windows games, the shelf life of a game is nothing for that OS. After a few months, people have moved on to other games. A bargain bin is about the only place people will buy games like that. If the game sells enough, they’ve also probably made their investment back on the game & can afford to lower the cost of it. Do you think the Linux gaming market is the same in that regard? No. I wish it were, but we still don’t have the numbers. You can’t compare the Windows gaming market with the Linux one.

By:

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 04:22:18 +0000

Sorry, I know we’re supposed to be zealots, and totally support this whole Linux Gaming thing without question, but I wonder why X2 still sells for £30- at LGP, while the Windows version is for sale in the UK for less than £5-… Yeah, sure, I appreciate the port (even though it runs slow as molasses when compared to the Windows version on the same hardware). But I fail to see why a port should be more expensive than the original. The port may be new, but the engine/graphics/sound etc… aren’t.

And then they wonder why Linux games don’t sell… Well, what do you expect, when you’re charging full price for a mere port of a game that’s over 3 years old?

By: msimms

msimms — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 02:38:54 +0000

Thanks for everyones support, its been one hell of a week.
In a nutshell – our upstream provider took 6 days to resolve a network problem on our line. At 5 days they said it would take another 3 days, so we decided – while the site was unavailable – we would perform a major upgrade (switching from postgres to mysql) and rebuild the main server – and literally as we reformatted the discs, the line came back. So we were left with a rather unstable system that we hadnt finished testing – oops
Its all getting back to normal now though!

By:

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:45:51 +0000

The current native game support for linux is very good. I must say that the OpenGL games just run very smooth.

X3 is yet another game I’ll be buying for myself to. It will be good to see how it will perform with my GeForce-8800-GXT. :)

By:

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 13:32:47 +0000

I just hope they do a much better job on X3 than they did on X2. I have a geforce 6800 and the game is very slow at many points in the game, and the end is almost unplayable. There are many missing textures, especially when they are at a distance. The game is still fun, and I do give them credit for porting a directx windows game to OpenGL and Linux.

By:

Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:56:59 +0000

X2 is an incredibly good game that reminded me a lot of the experience I had with the old elite back then.
I’m so happy that X3 can make it to Linux, thanks for your efforts msimms.