Mark Collins, co-author of Linux Game Programming,has written an editorial forSlashdot entitled “Promises And Pitfalls In Linux Game Development”,which looks at how Linux stands as a gaming platform today. Of note is Collins mentioning that a Microsoft developer is considering opening parts of DirectX tomake it cross-platform (I wouldn’t hold my breath for that).
turtleshadowhas posted a summary@ Kuro5hin.org ofLoki Software president Scott Draeker’s presentationat the Colorado Linux Info Quest yesterday. Based on his notes,it sounds like Draeker touched on Loki’s recent departures, their current business model,how Wine may be counter-productive in the long run (somethingI’m inclined to agree with), Indrema,and IP court battles. If anyone has more info on what was said, feel free to send it in or postit below. Thanks to Joe for the heads up.
Oliver let us know that inan interview (German) with deferred Power atCeBIT, Imagination Technologies’David Harold stated that Linux drivers for theirKyro II chipset are in development (are there any current generationchipsets that will be missing drivers in the near future?).
Gamespy has a new monthly column upentitled”Neverwinter Nights Adventure Creation Guide“,which, as the name suggests, will deal with how to forge new adventures with theAD&D RPG from BioWare.
Linux 4 Fun’sChristoph Hess forwarded the followingresponse from Radon Labs regarding a Linux port ofNOMADS (earlier this week the publisherof NOMADS, CDV,stated that they would not be publishingthe Linux version):
CDV publishes NOMADS for PC and XBOX. NOMADS runs under Linux, too,because of the cross-platform abilities of RadonLab’s engine THE NEBULADEVICE only for internal purposes. Publishing the Linux version is notdiscussed so far.
Yippee38 wrote in to point out thatCornered Rat is nowlooking for Linux programmers to work on their massivemultiplayer combat sim World War II Online. They’re specificallylooking for kernel hackers, so keep in mind this may just be for maintaining a server port.
Loki Software’s Sam Lantinga wrote in to theSimple DirectMedia Layer mailing list earlier this weekto relate his plans for the future of the API:
Q: What’s up with SDL 1.3? Can I help?A: SDL 1.3 will be a near full rewrite of the SDL functionality, based on what we’ve learned over the past four years. The architecture design is partially done, and we’ll start prototyping the design soon. As soon as there’s a working framework, we’ll make it publicly available for comment and contributions. This new framework has about a year or a year and a half before we anticipate it being ready for stable release. We anticipate this framework being the next generation SDL 2.0 API.
Version 0.6.0 of the 3D table tennis sim Cannon Smashhas been released; changes include a new lobby server for finding opponents.
Cannon Smash 0.6.0 Source:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/CannonSmash/csmash-0.6.0.tar.gz
A new version Linus Torvalds’ Linux kernel was made available today;the changes for 2.4.3 can be found here.
Linux 2.4.3 Source and Patch:
ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.4/
After several beta builds, Loki Software’s Leonardo Zide wrote in to announce the final release of the Linux Quake 3: Arena 1.17 SDK:
Today we’re releasing a package with linux native versions of all toolsrequired to build Quake 3 MODs (q3asm and lcc) and the required game sourcecode. We hope that this will help Linux enthusiasts to create gamemodifications under Linux, as has been common under Windows ever since theoriginal Quake release.
It’s currently unknown whether this release is actually meant for use with Q3 1.17 (the last stable Linux release) as the filename would indicate; the changes id Software made to Q3 during the 1.2x series broke SDK compatibility, which would require a new SDK whenever Q3A 1.27g beta is replaced.
Q3SDK 1.17 Download:
[ 3D Downloads | Loki FTP ]
Mike Sessions sent in the following:
I remember about a week or so back LinuxHardware.org posted somebenchmarks comparing the GeForce2 and the ATI Radeon. They seemed to havehad some problems with the Radeon in an Athlon/Linux/32bpp combo. No fancygraphs, but I have some numbers for those interested.
Sessions’ results can be found at
http://www.linuxgames.com/articles/msessions-radeon_benchmarks.txt
Funcom’s MMORPGAnarchy Online was previewed atat a few sites this week (thanks AO Forge):
Version 0.37b13.1 of xmame has beenreleased; changes include:
In the announcement, Lawrence Gold writes: Note that this contains onlyMAME, since MESS 0.37b13.1 has not yet been released.
xmame 0.37b13.1 source:
Version 0.8.1a of the RPG utility suite OpenRPG has been released; changes include:
OpenRPG 0.8.1a source: openrpg-0.8.1a-src.tar.gz
Anders Jensen-Urstad wrote in with wordthat he has put together a Game ServerHOWTO that covers running Quake 1/2/3 and Half-Life game servers. TheHOWTO will be submitted to the LDP but Anders would like some feedback first.Take a look at it and send your comments to
Pierre Phaneuf wrote in to let us knowthat the Quadra master server isback online. It may, however, take a little while for the DNS to propagatesince the servers is on another machine now. The full message sent to thequadra-announce list can be found at
The Arkanaeteam wrote in to announce that they have released version 0.3 of their GPL’d 3DJava-based RPG ( Arkanae 0.3 download:
A beta 1.2.4 version of the Java MD3 Model Viewer 1.2.4b download:
Loki‘s president, Scott Draeker, willbe speaking at the Colorado Linux Info Quest tomorrowin Denver on the future of Linux gaming. His one-hour talk titledLinux Games: Where do we go from here? is set to start at noon.
Gamespot has posted a