John Carmack on Linux ports

[geamandura]

Now take art elements that any idiot could accomplish. Make it feature chars like Tux, Penny, snowball, blue screen of death, ect. Target a middle-low polygon platform to maximize compatibility and run on say, pandora. Now instead of modeling your maps which should be done, because your stuff is low poly use csg. A dog can make a map using csg. Set the players to run on x axis and make them map w.e they damn well want. For textures, search web development forums and say they get credits. Those people are looking to get der names on everything, im serious.

Come on, man, I wouldn't even bother downloading something done as you desctribed it. Hell, it would even make the Linux gaming status quo worse to have a crap like that thrown together and advertised. People still play games using Wine, there's still stuff like Nexuiz, FreeCiv, Wesnoth... I mean there's already a standard in effect here. It's not Blizzard but it is something already.

If you're talking about minimizing effort but keeping it look good, then the solution is a minimalistic art design, something done by an art guy who knows his stuff real good, but has very little elements instead of an UT 3-like heavy art design. E.g. that Dyson game or the games from Puppy Games (www.puppygames.net). No compromises.

[L33F3R]

i think you greatly perverted what im saying. If you want to see crap look at all the FOSS games in synaptic. That alone proves you have no idea what your talking about. Start calling some good non FPS titles, you will be fairly short on a decent number of them that are 3D. That idea took 30 seconds to come up with, its hardly anything special but it demonstrates how the artwork hurdle might be accomplished, not will be.

BTW, IMO Puppy Games are boring as hell after 5 minutes. Great ideas and good looks but perhaps something that doesn't make me want to click the X on the window.

[geamandura]

To be clearer, I wasn't talking about all the Linux games having good standards. I was trying to refer to raising the bar on Linux games. If there's a recipe for art that can effortlessly be put together by somebody that doesn't have true art talent... better not bother.

[L33F3R]

oh hell I dont want to see an effortless product and neither does anyone else. I push when i say how easy it would be, its not. It would take a long time for everyone and the core team would need to be very handy. My point was to show how you can grab a team. Dragonlord can attest to how many hammer users are on moddb. Same goes for generic modelers. Some of them, might actually even be good . Photoshitters are everywhere and sound peoplez are less difficult then one might expect. In my example i showed how you would be able to adapt the title to the artists instead of the other way around. One such ways is using a very generic XML to be the geometry allowing the developers and as an afterthought, the people who play it, to use whatever program they want. Artists dont want to learn another program, we are a stubborn bunch.

[yogi_berra]

but saying nVidia is the only way for him to get it to work makes absolutely no sense.

It makes perfect sense or have you forgotten how the Doom 3 release went?

The game ran fine on nVidia hardware but crashed to desktop on ATi in Windows and Linux. ATi, now AMD, has never been good on the bleeding edge rendering technology that Carmack likes to program.

[Yomp!!]

It makes perfect sense or have you forgotten how the Doom 3 release went?

The game ran fine on nVidia hardware but crashed to desktop on ATi in Windows and Linux. ATi, now AMD, has never been good on the bleeding edge rendering technology that Carmack likes to program.

Yes, I am familiar with it, I had a ATI 9200 at the time of Doom 3's release, it was horrible on them. But it was a ATI OpenGL driver issue it had nothing to do with the way the game was done at all. Then ATI completely redid their OpenGL driver, its much better nowdays than it was back then. Sure, ATI still has issues but as far as rendering in typical OpenGL situations, the chances are very good that it'll work.

In my system I currently have a 9600 GT running on a 780G motherboard, so I got and tried the ATI 3200 IGP, and to be honest, its really not that bad.. Did I have issues? Yeah, but only when I tested Wine, which I hardly use. So comparing something that happened 5 years ago to today is nonsense.

[geamandura]

One such ways is using a very generic XML to be the geometry allowing the developers and as an afterthought, the people who play it, to use whatever program they want.

Collada?

[Dragonlord]

@L33F3R:
Wrong direction to mount the horse. Down-grading a project to the people just puts emphasis on Linux sucking for real games. There's only one way: do it right. Now this doesn't mean to be the biggest graphic miracle but without a certain degree of quality the cause is lost. And as much as I do know hammerers on ModDB as much do I know lazy bitches. Most of the people don't have the will to stand such a project through. That's the sad truth.

@yogi_berra:
Which is bull. I'm deving on ATI stuff on bleeding edge tech. That's not what is the problem. A crashing app is simply one which doesn't do things properly. Granted ATI had some crash-worthy parts in their drivers but so does nVidia. If it crashes it is first a problem in the game not doing their pointer arithmetic correct not the graphic card doing something wrong.

@L33F3R:
XML is good for only one thing: definitions. Never use it for large data-objects like models, terrains, images or whatever. It's best use is for using definition work and for higher level data ( for example maps but only defining entities no geometry/brushes or other binary stuff ).

[L33F3R]

Down-grading a project to the people just puts emphasis on Linux sucking for real games. There's only one way: do it right. Now this doesn't mean to be the biggest graphic miracle but without a certain degree of quality the cause is lost. And as much as I do know hammerers on ModDB as much do I know lazy bitches. Most of the people don't have the will to stand such a project through. That's the sad truth.

Yes and no. Yes to the lazy asses on moddb

I do not believe it would downgrade the quality of assets or the project as a whole. it would encourage shit work. Whether or not shit work is acceptable is up to standard. You dont hire someone simply because he/she is available you do it because they are qualified. Just because more people apply for a job doesn't mean that the rate of crap goes up. You pick your apples. As for a smaller weight it makes alot of sense. OGL 1.4 is good for mobile devices and netbooks. Make it run unexpectedly well on older hardware and more users will get on. This is 1 reason why WoW is such a success. That, and its like crack...

XML is good for only one thing: definitions. Never use it for large data-objects like models, terrains, images or whatever. It's best use is for using definition work and for higher level data ( for example maps but only defining entities no geometry/brushes or other binary stuff ).

Yes but it can be used for the others and if my irrlicht fps counter doesnt lie it works very well. Now i wouldn't make a large terrain level with it. That school project, what was it, urban warfare online. They used it aswell and besides the shitty collision it worked wonderful under wine. One might opt for a binary format but you would be chopping your options. That said, artists dont particularly like people poking around the assets so it has ups and downs.

[Dragonlord]

[QUOTE=L33F3R;84020]I do not believe it would downgrade the quality of assets or the project as a whole. it would encourage shit work. Whether or not shit work is acceptable is up to standard. You dont hire someone simply because he/she is available you do it because they are qualified. Just because more people apply for a job doesn't mean that the rate of crap goes up. You pick your apples. As for a smaller weight it makes alot of sense. OGL 1.4 is good for mobile devices and netbooks. Make it run unexpectedly well on older hardware and more users will get on. This is 1 reason why WoW is such a success. That, and its like crack...[quote]
WoW is only a success because it's based on a well known franchise ranging back to the original WC. If it would have been new stuff without basing of their old franchise it would most probably not have had such a success. That's what I call "IP Whoring" or "Franchise Whoring". Base your project on an existing IP/Franchise and you'll have lemmings... erm... fans... in no time. Do something original and creative and you'll get only a few people.

Yes but it can be used for the others and if my irrlicht fps counter doesnt lie it works very well. Now i wouldn't make a large terrain level with it. That school project, what was it, urban warfare online. They used it aswell and besides the shitty collision it worked wonderful under wine. One might opt for a binary format but you would be chopping your options. That said, artists dont particularly like people poking around the assets so it has ups and downs.

XML does work as a format, that's not the problem. The problems are
1) slow to load large files
2) very large files compared to equal binaries
I use those too for testing formats and engine features but in the end for a final product you need binaries. Not a problem with my engine though since in the IGDE you will be able to mass-convert files when doing a deploy build ( since every resource module in the engine is required to know loading and saving ).