An Open-Source MMORPG Using The Unigine Engine

[phoronix]

Phoronix: An Open-Source MMORPG Using The Unigine Engine

Project Bossanova has high hopes to develop "the first 3D game built especially with Linux as the first priority. It will set the standard in gameplay, graphics, compatibility, community integration and more." In addition, they plan to have the game, now announced as RunServer's MMT, to be open-source. This is an MMOPRG game and it's being built using the Unigine Engine...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTMxNA

[dacresbu]

I call BS.

the unity3d engine community is mostly made up of indi titles, and that was BEFORE they made it free. How about a 30 day trial?

[elanthis]

Unity isn't as graphically impressive, but it's well tested and a very well designed architecture and toolset. I've seen a lot of game developers doing their own AAA engines lately basically writing their design docs as "clone Unity". (Yay for NIH syndome...)

Since it sounds like Linux support was a primary concern for this group, I'd bet that if Unity had a Linux version that they might even just drop Unigine, depending on how far along the project is. Granted, if they're far enough along, switching engines would be retarded; Duke Nukem Forever level of retarded.

Unity doesn't have a Linux version, but this is most likely due simply to market concerns, and not technology (since they already have a Mac port... and hell, a Wii port even, which has a very "deficient" graphics API due to what is technically a lack of shaders and instead a reliance on TEV). I bet if enough of these Linux-focused projects kept pestering Unity, they'd do a port.

[allquixotic]

I wanted to mention that this MMT Demo actually does run using the S3TC texture support on i965. Now, granted, i965 is old classic mesa and very slow hardware, so I get 4 - 5 FPS, but everything renders 100% correctly I bet even a Windows port would get under 10 FPS because the hardware is so old. Maybe open source contributors can do something to help improve performance on lower end hardware

But hey, if they can improve performance on r600g, imagine what a HD5000 or HD6000 could do with S3TC support..... it's possible, remotely possible, that we might see good enough drivers for high end hardware to get playable FPS on this game by the time it's released.

Now, to get people like me (who volunteered to contribute $500 to Project Bossanova - am I crazy? - Yes!) to influence them to actually _prioritize_ supporting both lower-end hardware and open source graphics drivers

[snuwoods]

The Source Engine on Linux with such drivers is also a nightmare.

Obviously you mean source on wine on linux.

[madjr]

the unity3d engine community is mostly made up of indi titles, and that was BEFORE they made it free. How about a 30 day trial?

unigine and unity3d are not the same

[Michael]

Obviously you mean source on wine on linux.

Do I mean that?

[allquixotic]

Do I mean that?

Hehehehehehehe!

Either you have an NDA'ed build of source on Linux from Valve, or you're pulling everyone's leg with the Duke Nukem Forever ^H^H^H Steam on Linux sell again.

Oh btw, I am the guy who reported in for this article... I was dead wrong that it doesn't work with Mesa. It works as long as you have one of the supported drivers that works with libtxc_dxtn. You just need to hope that your driver has been optimized enough, and you have recent enough hardware, to get more than single-digit FPS in the otherwise correctly-rendered game world.

One more gripe: It's only x86 as of this writing. Where's amd64?

[Vadi]

amd64 will come; oilrush has 64bit binaries. mmt just didn't make one here, but the engine is fine with it.

I've pledged as well. Anything to realistically support Linux game dev.

[Sacha]

I pledged $100. I hope it becomes something decent.
They aren't taking money now (I thought it would) but I'd be willing to give that $100 for a decent Linux-focused MMORPG.