OT: games on linux (was OT: SCO Forum)

[Fairlight]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 09:53:14PM -0500, Steve Bergman may or may not have
proven themselves an utter git by pronouncing:
> >   
> It's an ATI Express 200M.  Not a very heavyweight chipset, but it does 
> OK.  Doom3 and Quake4 are totally unplayable.  They even give the NVidia 
> 6800GT on my CentOS desktop a run for its money.  But that's OK.

Ouch on the no-joy Doom3.  My Radeon 9600XT does that smooth as glass if I
don't try to go resolution-happy.  I never played Quake beyond 2 because 3
was Arena, if I recall, and entirely multiplayer.  I've got more
multiplayer FPS's than I can shake a stick at.  You should see FEAR and Far
Cry.  I'd drool but I have them already.  Actually, I need to play FEAR
again.  :)

> I only run native Linux binaries like those for:
> 
> Quake
> Quake2
> Quake3
> Quake4
> Doom
> Doom2
> Doom3
> Wolfenstein 3D
> Return to Castle Wolfenstein
> Unreal
> Unreal Tournament
> Unreal Tournament 2003
> Rune
> Hexen
> Hexen2
> Heretic
> Heretic2
> Descent
> Descent3
> etc.
> 
> All the titles I care about have Linux versions.

When the heck did they release all those as native ports?!  Last time I
looked, they had Doom 1&2, Quake 1&2, and Descent.  The rest were totally
unported.  I'm assuming you mean Descent 2, not 3.  (If 3 was released, I'd
-think- I'd have heard about it...)  :)

I had 5 of them for linux when I still did linux on the desktop.  I've had
all but five of them in general.

> I don't think that there are openserver binaries available, though.

Uh, no.  :)  Last time I used a SCO box locally, they couldn't even get a
Trident 8900CL working at 1024x768 without issues, much less any games.  :)

> I don't really do the Wine thing.  But transgaming has some good wine 
> ports, I think.

I've heard that name before.  I should look at it.

> I'm betting it wouldn't even install.  One nice thing about Linux on 
> servers is that I don't have to worry that much about the hardware.  I 
> pretty much know it's going to work.  With SCO, hardware selection was 
> always a bit of a gamble.

I'm betting you're right, but the second I say something like that I've got
six people on my back for REALLY slamming SCO.  :)  I gave 'em the benefit
of the doubt.  I've seen it installed on laptops before, but never
painlessly.

> I think you would be pleased with VLC (videolan) or mplayer (with the 
> win32 codecs, which are easily available and usable to get wmv9, 
> quicktime support, etc.  Xanim is not in the same class.  you can try 
> out VLC under Windows at http://www.videolan.org/

Tried mplayer and it was better than xanim, but it also had issues with
codecs.  Although, I didn't try installing extras, I don't think.  Now I
-do- do transcoding with lame, transcode, and a few other goodies on a
linux box here.  Or did when I needed to convert DiVX AVI->VCD MPEG.  That
need ended last March.

Second time in as many weeks that I've heard VLC mentioned.  Maybe I'll
check it out.  I have the weirdest problem in that I can still play any
video I have a codec for -EXCEPT- Microsoft Video 1, despite the fact that
the codec pack was reinstalled -and- I reinstalled WMP9.  It's driving me
nuts because I can't test my own videos on my own system, I have to use my
wife's.  No idea what buggered it.  Someone suggested I use Codec Sniper to
clean things up, but CS didn't even find MSV1 on my system.  I'd just as
soon not trust it.  :)

> You haven't used Linux in a while.  Both ATI and NVidia offer their own 
> drivers, though the open source drivers work fine for 2D on both cards, 
> and for 3D on some of the ATI cards.  The NVidia drivers are unified 
> with their other supported platforms including Windows (and FreeBSD, and 
> I believe, OpenSolaris) so all platforms support *all* features of the 
> card.  Go to the NVidia driver download page and select Linux instead of 
> Windows.

Untrue!  I use linux daily.  I'm using it now!  :)  I have a headless linux
box here through which I run all my shell sessions to everywhere.  I use
screen so everything's in one PuTTY session.

I've not used linux on the desktop with SVGA or X11 modes in uhm...3 years?
Whenever I installed SuSE 9.0 here on the system that died a year and a
quarter ago.  THAT's been a while. :) Truth is, I just had no need for
it as a desktop.  I had the old arcadia as a dual-boot configuration.
Now that I have a server (albeit headless--although it -does- have Xvnc
on it) up all the time, I don't even have linux on my desktop machine.
Dual booting got to be more like single booting anyway, due to lack of
-widespread- gaming support.  Where's the EverQuest port, for one? :)
I stopped booting less and less to linux during my Ultima Online days,
actually.  That was definitely what started impeding my dual-booting.

Interesting on the driver situation.  Yeah, haven't had to deal with that.
The last card I had running under linux was an S3 Trio64+ based card.  I do
recall seeing OpenGL support had fully come to linux though.

> But Ubuntu has them in the Universe repository so you can just "apt-get 
> install" the proprietary drivers for either ATI or NVidia with a single 
> command right from the internet repository.

Thinking about it, NVidia has drivers for SuSE that you can download the
installer from YaST.  I don't recall ever seeing an ATI driver in YaST
though.  Funny, that.

> All Id Software games have from Wolfenstein 3D on have native ports.  
> (No commander Keen, though ;-) )  All the titles since Quake1 have ports 
> done by Id Software itself.  

Oh, not entirely true.  :)  The Doom 1&2 were ported by iD themselves.
Quake 1 I -believe- was done by iD, but Quake 2 was done by the person that
was -going- to do Half-Life before he found out it was a complete
non-starter.  When I say iD, I mean ex-iD, actually.  Dave Taylor (ddt on
LinuxNET, when he was on it) did the original ports.  I believe Dave had
nothing or next to nothing to do with the Q2 port, as he'd left to found
crack.com by then.  They did a game I can't remember the name of (the one
written in LISP), and then they folded before Golgatha was out of beta (or
maybe even in beta).  The Q2 port was done by someone whose name I can't
even remember.

Interesting that they went backwards and did W3D.  :)  That was definitely
after I stopped.

And Parallax did Descent 2, finally?  Sweet!  Opensourced it, or did they
do it themselves?  I recall the original was OSS'd.

> The Unreal based games were ported by Epic themselves, which has         
> switched to writing things with multi-platform in mind.                  

Let me get this straight.  Epic will release Unreal for linux, but I
can't download a bloody copy for Windows like I can of the last six
FPS's I've purchased?  You -must- buy the CD for the Windows versions.
That's one reason I don't play it--I hate using disks.  This is where
www.direct2drive.com comes in REAL handy, as I now get my games via
download and don't need a disc to be swapped when I change or even install
games.  And some really good titles are available that way.

. Everything from Id through Quake II is open source, and I believe 
> they are working on opensourcing QuakeIII now.  Quake III was officially 
> supported by Id Software from the beginning.  You got a box, even the 
> special stamped tin ones on the initial release, with a Tux sticker on 
> it.  Unreal runs under the native Unreal Tournament Engine. 

Ooh...they back-ported the content to the newer engine?  Slick! 

Actually, -do- they let you download it, or do they require you to have a
CD for the linux version as well?  Epic has been annoyingly resistant to
digital delivery, as has Blizzard.  :(

> LiveCD's are really popular nowadays.  Grab the Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper 
> Drake" install CD at  http://www.ubuntu.com/

Would you believe I've -never- liked the concept behind a live CD/DVD?

It'd be okay for checking it out.  Just not a fan of the concept, I guess.
I can't put a rational reason on it, either, try as I might.  Maybe it's
not purist enough.  I dunno.

> I should probably try to tie this post into FilePro in some way, but it 
> would probably come off as a pretty lame attempt at this point. ;-)

It's flagged OT, no worries here.  However:

OB-fP:  One could make a handy database of linux-ported games.

Okay, yeah, that was lame.  :)  Ah well...  <Jack_Nicholson> All work and
no play makes Jack a dull boy... </Jack_Nicholson>

You know...I remember the days when linux could run on a 386/16sx with 4MB
of RAM--and you could get TinyX running.  I'm pretty much doubting the
modern kernels would actually work with that footprint model anymore, and I
bet that's been the case for years--probably since about 2.0.  I just can't
see that happening anymore.  Ya think?

mark->