Native Half Life for Linux project

Toltex · n00b Joined: 26 Mar 2003 Posts: 33 Location: Belgium

check out linuxgames.com

i guess telex4 did a good job

dermot · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2003 12:35 pm Post subject:

Comparing HL2 and Doom3 is like comparing apples and oranges, because although they are both first-person shooters, they each occupy (or will occupy) a different space in the market. Doom3 appears to basically be a first-person survival horror and is probably going for a slower, more thoughtful pace, punctuated with frantic outbursts of violence and action.

Half-Life 2 appears to be 'more of the same' albeit in a good, wholesome way: more running, more gunning, more innovations and more pre-apocalyptic, post-cold war paranoia.

As for the petition - I'm not going to sign it because, franly, I don't think it's worth the bother. On-line petitions aren't worth the paper they're not written on, unfortunately. Half Life will never be open-sourced, because it has made and continues to make Valve shitloads of money. It will never be ported to Linux either, because - as someone else pointed out - it makes far too much use of DirectX. It's quite possible that HL2 will be ported to Linux without any clamouring by Linux-based fans.
_________________
Dermot

I bought some rock star ashes from the back of Rolling Stone
I don't think he would've minded - he couldn't sell his soul

Ribs · Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2003 3:04 pm Post subject: Number of entries to date

There are now just under 900 confirmed entries in the database. This is a great start, but we need a lot more.

There are about 400 entries which are yet unconfirmed (Link in confirming e-mail was never clicked). Browsing through the database, it's fairly shocking to see how many people have used fairly obvious fake addresses...

-Ribs.

SQLBoy · Guru Joined: 17 Aug 2002 Posts: 381

Its based on Quake I's engine and both Quake I and II are open sourced.

SQLBoy · Guru Joined: 17 Aug 2002 Posts: 381

Open sourcing Quake I and II is what allows ID to continue to make money off those old releases. (although very little, ID makes more money on licensing I think) The fact that the opened the source code to the engine does not mean the content itself is open sourced. It doesn't mean people stop buying the game. You still need the .pak files. That being said, notice that Quake II compiles on like 30 different platforms now instead of just Mac,Linux, and Windows when it was originally released. People with those ill supported operating systems need the pak files so they have to go buy the game.

The Quake II community is still very alive and a high percentage of the players are running linux or some other unix.

There is nothing in the Half-Life engine that makes it special now adays. The content is what was so amazing. If they release the source then we could at least have Half-Life 1 on linux, freebsd, OS X, etc.

Daantje · n00b Joined: 16 Aug 2002 Posts: 14 Location: Netherlands

Signed it

NitroPye · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 1:00 am Post subject:

Dracnor · Guru Joined: 08 Jun 2003 Posts: 397 Location: Pennsylvania

Signed and confirmed

refriedbean · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 5:19 am Post subject:

Signed

_________________
"Ninety percent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact" --Terry Pratchett

dermot · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 7:54 am Post subject:

I just think it's a waste of time (sorry Ribs). I mean look at Ribs' last post:

Ribs · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 9:25 am Post subject:

Lovechild · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 9:32 am Post subject:

Ribs: did you find me in the database ?

generalgherk · n00b Joined: 22 May 2003 Posts: 58

i too wish hl (specifically cs) had a native linux port like quake 3 does but you really shouldn't have asked for opensource imo.. it'll make it easy for them to laugh both ideas off because the latter is unrealistic

SQLBoy · Guru Joined: 17 Aug 2002 Posts: 381

How can you say its unrealistic? The technology is obsolete. I think open sourcing (this does not mean HL becomes free) the engine would extend its life even further. Its also a seperate part of the actual petition. It would also spawn an OSX and Linux port in about 2 days probably. Not to mention the dedicated server code.

Uranus · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 4:35 pm Post subject: Re: hmm

tagore · Posted: Tue Jun 17, 2003 4:48 pm Post subject:

Signed.

IntergalacticWalrus · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 3:07 am Post subject:

The whole idea of this petition is flawed. What we really need to demand to Valve is that they stop being Microsoft sellouts. Valve has:

1) Took the Quake1 engine (a portability masterpiece) and filled it with DirectX-specific code to use it in Half-Life. Result: No Half-Life ports, since they made it basically unportable without metric tons of work.
2) Made a Direct3D-specific engine (called "Source") for Half-Life 2. Again, the chances of ports are automatically unlikely.

Valve is yet another company in the gaming industry who is sucking on Microsoft's *guess word here* on a regular basis.

Screw Half-Life 2 and that damn "Source" engine, my money is on DOOM III, a game that wasn't designed by a bunch of Microsoft sellouts who can't figure out that they are screwing up the entire Mac/Linux gaming market by going "Microsoft's way".

RedPingüim · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:04 am Post subject:

signed...

_________________
Carlos Vendramini
opera 9 build 1635 (gentoo 2006.0; gentoo-sources-2.6.15-r7, gnome 2.12.2) - Linux user #293485 - Opera Fórum em Português

Swishy · Guru Joined: 06 Jun 2002 Posts: 491 Location: NZ

and another :wink:

Cheers
Dale.
_________________
Theres no substitute for C.I.

dermot · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 11:02 am Post subject:

IntergalacticWalrus:

SQLBoy · Guru Joined: 17 Aug 2002 Posts: 381

Fuck that. Valve owes the Linux community a port. Linux hackers created AdminMod, Metamod, and a host of other 3rd party utilities for Half-Life servers that ran on Linux. That fact they went all DirectX even after what the Linux community has done for them is shameful.

kosamae · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 12:17 pm Post subject: Slashdot

I tried posting to Slashdot too, to no avail. I was going to try to post to games.slashdot.org, but I think stuff just gets posted there from the main site based on content. Maybe we should try emailing Ryan Gordon, to see what he thinks about porting it, he'd certainly be capable enough if he had the source.
I just hate the way companies refuse to release this stuff, I mean, what do they have to lose? Its an old game, with an antiquated graphics engine, that they could probably sell a couple thousand more compies of if they just open sourced the engine. I guess they just sold their souls to the devil...

Uranus · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 12:32 pm Post subject: Re: Slashdot

kosamae · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 12:54 pm Post subject:

Ryan Gordon is icculus, and I agree, lets start flooding Valve with emails, and make them see that the linux gaming community is a force to be reckoned with.

dsd · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:30 pm Post subject: with regard to publicity

did anyone think of submitting it to the GWN?