Quake Wars will be Linux native too right?

[pieman]

Quake Wars will be Linux native too right? All of ID games have been Linux native and ET is Linux native so Quake Wars will be too right?

[mortis]

I think you have answered your own question.

[kamikazee]

Where are we going to if people answer their own questions…

Oh wait.

[jimb0]

We don’t know too right? But like you said it probably will too right?

[igl]

Maybe!

[escapedturkey]

“Other features include in game voice chat, absolute Linux support (though may not be 100% done at the time of shipping), Punkbuster for anti-cheating, and stopwatch mode for tournament play.”

http://www.planetquake4.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Features&file=quake_wars_preview

Can a developer please confirm this?

[fjavier]

Hi, I am not a developer, my work area is not the same as they, but i know a bit this.
I would like to help something to all you that don’t know how this game is done and in general good and well done games.

Mainly, a game, and in general ALL applications are ENGINE+DATA. The world is full of dirty programmers that doesn’t understand this and don’t know that DATA is not Graphic, well, this is a personal discussion sorry. I will continue.

The only I know that the only difference between Linux, Windows and another operative systems is the engine, the engine in ET for example is only a file that is about 1.256 KB (ET.EXE), and some libraries, here there are:

Win / Linux

ET.EXE & ETDED.EXE / et & etded (ENGINE)
ui_mp_x86.dll / ui.mp.i386.so
cgame_mp_x86.dll / cgame.mp.i386.so

The other files are DATA (food) that the ENGINE ‘eats’. :poke:

I would like not to be a lot of ‘indigest’ in my explanations, but this is as simple as you read it.

You can read and test the game engines of games as Doom.
There is too an ET SDK, you can compile it to generate code.

Well, if you examine it, you can see that you use Visual C++ to build the code, packed on VC++ project, the code is usually portable, I have had no time to see if the code is POSIX (Windows NT has POSIX support), I supose is affirmative, but if it has, it is extremelly easy to port to Linux.
The code and the engine is done in C language.
There is too a Mac version to generate code.
You can cross-compile and generate from the same source, code for Linux, Windows and Mac for example.

The only external libraries the game uses are OpenGL libraries to graphics. Then, No problem, is universal and if I dont miss, ALL 3D graphics card supports OpenGL by hardware, you all know Directx support, but OpenGL was made before Directx, which is an invention of ®Microsoft propietary closed libraries (not open source as mesa for example in linux).

:poke: :poke: :poke: :poke: :poke:

Yes, I come from mars but you have no to worry about your question.

If the code is well structured, good programmers do ONLY well structured code (i saw status automaths and some more on id engines) and is a high quality code as i could see, is a trivial question solved.

In the other way, the support is another thing… usually is difficult to ger official support for Linux version of any game.
I would like to see some recommendations like, use artsd, use alsa, etc. Some general tips, not distribution based, there are a lot of tastes of the same Linux FHS distributions.

This is a theme for another big thread.

:moo: :???:

Any comments and corrections are well received, it’s to late now to well review my comment (5:04 in Spain).

Good night.

[Black_Forky]

Correction: ET.exe is 1,256 KB not 1.256

[kamikazee]

You need a ’ :nag: ’ with that.

[Sauron_EFG]

fjavier: I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say (it’s already fairly certain there will be native Linux support), but here’s a few comments anyway.

• Far from all applications are “engine+data” (and no, I don’t consider myself a “dirty” programmer).

• The Doom 3 engine was written in C++.

• Windows only supports a really old version of Posix, and hardly anyone uses it (certainly not id).

• Sound and input are completely different in Linux, and other things are slightly different (e.g. OpenGL).

• When porting to OSX/PPC you have other issues to consider as well, like endianness.

[B0rsuk]

Don’t expect any company to officially support Linux for games. I can’t remember anyone doing that. They will probably keep quiet about that, and just release linux binaries a few weeks after windows version. Which is when I will start upgrading my hardware.

However, don’t expect official http://enemyterritory.com to ever work with linux. It’s made in flash8, and last flash for linux is 7.0 . No sight of newer versions coming to linux. We’ll have to create our own website, because the official one sucks.

[fjavier]

fjavier: I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say (it’s already fairly certain there will be native Linux support), but here’s a few comments anyway.

To Explain

• Far from all applications are “engine+data” (and no, I don’t consider myself a “dirty” programmer).

I said it’s a personal apreciation, but for me, I don’t like applications as PowerBuilder for example… I prefer XML+XSL+Programming Language and Ontologies.
Every one has his own opinion.
I have seen a lot of wasted time by don’t reuse the code, there was at the past a software crisis by that reason, and today at day the people continues wasting time and resources rewritting code.
I don’t say it for you EFG, it’s a reivindication.

• The Doom 3 engine was written in C++.

I have not said something about Doom 3 engine.
I talked about prior engines written in C by ID based on status automatons, with a high artistic code programmation. My friends and me were impressed by that.
Wolfenstein engine is written in ASM/C.

• Windows only supports a really old version of Posix, and hardly anyone uses it (certainly not id).

I could not find any inclusion to posix.h in no one place when i saw the code. And Posix is as a bad patch to NT systems.

• Sound and input are completely different in Linux, and other things are slightly different (e.g. OpenGL).

OpenGL is not different for games in Linux, specially in ID engine based games.
The APIs themselves are fairly similar (wrt performance) between the two
as far as correctness goes they should be identical.
http://www.khronos.org/opengles/ An OpenGL Window System independent.

You can do a simple solution is to evolve the game with a sound wrapper as artsd, for example:

# artsdsp -v -m et

And the game sound is wrapped now and you can hear it. (Not as simple for user, but http://blogdrake.net/node/3047 explains in Spanish, English http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Make_sound_work_with_ALSA_and_Quake3/Enemy-Territory )

• When porting to OSX/PPC you have other issues to consider as well, like endianness.

Isn’t it managed by the kernel and compilers?
It could be interesting to see running ET on Silicon or Alpha (I love old Alpha SMP).
I talk about x86version.

[pieman]

“Other features include in game voice chat, absolute Linux support (though may not be 100% done at the time of shipping), Punkbuster for anti-cheating, and stopwatch mode for tournament play.”

http://www.planetquake4.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=Features&file=quake_wars_preview

Can a developer please confirm this?

Yeah can a dev comfirm that…

[Joe999]

ingame voice chat? i thought that was cancelled because of the availability of 3rd party products like teamspeak?

if it’s in game, maybe it’d be fun to see the mouth gestures of your virtual character when you talk through the mic

[jimb0]

Who said it was cancelled? The only thing I remember them saying about voip is that it was in.

I for one welcome ingame voip very much. TS and Ventrillo and etc are very good and we always use it on clanmatches but it makes no sense on pub servers since you can’t expect every random anonymous player to have the same software as you and to KNOW what server to join.

[pieman]

What about Linux support though??

[kamikazee]

The question is rather: why not?

Id mostly supported Linux, Linux builds of the engines were out only a few days after their game releases and I guess they will keep to do so.

[B0rsuk]

What about Linux support though??

Probably no support. Smart people can figure it out themselves.

Usually a game is released, and some time later developers quietly release linux biraries, pretending nothing has happened. My guess this is to avoid questions about linux support.

I think they don’t offer support for linux because it’s an investment that doesn’t pay off. There are so many linux distros that it’s really hard to provide support for anything but few selected distros. As I said, if you can make it run, good for you. If you can’t, well, you already bought the game.

DISCLAIMER:
I understood ‘support’ as ‘there’s a guy on the line answering your question about how to run the game on your distro’.
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20011011
http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19980614&mode=classic

[kamikazee]

Using Linux, support mostly means something else then it would using windows. More Linux people say: make it work yourself, UTFSB and RTFM. So there support means “it’s posible, now do it”.
Since ID releases a binary which might work straight away, I’d say they have pretty decent support. Compare that to GTA:SA and you’ll see you need at least Wine.

[pieman]

ID has always supported Linux by allowing there games to run native for Linux. So Quake Wars will be the same then right?