Linux port - No Longer Envisioned

[___________Illuvatar]

I just want to comment this. I would call this shoting yourself in the foot. I'm a bsd user, and currently play AO under wine, which works fine most of the time. Never the less I'd love to see a linux client come out.

I think you're making a huge mistake with cancelling this project, because you say you don't see enough interest. To my knowledge not many games in this class offer any support for linux at all, and you could have been breaking new ground here. With all due respect, this is a game that most likely would attract geeks, not just the average player with a Playstation and a computer he plays Duke Nukem 3D on. There is a lot of mature players in this game, many of which are educated IT personell (to my knowledge), and a linux client in this game could really boost your sales. At least, I would suspect so.

I'm not going to ask you to reconsider. I know you wouldn't listen to that anyway, and I don't really know your reason for cancelling this project. You claim it is because you see no market for it. I claim you are very wrong.

[Provisioner]

I've been a Linux user for 7+ years, and has always been a great "alternative" OS. It's great, but still not ready for prime time for the average user (remember, it's the average user that drives sales, not a few geeks).

They didn't write this thing with a GNU compiler; it's written in MSVC, likely with MFC and we *know* there's a bunch of imbedded MSDX. It seems much more likely that a Mac client would come out before a Linux client - at least Apple has "average" users.

With that in mind, it's all about cash. They spent a pant-load on this game, and it'll cost that much more to port to other OSes. Why would a company invest another 50% of their total costs to port it to other OSes when WinTel has 90% of the market?

Also considering that most "home and office" Linux users (myself included) have either a Windows Box, Windows Partition, or a swappable drive (or all 3 :P)

So really, what's the point?

Now that Linux has been heavily commercial over the past 3 years, you'll see more ports as it takes market share away from Microsoft (of course, the bigger it gets, the worse it gets - check the trends over the past 60 years).

For the time being, however, Linux needs to grow up a little and become accessible to the average user.

Provisioner

[___________Illuvatar]

Indeed I agree with you Provisioner, but the fact is that it was Funcom that made a promise to make a Linux port, this is no suggestion I am comming up with now.

Is AO programmed on MSVC? After all I have heard, Funcom runs 100% linux in-house, but there is no way I could know for sure.

I'm not claiming a linux port would take over for a wintel version, by no means it could, but it would be a nice addition. It would also make Funcom take one step further than their competitors, which I can imagine will be a benefit when later releases come, for just the very few dollars needed.

After all, making a linux port doesn't require a full recoding of the game (even though it would be nice). Simply making an OpenGL patch (which is needed anyway, DX sucks), and a new executable, the old window libraries would be fine (satisfying) to run the game

[blu789]

Originally posted by Illuvatar

Simply making an OpenGL patch (which is needed anyway, DX sucks), and a new executable, the old window libraries would be fine (satisfying) to run the game

Muahaha, simply making an OpenGL patch.

That has got to be the funniest thing I've heard in weeks.

I've already posted about this very topic.

http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...&postid=260666

Tim

[__________Quarentine]

The problem is that for every patch they would have to patch the windows version AND the linux version. Just what I want to wait twice as long for a patch.

Not to mention writing a game for linux is infinately harder than for windows. Not the game logic itself but the graphics and sound interfaces aren't nearly as developed as on windows.