event though I am an atheist, and vehemently against all religions and their backwards modes of thought, I can respect people who do believe in their respective religion, especially when they're not preaching or encroaching upon others' beliefs

-mastersmith (a GameDev.net Forums member)

So calling people backwards is a sign of respect now? Man, how words change...wait no, I think it's still insulting. Oh wait, he only respects people when they're not actually voicing their believes. At that point they're encroaching on your believe of...well...nothing. Now, I don't know this guy but this single post makes me think he's an idiot. Not even just stupid, but actually mentally deficient to the point that we should consider removing him from society. I'm sure he's not that bad of a person, he's a budding game developer after all and we all know how I just love all game developers . Not everyone is aware, I've developed some serious displeasure with Cliffy B and Peter Molyneux (I wanted to say hate but that's just too strong a word) over the years. That however, is another story for another time.

Anyway, this thread spawned from some ridiculous religious backlash to some kid looking to create this grandiose Bible-based video game. The thread has been locked (although there is a new one without all the flames). I've honestly never seen this side of GD. It's kinda perplexing really...

So much for a short tweet...

So, anyone who has been following OpenGL a little knows that it is the only real competitor to DirectX. This fact and the fact that it's open to any OS makes it kind of a big deal. The problem with OpenGL is that implementation sucks due to massive complexity issues. The OpenGL code is pretty damn old, around 15 years old. Now you're probably thinking, I guess that's old. In the tech world, that's ancient. Think about the hardware capabilities between now and 15 years ago. Huge difference exists there.

It's OpenGL 3.0 though, it can't be that old if there was a 2.0 in between. Yeah, the funny thing about OpenGL is that all they seem to do is patch the code constantly to keep up with modern features. All this patchwork makes for a really crappy design and hence the bad support due to complex implementation.

So what, if this is how it's always been, what's the deal with the fuss over 3.0? Well Khronos (the people now in charge of OpenGL) promised a clean break from OpenGL 2.1 with a complete rewrite of the entire API. This new API would be significantly more modern and feature increased speed and easier implementation. Every got super excited (in their pants) and then hit with a 10-ton anvil when the bomb dropped.

To sum things up: Promises were broken and I feel hurt as a game developer and Linux user.

People wonder what happened and many speculate they avoided a complete shift to appease their main market: CAD developers (think engineering software). It's nice to know they are happy with recent developments as a CAD developer responded on the GameDev.net Forums:

"After hearing these news, we will be starting the end-of-life plan for our OpenGL renderer in the very near future (XP compatibility and quad buffered stereo are the only features holding it back), and will be focusing on D3D10 exclusively from now on."

Awesome, they pissed off the game developers and the CAD developers. At least they still have OpenGL ES for the mobile market.

It's crap like this that makes me wonder why I use Linux. Our community needs to get it together. Times like this require us to either screw OpenGL and develop our own graphics API or rally to take OpenGL from Khronos and do something positive with it. Obviously, they lack the vision and guts to handle modern development. I mean if Microsoft did it with DirectX 10 then it should no problem to attack it with OpenGL.

Source: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=504623

Other suspect players include Dell, who of course would want to push to handle rolling out "certified" gaming machines. Acer falls in to the same category, the existence of the both of them makes their presence a little more tolerable but seeing as these people just put pieces together and sell them to us I'd like to see them both off the board.

Logitech, I'm half-and-half with. You want an input device developer on board. However, Logitech has a very closed source, proprietary nature and they don't like Linux (my mouse still uses workarounds for all the buttons).

WildTangent is a nice example of dead technology that no one cares about. It's obvious that they have a seat in order to leverage a chance to come back.

Antec? Why? Just no, please. Have some dignity and don't just take any tech firms money. There's no gaming related information in the Senior VP's bio on the site. Yeah that's right, Antec is on the board.

Razer? We have Logitech -- they're bigger and better, go home and save your money for a new start-up.

People I actually approve of:

Intel, AMD, and nVidia need to be there for obvious reasons. Any uniting of PC Gaming has to involve the key components of playing games: the CPU and the GPU. No worries with this.

Capcom rocks hands down. They make great games and now they're pushing to support PC ports with every major release in face of piracy. And no longer are they offering half-assed support. Word on the street is DMC4 is a prime example of how games should be taken to the PC. It has it's quirks but it's a lot better than the old DMC3 port.

EMA is a solid pick. Distribution is very important here and they need a representative from that sector.

SMU Guildhall is something I wouldn't have thought of off the bat but I approve big time. Educating new game developers is important as what is taught now will come to be the practice of the future.

People I want to see in the future:

Electronic Arts. I hate them but at the same time they are the second biggest developer (thanks to the Activision Blizzard deal) and they need to be a part of this. They ship way too many games for them not to. Also, they handled the PC port of Mass Effect beautifully.

Ubisoft has been responsible for a number of quality PC releases (even if the actual game isn't quality). They should have a say since they're kinda awesome.

A motherboard manufacturer. Gigabyte, MSI, someone. Maybe work towards some BIOS level features they assist with PC Gaming?

----

Right now, no one knows what this group is really getting done -- that is we're assuming they're doing something. When large companies get involved and demand large sums of money I can't help be think this is all silly. Especially when their GDC results were piss poor.

I for one, was pleased with the transition to smaller boxes. I have a habit of collecting the boxes my games come in and the small profile allows for easier storage. However, I was appalled when I bought my copy of Half-Life 2. 4 CD-ROMs in paper sleeves and nothing else. It was a far cry from the days of Baldur's Gate 2 and Icewind Dale 2 where you would receive a thick covered spiral instruction manual. Neverwinter Nights also delivered such a booklet. I remember when it was common for Japanese game releases to include t-shirts and posters. I always drooled over Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete when I saw it in stores. Dreaming of the quality package that awaited me if I ever found the funds. Needless to say, I never did -- I am without it to this day.

Konami seems to continue this tradition with Limited Edition MGS4 release but it's very uncommon. As Steam, Xbox Live Arcade, and other digital distribution systems promote digital delivery of content, it seems physical copies are slowly going out of style.

New commandment of game publishing: If you're going to sell me a box, put something in it. If all your selling me is compiled code and resources then save us both some time and only offer the title digitally. I don't want to ever open up another box to find paper sleeves and empty space.

EDIT: Apparently, the old image was moved/deleted. I officially need to re-up my images. Drop me a line if you notice this happening with some of my old posts. I'm wholeheartedly trying be less lazy about things.

I was thinking to myself earlier, although a lot of people have spoken on the topic about Street Fighter IV not being 2D but artistically shaded 3D, I'm going to cut Capcom slack -- doing high-definition 2D graphics with 60 FPS is something only a production studio like Disney can think of doing.

Just as I think something so ridiculous: SNK has to prove me wrong.

What the hell SNK? Why did you decide to just spank the mess out of Capcom. This has completely stolen all the thunder I had behind Street Fighter's art direction. If you watch the HD trailer, those visuals are disgustingly sick. And between the original 3D renders and high definition sprites, there should be no problems with collision detection. If they wanted the 2D graphics could just be an overlay for the 3D meshes so that attack range and collision ends up being near-perfect.

This is exactly how I would love to do a fighting game (or any 2D game) today. I thought of modelling and then spitting out 2D renders but I didn't consider re-drawing over-top the 2D renders.

The downside of this technique is that although it cuts down significantly on the man-power necessary to do HD 2D, it's still a lot of work. Artists are only getting through 1.5 frames of animation a day. I don't have that kind of time. I need to kill an entire object of animation within a few days.

I still have a lot of time before I scheduled development to begin so we'll see what turns up.

Of course, I was determined to give it a shot. I have this horrible habit of being really indecisive before I start a project as to how I should go about doing it. I was committed to Irrlicht for about a month and then I decided to change the project entirely and go 2D. Now I find myself with this SFML foolishness.

Anyway, after about a week of messing around with this bloody library I finally got it compiled and installed. At first I installed the pre-compiled binaries and they were of course, only for 32-bit machines. I then tried to compile the source for 64-bit only to find only one part successfully compiled. The rest had external dependencies not noted anywhere on the site/instructions/read-me. I guess they just expected all Linux developers to already have these libs installed. Not the case.

I admit, I should have a lot of these libraries installed: libsndfile, x11, etc. if I was in fact developing games for Linux. However, the last time I worked on game development was in Windows under WinAPI so I had no idea what I was getting in to.

Well, now the easy part is over and I can get started running through examples and tutorials as I prepare a technical design for my upcoming game.

Is this a formal announcement of a project? I guess so: I aim to have a fully-functional game completed over the course of this summer break. It will be a stripped down version of the complete vision but seeing as this is my first "real" project (aside from book demos), I think I should take it easy. Of course, no details until I actually have some work done on it.

Should I start a new blog to chronicle the progress or should I just post updates here on n4AEGIS?

John,

Sorry but Microsoft is the publisher of Gears of War. They decide what
platforms it goes on.

There will be Linux support for Unreal Tournament 3 however.

Mark Rein,
Epic Games, Inc.

Visit us at http://www.epicgames.com

Well not what I was hoping for but at least it clarifies that there will indeed be a native port of Unreal Tournament 3 for Linux.

This is the reply I typed up but decided would be better spent as a blog post.

I didn't expect any other response. MS owns the Gears of War IP -- there's a growing market share of Apple users willing to pay for games on their system. A lot of linux users either dual-boot for gaming already or aren't really gamers. It's not cost-effective to even think of porting the gaming to Linux having already dropped cash to port it to Windows and OSX.

You need to send letters to Crytek and Valve. Valve who refuses to port Steam or HL2 (which does not have DX dependency -- unfortunately I hear CS:S does). And Crytek who just released a ridiculously pretty DX9/10 engine that bound to get licensed and also not multi-platform.

With high development costs you have to start at the bottom. Developers have little incentive to port engines that don't already support Linux. Unreal 3 and the Doom 3 engine are the only ones I know that have native linux builds. Doom 3 is dated by current gen standards and Unreal 3 has essentially missed the boat for a lot of the big titles (Mass Effect, Rainbow Six: Vegas, etc.).

Once you have an engine to pick you have to prove that the customer base is actually out there. With sales of Unreal Tournament 3 as dismal as they are, developers aren't receiving that message right now.

It could be fleshed out a bit but the general idea is there. The gaming industry is in a pinch. The fall of the console age can't come soon enough.