Re: Direction of Linux games...

[Jan Ekholm <chakie@infa.abo.fi>]

On Sat, 13 Nov 1999, Erik wrote:

>I think that you're wrong on this point. There are gfx wizards who work for
>free. There are audio wizards who work for free. The problem is linux doesn't
>have the apps that make these folk happy. Look over www.digitalblasphemy.com
>for a bit. The only tools we have to do anything like that are very difficult
>to use for the lay person (povray, bmrt, and their relatives use a 'source'
>file that scripts or programs the scene elements, and the renderer parses this
>file much like a compiler. This is a different kind of app than the popular
>windows rendering packages, which combine a modeler and renderer. Bryce2,
>truespace, 3dmax, lightwave... What do we have, blender? I couldn't get
>blender to do anything usefull... granted, I'm no gfx wizard and I didn't
>throw a lot of effort at it. But I can make the windows packages do something
>semi-amusing.

Well. I may be part wrong, but I think very few artists want to work for
free for a game they won't get any credits for. It's one thing to render a
logo and maybe a few simple scenes, but it's a totally differetn task to
create all the gfx for a fullblown game that relies on a lot of gfx. I
can't do gfx, but I can help someone who needs code done. But I won't
spend months and months of hard work for something where I'll only be
mentioned in the "...and some thanks to Chakie for 800 hours of work,
although the code could have been better optimized..."-section. :-)

Another point is that graphics are still quite platform-independent, so
nothing stops all those artists from working with a tool they know well
and just exporting them to the other part of the team who the incorporate
the creations into the actual game. Tools for Linux are coming, but the
sheer amount of work needed for a good modeller makes sure it will take a
few years.

But, it would give me a lot of pleasure to be proven wrong here.

---------------------+------------------------------------------------------
 Jan 'Chakie' Ekholm |    CS at Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
    Linux Inside     | I'm the blue screen of death, no-one hears you scream