Re: Anyone on this list?

[Gianfranco Berardi <linuxmail@gbgames.com>]

> 
> 
>>Lots of words are spent about the `technologies` to use, but linux games have
>>still the appeal of  commodore64 games...
> 
> 
> Cruel but often true.  :D  Still that's not necessarily bad.  Lots of
> casual Linux gamers (amongst whom I am not) are quite happy with the
> sort of game that you can fire up for 15 minutes and enjoy the raw
> fun gameplay mechanics of eighties-style games, rather than the depth,
> length and variety that's promised (and sometimes even delivered ;))
> by modern commercial games.
> 
> --Adam

Again, I think this is more a side effect of the fact that it is indie 
developers learning how to make games rather than actually making them.
That is why there are so many Tetris clones and graphic demos.

And I liked Circus Atari, and Circus Linux was just that much more fun 
when I discovered it. Old school games Linux has got a plenty! B-)

As far as new stuff, I think part of it is the lack of tools and part of 
it is the desire to rebuild the wheel that only seems to come about in 
game development.
If I were to make a word processor, I would use code from 
Abiword/Kword/etc to make it. In fact, I might just add whatever feature 
I wanted to make into one of the existing projects rather than make a 
new one in the first place.
If I were to make a 3D Real Time Strategy game or RPG, there aren't 
readily any game engines available to work with. Most likely I will wind 
up trying to make the entire engine (let alone the game) myself or with 
a team. Again, the lack of existing code will make the team disappear 
quicker than you can say foo. Interest fades quickly when working on 
this menial task of getting a base framework like a game engine in place.

I believe Garage Games has a really great game development engine in 
their Torque Engine. (http://garagegames.com if you're wondering) It is 
supported for Linux I believe. For $100 per license per programmer, it 
is a high end engine for a low end price B-)

Things like that need to exist in the Free world as well. On that note, 
no one will want to develop on an engine that is a reinvention of the 
wheel and prevents them from selling commercial games they way they 
usually would, so it would probably be best to release it under some 
lesser than General Public License. Unless it would provide some amazing 
feature that no other engine has...

But them, it seems there are some game engine projects on Sourceforge. 
Crystal Space (I believe) seems pretty promising. I haven't heard about 
more than one project using it though.

Gianfranco