Pixelate:Issue 1/Crossing Platforms
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Crossing Platforms
In the beginning, there was nothing...
A year or three ago, the consumer market for PC's was dominated by the Windows operating system. Other systems existed, but none of them could propose a software catalog that covered such a wide spectrum. Apple had very powerfull software in the field of pre-press, DTP, image manipulation and video editing, and that is reflected in the wide-spread use of Apple computers in professional graphics enterprises. However, when it came to games, not many publishers would take the risk, and when a game was being released for MacOS, it was usually several months after the Windows original. The nature of Linux made things even worse. Not owned by a company, Linux was seen as many firms as an operating systems for renegades, and the OS was almost inseperably connected with the hacker scene. Moreover, there wasn't a high degree of market penetration when Windows 95 came out, so no commercial games were developed or distributed for Linux. All that changed when Id software released their Doom and Quake titles for Linux, but not much, as other companies started developing for Windows, and made their software use some OS-specific software components that couldn't easily be ported. So, Linux was stuck with many non-commercial games that were fun to play, but lacked professionalism in either programming or graphics, which gave the term 'Linux gaming' a bad name for long. Today, it's a different picture.
And then, there was light
Today, it's a different picture. Microsoft still dominates the market, but Apple has regained market share with their iMac line of products and Linux is getting more and more media attention. Apple has released new software components that support industry-wide standards like OpenGL, which make the graphics side of things much easier to port from other platforms. Linux has had a major boost in market share, and companies such as Loki games have shown linux games can be at least as good as their Windows counterparts. The newest version of the graphical server, XFree 4, supports hardware acceleration for 2D through a construction called Direct Rendering Interface (DRI), and 3D hardware acceleration is provided through OpenGL support which is built in. On the audio front, OpenAL tries to do what OpenGL did for graphics, by providing a common architecture for 3D sound.
It's not all gold that shines
However, until now sales of Linux games haven't been great so far. Possible reasons for it are that Loki (and other Linux developers, but Loki has had the most media attention lately) doesn't have a distribution network that can rival that of their Windows counterparts. connected to that is the fact that a large majority of Linux users aren't interested in playing games, as they use their systems for academinc or server tasks.
Plug and Pray
Sadly, Linux still has an aura of complexity which prevents most gamers from even considering or try it. This complexity has a number of causes. First, many people and companies are working on different parts of the system. This is a strength of Linux (when needed, only a single part has to be updated), but it is also a weakness, as the different parts are very difficult to integrate in one homogeneous package, like BeOS, MacOS or Windows. Those operating systems can be installed out of the box without noticeable problems if you have a mainstream system. It is safe to say a beginning Linux user is overwhelmed by the vast number of packages and different libraries a Linux distribution consists of, and it is almost inevitable that most users can't get their hardware to work from the first time as it should be. Installing sound cards is a nightmare (there are a number of different drivers available), just as getting a 3D accelerator card to work properly, if you haven't done it before.
The best of both worlds
How come a majority of Linux users still has a dual-boot system with Windows installed? Part from the fact that they probably fot the Windows version with their system when they purchased it, it is a sad fact that most Linux flavors of games are released considerably later than their Windows counterparts. Logically, when you have been waiting for a game for several months (as game companies tend to do sometimes), you don't want to wait another year for the Linux version to be released. And there are still some holes in Linux support for scanners and other more specialized hardware like video grabber cards which need to be addressed.
Things can only get better
This might seem a rather negative view of cross-platform software development, but I only looked briefly at what is missing from Linux to be able to compete other commercial operating systems. I don't believe Linux is dead, bad or so, but there still needs to be done a lot to improve the user-friendlyness of it. A good thing is that many companies are developing their software from the design stage with portability in mind. A fine example is Bioware, which are developing their new RPG game for Windows, Linux, BeOS, MacOS and NextStep at once. In my opinion, once these releases are commercially viable, a large boost in development towards user-friendly development will come, where today almost all efforts were just for the program to work.
Original Author: Janssens David
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