Just for the record, I''m writing a book on Windows and Linux Game Programming (writing platform-independant code basically), so you all better buy it come this fall.

Trent Polack
trent.codershq.com
trent@codershq.com
Author of Focus on 3D Terrain Programming

quote:Original post by stimarco
Mainstream professional developers have been writing multiplatform games for years . But they don''t give a gnat''s chuff about Linux. Most don''t even develop for Windows, since the PC market lost its dominance years ago.

Take a look around your local "Electronics Boutique" (or "Game", if you''re in Europe) and notice how the PC isn''t the platform getting all the marketing and hype. Consoles are where the money is. And multi-platform development has moved on from low-level APIs like OpenGL and DirectX. Middleware is where it''s at.

Good grief, another one falls victim to the "PC is dead, console is king" rumor!!!

PlasmicStefu: Kylix now supports C++ in version 3, but I don''t konw how good it is.

stefu: The reason I said OpenGL 2.0 is that I expect that, with 2.0 coming out, there will be a lot of hype and developers will start developing for it more.

quote:Original post by Machaira
Original post by stimarco
"Mainstream professional developers have been writing multiplatform games for years . But they don't give a gnat's chuff about Linux. Most don't even develop for Windows, since the PC market lost its dominance years ago.

Take a look around your local "Electronics Boutique" (or "Game", if you're in Europe) and notice how the PC isn't the platform getting all the marketing and hype. Consoles are where the money is. And multi-platform development has moved on from low-level APIs like OpenGL and DirectX. Middleware is where it's at."

---==*==---

Good grief, another one falls victim to the "PC is dead, console is king" rumor!!!

Rumour my arse. I know where the money is and it ain't on the PC. I have first-hand experience of this: I was a pro games developer in the UK myself until quite recently and I know what the market is and I can assure you, there's precious little money to be made from mainstream games on the PC. (FWIW: I'm a writer/consultant now as I prefer the freelance life.)

The QA and post-sales support requirements of the PC make it a much more expensive platform to develop for than people think. Developers have to actively maintain their PC titles for a set period simply to provide necessary patches, graphics card workarounds and similar crap that just doesn't factor into a console title. The PC's only advantage is that it's "open", in that anyone can develop games for it, but even at today's inflated prices, console devkits still represent a tiny fraction of the total game development budget for a mainstream title, so this is less of an issue than it was in the past.

Unless your name is Chris Sawyer or John Carmack, you can pretty much forget making any money off this platform developing big budget titles.

Now, indie games are another matter entirely...

--
Sean Timarco Baggaley


[edited by - stimarco on March 28, 2003 9:29:35 AM]

I really think linux has a shot and companies like nvidia are making great progress in it, just read about their auto install video drivers for example. The problem with Mac is that it''s expensive compared to pc so people opt for pc but linux can run on pc and this is its advantage over Mac. Now, there just needs to be more game players willing to buy a linux game over a pc game. Games need to be exclusive on linux for window users to give a hoot

We''re developing our games in Java - no, wait, don''t laugh - and the first one currently runs on Win32 and Linux x86, and should run on the MacOS shortly. We''ve got no OS specific code in the game itself.

Under Win32 we''re still going to distribute an .exe version for those that don''t have the latest JRE (ie. most people). But the .jar version runs just as well.

Cas
http://www.shavenpuppy.com/