“Do you think simply porting games is a viable business model
for Loki games? As Linux acceptance picks up don’t you fear
that more gaming houses will start doing their own cross-platform
development in house rather than relying upon Loki as a “port
house?“
“Scott: Right now it’s a viable business model. The question is
whether it will continue to be in the coming years. I hope
not….”
“How will XFree 4.0 affect how loki ports games? Is it going to
make things easier? Harder? I know you have problems with being
compatible with the different video card types and GlideX.X or
Mesa3.X but you have done a really great job so far (I own quake
]|[, heretic ][, and Homm ]|[).
“Scott: Thanks! XFree 4.0 won’t change the porting process much,
but it will dramatically change the gaming experience for Linux
users. Right now it can be rather daunting to configure 3D support
on Linux. The new XFree promises to support 3D ‘out of the box’ so
that, once you have X configured on your system you don’t have to
go through any extra steps to get hardware 3D support.”
“In fact, March is turning out to be a really good month for
Linux gaming. We’re getting standardized 3D hardware acceleration
with XFree 4.0 and the DRI, and standardized 3D positional audio
with OpenAL. Once these 2 technologies are integrated into the
various distributions, Linux gaming should be much more accessible
and enjoyable for new and old users alike.”