According to this post on BoingBoing, Cory Ondrejka, a Second Life programmer for Linden Labs, will be showing the first public demo of Second Life on Linux this weekend at the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.
Sweet, I can’t wait!
Flaming Sheep Software has released the Classic Doom mod for Doom3. Bringing back the look, feel and maps of the original Doom now running on the Doom3 engine.
Quake IV on Linux has been a breeze to run, I’m going to have to install my Doom3 copy that’s around here somewhere and try this mod out.
Back in July, I blogged about Icculus starting a port of Second Life.
About a month ago, I signed up for a Second Life account as it was: a) free and b) you need an account to get on the Second Life forums. I was looking for an answer or update on the Linux port. I didn’t find anything, but I headed back today, and found this post by Andrew Linden on the Linden staff:
_Quote:
Originally Posted by Adam Zaius
I think LL’s contractor has gone walkabout. We saw some initial screenshots, then nothing._
Actually, he [ed: Icculus] did go missing. As far as I know the project was started on his own initiative. He wanted to work on it in his copius spare time and LL’s stance was, “If you can do it, great!”. He made some rapid progress, then got sidetracked and never got back to it. I prodded him twice but he didn’t reply.
Which is very unfortunate. I don’t even have access to SL at home anymore since our Windows computer finally succumbed to a virus. I transferred all of the important data over to a Knoppix/debian machine and haven’t had time to rebuild a fresh Windows installation.
I would love to work on a GNU/Linux port of SL but I already have a full plate of stuff to do that I can’t get done fast enough. 🙁
Very interesting. Nice to have an update, and I’m intrigued that Icculus started the port on his own. I’m curious if he had the source from Linden Labs, or used the Mac client to port it to Linux. I’m disappointed that it never got finished, but I more than understand getting sidetracked when you were working on it for free.
Icculus.org is down (just today) switching ISPs, and I think Icculus has a FAQ up about contacting him – and this is one of those topics that are probably taboo. Bummer.
Sure, it’s photoshopped together, but this gives you a gut feel for the size of 3rd generation consoles.
The more I think about it, the sexier the PS3 gets. And the lamer Revolution is.
I should post some 360 thoughts after playing with one this weekend.
I’m back from my weekend of fun, if you were wondering where the blog updates were.
We had a mini get together, as we tried to keep the group (and more imporantly, the LAN party) manageable, especially as it’s the holiday time of year.
A few folks flew up from Texas, a few drove over the border from Wisconsin, and the core MN group got together. Friday night we hit Sportspage, with the best wings in Minnesota. The owner of the bar let us hook up a Xbox 360 on one of the plasmas, while the other plasma had the Gopher – Badger hockey game going. (Good job this weekend Badgers!)
Saturday saw a very relaxed LAN party, with Quake IV, UT2k4 (Bombing Run & CTF) and CS:S all played. And we wrapped up with some poker.
A good time was had by most… let’s say all but one, and he knows who he is. 😉
I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at this article on Gamasutra. Recapping a talk given at the Montreal International Game Summit last month, Rich Vogel, VP of Product Development at Sony Online Entertainment spoke about marketing directly to players in game, and managing their community outside of the game.
The fact that the industry is now talking about marketing to players within a game makes me want to cry – especially as almost all MMO games are roleplaying. Marketing and advertising take you out of that context. Whether it’s fantasy like World of Warcraft or Everquest (1 or 2), or sci-fi like Eve Online, Anarchy Online or Star Wars Galaxies, market to the players outside of the game – on their forums, fan sites and other gaming websites. Leave it out of the game.
He does have some really good points on managing a MMOG community.
Vogel insisted that separate game-related web sites be run by developers, not marketing or PR personnel, and that the writers try to keep their style very human and accessible, joking now and again, and seeming informal and down to earth. Another piece of small advice that added to the sum: color code the writers of forums to their status, be they player, moderator, or developer. That way, readers of the forum can easily scan the boards for pertinent information from appropriate people. âYou need to have clear lines of responsibility,â? he says, noting that a clearly color-coded community manager on a forum doesn’t have the same powers that a dev has.
Vogel says MMOG owners do well to admit their mistakes. âWin over your community so that they are forgiving of you when you really screw up,â? he said. He also gave some advice about distracting the players when making a change to the game, not answering controversies that arise, as it just feeds them, and not taking too seriously the forum rants of hardcore players, who don’t represent the silent majority. You can get feedback from the quieter majority, however, by simply administering surveys. However, the hardcore, verbal players are the people who generate word of mouth marketing, Vogel admits, âso keep them happy, too.â?
Now I don’t know if I agree with the distraction comment above, but I do agree in not catering to the vocal minority. It’s interesting to see where Sony Online Entertainment may be going with their games.
Speaking of building a MAME cabinet before, came across this at Digg.com today: Emucation.Com, download roms. They claim to be legal, but I’m not sure how (yet), unless they’re truly abandonware.
Linked off of their emulator page, is Advance Projects, which includes AdvancedMAME (an emulator), AdvanceMenu (a menu program for collating all your ROMs), and AdvanceCD, a LiveCD that only takes up 20 megs, so you can fill the rest of the CD with your ROMs, stick it in any PC, power it on and it’s a full blown MAME box.
Definitely adding that to my bookmarks for when I’m ready to build my cabinet.
Donna Wentworth gives you an overview of how Blizzard is spying on you.
If this was the government, as the article points out, they’d have to get a warrant.
What’s even more distrurbing to me, is the blog comments on this article – the gamers just don’t care if it stops cheating. This is right up there with those who say “I have nothing to hide, let the government videotape/phonetap/etc”.
Where do personal rights start and end? Just because you click on a EULA, does it really give a software company the right to capture what programs you’re running, who and what you’re communicating over instant messenger, and what websites you’ve visited?
All the pictures are now up, and grouped in 3 sets by time:
Feel free to leave comments on the pictures if you want!
Thanks again to the fine folks at BFG for hosting this and having us – it was a blast!
Congratulations to the winners: Fazin overall, Stirling in 2nd, Haf and Vhex tied for 3rd. (Updated per Haf’s comment).
Overall, the event was even better than last year. Well coordinated and executed, and a ton of fun. The food and drinks were good, the games and gamers even better, and a ton of fun was had by all. Except for Vhex placing for a second year in a row.
Sat. night’s pictures are up at my Flickr site, I’ll get them a group and link ’em tomorrow.
