[bf1942] hmmm.... [OT]

Rick Thompson rick at fortweb.com
Tue Dec 7 02:24:36 EST 2004


And a couple more things while I am ranting.

At 03:39 PM 12/7/2004 +1000, you wrote:
>What yall gotta realise is that even by merely providing standalone win32 
>dedicated servers, EA/DICE are light years ahead of most other developers, 
>many of whom don't even bother to offer a proper dedicated server - let 
>alone one you can download freely and independently of the game.

That is not true. There are lots of developers who are smart enough to 
release nix servers (see the top 16 on gamespy from my last post). Yes 
there are a lot of games that don't but you know what, those are the games 
that have a few hundred people playing instead of thousands and they are 
also the ones that fall by the wayside within six months. Many of the games 
listed on the top 16 right now are literally years old.

Give me one example of a developer who charges for their dedicated server. 
If you mean that you have to buy the game to get it, so what, you must have 
the game to test any server your going to run anyway so how is that 
charging for the server? That argument just don't wash.

>Linux is great and all, but we long ago realised that the majority of game 
>devs were going to be focusing first (for better or for worse) on win32 
>and have adjusted our game server platform to suit. While it'd be great to 
>see game devs getting Linux builds out at all (preferably in sync and 
>feature-compatible with their win32 counter-parts), it is happening less 
>and less, presumably because it is just too hard/takes too long.

It's "too hard"? Give me a freaking break, if it was easy I would do it. I 
design machines for a living and they are all "hard" but I get paid for 
solving difficult problems. Using the "it's too hard" logic I would be 
living under a bridge somewhere. Of course it's hard, that's why they make 
millions of dollars on a game, because it's hard.

The successful games, the ones that have a shelf life of years instead of 
months, the ones that put up four digit server numbers on gamespy have nix 
servers. It's not a question of something *we* have to accept like it or 
not, it is something they better damn well come to terms with or we will 
dump support for their game faster than an ugly blind date and move on.

Rick

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