[ut3] [UT3] Linux-Client

[Donovan Brooke]

Ondřej Hošek wrote:

[snip]
> Actually, I think most of it are the painful parts of the engine 
> communicating with the operating system. Creating and maintaining a 
> window or getting keyboard input on Windows is diametrically different 
> from doing so on Linux. Ryan will probably port the engine to use SDL 
> (http://libsdl.org) instead of native Windows code, and he'll have to 
> test that extensively. I'm not sure if he has access to the OGL renderer 
> code (I think he does), but there might be some cryptic shader code that 
> is different on the PC and on the PS3.
> 
> Additionally, he has to spend much time porting (or requesting ports of) 
> all the middleware Epic has purchased for UE3. He has ported the physics 
> engine (NovodeX/PhysX) alright (see the Linux server), but there might 
> be some client-side middleware that doesn't play along just like that.
> 
> Moreover, he seems to be spending a lot of his time on politics; this 
> becomes obvious if you follow his Twitter log and his .plan. I wouldn't 
> judge him because of that all too soon; maybe he's reached an impassé 
> and has to wait for some lawyers or external developers to get things 
> fixed and can therefore invest some time into the upcoming US elections. 
> I don't know.
> 
> Naturally, I'm quite pissed about the UT3 client situation, but I guess 
> I just wasted my money either way. €50 for a half-baked game with lots 
> of bugs (no banning by CD key until 1.2), consumer-unfriendly 
> partnerships (Games for Windows, GameSpy), imbecilic UI with a dumb 
> control scheme and hardly any options (what happened to that of UT2k4? 
> why don't they bring it back?), use of the cool graphics in the wrong 
> places (menu background), lack of use of the cool graphics in the right 
> places (cinematics), maps that just don't seem to match the atmosphere 
> of the UT2k4 ones... and Epic's explicit (see CliffyB) focus on 
> consoles, perhaps because they require less effort or because Epic's 
> strategies just seem to be working out better than on the PC. I know I'm 
> getting into minutia, but I miss the awesome Skaarj/Spidermine intro 
> screen to UT2k4 (NvidiaLogo.ut2).
> 
> Back in 2004, Epic had demonstrated much skill in making good 
> multiplayer first-person shooters for the PC. I still can't fathom how 
> exactly they could fuck it up so much this time around. I guess it was 
> the console compatibility and I fear that next time, it's not the 
> console players but us who will end up without a game.
> 
> I still wish Ryan good luck. He's great at what he does, and I don't 
> think he deserves to be blamed for the EPIC FAIL (omg bad pun) that UT3 
> has become.
> 
> ~~ Ondra



Ondra!  Very fair, and well said... could not have said it better myself!

Donovan


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** The worlds we have traversed, the battle we have mastered... those
around us will never know ** - Uff-Da