UnrealEngine3:
Work is still progressing on this, but there really isn't anything
terribly interesting to report right now.
OpenAL:
Working on the 1.1 spec. Also tossing around the idea of doing a new
implementation from scratch...al_osx taught me a lot about how to structure
this, and I have a lot of ideas about what I'd do differently if I had to do
it again from scratch. Apple definitely seems to have the MacOS side of
things covered, but there's some other Unixes and such I'd like to tackle
with this, if I ever get around to it. As for my al_osx code tree, it's
mostly a historical relic at this point, but it'll stick around on life
support for awhile for things that need a tiny version until Tiger ships,
like we did with this crop of Unreal titles and Feeding Frenzy and such.
UTPG:
There's just no way around it...the UnrealEngine1 renderer totally blows
on modern hardware. This really needs a rewrite before we're done. :/
Unreal Tournament 2003:
One more Linux build on its way, then I'm taking this out of my .plan, honest.
Unreal Tournament 2004:
Patch 3355 for Linux and Mac:
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2337 Mac users no longer need a DVD in the drive, Linux/amd64 people should get
a real framerate again.
Postal 2 Share the Pain:
Free Linux demo:
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=1816 Buy Linux full:
http://www.tuxgames.com/details.cgi?gameref=125&referrer=zakk Free MacOSX demo:
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2272 Buy MacOSX full:
http://www.gopostal.com/store/index.php Apocalypse Weekend will be made to work with Linux and MacOSX in some form.
I'm not sure what the distribution model will be (seperate SKUs, one
universal disc, buy Windows version and download Linux/Mac installer), but
there will definitely be
something.
America's Army:
ArmyOps 2.3.0 for Linux:
http://icculus.org/news/news.php?id=2333 ArmyOps 2.3.0 for MacOS X is in beta testing right now. No release date,
but it shouldn't be long, I hope.
Other stuff:
(This rant brought to you compliments of:
http://crystaltips.typepad.com/wonderland/2005/03/burn_the_house_.html)
Look, anyone who tells you that piracy doesn't matter is full of shit.
Anyone who tells you that he's an
artist and writes video games
because he
loves the idea of
creation is just jerking off.
In my experience, the only people that legitimately don't care about a
paycheck are already rich.
That doesn't mean DRM isn't a broken concept, though. These two ideas
aren't mutually exclusive...you can hate piracy and hate DRM (or, as Bill
Maher explained about conflicting ideas vs opposing ideas: "OJ killed his
wife
AND the cops are corrupt").
Spector is probably closest, though: the distribution model benefits the
upper one percent at the cost of innovation, piracy, and well, the artists.
If we can look at this from the music slant, Apple's iTunes Music Store is a
good start, but a shitty end. Eventually we're probably going to need, uh,
for lack of a better term, a distributed Steam...online, universal,
incremental transfer of product without a centralized publisher. The problem
with Steam as it currently stands, among other complaints, is that Valve
escapes their oppressive publisher in order to become an oppressive publisher
themselves. Apple's a little different in that they haven't escaped the whims
of the publishers at all (which is why every few months you see a Chicken
Little article on Slashdot about iTMS raising their prices by a whole 20
cents...the poor consumers! Poor Apple! Why doesn't anyone ever say "poor
musicians"?)
Ultimately, we're going to need to forcibly remove the publisher and make
each artist a publisher in herself, which means a need for more bandwidth
(and ubiquitous bandwidth!) to make Wal-Mart, as a pile of bricks enveloping
products, unnecessary. If you promise Best Buy that you'll ship on a certain
date and slip, they FINE you. I'm not kidding. Most people don't know this.
So add "pressure from brick and mortars to rush a title to market" to the
reasons why the Tomb Raider franchise has been devalued.
When we can all sell online without a central authority, stream the bits right
to the user any time of the day, and be the backup when their hard drive
fails (which would be a nice feature in iTMS that Steam figured out, in case
you're listening, Apple), then we could ship when we're ready, do things that
are awesome without 150-man teams and millions of dollars, make more money
within a meritocracy, and not whore ourselves out to Big Publishing. Not to
excuse them, but the fact that the EA Spouse blog exists says more about the
industry as a whole than it says about Electronic Arts. I mean, it's a safe
bet to say that everyone
outside of EA has an chilly familiarity with
those stories anyhow...put another way, when you see one cockroach, it's a
safe bet there're hundreds more behind the walls.
There are no benign dictators in publishing. The only sane thing to do is
flush them altogether.
Then again, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
--ryan.
