Linux version of Civ4 ?

[kryszcztov]

If Civ4 was also released on Linux and worked as well as on a PC, would you consider buying it ?

 

[kristopherb]

whatis linux

 

[Macmatt]

Linux is an open source operating system.

 

[cleverhandle]

I would buy it just to show my support, though I'm already playing the Windows version pretty decently through Cedega. From what I've read, the next Cedega version (should be released soon) will fix the annoying GLX-Bad-Drawable error that's responsible for most of the game crashes. Other than the occasional crashes, the only problems are that Ctrl hotkeys don't work (not very important) and that movies don't play properly (which mostly suck anyway). The movies might even work properly if I played around with the ini settings, but I really don't care enough to bother.

 

[kryszcztov]

I've tried Cedega for free once, and I'm glad I didn't buy it because it didn't work. Basically, I could see all the tiles of the map, some landscape features were black, there were many text errors, etc... which made the game unplayable. For a program which is supposed to run like Windows...

The only real solution is to have it on Linux proper, with decent testing. I'm even considering boycotting Warlords on Windows now.

 

[cleverhandle]

I've tried Cedega for free once, and I'm glad I didn't buy it because it didn't work. Basically, I could see all the tiles of the map, some landscape features were black, there were many text errors, etc... which made the game unplayable. For a program which is supposed to run like Windows...

And how much time did you spend getting it work? Your problems sound like you might just need some newer drivers or tweaked X11 settings. I figure that getting any particular game working to my satisfaction under Cedega will take a solid Saturday's worth of tinkering, and I know Linux inside and out. It's not like Windows gaming where you take a new game home and you're playing in 30 minutes, and it's never going to be.

I wish that all the people who love to trash Cedega were around in the 90's when your options for Linux gaming were Nethack and Doom. The possibility of playing good games in Cedega, despite it's imperfections, has brought a lot of people into the Linux community. At some point, more of the game companies will realize that there's a sizable market of people willing to pay (pay a premium even) for games that might be passed by by the mainstream Windows crowd.

The only real solution is to have it on Linux proper, with decent testing. I'm even considering boycotting Warlords on Windows now.

Yes, I'm sure that would be a great solution for you. I'm sure it would be a total non-solution for the game publishers, but you clearly aren't concerned with them. I'd love to see more first-rate games on Linux, but even I will admit that Civ and the Linux communities don't overlap a whole lot - I spend lots of time on various Linux boards and see very few mentions of Civ4. Porting a game from DirectX to OpenGL is a large investment, and most of the recent games that have had Linux ports were much more a labor of love than a major marketing move. And most of those games had much stronger fanbases in the Linux community. Businesses exist to make a profit, not to satisfy your individual desires.

 

[Artosoft]

If my current system will run Linux and Civ4 (+warlords) smoothly, I will convert to Linux. Currently my system run Winxp and Civ4 (+warlords) at the edge, sometimes lagging.

There is Linux software that can run Civ4 on Linux. But, they have ridiculous scheme. You need to pay monthly to keep and run the software on Linux... That's not for me.

Regards,
Arto.

 

[cleverhandle]

There is Linux software that can run Civ4 on Linux. But, they have ridiculous scheme. You need to pay monthly to keep and run the software on Linux...

No, you need to pay $5/month with a three month minimum to obtain the software. You can run it as long as you want on as many machines as you like. If you drop the subscription, you don't get updates. If all you care about is a single game that is already working well, then you can pay your $15 and cut your subscription after that. If you need to stay up to date with newer games, then you keep the subscription running.

 

[kryszcztov]

@ cleverhandle : You strangely have quite an aggressive tone for such a subject, but I'll answer you nonetheless...

And how much time did you spend getting it work? Your problems sound like you might just need some newer drivers or tweaked X11 settings. I figure that getting any particular game working to my satisfaction under Cedega will take a solid Saturday's worth of tinkering, and I know Linux inside and out. It's not like Windows gaming where you take a new game home and you're playing in 30 minutes, and it's never going to be.

I have an Athlon 1800+ with 256 MB RAM and an nVidia GeForce2, and I used Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake. I followed a lot of instructions on the French Ubuntu site, changed the 3D acceleration of the gfx card, etc... It cost me 2-3 hours to get it straight. I'm perfectly aware that Linux is a wild world that you need to tame so as to get it to your desire, but spending half a day per game after buying it for Windows and subscribing to make it run on Linux sounds like too much of a hassle. And we're not talking about customizing your desktop or stuff, just having the damned game running. I'm not that much of a geek, but not that idiot either, and I think that, if I can't figure out how to do it, then there is a problem. Oh, I forgot that the game was a LOT slower than on Windows (not a surprise, but really it was slow). Considering that my PC is quite an antic, this is not good news.

I wish that all the people who love to trash Cedega were around in the 90's when your options for Linux gaming were Nethack and Doom. The possibility of playing good games in Cedega, despite it's imperfections, has brought a lot of people into the Linux community. At some point, more of the game companies will realize that there's a sizable market of people willing to pay (pay a premium even) for games that might be passed by by the mainstream Windows crowd.

I'm not here to trash anything because I feel like it. I tested it without paying it and it didn't work well enough to be playable. At that point, I'm staying with my dual boot installation.

Yes, I'm sure that would be a great solution for you. I'm sure it would be a total non-solution for the game publishers, but you clearly aren't concerned with them. I'd love to see more first-rate games on Linux, but even I will admit that Civ and the Linux communities don't overlap a whole lot - I spend lots of time on various Linux boards and see very few mentions of Civ4. Porting a game from DirectX to OpenGL is a large investment, and most of the recent games that have had Linux ports were much more a labor of love than a major marketing move. And most of those games had much stronger fanbases in the Linux community. Businesses exist to make a profit, not to satisfy your individual desires.

I really understand that porting from DirectX to OpenGL is a big task. I'm not begging anything to anyone, just stating my opinion and throwing a poll to the masses. A poll which shows (at the moment) that close to half the people are considering buying it on Linux. Though that may not be the reality of things, this is not your 1-2% (or more ?) of Linux users worldwide. To speak of my selfish desires here sounds comical, to say the least. Oh, and I heard that Civ4 had been on the top list of demanded games for Cedega, and that's why it was portated to Cedega. I say : there is a market.

Maybe too complicated for Civ4, but for the next big game, why not ? Coding directly into DirectX may not be the only solution... just wondering...

 

[cleverhandle]

@ cleverhandle : You strangely have quite an aggressive tone for such a subject

I apologize for being snappy. The topic sets me off because of what I see in the Linux community, not because of anything you said in particular. Let me elaborate...

I've been using Linux for 8+ years now, and have closely followed several big communities. When it comes to commercial investment in Linux (porting games, supporting complex devices, etc.) I see basically two groups of Linux users. The first group of people understand the difficult business positions of companies that offer quality Linux support and go out of their way to support the companies that take the initiative to do so. These are often long-time users who are closely connected to the community. The second group of people pitch a fit on message boards demanding that companies fulfill their god-given right to do absolutely whatever they want on Linux, despite their total unwillingness to contribute money or time to the effort. (Yeah, there's some false dichotomy going on here, but not a whole lot.) And the problem is that the second group often drowns out the first, which makes it even less likely that Linux will get better commercial support.

I remember several years back when nVidia first released Linux drivers. They were good drivers, well-packaged, and well-maintained. Producing them required significant resources and IMO showed some forward thinking amongst the nVidia people. Because of this, nVidia got tremendous word-of-mouth in the Linux community for years (and still does to some extent). Not just "buy nVidia because their cards work," but "buy nVidia to show your appreciation for their support." Not many consumer communities are like that, and it's one of the reasons I enjoy Linux. It makes my blood boil to hear comments from company execs that they won't support Linux because they don't believe that Linux users will pay them back. Many of them will, and will do so with passion, but the suits only hear the radical nutjobs raving on the message boards. Again, I'm in no way implying that you're a radical nutjob, it's just the back story here.

I have an Athlon 1800+ with 256 MB RAM and an nVidia GeForce2, and I used Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Dapper Drake.

It's got to be tough on that machine even with Windows. A new video card and more RAM would help a ton, but I'm sure you already know that. If you were in the States, I'd send you some things out of my hardware bins.

...spending half a day per game after buying it for Windows and subscribing to make it run on Linux sounds like too much of a hassle.

Then Linux gaming is not for you. Nothing wrong with that. Personally, I find the other Linux desktop, programming, and networking tools to be worth the effort of dealing with games, but that's me.

Maybe too complicated for Civ4, but for the next big game, why not ? Coding directly into DirectX may not be the only solution...

Sadly, DirectX is really a pretty good solution from the developers standpoint. OpenGL was never designed for games and the standards body that governs it hasn't done much to change that. From what I understand (I'm not a game developer), OpenGL is more pleasant to code for as far as its capabilities go, but there are a number of things in DirectX that OpenGL simply can't do in any reasonable way. It's obviously better from the multi-platform standpoint, but that's just not enough to get many people coding games for it. Companies like Id that provide native OpenGL games are doing it for love, not for money. And outside of DirectX and OpenGL, there really isn't anything else capable of handling major games. SDL is fine for shareware-type stuff, but not for top-tier releases.

 

[Padma]

Would I buy Civ4 in native Linux format? In a heartbeat!

That said, I've got to basically agree with cleverhandle.

 

[CivDude86]

The DirectX porting stuff should be already done with the Mac port. Always find it weird companies will port to Macs but not Linux. Mac gamer has always been an oxymoron.

 

[Artosoft]

No, you need to pay $5/month with a three month minimum to obtain the software. You can run it as long as you want on as many machines as you like. If you drop the subscription, you don't get updates. If all you care about is a single game that is already working well, then you can pay your $15 and cut your subscription after that. If you need to stay up to date with newer games, then you keep the subscription running.

Thanks for clarification. I never read carefully . Shame on me.

But, reading people still having a problem running civ4 on Cedega, I prefer wait and still playing on winXP.

Regards,
Arto.

 

[Barney's_Soul]

What's a linux?

 

[kryszcztov]

It's got to be tough on that machine even with Windows. A new video card and more RAM would help a ton, but I'm sure you already know that. If you were in the States, I'd send you some things out of my hardware bins.

Yes but the thing is : Cedega is advertised to make your game run like if it was on Windows, which clearly isn't the case. I could spend time trying to fix this or that bug I talked about, but to make it run faster (at least as fast (slow ) as on Windows) ? I doubt it.

Then Linux gaming is not for you. Nothing wrong with that.

I think I'll go ahead and change your answer to "Then Linux gaming is not for you... now". You know that Linux gaming won't ever work if it keeps on being harder to run than on Windows, there is much room for improvement. By starting to use a Linux distribution and posting polls about Civ4 on Linux, I'm trying to help the cause at my level (ie. n00b). I think that Civ4 on Linux would have more success than on Mac because of the potential pool of PC users who could migrate (or have done it already). As someone pointed out, porting to Mac requires a huge effort, no ? The thing is, if they wait one (or more) year to port it to Linux, very few people will get it, since everyone would already have bought it for Windows. Whereas Mac users can wait, they won't get it before the Mac version is out anyway.

One day they'll have to learn that Windows isn't the end all be all of the gaming industry. We're still in prehistorical times here (monolithic OS world).

 

[gusi]

Another vote for the linux port. Civ4 is one of the few reasons for keeping my windows partition.

I didn't know that civ4 runs on mac! If it does a linux port shouldn't be too hard.

My guess is though that one there are few data on how many people run linux only and that since windows is the defacto standard for games on PC it would be lot of work and maintenance for few sales, ie it would really hurt profitability and I doubt we'll see it until more people run linux only.

 

[binhthuy71]

Alas, the chicken and egg dilemma strikes again: if there were more games that were ported to Linux then more people would run Linux. But games won't get ported to Linux until there are more people running it.

As I've mentioned before, I'm an IT person. I use Linux and I respect it for the things that it does well. Playing Windows games, despite the heroic work done by so many, is not yet one of them. Although Linux has become tons more user friendly over the years the second that you ask an average user to tweak X11 settings (A mistake in which can render your Linux GUI unusable) you've lost them.

My hat's off to you for having the knowledge and the patience to make games run under Linux. For the rest of us there's always dual booting.

 

[kryszcztov]

My hat's off to you for having the knowledge and the patience to make games run under Linux. For the rest of us there's always dual booting.

Which can be convenient if you're into solo gaming, but not when you play Civ4 PBEMs like I do. Imagine : rebooting to play one turn... Result : I spend less time on Linux than I would like to.

The egg and chicken dilemma, yes. But in the industry business, the offer has to adapt to the demand, more than the opposite. If there is a market for games on Linux, what are developpers waiting ? How to know if there is a market ? Poll the masses. Like I'm doing on a microscale at CFC. You have here the reason of the existence of this thread and poll.

 

[Chazcon]

Linux works well and is cool, and all that. I did the Linux thing for years, GAVE THE FINGER TO THE MAN!

But I went back to Windows. Linux takes too much work, it's a hobby, not a mainstream OS. There are still not enough cross-compatible apps for Linux.

Linux is like an old British sports car. It is wonderful to drive, exhilirating, but when you're not driving it you must be under the hood re-syncing the carbs, working on the wiring, adjusting this or that. After a while you go trade it in for a Corvette so you can just drive it when you want, and get on with your life.

 

[binhthuy71]

Linux works well and is cool, and all that. I did the Linux thing for years, GAVE THE FINGER TO THE MAN!

But I went back to Windows. Linux takes too much work, it's a hobby, not a mainstream OS. There are still not enough cross-compatible apps for Linux.

Linux is like an old British sports car. It is wonderful to drive, exhilirating, but when you're not driving it you must be under the hood re-syncing the carbs, working on the wiring, adjusting this or that. After a while you go trade it in for a Corvette so you can just drive it when you want, and get on with your life.

Excellent observation. I drove Sprites, MG's and the original Mini Cooper for years. One day while I was re-synching my SU's one of my friends said; "Minis are neat if you want to learn how to work on cars."