Will there be a Linux version?

I was the proud owner of a 3DFX Voodoo3 2000. You're still, clearly, a raving loon who knows nothing about the topic his raging about...

You do not have to humor me like that. Some guru upthread already told me how difficult it was for him to install Linux packages without a package manager, that was enough for today, thanks

That's last decade mate. The trend is fortunately going towards PC gaming again.
Not Linux though, sorry OP

Same reason everybody writes for DirectX I guess. It is easier to use when designing games because it's mainly designed for just that, gaming. Not that it really matters since the amount of Linux and Mac computers out there are like less than 10 % combined and most of those are not potential customers anyway. There is not point in going for full compatibility at all costs. Setting up a version for other operating systems takes more than just using a different set of graphics APIs. Designing a game for PC, Mac and Linux means a lot more work for coders and bug fixing and stuff.

For the Windows crowd, DirectX or OpenGL doesn't matter at all.

You can't really compare engineering and gaming because they have completely different needs. Most engineers program in either FORTRAN, Matlab or C with some Python thrown in there. How many games have you seen written in FORTRAN?

Well you are obviously way too young to miss out on the original Voodoo, the Banshee and the Voodoo 2 so you are obviously not very informed on what APIs were like back then. Since you mentioned Google i suggest you look into it just to see that OpenGL didn't worth a dime compared to GLIDE back then.

But hey i did check the URL you provided, very informative.....But it seems that Linux fanboys are the loons and not i......For example one of the many crazy answers i spoted :

"I see what you mean, but I can't say i completely agree. I belive that even if Directx was better in almost every way, we still shouldn't support it, but rather improve any other open standard to the point it becomes better than Directx. One company shouldn't have (almost?) complete control for something as important as this."

But of course if you want you can still continue supporting a hopeless cause like hoping to revive OpenGL just to get support for games in Linux....Good luck with convincing manufacturers that they shouldn't spend all their resources for the 85% of the people using Windows but instead waste them on the 15% of people using Linux....Yea, that sounds very reasonable and possible

Perhaps you are refering to the fact that NV bought 3DFX and dismantled it ? They did that only because 3DFX had declared bankruptcy and so NV was able to buy their assets quite cheap.

3. If I remember correctly it's even worse. PS3 uses an OpenGL wrapper around it's own engine so using OpenGL doesn't make much sense at all. That's why you get the crappy performance with OpenGL. Their own engine is based on OpenGL as well but it's modified and contains a lot of their own stuff. So Playstation can not really be used as an example of a good implementation of OpenGL.

Don't mistake me for disagreeing with you that making the game OpenGL compatible is 'bad'. But realistically, DX stability is better on Windows - the far most important game platform. AMD doesn't exactly have a good track record with OpenGL stability, both on Windows and Linux.

Linux sadly just doesn't have the numbers to make development for it viable - at least initially.

It did however take years to introduce Linux support, and the source engine itself is nearly a decade old. And at the end of the day, that still has only resulted in a 2% share of Linux machines on Steam, barely a quarter of the userbase of the questionable Windows 8.

Going back to Steam's statistics (because they are the most useful for the target market):

Roughly 70% of Macs are Laptops, and the majority of those (as by Apple's own admission) are low performance models, most lacking even a discrete GPU. Even if they could technically start the game, it would be unplayable with the current performance requirements of the game. Only 2.5% of the macs are last years high end iMac model, if we assume as many of this year's model (which is optimistic due to consistent supply shortages and it still being relatively new), thats just 5% of the Macs that are basically able to run this game at a satisfactory level.

And thats 5% from a ~2.2% market.

Those numbers are not so bad for Valve (Source) because the titles are inherently old, and carry low performance requirements. Not many of the parsed machines lack the hardware to run their published titles. Even 90% is likely conservative.

And thats still ignoring the reality that many of both platforms will have a Windows installation on the machine to boot. (Thus aren't really "lost" customers)

last i checked millions of people buy android devices every month.

the problem isn't linux in and of itself the problem is the linux distros are super fragmented. android also has fragmentation problems but those are more hardware related. IMO google has done a pretty good job with the android base software platform.

valve appears to be attempting the same kind of thing. the 'steam box' won't be a closed loop system. they've already stated you can build your own PC and run what will likely be a valve compiled linux distro. or you can buy a box from possibly valve or an asus/acer outfit that builds specific devices that are plug and play.

D3D and openGL are not graphics engines.

nah! was more talking about the fact that Glide was the first usefull attempt to get some sort of standard going. also their marketing section did a hell of a good job in pushing it. but sadly, they ****** it up because teh developers of ATI and Nvidia managed to release better cards before 3DFX even had he chance to relase theirs. when it finaly was, the Voodo 5 card turned out to be a worthless piece of **** which made every fanboy they ever had move to ati or nvidia.

never said anything else. if you read closely :"there is no extra (extra) layer! there is just a graphicsengine which uses D3D or OpenGL (D3D in this case)"

and thats connected to my quote in what way?

The original Voodoo blew everything out of the water.....But you needed a primary 2D card.....Same with Voodoo Banshee and Voodoo 2.....Voodoo 2 was also the 1st card you could connect with another Voodoo 2 via SLI (external VGA to VGA connector). Voodoo 3 also was nice and had no real competition in GLIDE compatible games.....
When Voodoo 4/5 5500 came out they weren't crap, they could still beat everything in the market (with GLIDE supported games), the issue was its very high Price (compared to other cards) and the fact that game manufacturers decided to support ATI/NV cards instead (lots and lots of money thrown to that end by both manufacturers). The result was 3DFX declaring bankruptcy.
Glide however was better than OpenGL and D3D back then.

The joy of internet and people being allowed to talk about subjects they dont have a single clue about. Mix it with a mere drop of freetard/linux crowd and you get an explosive cocktail.

Actually the Banshee was both 2D/3D (just wanted to correct that)

aah the good old times. i was blow away bei the Star Wars game with glide support (cant remember the name). those all were nice cards indeed.

thats where i remember different because im quite sure that the voodo 4/5 cards sucked bad. maybe because D3D was allready on the go and barely any games still supported glide. to long ago to remember all details ... **** im getting old . all i can remember is that tthe voodo 4/5 was subpar to the geforce 2 MX in any way.

but it was inevitable since Voodo so badly refused to support any other cards then theirs. and when M$ (directx) finaly came along and ati and Nvidia even fully supported OpenGL aswell, 3Dfx fate was kinda sealed.

Well you do remember wrong.....GeForce 2 MX was an uter Failure....GeForce Series 3 was quite good but what made Voodoo 4/5 cards absolete was Radeon 9700/9800 and GeForce Series 4.....Still that only happened because ATI and NV had far better marketing and managed to push GLIDE out from their way.

AND THANK GOD FOR THAT. XInput is not only slow, but it's also notoriously unreliable (it thinks of my controller as a mouse, just so you know). On top of that, you can just read KB&Mouse inputs directly through the Windows API like all Rockstar games do (or directly from the appropiate kernel modules in Linux).

Also, if they can get it to run on a mac... no problem running it on Linux, no matter what the drivers (have you ever looked at the hardware that macs come with? PS2 will run on a Mac Pro, not on any of the AIOs or Laptops which both come with Intel iGPUs only). Seeing how abysmal the market share fro PS2 on Macs would be, it makes MORE sense to develop for Linux (debian native preferably - then it would run on roughly 1/3 of all Linux distros, including Ubuntu and even Knoppix). Considering how little of the Mac users aren't business users, and how many of these are actually interested in games... Macs aren't bad,there's just the thing that they tend to overheat if you try to play anything heavier than Super Mario 64 on them (I used to own a Mac, so I know what I'm talking about).

I'll have to say something on the subject of archaic structures too: GLIDE was awesome... if 3dfx could only come back and rectify some of the really stupid stuff that is happening now.

@Xale: I can't decide if you don't know jack or just can't communicate your opinion properly.
On the subject of the game engine: I always thought that you just needed to compile the source code for (that is, on) the target platform and then make a few changes so it works properly and then move on... Why develop a different engine for every platform when one is pretty much enough for all of them?

Also, you can fling all manner of crappy games at Linux users and they'll take them if they run natively. Speaking AS a Linux user, that is more or less how I react to a game release for Linux.

Installing packages without apt-get is reallly a pain, I'll agree. I have an EEEPC on which I accidentally bricked apt-get, and I tried to install a game on it (Battle for Wesnoth if I recall correctly) - THAT was a long journey for an error message.

I hope this has been coherent (it's 1 o'clock in the morning so I can't really tell).

PS: Talk about a butterfly making a tornado... I didn't think this thread would even reach 2 pages.

Actually, the processors of the Mac Pro are not ideal for running Planetside. Not only has the Mac Pro still not been brought to the 2011 socket, but Xeon processors are generally slower on per-thread execution (Being designed for workloads that are often much more parallel and less sequential) - which is not good considering PS2's primary bottleneck right now is thread execution speed.

The iMac 27'' hosts an Intel 3770, the same (and in many cases better) than what is found even in custom built rigs. The 27'' comes with a mobile GPU, but one that if memory serves is roughly equal to a standard GTX 660. Not perfectly optimal for its resolution, but for Planetside 2 its not going to be as much of a problem.

That said, the iMac makes up only a small part of Apple's marketshare - and the 27'' mentioned above is rarer still. (The pro is measured in single percentage units)

You are under-emphasizing 'few', unfortunately. You certainly don't need a fresh rewrite, but the effort can still be higher than what would be profitable/sensible. Game engines are among the more complex pieces of software that exists.

Which also begs the question, why are you replying to a thread not replied to in over a month.

Since they are going to do an OS X build, most of the 'hard' work of porting from D3D to OpenGL will be already complete. Most everything else should be easily ported to Linux I would imagine, or any POSIX system for that matter.