Tux says...

[angshuman]

The problem is that they're all in it together - Microsoft, Intel, Apple, the Display manufacturers, and the good people that make up the RIAA and MPAA. Together, they create an ecosystem where if you want to enjoy any sort of media on your PC, you will have to use DRM-infected Monitors, Intel's DRM platforms and M$ and Apple's DRM software. I fear that in time it might be completely impossible to watch or listen to any sort of licensed media on open-source software and open-standards hardware.

[alanschu]

Right around then is probably when people finally start getting fed up.

 

Will a game company still make a game for Vista only if the people refuse to use it?

 

 

 

The problem with many alternatives is that they have a small installed base. Windows XP doesn't suffer from that problem. Unless Microsoft has a way to disable XP (which is when the fun really begins), I could actually see people refusing to use Vista.

 

It's not like everyone jumped on the Windows ME bandwagon, so Microsoft can't push anything down our throats.

Edited August 6, 2006 by alanschu

[mvBarracuda]

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=06/07/25/1726224 

 

A decent read on the 'vicious circle' of Linux gaming. An acurate statement of how companies won't make games for Linux unless it gets more popular and how people won't use it unless more games are made for it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

However I've got the impression that more and more indie teams develope cross platform games to support the *nix platforms too.

 

Our own engine is a good example. The project will hopefully become a framework for all kinds of 2D games and it works on all important platforms (win32, linux, mac, bsd). More information:

http://www.fifengine.de

 

And here are some example shots of the engine using maps from Fallout 1 & 2 (hope that's interesting as the most guys here should be RPG fanatics):

 

 

[Pidesco]

anything new about your engine since you last posted here?

[mvBarracuda]

Yep ) I was busy with university, that's why I didn't update the thread (there are tons of FIFE threads over the net and I simply forgot to post the latest updates here).

 

We've got a dev blog now so you can always get the most recent information directly from the source:

http://blog.fifengine.de

 

Our lead coder is currently busy writing on his diploma papers but we've sorted out the problems somehow. Now it's going slower but we're making at least small steps forward nevertheless.

 

The most recent code features two important additions:

1. The new map model:

http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Map_model

 

2. The new asynchronous scripting model:

http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=A...Scripting_Model

 

The scripting model is an approach to have all the AI code in a seperate engine thread. Details can be found in the wiki article linked above.

 

You can script NPCs (called "critters" in Fallout) using LUA now and make them walk over the maps. The next steps will be a trigger extension of the scripting model. A first draft of a draft is already in the wiki:

http://wiki.fifengine.de/index.php?title=Trigger_System

 

 

We've planned to finally start working on our own animation format too but I guess this will take quite some time. The work on the planned editor tool is still ongoing. We hope to release a first alpha version of it in about 2 months.

 

If you want to test the most recent stuff: I've just compiled a test version of the latest SVN code. Download it here:

http://members.fifengine.de/bin/FIFE_r668_win32.exe

Edited August 6, 2006 by mvBarracuda

[angshuman]

Unless Microsoft has a way to disable XP (which is when the fun really begins), I could actually see people refusing to use Vista.

Well, you can always continue to play your existing media on XP. However, all new media released by the big content providers will be unplayable on non-DRM-infected machines. I am sure Microsoft will release free patches for XP that will make it fully usable with DRM-compatible hardware and media. If you want to enjoy the new content, you'll either have to install the patches or switch to Vista.

[alanschu]

We'll see I guess.

[angshuman]

The Great HDCP Fiasco.

 

The article primarily complains that none of our existing hardware (monitors and video cards) will be able to play HD-DVDs/Blu-Rays with copy-protection (which means effectively all commercial HD-DVDs). I frankly don't care; I didn't really expect my year-old video card to be able to play these high-definition videos at reasonable framerates anyway. What bothers me is that the "DRM ecosystem" I was talking about in my previous few posts seems to be coming alive. It seems if you want to play HD-DVD or Blu-Ray content, you need to have an HDCP-compliant video card, an HDCP-compliant monitor and an HDCP-compliant OS, otherwise you will only get the content at 1/4th resolution.

 

 

 

EDIT: I hadn't noticed that this was a pretty old article. Do forgive me if you have already read it. I felt it was relevant to the current discussion.

Edited August 8, 2006 by angshuman

[LostStraw]

Well, for some potentially good news -- this might not happen for awhile still.

 

The conundrum isn't apparently lost on the consumer electronics industry or Hollywood. According to German-language Spiegel Online, there is reportedly a behind-the-scenes, unofficial agreement between Hollywood and some consumer electronics manufacturers, including Microsoft and Sony, not to use ICT until 2010, or possibly even 2012. Without providing more details, the report suggests that Hollywood isn't exactly happy with the situation, and could very well renege on the agreement, such that it is. But the agreement is there nonetheless, presumably to help the industry transition to HDMI. This could explain why the very same studios that pushed for HDMI and ICT have recently announced that they would not use it for the time being.

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060521-6880.html

 

Reassuring, eh?

[metadigital]

If it comes to that level remains to be seen, yes. But Vista WILL be the OS with the highest level of Copy-protection/TPM/DRM-integration in history.

 

 

Last tidbit I heard from a reliable source (Microsoft interview on IDG.se) was that all decoding/decryption of "protected media" in Windows Vista will take place in a special protected dedicated memory section that is not acccessible to third-party programs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm willing to bet crackers will have that slice of memory open in a week and a half of use.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The Wintel consortium has been trying to create a CPU with "protected areas" designed inbuilt, so that level zero programming (kernel etc) can be run in a secure hardware environment on the same chip.

 

They have been talking about it for at least a decade.

 

Still haven't seen it.

[Diamond]

Necroposting!

 

There is an interesting post at Atari forums regarding Linux game market and NWN1 for Linux in particular. I thought it was quite insightful.

 

A friend of mine came up with a perfectly good reason for why that poll had so many linux users, which didn't acuse anyone of cheating. (I'm not saying that its 100% accurate, simply that it may not be as inaccurate as some people are saying.) Its really simple. He thinks that the poll may indeed be (reasonably) accurate, not because 60% of all gamers are Linux/Mac users, but because 60% of NWN players are Linux or Mac users at the time of the poll.

 

He even came up with a good explanation of why that could well indeed be the case. There aren't too many games that natively support either Linux or Mac, which means that when Linux/Mac users want a game to play, they have a smaller choice. This means that a smaller number of games each get a ridiculously huge share each of the Linux/Mac gaming market.

 

Think about it. NWN is an RPG. How many modern RPGs are available, natively, for those two platforms? I can only think of one, myself. This means that pretty much every Linux or Mac user who wants to play an RPG goes out and gets NWN, even though there are a lot of newer RPGs out for other platforms all fighting for their very small share of the market. On top of that, where Windows users have since moved on to other, newer titles, there have been no new titles for Linux/Mac, so those gamers have stuck with NWN.

[metadigital]

Yeah, if it hasn't been said many times before, I think it'd be a good move to translate the DM client (if nothing else) to Mac and / or Linux, though the toolset would be good, too.

 

Considering the effort spent by Obsidian on the (DirectX) graphics upgrade, that might not even be possible, though.