I solved it, it's Napoleon: Total War. Napoleon blew the Sphinx's nose off with a cannon, and he was a pretender to the French throne. It is also a game in their existing library, so they didn't have to do anything to get the license.

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Freespace 1 also works in this engine. There are also open source level editing and ship editing tools. I am desperately trying to get this stuff ported to Linux. If anyone would like to help out please hit up the forums at hard-light.net or irc.espernet in #scp. There is a vibrant programming community around this game, and we would love to welcome any help we can get.

If Free Software/Free Gamers are interested, Freespace 2 would be the perfect space game to get a free content mod. All formats are documented, and full source to the game and the editing tools are available.

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How about rather than jamming on a game, we get jamming on game development tools. Linux lacks a lot of tools that other platforms take for granted. I'd like to see a game jam dedicated to creating good level design tools/3d authoring tools. This does not mean a 3d modeller but more asset creation tools. Think ship hardpoint editors/GTK Radiant style tools.

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For EA games the only way to run on Linux remains emulation or 3rd party reverse engineered ports. Same old same old, not surprising.

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Between Krita, Gimp, Blender, Maya, Unreal Engine 4 and Unity Linux is actually becoming a viable game development platform. Now if someone would write a bulk 3d viewer/converter like Deep Exploration, and a viewer that reloads textures on a model when the window gains focus we would be getting pretty close to having some really good tools.

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You guys know that all the aurora/odyssey engine games are being ported to Linux via xoreos right? http://www.xoreos.org [External Link] I've been speaking/hanging out with those guys on IRC and they are dead serious about getting them ported. They also worked on the GemRB engine port and at least one of their devs got hired by Beamdog.

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Sarmad have you used current VR? I have. The headset being light is about the only thing that hasn't been solved by current generation VR. It's relatively light, but it might be possible to make it even lighter. Now personally for me it's the resolution holding back VR. Even the Samsung Gear VR has a visible pixel grid and that's running at 2560x1440. 1280x1440 per eye. The resolution will need to be at least 2560x2880 per eye to be acceptable, and those screens are still a while off. I suspect that true presence won't happen until we're at 5120x5760 per eye so someone will need to invent a phone screen that's 10240x5760. Of course then you need a computer system to drive it and that's a whole other ball game. We are definitely starting to come up against Moore's law limitations. Look at the lack of GPU development, we're still stuck on 20-28nm manufacturing. I really hope that we can get down to 10-14nm on GPUs and it's enough of a performance boost to handle immersive VR. Right now it seems to be a bit of a pipe dream.

Btw before people jump in claiming I don't know what I'm talking about, I've used the Samsung Gear VR (2560x1440), and the Occulus Rift DK1 (720p) and DK2 headsets (1080p). I've also used a really craptastic 1990s VR headset that had the square picture and it was terrible. I like VR, but I'm trying to be realistic about where the technology sits for me. (I will also add that the Unreal Engine 4 tech demo was magical, the 3D effect was crazily good and I can see the potential for interactive worlds is immense.)

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I think Linux should be embracing the Kickstarter model. The main thing I guess is to get accurate information out there. If possible we should get Icculus and other developers to reveal their costs in making ports. Eg, how large the games' codebase is, how complex, how reliant on DirectX/Non Open technologies were the engines prior to the port being made, how long it took, what financial costs, etc. All these factors put into an easy to read website which gives us an accurate picture of the cost of porting. Then developers can build Linux port kickstarters that are realistic and give consumers real choice on which projects to support.

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As a long term modder 10+ years. I don't have a problem with this. (Hell what is counterstrike?) What i would like to see is Valve get agreement from rights holders such as Games Workshop so they get a cut when modders use their IP. Games Workshop in particular have been total assholes at shutting down any mod using their ip. If valve could work out a deal for paid mods that gets modders access to ip they can't currently use, it would be a huge step forward.

As with anything there will be those who make free, open source, and closed source mods.

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The answer is simple, time to throw more money at Linux games and ignore non-Linux games. Blizzard has known for a long time what we want, and how to get it. Never forget that Sam Lantinga was lead software developer for Blizzard. They know better than anyone how easy it would be for them to get a Linux port up and running. I think he spent years trying to get them to go Linux internally and he finally got fed up and took Valve's offer when Blizzard turned him down. I'd rather give my money to the people who are giving Linux a real shot at becoming a heavy gaming platform. Valve has earned my trust, video card drivers, good games, full platform equality for Valve's titles, and crucially, bringing in third party developers to port new games. Valve are a wonderful Linux citizen we should embrace them with more money. Hell maybe throw a Blizzard won't sell us games, so take our money Valve blitz on the app store.

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