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id Software and Linux
There has been a bit of unrest among Linux gamers about id's commitment to releasing Linux versions of the games we make.
I don't want to be rehashing old subjects, but I'll offer a few thoughts:
Fundamentally nothing has changed with our policy regarding Linux games. Trying to shoehorn the ZeniMax acquisition into this is pointless, as they are true to their word of focusing on the business and letting the studio focus on the games.
Linux players represent about 5% of the QuakeLive population, which is in line with the company's previous releases. Nothing new there, releasing Linux versions has always been a matter of higher code quality, good software architecture, and technical interest for the platform.
We never commit to releasing Linux versions for any of our titles, at least not until we are reasonably sure that we have the resources to put into it. In the past few years I am pretty much the only one who has been involved in our Linux versions, and most of that work was done in my spare time. It worked out because I spent significant time working on each of those projects to get them shipped (Doom3, Quake4, ETQW), and making sure we had working Linux builds was a natural part of that process.
It is unlikely the new Wolfenstein title is going to get a native Linux release. None of it was done in house, and I had no involvement in the project. QuakeLive offers a lot of challenges and eats away everything else right now.
As far as idTech 5 (the Rage engine), it runs on PS3 and Mac already. Setting up idTech 5 to run on those platforms early on in our development cycle was a direct result of carrying Linux/Mac support in idTech 4 beforehand. It is likely i will be involved with idTech 5 in the near future, I'll be damned if we don't find the time to get Linux builds done.
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I think if more people realised that they could get a performance increase on their machines (at no extra cost) they would try out linux for gaming.
Carmack mentioned that only nvidia cards will handle this - well then just make it nvidia only until the other card drivers catch up.
I am going to purchase ETQW this month - purely because of linux support , I have previously purchased Quake 4(due to the same reason). If you do not release idTech 5 for linux then you are going to lose out on my(and others) revenue - Although I do like games, being able to play the latest games is not enough reason to re-enter that hell that is Windows.
p.s - any nvidia user that feels their card is not performing at an optimized level - try adding the nopat option to the kernel line in grub
I will support id with buying every next id game for Linux...
I too pledge my support for any id game with a native Linux client.
I'll also add that I'd be willing to pay for a downloadable Linux client in addition to buying a boxed copy of the Windows version, if that's what it takes to keep Linux games being made by id.
I'm guessing you'll be "damned" if you don't delete this comment before anyone gets a chance to read it too, god knows Carmack's ego wouldn't allow for a negative comment about iD even on -your- blog. At this point I'm as disgusted with iD as I am with Epic and their non-starter of their promised UT3 Linux port, and I don't think I'd bother buying Rage even if a native port were released because frankly it doesn't look that good.
PS. Have you played World of Goo on Linux?
definitely worth the wait!
Maybe you need to read my post again. id *never* committed to the platform. That hasn't prevented us from releasing Linux builds in the past, and that situation is unchanged.
Our work on Linux is always based on a technological interest for the platform. I can understand your frustration that I'm currently more interested in working on problems related to QuakeLive on my spare time than I am interested in wrestling matches with gcc. Thankfully I am not looking up to you for advice.
And I'd like to thank everyone else for their support.
It's nice to be able to play Doom 3 and Quake 4 on Linux. When those games were released, I still used Windows, so I already owned the Windows release of those games when I started to use Linux.
Now I only use Windows and I don't want to buy any more Windows games, because I don't want to support Microsoft and its Windows platform. I really hope you'll contact Linux Game Publishing to publish the Linux-releases of your future games. I want to play your upcoming games, but I don't want to buy games for Windows. I want to support Linux, not Windows. Buying a game for Windows counts as a sale for Windows and I want Linux to have good sales, not Windows. Please contact Linux Game Publishing to release boxed versions of your upcoming games.