greed (was)

[Brandon Van Every]

Geoff Gerrietts wrote:
>
> Keep in mind also that Microsoft is making a pretty big play in the
> console marketplace as well. Given that Microsoft has more money in
> petty cash funds than Sony has in market capitalization, it will be
> interesting to see how that foray plays out, but the bottom line seems
> likely to be that DirectX will be dominant on consoles and in PCs.

Sony has historical incumbency with developer relations.  Apparently they do
a good job keeping Playstation 2 developers happy, so the weight of talent
is still more behind Sony than Microsoft.  This also seems to be reflected
in relative sales to date, i.e. Microsoft is losing and fighting an uphill
battle.  But, Microsoft has enough cash to stick around and learn from its
mistakes.  It'll be interesting to see how each side tries to appeal to the
developer in the long run.

> And DirectX is really a better toolkit than OpenGL. OpenGL is much
> lower-level, and very feature-poor compared to what DirectX offers.

That's true now.  It wasn't historically true.  It took awhile for DirectX
to catch up to OpenGL.  After it caught up, you have the classic difference
between proprietary, aggressive development and open standards,
committee-based development.  OpenGL cannot catch up now.

> If Linux is going to have a chance in the gaming marketplace, it would
> hafta be through the success of some kind of middleware engine, like
> CrystalSpace (though maybe not CrystalSpace itself).

3D engines aren't the bottleneck.  Consumer demand is.  No ease of use, no
consumer demand.  My only reason for contemplating a Linux port is (1)
emotional, I cut teeth on Linux (2) I might release a user AI programming
interface at some point, although certainly not initially.  In that event, I
figure I'd get more people writing AIs if I go with the open source hacker
culture.

There's not even an efficiency reason for me to pick Linux anymore.  I've
got tons of CPU + GPU cycles to play with even on a lowly 866MHz P-III +
GeForce2, and I'm not anywhere near to shipping.  W2K is certainly lean and
mean enough for the job, there isn't going to be some tremendous cycle
advantage doing anything on Linux.

The difference in OS reliability is a marginal gain for game development.
Unless you're doing a MMOG, it's not a core issue.

To be honest, console ports will be far more valuable / strategic for me
than a Linux port.  In that vision of portability, which I'm already
committed to, the Linux port comes "for very little extra work."

> Even that's a pretty tough thing to do, not likely to happen. On the
> other hand, I think there's a place on the horizon -- not too far
> away, really -- when games stop being a pell-mell rush to the next
> video card, the next CPU, more bells and whistles. Much like happened
> with application software, there's going to come a point of "that's
> pretty good", and people won't be willing to pay for more.

I hope that day comes soon because I'm *not* enjoying the nouveau "pixel
shader" API wars.  Shades of OpenGL vs. Direct3D all over again.  Maybe
that's how Microsoft will finally kill OpenGL.

> To break this trend, some game publisher would need to release some
> compelling, must-have titles on Linux, and not on Windows.

That will never happen.  "Must-have on Linux" is an oxymoron, nobody can
generate that kind of marketing mindshare with the Linux platform alone.
There simply aren't the retail distribution channels for it.  Nor any
engineering necessity in it.

> if Linux gets too
> much more user-friendly, it will no longer be expert-friendly.

That's false.  There's a parametric range (t) from 0.0 to 1.0 of how
user-friendly an OS is.  Linux can certainly afford to be slid forwards on
the scale, and can certainly do so for quite a bit before losing
expert-friendly stuff.  It's only at the extreme end of the scale that it
starts getting too dumbed down.  Unwillingness to solve ease-of-use problems
is just engineer laziness / lack of motivation.  Sure it takes more energy
to solve power user + newbie user design problems simultaneously.  That's
called innovation.  The payoff is greater industrial productivity.

> Already, many apps are building crappy-assed GUI configuration tools,
> and using them as an excuse to leave the majority of the system's
> configuration undocumented. It didn't used to be that way.

There is a price to pay for industrial scaleup.  To become a mainstream OS,
you have to deal with large-scale ease-of-use issues.

--
Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.