Quote:
Hugh Manatee said:
question, could you put out a game with it's own O/S? like when it installs it makes it's own partition on your HD and has it's own set of drivers and such, effectively bypassing dx10 and vista's compatibility issues? Like say it was one of the smaller linux distros with enough functionallity to install itself, launch the game, and detect and debug the drivers for all the devices? Maybe with a built in web browser and some basic tools....
|
What an interesting idea. You do know that in the early days of Pagemaker for MS-DOS it included a custom version of GEM Desktop because "Wind'ohs" was so cruddy at the time. So there is a sort of precedent for a custom OS with an application. The problem now is that hardware is many times more complex than in the days of MS-DOS and you'd need to get custom drivers for God-knows how many video and sound cards. Linux can only have drivers that are available with source. Since many companies are not willing to release source and possibly give away their 'technical secrets' MS now has a stranglehold on much of the PC industry because of their control of drivers.
And then there is Direct X, which saves many game developers a lot of time and effort to develop basic graphics libraries. Spending the time to develop a substitute would be a very large hurdle to get over.