Getting SEV to work with linux

[Fyron]

Those are all strategy-lite though. Nothing compares to a real 4x game.

Natso has been talking about making some sort of SE3-like homebrew game for the DS for a bit now.

[Baron Munchausen]

This is true. Starfury would be a better candidate for the console route. How does one develop for a console, though? Do you need to be 'invited' to make a game for their proprietary hardware? I wonder if one of the major console makers would be interested in a Starfury II for their machine...

[Hugh Manatee]

As far as I know you have to buy out their liscence which costs a few grand, and they have to aprove of the purchase or something. If Big Mutha Trucka can get a liscence on consoles there's not much that can't.....

[Fyron]

For Xbox, you can use XNA game studio express to get started. They will be releasing a "pro" version that lets you compile for 360 directly some time this year. Of course, this is geared more towards the Xbox arcade type games, and isn't the normal dev kit.

[Atrocities]

Well all Aaron would need to do is dumb down SE V, using Empires At War as an example, and presto he would have a great game for the 360.

O/C dumming down the game would mean that it wouldn't be worth playing, but hey, stupid people love simple games and we all know that most stupid people will fork over $500.00 for a 360 so it goes without saying, the game could be a success.

EAW programs have stated that they wanted to add more depth to the game but the edict was "keep it simple so most people can play it." That is just sad. But it proved to be a good business model as the game sold well over half a million copies. (THATS A LOT of simple minded people money out there.)

Simple sells. Its as simple as that. Make the game simple, and port it to the X-box 360 and then watch the $$$ roll your way.

[Solymr]

Consoles are the devil of gaming. While Morrowind was made originally for the PC and ported to the Xbox, I get the feeling Oblivion was aimed at Xbox players because I couldn't shake the feeling the game was dumbed down insanely compared to MW.

That being said, you'd have to REALLY dumb SEV down to get it on a console player level. I think even Oblivion was just a little too complex for some of them from what I've been reading.

[AstralWanderer]

Imperator Fyron said:
Malfador has never gone for the latest graphics tech. SE5 requires only DX 8.1, and it came out well into the DX 9 era. I doubt SE6 will even require DX 9...

A couple of years from now, DX10 may well be compulsory with DX9 support going the way of OpenGL.

DX10 is Microsoft's big carrot/stick for forcing Vista adoption (and all the DRM-goodness that will allow MS to screw the MPAA/RIAA) so it is likely that they will ramp up the pressure for its adoption, moving from persuasion to coercion.

[Fyron]

But if most people do not migrate to Vista in a timely manner, as has happened with all previous incarnations of Windows, we've got a wide window of usability for DX8/9... MS is working on a DX9 compatibility layer for Vista though, so it probably won't be a carrot on a stick issue in reality.

[Hugh Manatee]

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....

[Suicide Junkie]

Or why not just a bootable CD?
With a decent amount of RAM, you don't even need a harddrive except to store savegames and preferences, and a USB stick covers that too...

Either a cheap 64meg one for savegames, or a big 2gig one and have the game come on the bootable USB drive.

Its an easily portable game and a security dongle all in one.

The downside is no alt-tabbing out to chat while you play.