Ryzom

sydius wrote:Yes. I would say it is also.

tetra wrote: Use the tool best for the job, in the case of games, it is almost always windows. To be brutally honest, I would be rather pissed if nevrax wasted the dev time needed to port the client over to linux, instead of spending that money on something that would actually effect the game in a positive way. The number of folks who would not play the game if they could not play it in windows, is such a tiny fractional minority, that it's not even a statistical blip.

trosky wrote: Windows is not the best tool for the job. Its the most used tool for the job. Even the Windows user would benefit from having a Linux client :

1- The Linux mmorpg players might be very interested in Ryzom = more players

2- Open Source means people at home can iron out bugs in the client, those bugs could also be present in the Windows version.

3- It also means they can improve the performance of the client, and again the Windows user could benifit from that.

4- It would give more visibility to Ryzom = more players again


Im no computer programmer, my personnal experience with open source is DeviceNet (open source automation technology). So this might be a little biased... feel free to correct me if im wrong in my statements.

thexdane wrote:actually you'd be surprised how many would switch over. i've seen several that would switch to a linux client.

tetra wrote:Switching implies that they were using the windows client before. The windows client that requires no extra development time like a linux client would. Given the incredibly small and statistically insignifigant but vocal number of folks that would only play the game if it had a linux client, there are very few benefits, and a great deal of downsides for nevrax to make a linux client... one of the most important downsides being the extra cost of keeping the client updated...

They have enough problems wiht making the client work for windows, tossing linux into the mix won't improve things.

thexdane wrote:ok what about those that play it under wine, i prefer not to because i'm not big on wine nor will i support transgaming

you are failing to take into account those that use wine and those that dual boot into windows just to play games and would prefer to not dual boot

you are also not taking into account that most of that "statistically insignificant" group are rper's in one form or another and also most stats on linux don't take dual booters into account. the only reason i use windows is 1 to play ryzom and for work purposes because the unculled masses use windows, all other cases i use linux

i bet you that if there was a linux version there would be a lot of ppl using it, the fact that several ppl here have said they'd use it means that there's probly a lot more that would use a linux client that haven't been vocal on the boards.

as for the ultima online version of linux, i've never heard of a version of that. in the time i've used linux i've never heard of it ever being released. it was never properly advertised and badly supported so no wonder no one used it

tetra wrote:What about the folks who would like a larger influence given to the church of the pink flamingo? Isn't that statistically insignifigant minority an important voice to listen to?! I don't see any pink flamingo's in game yet and it's obvious that including them would be even more trivial than the "simple" task of porting the client to linux.

Q:
Given that Ryzom is built on a completely open source engine, when can we expect to see the linux client released for testing? Ad are there any differences between the windows and linux version?

A:
Ok this deals with several connected topics.
one is: What's open source in Ryzom? Ryzom is build with a technology called NeL (for Nevrax Libraries). These technologies (e3 engines for example) are open sourced. You can download the source code of our tech, but that alone doesn't give you a game. These are raw technologies (very good ones too) that we use every day to craft Ryzom (I guess we are crafters when it comes to Ryzom), but Ryzom its self is not open source. (but some things will move here too)

In Ryzom you have two families of software. One is called the client and this is what you install on your pc. The other is the server (one server of Ryzom means ~10 physical machines). The server holds everything expect 3d elements and sounds. The client might become open sourced at some point, but we have a lot of work ahead of us to make sure you get the best experience possible as soon as possible. So we can't work on the right documentation of the code in the mean time.

So, right now, nobody except us can compile the client of Ryzom, but some day We really believe in what we do, and technology is a tool. We want to let it evolve asap, we want to port the client to linux and to mac as well (the linux version will come first). The servers are running on linux already, though we have a windows version of the server, but only for some test purposes (we don't ever use it in operations). Depending on how things go (right or complicated), we'll move on to the linux client, but I really can't give out a date now. Personally I'd like for the end of summer. It is possible that we'll have an open beta for the linux client too. It is also possible that we'll open source the client first, so the community can port it to Linux and Mac at the same time.