Linux GameDev V - Marketing and Distribution

The next part of Troy Hepfner's Linux Game Development series is published at GameDev.net - his last article, but as he stated perhaps his most important, and is about how to sell games for Linux. Indeed that's a little difficult, 'cause the market is very, very small.

Linux GameDev Part IV - Testing

Troy Hepfner's next tutorial about Linux game development was published at gamedev.net. This time it's about testing games on Linux, and how to treat problems: testing on multiple distributions, hardware accelerated video drivers, SELinux & 64 bit.

Next Round for OpenGL

The last weeks OpenGL comes out with some good news. At first the announcement of OpenGL 3.0, which will drop backward compatibility to get better performance of modern hardware and makes development easier.

The second thing is the Linux release of the gDEBugger, a high quality OpenGL debugger and profiler. This tool will help to make your applications faster by letting you trace for performance killer and bugs.

The last thing is the release of the glslDevil, a tool for debugging the OpenGL shading pipeline.

OGRE 3D Programming

The OGRE 3D graphics engine has become real popular in open source game development, and meanwhile is an alternative for some commercial developers, who already using it. A notable thing is the good documentation about the engine, a friendly community, and even now a book - Pro OGRE 3D Programming (2006). In my opinion this makes the position of OGRE very clear as a constant among (FOSS) 3D graphics rendering engines.

Graphic Artist Gluttony

A quick search about books for graphic artist astonished me to find so many results for Blender and the GIMP, but only few are up to date. To my surprise a new Blender book will be released next month - The Essential Blender.

I acknowledge to not have read one of these books, but as proposed in the forum we'll create a database of game development books, and this is just for completeness. Of course you're invited to give a review or a comment about any of this books, either here or in the forum.

Books about the GIMP:

• Beginnig GIMP: From Novice to Professional (2006)
• GIMP 2 for Photographers (2006)
• GIMP Pocket Reference (2000)
• Grokking the GIMP (2000)
• GIMP for Linux Bible (2000)
• The GIMP for Linux & Unix (2000)
• Guerrilla Guide to Great Graphics With the GIMP (2000)
• GIMP - The Official Handbook (1999)
• Sams Teach Yourself GIMP in 24 Hours (1999)

Books about Blender:

• The Essential Blender(not out yet - 9/27/2007)
  
• Introducing Character Animation With Blender (2007)
• The Official Blender GameKit: Interactive 3D for Artists (2003)
• The Official Blender 2.0 Guide (2001)
• Blender Book (2000)

Linux GameDev Part III - Installers

Troy Hepfner is busy as a bee and released his third article about Linux Game Programming. This time it's about installing your game with an installer, and not by the distributions. I wont repeat is article so better read it yourself, it's better anyway.

Linux GameDev Part II - Distributable Binaries

As mentioned before, GameDev.net, the probably largest website about game, is working on a series of articles introducing game development on Linux. Recently the second article has been released, and this time it's about creating executable binary and how to distribute them.

Anyway, better read the whole article about Linux Game Development on GameDev.net yourself.

Icculus - Gamedev Hosting

I really should mention Icculus. Following this link navigates you to one of the few guys, dedicating their enthusiasm to linux game development. Actually Icculus is an open source hoster for game development (as far as I can see, 'cause it's hard to find more information on the site), but the hoster Ryan, once Loki developer, has essentially done some important Linux ports, including Unreal Tournament 2004, America's Army, Descent 3, and Serious Sam.

Of course there exit other some other open source hosting sites, but Icculus is striclty for games. Anyway, some alternatives

• Icculus
  
• Google Hosting
• Sourceforge
• Savannah
• BerliOS (nothing game related anymore)
• Dotsrc
• Seul
  

Linux GameDev Part I - Introduction

Recently I was browsing for Linux/UNIX on GameDev.net, probably the largest website about game development in general, but it's hard find something specific. In principle it doesn't realy matter, because game development is beside technical details and tools always the same. Anyway, it's bothering to study both technologies, and is time consuming as well.

However, a member of their site thought it might be good idea to introduce to Linux game development, and is writing a series of five articles about development tools, usage, and distribution.

As this is an introduction, it's especially useful for beginners and developers of other platforms, considering about developing for Linux too.

Step into the Third Dimension

Todays games without amazig 3d graphics seem to be like toy games made by newbie developers. Well this is not my opinion, but after mastering the 2d stuff any serious game developer should jump into the 3d world. But before writing your own 3d engine consider the pros and cons, and maybe have a glance on some stable, existing engines.

For many people the finest open source 3d engine is OGRE. To some people it is not a complete engine, because it lacks typical features of an engine (as physics, networking, etc.), but OGRE definitely has an amzing renderer. Beginners often complain about complexity, ugly documentation, but OGRE has a very nice community. It's suitable for cross-platform development.

Another popular open source 3d engine is Irrlicht. It's is a well designed engine, easy to use, and thanks to the BSD license great for modifications. Some will say it's not as powerful and slow, but this may be perfect for beginners or simpler things. Also Irrlicht has a good community, and is suitable for cross-platform development.

The next one open source 3d engine is Crystal Space. It is the most complete open source 3d engine out there, but is not easy to use. They have a very friendly community, and is also suitable for cross-platform development.

Once crafted by Disney now Panda3D became open source. Well, what to say else than this is another great engine. It is simple to use, and suitable for cross-platform development.

Next one of the open source and cross-platform 3d engine is the Nebula Device. It's a powerful and complex 3d engine, but maybe isn't easy to use because it lacks community and tutorials. It already found its way into commercial game development.

The last of the open source 3d engines I review is OpenSceneGraph. It's also a well designed engine.

Well of course there are many more 3d engines. In fact it seems like there are as many as game programmers. Many of them are open source, but some developers say, they are not suitable for the development of commercial games. For sure there are some commercial engines available, as Torque or some other, but I'm not sure in which way they are superior - since I'm using Unix-like systems I'm not really gaming, and that's before GPU was established.

In the Beginning

Though game development is a not easy, some environment is more easy than another. Especially for beginners without any experience in programming this is of concern. So I think it's time to search the beginners game development environment.

The first thing I noticed is PyGame, a cross-plattform game development library based on Python and built on SDL. It is designed to make game development easy and powerfull, without the need to care about the low-level details of C/C++. PyGame seems to have a great community.

Another thing is the Blitz BASIC compiler, a BASIC dialect designed for game development. It originally came from the Amiga, but today it is cross-plattform available.

Both languages are easy to learn, and have their pros & cons. While Python+PyGame is open source, Blitz BASIC isn't and has a price of 80$ upwards. Blitz BASIC creates compiled code, while Python is an interpreter (but fast) and needs its source code to execute. However, Python is commonly used as additional scripting language for many projects.

For sure there are alternatives to PyGame and Blitz BASIC, but they are definitely a good choice for beginners.

Programming Linux Games for Download

This book is a true classic on Linux game programming. It is written by the creators of SDL and founders of Loki Software, and covers lots of things a game programmer should care about when using Linux & SDL.

Of course you can buy a printed copy of this book, but for all those poor guys there are legel(?) PDF versions of this book available. I found a free e-book copy here, but this can be off another day. Better search on your own.