Linux Game Dev and Ports

[kilgariff]

I have been working with Linux as my primary operating system for a few years now.
The development tools and sheer amount of available source code is a great asset to any developer.

I want to try and test my skills in porting games to Linux, rather than just my usual writing code for Linux from the start. If anyone has any SDL/OpenGL/Allegro-based games, and wouldn't mind giving me the source code (I won't pass it on, don't worry), I would like to port them to the Linux platform.

Similarly, if anyone would like to try and learn how to code using Linux, then I'd be happy to point you in the right direction.

I really like the challenge of taking, understanding, and translating other people's code to work natively on this brilliant platform.

If you want to give me a REAL challenge, you could post the source for a game based on DirectX or using some OS-specific libraries, so I can attempt to find alternative methods.

Either way, I think it would be great fun.

Thanks,
Ross

[MarauderIIC]

Unfortunately, I lost all my stuff *sigh*

Not that my things would help you anyway, they were usually cross-platform. Even the multithreading, I downloaded a Windows version of the pthread library, heh.

[JS Lemming]

What distro you use?

[kilgariff]

Right now, I use Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, but I jump back and forth.

[JS Lemming]

Good choice. I upgraded to 8.04 just the other day.

[kilgariff]

By the way, which people here are in the videos?
I know Falco is GyroVorbis and Marcel is Arce, but I don't know any others.

[Falco Girgis]

Chris - DJ Yoshi
Peter - Hyper Shadow

Alex - MarauderIIC, but he doesn't live near us and thus isn't in the videos.

[DJ Yoshi]

What Falco said.

[dejai]

I would love to make RPM's for Fedora and other systems.

[arcelios]

Linux is constantly criticized for its lack of games-it's great to know that someone is working to change that. Keep it up!

[sparda]

Ha, cool. I'll send you my code for the compacting program I'm working on when I'm done. It is to be used internally in my game dev project I'm currently researching ( the game will be totally written in Lua, in lieu of C++). Since the compacter is totally a console program, you don't mind if I mess with you do you? I mean, I can do tricky stuff with endianesses (if you're using Linux in another architecture besides x86), among other things. Some easy ways to mess with you also include:

1. Using windows specific stuff like: system("dir"), etc.
2. Inline some asm functions that work under windows x86 but not linux x86, like for instance:
the exit codes (in gas).

Code: Select all

# GNU AS code
.section .data
.section .text
.globl _start
_start:
     movl $1, %eax   # Instead of using the proper linux exit code $1 here, I can change it for windows 
     movl $0, %ebx  
     int $0x80

Damn, I can't think of any others right now, but you get the deal. In any case, I'll let you know when I'm done, as I'm currently trying to
figure out how to implement modular congruences in the encryption class I got going on...

[dejai]

As long as people stear clear of the constant use of the system function and don't include no standard code in there programs it is quite easy to recompile projects for linux. Of course it can also be a really bitch if the thing was made just for windows, uses direct X or some other annoying as hell factor. But if it adheres to standards, uses opengl and the developer built it with porting in mind you will be fine. I do it for Irrlicht projects quite often and because the engine itself is cross platform its usually quite easy to do. Good luck.

[Anarki]

Actually, I have been trying to port Quake 3 Arena to Linux. It's not my game, but it's open source. If you could help me, that would be great.