Haiku != Games ?

I think that you have greater chance to port DirectX than Wine (Wine will never have native speed)

http://www.v3x.net/directx/

v3x have been a great BeOS supporter. I think that part of the code was ported to BeOS.

But then again OpenGL are a better and more widely spread

//Fredrik

My opinion on this is the following: I don't think we can get much of the big game companies to port directX games to Haiku...don't think the market will be big enough...yeah we can make it easier by porting directx as you described...that would also attract some of the smaller software companies...but still I think Haiku will not attract major commercial game companies(yet).

Therefore I think we should make it easier for open source game developers to add haiku to their list of supported platforms. Open source games will have the future anyway IMHO. Most of the people writing those games are enthousiasts and want to broaden their public. Also, as being open source, they might be more willing to explore Haiku and hopefully be enthousiastic about it... to make it more easy to develop oss games on Haiku I think we should port some of the great 3d game engines around(as soon as Rudolf's got some hw 3d running ;)), one of them I especially like is Ogre http://www.ogre3d.org

other iniatives are:
-Irrlicht http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
-Open scene graph http://www.openscenegraph.org/

once we get some of these engines running under BeOS/Haiku I think we are a more serious platform for (open source) games,

regards,

Tim

I disagree. As more people start developing games in python using pygame and pyopengl, having it will be very important.

Not to mention the fact that porting an app written in python using pygame will be infinitly easier to port than an app written in C/C++ using the SDL.

EDIT: Also, this thread is about what people are doing to get games on Haiku. Not argue over whether a library is a wrapper of another or a completly different one.

FUD... pure FUD :evil:

Wine is not nothing but an API layer and there is no problems with speed in regard to the x86-platform. Wine is not an emulator and rherefore does (generally) not suffer any speedloss compared with windows. It can actually be faster on occasion. :D

Wine is written for *nix'es and will require some rewriting to work on Haiku. But it's a reasonable idea in regard to games. For applications in general wine is not needed. There are opensource alternatives to most windows apps, and these alternatives are usually rather superior :D

Like Win4Be?

Drivers, or at the very worst, good spec books. No 3D, no decent game audio lib (OpenAL already somewhat works on BeOS, so thats that somewhat done...) == no chance of games

Having accelerated OpenGL, etc, does not guarantee games, though....

Games are important for Haiku, but not for everyone. It really depends on what you intend to use Haiku for. I personally don't play much in the way of games under BeOS because I spend most of my time doing work for school in StarOffice under Window$ or writing code in BeOS. However, my mother-in-law uses her 500Mhz box just for playing games and there are games I loaded on it that are free for BeOS that she loves, particularly Mahjongg. She's a typical computer-illiterate, so she doesn't want to spend money on something that she thinks she's going to break somehow, so things like Pelle's Patience are her only kind of option. Now gamers who are into the flavor of the month 3D-shooter are a different story, but I'm not even so sure that that will stay that way for all that long - Haiku, unlike Linux, is very commercial-friendly and also easy to develop games for (OpenGL, SDL, etc). The potential is there for Haiku/BeOS/Zeta to be a gaming platform. My $0.03. :)

Would be cool if the proprietary linux nvidia/ati drivers could be somehow wrapped to work with haiku - maybe in wine style as it is nothing more than a linker - provide a fake layer between the driver kernel interface which reroutes the communication to Haiku subsystems and so on - that could provide full 3D. :lol:

As for anything else - arent there drivers out there which could be recycled? *looking around and seeing a lot of candidates*

Its possible but a: only works on x86, b: only on 32 bit with 32 bit drivers and only on 64 bit with 64 bit drivers and c: has never been shown to work with anything other than network and modem drivers. And d: not a hope in hell of being allowed distribute them with the core OS.

nvidia drivers are closed source. Haiku's nvidia drivers are already better than the opensource ones on Linux. As goes "porting" them, they're for a totally different OS. You can use them to get info on the hardware, thats about it.

Doesn't help for the drivers you need to get a machine going and on line, which is disk, input, network, modem, etc, etc. Doesn't help when most of the drivers are packaged in .exe installers too.

Maybe check some of the EULA's that come with those drivers before you assume there are no restrictions on them... I haven't personally checked, but I'm sure at least one manufacturer has language in there about what you can/can't do with their drivers... certainly I doubt many allow you to redistribute them in any way other than what they've provided.

A wrapper around windows drivers requires emulating things like the Windows registry (where many windows drivers store their settings) and all the necessary kernel calls and other DLL interfaces that the drivers may be calling in order to function properly... Projects like ReactOS are the closest to actually doing this with ALL drivers - mainly because ReactOS aims to be binary-compatible with Windows NT/2k/XP and therefore will provide everything that a Windows driver may need in order to function.

Hi boys. I am realist and programmer too, (in linux) and I say that´s first ports some little to Haiku. Etc. Allegro its BeOS compatible and its great for beginers programmers. its not very fast but there are AllegroGL enhacement and ... and big support .... after you can port a SDL or ClanLib (clanlib is full c++ with threads). In the oficial pages of SDL is write that is support BeOS, too.

The more games available the better. Windows has many younger users mostly because of the games. Look at the World of Warcraft hype for instance. But many other 3D Games as well.

Provider Users with a huge variety of other games and they would start to leave Windows (they do moan a lot about the virus and rootkit problems, so its not so much they dont WANT to leave windows, its just they are lazy and need incentives)

I am not sure which way to go for visually appealing games in general on non windows side. I think its still quite some way/time to go. :(

I wonder if it has to do with 3D drivers being a problem in it, or if its a lack of manpower. (I am talking about 3D games on non-windows platforms here, I dont know many good ones. Even on a MAC you often find good commercial 3D games, and it doesnt have a big market share, only big company behind it.)

I think I've solution for this.

Lets make game development easier and cheaper on haiku, and lets make that porting so impossible that for example. On windows you'd be totally unable to even port half of those features. Then lets boycot those who even tries to support windows for games! The direct attack is best when we mean it. If we would be able to pull it off to that level what it were when we lived C64 & amiga -time, then we'd be straight out winners.

Not exactly sure what he is trying to say but I think it is something to the effect of "let's make Haiku only games." (ie games you can only play on Haiku and not worry about letting big game companies easily port their games to Haiku). And yes, I think he was trying to be serious about it! I don't know if I like the idea of not letting big game companies easily port their money makers to Haiku but I do like the idea of building a couple of excellent games for Haiku that you can NOT play on winblows or OS X! ;-)

I think the key is to support selected opens source game projects.
This games should be the leaders in their sector of the PC gameing industry.
Support the best 3D engine.
The best RTS engine.
Assure that it are big projects with enough developers.
And then resease this games with a haiku distribution.

I tried keeping weight on the first sentence: lets make game development easier and cheaper.

Without considerable change in ability to support games, this really would be a wrong choice and wouldn't benefit anyone. The last sentence would come as side-feature, or not at all. I'm thinking about not caring whether ppl can port games from/to haiku.

So we shouldn't just port things. We should create much more advanced system than those which exists. One where one person could actually do vital game straight out of idea. This'd require considerable development on things like producing graphics, audio, the improvement of programming interfaces would be only small portion of making game development cheaper.

Okay. Support for games, I think, is the epitomy of support. When you support hardware enough to run a game (one of the most intense operations any average user could undertake, unless you're the average unix-user who's into 3D modelling and has a renderfarm..), I'm sure you've covered many of the other bases. Shouldn't it be within the capacity of this project to make Haiku capable of taking on whatever sort of applications are out there? Games aren't the only multimedia application out there, but they are the ones that get the community excited.

I say that the project makes itself as well-rounded as possible: it should be forgiving for the *nix convert; it should be useful for the college student; it should be perfect for graphics work and video editing; it should be lightweight for the average user who complains about microsoft word slowing down too much; it should be easy to develop for, showered in great documentation; it should be filled with games -- but not just chintzy games like breakout/tetris clones written in SDL, but real games that the world has never seen before that run better on slower hardware.

It shouldn't be the case that Haiku == Games. It should be something that it can do without blinking an eye. :/

None of this can be done with code alone, even though code is 70% of the battle (or whatever majority-resembling statistic you want to stick in there). So many lovely projects get neglected. Seems like Unreal is the only series with releases in linux. People must be convinced. A campaign must be launched to make sure that Haiku is known to the people inside who need to do the other part of the coding. (;

Yeah. These are all big words from someone who hasn't contributed much so far, but perhaps I can contribute... big words. *snickers*

By the way, is there any way to make something binary compatable with Direct X -- and can you write your own implementation of the Direct X standard without being bound to some EULA from Microsoft?

I completely agree. Perhaps where others succeed is in proving to the bigwigs in the market that we are worth investing some time (and ultimately, money) into. I feel like there's this elitism in the Linux community, as if there's some sort of rule against corporate cooperation. I think it's essential to cooperate with certain people to enact change while preserving the nature of your own project.

You're right, the developer must be given free reign in any given environment. All APIs should be supported.