BI Games delivered with own Operation System

[Deadfast]

Imagine buying a game for 50 Euros and receiving a fully functional and modern operation system including an officesuite .... beer anyone? ;-)

Imagine buying a game for 50 Euros and receiving a fully functional and modern system including an office suite which wouldn't run any other games.


I'm sorry, but unless other developers start publishing Linux versions of their titles there is just no point for BIS to make their own Linux distro. Note that I am not saying they shouldn't make a Linux version of the game itself, though I can imagine the pain behind porting the whole rendering engine to OpenGL and I'm pretty sure that's not the only thing that would need massive changes.

[Nutty_101]

Funny, i recall that open-office also runs in windows, Mac, etc... While unix system's are making a comeback it still has a way to go. I used to admin OpenVMS for Digital when i was younger. oh the horrors..

Funny part will be what happens when MS releases their phone that will allow people to play the same games on the phone, xbox, and pc. Developers will jump all over that I suspect. Should be interesting as it may also be that Sony makes the PSP phone a reality. Since they have Ericsson anyway it would be easy for them to market it to carriers quickly.

Oh yeah, forgot to say that OpenGL (last time I did any coding for it) didn't support any native networking, input or sound. Maybe it has changed but this was something that I found out when designing an audio front end for cars in the past. So adoption rates might be slower on the gaming side as they have to write that or license third party code for it. With the market being driven to produce results quicker the last thing you need to tell a shareholder is that you are working on your own networking, sound systems when there is one built into an API that 90% or more of the industry utilizes. Bis might be in a different boat as they have more freedoms but it all comes down to the bottom line. Keeping your company open, if you venture off and waste time in development on things like that it can have adverse affects down the road.

Also another issue with making a game on it's own OS is the fact that you might have to support that as well. I don't know how many game companies would like to take on the burden of supporting a game and the OS. To many different pieces of hardware to even try to deliver a unified driver. God forbid you have to deal with that mess.

[McArcher]

Oh yeah, forgot to say that OpenGL (last time I did any coding for it) didn't support any native networking, input or sound.

I think, it is not as bad, because in latest OSes (new 7 and unpopular Vista), Micro$oft has got rid of EAX support for soundcards, and I think it was a great mistake of theirs! So developers have to write their own sound engines in both cases.

[echo1]

I used to admin OpenVMS for Digital when i was younger.

Respect. I fired up VAX/VMS in an emulator once... The word 'arcane' doesn't seem strong enough. Supposedly one of the most reliable OSes around though, even to this day.

Can you explain?

See some of the points raised above. It's an awful lot of effort for a company to partake in for what boils down to freetard idealism.

[Herbal Influence]

(....)
Also another issue with making a game on it's own OS is the fact that you might have to support that as well. I don't know how many game companies would like to take on the burden of supporting a game and the OS. To many different pieces of hardware to even try to deliver a unified driver. God forbid you have to deal with that mess.

Thanks for your posts!
I read them all but especially concerning OpenGL - I don't understand too much.

But in OpenSource the rule goes:
If you need something, you're gonna have it if people assemble.

Yeah, and the idea is to leave that hardware/OS "discussion" to one of the major distributions, especially not a rolling one (like Novell/Suse which has a contract with Microsoft which I find irritating to say the least), but one which delivers a stable and long time supported (LTS) version every four years like Ubuntu.

I am completely happy with the overwhelming quality of support I received and continue to receive and see people receive on the Ubuntu-Forums every minute.
And I - already - can easily help newcomers sometimes too.

Concerning the OS/hardware BIS would never be left alone - sure they might need more elaborated support in the beginning.
But I don't even think that - I firmly believe that every programmer is into Linux.

For this is a system you really can understand:
It is completely open, it's documented, structured and there are so many helpful hands to ask 24h/7days.

As I said, my Alpha Version (10.04 = Lucid Lynx) - typing on it now and 24h/7days - is already stable and will be released at the End of April 2010. It boots incredibly fast and is off when you hit "off". Installation, may it be together with Microsoft or not, is about 30 min incl. whole OpenOffice package.

And for the possibilities to run other games:

1) If you are into BIS games and have a fulltime job and/or family - I don't think there is much time for other games!

2) More important: Since 2001 I don't feel the need for other games at all.
Sometimes I think, especially when walking throught the barricades of other games in the supermarkets:
Wow --- a nice flight- or tanksimulator should be nice to play ... while a second later I remember I have all that in BIS games too, sure sometimes less granulated but on the other hand much more realistic for there is also a tank simulator "built-in"!
And, by the by, do you know the effect of turning round the DVD-package of a "great tank simulator" and looking at more precise pictures on the backside?
I am simply not interested when friends try to convince me of other games: I did do a lot of gaming before 2001 and only BIS games have been something really new and lasting to be really new. (I happen to watch into other games from time to time visiting friends, so I know them all but only superficial, I must admit.)

3) If you really wanna get into BIS games they need all the time you have for it - speaking of scripting, big crctis (often lasting a four hours), etc. etc.

(...)
See some of the points raised above. It's an awful lot of effort for a company to partake in for what boils down to freetard idealism.

Sure - it is a quite an effort.
And I see BIS undertaking other big efforts that pay out only partly - the Openess of BIS games always leads (and led) to quite the same of Openess to bugs.

And I immediately understand that either you need a kind of Warren Buffet in the background or you have to be quite genious.

The latter I think matches with BIS more than the first.

It is risky, it is (experi-)mental !

But wasn't it the same with:

1) Rynair - who would have thought you can earn money by requesting only 10 % of the fare?

2) Linux itself - Linus Torvalds never thought of his software being used worldwide in millions of millions of copies. Don't forget: Your Siemens TV, your Panasonic TV, your DVD player etc. etc. and soon even your BMW (Audio- and Infotainmentsystem) runs with embedded Linux too.

And BIS is already having a "nervous" customership which does play BIS games for they are that "open".

This matches so much with the Linux community.
Linuxers are mostly
- young academics or at least quite well educated
- thereunder mostly informatics or at least studying kind of technics
- extremely rational = clear thinking, willing to drop things in their way
- free-thinking i.e. hating dependency
- self-conscious, at least relating to software
- interested in understanding it all (which proprietary software doesn't make possible by principle)
- they decide which basic software runs in a company - at least give the most appreciated advice to the board of the company.

So there might be quite a rapid turn within the next years - people only need to suddenly realize what is the fact just today: Linux is more desktop ready than Microsoft ever was.

(Example: I reinstalled on this PC until now (for fun - for its a thing of 30 min, no activation calls, full versions etc.) about a six times Linux without any problems. A week ago I reinstalled WindowsXP - took me two hours, no sound anymore though this PC was delivered with that very MicrosoftXP, it's hardware being Microsoft optimized. And, I tell you what, I was astonished how fast it did boot with no other software on it. Astonished how fast Microsoft7 boots? Sure. But wait ... will boot time decrease like it does with all Microsoft in the past?
Linux - as far as I understand it - isn't affected at all by the amount of additonal software on the PC - for principal reasons.)

I want BIS to be the first to profit from it.

[Nutty_101]

Yeah, but how many people can you sell a game to at a retail store and expect them to head out to a community forum for support. They will go to the vendor right off or just demand a refund. Major retailers will drop that publisher/vendor if things like this happened. While you're thinking may be somewhat OK for people who are good with computers; you just end up cutting out a huge demographic of players.

Also education does not lean towards a specific OS, or computer. you might be amazed how many of the brightest people use systems for other reasons than cost or dependency. Even more funny is that there are quite a few people who are really good with computer systems yet tend to be more distant from the current education system. Aka people who dropout and lack a full education but are in all honesty quite brilliant in their own ways. So that person would be labeled as uneducated and fast food fodder. Just cause you went to school and got a comp Sci degree does not mean you will not use windows, MacOs, BeOs, Bsd or something else.

Also I find that a bigger demographic of people who use Linux defiantly do not match what you said above. Quite a few of my clients utilize something Unix based for the fact that the system's they utilize to this day started off on AIX, VAX, HP-UX or some other flavor of UNIX (Before MS was even networking). I saw this argument from somewhere else in an article and there really was a lack of basis for any of it.

Got me, just my two cents. One day I hope everything will be cross platform. Would remove issues with testing or having to implement multiple systems because something only uses xxx os.

[echo1]

So are you saying that ArmA should be open sourced as well?

[Herbal Influence]

Yeah, but how many people can you sell a game to at a retail store and expect them to head out to a community forum for support. They will go to the vendor right off or just demand a refund. Major retailers will drop that publisher/vendor if things like this happened. While you're thinking may be somewhat OK for people who are good with computers; you just end up cutting out a huge demographic of players.

I understand and appreciate.
But if you look at our community of BI gamers: They're having fun with tweaking things. It's like in the ol' days they were modding their bikes 'n cars ... ;-)

But sure, they, the market, should be prepared indeed:
It shouldn't be sold as bugfree, but "open" instead.
There is a lot of "communication" to be done - a genious marketing concept must accompany the whole thing.

Ubuntu itself is absolutely stable, especially when you are giving it only one task, which should be done: Run Arma3.

Linux Distros suck when you want to use exotic hardware and there is no driver at all, sure. But that must be communicated, is not BIS problem: It's a surplus that you can print, surf the internet with Firefox, email with "Evolution" etc. etc. - all "with your Arma3" ! ;-))

Also education does not lean towards a specific OS, or computer. you might be amazed how many of the brightest people use systems for other reasons than cost or dependency. Even more funny is that there are quite a few people who are really good with computer systems yet tend to be more distant from the current education system. Aka people who dropout and lack a full education but are in all honesty quite brilliant in their own ways. So that person would be labeled as uneducated and fast food fodder. Just cause you went to school and got a comp Sci degree does not mean you will not use windows, MacOs, BeOs, Bsd or something else.

You are absolutely right.
But on the other hand: Those I described exist too.
I have seen Linux addicted academics in UK, France and Germany.
They are hardcore, they can "speak" - meaning, they will be able and willing to create a lobby for freedom and Linux.
It's not that I don't also see the people you describe.
But are they as "loud", as "verbal"?
I wish they are - don't know too much of that group, but I hope they are.
They only have to get rid of their Stockholm syndrome relating to their closed and proprietary software

Also I find that a bigger demographic of people who use Linux defiantly do not match what you said above. Quite a few of my clients utilize something Unix based for the fact that the system's they utilize to this day started off on AIX, VAX, HP-UX or some other flavor of UNIX (Before MS was even networking). I saw this argument from somewhere else in an article and there really was a lack of basis for any of it.

Well ... my view is the German universities which all full of people engaged in Linux - many frustrated by proprietary software, because it simply cannot be studied for it is a black box and is a big dependency with no chance to overcome it ever.

Got me, just my two cents. One day I hope everything will be cross platform. Would remove issues with testing or having to implement multiple systems because something only uses xxx os.

Ok - and free, at least the basic systems, the operation systems ... which is an answer to ...

So are you saying that ArmA should be open sourced as well?

... no, I understand perfectly well, that BIS only has a chance with leaving it proprietary. And I don't see a problem in this whereas I don't like Microsoft to be proprietary. For some good reasons: Microsoft is a defacto-monopolist and it has problems with the laws every now and then, because it seems it wants to raise it's monopoly to 101 %.
Developed a nice software?
Don't dare not to deliver a Microsoft Main Version of it - or go bankcrupt.

That's reality all over the world in 1980 - 2010, for more than 30 years now.

I think people would get nervous if they would see only BMWs down the streets ...

The rules can be different in these ways for BIS:

BIS is a niche game developer.
It can go on earning little money with private consumers, and more money with military all over the world.

But it could only make a revolution of the market - the way I described it.

OFP has been revolutionary.
BIS has a tendency to genious thinking.

If 90 % of the economy and the private people use BIS games everyday I would say: BIS ! You earned enough, it's an obligation to society to deliver the sourcecode.

But not before.

[echo1]

I understand and appreciate.
But if you look at our community of BI gamers: They're having fun with tweaking things. It's like in the ol' days they were modding their bikes 'n cars ... ;-)

But they probably don't make up the majority of people who buy the game. And not everyone who likes making missions or mods is that computer literate... You're going to put people off because of reasons that boil down to "lol, open source strong!!111"

Ubuntu itself is absolutely stable

Bullshit. In my experience, very few serious Linux users go anywhere near the thing, it just breaks too much. Once one of their releases comes out, it invariably has a load of bugs or some half-baked feature that has been rushed out before it's ready (Pulseaudio, some of the HAL replacement stuff etc.). You wait six months, and... more bugs. Not to mention the reams of bloatware it gets shipped with. I ran Ubuntu on my PC between 2006-2007 and on my laptop between 2008-2009, and in both cases, it was just problem after problem. I know many other Linux users who had the same issues as I did, so it wasn't some isolated problem, or my incompetence. Oh, and in both instances, they suddenly disappeared when I switched to Arch.

The great dilemma with Linux is that all the good ones (e.g. Arch, Debian, Slackware and others) require the user to know what they're doing, and all the easy ones are often as bad if not worse than Windows (especially given the release of Windows 7, which is a great OS whether you like MS or not). This isn't a co-incidence - when you have to configure everything from scratch, you end up building a system that works in just the way you want. Contrast this with Ubuntu, Fedora et al. where they try and second guess how everyone wants their system to work which causes all sorts of problems and is a lot of work to undo. I'm involved in a society in college that promotes *nix usage, and we have the problem that when people want to know what to try to get familar with Linux, we have to recommend them Ubuntu, despite the fact that none of use it, and most of us hate it. In a sense, we're like the drug dealer who starts someone off on hash so that we can sell them heroin later... but that's another story.

Linux Distros suck when you want to use exotic hardware and there is no driver at all, sure. But that must be communicated, is not BIS problem: It's a surplus that you can print, surf the internet with Firefox, email with "Evolution" etc. etc. - all "with your Arma3" ! ;-))

So you're saying that BIS is just going to magically convince all the hardware vendors to come out with open source drivers? Not going to happen.

Truth be told, Linux works good with exotic hardware, it just doesn't work well with obscure El-Cheapo Brand stuff for which there are no drivers available. Same stuff is going to have bad Windows drivers too so you're better off avoiding it.

You are absolutely right.
But on the other hand: Those I described exist too.
I have seen Linux addicted academics in UK, France and Germany.
They are hardcore, they can "speak" - meaning, they will be able and willing to create a lobby for freedom and Linux.
It's not that I don't also see the people you describe.
But are they as "loud", as "verbal"?
I wish they are - don't know too much of that group, but I hope they are.
They only have to get rid of their Stockholm syndrome relating to their closed and proprietary software

As I said, I'm involved with people who are very interested in Linux, but not many of them are into the hardline interpretation of open source. I think most people lose interest in that sort of stuff around the point where they can't use proper drivers for their hardware or video codecs because they're not "free as in freedom". There are plenty of pragmatic reasons for using open source and Linux, but subscribing to the cult of RMS is not really one of them.

Well ... my view is the German universities which all full of people engaged in Linux - many frustrated by proprietary software, because it simply cannot be studied for it is a black box and is a big dependency with no chance to overcome it ever.

Right, but you're talking about a commercial product here... what percentage of potential ArmA customers have those interests? Very few I'm willing to bet.

[Herbal Influence]

Thanx for your learned answer!

You are absolutely right that the future customers have to be invented in a way - like always when you plan a revolution of the market like Rynair and quite all other revolutionary products.

You even have to put into account that the proprietary software sellers - don't like to call them developers for little has been developed by them, but much if not most by others - fight you - like they used to do.

(Sure, you know that windows weren't developed by Microsoft - but how many still do?
Microsoft forbids everyone to even use the word "windows" for own software!)

Since 2004 I am running Linux (first Suse, than Ubuntu) on more than four 24h/7days professionally used desktop computers used as desktop computers in the sense of enduser everydays work.
As I said I know kids and people 67+ using Ubuntu without frowning continuously.
Stable 24h/7days - with no more support than you need doing Microsoft OSs.

But - I admit - the average Linuxer, who is mostly a parttime techfreak, is maybe not even the one who would consent with me. For one simple reason:

They are steadily "interpreting" the "never change a running system" into "daily try something new" and so they steadily have something to tweak.
The outcome is that especially the Linuxfreakz have a worse opinion of Ubuntus stability than the simple professional enduser.

Microsoft7 seems to be really great - compared to Vista.
To call Microsoft7 a great OS is, now only using your language, bullshit.

Not only in terms of freedom and security which you might take more serious?
Just take a short look into the Microsoft7-forums and see the helpless community tweaking around.

I see no advantage at all under professional aspects (using it in enterprise or governments, like in France) compared Ubuntu 9.10 or even 10.04 but many and basic disadvantages.

Do you know what data is transfered - let's say 'in the background' - to Microsoft?
Sure, if you believe them.
Can you proof it?
Why don't they allow you to control it? Why do they encrypt the data send?
Why don't you get a copy of the files sent not even as an option?
Etc. etc. - for professionals that are by law required to keep their data secure that's quite a serious thing. What about a lawyer having a law suit against Microsoft and his OS phoning "in the background" with Microsoft encrypted?

We know the last porn you watched.

And delivering the last used files - like the ms-mediaplayer did regularly at last in the versions about 2002? There was no laymens possibility to stop the MS-mediaplayer from doing this, no deinstallation possible, even "Antispy" couldn't hinder it! It's an inevitably part of the OS they said, like the IE!
We are more informed today? Wasn't it a lie?
(I don't know if Microsoft still has this practise but I never read they stopped it.)

>Not to mention the reams of bloatware it gets shipped with.

Got no bloatware with Ubuntu 9.04, 9.10 oder 10.04 at all, but got a lot of that with OEM Microsoft 95, 98 and MicrosoftXP.
Don't you remember switching all the "demo" and "advertising software" off after you started your OEM Microsoft PCs?

And there is not much space for bloatware on simple Ubuntu-CD (incl. OpenOffice!) for installation - but a lot on the DVD Microsoft ships it's OS.

>In a sense, we're like the drug dealer who starts someone off on hash so that we can sell them heroin later... but that's another story.

You could do much worse.

Sure freedom is never for free.
Nothing seems easier than buying a preinstalled Apple/Microsoft computer thingie and thereby accept rigid DRM and wave standards.

Freedom is a chance to take.
Freedom is something you have to care for.

But my idea for BIS is:
Take the chance of a revolution coming - before others do.
You are used to that kind of philosophy.
Make money of it.

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

For BIS this means:
You have the possibility to really get control of what's going on technically.
No more secrets, no more fishing in the fog.
No more begging a monopolist to do this or that.
Or not to do this or that.