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Games Entertainment

Live CD for PC Games? 110

Posted by Cliff from the why-not? dept.
Onion asks: "Can anyone inform me why games developers don't put out games on a 'Knoppix' style live CD? This would negate coding the games for different PC platforms. Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch, the game could be coded using GNU/Linux for development and would run on any PC machine, regardless of OS. Only major drawback I can see would be the need to 'reboot' each time to play. Any thoughts or views on 'why not' ?"
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Live CD for PC Games? More

Live CD for PC Games?

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  • Here's the catch (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xagon7 ( 530399 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:26PM (#7030474)
    "Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch"

    Hardware, ESPECICALLY gaming hardware changes so frequently, that it would be difficult to support you gam ein a few years, it would possibly be unplayable on newer hardware.

    FP
    • im starting to get tired of having to buy all new hardware every few months.

      this might be a good thing(tm). since newer hardware would be possibly incompatible with the game. it could either slow down hardware progression (very unlikely) or force hardware manufactures to be more versitle and allow better backwards compatiblity with older drivers. (maybe)

      • Re:Here's the catch (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @12:31AM (#7031146) Journal
        im starting to get tired of having to buy all new hardware every few months.

        So don't.

        The good games that were produced a couple of years ago haven't lost any of their goodness. If you want to sit on the bleeding edge and deal with expensive hardware, issues with new systems coming out, and constantly upgrade, and "beta test" all new games coming out. The only reason to sit right on the edge is because marketing is forcing you ("August 28th, the world will fear...Warcraft IV!") to do so. Just ignore it.

        It's better to view the PC market as a system where the current set of games is a beta test for what you *will* be playing in a year or so, at the earliest. That way, all the bugs (savegame corruption, random crashes, getting stuck) are ironed out, frequently expansions get bundled with the main game for free, there are good strategy resources out, the hardware is cheaper, and you don't spend all your time on the bleeding edge. It's called "bleeding" for a reason.

        Taking this to a probably more extreme extent than most would be willing, I just played Star Control 2 (via Ur-Quan Masters) and Majesty on Linux for the first time in the last month. Both tons of fun, and for both my PIII is a ridiculous powerhouse.

        You can play Half Life (great fun) and the expansions very smoothly on systems that people are throwing in the trash.

        It's just a difference between the PC and the console market. The console approach has everyone buy hardware, and then sit there for a couple years while the hardware stagnates. The PC approach is to make games with scalable effects, let people buy hardware when they want -- but make the games available overly early. Only the most fanatical of must-have-it-before-everyone-else gamers should purchase games at release date. Everyone else should just walk the path that they blaze.
        • 0x0d0a wrote:

          It's better to view the PC market as a system where the current set of games is a beta test for what you *will* be playing in a year or so, at the earliest. That way, all the bugs (savegame corruption, random crashes, getting stuck) are ironed out, frequently expansions get bundled with the main game for free, there are good strategy resources out, the hardware is cheaper, and you don't spend all your time on the bleeding edge. It's called "bleeding" for a reason.

          As a Mac user, I get to apply

        • Yeah, there are just so many benefits to waiting a year or more before playing any new game:

          - You get it for half the price.

          - The bugs have been worked out.

          - There are abundant cheats and tips available for free on the web if you need them.

          - You save a ton of money on hardware upgrades.

          I just started playing Diablo II a couple of months ago... I remember the anguish when it came out, the bleeding-edge hardware requirements. Well, now it runs on a dirt-cheap laptop. Ha!

          Or, if you want to be playing the

    • read updates off the HD (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:47PM (#7030958) Homepage
      The OS could, on boot, read update information off a directory on the hard drive. For that matter, if it were done cleverly, it might even be able to load its kernel image from it.

      The advantage of having control over the environment the game runs in is enormous. Of course, it also means the machine would be useless for background tasks, and no one could interrupt you with something more important...

      Aaah, who am I kidding; nothing's more important than the game! ph34r m3 l4m3rz! d13!

    • Re:Here's the catch (Score:5, Funny)

      by kinnell ( 607819 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @03:40AM (#7031850)
      Hardware, ESPECIALLY gaming hardware changes so frequently, that it would be difficult to support your game in a few years, it would possibly be unplayable on newer hardware

      In other words, this would only be feasible if there was a gaming PC with standardised hardware which couldn't be upgraded [xbox.com]

    • Hardware, ESPECICALLY gaming hardware changes so frequently, that it would be difficult to support you gam ein a few years, it would possibly be unplayable on newer hardware

      Exactly, this is a moving target. The moving target will obsolete your game when especially when you buy the next generations AGP card.

      Then there's the people who already have a Linux install. They would far prefer to install the game under their own environment rather than be tied into another dist, and a reboot to play the game.

      • Then there's the people who already have a Linux install. They would far prefer to install the game under their own environment rather than be tied into another dist, and a reboot to play the game.

        No. Not if it "just-works". I take no pleasure in fiddling around with obscure settings and installation breakups.

        Then there's the people who are anti open source and all things not Microsoft. To purchase a game tied to Linux would be anathema.

        Oh yeah... As if anyone cares what kind of OS is running your la

        • Oh yeah... As if anyone cares what kind of OS is running your latest game in PS2.

          Yeah, as if. I really see that happening. Parent was refering to PC, not PS2 anyhow.
          • Puleaze! Read the whole post before replying and wasting my time.
          • Consoles are a good point.

            A lot of games are written using DirectX APIs. Perhaps someone who knows more about it can elaborate on this: Does writing a game in DirectX make it easier to port to the X-Box? I do believe the answer is yes.

            Also, if games came on bootable CD images, how would you patch them? Or add mods or other editing capabilities? Game distros that just come on a disc are what consoles are for to begin with.

    • Hardware, ESPECICALLY gaming hardware changes so frequently, that it would be difficult to support you gam ein a few years, it would possibly be unplayable on newer hardware.
      Ok that's bad news for some bleeding edge consumers. For the game producer though, being able to sell a hardware update version is a bonus.

  • why? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nuggetman ( 242645 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:26PM (#7030475) Homepage
    Because most games don't even fit on a single CD for one OS, let alone a Win/*nix/Mac combo setup... even a DVD is probably too small.

    Plus I don't wanna reboot my system to play games.
    • Actually, the Multi-OS combo would probably not make much difference. Compared to the (architecture agnostic) game data, the OS-specific game binaries are usually tiny. That is why "hybrid" CDs are so common (probably more common than separate versions, nowadays), and why you can use any Quake 3 CD to install on any supported OS. The "update" contains everything but one huge game-data file.
    • last time I checked a DVD contained several gigabytes, it'd guess most games don't require more than a few gigabytes, ie. 2-3 gigabytes, and your windows installation doesn't require much more than 1 gigabyte just to play the game...
      Still well within the reach of a DVD... most games would probably fit on a CD too... Enemy Territory is only like 270M installed on my linux box...

      That could easily be burned on one CD including a stripped down knoppix/gnoppix system...

    • Because most games don't even fit on a single CD for one OS, let alone a Win/*nix/Mac combo setup... even a DVD is probably too small.

      There's no reason why you couldn't swap discs during game play. I mean, that's how game consoles work with regards to multidisc games, you know? Besides, any game that doesn't fit on a single CD probably has bucketloads of crappy FMV, anyway. :P

      I agree with you on the reboot issue, though. I wouldn't want to reboot just to play a game.

    • Re:why? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Wolfrider ( 856 )
      --Why you spoiled little--!

      --Where were you when DOS 5.x was around, and you HAD to reboot to play games? That was the only way to get all the memory optimizations and your sound card working!

      --Where were you when Win95 came out, and you had to boot INTO DOS to play most games?

      --Where were you when Win98 came out, and you had to reboot AFTER playing Solitaire??

      --Where were you when OS/2 came out, and you could format a floppy while looking around for nonexistent drivers for your hypothetical games?

      --W

  • Hardware detection routines (Score:3, Funny)

    by Ondo ( 187980 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:28PM (#7030481)
    The hardware detection routines wouldn't be up to scratch. Most notably, detecting hardware that hasn't been made yet is a bit difficult.

  • Many reasons. (Score:4, Informative)

    by NotoriousQ ( 457789 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:29PM (#7030488) Homepage
    • they would have to include drivers for the all the hardware, games need to run on.
    • how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.
    • Games frequently use swap, but with no OS, they have no facilities to make their swap files.
    • There is a part of the game that needs to be accessible at all times. (AKA binaries, dlls) Those will need to be placed into some kind of ramdisk for multidisk games
    Do you think the OS is there for nothing?

    • Re:Many reasons. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by n.wegner ( 613340 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:04PM (#7030685)
      >as well as the OS they have to include.... but with no OS

      That's nonsensical. The whole point is that it does include the OS, and even you agree to that.

      >drivers for the all the hardware

      That is impractical. Including almost every driver that a Windows install cd does would be more sensible. I think Knoppix is already at that stage, but I haven't tried it. You can always play in your existing OS installation if it doesn't have the drivers you need.

      >how about all the libraries. DirectX et al is not tiny, as well as the OS they have to include.

      Last I checked, most Windows games ship with a copy of DirectX, so that library isn't much of a problem. The CD has to have all the drivers, the kernel, OpenGL, X, SDL, etc. but thankfully doesn't need a desktop environment or most of the misc. apps that typical distro has. How large would it be? I'd say less than 50 MB, but who knows. The gentoo game cd is, what, a 130 MB download including the UT2k3 demo? Compressing it on CD is always an option.

      >Games frequently use swap

      Knoppix can use existing swap partitions (or format its own). In most cases, the user probably has enough ram to run the game, though, so swap isn't a huge deal. If not, they'd need swap no matter where they boot from.

      >some kind of ramdisk for multidisk games

      What of it?

      • Re:Many reasons. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MattCohn.com ( 555899 )
        >>as well as the OS they have to include.... but with no OS
        >That's nonsensical. The whole point is that it does include the OS, and even you agree to that.

        Yah, let's go ahead and show the whole quote now, shall we?
        "Games frequently use swap, but with no OS, they have no facilities to make their swap files."
        He meens an OS to handle the file system. I'd like to see you put a swap file onto a CD-ROM. What's ROM stand for again?

        >>drivers for the all the hardware
        >That is impractical. Includ

        • Re:Many reasons. (Score:3, Interesting)

          by n.wegner ( 613340 )
          >You are right, most people can get video with
          >drivers out of the box from Windows. They get
          >640x480 with 16 colors and a *BEEP* from the PC
          >Speaker for sound.

          My Windows XP CD has drivers for most of the common motherboards, graphics cards, and sound cards. I've never had a problem with it finding them, and it even recognized a card that I couldn't. As I said, if you need other drivers you could just boot your normal OS installation.

          >Most Windows games DO have the DirectX INSTALLER
          >on th
          • > My Windows XP CD has drivers for most of the
            > common motherboards, graphics cards, and sound
            > cards

            I'll give you that with each version of windows, they include more and more drivers, but obviously the CD won't have the most recent ATI/nVidia drivers. NP, just download them and install them, then reboot. Wait, how do I write to this freakin' Read Only Memory?

            That problem aside, one of the reasons that OS's come with installers is because they're smaller, they run once, and they make it easy t

        • Re:Many reasons. (Score:1, Redundant)

          by Wolfrider ( 856 )
          --I would bet the game only requires that much RAM because:

          o It's designed to run only under Windows XP
          o XP has **horrendous** MINIMUM memory requirements.

          --This is one reason why lots of people are investigating Linux - because it gives them a way out of the Wintel upgrade cycle.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:30PM (#7030490)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • yeah.. selfboot games were a choice on pc too once..

      when you expected everyone to have a floppy drive and cga for gfx.

      selfboot games have ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE on pc now, you lose everything that makes the pc a pc if you go that route and the abstraction of the hardware is what makes things work on multiple hw configurations.
    • But games manufacturers can't redistribute Windows

      They can if MS licences their code. This would be fantastic for MS. They'd be able to demand a license fee for every copy of a game that was ever produced.

      Most games developers have enough to think about without having to build an OS "installer" too

      It would be a standard kit. Just copy the OS to the CD, name your executable Game.exe, and it just runs.

    • Microsoft has done more than get help from hardware manufactures. They have activly forced hardware manufactures to give up on some stupid designs. You can't put a designed for windows sticker on a PC if you have ISA slots. You have to have USB. And a lot of other restrictions designed to get rid of old hardware that was hard to detect and replace it with new hardware that is detectable. Linux benifits from this, on a new PC you can be sure that linux will correctly detect and identify all the hardw

  • Gentoo Games (Score:5, Informative)

    by _iris ( 92554 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:30PM (#7030496) Homepage
    They do. Look into Gentoo Games [gentoogames.com]
  • when half the games I had at that time required you to reboot the machine (then a 8088, IIRC), with the game floppy (five and a quarter inches) in the drive, to get 16 glorious colors of pixelated graphics.

  • Multi tasking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gehrehmee ( 16338 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:33PM (#7030516) Homepage
    Say goodbye to your msn/icq/aim/yahoo in the background... Unless of course the game developers started building in support for open-ended protocols like jabber, in which case a remote server could be handling things like providing legacy IM services and native jabber im.
    • and then they could add a word processor in the background too, and then a web browser! And then we could all run HalfLife2 OS!

      Basically, what we're talking about here is a vicious cycle. If you _really_ want to multitask while playing a game you're not going to want to do something silly like start bundling in frickin' IM protocols on your game just so some schmoe doesn't have to stop text messaging his friends while he's playing a game.
      • Aw, come on.

        What portion of the gaming market wants to be writing up text documents as they play? Who wants to read slashdot as they blow an avatar's head off?

        IM (in particular, presence) is something that alot of people would go for as something to sit idle while they play something else. Even more so if they have the opprotunity to wrap their traditional IM experience into an interface that's blended seamlessly into their gaming UI. (Eg, recieving messages via a HUD, quick replies via the keyboard).

        • XBox Live already lets you do this in a form far more seamlessly than typing. For a slower-paced strategy game I think that IM'ing would work fine, but for fast-paced games (Halflife 2, Doom III, etc.) it seems like it would take far more energy than its worth to type. However, one really cool thing (that certainly won't exist for a while) would be integrated speech recognition, allowing a textual log of different users' voice comments to be made during gameplay. Leaving this on a HUD would definitely prove

  • Drawbacks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by artios ( 524941 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:35PM (#7030535)

    Rebooting -- that is kind of a big one -- but people who have dual boot partitions do it all the time.

    Hardware Detection: We are talking about some serious driver databases here. Especially if you want to enable all the whistles available in each piece of hardware.

    There is a reason why we install an OS. So that every program/game doesn't have to redo what has already been done.

    If game developers were going to put that much effort into a game, they might as well just port their stuff to Linux and MacOs, and be done.

    Eventually, I think that is what will happen.

    • My top 3 reasons "why not" are rebooting, multitasking, and saving games. This Live CD thing keeps coming up over and over again and I maintain that is will not come around again (remember DOS based games from the early 90s) because it's a hassle for both the user and the publisher. I'm a Linux user and I'd love to see more Linux games but looking to Live CDs for salvation is a flawed solution. If we want to see wide spread availability of Linux / Mac / Win games them we need a full featured cross platform

  • They already do (Score:2, Insightful)

    by squant0 ( 553256 )
    Its called a console ;)
    You should really check them out, full blown computers made just for playing games.

    But seriously, because of the licencing on windows / directx and such, I think that unless many / all game developers decided to start using (what some may consider lower quality) open source / free drivers, that this isn't going to happen any time soon.
    Also, gamespy type 3rd party software wouldn't work, and irc clients for finding games may not be included either...

    I think a completely new OS, bu

  • Hardware support. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Vector7 ( 2410 )
    Why not? Sure "why not". The reason is hardware support (obviously) - trying to support everything in people's computers now would be an almost impossible task (Linux has a hard enough time doing this, imagine every little game developer having to attempt it..). And assuming you COULD manage that half, the major thing would be that you wouldn't work on any new hardware released after the game shipped, unless it tried real real hard to be compatible with older hardware at a low level. In the age of the "lega

  • reboot?! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by akudoi ( 568104 )
    Okay, lets say that the hardware dectection was there. I really don't think people want to reboot every time they want to play a game.

    Plus you couldn't multi-task you're games anymore either. granted, a lot of games you dont need too. however there were times where i would play counter-strike in window mode and multi-task back to a word doc or the net while i waited for the next round to start. as well as letting you run say, winamp in the background and mute ingame music.

    and just as im typing this. how w
    • I really don't think people want to reboot every time they want to play a game.


      I think they would, if it meant not having to deal with games hosing their OS installation, or being incompatible with their other installed software, and so on.
    • how would save games be handeled? you cant assume they have a HD if its a live cd.

      Yes you can. HDDs are pretty much universal on PCs.
      You'd need to have read/write drivers for FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, reiserFS, etc. But HDD is likely to be there, or at least some device that looks like a mass storage device. You'd need to support SCSI, IDE, USB and Firewire mass storage probably.

  • Obvious Reason #53 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by highcaffeine ( 83298 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:44PM (#7030591)
    What about game saves? Sure, it could possibly include drivers for the current filesystems (of course, NTFS r/w was/is still pretty sketchy under Linux last time I checked), and the boot process could seek out the current drives. Of course, they'd also need to be able to support all the ways people connect drives to their systems. If I'm saving my progress in a PC game right now, it doesn't matter whether I'm saving it to an IDE drive, SCSI, USB, Firewire, network share (Samba, NFS, Netware, etc.), or even battery-backed RAM disk.

    But, even assuming they could manage to handle all the currently supported filesystem types and all the ways of connecting them that already exist, what happens when new FS types come along? "Sorry, sir, but your machine is too new for our game to be able to provide you the ability to save your progress." I don't think that will cut it.
    • Game saves is an interesting problem, I wonder how suitable those old password or symbolic systems are for storing progress in a complex game.

      Theres always USB keychain drive or something publishers could include / recommend.

      You had to buy a memory card (iirc) to save games on Playstations and some Nintendo, so its not so outlandish perhaps.
      • " I wonder how suitable those old password or symbolic systems are for storing progress in a complex game."

        Simple - they aren't.

        Sure, theoretically you can pack a lot of information into a set of patterns, but have you looked at how big some save games are these days? Running into MBs, or even tens of MB, is not unusual, and fitting that into a password or a pattern would be well-nigh impossible. You could get away with it for simple episodic gameplay where the player's inventory is predetermined at he st
    • Or the CD could make a partition (or even you put the CD in the drive in your OS, run the propor tool, and it creates it for you), and ALL your game saves go there. Game saves are relativly small, unless you have hundreds of games, 500-1000MB ought to be enough.
    • Duh: save it online! Mirabilis finally realised that with reinstalls, mobility, etc. people would prefer their ICQ lists to be saved on a central server -- all those reasons also apply to game settings and savegames. Never mind just continuing on another machine, highly customised games like Tribes 1 are unplayable under someone else's configuration. And once you start sticking things online, the possibilities are endless; eg: I can let you take a look at my beautiful SimCity in read-only mode.

  • Defeats the Point of the Platform (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Prien715 ( 251944 ) <agnosticpope@@@gmail...com> on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:50PM (#7030613) Journal
    Two issues (other than HW support):

    1) I don't know about any of the other slashdot gamers out there, but I'm seldom only doing one thing at a time. I'm usually on some sort of IM client and if the game I'm playing isn't networked, I may download something at the same time or may even play an mp3. If I wanted to check my e-mail every 15 minutes, that'd mean a reboot every 15 minutes. No thanks.

    2) Patches. One of the unique parts of the PC platform is that if there's a bug, you can patch it. Buring a CD multiple times is a pain. If the game is even remotely network capable, it's a must to be able to patch to help prevent extensive cheating/hacking.
    • If you can afford the CPU power and bandwidth to multitask, then why don't you just buy a headless box to do that shit for you? But more seriously, if the game has a rich enough scripting engine, users can add all sorts of stupid features. Tribes 1, for example, can have ICQ integrated into the HUD.

      The patch problem can be solved by mailing out replacement CDs, which makes the whole idea interesting because it benefits both customers and producers:

      Producers don't have to worry about setting up mirrors and

  • Game Consol. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mohhomad ( 638585 )
    Why not use the idea of a liveCD and somehow work it into a game consol. You don't have to worry about hardware support because the hardware is standard, but you get the benefit of having better versions or tweaked versions of the linux kernel for each game and an easy environment to design games in rather than specialized hardware or software that has a steep learning curve. As a sidenote this would allow you to play games from independant studios that might not have money for licencing fees or developme
    • As a sidenote this would allow you to play games from independant studios that might not have money for licencing fees or development hardware.

      Not if you don't pay the licencing fees to get it signed, it won't.

  • Security also a concern (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SpaFF ( 18764 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @10:54PM (#7030635) Homepage
    What happens when there is an exploit in something like the TCP stack that is used by the kernel that the bootable cd is using? Then your machine is exploitable everytime you want to play your game. The game company isn't going to want to press another edition that fixes the exploit and replace the old copies on the shelf with it so that your machine will be safe.

  • Not such a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:09PM (#7030710)
    I appreciate the sentiment here, but what about forward compatibility? How would a game made today talk to the video card I buy in a year?

    I think that point has been established already. Another one that's been covered heavily is the reboot issue. I don't want to reboot just to play a game. I have consoles for that. If it's really that imperative to make a game like that, then why not make it under a virtual machine? Why not use something like VM-Ware or MAME? Make a game for MAME, and you're golden. Okay, there are limitations, but it works on everything down to a PocketPC.

    Gotta ask, though, why not just develop the games in Java?
    • Gotta ask, though, why not just develop the games in Java?

      Because it's too damn slow, too damn buggy, and is lacking vital features for an OO language like destructors (finalize is completely inadequate, since it's not called until GC occurs -- and GC timeliness is not specified in the Java spec).

      Yeah, I can see a cutting edge game like HL2 or D3 being written in Java. Fastest system available would get all of 10 fps.

      On the other hand, I completely agree with you for the reasons why the submittor's ques

  • One reason: Networked Multiplayer (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iCEBaLM ( 34905 ) on Monday September 22, 2003 @11:10PM (#7030726)
    Reconfiguring your network connection everytime you go to boot a game cause you can't save settings on a CD? that sucks...

  • good idea, but (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    why boot off a cd? hard drive space is cheap and minimal linux installs are tiny. just include a umsdos/loadlin option as a bonus on the main cd for those that want it (stability during important matches would be worth the reboot back to windows when you are done). The whole patches and save game thing ends too.
  • You want to run ICQ and rcon and all your fancy stuff in addition that makes owning a computer worthwhile in the background. Rebooting may be fast in NT, but hardware detection takes a long time, when it works. Including drivers for every interface can get expensive spacewise.

  • Reason? SPEED (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Joff_NZ ( 309034 )
    One major problem: CD-ROM drives are waay slower than harddisks.

    Remember when people used to do "minimal" installs of games to harddisk and have most of the game content on the CD?

    Doesn't really happen much anymore because the loading times are unbearable.
    • > One major problem: CD-ROM drives are waay slower than harddisks.

      > Remember when people used to do "minimal" installs of games to harddisk and have > most of the game content on the CD?

      > Doesn't really happen much anymore because the loading times are unbearable.

      does [xbox.com] it [playstation.com] really [nintendogamecube.com]?

      • I hated the PSX because of the LOADING... screens. You lose the fast-paced action of games when you don't have fast access to the media, like a cartridge.
  • Why stop at games? Why not do this with every application out there.
    Need to run OpenOffice? reboot the machine, wait 10 minutes for an OS to load as well as detect and configure the hardware.
    Now I need to email the document to someone, save it to floppy, pop in my Thunderbird CD and repeat the process.

    A platform is designed to get things working together and games need this too. Not to mention the massive needs for updates (while we're storing the whole game in RAM, let's try updating it while it's in ther
  • The only good thing (well, it's a bad thing really, but good for corporations that make monopolising operating systems (oops, was that too much of a finger-pointer?)), would be that they would be able to make billions more licensing their OS as a gaming platform for Live CDs to gaming companies and reducing support for developing games onto their other OSs (introduces the Gaming OS concept to squeeze more money outta you).
  • PlayStation II, XBox, GameCube. Take your pick.
  • So... I am going to reboot my machine to play a game? And how can I save my progress? And wouldn't it be dead slow unless I could cache the entire CD in RAM, but then I would need a lot more than 1GB, to leave some for the game...

  • Would there be problems with game saves?
  • Mods, new skins, all that sort of thing. Third party voice apps.

    These are all a bit FPS specific but I'm sure there is similare in other games.

    What about game patches and bug fixes?

    What about internet play? If you haven't got a routed broadband connection (and not everyone does) then you're a bit stuck, unless you want to specify your ISP details every time you play.

    Oh, and another point about save games - my hard disk is kinda formatted NTFS, so that's not going to happen anytime soon is it?
  • Back in my day, Linux ports of various games came out, but they were a commercial disaster and the porting work stopped :-( I did manage to scrape together enough money for 6 games in total, mostly all 3D shooters including the wonderful Quake III Arena.

    Quake III Arena came with a GPL'd SuSE Linux disk in the box, so you didn't even already have to have Linux installed, you could install the SuSE from CD.

    It would be cool if all games were like this: native UNIX/Linux software supplied with a Free OS in the

  • I have a feeling that many companies are worried that they will not be able to patch their code if they discover a bug 3 or 4 months down the line.... most (non-tech savy) customers are alright with d/ling a binary patch installer but do not want to d/l an iso and re-burn it.
  • - CDs are much slower than hard disks. Today's games push system specs and speed. This would make the game slower.
    - Because people like to multitask. The trend is towards letting people check their IMs/e-mail, without having to quit their games. Everquest for example used to disallow swapping out on purpose. A client hack came out to let you swap out and run in a window, EQ responded by adding functionality to let you swap out and run in a window. Do what your clients want.
    - Because no one else does. Introd

  • They have done this. Where have you been? (Score:3, Informative)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <`vasqzr' `at' `netscape.net'> on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @08:55AM (#7032928)
    You don't remember the Gentoo/Unreal Live CD [gentoo.org]?

    Unreal Tournament 2003 Gentoo Live CD

    Posted on 16th September 2002 by drobbins

    Epic Games' much-anticipated Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo is now available on a self-booting Gentoo Linux-based LiveCD, allowing you to play the Unreal Tournament 2003 Demo using any modern PC with an NVIDIA GeForce 2 or greater graphics card and a CD-ROM drive. Full networking, OSS sound and Creative Soundblaster Live! and Audigy support included, allowing for the full gaming experience including LAN/Internet play, EAX environmental audio and of course 3D accelerated OpenGL graphics. The CD also serves as a fully-functional Gentoo Linux installation CD. You can download the CD using this link [ibiblio.org].
    • --That was disappointing as hell, I wanted to run it on my Riva TNT2 card. :( Didn't know about the fancy Geforce requirement until just now when I read your quote.

      --Plus the layout of the CD wasn't exactly intuitive; I think the game itself was in /opt somewhere.
  • I have several...

    1) Booting from a CD means you would have to either read off a disk (hard drive, floppy), reburn/burn a CD, or store on the network. Reading/writing to the hard drive is all fine and good, unless you run Windows 2000 (or any NT derivative) which has the NTFS file system and is a pain in the ass to read/write without permission.

    2) Hardware has already been mentioned, so I won't beat the dead horse, but suffice to say that hardware configurations would be an issue...having to check and loa

  • Spawn (Score:3, Insightful)

    by _iris ( 92554 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @09:41AM (#7033256) Homepage
    I could definitely see games that are written for Linux offering this as a "spawn" copy (ala Diablo). Select the basic hardware configuration (e.g. IDE/SCSI, CPU type, video card) and it would create an ISO image to be burned to a CD/DVD. These would be awesome for LAN parties.

  • ...here is one about MAME:

    http://advancemame.sourceforge.net/cd-readme.html [sourceforge.net]

    There are links to other similar projects at the end of the page.

  • Easy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drsmithy ( 35869 ) <drsmithy&gmail,com> on Tuesday September 23, 2003 @10:13AM (#7033528)
    Can anyone inform me why games developers don't put out games on a 'Knoppix' style live CD?

    Because it's a daft idea. The only advantages it would offer would be to a tiny minority of people who aren't prepared to spend $50 on an OS (but are probably prepared to spend $LOTS on the latest and greatest hardware every year) while everyone else would suffer because of the disadvantages.

    This would negate coding the games for different PC platforms.

    No, it would not. It would merely negate writing a code for supporting a tiny portion of customers and substitute the much more difficult task of coding for the umpty-um million different combinations of PC hardware out there.

    A platform includes the software _and_ the hardware.

    Yep, I'd be chomping at the bit to return to the bad old days of wondering whether or not a flash new game was going to support my particular hardware combo.

    Provided the hardware detection routines were up to scratch, the game could be coded using GNU/Linux for development and would run on any PC machine, regardless of OS.

    No, it would almost certainly only run on the PCs that particular distro of Linux happened to support *at the time of the games release*.

    And, given that support of cutting-edge hardware favoured by gamers tends to be spotty under Linux at best, I think that would be a bloody stupid move on behalf of game developers.

    Only major drawback I can see would be the need to 'reboot' each time to play. Any thoughts or views on 'why not' ?"

    Oh, there's many more drawbacks than that. Having to reboot is relatively a minor one.

    Hardware support. Your game-on-a-CD is probably going to have huge problems with hardware released after it is.

    From the developers perspective, support would be an utter nightmare, largely because of the hardware support issues.

    No guarantee of convenient writable media - where are the saved games going to go ?

    Memory constraints. No guarantee of available swap space.

    Size constraints. Most games these days don't fit on a single CD.

    Having to reboot the machine to play games. That'll be *really* popular in a house where several people share the one machine.

    You basically want us to go back to the early 90s, when playing games meant having appropriately "compatible" hardware and having a custom boot disk for each game.

    Worst. Idea. Ever.

    If you want a console, buy a console. If you don't want to use Windows, be it for financial or philosophical reasons then accept the fact that this decision brings with it the consequence of a limited selection.

  • There are really two issues here.

    the first is that the amount of space available for hardware drivers (particuarly those that require a custom kernel module, like nvidia) is restricted - so a live-cd of the game would be similarly restricted; within those limitations though, it is more than just possible, but has been done; UT2003 demo was released on a bootable linux cd, for gforce (and a small selection of supported sound cards) which worked as well if not better than the windows demo version.

    the second

  • check here [playstation.com], here [nintendo.com], or here [xbox.com] for further reference.

    Thank you for playing.
  • 1 - Hardware detection. You bought the game and changed video card some time later... too bad

    2 - Game updates. You dont wanna burn a new CD just to apply a small patch

    3 - Game size. Some games spawn thru several CDs

    4 - Speed. Loading from CD is SLOW

    5 - The environment provided by the OS. You wanna play using AOL on dial-up? Too bad, they only support standart ISPs... What if you want to play w you network card/cable modem/some other geek way you found out to rig your PC to the internet...
  • I'm for the liveCD concept... but there are some good counterarguements.

    Here [slashdot.org] is the link to the first comment.
  • You've obviously spent a LONG time thinking about this, havn't you? Free clue: People buy video cards. Video cards require drivers. So, if you ever buy a video card made after the game, the game becomes instantly unplayable!

    Idiots.

    This is EXACTLY what hardware abstraction layers are supposed to fix. That's why we've got OpenGL and DirectX. Post less, think more.

  • There were a few EPYX games that were self-booting on 720k floppies. Provided you had 512k of physical RAM and a CGA card, you were all set.

    Made it tricky to break the copy-protection too, because the disk had bad sectors strategically placed, and it was a pain to disassemble the thing because it ran its own OS and everything.

  • What a bunch of MS shills!!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mabhatter654 ( 561290 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2003 @12:24AM (#7040669)
    I thought this was /.? I must be on ZDNet with all the worthless & unimaginative drones on the board!

    OK, let's start again!

    Let's start with Morphix/Knoppix as a base module. They are consistant and fairly stable in development. Next, lets set up the drives with stored configs, persistant home, and swap file...[note to self, may need winXP script to set up files in NT systems. As long as the file size is exactly the same Knoppix doesn't have a problem] Now adding an SDK for compatibility....Let's see both Morphix and Knoppix now support the idea of modules...precompiled & zipped up add-ons keyed to working with the disc. These would be useful for the SDK, and for the games. Again, they could sit on ANY file system. You could download new SDK modules to your HDD when you get new hardware! Knoppix is based on Debian which has execllent forward & backward compatiblity built in!! Knoppix suports External everything out of the box, USB keys, memory cards, external drives...storage of game saves is a moot point.

    WE have forward and backward compatiblity, removable storage, extensability of the game & OS. The only things missing are a few key bits of software. One would need to establish a very strict API [SDL perhaps] and carefully guide it for this purpose. There would need to be work done on the game end to optimize for varied requirememts/ best play.

    Overall, it's doable RIGHT NOW! So stop bitchin' about it! Try offering some constructive soulutions instead!!

  • network? (Score:2)

    by YE ( 23647 )
    Besides the other obvious arguments against pointed out in the thread, think about multiplayer games. The game would have to take care of making a connection - which means knowing about your wacky winmodem, or proprietary-protocol cable modem, and you'd have to enter a zillion settings every time you boot. Do you think it's okay to configure your network settings anew for each new application you run? That's what OSes are for.
  • I won't play online coop games without it. Until there's a suitable, universal, easily configurable in-game voice communication system, I'm not interested in going to the effort to reboot my PC to play one game, which I can quit my current game, and boot another one, without diconnecting my voice chat system.

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