egosoft.com

Applications are now closed. Thanks to everyone who responded. We have found someone and are coordinating the work now. Please understand that it will take some time before we will have further news to share on this subject.

Do you have OpenGL skills and experience of porting tools such as SDL? If so then we may have a little job for you...

Although there have been third-party Linux ports of some of the X series games in the past, we have decided that the time has come to bring all that good stuff in-house. There are various reasons for this, but most importantly it will allow us to offer a unified product on Steam, so that you can buy our games once and then play them on different platforms.

Starting from an existing port of X3:Reunion, we are looking for someone to help us build on that and enable us to release our own ports of X3:Terran Conflict and X3:Albion Prelude.

Requirements:
• Excellent C and C++ programming skills
• Good knowledge of OpenGL
• Experience of SDL and Gtk a definite advantage (XCode too!)
• Experience of other relevant libraries (e.g. multi-media) also useful
• Steam account (experience with the Steam API would be a bonus)
• Access to hardware and appropriate programming tools
• Willingness to set up and test on a range of OS platforms and distributions
• Ability to communicate at a technical level in English

Interested? Send your CV to Bernd at jobs@egosoft.com and we'll take a look!

I don't have the skills, but I will certainly forward this to a number of people I know that does.

It's great to see this as I love the X-games and use Ubuntu as my primary platform.

Oh, I'm so holding my thumbs up for this.

If you need testers - count me in, I'm a long term linux user, I would so want to play X3 natively on linux.

This is great news indeed!

Broken link. The link to first unread post for this thread actually transfers to the cut thread in a different forum instead of this one.

< There is no in-thread link. The OP has an e-mail address for CVs and applications.
Yes some off topic chat was split and moved to a thread in the Off Topic forum and you may be tracking that instead. Alan Phipps>

Will the OSX version also move into 'steamplay' as a complete unified product, or does the licensing arrangement restrict it? any plans for this in the future? - sorry if this is OT.

Sad to say that, but OpenGL performance is much worse than DirectX... Or previous ports were horrible.

OpenGL certaintly isn't slower than Direct3D

and according to value, its faster
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/08/04/linux ... s-version/

midenok wrote:Sad to say that, but OpenGL performance is much worse than DirectX... Or previous ports were horrible.

Depends on the implementation and a number of other factors.

Looking at it from a technical stand-point, when coding using OpenGL you typically have to do more work yourself as DirectX tends to be a little more abstract.

Saying that, what evidence do you have to substantiate your claim?

Roger L.S. Griffiths wrote:

midenok wrote:Sad to say that, but OpenGL performance is much worse than DirectX... Or previous ports were horrible.

Depends on the implementation and a number of other factors.

Looking at it from a technical stand-point, when coding using OpenGL you typically have to do more work yourself as DirectX tends to be a little more abstract.

Saying that, what evidence do you have to substantiate your claim?

As Griffith said, there is a huge number of circumstances were opengl and directx could be compared but then could not be compared. opengl has its own factor's and ups and downs

For example. you could look at a game on linux such as minecraft and say the graphics are awful, opengl sucks etc

Then look at a game called "Oilrush" and notice the water tessellation and high end shadowing and say its amazing

Along with that.

This decision is excellent news for gamers on linux especially since most linux gamers enjoy sandbox based games. it just comes with the mindset

Ontop of that. with steam releasing a linux native client in the works
( YES IT IS DEFINATLY HAPPENING )

This is the perfect time for Egosoft to work with steam and release X3 on steam and linux

My advice to egosoft. contact steam's departement and developement team, they claimed that they will port any games that a company wants ported for them as long as it supported by valve/steam

And organise there help in the project

I just hope that. if you already own the windows version that you dont need to rebuy the game for linux

CBJ wrote:so that you can buy our games once and then play them on different platforms.

Considering that Mac OS is currently supported on Steam, do you think that you might also want to create Mac ports in the future? Or would you still leave it to VP?

I might even be able to get a team of Mac devs together...

Wow...props to Egosoft. Not many worthwhile games on Linux.

Im guess that Valve has something to do with this... They are pissed with the Windows 8 Store and are pushing to support Linux...

Why GTK and not Qt? The latter is by far superior.

It could be for licensing reasons since QT versions newer than 2.1 incure a license cost if you use it commercially where as GTK is completely free/LGPL.

[EDIT]Newer than 2.1 I meant, NOT older - [/EDIT]

Qt older than 4.0 is not relevant anymore

SkyBon wrote:Qt older than 4.0 is not relevant anymore

I meant newer, still waking up

Although I have some rudimentary programming skills, they are far from enough to even think about doing a windows port to Linux. A shame really. I will however give this information to the local Linux user groups I know..

Seen in this light I now understand why the licenses for X2 and X3 for LGP (Linux Game Publishing) are retracted. I really hope X:Rebirth is not the only title that will be running under Linux. I would LOVE to see X3:TC and X3:AP running under Linux..

I am really curious how this will turn out...

CBJ wrote:Starting from an existing port of X3:Reunion, we are looking for someone to help us build on that and enable us to release our own ports of X3:Terran Conflict and X3:Albion Prelude.

@JClosed: It is TC/AP that they are working on for Linux not X-Rebirth (though the latter may still be on the cards)

Roger L.S. Griffiths wrote:It could be for licensing reasons since QT versions newer than 2.1 incure a license cost if you use it commercially.

No you don't unless you modify Qt and don't disclose changes. In fact, you can choose to use Qt as GTK (LGPLv2.1) or GPLv3 or commercial license.