NEWS: X2: The Threat for LINUX - order in our online shop

[BurnIt!]

Order X2: The Threat for LINUX in our Online Shop now!

More than 20 years have passed since Kyle Brennan, test pilot of the X-Shuttle, was catapulted into unexplored space.
Now, take up the role of Julian Gardna, convicted of the theft of a transport ship, and given a second chance. From this point on, the choices are all yours.

In the immersive universe of X2, there are no rules. Return to a life of piracy and crime, build your own trading empire, join the ranks of mercenaries, or become an ace combat pilot, commanding a fleet of starships from the bridge of your carrier. Any path is open to you.
If you wish to, follow the evolving storyline, and take your place among the greats of the universe, or blaze your own path to glory.

But beware. Something is moving in the remote areas of the galaxy.

X2 features stunning graphics, beyond anything seen before in the space genre.
Open ended gameplay allows you to choose your path freely, in a universe that would take you almost 2 days playing time just to fly from one end to the other. Pilot any of over 60 classes of ship ranging from the tiny Argon Discoverer, a one man fighter, all the way to the Teladi Albatross, a huge carrier class ship over 2km long, capable of carrying a squadron of fighters, all at your command.
A complex yet intuitive interface allows complete control of your empire. Be it a trading fleet of merchant vessels flying between the factories and stations littering space, or a fighter wing of deadly Split Raptors.



System Requirements:

Operating System: 2.2.x or better Linux kernel with glibc-2.1 or later and X-Windows (XFree86 3.3.x or later)
Processor: 1.2 GHz x86 Processor
Memory: 256 MB
Disc Space: 1.4 GB
Optical Drive: 1 x DVD Rom
Graphics Card: Hardware Accelerated 3D Graphics card with 64 MB video memory
Sound Card: OSS or ALSA Compatible

Fore more information visit LinuxGamePublishing.com

[=VipeR=]

Im not using linux wright now but im very courious about performance and controler compatibility, if any one is going to try it, please post your impressions, thanks.

[eladan]

Much as I love the idea (and I do - I'd dearly love to see more games written for linux, especially of this quality) I can't see myself digging into my pockets for another copy of this just to play it under linux - particularly this long after it was released on Windows, with X3 taking up so much of my time. Give us a choice at release time, and it would be a different story...

I hope it sells well, but I suspect it won't. And none of us will really know how popular it would have been.

[bobioman]

oh wow...i really hope egosoft didn't spend any time on this when they should be spending time on adding more features and updates to X3 like they promised us when we purchased the game. So far there have been mostly just updates to fix things in the game, not much has really been added to the game. I swear I remember reading something about "future content upgrades" either on the box or in the manual...how many months has it been now?

[pjknibbs]

Egosoft didn't write the Linux port, so no, they didn't "waste" any time doing this.

[jlehtone]

Two obvious questions:
1. BonusPack
2. Savegame compatibility


If we do want to see more/any games on the Linux platform, we have to pay. Money is the only signal for the publisher to recognise that such effort pays off.

[nirwin]

I never owned X2, so I have bought X2:the threat for linux, and have had it a couple of weeks now (got it from tuxgames.com).

I don't know about savegame compatability (send me a savegame to find out) and nor have I downloaded the bonus/content from this site to test it out (it may even be included, I think the game is installed as patch 1.4
However the bonus content should work, as it is all XML based, and as we all know XML is a beautiful multi-platform Markup Language.

Performance-wise I am running it on Mandriva 2006 (KDE environment configured to be beautiful) with an AMD Athlon XP3200+, a GeForece 6800 256Mb and 1.5Gb RAM, and a SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZX platinum soundcard. This gives a generally nice FPS with the occasional stutter, which is most noticeable in FMV's.

The port itself is very well done, nothing seems out-of-place, nothing seems to have been done with a half-hearted effort, there are no ReadText problems like the demo had.
I cannot say about controller issues as I am just using keyboard and mouse (which really sucks in X2, hurrah for X3), but both those controllers work fine, my assumption would be if your peripheral (joystick/gamepad) is linux compatible and there are no known problems with it and X2 (and you can get the peripheral recognised by linux) then it should work.

Bringing a game to more than one platform is not a 'waste' it is simply aiding free choice, and I for one think that is a fantastic and noble goal.

I bought this game to add to my rapidly expanding linux game archive because i love X and wanna play it in linux, I want to encourage future linux game development (especially in the world of X) and I wanted to play the plot of X2. And I must say despite the price tag for such an old game I am happy with the purchase.

Thank you Ego/Enlight/Deepsilver/LGP, basically anyone who had a hand in allowing this to come to pass. But I agree that a same-day release for each platform would be preferable, I would certainly buy X3, X4, X5 for linux, so come on Ego, make your code platform independent, or get LGP in on the ground floor so they can be ready to release a version soon after the official 'Windoze' release.

Buy it, support linux gaming, support X.

[=VipeR=]

Thanks nirwin for your feedback, that was realy informative.

[CBJ]

Regarding savegame compatibility, savegames should be compatible between different platforms (provided both are 1.4) but that cannot be absolutely guaranteed and as far as I know has not been tested.

Regarding the bonus pack, again, the scripts should be cross-compatible. However, the installer almost certainly won't be so you'd need to extract the files first on a Windows PC and then copy them accross.

Regarding platform-independence and same-day release, I'm afraid that is extremely unlikely. It simply isn't practical to move away from DirectX, nor is it practical for third party companies to start porting code that is still under heavy development prior to release.

[nirwin]

[busby1968]

Ill like to say well done to ehosoft for allowing a linux port of X2. I hope X3 will also be ported to linux. Linux is an up and coming gaming plaform but should be a lot further on if sony decided to ever help the open source community. Anyway might buy it alought I still vmware linux and not have a sperate harddrive for it so it will affect performance and the direct X API is better then the open GL one in my opion(A lot easier to code with).

[esd]

[elmy]

Can't beleive that. That would keep many hi-end media production software (eg Maya, 3ds max, AfterEffects, ...) from operating on Vista. Plus most professional graphics cards are even optimized for running OpenGL. Up until now, it was up to the gfx card producers to provide OpenGL drivers. How could ms possibly stop them and get away with it ?

EDIT: I just checked the beta-driver offeed by nvidia. They are advertised to contain OpenGL support.

[nirwin]

[Cycrow]

well, being a programmer in both opengl and directx, i have to say that OpenGL is the better API.

and ID software must think so as they always use opengl