Obligatory plug for my favourite HL1 mod: http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/
Edit: Yep, sure enough HL1 shows up in the Steam Linux CDR (http://cdr.xpaw.ru/linux/), and interestingly enough, so does Counter-Strike - albeit with the message "Not Marked for Linux"...
http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/178aev/valve_pushes_o...
Here are the main differences:
* Commanding is much less stressful. Giving the marines their own resources and the ability to buy their own weapons means you can focus more of your attention on just coordinating attacks and getting upgrades.
* Stalemates are much less common. In NS1 taking down the turret factory would mean that there's an opportunity for everyone to rush it to take the rest of the base, now every room has a power node in a fixed location that powers down all the structures when it is destroyed. This makes it much easier to force a beacon, and to end the game once the marines are down to their last base.
* Each class is much better balanced. Excellent Fades are no longer the sole backbone of a good team. Lerks now are useful at all skill levels. Exosuits are extremely powerful but very vulnerable when alone.
* Gorges are now a nice-to-have when building instead of absolutely necessary. This means they can be on the front-lines more often.
* Graphics (obviously) and very dynamic environments. The infestation spreading is beautiful, and taking the power down makes for some very tense moments.
Regarding NS2, graphics are sweet, but I do not like the gameplay changes coming from NS1. I literally thought NS1 was perfect, and NS:Source would have sold like hotcakes.
That being said, I did happen to stumble across NS2 Classic (http://ns2cmodpreview.com/), and was very intrigued. Search for "Classic" in the NS2 server browser and just connect to play it. I found one with just 3 people on it, so not much gameplay was to be had.
Long story short, it was everything it was advertised to be - it felt JUST like NS1, with additions where needed. There was even a ported NS1 map we were playing on (I think it was ns_eclipse), although the textures weren't done. It still needs lots of polish to be done, but man, is it promising.
Very promising though if NS2 classic takes off, and I think (hope) it will see more adoption as the NS1 crew starts to move out of HL1... And as more people in NS2 discover the wonders of NS2 Classic.
Seems to be using the original Goldsource content GCF, so it appears indeed to be Half-Life. Interestingly enough, the OS list shows both Linux and OSX.
I'm very excited for the rest of the Source games showing up, especially with CS:GO.
edit, sv_cheats, noclip, fly, god etc don't seem to work? (edit2: I forgot -console -dev -sv_cheats 1 launcher opts.)
It's officially just for Windows, but it runs fine in Wine.
It's passed steam greenlight, so once finished, should be available for a nice one click install. I look forward to this :)
But if you're reading this thread and excited, you'll probably get a kick out of it.
You can get a preview of the gorgeous Xen graphics in one of the rooms of the Questionable Ethics chapter.
Why can't people express their opinion? Why do you care so much?
I think they have to move quickly though - the steam-sale model is getting copied by other PC download services and they stand the chance of getting lost in the crowd.
I stopped reading here. Lies.
1. Wikipedia lists the release dates for the full game, which were in Dec 1999 for both Windows and Linux (windows a few weeks earlier). I don't recall exactly when the demo came out, but I think it was sometime in the winter of 1999.
Otherwise you're right, setting up Linux Gaming computers with working OpenGL Hardware Acceleration was painful, especially for us poor people who could not afford the most expensive OpenGL Hardware. ;) On the other hand I think audio was easier to setup :P
For me, it was a great first trip to Linux-Land - I was in my gaming-and-hacking phase, so I hacked together a Linux that could actually run UT :).
I get:
Error:dlopen(/Users/barbs/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Counter-Strike/hw.dylib, 2): Library not loaded: release/vgui.dylib Referenced from: /Users/barbs/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Counter-Strike/hw.dylib Reason: image not found Could not load hw.dylib.
:(
[1] http://cdr.xpaw.ru/app/70/
Edit: I opened Steam on my mac, Half-Life is showing up under "Mac games," I'm downloading it now. Great.
* It will crash right after start using NVIDIA drivers 310.19. Upgrade to the latest, I used 310.32.
* It does not work with plain ALSA, I only get sound after starting PulseAudio.
Anyway, I'm mad at Adobe not because they didn't port CS6 over to Linux, I'm mad because they didn't even TRY to ensure Wine support for it. Tweaking your application to work under Wine is just as good as writing a copy for a different OS from scratch, and that's the least they could have done.
2. "only?
3. Why do people care? Not necessarily you, but commenters on reddit, The Verge and others are practically angry at Valve supporting Linux.
On top of that, the PC itself seems to have peaked. It's hard to think that Valve sees this as the right time to pour resources into PC gaming on Linux. It's much more likely to have something to do with the console we know they're working on.
