Expanding the playing field for Linux users

Computer experts will tell you that Linux software is unbeatable at tasks like scientific supercomputing or corporate number-crunching. But offer to take them on in a rousing round of Empire Earth or some other popular computer game, and watch their faces fall.

Linux is operating system software, code that controls a computer's most basic functions. Microsoft's Windows is the best-known operating system, and there's also Apple's Macintosh OS X. But Linux is something special. Created by volunteers scattered around the world, Linux is available free over the Internet. Yet Linux has been polished to the point where it's become a favorite with corporate and academic users worldwide.

But Linux software is so complex and unfamiliar that few casual users will give it a try. That means there's only a tiny market for Linux computer games. Of course, that means game companies rarely offer Linux versions of their top titles, which means even more consumers avoid Linux computers, and so on.

"The major companies aren't interested in it, because they don't feel they're going to get any market share out of it," said Bob Zimbinski, a Minneapolis computer programmer and manager of happypenguin.org, a website devoted to Linux gaming.

Can anybody break the cycle? Gavriel State is giving it a try. He's chief technology officer of TransGaming Technologies, a software firm in Ottawa. His company's WineX software is designed to "translate" Windows computer games so they'll run directly on computers running Linux. "We supply software that allows end users to take their Windows games directly out of the box, pop them into their Linux machine, and go," State said.

WineX is an attempt to sidestep the costly and difficult process of "porting" a game from one computing platform to another. Porting is done all the time in the gaming business. Games originally written for PlayStation 2 or XBox are carted over to Windows PCs and vice versa. Several companies, such as MacPlay, have found success in porting major Windows PC games to the Apple Macintosh. But so far, porting to Linux has been a losing game. One company that tried it, California-based Loki Games, went bust in 2001.

TransGaming thinks it has a better idea. Rather than rewrite huge slabs of game software for a Linux version, Linux users can run Windows games on top of WineX code. State insists that the extra layer of software doesn't harm the performance of the games. "In some cases we've seen games run faster in Linux than they do under Windows," State said.

Meanwhile, a few gaming companies are going out on a limb and offering true Linux versions of their titles. BioWare Corp. of Edmonton, Alberta, sells a Linux version of its popular role-playing game, Neverwinter Nights. The US Army never planned to make a profit on its hugely popular war game America's Army, so it's no surprise that it has produced a free Linux version at www.americasarmy.com.

Perhaps the most visible example comes out of Raleigh, N.C., home of Epic Games, producer of the popular Unreal Tournament series of shoot-'em-up games. Unreal Tournament 2003 was released in Linux, Mac, and Windows versions; Epic will do the same with Unreal Tournament 2004, due out next month.

Unreal Tournament is designed for play over the Internet. Gamers connect to a central server that runs special software that coordinates their combat. It just happens that Epic's server software is written for Linux machines as well as Windows, because the Linux version is cheaper for gamers who want to run their own private servers.

Epic vice president Mark Rein said the decision to offer Linux servers forced his hand. "Our feeling is we can't give them a Linux server and not give them a Linux client," Rein said. "That wouldn't be fair." So Epic created a Linux "client," a full-fledged version of the game, complete with all the complex and expensive 3D graphics.

No good deed goes unpunished. Rein said that while at least half of all Unreal game servers are running Linux, fewer than 1 percent of the players are using the Linux version of the game. Rein doesn't seem to mind. "Sometimes you've just got to do the right thing," he said, "even if it doesn't make you money."

Nor is Rein holding out for that glorious day, oft-predicted by geeks, when millions of ordinary Americans will throw away their Windows software and embrace the Linux mascot, a roly-poly penguin. "Linux is not a mass-market operating system," he said. "The numbers are always going to be minuscule."

Perhaps. But thanks to Rein and a few others, at least there will be a minuscule number of good Linux games as well.