powerpc verison

[ssam]

hello

is there a powerpc linux version? or can i build one from source?

thanks

[xander]

There are three versions of Darwinia: Windows, Linux x86, and Mac OS X. If you have a Mac, you can play using OS X, not Linux. As the game is not open source, there is no source code for you to compile. Sorry.

xander

[ssam]

thats is a shame

you dont tell x86 linux users to just run windows.

would it really be to difficult to but linux on one of your test macs and compile a powerpc binary? your code must be very clean for it to work well on 3 platforms already. it is rare to find a linux program that wont compile on powerpc linux these days.

[xander]

thats is a shame

you dont tell x86 linux users to just run windows.

Actually, I would. If there were a game out that ran on Windows and not Linux, and someone wanted to play that game, I would suggest that this person get Windows. This is not a value judgement about the operating systems, simply a statement of fact. "If you want to play game X on your machine, you must have Windows."

would it really be to difficult to but linux on one of your test macs and compile a powerpc binary?

I really can't speak for IV, but here is the situation, as I see it: there are basically two people coding -- Chris and John (have I left anyone out?). Chris writes the code, John ports it to Mac and Linux. The history of Darwinia looks something like this: Windows release, wait a month, Linux release, wait a month, Mac release (more or less). We are still waiting for 1.3 for the Mac. A LinuxPPC version of Darwinia, I would imagine, is more than just a simple recompile. I don't know how optimised the code is, but there may be some endian problems, as well as processor related problems on the Mac -- it runs dirt slow in some areas on the Mac as it is.

There are differences between the processors, and the operating systems that run on those processors. I do not think that recompiling Darwinia for LinuxPPC is a trivial matter.

your code must be very clean for it to work well on 3 platforms already.

You're new here, right? The code for Uplink was a mess, though, and it ran on all three platforms. NeoThermic tells us that Darwinia's code is cleaner, but IV does not have a reputation for clean code. I think Darwinia running on multiple platforms can be attributed to the hard work of John, more than anything.

it is rare to find a linux program that wont compile on powerpc linux these days.

Yes, but that is because a lot of people have put in a lot of time getting things to compile. I ran LinuxPPC back in the day (2.1 kernal), an many, many things would not compile -- most people did not care to write code that ran on the PPC, because there were only a half dozen people in the world that would care. I am heartened to hear that things run a bit more smoothly now, but that does not mean that getting things to cross-compile is easy. It still takes a fair amount of work.

Now, I agree that it is a shame that Darwinia will not run on all platforms. However, there are only so many hours in the day, and only so much code that can be written. LinuxPPC is a niche market inside of a niche market -- current estimates show that the Mac OS has less than 10% install base -- what percentage of those are running Linux? When we are still waiting for the 1.3 patch, can you justify further expenditure upon a LinuxPPC version that only five or six people are actually going to care about?

xander

[Dave2]

On a purely practical basis, what kind of graphics card do you have that could handle Darwinia, but also has drivers for PPC Linux?

I doubt there'd be endianness issues, as the MacOS and Linux codebases are mostly the same, and use mostly the same libraries, so cross-platform code is already in mind.