Technical differences from AI Wars, and Linux support?

[Buttons840]

How does this game differ from AI Wars in dependencies?  I know AI Wars wouldn't work in linux due to problem with the .net framework and -- whatever that other dependency was.

What are you thoughts about this game and Linux support?

[keith.lamothe]

AI War and Tidalis are on totally different engines.

AI War runs on our custom SlimDX/.NET engine, which is limited to Windows or emulations thereof.

Tidalis runs on the Unity 3D engine, which allows us to create both Windows and Mac builds (it also allows extension onto the iPhone and the Wii, and later versions will support the Android, the PS3, and the XBox360; but all those have additional fees involved).

The Unity team has been asked quite a bit for Linux support, but I don't think they have any plans for it at this point.

We'll be attempting a port of AI War to the Unity engine later this year, perhaps July.

[x4000]

To add to that, Tidalis has literally no external prerequisites. The Unity stuff is all self-contained. It also works with dx or OpenGL. So you may have much better luck with tidalis in WINE, but we have not tested this yet. You could also try the osx version in Linux, since that is more unix-like, but I imagine there are gotchas there, too.

[keith.lamothe]

To add to that, Tidalis has literally no external prerequisites.

Yea, you can just copy the files to your computer, double-click the executable, and it runs.  All the installer does is unpack the compressed package and copy it to the usual location, if I understand it correctly.

[Buttons840]

Windows version worked in wine.  I don't have windows on this computer so I can't compare performance but it was pretty painless.

[keith.lamothe]

Cool, glad to know it works, albeit emulated

[x4000]

Wonderful!

[Buttons840]

I tried using the OSX binaries, but I'm not really sure how they work.  It would complain every time I attempted to execute them.

Any advice?  I know OSX is Unix based so I was hoping they might be more Linux friendly than the Windows binaries running in wine.

[keith.lamothe]

My guess is that the Operating-System calls in the OSX binary cannot execute on a normal Linux OS.  Just a guess, though.

[x4000]

To be honest, we're not OSX experts, either.  What we're providing is a "universal binary," though, which is a package that will run on either Intel or PPC Macs, all packaged up in one thing.  You probably want to just run the Intel part, somewhere in the .app folder.  But I am not an expert on that format.

[Buttons840]

Since Tidalis on the Unity engine will run in wine, do you expect that AI War will also work in wine once you change to the Unity engine?

I'd love to be able to play it on my laptop, and I don't have a lot of ram, and find Linux performs better in this circumstance.

[x4000]

Since Tidalis on the Unity engine will run in wine, do you expect that AI War will also work in wine once you change to the Unity engine?

100% definitely, with no differences in terms of support.

I'd love to be able to play it on my laptop, and I don't have a lot of ram, and find Linux performs better in this circumstance.

Whether or not the WINE overhead (if there is any) will make a difference in terms of performance versus on native Windows is something I don't know, but I that's something that AI War would be more sensitive to since it uses more CPU/RAM than Tidalis.  So the support will be the same, but if there was a "performance tax" for WINE, it would show up more in AI War than Tidalis.  That would be the only difference between support for the two programs in WINE, so far as I know.

[Buttons840]

Good, at least it will be possible.  Tidalis ran well enough with the generic wine package I grabbed from the repos.  So even if AI Wars is a little slow, there may be some additional wine configuration which could help.

[x4000]

Nice to hear!