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'''Ryan C. Gordon''' (also known as '''icculus''') is a former [[Loki Software]] employee who is now responsible for ''icculus.org'', which hosts many Loki Software projects as well as several new projects created by himself and others. Gordon's site hosts projects with the [[:Category:Commercial video games with freely available source code|code from such commercial games]] as ''[[Duke Nukem 3D]]'', ''[[Shadow Warrior]]'', ''[[Quake III Arena]]'' and many other [[free and open source]] projects for multiple platforms.
'''Ryan C. Gordon''' (also known as '''icculus''') is a [[computer programmer]] and former [[Loki Software]] employee who is now responsible for ''icculus.org'', which hosts many Loki Software projects as well as several new projects created by himself and others. Gordon's site hosts projects with the [[:Category:Commercial video games with freely available source code|code from such commercial games]] as ''[[Duke Nukem 3D]]'', ''[[Shadow Warrior]]'', ''[[Quake III Arena]]'' and many other [[free and open source]] projects for multiple platforms.


Gordon has also created ports of proprietary software products to the [[Linux]] and [[Mac OS X]] platforms. These include being hired to port the ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'' series, some of the ''[[Serious Sam|Serious Sam series]]'', the ''[[Postal (video game series)|Postal series]]'', ''[[Devastation (video game)|Devastation]]'' and ''[[Prey (video game)|Prey]]''. He has also been involved in porting several non-gaming products such as ''[[Google Earth]]''. Some, such as ''Candy Cruncher'' and ''[[Postal 2]]'', have been published by [[Linux Game Publishing]]. He has also been described alongside [[Edward Rudd]] as being "instrumental" in ensuring the multi-platform nature of the [[Humble Indie Bundle]] initiatives.<ref>{{cite web|last=Kuchera|first=Ben|title=The latest Humble Bundle offers amazing games, promotes multiplatform releases|url=http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/12/the-latest-humble-bundle-offers-amazing-games-promotes-multiplatform-releases.ars|work=ars technica|accessdate=February 18, 2012}}</ref>
Gordon has also created ports of proprietary software products to the [[Linux]] and [[Mac OS X]] platforms. These include being hired to port the ''[[Unreal Tournament]]'' series, some of the ''[[Serious Sam|Serious Sam series]]'', the ''[[Postal (video game series)|Postal series]]'', ''[[Devastation (video game)|Devastation]]'' and ''[[Prey (video game)|Prey]]''. He has also been involved in porting several non-gaming products such as ''[[Google Earth]]''. Some, such as ''Candy Cruncher'' and ''[[Postal 2]]'', have been published by [[Linux Game Publishing]]. He has also been described alongside [[Edward Rudd]] as being "instrumental" in ensuring the multi-platform nature of the [[Humble Indie Bundle]] initiatives.<ref>{{cite web|last=Kuchera|first=Ben|title=The latest Humble Bundle offers amazing games, promotes multiplatform releases|url=http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/12/the-latest-humble-bundle-offers-amazing-games-promotes-multiplatform-releases.ars|work=ars technica|accessdate=February 18, 2012}}</ref>

Revision as of 05:44, 20 March 2012

Ryan C. Gordon
Ryan C. Gordon giving a talk at the SouthEast LinuxFest on June 13, 2009.
Other namesicculus
EmployerLoki Software (formerly)
SpouseCarrie (2010-present)
ChildrenOlive Finch Gordon
Websiteicculus.org/~icculus/

Ryan C. Gordon (also known as icculus) is a computer programmer and former Loki Software employee who is now responsible for icculus.org, which hosts many Loki Software projects as well as several new projects created by himself and others. Gordon's site hosts projects with the code from such commercial games as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Quake III Arena and many other free and open source projects for multiple platforms.

Gordon has also created ports of proprietary software products to the Linux and Mac OS X platforms. These include being hired to port the Unreal Tournament series, some of the Serious Sam series, the Postal series, Devastation and Prey. He has also been involved in porting several non-gaming products such as Google Earth. Some, such as Candy Cruncher and Postal 2, have been published by Linux Game Publishing. He has also been described alongside Edward Rudd as being "instrumental" in ensuring the multi-platform nature of the Humble Indie Bundle initiatives.[1]

Gordon is also a founding member of the BareBones Theatre Group in Charlotte, North Carolina.[2]

Biography

Ryan grew up just outside of Philadelphia, going to college in Charlotte, North Carolina where he currently resides.[3] In the summer of 1999 Loki Software ran a contest called "Loki Hack" at the Atlanta Linux Showcase, with the goal of improving the Linux port of Civilization: Call To Power.[4][5] Ryan decided to give it a try, driving the four hour trip from his home to Atlanta.[6] Loki was impressed with his work and decided to offer him a job.[7] Ryan quickly rose to prominence at Loki, working as a developer on the game ports of Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Quake III Arena, and Eric's Ultimate Solitaire, as well as being the lead developer for Descent 3 and Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K.².[8] In 2000 he also wrote several articles for the online Linux news and information website Linux.com.[9] Around this time he founded icculus.org, made to provide hosting for various free and open source projects, and would later be used to support and continue some of Loki's free software projects and tools.

The upcoming closure of Loki forced him to seek outside employment. A friend offered him a job at his cybercafe, and he was forced to move in with his parents. Desperate to escape working a cash register for a living, he found the e-mail address of an artist working for the developer Croteam. They had recently released the first of their highly successfully Serious Sam series, and Ryan asked if they would be interested in him building a Linux port.[7] They agreed, and the ports first beta was released on December 5, 2002.[10] From there he gained other contracts such as being hired to port Devastation and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for Linux and America's Army for Linux and Mac OS X.[11] He was also contracted by Epic Games to port their Unreal Tournament 2003 title to Linux and Mac OS X, with the port being included with the packaged Windows version.[12] This business relationship continued with the release of Unreal Tournament 2004.

Upon learning about the release of Postal 2 in 2003, Ryan decided to contact the developer behind it wondering if they would be interested in him making a port of the game to Linux and Mac OS X. Loki had previously ported the original Postal to Linux, and he was interested in keeping the franchise compatible.[13] Running With Scissors agreed, and the finished port was shipped on February 14, 2005, with Linux Game Publishing initially handling the publishing of the Linux version.[14] Soon after he was contracted to make a Linux port for the Wolfire Games title Lugaru, a business relationship that would later prove fruitful for Gordon.[15] Around this time he was also contracted to build a Linux client for the online virtual world Second Life.[16] Google also utilized his services, with him being contracted to make a native Linux port of their Google Earth application, with Linux functionality finally becoming available starting with the release of the version 4 beta on June 12, 2006.[17]

In 2007 he was once again contracted by Epic Games to port their new Unreal Tournament 3 title to both Linux and Mac OS X. The Linux game server was released on December 18, 2007,[18] but work was eventually abandoned on the Linux and Mac OS X clients for reasons which remain undisclosed.[19] In October 2008 he made a surprise announcement that he had been working on a Linux client for the first-person shooter game Prey, after previously porting the game's Linux server in 2006. Although there had been some speculation about a potential Linux release, it had been denied by the developer of the title in the past.[20] The finished port was released on December 7, 2008.[21][22] On October 23, 2009 he announced his plans to make a universal binary system similar to the one used on Mac OS X for Linux systems called FatELF. The project generated considerable controversy, with several Linux Kernel developers decrying the effort.[23] Ryan announced that the project was on hold in early November,[24] later stating that he would be willing to work on it again if he receives help from an interested party.[25]

Around this time he also started to port Aquaria to Linux for Bit Blot.[26] On January 3, 2010 he became engaged to his girlfriend Carrie and were married later that year.[27] On May 11, 2010 he and Wolfire Games released the source code of his code branch of Lugaru under the GNU General Public License.[28] He was also involved with the source code release of Aquaria; both having been shipped as part of the first Humble Indie Bundle. He was then contracted to port Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 to Mac OS X, stating that he he could potentially port it to Linux if Steam ever releases a Linux client.[29] Ryan also generated some controversy that summer for his talk at the 2010 SouthEast LinuxFest titled "Anatomy of a Failure", where he criticized some aspects of the Kernel development process.[30] He then ported Braid to both Linux and Mac OS X to allow it to be part of the second Humble Indie Bundle, as well as porting the games Cogs and Hammerfight for later bundles.[31] As part of this he ported the "Haaf's Game Engine" to Linux and Mac OS X, and released his port under a free software license.[32] He also ported Frozen Synapse to Linux to be included as the primary part of the Frozen Synapse Bundle, as well as Super Meat Boy and Shank for Humble Indie Bundle 4. On January 31, 2012 his wife gave birth to their first child, Olive Finch Gordon.

icculus.org

icculus.org is Ryan C. Gordon's personal website and a project incubator not unlike Sourceforge.net and GNU Savannah. Gordon is often involved in the projects hosted on his site but not universally. The site hosts port or enhancement projects for games such as Aliens versus Predator, Jump 'n Bump, DONKEY.BAS, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Freespace 2, Descent 2, Black Shades, Ken's Labyrinth, Rise of the Triad, Wolfenstein 3D, Heretic, Hexen, cooperative Rune, Quake II, the Build engine, Unreal (as an Unreal Tournament mod) and the Chzo Mythos. The site also hosts free software projects such as Neverball, ioquake3 and related projects, an attempted Visual Basic re-implementation, OpenAL for Mac OS X, and a Yahoo! Messenger client. It is also the host of the freeware CodeRED: Alien Arena project and has hosted code from the developers Blazing Games,[33] Piga Software,[34] Wolfire Games, and Bit Blot.

Ported titles

The following is a list of all the games and software that Ryan Gordon has been involved in porting. It does not mention his game server ports.[35]

Humble Indie Bundle

Independently Contracted

File:UT2004-BeaFanatIX-Linux-Screenshot.png
Unreal Tournament 2004 running on BeaFanatIX Linux
Prey running on SuperGamer Linux

Mac OS X only

Loki Software

Unfinished Ports (Beta)

File:SeriousSam-Fedora-Linux-Screenshot.png
Serious Sam: The First Encounter running on Fedora Linux

Unreleased Ports

See also

References

  1. ^ Kuchera, Ben. "The latest Humble Bundle offers amazing games, promotes multiplatform releases". ars technica. Retrieved February 18, 2012.
  2. ^ About Us | BareBones Theatre Group
  3. ^ A Chat With Epic's Ryan Gordon Inside Mac Games, March 18, 2004
  4. ^ Loki Hack 1999 - Loki Software, Inc
  5. ^ Loki Hack 1999: 48 hours with no sleep and no end of fun Linux Weekly News
  6. ^ The Hacking Contest Nobody Tried to Win Slashdot, October 16, 1999
  7. ^ a b Intervju: Porting games to Linux - hardware.no
  8. ^ "Ryan C. Gordon's Resume". Ryan C. Gordon. Retrieved 2009-12-06.
  9. ^ Linux.com Article DB: Articles by Ryan C. Gordon
  10. ^ Serious Sam: The First Encounter beta1 now available - icculus.org
  11. ^ No complaints here: Linux gaming is gaining steam - LinuxWorld
  12. ^ A mixed welcome for Unreal Tournament 2003 on Linux - LinuxWorld
  13. ^ Interview with Ryan Gordon: Postal2, Unreal & Mac Gaming - Macologist
  14. ^ Postal 2 for Linux now shipping! - icculus.org
  15. ^ Lugaru for Linux Ships; Gordon Updates Plan
  16. ^ Second Life for Linux Alpha Test - icculus.org
  17. ^ Google Earth For Linux - Phoronix
  18. ^ UT3 Linux Dedicated Server - LinuxGames
  19. ^ UT3 For Linux Is Laid To Rest By Epic's Mark Rein - Phoronix
  20. ^ Reyes, Dustin. "No Linux Prey Client". LinuxGames. Retrieved February 19, 2012.
  21. ^ Prey Linux Retail Client Released - Phoronix
  22. ^ Prey for Linux released Pro-Linux.de, December 8, 2008 (Article by Mirko Lindner)
  23. ^ Ryan Gordon Ends FatELF Universal Binary Effort - Slashdot
  24. ^ Ryan Gordon Halts FatELF Project - OS News
  25. ^ No one will ever know it if I keep my mouth shut tight, tight, tight. - Ryan C. Gordon
  26. ^ Icculus on Aquaria - Linuxine
  27. ^ icculus .plan file (January 4, 2010)
  28. ^ Lugaru goes open source Wolfire Blog, May 11, 2010
  29. ^ Valve's Linux Play May Lead More Games To Follow Suit Phoronix, May 25, 2010
  30. ^ Brockmeier, Joe (June 23, 2010). "SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure". Linux Weekly News. Retrieved 2011-02-06.
  31. ^ Interview: Ryan C. Gordon AbcLinuxu.cz, March 8, 2011 (Article by Luboš Doležel)
  32. ^ Ryan Gordon Ports HGE To Linux, Then Releases Code Phoronix, August 07, 2011 (Article by Michael Larabe
  33. ^ icculus.org Projects
  34. ^ Free Software Project Hosting?, LinuxGames (Article by Dustin Reyes)
  35. ^ "Ryan C. Gordon's Resume". Ryan C. Gordon. Retrieved 2009-06-15.
  36. ^ Linux version of Prey released, air sickness bags required - ars technica
  37. ^ Linux Gains FPS - DesktopLinux.com
  38. ^ New Linux Prey - Blue's News
  39. ^ Lugaru Port and Test - LinuxGames
  40. ^ Mac, Linux America's Army - Blue's News
  41. ^ Medal of Honor: Allied Assault Beta 3 - LinuxGames
  42. ^ Serious Sam 2nd Encounter Q&A & Linux News - Blue's News
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