Ryan C. Gordon

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Ryan "Icculus" Gordon at SELF 2009

Ryan C. Gordon (also known as Icculus ) is a famous American cross-platform - programmer and former employees at Loki Software . He gained fame for his pioneering role in games ported to Linux - and Mac - platform , his contributions to the SDL -Multimediabibliothek and the development of fat binary extension FatELF for ELF - binary format .

Life

Ryan Gordon grew up outside of Philadelphia and attended college in Charlotte , North Carolina , where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1999. He now lives in Charlotte again.

In January 2010 he got engaged to his girlfriend Carrie, whom he married in the same year. His first child was born on January 31, 2012.

Employment at Loki Software

In the summer of 1999 Loki Software started a competition called Loki Hack at the Atlanta Linux Showcase with the aim of improving the Linux port of Civilization: Call to Power . Gordon decided to attend and took a four-hour drive to Atlanta . Loki was impressed with his performance and offered him a job. Gordon was soon involved in key porting assignments at Loki: Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns , Quake III Arena, and Eric's Ultimate Solitaire . For Descent 3 and Heavy Metal: FAKK² he was already the lead developer. In 2000 he also wrote several articles for the Linux information website Linux.com . At Loki Software Gordon got to know the SDL library developed there and the Loki setup; Development tools that he later relied on and that he further developed. During this time he also founded icculus.org , a website for hosting FOSS projects, on which support for Loki software projects and tools was continued later.

End of Loki Software

When Loki closed in 2002, Gordon was forced to take a job in a cyber café and move back to his parents. In order to escape this uninspiring work, which he had only accepted to finance his life, he grabbed the straw from a found e-mail address of a Croteam developer and got in contact with it. For Croteam's recently successful game Serious Sam , Gordon offered a Linux port. Croteam accepted the proposal and a first version became available on December 5, 2002. As a result, Gordon repeatedly won contracts for porting games, for example Devastation and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for Linux and America's Army for Linux and macOS. He was also hired by Epic Games for the Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004 ports to Linux and macOS .

When Gordon heard about the publication of Postal 2 in 2003 , he contacted the developers, offering a port, as he had already been involved in the port for the first Postal part (still at Loki). Developer Running With Scissors agreed and the finished port became available on February 14, 2005, distributed by Linux Game Publishing . Soon after, he was contacted for porting Wolfire Games ' game Lugaru ; a contact that would later lead to Gordon's heavy involvement with the Humble Indie Bundles . During this time he was also signed up for a Linux client version for the virtual world Second Life . Even Google took his services for a native Linux version of the application Google Earth , available this was from the beta version 4 on June 12 of 2006.

In October 2008, Gordon made the surprising announcement that he was working on a Linux client for the first-person shooter Prey , after porting the server part of the game to Linux in 2006. Earlier speculations in this direction had so far been denied by the developers. The port was released in December 2008.

FatELF

On October 23, 2009, Gordon announced his plans to work on a universal binary system for Linux called FatELF , similar to the one used on macOS . However, the project generated considerable controversy, in which Linux kernel and distribution developers in particular criticized the concept and refused to support or integrate it into the Linux kernel. Gordon stopped the project in early November, despite the technically advanced state and support from ISVs . However, Gordon later announced that he would resume the project with sufficient support.

The next game porting project was Aquaria to Linux for Bit Blot .

Humble Indie Bundles

In May 2010 he published together with Wolfire Games the source code of his development branch of Lugaru under the GNU General Public License , he was also involved in the publication of the source code of Aquaria . Both games became part of the first Humble Indie Bundle . Next project was the port of Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 for macOS , also announcing that he could create a Linux version if a Linux client from Steam became available.

Gordon generated a lot of discussion with a lecture at the SouthEast LinuxFest 2010 under the title Anatomy of a Failure , in which he openly criticized some aspects of the Linux development process and brought in his experience with FatELF but also named Con Kolivas as another example.

For the second Humble Indie Bundle, Gordon ported Braid , Cogs and Hammerfight for both Linux and macOS . Part of the work was porting the Haaf's Game Engine to Linux and macOS, which was then also released under a free software license. For the Frozen Synapse Bundle , Gordon ported Frozen Synapse to Linux. For the fourth bundle, he ported the games Super Meat Boy and Shank .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ben Kuchera: The latest Humble Bundle offers amazing games, promotes multiplatform releases ( English ) In: ars technica . December 14, 2011. Retrieved February 18, 2012: " Some developers are ready for it from day one, but usually a game is Windows-only and needs to get ported to Mac and Linux. Ryan Gordon and Edward Rudd have been instrumental in this, but a lot of developers will do ports internally as well. "
  2. ↑ a b Thom Holwerda: Ryan Gordon Halts FatELF Project ( English ) osnews.com. November 3, 2009. Retrieved July 5, 2010.
  3. ↑ A Chat With Epic's Ryan Gordon Inside Mac Games, March 18, 2004 (English)
  4. ↑ CV CV of Ryan C. Gordon (English)
  5. ↑ icculus .plan file (January 4, 2010)
  6. ^ Loki Hack 1999 - Loki Software, Inc
  7. ↑ Loki Hack 1999: 48 hours with no sleep and no end of fun Linux Weekly News
  8. ^ The Hacking Contest Nobody Tried to Win Slashdot , October 16, 1999
  9. ↑ a b Intervju: Porting games to Linux - hardware.no
  10. ↑ Ryan C. Gordon's Resume . Ryan C. Gordon. Retrieved December 6, 2009.
  11. ↑ Linux.com Article DB: Articles by Ryan C. Gordon
  12. ↑ Serious Sam: The First Encounter beta1 now available - icculus.org
  13. ↑ No complaints here: Linux gaming is gaining steam - LinuxWorld
  14. ↑ A mixed welcome for Unreal Tournament 2003 on Linux - LinuxWorld (English)
  15. ↑ Interview with Ryan Gordon: Postal2, Unreal & Mac Gaming - Macologist ( Memento from March 9, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  16. ↑ Postal 2 for Linux now shipping! - icculus.org
  17. ↑ Lugaru for Linux Ships; Gordon Updates Plan ( Memento of July 20, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ^ Second Life for Linux Alpha Test - icculus.org
  19. ↑ Google Earth For Linux - Phoronix (English)
  20. ↑ Dustin Reyes: No Linux Prey Client ( English ) In: LinuxGames . Archived from the original on December 28, 2010. Retrieved February 19, 2012.
  21. ↑ Prey Linux Retail Client Released - Phoronix
  22. ↑ Prey for Linux released Pro-Linux.de, December 8, 2008 (Mirko Lindner)
  23. ↑ Ryan Gordon Ends FatELF Universal Binary Effort - Slashdot (English)
  24. ↑ Gaslamp Games Interview at http://www.gamingonlinux.com/ , February 16, 2012 (English)
  25. ↑ No one will ever know it if I keep my mouth shut tight, tight, tight. - Ryan C. Gordon (English)
  26. ↑ Icculus on Aquaria - Linuxine ( Memento from July 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  27. ↑ Lugaru goes open source Wolfire Blog, May 11, 2010
  28. ↑ Valve's Linux Play May Lead More Games To Follow Suit Phoronix , May 25, 2010 (English)
  29. ↑ Joe Brockmeier: SELF: Anatomy of an (alleged) failure ( English ) Linux Weekly News. June 23, 2010. Retrieved February 6, 2011.
  30. ↑ Interview: Ryan C. Gordon AbcLinuxu.cz, March 8, 2011 (Luboš Doležel)
  31. ↑ Ryan Gordon Ports HGE To Linux, Then Releases Code Phoronix , August 7, 2011 (Michael Larabel)
personal data
SURNAME Gordon, Ryan C.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES icculus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American programmer
DATE OF BIRTH 20th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia