Wishlist for Porting Projects (Pt. 2)

[ZyanKLee]

As I missed the 2nd part of this questionaire yesterday, I'll repeat my question here:

What about ...

* X: Beyond the Frontier
* X-Tension
* X?: Terran Conflict

?

[rhdunn]

I know PopCap have been mentioned (yay!), and if it would be possible to get the engine working on Linux so future titles work that would be awesome (Bejeweled 2, Peggle and Plants vs Zombies are awesome ).

Has anyone mentioned other casual game titles/producers/distributors (I know Puzzle Quest has been mentioned). It would be great if Oberon Media, Big Fish Games, the YoudaGames and others distributed games that work on Linux.

I have been playing games distributed by Oberon Media in Wine with about a 50% success rate, but their launcher (and thus purchasing/registration) does not work well. It has gotten progressively worse to the point where I cannot register the new games anymore.

FWIU, the YoudaGames are written in flash, so it should be easy to create the launcher for them (and any other casual games that are flash-based).

[gilboa]

As I missed the 2nd part of this questionaire yesterday, I'll repeat my question here:

What about ...

* X: Beyond the Frontier
* X-Tension
* X?: Terran Conflict

?

I doubt that LGP will port XB and XT (Too old, X2 and X3:R were already ported).
As for X3TC, in theory it was next in line when LGP finished porting X3:R (Back in Nov/08) - especially given the fact that both share the same engine, lower the cost of possible port.
However, thus far, LGP has been rather tight lipped about it with nothing official either way.

Given the fact that there's no official word on how well (or bad) X3:R/Linux sales were and/or how forthcoming Egosoft is (royalties wise), I'm not overly optimistic at the moment.

- Gilboa

[alazyworkaholic]

Escrow port fund?

I'm curious - is there a website (& if not why hasn't it been done with all the commitment statements I've seen) with a list of (serious) potential porting projects that could be undertaken with a good chunk of cash, while offering a way to contribute to that? I'm thinking of an escrow account that could take thousands of ~$10 donations or ~$25 pre-orders (or something like that) to be paid out for the purchase of porting rights. I imagine it would have to be set up so that participants can withdraw their money from the fund if they want prior to the rights purchase, & also be able to select & give priority to which game-rights pools they're cash could contribute to. (so someone who wants to see crysis on Linux doesn't see their money "wasted" on a casual game they don't care about, & vice versa)
I'm no lawyer, but I imagine legal precautions that are necessary to prevent misuse of the money exist. Maybe LGP could coordenate it, or a third party who would hire independent porters; the cost of paying for the actual work of the port could be part of it or not - so long as I'd get the game & could take my money out of the fund if the whole idea seemed to fizzle (or I just wanted it back prior to it being committed).
I bet Linux gaming is widely seen as a small, risky, unproven market, & it'll probably grow faster if it's possible for us to pull games into it rather than hoping that LGP & others will be willing to take their chances with it. We'd get the games we want, the developers get their money, Linux gets better. What do you think?

[RealNC]

Is it just me, or nothing useful has come out of this thread? None of the games are ported, just people add new ones they want...

[penguin_from_hell]

@Svartalf:
You can remove Aquaria from the "Being Looked Into"-List. It already get's ported by Ryan.

[jonwil]

I dont know all that much about the games industry but I suspect a "donation drive"/"escrow account" idea (where we crowd-source the raising of enough money to get <title popular with/desired by the linux crowd> ported to Linux) wouldn't work.
Money-up-front alone is likely not going to be enough to convince a publisher/developer its worth porting an AAA title to Linux (or allowing a 3rd party to port) although its a start.

Some of the reasons publishers may reject a linux port even WITH money-up-front:
Lack of DRM on the linux platform (with the kernel and libraries open source, its pretty much impossible to implement the kinds of CD based or hardware based copy protection that many publishers are using on Windows)
Concern about IP (i.e. can those doing the port be trusted not to leak the source code)
Concern about quality (e.g. they may be worried about a poorly-made port appearing that devalues the title or franchise as a whole)
Issues with updates and making sure Linux patches appear at the same time as Windows patches (especially relavent for things like MMOs)

[Naib]

Torchlight!!!!

Seriously! it is using an engine which is linux-native and it is coming to the Mac so most of the work is done

please lobby this to happen
This game is great!

[MAXX]

Aye, I'd also definitely like to see Torchlight.

[Svartalf]

@Svartalf:
You can remove Aquaria from the "Being Looked Into"-List. It already get's ported by Ryan.

/me nods...

Been a bit more swamped than I'd envisioned (YOU try mounting a Civil case against someone sometime...it's not fun or easy, especially if there's qualified immunity involved...). I should get the list updated tomorrow when I get a window of time up at work.