C4 Engine Drops Linux Support, Calls It "Frankenstein OS"

[Cyber Killer]

Other than C4 Engine, what could you suggest to write games using other game engines listed in here?

Let's say I'm into 3D Japanese RPG game development. And yes, JRPG is one of my favorite genre of all time, ranging from Chrono Trigger to Ni No Kuni and Breath of Fire IV. I'm thinking a small JRPG game, though. And a language to program something as easy as C#. And something with a level editor, if any.

Well, to easily make a jRPG you can use RPG Maker VX and then use it with mkxp (which despite the name supports the VX version too) to make the game run on GNU/Linux (you just need to keep in mind it's limitations, e.g. don't use winapi in the game, windows media formats etc). There's also OHRRPGCE, though that seems to be a bit more cumbersome to use.

For other games I'd recommend the recently released Godot engine, or if you prefer to do more code then the L?ve framework is nice. RenPy is also very easy to use, but it's limited to visual novels.

As for the C4 engine, well, time will be better spent using game engines with much greater viability ;-).

[Jabberwocky]

LOL

Seriously, I know that we are mean here, but with such people, I think this is the right attitude.

According to his wiki page. "He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Davis and a Masters Degree in Mathematics from Virginia Tech." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Lengyel Clearly there's nothing wrong with the left side of his brain.

That does not mean that he's not an asshole or his buddies for that matter https://twitter.com/dotstdy/status/554866536712663040 Honestly I don't know what he was thinking or if frustration got the best of him. He should've expected bad responses on his twitter post if his ranting without providing technical information like submitting bug report(s) and ranting about that.

[nanonyme]

Having a PhD on CS doesn't necessarily mean you know dog's crap about software other than being a real ace with algorithms. Graphics programming is rather mathematical and it sounds like it's his core expertise area bases on the books he's written

[Ardje]

The hell he was talking about is exactly why I left anything microsoft related. The bugs and the "fixes". Updates criple goodworking libraries so office would not crash due to very stupid bugs in office.
Bug reports get acknowledged 6 months after submission with fixes. And I am talking real OS things here.

It wouldn't be such a big hell if all those proclaimed windows administrators have no clue about windows what so ever... Try asking a windows administrator how to add a second ip to the interface, or how to add a service, and start that service.

Then windows has this driver hell. Everything is a dll, no real seperation of processes. The printing engine is part of the kernel. (Although running in the outer layer).

And of course, you cannot do any real work without having a graphics screen and a cmd.exe window (because windows don't know terminals), because you need the cmd.exe window to give the right parameters, and then probably you can click somewhere.

I could get really started on this, but my blood would be boiling, just as his blood is boiling.

He is right in that linux at this moment might be some kind of hell. From an expert point of view. Ubuntu is not the easiest to install. As long as you do a clean install, and do exactly what ubuntu wants you to do it might work. But the last three dist-upgrades of my machine always ended in a non-bootable machine because of untested assumptions. LDAP does not work for an LTS distribution on a platform that is supported, because it is not tested.
After those "horrors" (actually anoyances) I upgraded to jessie. Which works wonderfully, until you do an upgrade and systemd gets installed.
Again, 3 systems that suddenly did not know how to parse a correct fstab, and hence were unbootable.
Don't get me started on pulse-audio... It's been wrecking my setups sinds 2011, although the concept is not that bad.

So yes, linux is also a kind of a hell. But certainly not the kind of hell windows or Mac OS-X is. (Don't get me started on the last one).

[mitch074]

This is a NIH syndrome, actually

Looking at the description for the C4 engine, he's trying to do everything starting from the "core" system. Most "easy" game ports done on Linux were actually done by using stuff like SDL, which takes away a LOT of the sh|t one has to deal with.

In essence, he's trying to program his engine by hitting directly the sound and video cards drivers directly, without going through DirectX or Cocoa+OpenGL. But only on Linux.

Now, DirectX and Cocoa+OpenGL are default, required APIs needed to develop in Windows and Mac, while SDL is not a core OS requirement; had he considered it so, he probably wouldn't have had to reinvent the wheel...

[justmy2cents]

Actually one of the developers read this damning list of Linux problems and agreed with it wholeheartedly. You may disagree with certain points, saying "I don't care", "I don't have this problem" or "this doesn't affect me", but the truth is, you don't have to agree with everything. The summary is what matters, and everything written under it is just fecking wrong and needs to be fixed or there's no road ahead.

As a software platform the Linux OS just doesn't exist. Full stop.

condemning something is really easy as long as you focus on something. one could easy find same amount of damning features in any OS, at least i know i could. i for example never claimed linux is perfect, for me it's just not nearly as terrible as Windows or OSX. but, the fact that i can tailor it to my needs, makes it much closer to perfection.

and you should read the beginning. no OS is fit to be called OS, that's not linux only problem.

[bitman]

I feel their pain, linux distributions are indeed frankenstein OSes.

1. No application isolation.
   • What if i want to call my app excutable "sed" (and say i even have original sed compiled from src and installed to /usr/local for the sake of argument)?
   • What if i want to have multiple versions of same application/libs installed? (nix is working on that).
   • What if i want to quickly gather my installed but otherwise portable application to one folder and ship it? Stuff is all over the place.
2. Very difficult to build portable (across distros) software.
   • Software built with later glibc version will not work on earlier glibc version. It is ok but there is no reasonable way to control it.
   • Distros depend on rather new version of glibc anyway which forces user to rebuild all of dependencies.
   • Building software requires pure enironment to avoid pulling in dependencies which are present in your distro but might now available elsewhere. Enter chroots of old distros which bring in their own pain of discontinued support, old libs/compilers/etc... On windows you define WIN_VER=0x501 to target XP+ and bundle few megabytes installer just in case (msvcrt***.dll stuff).

In other areas things are getting better but this properietary software unfriendlyness is what is stopping linux. Im sure some opensource zealots will pop up saying "we dont need no stinkin closed source software! just share the src!". Im sorry, world does not work that way. And market share of linux desktop reflects it perfectly. But developers need to eat too so they have to make money. And thats why linux needs proprietary software and needs to provide proper tools to make such software. Until it happens linux will stay niche OS for geeks. However the fact that i can handle linux does not make me dismissive of people who cant. I would love that all people were able to use linux as easily as other 2 major desktop OSes. Hope you people share my view.

Disclaimer: dont get me wrong, linux is awesome and i love it. But it has few terrible shortcomings that i am prepared to put up with because of power i get. However developers that put up with this crap are minority and those very same developers drive adoption of platform by producing quality software. So even though linux is awesome it still shoots itself in the foot.

[justmy2cents]

If Linux distros in 2014 are so easy to install, a developer cannot do that, that says a lot about the quality of OSS. What quality, I might add.

i'm a developer and i'm yet to successfully finish the install of windows on my notebook where fedora installed OTB. with windows i see whole bunch of weirdness. to be honest here, most of the griefs i have are due to my dislike and lack of willingness to focus on the problem. can they be solved? most surely. can i solve them? no, my lack of interest and my dislike for OS are preventing that to ever succeed.

in the end, i couldn't care less if windows works or not since it will maybe amount to 1 hour of yearly usage.

now, the real problem here is not X not using Y. real problem is that you can't say "multiplatform" and "os preference" in same sentence. as soon as you did that, project is either dumbed down to lowest common denominator making a lousy product or suffering from severe case of "this works on X, doesn't on Y" and unreliable at that. and if person with PhD can't figure this out, project and its users are doomed

[blackout23]

Did he really say he might target Steam OS which means it probably won't run on Linux distributions?......Ouch....*cringe*


"Hey I'll just target Windows 8.1 so it probably won't run on Windows 8! Ha suck it!"
Good luck targeting all those proprietary, non GNU userland parts in Steam OS which are not available on every Linux distro on the planet....ohh wait there aren't any.

[justmy2cents]

I feel their pain, linux distributions are indeed frankenstein OSes.

1. No application isolation.
   • What if i want to call my app excutable "sed" (and say i even have original sed compiled from src and installed to /usr/local for the sake of argument)?
   • What if i want to have multiple versions of same application/libs installed? (nix is working on that).
   • What if i want to quickly gather my installed but otherwise portable application to one folder and ship it? Stuff is all over the place.
2. Very difficult to build portable (across distros) software.
   • Software built with later glibc version will not work on earlier glibc version. It is ok but there is no reasonable way to control it.
   • Distros depend on rather new version of glibc anyway which forces user to rebuild all of dependencies.
   • Building software requires pure enironment to avoid pulling in dependencies which are present in your distro but might now available elsewhere. Enter chroots of old distros which bring in their own pain of discontinued support, old libs/compilers/etc... On windows you define WIN_VER=0x501 to target XP+ and bundle few megabytes installer just in case (msvcrt***.dll stuff).

In other areas things are getting better but this properietary software unfriendlyness is what is stopping linux. Im sure some opensource zealots will pop up saying "we dont need no stinkin closed source software! just share the src!". Im sorry, world does not work that way. And market share of linux desktop reflects it perfectly. But developers need to eat too so they have to make money. And thats why linux needs proprietary software and needs to provide proper tools to make such software. Until it happens linux will stay niche OS for geeks. However the fact that i can handle linux does not make me dismissive of people who cant. I would love that all people were able to use linux as easily as other 2 major desktop OSes. Hope you people share my view.

Disclaimer: dont get me wrong, linux is awesome and i love it. But it has few terrible shortcomings that i am prepared to put up with because of power i get. However developers that put up with this crap are minority and those very same developers drive adoption of platform by producing quality software. So even though linux is awesome it still shoots itself in the foot.

i'm writing both OSS and closed and i still say. examples don't make sense.

application named sed? sure, due to path order it could break your system. the hoops you needed to take? it's like watching Dumb and dumber. it's like me asking what hapens if i create application user.exe and compile it to system folder on windows. it's not OS problem, it is PEBKAC

library versions? mostly package management restriction for the sake of sanity. each .so is still branded with its version. and there is a thing called order in which library is searched for. just like anywhere else you're free to just put .so in same folder as application.

if your application resides on more than one place, don't try calling it portable. it is not

if glibc broke compatibility, there was a good reason. maybe you should look up the reasoning behind it

so, simply WIN_VER=0x501 and bunch random crap... about the same on linux, you just need to be as familiar with it as with windows. the so called easy is gibberish for me, but i can deal with same problem on linux without problems.

you seem to know one OS and expect to not learn for others, but rather other OSes to be as OS you know