Bioware's Dragon Age Petition for Linux?

[Svartalf]

I don't see a forum thread as likely to "sway" anything. If every poster sent a ?10 donation to Bioware, which would then be discounted from the price of the game if they bought it, then perhaps. But people making free posts on a free forum provide little indication of commercial viability of a product. For example, I'd sign a petition or post in a forum to get Dragon Age on Linux, but I wouldn't buy it

I'm not going to hand them ?10 to hold onto on the oft chance that they MIGHT port the thing for us. That translates into almost half the US dollar value of the silly thing- for something they might/might not do. If I could get assurances that it was an actual deposit on the entire process, and a refund from them if they didn't- it'd be a different story. But, no business in their right mind would do this unless they're being magnanimous (In which case, why are they NOT doing it anyhow?)- it'd be far too much of a hassle and liability to do that sort of thing otherwise.

[Malikith]

I'm not going to hand them ?10 to hold onto on the oft chance that they MIGHT port the thing for us. That translates into almost half the US dollar value of the silly thing- for something they might/might not do. If I could get assurances that it was an actual deposit on the entire process, and a refund from them if they didn't- it'd be a different story. But, no business in their right mind would do this unless they're being magnanimous (In which case, why are they NOT doing it anyhow?)- it'd be far too much of a hassle and liability to do that sort of thing otherwise.

Yeah.. I wouldn't do that either myself, because there is a high chance that it will lead nowhere. The thing is, petitions never seem to really have any effect on these companies. Yeah, its always great to try, I definitely agree. However, for some reason, they must use directx, and the funny thing is, directx is way messier than opengl/openal/sdl. Hell, Microsoft dropped Directsound because it was just so horrible and they knew it and switched to openal.

As far as D&D titles, sounds like you guys are just gonna have to stick with Neverwinter Nights. Although, the thing that doesn't make much sense is that they port Neverwinter Nights but have no plans to port any future games. And Neverwinter Nights is still the community favorite for many many reasons.

[Svartalf]

Yeah.. I wouldn't do that either myself, because there is a high chance that it will lead nowhere. The thing is, petitions never seem to really have any effect on these companies. Yeah, its always great to try, I definitely agree. However, for some reason, they must use directx, and the funny thing is, directx is way messier than opengl/openal/sdl. Hell, Microsoft dropped Directsound because it was just so horrible and they knew it and switched to openal.

As far as D&D titles, sounds like you guys are just gonna have to stick with Neverwinter Nights. Although, the thing that doesn't make much sense is that they port Neverwinter Nights but have no plans to port any future games. And Neverwinter Nights is still the community favorite for many many reasons.

Heh... At the rate things are going, they'll drop DirectPlay (the network stack, which is now deprecated- you're encouraged to do WinSock2 code instead... Ugh...) for something like RakNet, OpenPlay, or Grapple (I vote for RakNet or Grapple- both are MUCH more sensible in nature to OpenPlay and Apple's hoping someone would come along and fix it proper or axe it...).

Everyone does DirectX because it's accessable and MS does such good marketing. Target the primary market and all. This is changing.

You want a PS3 title? You're doing OpenGL/OpenAL, etc.
You want a Wii title? Ditto.
You want a mobile title? Ditto.
You want a MacOS title? Ditto.

In reality, the market segment for things NOT MS is about half or more of the actual market- and has been for quite some time. And these guys are leaving it lying on the floor.

[Synergy6]

Personally, I don't think DX/GL is the main issue (though, obviously, it is a factor). Bigger obstacles are things like distro support, after-sales service, etc. Changing graphics engines for different platforms is relatively common-place by now, but Linux has further problems of its own.