Wishlist for Porting Projects (Pt. 2)

[jonwil]

This. I meant to post this in the last thread, but I'll just second it here.

Dude's got some interesting things going on engine-wise, too, if you read his post about it. Unfortunately, he's using XNA, so that might be a little problematic...? (I haven't looked at XNA at all, so I'm not sure how ugly it is from a porting perspective.)

XNA is basically .NET with a bunch of special libraries (i.e. its got some of the standard .NET libraries plus a bunch of extra libraries).

Depending on how it works, it may be a candidate for MONO to support XNA in which case the game would just start working without a specific port.
Whether its possible for MONO to support XNA (and more to the point whether MS would take action against MONO if they started to support XNA either legal action or action through whatever deal MS has with MONO for e.g. Moonlight)

[Dragonlord]

I vote for no since M$ is involved and we all know how nazi they can be about attacking Linux at any possible moment and location <.=.<

[jonwil]

MS is not 100% anti-linux. They DID provide binary Windows Media codecs for both Linspire distro and the Moonlight player (which is the Mono-based linux Silverlight-clone that has "official MS" blessing)

[Apopas]

MS is not 100% anti-linux. They DID provide binary Windows Media codecs for both Linspire distro and the Moonlight player (which is the Mono-based linux Silverlight-clone that has "official MS" blessing)

...

[Dragonlord]

Binary doesn't count. This is like getting a gift and being told to never open it or you get sued.

[jiero]

May I request several indie titles?

1. BootFighter
A 3D mech action/fighting game support multilayer via Internet from Japan.

http://homepage3.nifty.com/alexholth/ukwindomxp/

2. Zero Gear
A kart game similar to Mario Kart. They have discussed about the port here: http://www.nimblebit.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=83

http://www.nimblebit.com/games/zero-gear/

3. InstantAction from
Quote:
"We are currently investigating porting our development SDK to other platforms. We can't make any timeline guarantees but we know there's a desire for it and it's on our radar. With our current Firefox support there shouldn't be too many problems porting over to Linux. Porting all of our games on the other hand may not be possible."
Don't know how to make it possible

4.

[Svartalf]

Binary doesn't count. This is like getting a gift and being told to never open it or you get sued.

No kidding. I wouldn't touch any of that stuff directly if I could ever help it. Things like Mono and Moonlight are an open invitation to get sued over Patents. Now, if the in Re Bilski decision gets upheld or not granted certiorari by the US Supreme Court, this would be a differing discussion- it's still problematic, much like overuse of Java is problematic (It's a great language- the problem lies in going object-happy in it and relying overmuch on the garbage collection. C# suffers from a similar issue.)

[Svartalf]

XNA is basically .NET with a bunch of special libraries (i.e. its got some of the standard .NET libraries plus a bunch of extra libraries).

Depending on how it works, it may be a candidate for MONO to support XNA in which case the game would just start working without a specific port.
Whether its possible for MONO to support XNA (and more to the point whether MS would take action against MONO if they started to support XNA either legal action or action through whatever deal MS has with MONO for e.g. Moonlight)

Until you can SAFELY remove the risks of Microsoft being in a position to SUE anyone stupid enough to try this over filed Patents covering aspects of .Net and XNA, you'd best forget that notion.

Unless you're a Novell customer (Using SuSE or Mono will not count in a Court of Law, mind...you have to have BOUGHT from them for that little covenant to apply to you...) you're fair game. If Novell and MS don't renew the covenant at the end of the term (which is coming up fairly soon now...), you're fair game.

There's a reason the FSF called it out as being bogus in V3.0 of the GPL license text. You don't have the protections against this sort of stuff that you think you do- and MS is going to be real ill-disposed to allow you to openly cut off their air supply like that (and they'd view it that way), especially in light of them going and suing TomTom over their weak FAT32 patent, amongst other recent stunts.

[Svartalf]

MS is not 100% anti-linux. They DID provide binary Windows Media codecs for both Linspire distro and the Moonlight player (which is the Mono-based linux Silverlight-clone that has "official MS" blessing)

Do NOT delude yourself. They're very much against us because we pose a threat to their business model through and through. Anyone that thought the way you did in the past is no longer in business- and just because we're not a business doesn't protect us from the sorts of pain they can muster our way. I've watched them for easily 15+ years turning around and lying, cheating, and killing small companies for sport- they rightly view us as a threat and they'll do ANYTHING (don't doubt for a second that they burned a billion or more to burn out the threat of the Linux netbook...they did.) to hold us where we are or do us a nasty turn.

[avaughan]

I've lurked in this thread for a while, but I need to comment on this.

If you like the game, at this stage, you need to divorce the concept of "age", "cost", etc. because they're not going to listen to anything but sales figures. We've got very, very poor sales figures in our past on things that should have been blow-out sellers. Because we couldn't wait for the Linux version. Because it was "old". Because it was "expensive". As a result, what you see available is sort of the wages of that thinking.

I think its important to have realistic expectations.

If a gamer already owns the Windows copy of a game, it's not realistic to expect them to fork out $40 again for the Linux version. Nor is it realistic to expect people to hold off purchasing something they want to play, and wait indefinitely for a Linux version (especially in cases where a Linux version hasn't even been announced).

I dual-boot Linux + Windows purely to be able to play Windows games, and I suspect that many Linux users who also play commercial games dual-boot. If given a choice between purchasing a Linux version and a Windows version, then all other factors being equal I will take the Linux version. (I will even pay few extra dollars for a native Linux version).

Unfortunately all to often other factors aren't equal. Take Sacred Gold. LGP lists it at ?27.00, equal to US$44.47. Steam and gog.com both list it at $9.99 (presumably USD). Sacred Gold was released for windows (afaict) in roughly Aug 2005, yet the LGP version went gold March 6th, 2009. (Note Sacred 2 released Nov 2008, steam has it for $49.99). If Sacred gold excited you, and you are willing to dual-boot, then odds are you will already own a copy, and probably have already moved on to Sacred 2. Even if you don't, you have to ask yourself whether the Linux version is worth the extra $30+, or whether that $44 is better spent on Sacred 2.

From what I can see LGP is basically targeting the hardcore Linux user who isn't willing to dual-boot. I expect that there is a significant proportion of Linux users who are do dual-boot, and who won't pay that sort of price premium. (I've got no idea what sort of royalties LGP is paying on Sacred Gold, but given the retail prices of Windows versions, it shouldn't be more than $10 per copy, modulo some sort of minimum volume requirement).

Heh... If Caster keeps going as well as it's currently doing, coupled with a few of the other indie titles I'm about to start propositioning, I'll have better ammo for LGP and myself to see quite a bit better deals in the medium term future.

Now Caster is different. Firstly it's current (and low profile enough), that the people it appeals to probably don't already have a copy. Secondly, there's no price discrepancy working against the Linux version. Third its cheap enough that people will buy it on impulse rather than having to choose between Caster and something else.

When deciding whether to port a game you really need to consider:
1. Am I going to be able to sell this at a price that people are willing to pay?
2. Am I going to be able to ship this whilst people are still want to buy the game?
3. Is the developer/publisher supportive of this port, or do they just want to take my money and then watch me fail?

You really aren't likely to get a worthwhile outcome unless all three are true.