List of Linux friendly Kickstarter projects

[thalaric]

Shadowrun Returns announced today that they are going to support linux after all. Support will come after release like Banner Saga. Is anyone still interested or is this just insult to injury?

[scaine]

I've pledged for Shadowrun on the back of update 6, where they pledge linux support if they hit ?1M. Which is cheeky, considering they're already at ?800K - for ?200K, you could hire about 3 or 4 very well paid linux engineers for a year or longer. How much effort is there in this? I saw elanthis' sarcastic post earlier and while a lot of that is valid, it certainly doesn't cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

I also backed Wasteland 2, Banner Saga and Nekro.

They all look pretty good.

Vigrior looks decent too, but as they're only porting to linux as an afterthought and since I've already overspent on the previous four... I'll pass for now.

[AnonymousCoward]

1M ?? I'm pretty sure it was 1M $. Considering where they're at now, it shouldn't be too much trouble. Supported.

Also, Gravitaz should probably be added to the growing list.

[elanthis]

They need to do none of the things above(some of which is also not true/irrelevant). They just need to hire someone to do the work for them and when they are already approaching 200% of their goal i'm pretty sure they could find the funding if they cared enough.

All of those items are true, and very relevant. These are real problems I've been asked to solve for companies before. All of them.

Yes, pay someone else. Because when the problem is "we don't have the time/money/expertise" the solution is to "spend time finding someone to hire that hopefully has the expertise, and then give them money."

I've pledged for Shadowrun on the back of update 6, where they pledge linux support if they hit ?1M. Which is cheeky, considering they're already at ?800K - for ?200K, you could hire about 3 or 4 very well paid linux engineers for a year or longer. How much effort is there in this? I saw elanthis' sarcastic post earlier and while a lot of that is valid, it certainly doesn't cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Why in $DEITY's name would 99% of their customers want them to spend that money on Linux when they could spend it on more content, more game features, better art, better sound and music, more community features, a released game editor, etc. ?

No, porting to Linux doesn't cost a quarter of a million. But whatever it _does_ cost is money that can be spent on something else.

Like I said, it's a checklist. Linux support is way down on the bottom for most game companies. Every bit of cash or time the company gets, they're going to use that resource to knock off one of the items higher up on the list. If Linux support is now back on the list of features, that just means that they got enough cash to do all the more important things, and now have enough left over to consider unimportant low-priority items like Linux support.

Smaller games often care about getting an extra 1,000 sales. Bigger games couldn't care less about +/- 10,000 sales. And the mega-hits write off more copies to piracy than there are would-be Linux gamers in the world.

[Kamikaze]

Shadowrun Returns announced today that they are going to support linux after all. Support will come after release like Banner Saga. Is anyone still interested or is this just insult to injury?

After reading their update, their reasons make sense coming from cost, support for their dev environment, and complete lack of any linux experience in the company perspectives, so I'm back on board with the project @ $15. Contrary to my earlier post where I was wondering if I'd bother, I've decided that if they're willing to give Linux a second chance, then I'm willing to give them a second chance...

How much effort is there in this? I saw elanthis' sarcastic post earlier and while a lot of that is valid, it certainly doesn't cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

I think elanthis exaggerated on some of the effort required (e.g. I'm sceptical about needing to care about different windowing system bindings when using cross-platform APIs for games when they typically just have a VERY simple, single window displayed that is interacted with), though there is definitely some effort involved. According to HBS update they have to pay two different 3rd parties for their support, zipline games and an unannounced 3rd party game porter and each of these 3rd parties will obviously charge a margin on top of the actual cost required (and hopefully they know what they're doing so HBS don't get overcharged due to 'risk' involved in the work).

There's a good benefit to this though, if HBS don't have a bad experience on this port they can continue to use their newly modified tools, engine and knowledge to continue to release for Linux.

Like I said, it's a checklist. Linux support is way down on the bottom for most game companies. Every bit of cash or time the company gets, they're going to use that resource to knock off one of the items higher up on the list. If Linux support is now back on the list of features, that just means that they got enough cash to do all the more important things, and now have enough left over to consider unimportant low-priority items like Linux support.

Our place on the checklist is exactly what we can, and should be trying to influence though! There seems to be a disproportionate amount of linux users on kickstarter based on the comments I've been reading, so it's our chance to get game developers to seriously consider linux as a platform. Each one of these projects that turn out to be a success for these companies will give them more incentive to continue to release further titles for linux, especially if they've already got an engine, dev tools, and some experience in either costs for contracting out for it, or doing an in-house port for it. As this gets easier and less costly for them, it increases the chances of Linux being a first release platform.

[frampone]

The main problem with shadowrun is that they use MOAI (getmoai.com) and they don't support linux.
Luckily the linux support could be easily added just by creating the right CMakeLists.txt as the game framework should be working on linux.

This guy (https://github.com/bjorn/moai-beta/) forked moai and added CMake support - but this happened some time ago and with an old version of MOAI and the changes never got committed due to time problems.

It should be easy to add it back by scraping the visual studio projects and adding CMake support.

[thalaric]

I've heard that, and indeed that is what Hairbrained Schemes said in their update. What isn't explained is why Linux is listed as a supported platform on Moai's FAQ:

What mobile platforms does Moai SDK run on?

The current release of Moai SDK is designed for mobile games on iOS and Android. Games built with Moai can also run natively on Chrome browsers, Windows, Macintosh and Linux.

[snuwoods]

Hi guys, I made an up-to-date list of Kickstarter projects:
http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/...kstarter_Games

[bachinchi]

Hi guys, I made an up-to-date list of Kickstarter projects:
http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/...kstarter_Games

Thanks for that.

[Kamikaze]

Hi guys, I made an up-to-date list of Kickstarter projects:
http://steamlinux.flibitijibibo.com/...kstarter_Games

Site down? I can't connect.

I've just updated the list here to make it a bit more readable too...:
----------

Linux support confirmed:

Double Fine Adventure (successful, ended March)

Faster Than Light (successful, ended early April)

Aura-tactics (successful, ended early April)

Wasteland 2 (funded, ends April 17)

The Banner Saga (funded, ends April 20) - Post release linux support

Shadowrun Returns (funded, ends April 29) - Post release linux support after being lynched by angry Linux supporters (see comments in this thread for more details)
Note: This is only a 'go' if it reaches $1mil in funding - that seems very likely so I've put it in the confirmed section.

Nekro (ends May 4)

Gravitaz (ends May 10)

Linux support being investigated/considered:

Takedown (successful, ended early April)
NOTE: If you pledged this project and want Linux support, make sure you message the team to state that you'd like it. They will do a port based on demand.

Starlight Inception (ends May 8)
Garry from Escape Hatch is investigating and asking backers what distro to look at targetting IF possible. If there are any Phoronix members who have backed this project and are familiar with compiling/linking software to work against multiple distros, please post a comment in the kickstarter comments section.

Leisure Suit Larry (ends May 2)
Linux support promised under condition (FAQ). Here I would to note some changes in FAQ - because they need to rewrite engine to support Linux (see comments). Look's strange.

Jane Jensen and Robert Holmes game studio (ends May 19)
Depends on additional funding, they will first focus on Mac OSX and then Linux.

Vigrior-maneuver-warfare (ends May 5th)
Investigating support, attempting a stable build now. Sounds quite likely