Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[niniendowarrior]

I've always wanted to know how the Holmes-Lupin game worked out... mind if you drop a few info on it, Thetargos?

[Svartalf]

Ok, so what was the reason this one is not a chance? Either I missed it or it was not being said.

Rights are with a company that may not be friendly to Linux.

It's a "maybe"- but it's not a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, if we DO get rights, someone would HAVE to get a hat passed around to buy the initial royalties and the production royalties.

[krzta]

Rights are with a company that may not be friendly to Linux.

It's a "maybe"- but it's not a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination. Moreover, if we DO get rights, someone would HAVE to get a hat passed around to buy the initial royalties and the production royalties.

I wonder how much it could be for this particular title (not that I have some spare cash for such an endeavour). Would you care to estimate?

[Svartalf]

I wonder how much it could be for this particular title (not that I have some spare cash for such an endeavour). Would you care to estimate?

If we're lucky, ~$25k just for the right to SEE the code- if we're not, probably as much as $75k. Civ 4 is a AAA title and they typically demand as much as that or more (Try licensing the Quake4/Doom3 engine and content... )

I wouldn't mind having that timesink on Linux so I could actually PLAY it...

Unfortunately, unless you have someone like LGP in a better situation or you can convince Firaxis and Take2/2k that it's a good idea to do it themselves, it's not likely and not practical to consider right at the moment.

[krzta]

If we're lucky, ~$25k just for the right to SEE the code- if we're not, probably as much as $75k. Civ 4 is a AAA title and they typically demand as much as that or more (Try licensing the Quake4/Doom3 engine and content... )

I see. Do you know who did a mac version of the game? And how did CTP get ported years ago (by LOKI? don't remember now). I'm not sure who released each civ version, unfortunately, and thus why it can/could be easier with different versions.
But given that MAC version is available (civ4), I wonder how much bigger MAC games market than Linux one is? It's hard to believe it's MUCH bigger and yet, lots of new games, including that one, are released for this platform and hardly ever for Linux (linux == "geeks that don't play" myth, maybe?)

I wouldn't mind having that timesink on Linux so I could actually PLAY it...

Well, such games are time consuming, but I would buy it even to play 1-2 times a month (I don't have much spare time either).

Unfortunately, unless you have someone like LGP in a better situation or you can convince Firaxis and Take2/2k that it's a good idea to do it themselves, it's not likely and not practical to consider right at the moment.

I've seen many petitions concerning this issue. I guess they don't care about this user base. Pity.

[RobbieAB]

Not wishing to denigrate the Civ version that Loki ported, it was, I believe, the least successful game in the entire Civ franchise, so allowing the port could have been a recoup the losses move...

Realisticly, if you want Civ4, get some cheaper strategy games working, and selling, and than go to Firaxis with a demonstration that there IS a market for commercial strategy games on Linux, and ask if they will do the port. It is written in openGL, so it shouldn't be a huge job to port.

And for cheap strategy titles, look for moderately successful offerings from smaller companies who might be willing to let you at the code under NDA simply in the hope of generating a little more revenue from it at no cost to them. After all, even if all they get is €1 per linux copy, and only 5k linux copies ship, that could still pay one or two people for a week.

[Aradreth]

(Try licensing the Quake4/Doom3 engine and content... )

From what I've heard a U3 license is over $750K+ for the initial platform and $100k+ for each additional platform. They also take a cut of the revenue.


U2 engines pricing is public here.

A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.

[Svartalf]

From what I've heard a U3 license is over $750K+ for the initial platform and $100k+ for each additional platform. They also take a cut of the revenue.


U2 engines pricing is public here.

Sobering, isn't it?

Everyone, this is part of WHY LGP can't arrange deals where you talk about "selling it for 'half price'" and so forth- they want this sort of money for AAA titles in many cases. For the A and B titles they want something like $10-40k for a newer title that did well, and only slightly less for something that broke even. The same rough pricing from the new/newer A and B titles goes for "old" AAA titles.

This all applies when you talk about someone that's not "doing the right thing", as is exemplified by Id, S2, OddLabs, etc.- who are making Linux ports available, either as an official supported version or as an unofficial one.

Now, having interjected this, let's get back to our plotting/scheming on more doable things. I'm going to go back through the thread and edit the original post to put up the ones ventured as impractical (some dead-out 'no way' items, some 'maybe' items...) and the ones that look promising and start filtering through contacting rights holders one by one on these we have. Keep suggesting things, though, guys- I think we're going to be on a roll here with this.

[Svartalf]

I've seen many petitions concerning this issue. I guess they don't care about this user base. Pity.

Heh... It's not that they don't care...

It's about dollars.

I'll keep saying it until I'm blue in the face (At which point, I'll catch my breath and start it all over again)- at least until everyone's largely on the same page with this (which probably means I'm going to be going over this either as a rant (this isn't one... ) or an explanation for some time to come... ).

Petitions do not count as sales.
Email campaigns do not count as sales.

All a publisher cares about is SALES.
And a studio does it as much for the money from them as their craft.

If you don't have sales figures, they don't believe the platform's credible and until the Windows SKU sales start dropping another 10-20% or possibly more, they're not going to seriously look at installed base figures for anything. And all this munging of content from LGP in the torrents and the piss poor sales many of the titles seem to have just lend to the impression that we're nothing more than an batch of thieves. I know, you're not and to presume that you are is insulting- you're preaching to the choir there.

They do NOT see the people placing petitions as customers.
A petition entry doesn't mean that they'll actually BUY it.
An email requesting the game doesn't mean you'll actually BUY it.
A discussion thread posting doesn't mean you actually BUY it.

And, in the end, that's all they really care about- and with Windows they KNOW they'll sell X amount of units in many cases. It's a known.

[sgRevan]

How about a fusion between LGP and Aspyr to port titles to both of the main alternative OS?