Put the wish list for porting projects HERE...

[Svartalf]

OK, so honestly, what's the deal? We are stucked (at best) with 10 years old titles or nothing? Because almost any title mentioned in this thread is marked as "no deal" or "probably no deal"...

Do you have $20-50K? Do you know someone at the studio and publisher so that you could get something done with a handshake and a little larger and easier to swallow royalty deal?

If not, you're stuck with indies and "OLD" titles for a bit until we can get a few titles going for ourselves other than what LGP and Runesoft is managing. That's because you don't have RIGHTS ACCESS for anything less than the aforementioned means. Seriously. And if you want something like UT3 outside of the good graces of the studio and publisher, you'd better be able to cough up something in the low to mid six figures just to be able to PORT the thing.

We've gone over that little detail, ad infinitum, in other threads.

The reason that the titles are marked "no deal" is that the studio is VERY MUCH Linux hostile right at the moment or it's going to be one of those $50-250k deals just to license the rights to publish the version on Linux. The "probably not" deals are because they're going to want $25-50k up-front and I most definitely DO NOT HAVE THAT and Michael Simms determines LGP's plans- this is a personal pet project of MY own doing to try to show how things actually WORK in the games industry and to perhaps work at trying to change the rules a bit.

If you don't like what you're reading, I'm sorry for that. But, you're not their customer if you're not running Windows, MacOS (in some cases...), X-Box 360, Playstation 3, or the Wii right at the moment as that's what they make games FOR. Stating installed user base numbers won't do any good unless the Windows or console sales slip so that they're forced to look for customers elsewhere.

Complaining about the age of things we have at our disposal won't fix that.

Complaining/begging/threatening/etc. the studios and publishers in a VAIN effort to get them to make games for Linux most definitely won't work either.

Going our own way might. We've got to show indies that there IS a market for their stuff. Can't do that without a good base of titles, however new, old, etc. they might be- so long as they're fun to play, we need them.

That's what this thread is about as much as anything- trying to change the rules as much as we can on our own without having to fight the other fights.

[Svartalf]

Not so sure if the law allows the devs to take the rights if the officers don't specifically own the rights...maybe some legal opinion be needed for that

I did some checking...

Unless there's an explicit rights assignment for each instance of a work, software tends to be not considered a work for hire based off of precedent. A statement of all software work done for the employer by the employee won't cut it for the company either- they have to explicitly delineate the work the person does for you as an employee, and if it changes because of role change or line of business change, they HAVE to give you a new agreement or that clause usually gets thrown out if it goes to court as it's not presumed to be a work for hire except for a narrow range of things considered literary or artistic works.

Typically, you'd have to go to court to sort that sort of mess out, so most people don't dicker over the code- even at a game studio.

Having said this, we need to see if we can find the publisher's management or Les Bird's employment agreement before forging forward with the code he's providing on his website.

It's not out of the question, but it's forbidden fruit for now.

[Malikith]

OK, so honestly, what's the deal? We are stucked (at best) with 10 years old titles or nothing? Because almost any title mentioned in this thread is marked as "no deal" or "probably no deal"...

Some of the titles may be pretty old, but if you take a game such as Raptor, have options so you can play it at say 1680x1050 or 1280x1024 and add a HQ filter or just new higher resolution replicas of the old graphics I think you got a game that can sell pretty decently. I mean yeah I understand your point if I was buying a game today that runs at 320x200 and costed me at least 20$ yeah I could see your point but I don't think that will happen.

You could almost just call it Raptor: Call of The Shadows Enhanced and its a Linux exclusive, instantly you got something no one else does. I think its a win win.

[Svartalf]

Some of the titles may be pretty old, but if you take a game such as Raptor, have options so you can play it at say 1680x1050 or 1280x1024 and add a HQ filter or just new higher resolution replicas of the old graphics I think you got a game that can sell pretty decently. I mean yeah I understand your point if I was buying a game today that runs at 320x200 and costed me at least 20$ yeah I could see your point but I don't think that will happen.

You could almost just call it Raptor: Call of The Shadows Enhanced and its a Linux exclusive, instantly you got something no one else does. I think its a win win.

There you go. That's something of what I was getting at when I said "change the rules".

[krzta]

You could almost just call it Raptor: Call of The Shadows Enhanced and its a Linux exclusive, instantly you got something no one else does. I think its a win win.

Don't get me wrong - I don't have anything against old titles. Actually, I played Beneath a Steel Sky this weekend and I think it's a great game and it's like 15 years old or so.
Maybe just this thread went out of control with 90% of titles that are definitely a "no-deal".

[RobbieAB]

There you go. That's something of what I was getting at when I said "change the rules".

Pretty much my thinking. Create a user base from what we don't need up front cash for. Make money for studios willing to play on that basis. Keep it up for a while, and it stops being us begging the big studios, and becomes the big studios begging us.

Take my suggestion of Paradox games. If it comes together at, say, $20 and 5k copies are purchased that totals $100k in sales, or, to pick a number at random for the sake of argument, $20k profit for the studio after all the costs are subtracted. For a small company with 5-10 staff, that is a LOT of money for nearly zero investment on their part, so they will probably be delighted to let us at other games they produce.

Do this several times, and you should see the sales numbers climbing over time. Eventually, you will get to the point where your sales numbers are high enough that the bigger publishing houses and games studios will start getting interested...

So Svartalf is looking for stuff we can get either cheap, or free, as nobody can afford to pay 50k upfront for a concern that is looking at the sales figures I'm suggesting.

[krzta]

Do you have $20-50K? Do you know someone at the studio and publisher so that you could get something done with a handshake and a little larger and easier to swallow royalty deal?

I'm not complaining or accusing anyone of anything etc. - it was just a reality check as more and more posts where about "no-deal" titles.
I may consider pouring my future cash into some title, but right now I don't have any spare amount of such magnitude

[RobbieAB]

I'm not complaining or accusing anyone of anything etc. - it was just a reality check as more and more posts where about "no-deal" titles.
I may consider pouring my future cash into some title, but right now I don't have any spare amount of such magnitude

Now there is a method of getting decent Linux games...

Find someone mad enough to pay $50k for a copy!

[Svartalf]

I'm not complaining or accusing anyone of anything etc. - it was just a reality check as more and more posts where about "no-deal" titles.

Heh... It really IS that way, unfortunately. Not a single one of us in the community can go and drive over to Garland, Texas and tell George Broussard to make Prey or the "upcoming" Duke Nukem title (yeah, yeah, I know... ) for Linux and expect have him do anything other than call the Garland Police to escort you OUT of his offices right at the moment.

Ditto John Carmack or any of the Id crowd- save that it'd be Mesquite cops instead of Garland ones...

I may consider pouring my future cash into some title, but right now I don't have any spare amount of such magnitude

None of us do. Even if we pooled it together- it's not a foregone conclusion you'd see anything out of it. That's a $25-50k pig in a poke deal, really. LGP's got rights to a NICE RTS title- and every team that's looked at it has up and ran off on him. This has been ongoing for about 3 or so years now. I've looked at the code...heh...game's nice, code's okay (as in it'll be robust...)- but only once it's been moved over. It's going to be a rough run at best for that title. He's spent money on the rights access already. It's an example of how much of a crapshoot this really, really is.

[Svartalf]

Now there is a method of getting decent Linux games...

Find someone mad enough to pay $50k for a copy!

Heh... I keep playing the lotto here in Texas and they keep reading off the WRONG NUMBERS...

If I won a big enough pot, I'd do a few of these just to un-logjam things a bit.