Thank you so much for the good help.  Justin, that was exactly what I needed.

Evan:  Is the guidelines doc the long list of short items like "Do not use gui elements that are like ours or your app will be rejected.  Do not have something that links to a web store other than ours or your app will be rejected and your developer account canceled."  Things like that?  And about 200 of them?

I am almost finished with my first iOS game.

What should I expect from the submission process?  I have looked for documentation on this-- not so much the "no no's" list but a generalized list of the necessary procedures one has to go through to submit the game, receive payment, etc.

The spammiest post you ever made is probably more useful than the entire catalogs of certain book companies.

I really think linux releases might be good for small developers because of the much larger splash you can make.  Even a small title released for Linux has a tendency to make some news just because of how unusual it is, and I also think that a large part of the userbase tend to be anti-piracy zealots of a certain sort-- they don't mind if other people pirate but they will NOT do it themselves.

There are plenty of ways of porting, so you might as well do it for yourself and see how it goes, you have little to lose.

The overwhelming reason is obviously market share.  The marketshare for linux on the desktop is still something like 1%.  That means that it is unquestionably NOT worth the support and development headache for any sort of large title, especially when you consider the fact that the vast majority of the market is on DirectX, which means, again, a huge development effort required to support numerous cards and their idiosyncrasies under OpenGL. 

Then you have support. Different distros, often with weird driver issues (even still).  Then you have to consider that a lot of updates released by these people often totally bash various subsystems.  Even established groups like Canonical seem bent on making bizarre and poorly thought out changes to their architecture seemingly unilaterally, diverging them even further from mainstream operating systems as well as from other branches of linux.

As an indie developer I am unquestionably going to release on Linux boxes.  But I have a porting infrastructure that allows me to do this easily.  I am unquestionably NOT going to devote much effort to supporting those releases.  I will publish to a certain Ubuntu version, possibly check them on Fedora.  Then I will document what distro and version the game worked on, and leave it at that.

A number of companies have gone belly up trying to do porting or support services of various sorts.  Loki was one.  Cedega is another.  Various gaming distros have been tried and I can't think of any of them that are still around.

In an increasingly cutthroat market, can you blame companies for not wanting to drop $5 million in an effort to try to cater to 1% of the market?  As techies we have to realize that we are extremely isolated in terms of what the rest of the world is running and what they want.

all the legal problem work both ways and it's even more dangerous for programmer than for contractor. If your programmer on the other side of the globe doesn't finish the work you just lost some time trying to find another one. If you are the programmer, finish the work and your contractor doesn't pay you, you are basically screwed

And this is why you shouldn't do it.

But again, your mileage may vary.  Competitors, go right ahead and hire programmers who live in Uzbekistan!  I won't stop you.

Moczan, what country are you from?

This is an excellent (and necessary) thing for learning purposes.  Especially write a raytracer and a raycaster.

But if you are doing something for release, for god's sake use OpenGL or some other canned library.  The number of advantages you get from hardware acceleration are so extreme that it's foolish not to exploit them.

I have hired numerous programmers and worked with numerous outsourced developers, mostly in the Philippines.  To say that it was a huge can of worms is the understatement of the year.

But I really shouldn't argue about this sort of thing, do it a few times and you'll find out for yourself.

I'm actually from a country very close to Uzbekistan so perhaps you might want to revise your knee-jerk political correctness.

If I moved to Uzbekistan I would not want to hire programmers who live in the US.  Hiring people who live in other countries has a whole host of issues associated with it, not least the cross-jurisdictional issues associated with making sure you get paid, making sure they do the work, et cetera.

Ever try to sue someone who lives in the Philippines?  The legal system will just laugh at you.

A big question is why a programmer would work for you to develop your idea at lowball wages when he can program his own game and keep all the money.  Game programmers are very smart and creative.  What are you bringing to the table?

This is a double edged sword.  If you find some contractor willing to work for peanuts odds are he is not qualified.

If you outsource to Uzbekistan you will get what you deserve.

Then there are the people who make a fairly substantial sum in the first year of starting.

Do you know programming?

Turn based means that you have a number of options that aren't available real-time. 

I would go with potential fields, Dijkstra maps, some sort of micro-tactical AI which tries all possible moves when in a close fight and weights them somehow. 

Those three should get you something extremely brutal.

I think game design school is a terrible idea.  They are almost like a sort of ponzi scheme.

Trust me, you don't need it.  What you need to do is to make games.  Playing games with a critical eye is design school.

I'm cynical in the extreme and I think it's absolutely possible to succeed as an indie game programmer.