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[nihilocrat]

Hey, Ars Technica interviewed Jeff Rosen (Wolfire Games, makers of Lugaru) and he pointed out some telling figures suggesting that you should make your next game cross-platform.

Indie dev suggests peers should support OS X, Linux gaming

I guess every time you make a Windows-only game, God kills a kitten.

[J.G. Martins]

No. He kills a TIGER.

Also, that sounds like an interesting article, I'll be reading it.

[Soulliard]

I guess every time you make a Windows-only game, God kills a kitten.

Cactus must be causing a mass extinction.

[Jeff]

Summary: indie games are so small that traditional market forces affect you in unpredictable ways.  Another example: David sold more copies of Lugaru when we gave it away for free (link).    

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

Well, yeah, supporting mac will usually double your sales of your indie game, sometimes more. Linux strikes me as more difficult, but there is money to be made there too.

However, there's plenty of argument to say that indie developers should leverage the most convenient and comfortable development methods they can manage. If they don't have access to mac or linux, then that's going to be tricky for them. 

If you're using any sort of library or engine though it is wise to choose something multi-platform, so you have options when it is finished.

[J.G. Martins]

Jeff, isn't that exactly what the original article was about?

And dock, pretty much any of those operating systems run on any machine these days. Plus, there's virtual machines applications where you can get other OS's running transparently on top of Windows or Linux or whatever. It's not THAT hard.

On a sidenote, when I eventually release a game (never), I am seriously pondering the idea of releasing it for Linux and having Windows binaries either not available or available for the irritating sum of, say, $1. Give the Windows developers a bit of their own medicine.

It's just for the annoyance factor. I have to boot into Windows when I want to play games that could so easily have been multi-platform it hurts.

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

And dock, pretty much any of those operating systems run on any machine these days. Plus, there's virtual machines applications where you can get other OS's running transparently on top of Windows or Linux or whatever. It's not THAT hard.

It's hard enough to be offputting. Also, unless you're willing to pirate, you'd have buy Windows and Mac OSX. And OSX really doesn't seem to run reliably on non-apple hardware for more than a month or so, and I wouldn't trust it to be used as a development platform, or be any indication of how the game might run on a real mac.

It really depends on the person! For example, to me, the idea of setting up a linux box, and indeed learning about linux, in order to make a linux version of a game I made, just isn't worthwhile for me.  I would love to make linux versions available in the future, but my priorities right now are solely on development.

On a sidenote, when I eventually release a game (never), I am seriously pondering the idea of releasing it for Linux and having Windows binaries either not available or available for the irritating sum of, say, $1. Give the Windows developers a bit of their own medicine.

It's just for the annoyance factor. I have to boot into Windows when I want to play games that could so easily have been multi-platform it hurts.

That's pretty obnoxious There are people like this in the mac community, whom talk about gimping thier windows edition.  The best way to do this without causing upset is to stagger your releases and give your preferred platform a week or month of exclusivity.

[J.G. Martins]

You do have a point about getting the OS's. However, I know for a fact that Mac runs OK on most computers because a colleague of mine has what he calls a "Hackintosh". It's just a regular laptop with Vista and MacOS. He does have problems from time to time, but generally speaking, the computer is perfectly functional. He rarely logs into Windows.

Regarding Linux... like I've said somewhere else, it's hardly the monster it's cut out to be. With Ubuntu, you can pretty much install and use it with as you would Windows. The only thing that changes is the interface. Getting stuff to compile might be slightly harder, but there are multi-platform IDE's that do most of the work for you.

Actually, I'd be as bold as to suggest that it might take you, in the worst case, about one day to get the ability to compile your game in Linux - barring the code not being multiplatform friendly. Including OS, tools (IDE, basically) and library installation.



Regarding being obnoxious, I'm sorry, it did sound like that. It wasn't my intention Disregarding how it's implemented, the idea would be to pose a slight annoyance to Windows only developers. I am aware that this would also target collaterally loads of regular gamers, who aren't to blame... but your idea is pretty good

Or maybe just add one of those irritating 5s waiting screens when you close your game Most modern games have long exit times anyway

[Soulliard]

And dock, pretty much any of those operating systems run on any machine these days. Plus, there's virtual machines applications where you can get other OS's running transparently on top of Windows or Linux or whatever. It's not THAT hard.

I think you're being a little unfair here. Lots of developers use programs like GM, MMF or Construct, due to the ease of bringing a game to completion. There's not much these developers can do to make their games mac-compatible.

[J.G. Martins]

Just so you know, I'm not some hardcore multi-platform zealot. I'm not, word.

I'm just playing a little devil's advocate here, and trying to pull the indie community a bit more the multi-platform way. It's not like I don't use Windows too.

Also... DAMN! I read about construct and being open-source I assumed it'd be cross-platform... sheesh. So I guess you have a point there. Then my flak goes to people MAKING such applications

I mean, seriously, there is no real reason nowadays you shouldn't invest some time in making your stuff multi-platform. All the groundwork has been layed. Sure, there's an initial overhead you have to cope with, but that's basically it.

Oh well. Lost cause for now, I guess.

[Jeff]

However, there's plenty of argument to say that indie developers should leverage the most convenient and comfortable development methods they can manage. If they don't have access to mac or linux, then that's going to be tricky for them. 

I totally agree.  Just the act of installing Linux and getting the developer tools set up is hard enough to deter most people, let alone figuring out how to get it to compile and stuff.  I'd rather see people make kick ass games than learn operating systems they aren't familiar with just to appease the Linux gods (however noble or profitable).

With that said, there are a million Linux zealots who would love to port your app to Linux for free, given the source code if they like it.  You just have to ask.  That's the story of Lugaru:  David wrote it for Mac OS 9.  Thanks to external help, volunteers ported it to Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.

[Guillaume]

I'm totally for cross platform development. When a game runs on Linux, it makes my day.

(just so you know, most Game Maker games are runnable with Wine).

However, developing for Mac is a pain. I have a Macbook, I like to tweak around and code some stuff for my iPod Touch, but that's it really. Apple are very elitist about which developers they'd like to develop applications for OSX, which is a good thing as a user because of the overall quality, but is a pain as a developer.

[Alec]

Oddly enough, a lot of Windows games run "fine under Wine".

Fine under Wine - 

But some Linux users don't find this acceptable, even though the end user experience is nearly identical to a native port.

I find this confusing. 

Are there actual, noticeable and important differences in the way games run under Wine, or is this just a "Linux politics" thing?

[Guillaume]

Well it's always nicer to have your application run by itself rather than using another application.
Also, it's always annoying to believe that a game works, play it for 30 minutes and then having Wine crash.

But you're not wrong, a big part of it  is a "Linux politics" thing 

[Alec]

But you're not wrong, a big part of it  is a "Linux politics" thing 

I find that whole thing annoying sometimes, mainly because people come to you in the guise of "just wanting to play your game" on Linux, and then it turns out they're really pushing for some longed-for validation of their platform by the gaming community.

It makes a lot of sense for indie games to be on Linux, but its not always a simple matter to port the game to another platform. There's often more to it than just ensuring that the code is portable. (testing on many different configurations and hardware for example)

[Hayden Scott-Baron]

One thing that the mac does have going for it is the .app container object. There's nothing nicer than all your files nicely wrapped up in a cute and shiny icon.  Of course, it makes it harder to find somewhere to keep associated readme files.

A friend of mine received an EEEPC about six months ago, running linux. She found some software she wanted to use, and they even had an EEEPC specific build of the software, but after spending three or so hours she still couldn't get it to install and has given up on ever installing anything on her EEEPC. Of course this is 'her fault', but it illustrates that using linux is less trivial than people make out, and it also shows that casual computers with Linux aren't a valid platform if you want people to download your game and be able to play it.

Are there actual, noticeable and important differences in the way games run under Wine, or is this just a "Linux politics" thing?

Yep, people probably consider it to be sloppy seconds!  People flipped out because Spore on the mac was discovered to have some Wine code in it somewhere or other, haha.

[Alec]

In the case of OSX, there are actual differences you can make in the application and the way its presented that do change the user experience slightly. (the app bundle, the icon, the help integration, changes to the control scheme, etc)

But in the case of Linux, I'm not sure if its all that different from how Windows does things. (a folder full of files, run the executable)

[Jeff]

One thing that kind of sucks with Linux game development is that the APIs change pretty often.  For instance, Lugaru was ported to Linux by someone who really knows what he's doing: http://icculus.org/.  However, 4-5 years later, despite following all the best practices of Linux development, the Lugaru build just doesn't work anymore and simply segfaults on certain distros.  We do actually refer people to Wine, for now.  However, the pre-intel Mac OS X Lugaru and early Windows XP Lugaru still run great on Leopard and Vista.

[PGGB]

In the case of OSX, there are actual differences you can make in the application and the way its presented that do change the user experience slightly. (the app bundle, the icon, the help integration, changes to the control scheme, etc)

But in the case of Linux, I'm not sure if its all that different from how Windows does things. (a folder full of files, run the executable)

When it comes to indie games Wine often works just fine. Still I guess this is because those were rather simple in the past. As they get more and more complex it gets more difficult to run things on Wine.

Anyway Wine is really awesome so I would suggest that game devs should check how their game runs with Wine. If it does there is no apparent need for a port. If there are only small problems you could contact the Wine devs and they could likely fix it which would a) improve Wine and b) be probably less painful then doing a full port.
That's my thought anyway. :D

One thing that kind of sucks with Linux game development is that the APIs change pretty often.  For instance, Lugaru was ported to Linux by someone who really knows what he's doing: http://icculus.org/.  However, 4-5 years later, despite following all the best practices of Linux development, the Lugaru build just doesn't work anymore and simply segfaults on certain distros.  We do actually refer people to Wine, for now.  However, the pre-intel Mac OS X Lugaru and early Windows XP Lugaru still run great on Leopard and Vista.

Yeah, this is a really big problem that comes with the open nature of Linux. Hope they can somehow make this more consistent.

[Bad Sector]

For starters, use .tar.gz instead of .zip files. Second,

Code:

badsector@kukuruku:~/Apps/lugaru$ ldd lugaru-bin 
	not a dynamic executable

Static linking an executable is a bad practice. The program is supposed to link against the C library dynamically which has an interface that is the same for many years (it only gets extended). The C library is a layer between the kernel calls (which change often and it is stated in the documentation that a program must never depend on it) and your program. By statically linking the C library you're basically using the kernel calls directly - that is the kernel calls of the C library version you compiled against.

The best practice, for binary-only distribution, is to include all your .so files with the binary and set up a script that uses the system-wide available version and if those are not found (or the binary fails to launch because something is missing), to use the distributed one.

Besides keep in mind that for years linux was a "hacker's os" (not crackers) and binary-only software was third-class citizen. Now its second-class and as it becomes more known, it'll become first class like in other OSes.

Also people should not depend on Wine. First of all Wine is not available everywhere. Also it is not stable; it can crash for many reasons. It doesn't have the stability that native libraries have. It adds an extra CPU burden due to the implementation. It moves around much faster than the kernel does, meaning that one version might work and the next might break (this can be seen in the appdb). And of course its not native, meaning it has less integration with the rest of the system (like not being able to fully utilise some device features that are otherwise available for native apps - full pixel shader support comes to mind).