Humble Bundle number 13!

Quoting: "liamdawe, post: 4395, member: 1"The thing is though, if games that use it sell well, then hopefully you would think people in future would program with Linux in mind for a native version, after all this is a game that has been out for a while.

Another small point to add to this is that, when you consider it fully, we are not actually gaining anything from this but are in fact actually losing something we already had. Instead of just gaining pseudo-support from one developer (as this implies) we are actually potentially losing full support from the Humble Bundle for other titles in the future. It used to seem be native assured, but now this throws that into question.

So why should we let ourselves lose what we already had?

Quoting: "liamdawe, post: 4395, member: 1"The thing is though, if games that use it sell well, then hopefully you would think people in future would program with Linux in mind for a native version, after all this is a game that has been out for a while.

Tacking on wine support after is better than 0 support in my eyes, i don't have to mess with any configs still, it all installs for me just like it would natively.

The way I look at this particular issue is that if Linux users are buying products using Wine, then that erodes the potential customer base. From a publishing standpoint, if people on Linux have the ability to use Wine, then that's that market's needs met. If Wine can be seen as a legitimate option that consumers are happy with, then native support will be significantly harder to justify.

If it works it works!

Who knows maybe people will give more help towards Wine (maybe the humble guys should think about donating ;)).

I am frankly suprised by how many people are defending this, when it goes against everything the Bundle was (supposed) to be about, at least on Linux.

It was never supposed to be about WINE. It was supposed to be the catalyst for a more stable native market. Just because we are to be humble does not mean we need to allow ourselves to be tred on.

EDIT: Just to try and add a little levity:

Quoting: Tim SchaferLinux was like a party that sounded fun [but] we were afraid to go to because we didn’t think we’d know anybody there, and the HiB guys were like your socially fearless friend who says, “Don’t worry, we’ll go together.”

When he gets to your house he says: “Is that what you’re wearing?” and you say, “uh…” and he says, “Don’t worry. I know a guy.” And he lends you a cool leather jacket and you go to the party and when you walk in there’s a needle scratch and everybody turns to look at you and your friend gives a cool nod and then everybody goes back to the party.

So kind of like a John Hughes film. Hope that helps explain things. That’s about as technical as I can go. I just hope I don’t accidentally knock over a beer can pyramid that some tough guys are building.

Oh and also, if you want to be cool at the party, stay away from wine. (haha! Linux joke!)

[URL='http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/06/humble-bundle-devs-talk-gaming-on-linux?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+d0od+%28OMG!+Ubuntu!%29']http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/06/humble-bundle-devs-talk-gaming-on-linux?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed: d0od (OMG! Ubuntu!)[/URL]

the bundle was (supposed) to be about?
i think it doesnt go against that.
if it works crossplatform (no matter if wine is used or not) then its "crossplatform".
wine is a good thing. it allows us to play the games that are never ported on our platform. it also runs some older games much better than u can run them in latest windows releases.
i do not own windows but i do buy windows games that work well in wine. Just the gamer inside me wants to do that.

ofc native ports are better. but i use all i can to enrich my gaming.

i personally have nothing agains winelib ports if they do work. and in my case, LIMBO works just perfectly with zero issues.

I am not against the WINE project - I was using WINE to play an older game right before I came here to post this. Now, I am personally against purchasing modern Windows games to play them on Linux, but that is a subject for another thread.

The main thing I am worried about is that this can soil the Bundle's future potential on Linux. It is quite clear from Ryan Gordon's comments that he has a large vested interest in the Bundle as he feels it is the steeping stone we need to get the Linux games industry to finally be fully recognized - an actually vibrant native community where we are not always treated like second class citizens. We have come a long way towards this in the past few years, and I want this growth to continue.

This is a threat to that - it destroys the incentive to build that bright future just for short-term convenience through the use of a hack. It is like the snake-oil sold by Transgaming all over again. A relevant quote from the time of Loki's closure:

QuoteThe arrival of TransGaming to me is the clearest indication that Loki failed to jump-start a Linux gaming industry as we'd hoped, because TransGaming has nothing to do with Linux games. Their message to game developers is: "Use DirectX and develop for Windows. We'll help you sell your Windows products to Linux users." TransGaming's strategy is the same one Corel used in its Linux applications business. In the end I don't think they'll be any more successful than Corel was.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020202221402/http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=02/01/24/2118235

Humble Bundle could be seen as the new Loki, what could jump start Linux game development. I do not want to soil that opportunity just because someone did not pay attention when selecting their middle-ware.

Firstly, it's important to note that Limbo runs via CrossOver rather than normal Wine.

I spoke briefly with the Humble Bundle guys about this. They say that they're treating Codeweavers as they would any other porter, and are working with them to fix and resolve issues as they would with any of the other bundle titles.

To add a little proper reasoning to this;

QuoteThe LIMBO Linux build was created by CodeWeavers who basically take a custom version of Wine and tune the game to make sure it runs flawlessly. This is our first experiment with CodeWeavers and we are watching carefully.
If there are any bugs with the game, I don't want people to think "oh well, it uses Wine" -- these ought to be sent to CodeWeavers who should do their best to fix them.

QuoteWe typically help organize porting for the games in the bundle, and it's usually the toughest part! But we're rabid about trying to provide the best experience possible, and native ports usually do that.
But in the case of LIMBO, our porting friends said there was some audio middleware that's not easily supported on Linux, we decided to see if we could experiment with another solution that could provide a rock-solid Linux gaming experience. CodeWeavers took it on—they do highly customized Linux wrappers to optimize specific pieces of software—and the prototypes worked incredibly well. They spent a lot of time tweaking and optimizing, and it passed their QA and our QA (and seemed to perform more consistently than even some of the native ports we've seen).
But we get that software is hard, and so we'll try to keep an eye out for any showstoppers. Hit up [email protected] with any issues and we'll make sure CodeWeavers hears about any LIMBO bugs that need fixing.

So if you any of you do get issues, email them, make your thoughts known there, the petition will do nothing as it always does IMO.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to make sure that concerns and problems also make their way to the Humble Bundle support system so that issues are visible to them as well IMO.