Cheese Talks: More Cross-platform Humble Bundle Details Than You Ever Wanted To Know!

I was going to Tweet to you, but I guess posting here is just as good: An excellent article in general, sums it all up quite nicely.
It was also very interesting to read more about the porting process. I always was curious about how it goes and why.

It's a shame that we can still only speculate on many issues concerning the current HiB, especially about the reduced number of sales.
I suppose we'd need some data directly from the users if we're to ever be able to find out the true reasons why it happened...

From a technical standpoint, besides an occasional typo and missing word, only one thing bugs me some: the pie doesn't have any associated numerical value.

Other than that, a very good read. Keep em coming. :cool:

Edit: Oh, and Happy New Year!

Thanks for the stats on who ported what - most interesting there for me. :)

As for your little editorial there on the whole THQ thing, I agree with most of what you said even if I am a little less favourable of HB than you are, and I especially like the talk about how things went toxic and why. All and all a well rounded perspective.

I enjoyed reading this, but one thing - Jack Claw was never on Mac in any fashion.

I think Shank 2 was ported by Icculus. Jack Claw wasn't released for anything than Windows afaik. Good read.

Do you have any stats on the actual open sourcing of various games over the releases and the kind of licenses used?

(crap captcha btw)

I enjoyed reading this, but one thing - Jack Claw was never on Mac in any fashion.

Ah, my first real correction! This is what I get for forgetting to double check stuff sourced from Wikipedia against my own download page >_<
I'll be making an update soon. Thanks for pointing it out.
The source for the Mac port as done by Alternative Games was [URL='https://github.com/Frozenbyte/Jack-Claw/commit/22af434f21fa527dadc39235f90841616a513b28']added to the repo[/URL] though (which could potentially count as it being "on Mac"). Binaries definitely haven't been made available to Humble Bundle purchasers.

I think Shank 2 was ported by Icculus. Jack Claw wasn't released for anything than Windows afaik. Good read.

Shank 2 was ported by Alternative Games president Tapio Honkonen. Icculus wasn't involved in that one according to the Humble Bundle guys (and he didn't mention it when we were corresponding about the article).
Jack Claw Linux binaries are on your Humble Bundle download page if you have purchased a bundle containing it. They were added 10 days after the bundle launched.

Do you have any stats on the actual open sourcing of various games over the releases and the kind of licenses used?

Yeah actually, I touched on that in my [URL='http://cheesetalks.twolofbees.com/humbleStats.php#changing_bundles']shallow analysis of the first 10 Humble Bundles[/URL]. It's towards the end of the "[URL='http://cheesetalks.twolofbees.com/humbleStats.php#changing_bundles']The Changing Shape of Bundles[/URL]" section.

I just hope for one thing - that people start using the bloody XDG specs and stop throwing their save games randomly around. Thank god that at least Icculus, Urkle and Flibit adhere to them.

I thought the Jack Claw version was a user-driven effort instead of an official port, I didn't know Alternative Games was behind it. It didn't work very well when I tried it. And for Shank 2, I was convinced Ryan's name was there somewhere. How wrong I was, I guess it was for Shank. I should have my facts. Thanks for your clarification and your excelent reports. I like to know who's doing the hard work.

I just hope for one thing - that people start using the bloody XDG specs and stop throwing their save games randomly around. Thank god that at least Icculus, Urkle and Flibit adhere to them.

There have been some complaints about the lack of standards across distributions. We should let them know these exist.

Icculus is involved in developing a spec for fullscreen mode apps. That's an interesting one too.

interesting read, I know its probably not possible to really find out, butI do wonder of all those linux games several are simply converted to linux so that the game can join the HiB, but how many are really maintained and fixed ? Dungeon Defenders tbh is a piece of junk right now, Walking Mars I just noticed has a new version (1.1) so that might now not lock up, downloading as we speak, but there are several more. Just feels a bit that when the HiB is over, give it 3-4 weeks, the focus is gone.... quantity vs quality

Also, Torchlight and its infamous bugs (and non-support of mods).
Indeed, the level of support is quite... variable. Most unfortunate.

Updates have been made. Thanks for the comments, guys :)

interesting read, I know its probably not possible to really find out, butI do wonder of all those linux games several are simply converted to linux so that the game can join the HiB, but how many are really maintained and fixed ? Dungeon Defenders tbh is a piece of junk right now, Walking Mars I just noticed has a new version (1.1) so that might now not lock up, downloading as we speak, but there are several more. Just feels a bit that when the HiB is over, give it 3-4 weeks, the focus is gone.... quantity vs quality

I touched very briefly on this in the conclusion. I would have liked to have really gone into detail on this subject, but records of outstanding bugs and when stuff was fixed has been difficult to come by. Depending on how things go, I may cover this in a future update.

This is a very real danger though - the potential for Linux to be seen as a place where it's OK to throw titles out and not maintain them seems high, and it would be more detrimental than a lack of titles.

In a recent conversation I had with icculus, he said that there are some things that are being looked at which he couldn't go into detail on (not that these are necessarily things that he would be in control of, being a contractor and all), so perhaps there is some resolution on its way (hopefully some that isn't done merely because a title is appearing in another bundle).

Also, Torchlight and its infamous bugs (and non-support of mods).
Indeed, the level of support is quite... variable. Most unfortunate.

Actually mods work in Torchlight, but you have to shove them in the data packages right now. Ukrle has said that he'll be fixing Torchlight early in 2013, so you'll unfortunately have to wait.

I find it funny that one of the best ports is the one that was delayed for three months - I've had almost no problems except one that's related to a bug in compiz (weird mouse clipping issue).

But there are still serious issues in many ports. I won't complain about DD, since that's still recent, but Cortex Command, Isaac, SMB, GSB, Psychonauts, Fieldrunners, Torchlight, Eufloria and Waking Mars. To my knowledge, Psychonauts, Torchlight, Eufloria and Waking Mars will be fixed in the future as stated by the devs, with Psychonauts, Torchlight and Eufloria having an ETA for a better version in early 2013 and Waking Mars being fairly stable now.

Then there's the lack of feature parity, like in Swords & Soldiers - at first I actually fell for the 'because of steamworks' excuse, but since they have a Win/Mac version outside of Steam with DLC and multiplayer support, well... Hopefully they'll add multiplayer and DLC now that's Steam is on Linux.

I feel like we should pester the devs to do one of the two things: fix it or drop it. CC doesn't even work, and yet they sell it with Linux support (and do not answer to any questions related to Linux lately).

Also, if anyone's up for providing a wiki somewhere for checking which games support XDG that would be nice - let's see who doesn't and ask them to add support. Puppy Games has responded saying they might at a later date but are unsure because it would break support for old save games.

Now I won't even mention flash games, because that's a different issue entirely.

Of course, the many great Linux ports should not be forgotten - but the bad ones need to be remembered, because what the hell, it's been months without a fix for many of those and quite often absolutely no statements. Even minor issue are important, and this isn't XBLA where they have the excuse of not wanting to spend $40k on distributing patches.

Actually mods work in Torchlight, but you have to shove them in the data packages right now.

I know that much, I was one of the first to try this method and comment about in in Runic's forums. ;)
Still, the number of mods you can get to run this way is VERY limited. A good 80% of those I tried failed, plain and simple. I couldn't even get the French translation to run - a pity, as I'm pretty sure my daughters would have liked the game, but they're not exactly up to speed with English yet. And boy am I glad I did a backup before every change to the zip file. :/

On feature parity, there's also GSB. Want the DLC? SOL.

I know that much, I was one of the first to try this method and comment about in in Runic's forums. ;)
Still, the number of mods you can get to run this way is VERY limited. A good 80% of those I tried failed, plain and simple. I couldn't even get the French translation to run - a pity, as I'm pretty sure my daughters would have liked the game, but they're not exactly up to speed with English yet. And boy am I glad I did a backup before every change to the zip file. :/

On feature parity, there's also GSB. Want the DLC? SOL.

Oh, I wasn't aware. Well, no need to mention it then, but yeah, it's still poor.

I only mentioned that since that was the only one I played that also didn't have the dlc. And also, Jamestown, which is a shame since I love that game (the 4-player COOP is super fun). Anybody ever get any answers out of those devs? I only hit up Ronimo (Swords & Soldiers devs) about Awesomenauts on Linux, and they didn't say either way. Any idea what other games lack the DLC? I know that Dredmor's works on Linux (but the latest build of the game is broken :( ), and so does Revenge of the Titans'.

Hm, here's a list of Humble games with DLC, any idea which ones have and which ones haven't?

Dungeons of Dredmor - on Linux
SpaceChem - not to my knowledge
Steel-Storm - on Linux
Swords & Soldiers HD - not
Frozen Synapse - no idea
The Binding of Isaac - technically it is now
Gratuitous Space Battles - not
Dungeon Defenders - technically all of it is
Jamestown - no idea
Revenge of the Titans - on Linux (via website)

That's all I know and I think that's all the games in the bundles so far.

Jamestown: nope. Never answered my tweet about it either (even though he was active on Twitter at the time I asked)
Frozen Synapse: Red is available (at least on Steam) and can be used in game, just choose the campaign.
SpaceChem: Can't tell, see [URL='http://steamcommunity.com/app/92800/discussions/0/828923952121455084/']this thread[/URL] for extra laughter (or teeth grinding/facepalm/rage/whatever suits your fancy). Noteworthy too: they use a launcher. Nice sh. Forcing apt-get and gksudo down your throat. Checking for debian-specific versions of the dependencies. Way to go...)

Jamestown: nope. Never answered my tweet about it either (even though he was active on Twitter at the time I asked)
Frozen Synapse: Red is available (at least on Steam) and can be used in game, just choose the campaign.
SpaceChem: Can't tell, see [URL='http://steamcommunity.com/app/92800/discussions/0/828923952121455084/']this thread[/URL] for extra laughter (or teeth grinding/facepalm/rage/whatever suits your fancy). Noteworthy too: they use a launcher. Nice sh. Forcing apt-get and gksudo down your throat. Checking for debian-specific versions of the dependencies. Way to go...)

God, that's just ridiculous. I still didn't bother to download SpaceChem via Steam, but it seems like I also have too many bits for it. I thought that the packaging would be better this time, since they previously distributed only 32-bit debs (with a conversion script for 64-bit). Oh, well...

So, Jamestown, SpaceChem, GSB, S&S. Great. Has anyone poked Ronimo or the guys behind GSB about this? Although I don't expect much of GSB...

No idea about Ronimo.
As far as GSB is concerned, to put it bluntly: cliffski doesn't give a hoot.
[URL='http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=6842#p53390']Mandatory post in Positech forums.[/URL]

And you're supposed to put up with that and kindly stfu.