Humble Double Fine Bundle launches, we were right!

I've found a weird issue. Some games are multi-language in Steam, but just English for the DRM-free version. I can see the language files, and I guess I could replace the English ones, but is there another way to select the language?

What's up with this? Any logical reason to make it that way?

I suppose they never got around to it. Forgive our Anglocentrism.

Quoting: berarma

Quoting: s_dRegarding multiplayer, it is absolutely true, and I've a nice technical explanation from them.  It appears to be an architectural limitation:

http://www.doublefine.com/forums/viewthread/9178/

As much as I respect these guys and their work, I think that's a very poor design decision.

Yes, well, the engineer that answered my question did defend the method (sort of), but also didn't seem overly thrilled about it either :P

It is what it is.  The game is four years old, and was originally launched exclusively on two consoles (which probably couldn't match-make against each other for a whole set of other reasons).

Why would their publisher (EA!!!) have been willing to paying DF to build netcode that would make an unapproved future desktop port viable for cross-platform multi-player?

Well with Steam being as popular as it is nowadays I won't be surprised if we see more games just hooking into steam's servers and using them for matchmaking.

Quoting: liamdaweWell with Steam being as popular as it is nowadays I won't be surprised if we see more games just hooking into steam's servers and using them for matchmaking.

The issue here isn't with matchmaking, it's a combination of incompatible middlewares and that their build processes don't end up giving consistent client side prediction and synchronisation across platforms.

As s_d says, the game is pretty old (by industry standards), and was originally for incompatible platforms - there was never any reason to aim for this kind of cross platform consistency, and so there could be any number of things hiding throughout the codebase which would prevent cross-platform multiplayer from behaving.

This sort of thing is really tough to implement retroactively.

QuoteWe just added eight inventive prototypes to the Humble Double Fine Bundle! This includes Autonomous, Black Lake, Hack n’ Slash, Spacebase DF-9, The White Birch, Costume Quest prototype, Happy Song, and Brazen! (Please note, all the prototypes are Windows only.) 

Am I the only noticing how poorly this Bundle has done financially in comparison to most of the the other Bundles? Only within the past few days did it cross the million dollar mark, which is hardly bad but hardly impressive considering Humble Bundles past records. This is more on par with Humble Indie Bundle 1 than anything else.

Could this be a sign of Bundle fatigue? I mean, I grant these games may be a little niche to some people, but they are certainly a lot more well known than many other Bundle titles, and this is first time that they have offered a swath of games from someone who could be called a legitimate video game auteur.

I think there are a whole bunch of factors at play. I've heard a lot of murmurings about outstanding bugs in Psychonauts and The Cave making Linux users wary of getting emotionally invested in Double Fine. The pitch video is certainly bound to make anybody not familiar with Tim/Double Fine's character and sense of humour scratch their head in bewilderment. The Windows only bonus titles don't seem to have given this bundle the kick that previous ones have had from cross platform bonus titles.

I think the biggest factor is that this isn't a Humble Indie Bundle. It's a series of games from a single developer - one which may well have an acquired taste (I'm a big fan of Tim, but I can recognise that some of his work and the work he's fostered in Double Fine is a little too zany for the casual observer). The more diverse bundles have the ability to draw in a much more diverse audience than these focused ones. I'd be comparing it more to the Frozenbyte Bundle, the Voxatron Debut or the THQ Bundle than the "Indie" (or even the Android bundles).

That said, between their Kickstarter campaign and longtime fans, DF have a pretty impressive following and I would have thought that their supporters would have been able to garner much greater attention for this bundle (I was expecting it to be closer to $2m by now, and my initial expectations were that we'd get 35k+ Linux purchasers).

So, yeah. I can see a few aspects that would probably be offputting, but I'm still scratching my head as well. I think the notably high averages indicate that Humble's long time audiences and DF's hardcore fanbase are both at work, but some of the more opportunistic Humble contributors (who I speculate are the bulk that pull the averages down) are sitting this one out.

Speaking personally for me I haven't purchased this one, mainly because I am not interested in the games to sit down and play myself. I think that will be one of the big reasons is that their games have a particular audience as opposed to a HIB.

I agree that the main reason might be that this bundle doesn't have a game for almost everyone like other bundles, and I guess that gamers being eager for this special kind of games wouldn't wait to buy them in a bundle. Also, psychonauts was already in a previous bundle and I guess almost everyone interested already owned it, that makes it a 3 games bundle plus a crowdfunding.

I like these games and most are debuting on GNU/Linux, so this bundle is great for me.