Humble Double Fine Bundle launches, we were right!

Added a link the Humble Bundle website since you seemed to have forgot Liam. ;)

I will probably find a way to purchase this one, since I did enjoy Psychonauts and it does fit my terms. Brutal Legends needing Steamworks for multiplayer is not a deal breaker, as I can at least play the game DRM free offline. I also see on your Twitter feed that they are releasing new builds of Psychonauts with this one, which is great news, although I assume previous purchasers would have access to it regardless.

I am a little disappointed that The Cave did not get a DRM free debut with this one though.

EDIT: Yes, HIB5 purchasers get the update. :)

Woooooooooooo!!! I can't wait to download and play most of these games! But first I'm gonna add them to the sales list. :P

Hamish, I too think it's a pity that The Cave is not included in this bundle, but since it was published by Sega and being a fairly recent release it was somehow to be expected, don't you think?

Not really sure what to think of it.  Psychonauts I do have already, the other two seem so-so from the Trailer. Following the info 'Paying more than average will give you the steam key for Brütal Legends' - can anyone comment on that?  Will I get a download from Humble, or just a key? The latter would be useless...  Same for the 35$ extra - not clear if this would be steam-only and/or DRM-free....

Hot damn, this is fantastic!  I'm perfectly happy to play all the single-player campaigns.  I'm thinking that I'll claim my HIB version of Broken Age and gift the backer's key I have.

Not at all surprised about The Cave, as it just came out, Sega has distribution rights, and will probably (if ever) launch DRM-free at a fixed price before becoming a PWYW deal.

A typo in the title Liam. This feels a bit off for a humble bundle with the pricey tiers.... eh I think I'm going to skip this as I already own some of the games.

Following the info 'Paying more than average will give you the steam key for Brütal Legends' - can anyone comment on that?  Will I get a download from Humble, or just a key?

I believe that both games will be available as DRM-free downloads.  Brütal Legend has a single-player campaign, which I believe is what will land in your Humble Library, but the game is recently being heavily promoted by Double Fine as a multi-player PC RTS, and that online multi-player & match-making functionality was all plumbed up using Steamworks (which is both DRM as well as a set of libraries & API's that hugely simplify the engineering of such features for game developers).

Broken Age is a single-player, 2D graphical point-n-click adventure (formerly Double Fine Adventure from Kickstarter), with no online features.  A DRM-free version was promised to all backers of the project, so I believe that the Humble version will probably be the same downloadable installer.

Thusly, I suspect that the Steam keys are both for Steam fans and for unlocking online multi-player matches for Brütal Legend.

However;  my statement is pure speculation and reasoning on my part.  Caveat emptor.  :)

The real question unanswered question... will the DLC's for Costume Quest & Brütal Legend ever be available & usable for the DRM-free version?

A typo in the title Liam. This feels a bit off for a humble bundle with the pricey tiers.... eh I think I'm going to skip this as I already own some of the games.

I must be tired, where's the typo? :(

A typo in the title Liam. This feels a bit off for a humble bundle with the pricey tiers.... eh I think I'm going to skip this as I already own some of the games.

I must be tired, where's the typo? :(

'where' should be 'were'. ;)

PS: I'm pretty sure I corrected it a while ago... :O

No cross-platform multiplayer in BL. No fun for Linux users I guess :(

No cross-platform multiplayer in BL. No fun for Linux users I guess :(

Really? Man that's pants.

Brutal Legend doesn't have a Linux binary on Steam yet, and Costume Quest on Steam doesn't work for me (black screen). Hope they fix that soon. With how the Cave hasn't been updated, I fear the worst but hope for the best.

No cross-platform multiplayer in BL. No fun for Linux users I guess :(

Really? Man that's pants.

Pretty sure that's just the DRM-free version.  I'd be a tad surprised if multi-player is not included in the Steam version when it is ready.  Someone could probably get clarification from DF via twitter.  I will ask on the DF forums.

No cross-platform multiplayer in BL. No fun for Linux users I guess :(

Really? Man that's pants.

Pretty sure that's just the DRM-free version.  I'd be a tad surprised if multi-player is not included in the Steam version when it is ready.  Someone could probably get clarification from DF via twitter.  I will ask on the DF forums.

 I know what I'm saying. Multiplayer is Linux-Linux, Mac-Mac, Windows-Windows only, no cross-platform multiplayer is what I said. Hopefully they can get it fixed.

I would have thought Steamworks would have worked out such wrinkles. Isn't that supposed to be the whole point, other than the DRM component?

I would have thought Steamworks would have worked out such wrinkles. Isn't that supposed to be the whole point, other than the DRM component?

I think sometimes it's down to the developer.

I've seen Black Ops (call of duty) released on mac and only have mac-mac online play even though its on steam for windows too.

It's odd.

Regarding 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/

BL’s matchmaking is restricted by platform/OS (i.e. 360 vs 360, Win vs Win, Linux vs Linux, etc).
The reason for this is that BL uses a deterministic peer-to-peer multiplayer model. In this model, there is no central/official server that makes all the important decisions and tells everyone else what happened. If there was, cross OS multiplayer would be much more possible. However, in the case of BL (and Iron Brigade), each player basically runs their own server and players only send their input to the other players. It’s as if everyone had their keyboards/mice/controllers plugged into a single machine. Except, they aren’t the same machine, but they have to act as if they are. What this means is that the game must be 100% deterministic, i.e. given the same inputs, each instance of the game must produce the same output. If the games don’t have the same output, then you get what we call a desync, which is sort of a butterfly effect where the games could continue, but each player would have an increasingly divergent version of the game.
In order to produce the exact same outputs, the game’s code needs to execute *exactly* the same on all of the machines involved. Any difference in how the process does, say, floating point math (i.e. PS3’s Cell vs Intel) would break that requirement. Even on machines with the same hardware (i.e. Windows vs Linux), we have to use different compilers and rely on different OSs. These differences in how, say, a compiler optimizes code can introduce subtle changes that will not be deterministic with the same code compiled on another processor.
It is, theoretically, possible to make a windows binary and a linux binary deterministic, but it’s a daunting proposition on a codebase as complex as Brutal Legend. It would require a vast investment of tech and QA, and would probably be quite fragile, easily broken by a subtle change in compiler behavior, OS update, etc.
Anyway, I hope that helps answer your question!

So, there you have it.  Each client sends state deltas to the others, and each client is expected to apply those deltas to the parameter lists of each object in play.  Then, each client's game engine is expected to play the resulting gameplay segment exactly as all the others (units spawn & die at the same time, attacks are issued & land in sync, etc.), and this is highly perturbed by engine variation, even compile-time optimization differences.

I can't say it's a happy result for me, but it's clear that they did not simply dismiss the feature, but did in fact put effort into discovering feasibility.

Beyond that, I'm conflicted... I'm not much of a multi-player kind of guy.  So, it shouldn't be a big deal.  But when I do, the two genres I enjoy are RTS and co-op RPG's (e.g., NWN1).  I've had a chat with some co-workers, regarding the PC release of BL, and they all pretty much agree that the game's RTS mode was not at all appropriate for a console (big surprise), and that the game is most fun to play with a gamepad for the action-adventure segments, and mouse/keyboard for the RTS battles.

Oooo, this looks like a proper Humble Bundle to me. Yes, we already have Psychonauts from an earlier HB, and Broken Age from the kickstarter, but I'm happy to see those other games really did get ported to Linux!

Omg i want this; but i am so broke right now.

Great bundle! Great company (Double Fine)! Great video! Support for Electronic Frontier Foundation! Tim Schafer is a good guy and totally deserves my $35 alone! 

just bought it for $35 and I recommend everyone else to do the same. Show your support when you can! Money talks and you have the opportunity. This is unprecented times for free open source platforms, so support while you can ;)

Omg i want this; but i am so broke right now.

Welcome to the club... :(