Banished City-building Strategy Game Will Get A Linux Port

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ls8FBFFjMxk
Well now, this was annoyingly missed by myself. The developer of Banished a pretty big indie hit stated openly on his blog that he will be porting to Linux & Mac!

Two prize quotes from the developer:

QuoteA big push at the conference was obviously moving games toward Linux and OpenGL to support the Steam Box and Steam OS. Since I’ve been thinking about Mac and Linux versions of the game anyway, being an early entry into games that will run on Steam OS probably won’t hurt and not take much extra time. Plus playing Banished on my couch in front of a large TV is pretty amazing.

And also this one in the Port section.

QuotePorting to Mac and Linux

So porting. It’s not the most glamorous of coding, but I’ve done it many times on consoles. I haven’t ever coded on a Mac (unless an Apple IIgs counts), but really it can’t be much worse than my experience of getting a PS3 out of the box for the first time and making a game run on it. I’ve used GCC and Unix previously so the learning curve on Linux shouldn’t be quite as high.

Source

If you keep reading it gets even more interesting too:

QuoteThe upside of all this work is that any future games will already just work on all platforms, and I only have to worry about the generic code that compiles on all systems.

So, future games from Shining Rock Software should also be on Linux.

The blog post is from the end of January, so we are a bit late on bringing this news to you, so apologies due there, but with all of the game engine news lately I think you will forgive us. It has actually been on my todo-list for a over a month, but kept getting pushed back.

I really do love city-builders and we just don't have many good ones, I look forward to this very much. What do you guys think of it?

About Banished
In this city-building strategy game, you control a group of exiled travelers who decide to restart their lives in a new land. They have only the clothes on their backs and a cart filled with supplies from their homeland.

The townspeople of Banished are your primary resource. They are born, grow older, work, have children of their own, and eventually die. Keeping them healthy, happy, and well-fed are essential to making your town grow. Building new homes is not enough—there must be enough people to move in and have families of their own.

Banished has no skill trees. Any structure can be built at any time, provided that your people have collected the resources to do so. There is no money. Instead, your hard-earned resources can be bartered away with the arrival of trade vessels. These merchants are the key to adding livestock and annual crops to the townspeople’s diet; however, their lengthy trade route comes with the risk of bringing illnesses from abroad.

There are twenty different occupations that the people in the city can perform from farming, hunting, and blacksmithing, to mining, teaching, and healing. No single strategy will succeed for every town. Some resources may be more scarce from one map to the next. The player can choose to replant forests, mine for iron, and quarry for rock, but all these choices require setting aside space into which you cannot expand.

The success or failure of a town depends on the appropriate management of risks and resources. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.