Developer breaks silence about 'The Silent Age', a point-and-click adventure for which a Linux port was promised

"Problems with middleware" means DirectX.

Quoting: BreezeWhat do these developers mean by middleware? Are they talking about network, database, keyboard/controller libraries? There are tons of platform independent libraries for those.

I middleware is a piece of software that does a part of the job you need done.
.Net devs usually calls this "components"
Could be network related (multiplayer protocol for a game), anti-cheat in multiplayer game, graphic (handling 3d, or simply image display methods) or any other part of an application...

Rather than developing the solution themselves, the game studio bought a license to use some code another firm have developed.
It spares them some work, but it introduce a bit of software they have no ability to alter.
You usually don't get a middleware source code, just a library to integrate in your project.
So, if the middleware you use is not compatible with another system than windows, then you cannot use your game binary without re-implementing what the middleware does, and in a compatible way.
They just don't want to invest that much time in it.

What irkes me the most tough, is the "if" in that sentence:

QuoteWe haven't looked at it for a while, but if and when we return to it, we'll let you know.

They are just simply walking away of they're previous statement that a Linux version will be available.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: GuestSo really, it would force people out of their comfort zone (really, windows is about as comfortable as shirt made out of tree bark) to try something new.

I don't get this. How do exclusives force anyone to do anything at all? If a game isn't available on my OS, I shrug and move on. I certainly do not feel compelled to install Windows or buy a Console just so I can play them. Exclusives are bad, full stop. Besides, if you love Linux for the freedom it affords you, why do you feel the need to force it down someone's throat?

It takes extra development effort to make a piece of software available on another platform. I would love to see Gambas ported to MS Windows, but it's exclusive to GNU/Linux right now. The same goes with a lot of GNOME and KDE apps like gThumb and K3b. What if I want to use Nautilus or Konqueror instead of Windows Explorer? No can do.

When you're looking to develop and distribute a game commercially, targeting one platform in particular can make good business sense. It's not as though releasing a game exclusively for one title means you're holding back from hitting some switch to magically port it to other platforms. There are technical challenges involved to supporting other systems.

Accordingly, if SteamOS ever got popular enough that a game studio could make a healthy profit supporting it exclusively and then worry about porting it to other platforms later, I don't see how that's a bad thing. As you said yourself, it's not *forcing* anyone to use GNU/Linux. It's just giving incentive to those people who will try a whole new system just to play one game. This in turn means a greater install base for SteamOS and accordingly more incentive for developers to support GNU/Linux commercially.

Obviously what would be better is if you could write once, run anywhere, for everything. But that's effectively just creating a single platform anyways. If there really was no effort involved at all in supporting multiple platforms, then you're not truly supporting multiple platforms but rather a single monolithic cross-platform platform--and considering how those kinds of efforts have gone in the past (e.g. Java) that approach potentially has its own drawbacks.

In short: Exclusives aren't necessarily a bad thing. They're just a fact of life.

Quoting: Shaolu

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: GuestSo really, it would force people out of their comfort zone (really, windows is about as comfortable as shirt made out of tree bark) to try something new.

I don't get this. How do exclusives force anyone to do anything at all? If a game isn't available on my OS, I shrug and move on. I certainly do not feel compelled to install Windows or buy a Console just so I can play them. Exclusives are bad, full stop. Besides, if you love Linux for the freedom it affords you, why do you feel the need to force it down someone's throat?

[...]

In short: Exclusives aren't necessarily a bad thing. They're just a fact of life.

Thanks for the wall of text, captain obvious. ;) But this isn't what I was arguing against, and I certainly wasn't speaking of a hypothetical popular SteamOS of days to come. I was simply stating my firm belief that Linux-exclusive games aren't the right way to market Linux as a gaming OS today, and also protesting Kyrottimus's use of the word "force" I guess. Obviously it often makes financial sense to target the largest or otherwise most profitable segment of the market and any work towards additional platforms will yield smaller returns. True, but beside the point.

Quoting: liamdaweAh the dreaded "middleware" reasoning again.

Why on earth do developers not look into first and plan ahead?

So frustrating.

The answer to that is fairly depressing I'm afraid; the reason they don't plan ahead is that Linux support isn't something that is being discusses until the game is far enough ahead that the PR department starts making noise and some suit catches wind of this here "leenuks" and sends a memo to the programmers "please add in some leenuks".

And at this point it comes down to blind luck - do the various libs ( or in marketing speak "middleware" ) have Linux ports? can we exchange for another that has?

with the typical game needing libs for;

* Input
* Sound
* VFS/assert managment
* Graphics
* Physics
* Network

and just one of them not having a port is a show stopper, well there is you answer why so many games can't have Linux versions.

Hopefully with Valve creating a bit of awareness for Linux via steamos developers will keep that in the back of their head when starting new projects as to not prematurely close the door on the Linux marked. So that titles that comes out in the next couple of years will ( or atleast can ) have Linux support.


Last edited by Guppy on 1 July 2016 at 6:32 am UTC

It would be really interesting to better understand the issues that gets reported when devs face issues with Linux ports. What does the "texture" issue really mean for instance? Is there a 32/64 bit mess up? Are the APIs incomplete on the Linux side? What is it?

Quoting: HyperdriveIt would be really interesting to better understand the issues that gets reported when devs face issues with Linux ports. What does the "texture" issue really mean for instance? Is there a 32/64 bit mess up? Are the APIs incomplete on the Linux side? What is it?

You can ask the devs at the Steam forum. :) The link is already in the article.

Yes, but I like this forum and would like to support it someday. This is the information it can provide for me to increase my interest. :-)

Quoting: Liam. . . after months of complete silence (no pun intended). . .

Perhaps not intended, but appreciated nonetheless!!! :D


Last edited by Nanobang on 1 July 2016 at 12:40 pm UTC

Quoting: HyperdriveIt would be really interesting to better understand the issues that gets reported when devs face issues with Linux ports. What does the "texture" issue really mean for instance? Is there a 32/64 bit mess up? Are the APIs incomplete on the Linux side? What is it?

In this context it probably means that they wrote the shaders in DirectX on Unity and the DirectX to OpenGL translation in Unity borked some of them so that some textures looks wrong. Since too few write their shaders in OpenGL to begin with we can only hope that the momentum behind Vulcan will change this.