For those of you interested in seeing The Witness [Official Site] on Linux, it seems Jonathan Blow mentioned it again recently in a livestream in response to a viewer question. It's hard to argue with what he's saying.
You can see the video here, skip to 27:10.
I took some time to listen and note down what he said if you don't want to/can't watch it. He starts off by explaining the rough time they had when it came out on Windows and then moves into talking about Linux directly:
QuoteOn Linux, the situation is way worse. Few people will buy the game, we know that because we've sold games on Linux before. The percentage of people who have support problems is gonna go way up, relevant to any other platform. So basically, we're just inviting misery to ourselves for people to complain about problems, and for us to the fix the problems. It's not worth it for this game. Braid we got away with it as it has a much simpler rendering engine. Porting that to Linux, we still had some issues, but for the most part is was alright. Maybe someday in the future if we have a Vulkan renderer and if Vulkan runs well on Linux, and if Vulkan doesn't destroy itself with driver shenanigans then in that kind of case me might be open to doing it, but an OpenGL version forget it.
Myself and Jon had a bit of a falling out a while back over something trivial, so he still has our @gamingonlinux account blocked on Twitter. I fully respect him though and I won't argue against his points here, as I think he's mostly right.
We are still a small market, growing yes, but still small and not worth the time for everyone just yet.
Our drivers are certainly better than they were a year or two ago, but they still have ways to go. Remember, I do speak to developers regularly about the issues they face, and OpenGL bugs or low performance issues are always top of their lists. Thankfully, with more high profile ports arriving on Linux like Deus Ex, Mad Max, Tomb Raider and more, driver developers have more demanding Linux ports to test their games against.
It is really interesting to hear that he's interested in Vulkan, so it's a really nice surprise. He's not saying they will do it, but it's possible if they do get a Vulkan rendering engine in future.
Thanks for sending me the link, Till! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: renegat0x0@shmerl
QuoteThat's good, I like when developers make their own engines. But it sounds like they don't use Vulkan yet.
I disagree. I don't like when people are reinventing the wheel. He could have used existing engine. He could have used engine that simply supports linux. That is the price of having your own engine. You have to do everyhing yourselve.
I could agree. But even when devs use a "multi-platform" engine, it doesn't mean they'll achieve a good Linux port, nor even a Linux port.
We saw that many times, and often 'cause doing a port mean at the same time support on this. And if the devs don't really understand the issues... The Linux Port is fu**ed.
(I was thinking of Unity for example).
Appart of that, i'm still thinking that make their own engine is a good idea. But i think it's not directly related to "simply supports linux", but it can be, or not.
Last edited by Cyril on 27 January 2017 at 5:35 pm UTC
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Meh
Was looking at that game again, then remembered it was a JBlow product.
I liked Braid, but it didn't transcend existences and blow minds like JB claimed people were too dense to understand. He needs to get over himself.
Actually, most of the devs in "Indie Game: The Movie" infuriated me.
- Fez? Cool game, interesting concept. Phil Fish? Needs a slap.
- Super Meat boy? Again, neat concept. But yet again the dev was the centre of his own solar system (The artist seemed down to Earth however).
Sorry about that rant^.....
I wouldn't even care if he had simply stated reasons they would not port it (or don't even give reasons, I don't care), but just the way he always communicates as if its a burden on his "genius"....
Was looking at that game again, then remembered it was a JBlow product.
I liked Braid, but it didn't transcend existences and blow minds like JB claimed people were too dense to understand. He needs to get over himself.
Actually, most of the devs in "Indie Game: The Movie" infuriated me.
- Fez? Cool game, interesting concept. Phil Fish? Needs a slap.
- Super Meat boy? Again, neat concept. But yet again the dev was the centre of his own solar system (The artist seemed down to Earth however).
Sorry about that rant^.....
I wouldn't even care if he had simply stated reasons they would not port it (or don't even give reasons, I don't care), but just the way he always communicates as if its a burden on his "genius"....
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He complains that Windows development was a lot of work. 4 full time devs for 3 months just on problems with Windows and he argued Linux was worse. I don't know, I compiled a game for Linux using SDL2 and it has always been very stable across every GPU that I through at it. Other much more complicated games run on Linux flawlessly. He also argued that nobody would buy the game- but I won't buy it because it's Windows only. There are way too many Linux supported games. A Windows-only game has to be really, really good for me to buy it. Chances are, I won't until it drops down to $5-8 dollars.
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From what I've heard about The Witness, I would be very interested in getting it for Linux. But his words don't inspire any hope.
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He seems stuck to prove his point and opinion. He might port it just to say "I told you so", ignoring the fact that more he waits, the less interest it will generate and by the time when Wine will be able to run that game, he will lose even more potential costumers. Some might buy it to run in Wine, but lot of people will not.
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