Ryan "Icculus" Gordon is looking for new games to port to Linux, pay not required

An indie like Subnautica or Astroneer would be very cool. I'm also still hopeful we'll see Oxygen Not Included, but since that's Klei, it's likely coming anyway.

Otherwise, Hellblade Senua just released (UE4), Event[0] appears to be struggling to get anything out the door for Linux, despite promising it about a year ago, there's no sign of Rain World, again promised during Kickstarter and all quiet.

On the AAA front, it would be great to see Neir:Automata or Prey, or Overwatch, or, or, or... yeah, not likely! But then I'm pretty sure Icculus was the godsend behind Sanctum 2, so you never know!

How about Killing Floor 2? Tripwire promised that one three years ago, but then went silent.

Finally, INSIDE (spiritual sequel to Limbo) would be cool, or UnderRail?

So many games! So little money.

[Edit: This inspired me to give Ryan the same Patron pledge I give this site. It still pisses me off that there's Patreon's of people making Youtube videos of Overwatch raking in like $5k a month while these Patron's are only just sitting around the grand mark, but that's life in the niche lane, I suppose. Great to see Ryan's Patreon coming up to a grand already!]


Last edited by scaine on 21 August 2017 at 9:38 pm UTC

I'd go with The Witcher 3 and GTA V (maybe even Red Dead Redemption, but guess that's impossible).

Save Red Dead Redemption for RPCS3 ^_^

Doom 2016 would be good if we are talking about AAA's but let's be realistic , Ryan Gordon talks about indie games for sure.

AAA port would be so hard for one man.

Yo know he's ported a heap of AAA already, right?
Doom 2016 (why the fuck didn't they call it Doom 4) with vulkan and idtech is probably the easier end of the scale.

If only permission from id would be enough , then yeah. He could. But with Bethesda involved it has no chance.

Vulkan is there , you are right. But did you know that Doom 2016 uses a compability profile for Vulkan and most important ; Vulkan open source driver radv is not there yet.

So with that conclusion , it would still be a pain in the ass.

You can't play that game with Mesa Vulkan , you will Amd Gpu Pro.

On Nvidia side , you are cool. No one is using Nouveau for gaming anyway.

What do you mean? Doom 2016 runs well using wine with radv mesa 17.1, I have played it myself.
Running it with OpenGL on the other hand, does not work.

Apology for what? For this?

No, for this:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/the-witcher-3-didnt-come-to-linux-likely-as-a-result-of-the-user-backlash-from-the-witcher-2.9940

We're not the borg or some kind of hivemind, so that must not be what you mean. I'm not making excuses for foolish people, but that's why I won't make any excuses for CDPR. I don't control and I don't WANT to control, directly or via some kind of censorship or social bullying, anything some other "member" of the "linux community" says or does; and I also utterly absolve myself from any responsibility for what they say or do, therefore. If they don't want me to buy their game because of something some kids said, that's their decision, but petty doesn't begin to describe the offensive excuse given by that guy.

I'm sure creators of very cared about games have seen worse, and maybe whomever did that No Man's Sky deserves worse, but I've never heard such a childish, level-stooping and just plain absurd response from any dev or publisher. Ban the haters, prosecute the lawbreakers, and man the eff up. The closest thing to an apology I can think of that would be reasonable to expect from those of us who would like a port and aren't responsible for threats, etc, would be along the lines of "Hey, some folks are real jerks, huh? Well I'm sorry you had a rough month, but let's not fall into generalization. I have this money here..." /endrant

Skyrim would be great. And other Bethsoft games like Dishonored.

However, I am looking also for good RTS/TBS, be it city-building or so.

Hegemony III would be cool.
Endless Legend also.
Age of Empires: remastered and AoE2:HD.

I think some people who are talking about Mr. Gordon doing things like contribute to Wine or fixing problems with Unreal engine or whatnot are missing the mark a bit. Coders are not universal tools. Ryan Gordon is very experienced and expert at porting games to Linux; there may well be nobody in the world who is better. That does not make him experienced and expert at any and all computing tasks. He's a smart man and could no doubt learn any of those other things, but spending time on those learning curves, unless he happens to have "caught the bug" on one of them, would not be the best use of his time and expertise.
Other people who know Wine can hack Wine, he can port games.

I just patreoned this guy. He writes awesome FOSS and ports games to Linux. What's not to love?

Not my cup of tea, but what if he ported League of Legends? That would surely appear to a mass audience that is looking to make an OS switch. If that wasn't possible I would opt for "The Witcher 3."

I'd go with The Witcher 3 and GTA V (maybe even Red Dead Redemption, but guess that's impossible).

Save Red Dead Redemption for RPCS3 ^_^

Doom 2016 would be good if we are talking about AAA's but let's be realistic , Ryan Gordon talks about indie games for sure.

AAA port would be so hard for one man.

Yo know he's ported a heap of AAA already, right?
Doom 2016 (why the fuck didn't they call it Doom 4) with vulkan and idtech is probably the easier end of the scale.

If only permission from id would be enough , then yeah. He could. But with Bethesda involved it has no chance.

Vulkan is there , you are right. But did you know that Doom 2016 uses a compability profile for Vulkan and most important ; Vulkan open source driver radv is not there yet.

So with that conclusion , it would still be a pain in the ass.

You can't play that game with Mesa Vulkan , you will Amd Gpu Pro.

On Nvidia side , you are cool. No one is using Nouveau for gaming anyway.

What do you mean? Doom 2016 runs well using wine with radv mesa 17.1, I have played it myself.
Running it with OpenGL on the other hand, does not work.

Last time i checked it didn't work for me on Mesa

If he starts porting a title I think is REALLY NEEDED for Linux, then I will toss some money his way via patreon. I have a pretty big list of acceptable titles, but often its the outliner ones that are picked to port. I understand sometimes this can't be helped when a developer is not Linux friendly (looking at you Bethesda), but maybe he will get lucky.


Last edited by TheRiddick on 21 August 2017 at 10:49 pm UTC

Approach the company on behalf of all the apples in the barrel, good and bad.

Sorry but it does not work like that. Some companies failed us, some are very nice to us. It wouldn't make sense that Valve, Feral, Aspyr, Kalipso, Paradox and many others own the reaponaibulities of bad apples like GOG and CDPR. For example, I do not trust GOG anymore, but I do trust Aspyr because, whereas GOG, their communication was very nice to us for Civ6. They didn't lie. They clearly stated that it might not come, then made several statements about their progress and finaly released it. You see, blaming someone for someone else action is very immature and not professional.

I'd go with The Witcher 3 and GTA V (maybe even Red Dead Redemption, but guess that's impossible).

Save Red Dead Redemption for RPCS3 ^_^

Doom 2016 would be good if we are talking about AAA's but let's be realistic , Ryan Gordon talks about indie games for sure.

AAA port would be so hard for one man.

Yo know he's ported a heap of AAA already, right?
Doom 2016 (why the fuck didn't they call it Doom 4) with vulkan and idtech is probably the easier end of the scale.

If only permission from id would be enough , then yeah. He could. But with Bethesda involved it has no chance.

Vulkan is there , you are right. But did you know that Doom 2016 uses a compability profile for Vulkan and most important ; Vulkan open source driver radv is not there yet.

So with that conclusion , it would still be a pain in the ass.

You can't play that game with Mesa Vulkan , you will Amd Gpu Pro.

On Nvidia side , you are cool. No one is using Nouveau for gaming anyway.

What do you mean? Doom 2016 runs well using wine with radv mesa 17.1, I have played it myself.
Running it with OpenGL on the other hand, does not work.

Last time i checked it didn't work for me on Mesa

Did you have "+r_renderAPI 1" in launch options? That makes it start the game with vulkan instead of opengl, otherwise it won't work.

Elite: Dangerous!
Ryan and David should become drinking buds!

I'm not that surprised.
Didn't Ryan Gordon "Icculus" port Lugaru more or less for free and in almost no time at all? I want to remember that he said that he had it running the first day but i can remember wrong.
I like Ryans ports so i really hope it ends up being a game that i like to play.

GTA V
Final Fantasy XV
Skyrim
The Witcher 3
StarCraft II
StarCraft Remastered
WarCraft
etc...


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 22 August 2017 at 12:42 am UTC

I feel like it would make more sense to go for porting the major game engines as opposed to one off games. Imagine if unreal engine had Linux support. It would be insane and we could recycle a bunch of code.

Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams

i have an better idea, he became an teacher and helps create cheaper quality laborhood to do the ports

What's not legit in the Wine wrapper? It's not modifying the original. So it's completely legit.

The difference is a Wine wrapper is not a port of the actual code, which is what Icculus is talking about, he wants to get into the code itself & do a proper port, not half-ass it with Wine.

I fear the whole thing won't be that easy. Porting a game is just half the battle. The game also has to be supported after the port.
Even if Gordon decided to spend the rest of his life doing support for that single game one man wouldn't be enough.
If one of the AAA companies lets him do the port it would have to set up and pay a support team on their own which would probably cost even more than the port itself.
There would be a big backlash if the game was released for Linux without anyone fixing bugs later on. So I don't think any AAA company will let him do the port even if they wouldn't have to pay for it.
Big publishers could pay a Linux port itself out of their petty cash anytime.

Forgetting about the games for a moment, lets take a second to reflect how great it is that the community is funding Ryan to work on useful stuff that benefits us all (Linux gamers) directly. A good example is the fact Ryan has been able to work on https://icculus.org/physfs/ full time for the last month or so because of patreon funders.

I got more interested in the patreon model a few weeks back when I read these articles [1] [2]. Consequently I went looking for people I though worth funding, heres what I found:

Open Source Gaming:

* https://www.patreon.com/icculus
* https://www.patreon.com/flibitijibibo
* https://www.patreon.com/godotengine
* https://www.patreon.com/openfl
* https://www.patreon.com/haxeflixel
* https://www.patreon.com/lutris
* https://www.patreon.com/Cheeseness
* https://www.patreon.com/liamdawe
* https://www.patreon.com/kozec
* https://www.patreon.com/angegastudios
* https://www.patreon.com/onpon4

Open Source

* https://www.patreon.com/joeyh

I'm sure I missed some, if you know of other interesting people or projects in the open source gaming space please post them in the comments.


Last edited by Nod on 22 August 2017 at 9:22 am UTC