Myst 25th Anniversary Collection will not being seeing a Linux release for now

Too bad, guess I'm not re-buying all the Myst games then. Not the end of the world, but I am somewhat disappointed.

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: GuestI hate this kind of hypocricy :"Due to the large variety of Linux versions".

It's not hipocrisy, it's reality. It's true that you can make a game only guaranteed to work in e.g. SteamOS and Ubuntu, but you think Fedora and Arch users won't complain in the forum if the game does not work on their distros? It will add to the low score anyway. Heck, even in different releases - Shadowgrounds, shadowgrounds survivor and all the Anomaly games don't work on current Ubuntu releases.

Yes, there are a variety of solutions to the libraries and distro problems, but they are not known and they are not obvious to people who do not have the "Linux culture" and just want to have "just another build" for a minority platform. Also, they know that in practice they'll have to have knowledgeable support in most distros to satisfy their linux users. This is neither easy nor cheap!

I am as frustrated as anyone by the "large variety of distros" but this is not a lame excuse from the developer, it's the harsh reality. We could do much better if we just suggest a few workarounds to the problem and assist the developer with it.

Sorry - but that excuse simply doesn't hold water. I use Manjaro (Arch) and don't have any issues running stuff made for SteamOS or Ubuntu. That holds true of other distros as well. As for stuff not running on current releases, that holds true of the MS Windows world as well. Stuff made for Win 95/2000/ME(gasp!)XP may/may not work on current MS Windows versions.

I've used other distros in the past and if it works on one, it can be made (sometimes with a bit of effort), to work on another. It's one of the things I love about linux - stuff either works outright, or can be made to work - even old stuff.

Well, that sucks. However, we still have Starry Expanse (the fan-made remake of Riven using the Unreal 4 engine) to look forward to, which will likely have a Linux version whenever it is finished (probably still five years to go).

Quoting: PatolaI understand - you don't have issues. But others which use your distro will have them! The problem is not the majority of people that gets it right, say, 90% of the buyers of non-supported distros. The problem are the 10% that fail. They fail this way on Manjaro, that other way in Fedora, that other way in OpenSuSE and so on. These frustrated people will be the ones that are vocal when judging the game. Try to put yourself in the place of a games developer, having to hire an expert linux support person (or persons) to solve problems in all distros. Games development today is a saturared market with risky business and often with a very low profit margin. Being antagonistic to developers which are just trying to juggle financial outcomes, development resources, marketing, multiple expenses and so on will not make things better. We do not know their particular internal pitfalls and caveats.

From my experience when i've moved from Linux Mint to Antergos is normally the lack of specific library. For example i couldn't run Shadow Warrior Classic Redux cause it was complaining about the freeglut even though i have it, i've figured out that it's about the 32 bit version of it so i've installed it from package manager and the game ran fine.

Besides, Steam and GOG always says that they provide support for Ubuntu and Ubuntu based distros but outside of that, you are on your own and when people encounter an issue may ask the Linux gaming related sites or at the official distro forum.


Last edited by KayKay91 on 20 May 2018 at 12:52 pm UTC

I can at least respect them for making an open statement about that during the kickstarter before too many linux users help fund them thinking they'll be supported. That's more than I can say for some kickstarter campaigns who seem happy to take our money under false pretenses.

But yeah, I agree that their reason for it is pretty weak. I thought the days of hearing that line as an excuse were behind us thanks to the work Valve has done to create a single targetable distro for devs.
It's almost like they just googled "excuses to not support linux" and posted the first one they found which applies even less today than it ever did.

For something so "classic" surely they'd just be doing a wine wrapped release. Surely it wouldn't take much in the way of consultation funds to CodeWeavers (or whomever would be a reputable knowledge base) to learn how to package everything in an easily redistributable way. Then just guarantee support on the Ubuntu/SteamOS targets as usual and life will go on. Rolling distributions will sort it out and/or they'll get knowledge base articles sorted out quickly with whatever modifications need to be made. Just look at Feral's support setup. Where's the problem?

(I'm going to go dig though my box of junk to find Myst. I would bet it runs fine under wine as is.)

Quoting: wheresthetux(I'm going to go dig though my box of junk to find Myst. I would bet it runs fine under wine as is.)

For the original Myst or Riven you'll be better off with ScummVM.

Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: wheresthetux(I'm going to go dig though my box of junk to find Myst. I would bet it runs fine under wine as is.)

For the original Myst or Riven you'll be better off with ScummVM.

and Myst III will work on ResidualVM

BOOOOOOOOOOO

In other news, my wallet will not be seeing their series.

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: GuestI hate this kind of hypocricy :"Due to the large variety of Linux versions".

Oh yeah? Go F yourselves you worthless hacks who can't code a single hello world in c and you claim to be game makers... It is fine if you don't want to support the platform, but at least stop with the filthy excuses. There is no "large variety of Linux versions", there is only one Linux, the kernel. And you don't have to support every distro, as long as you support some common libraries. But you wouldn't know that because you never made the effort.

Grow up. It's people with attitudes like yours that make developers not want to support Linux.

And yes, you DO have to make the effort to support a few different distros, because otherwise people complain LOUDLY even if you say "Only supports SteamOS/Ubuntu". I know, because I've been there and done it. Even though VP only officially supported SteamOS/Ubuntu, I tested against Fedora, Arch and SuSE to cover as many bases as possible. There were distro-specific library issues I had to sort out. No, just using steam-runtime does not solve it all for you.

Patola is pretty much spot on with everything he's said...

Except this would be using Codeweavers, and hence Wine. So as long as Wine works on a distro (which is pretty much already packaged and tested on ever distro) it should work, right?

As said earlier, usually getting Steam and most games under it working, it's just a matter of having the 32bit libs installed.