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

I 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.

As i said in another comment recently, those devs don't care because they expect their indie-level games to be playable on WINE, thus they get to keep the money without providing official support. Everything else is just excuses.

By the way, Myst was overrated garbage even back in the day. People were mesmerized by the graphics, but the game was nothing special. So we don't miss anything anyway.

I also don't like seeing the "Due to the large variety of Linux versions...." bit either. It's not a true obstacle and never has been.

That being said, do what I did - use the 'Contact Me' on the Kistarter and write them a polite message explaining all they need to do and offically support is a single distro. I suggested Ubuntu. While I don't use it myself, it's a good base, many games are developed using it, and I've never had any issues getting a 'Ubuntu' game running on Manjaro.

Again - while this is a frustrating stance, being polite and well thought out in a message to them can go a long way and will have much better odds for changing their minds.

Beemer

I 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.

As i said in another comment recently, those devs don't care because they expect their indie-level games to be playable on WINE, thus they get to keep the money without providing official support. Everything else is just excuses.

By the way, Myst was overrated garbage even back in the day. People were mesmerized by the graphics, but the game was nothing special. So we don't miss anything anyway.

I also don't like seeing the "Due to the large variety of Linux versions...." bit either. It's not a true obstacle and never has been.

That being said, do what I did - use the 'Contact Me' on the Kistarter and write them a polite message explaining all they need to do and offically support is a single distro. I suggested Ubuntu. While I don't use it myself, it's a good base, many games are developed using it, and I've never had any issues getting a 'Ubuntu' game running on Manjaro.

Again - while this is a frustrating stance, being polite and well thought out in a message to them can go a long way and will have much better odds for changing their minds.

Beemer

I agree with this, I guess I have to sign up for kickstarter now to send them a little message :)

Not surprising though. In the other news i was a bit skeptical...
Here's they said on their previous KS "Obduction" :

Our Linux support currently depends on Unreal Engine 4 support. It's possible, but we can't promise it, yet.

And yet, no Linux release.

They should just pick a popular distro and restrict their time and effort to supporting that.

Puaahhahahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahahahha

A brown envelope has reach these "professional game makers", from somewhere... The reason they state for not doing Linux indeed is a pathetic excuse.

If you don't want to do a Linux port, just don't. But don't give this crap.

*sigh*

Due to the large variety of Linux versions

This excuse again, seriously? For starters bundling the libraries already solves much of the issues and if they really want to focus on a specific distro just go with Ubuntu (game will work on other distros anyway).

For the record, most distros are based on larger projects, more than a dozen of distros are based on Ubuntu, a dozen more on Arch, some others on Fedora. The picture is much smaller than they're thinking.


I took a quick look at their Kickstarter page and it seems the Mac versions will be wrapped by Codeweavers too.


Last edited by Avehicle7887 on 19 May 2018 at 5:34 pm UTC

Sad sauce. :(
I hope they get around to bringing this collection to us.

This is typical of Cyan. They seem afraid of a Linux build not being perfect. RealMyst Masterpiece Edition runs on Unity and Obduction runs on Unreal Engine 4, but no Linux support. I even messaged them a couple times offering to help debug and test Linux builds of these games for them, but they never responded about that.


Last edited by km3k on 19 May 2018 at 8:21 pm UTC

All anyone should do is base it upon SteamOS. Pretty much everything else would be compatible to that anyhow.

Besides, if they were planning on wrapping it up in Wine anyhow, how the hell would the Linux distro even matter?

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

I 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).

I 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.)

(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.

(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.

I 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.