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PayPalUPDATE: The developer provided some clarifications here. I think the key point to take away is this "Last but not least, we are shelving the Linux port, not outright killing it. This doesn't mean we won't do it after the launch."
ORIGINAL: Book of Demons [Steam], a dungeon crawling hack and slash with deck-building will no longer get a native Linux port. Steam Play is part of the reason.
It won't be the last game to do this I'm sure. At least in this case, they aren't pulling support for an already released game like Human: Fall Flat as Book of Demons didn't have a public Linux version. Anyway, writing on the Steam forum the developer noted a few vague issues they were having.
Things like "We had as many different issues with the build as testers. With each flavor of Linux came different issues." along with "Right now everything indicates that Linux port would be very high maintenance.". I always find these types of statements highly unhelpful, unless they actually say why that is. Let's be clear on this again too, you do not need to support all Linux distributions, support the most popular.
They went on to mention the issue of users only getting a single choice between Native or Proton, since Steam has no built-in way of picking between Steam Play or a Native build. An issue that seems to be mentioned more lately by gamers and developers. So, they said they will "focus our efforts on supporting Steam Play and Proton.".;
This does bring up some interesting thoughts. To be clear, I'm very open minded about Steam Play especially since sales will still show up as Linux and that I do like.
However, there's a lot that's unclear right now. When developers say they will support Steam Play/Proton, how will they do that? It would at the very least, require them to test every single patch they do on a Linux system through Steam Play to ensure they haven't broken it. Anything less than that and I wouldn't say they were actually supporting it. If it is broken, finding out why might end up being a hassle and hold them back and end up causing more issues. They can't really guarantee any degree of support since it is Valve and co handling it for them, the way I see it is that the game developer is not really doing anything.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
QuoteWe run in pretty much all kinds of issues. On some distros/hardware configs sound was crackling. We have had issues with game losing focus, resolutions going haywire when the window was minimized, on some hardware configs dungeons would be generated incorrectly, and, last but not least, on Linux our OpenGL renderer was at least 30% slower than it's DirectX implementation (weird since the same code flies on Mac). These are not all issues we ran into and we tested it on very limited number of hardware/software combinations.
We ran limited tests on players and even with a small group every player had at least some issues that took us from day to three days of work to fix. And even within that small group some players tried running the game on unsupported distros and were unhappy that we really don't support their distros or reported issues like they were happening on Ubuntu even though it was Arch ;-)
We spent far more time on Linux port than on Mac port. Shelving it was a very difficult decision for us because we do believe in Linux gaming and for the last month we felt that we were "almost there". However, our regular development was getting seriously hampered by Linux port efforts and it was time to make a tough choice.
Proton is not perfect but it's working well with Book of Demons. Actually, our native port was much slower than the game played in Proton (as I mentioned we had performance issues with OpenGL renderer). By "official support" for Proton we mean that if issues specific to Proton occur we will work on fixing them, not just write them off to "well it's a weird emulator on Linux we don't support that". The main issue here is that Book of Demons works in Proton and releasing the native port would disable Proton for BoD. So people playing the game now on Linux wouldn't be able to do so anymore if the native port had any issues on their machines.
Last but not least, we are shelving the Linux port, not outright killing it. This doesn't mean we won't do it after the launch. We really sacrificed a lot of time on that port and we too would love to see it happen. Especially if Proton turns out to be more problematic than it seems. However, the port can't happen this year, we simply don't have resources for that with early access exit around the corner.
Quoting: GuestI am very glad this is happening. The game is not a AAA game, it can play on a toaster, so any performance penalty from Steamplay won't affect us much.
I take it you've never worked on a non-AAA game in Wine or have ported a non-AAA game to linux.
Performance *always* matters, if you want to build a customer base.
QuoteAnd i would rather have a proper proton-based release that will be supported forever, than a half-assed native port that will be abandoned and will never play in the future...
Products are abandoned by their developers on their original platforms all the time too.
Mohandevir Nov 5, 2018
Quoting: the3dfxdudeProducts are abandoned by their developers on their original platforms all the time too.
... And for these old titles that are not supported on Windows anymore, all you need to do is run them on Linux through Wine... Did I said that?! Lol!
@Arkhenius: Hey! It's been a long time I haven't seen anything Raistlin related. Nice! Gave me an idea...
Last edited by Mohandevir on 5 November 2018 at 10:11 pm UTC
Yet, if you argue that you end up with plenty of issues trying to port your code base (crackling sound and whatnot) and then claim a generic compatibility layer outright beats you, then you're probably not a very good developer.
Nevertheless Nov 5, 2018
Quoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Quoting: NeverthelessQuoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Problem is , what kind of compability they would be looking for?
Using Wine / Proton just as a surface for not dealing Linux specific things but using OGL or Vulkan in their game , not including crazy drm etc
OR
Just hoping it works alright with existing Windows version?
There is a huge difference between them.
Nevertheless Nov 5, 2018
Quoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Problem is , what kind of compability they would be looking for?
Using Wine / Proton just as a surface for not dealing Linux specific things but using OGL or Vulkan in their game , not including crazy drm etc
OR
Just hoping it works alright with existing Windows version?
There is a huge difference between them.
"By "official support" for Proton we mean that if issues specific to Proton occur we will work on fixing them, not just write them off to "well it's a weird emulator on Linux we don't support that"."
Anyway, the follow-up Liam posted is very sensible and they definitely made the right call. If it runs with close to Windows performance and they work on Proton compatibility problems - who cares if it's not native. Half the "ports" are Windows games in a wrapper. Maybe soon you can start reviewing official Proton games, too, Liam.
Quoting: NeverthelessQuoting: LeopardQuoting: NeverthelessQuoting: Beamboom... And this is exactly what the pessimists were worried about.
And it's also what the optimists were hoping for. Instead of maybe just giving up Linux support completely, the developer now looks out for Steam Play compatibility at least. What's the harm in it? If you want the game, you will be able to play it on Linux.
Problem is , what kind of compability they would be looking for?
Using Wine / Proton just as a surface for not dealing Linux specific things but using OGL or Vulkan in their game , not including crazy drm etc
OR
Just hoping it works alright with existing Windows version?
There is a huge difference between them.
"By "official support" for Proton we mean that if issues specific to Proton occur we will work on fixing them, not just write them off to "well it's a weird emulator on Linux we don't support that"."
Is that sounds realistic to you? Seriously , devs who can't deal with native build will fix issues on Proton side things which i'm sure they never used Wine before.
Eventually, all they can do will be reporting issues to Wine tracker in order to get them fixed
Quoting: mao_dze_dunAs usual everybody hurried to be b*tthurt when a developer drops Linux support, because who can think of an actual legit reason for an undestaffed small studio with no Linux experience not to offer day one perfect native support. But hey - the forum talk heads definitely know better that the people actually making the game. Gosh, I hate that entitled attitude...
Anyway, the follow-up Liam posted is very sensible and they definitely made the right call. If it runs with close to Windows performance and they work on Proton compatibility problems - who cares if it's not native. Half the "ports" are Windows games in a wrapper. Maybe soon you can start reviewing official Proton games, too, Liam.
Don't expect me to believe that.
Quotelast but not least, on Linux our OpenGL renderer was at least 30% slower than it's DirectX implementation (weird since the same code flies on Mac).
https://icculus.org/finger/icculus?date=2016-04-25&time=03-02-30
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