Ron Gilbert is a name most in the game industry will know from the likes of Thimbleweed Park, and earlier works like The Cave while at Double Fine and they were even the producer on my all-time favourite RTS Total Annihilation. More than that, Gilbert was also the creator of the classic Monkey Island and it appears they're now attempting to switch to Linux.
Terrible Toybox, the actual team behind Thimbleweed Park are working on a new game and game engine too. They released Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure in May 2020, as a small standalone title that acts as a prototype for their newer game engine. They even put up the source code for the Delores game on GitHub, although it's not under an open source license. It doesn't support Linux yet but that appears to be planned.
So what's the fuss about? They're switching their development flow to Linux and they've started blogging about the adventure too with a first post about their new hardware a few days ago. Seems they've settled on a Dell XPS 13 with Ubuntu Budgie. The question is: why are they doing it? As they said in the post:
My goal is to see how far I can get developing my new game on directly on Linux and not the Mac (I haven't developed on Windows in years). Can I ditch the Mac and go 100% Linux?
For working on the "game", this shouldn't be a problem once the engine runs on Linux. The few custom tools I use (Wimpy, for example) and all built from the same code the engine is, so once it's working under Linux, they should compile as well.
It's quite interesting to see more developers try out Linux, although not too surprising with how Apple is now again moving CPU architecture. Not just that though, as Apple have been getting more hostile for indie developers, with all sorts of extras being needed now and that's on top of the "Apple tax" that forces you onto their hardware. Gilbert mentioned this as well, with Apple being 'more paranoid and authoritarian' as time goes on.
Since their initial blog post it seems it went mostly okay, and they're continuing to learn and find the software they want. Will be fun to see how it all goes. Good luck, we're here if you need us Mr Gilbert and our Forum is always open. We're always happy to help game developers on Linux.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: DigitalSinWhat are the Linux alternatives to Apple's Xcode? Last time I used it, was easy and fast to use - with incredible search capabilities. (This was years ago in Tiger.) I can't really find a comparable IDE for Linux.Have you looked at JetBrains products? AppCode is probably the closest thing.
Quoting: Duncso as long as your simple in-house tools still work, why change?
Strangely enough, IMHO, for a "simple" game, taking an already existing game editor is good decision, both short-term and long-term.
It is a good short-term decision, because you can invest only in what's matter: your game. A game editor is much, much more than just SDL. SDL is the bare minimum, but then you need to create everything else for your game to work. I can't even list the number of parts there are in a game editor (and I've worked on 4 of them along my 14-year career). I would make a more detailed blog post one day, explaining all that in more details. So, TL;DR: it's a good short-term decision because you can focus only on your game: level-design, gameplay, UI, multiplayer, ...
But it is a good long-term decision as well, because if you want to create a game studio -- with more than just one game -- then you won't have to keep up with the latest trends. Imagine simply what's needed to do to migrate from OpenGL to Vulkan: it is a lot of time to invest into something with very little value for your game. Another example: let's say your first game works really well and you would like to port it to game consoles now. That is, again, a huge amount of resources to invest in order to port over Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. And another example: as your studio grow, you'll hire more people. If you're using have a well-known game editor, than you won't have to train your new hires, they'll probably already have heard of it.
Some 2D/pixel art game examples:
- Broforce is using Unity
- Cuphead is using Unity
- Enter The Gungeon is using Unity
- Dead Cells is using Heaps.io (which I didn't know, but is still something they didn't develop on their own)
Edit:
That said, I agree that if your game tools already exist and are working, migrating to another game editor will definitely be painful, so I would not encourage doing the migration, unless the pros and cons are exhaustedly listed. I am indeed talking more about newly created game studios, doing their first game. I would advise them not to create their own game editor.
Last edited by Creak on 27 July 2020 at 10:03 pm UTC
Quoting: CreakEdit:Fair enough.
That said, I agree that if your game tools already exist and are working, migrating to another game editor will definitely be painful, so I would not encourage doing the migration, unless the pros and cons are exhaustedly listed. I am indeed talking more about newly created game studios, doing their first game. I would advise them not to create their own game editor.
And, just to clarify my own point, I'm not saying that a small studio should never use an existing general-purpose engine, just that for certain types of game, in certain circumstances I can see how it might still make sense to roll your own.
Was always curios to tinker in that.
And since the game has a linux candidate was hoping the engine works under it as well.
Quoting: MakiQuoting: Liam DaweIt always bothered me about Debian that they have a "Don't break Debian" policy in the background. Why not? Breaking Linux and learning how to fix what I broke has gotten me more involved than I ever was in Windows. If I mistype something in /etc/fstab, it's my mistake to fix. I would hope that developers are always seeking to find the game engine that suits their needs best while giving them the required openness about bugs they encounter so they don't have to search through 12.000 lines of code just to find the missing ;...Quoting: mylkawhy does he need a new engine? just use godotI like Godot but it's not the answer to everything and it doesn't fit everyone's needs. Why does anyone make their own stuff? To learn, to have full control and know exactly what it's doing. Just telling a developer to "use x game engine" isn't particularly helpful.
The "Don't Break Debian" slogan is about mixing in foreign repositories with Debian incompatible packages and then expecting nothing to go wrong. They don't really mean, "Don't break Debian"; They mean, "Don't break Debian and then blame Debian (us)."
Last edited by CFWhitman on 28 July 2020 at 1:00 am UTC
Quoting: DuncQuoting: mylkayeah i know, but his games arent really that complexIf you're sticking to one style, the knowledge and control of the codebase a custom engine gives you tends to outweigh the flexibility of a general-purpose one.
i understand it for cyberpunk or other huge open world games, but a pixel style point and click.... i dont know... doesnt seem to by very economically
he makes 2D pixel art games. how flexible do you have to be for that?
if you need special water effects, or physics, or lightning, or trees... anything..... i would understand
but why all the work for
Last edited by mylka on 28 July 2020 at 1:01 am UTC
Quoting: mylkaQuoting: DuncQuoting: mylkayeah i know, but his games arent really that complexIf you're sticking to one style, the knowledge and control of the codebase a custom engine gives you tends to outweigh the flexibility of a general-purpose one.
i understand it for cyberpunk or other huge open world games, but a pixel style point and click.... i dont know... doesnt seem to by very economically
he makes 2D pixel art games. how flexible do you have to be for that?
if you need special water effects, or physics, or lightning, or trees... anything..... i would understand
but why all the work for
I think they started the engine after Thimbleweed Park, so it's for the next big ;-) thing, no?
QuoteTerrible Toybox, the actual team behind Thimbleweed Park are working on a new game and game engine too.
I couldn't find any information about this.
Liam, did you deduce that from the fact that Ron is working on a new engine
or did he explicitly mentioned working on a new p&c game? :)
Quoting: subEven more exciting to me than Ron is trying out Linux now (which is great) is this part:
QuoteTerrible Toybox, the actual team behind Thimbleweed Park are working on a new game and game engine too.
I couldn't find any information about this.
Liam, did you deduce that from the fact that Ron is working on a new engine
or did he explicitly mentioned working on a new p&c game? :)
They said this in the Dolores Steam forums and they also said while Dolores doesn't support Linux, their engine and their next game will.
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