Klabater drops Linux and macOS support for Crossroads Inn

These things usualy happen to games that have shitty devs. And this case isn't an exception.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: hardpenguin

Quoting: CatKillerIt's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.

No. And saying things like this only proves you have no idea not only about game development but also project management.

Making a game multiplatform from the start lets you make your game better cheaper, faster, and easier even if you never make a single sale on another platform. When you're looking for bugs to squash you want to throw your code at everything you can find. Different compilers, different environments. Bugs in your code might be elusive (but still present) in one environment, but be able to be replicated every time in a different one, which lets you find it and fix it. Making something work on Linux gets you a whole bunch of different compilers and environments for free, which helps you debug your code that you might also be using on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, wherever. And, hey, now that your application is nicely modular and spec-compliant, with separation of tasks, and survives all sorts of changes in environment, you've got handy entry points should you want DLC, or to help with modding through Steam Workshop if you want.

But please, tell us more about how sloppy coding practices aren't a sign of sloppy coding practices.

Very much this! I still don't know why there aren't more development houses seeing the benefits here. So many of them have no problems with releasing their server side stuff for Linux, but not the client. So they clearly have SOME coders working for them that are aware of how Linux development works. Switching to Vulkan/OpenGL as the main API vs DirectX gives you so much more flexibility on where you can release your game. Look at how many of the games on the Switch also have native Linux releases. That should kind of show how wise a decision it is to release on multiple platforms from the beginning, and use engines that support everything equally.

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: hardpenguin

Quoting: CatKillerIt's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.

No. And saying things like this only proves you have no idea not only about game development but also project management.

Making a game multiplatform from the start lets you make your game better cheaper, faster, and easier even if you never make a single sale on another platform. When you're looking for bugs to squash you want to throw your code at everything you can find. Different compilers, different environments. Bugs in your code might be elusive (but still present) in one environment, but be able to be replicated every time in a different one, which lets you find it and fix it. Making something work on Linux gets you a whole bunch of different compilers and environments for free, which helps you debug your code that you might also be using on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, wherever. And, hey, now that your application is nicely modular and spec-compliant, with separation of tasks, and survives all sorts of changes in environment, you've got handy entry points should you want DLC, or to help with modding through Steam Workshop if you want.

But please, tell us more about how sloppy coding practices aren't a sign of sloppy coding practices.

Experience has taught me none of this is true.

Quoting: Sayuri

Quoting: CatKiller

Quoting: hardpenguin

Quoting: CatKillerIt's generally quite straightforward: they aren't very good at game development.

The, "oh, but the sales," or, "oh, but the fragmentation," or, "oh, the graphics drivers," are just flimsy excuses because they don't want to admit to themselves that they kinda suck at their job.

No. And saying things like this only proves you have no idea not only about game development but also project management.

Making a game multiplatform from the start lets you make your game better cheaper, faster, and easier even if you never make a single sale on another platform. When you're looking for bugs to squash you want to throw your code at everything you can find. Different compilers, different environments. Bugs in your code might be elusive (but still present) in one environment, but be able to be replicated every time in a different one, which lets you find it and fix it. Making something work on Linux gets you a whole bunch of different compilers and environments for free, which helps you debug your code that you might also be using on Windows, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, wherever. And, hey, now that your application is nicely modular and spec-compliant, with separation of tasks, and survives all sorts of changes in environment, you've got handy entry points should you want DLC, or to help with modding through Steam Workshop if you want.

But please, tell us more about how sloppy coding practices aren't a sign of sloppy coding practices.

Experience has taught me none of this is true.

25+ years experience in software development have taught me that @CatKiller is spot on. I can't even count the number of bugs that we fixed in our software for Windows when we initially ported it to Linux at a previous work place.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 14 April 2021 at 10:38 pm UTC

I actually had this game on my wishlist, because the idea seemed interesting, but, luckily, I didn't get it.
Given this news what I'm going to do is just delete it from the wishlist and forget all about it.

I'm also leaning towards them "not being good at game development" here for most of the reasons already mentioned. This game garnered a ton of interest due to the theme and general idea behind the gameplay. I mean, it just sounds fun. The execution of that idea appears to have been bad from the start, however. I get that it's (sadly) become acceptable behavior in the industry to release beta-quality games as a final release and then just fix all the issues with successive patches but it looks like this game just never got any better, according to reviews and critics. Like others here, I've checked in with it occasionally to see if the gameplay had improved to the point of being worthy of a purchase. Sadly, that just never happened. I think we're just seeing the first steps of them abandoning this game and moving on to other things at this point.

I really wanted this game to succeed but I don't have any confidence of that ever happening now, regardless of platform. Time to remove it from the wishlist.

Travellers Rest is another I've been watching which is in the same vein as Crossroads. It's still in EA but has very good reviews and looks like the gameplay is quite fun from what I've watched and read. Unfortunately, it's only showing Windows as a supported platform currently. Due to the somewhat low-tech nature of it, I'd expect it to work well on Proton/Wine. The other (minor) strike against this one, for me at least, is that the graphics are more JRPG-style. Not really that big of a deal but I much preferred the graphics style of Crossroads.


Last edited by foobrew on 15 April 2021 at 7:08 pm UTC

This game has been such a disappointment to me. I was dying for it to release and expected it to be one of my favorites, then when it did, it was horribly broken and underwhelming. It seems that never changed (despite DLC of course!). And now no more native support, not that it matters too much at this point anyway.

It is games like this why I stopped (almost) getting anything that is in EA. Basically if I like the ifldea, I will put it on the wishlist.
I can't remember, does the wishlist show the dev that it is there, and does it show preferred OS?

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt is games like this why I stopped (almost) getting anything that is in EA. Basically if I like the ifldea, I will put it on the wishlist.
I can't remember, does the wishlist show the dev that it is there, and does it show preferred OS?

Both. The devs get to see the number of wishlists (which also affects placement in the store) expandable by platform. You need to set your preferences to only show you games for the platform you're interested in for your wishlist entry to be counted as a particular platform, though.