Ethan Lee, otherwise known as flibitijibibo (really rolls off the tongue huh), who created FNA and has ported a ton of games to Linux, macOS and more has announced a new game maintenance service for developers.
Lee worked on ports like FEZ, Rogue Legacy 2, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Streets of Rage 4, Celeste, Thirty Flights of Loving and Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap just to name a few.
Now though, Lee is offering up a service to game developers to keep their games updated and working great on modern systems. As said in the announcement: "I am now available for hire to maintain games that have released and may no longer be in development! I believe that I can help bring your back catalog back to life, and can do so quickly and effectively with minimal costs to your business."
The platforms for maintenance and porting include:
- Linux
- Windows
- Xbox (One, Series X|S)
- Nintendo Switch
- macOS (currently x86_64 only, not Apple Silicon)
Some of what Lee has focused on recently includes:
- Steam Deck Verified certification
- Migrating from UWP to GDK
- Migrating XNA titles to FNA (so yes, your old XBLIG game qualifies!)
- Public source code releases (not a requirement though)
There's one extra little catch though, Lee said that the only requirement (apart from obviously being paid) is that there "must be a native Linux version available to customers" and if developers don't have one Lee will make one for them.
Sounds like a nice service for game preservation. No doubt many developers are over-worked, with plenty of indie teams having a growing list of titles they no longer worked on directly that could benefit from a little TLC. This service offers a full free assessment.
Contact details on their website and on X.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
PublicNuisance Sep 6, 2023
Quoting: scaineI'd be happy to throw some money his way, but he only accepts donations through GitHub sadly. I'll always love the guy for Salt and Sanctuary, but not enough to make a Microsoft account.
I don't love Github and certainly don't love Microsoft but I prefer Github over say Patreon because I prefer one time donations over recurring. I also like how Github uses Stripe over Paypal unlike some other options. That being said I wish more people and projects used Open Collective.
Quoting: EduAAACool, don't really understand how this helps Linux since game has to be already available for Linux but hope he hmmm, improves Steam Deck compatibility somehow?
Maybe you missed this bit in the article: "...if developers don't have one Lee will make one for them." Meaning that he's willing to work on any game, not just ones that are already available for Linux.
There's also a bunch of old Linux releases that don't work on modern distributions out of the box for various reasons.
Quoting: EduAAACool, don't really understand how this helps Linux since game has to be already available for Linux but hope he hmmm, improves Steam Deck compatibility somehow?a) Moving to newer FNA can bring native Wayland compatibility instead of relying on XWayland
b) Some apps do audio backend detection (pulseaudio/alsa/pipewire) in very fragile ways. It could be made more reliable
I'm sure there is more...
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