World of Goo 2 launches in May on the Epic Store - but Linux support from their website

Instabuy as far as I'm concerned. Takes me back to the early and pre- Humble Bundle days. I remember a time where there were a couple of companies porting games to Tux, more open source games, (almost) no Triple-A's requiring super fast machines, and when we were hoping the desktop Linux would take over the world ! (instead of having the Linux kernel on top of GAFAM ecosystems everywhere).

Well, everything was not that great, we were still struggling with Flash and drivers. It was sometimes a PITA to get games running (binary distributions and neverending WINE/Cedega/... tweaking). And the early KDE 4 era was such a mess ! But at least I had the time to play all those games and that was good enough to me (better for my focus and overall philosophy) but I'm not representative AT ALL ;)

Meanwhile, back to my Amiga 1200, many games & demos still being released :)


Last edited by bidinou on 22 February 2024 at 2:21 pm UTC

Quoting: gbudnyI saw many reports about issues with Proton.

You're not wrong but times have changed. Proton used to be buggy but now it's practically seamless. Like in my earlier example, I only had problems with Ghostrunner and that was only because I was running it from Heroic. If I had bought the game from Steam, it would be a one-click option.

Quoting: gbudnyIt's just not too entertaining for me to play games for Windows.

??? Do you mean that you have more fun setting up games for Linux than actually playing games? I mean, if that's true, that's cool, but otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean??? Games are fun regardless of the OS. If you primarily play games on Windows, that's cool. If you play games mainly on Linux, that's cool too.

Quoting: gbudnyWindows is better for these games, and above 90% of Windows users can confirm it - this operating system sells so well.

The only reason that Windows sells well is because every OEM ships their PCs and laptops with it. Plus, people are used to Windows so they're going to pick the one that they're most familiar with. That doesn't mean that Windows is better; the Steam Deck's success proves that Linux is ultimately better. Especially since you can dual boot the Deck with Windows. I did that with mine and honestly, it's not worth it.

OK, I don't think much of some of the stuff gbudny is saying.

But there is an issue with old Linux native games not running on modern Linux (to be fair, even Windows' once-impressive backward compatibility has been slipping in recent versions). But it seems to me like it could be a pretty solvable issue. I mean, all the code from then is available, right? And the Linux kernel itself as I understand it is very backwards-compatible, so it's all about libraries and stuff, yes? So, like, shouldn't it be possible to make Flatpak-ish sandboxes that reproduce various vintages of Linux, using old libraries (or, where they'd actually work fine, new libraries renamed to look like old ones)?

Quoting: Purple Library GuyOK, I don't think much of some of the stuff gbudny is saying.

But there is an issue with old Linux native games not running on modern Linux (to be fair, even Windows' once-impressive backward compatibility has been slipping in recent versions). But it seems to me like it could be a pretty solvable issue. I mean, all the code from then is available, right? And the Linux kernel itself as I understand it is very backwards-compatible, so it's all about libraries and stuff, yes? So, like, shouldn't it be possible to make Flatpak-ish sandboxes that reproduce various vintages of Linux, using old libraries (or, where they'd actually work fine, new libraries renamed to look like old ones)?

My immediate thought is that this is a problem Distrobox is designed to solve. Obviously, there needs to be a more user-friendly solution in the future.

Yes, this is a real issue. I don't play that many games, but I've had to manually patch half of the ones I played last year, without guidance from the developer (they have no clue how to fix it either), just based on error messages. Issues ranged from needing older libraries (I compiled from the AUR), needing newer libraries (I deleted the bundled libraries), to "the game engine is EOL so the developer can't update the game easily, but Linux's fontconfig introduced a breaking change a few years ago, so I need to download a newer version of the bundled library, replace it, and hope it works with the other bundled libraries".

one of the first games to support linux

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: dvdI find it weird that people find it weird that a company supports our platform of choice. I wish more devs had an option to bypass the bullshit stores. Why is it so necessary to put the game on these stores?

Because Proton, which is only usable by most people on Steam, provides a better experience in most cases than a native Linux version.

That's not necessarily my experience, although I recently had to install old libraries to get Loop Hero from GOG to work again, but a lot of Linux users do say as much. I also had to manually patch a library for another native Linux game from Itch. And delete some old bundled libraries for a Ren'Py game from Itch...

But I do support devs releasing their games wherever they want. It's just, supporting Linux natively long-term, even with open source engines, seems far more challenging than other platforms.

i had issues with games like open arena and super tux, once i updated my system...
but i havent had much trouble that i can remember of since i set myself to only using LTS.

Quoting: Phlebiac

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualsupporting Linux natively long-term, even with open source engines, seems far more challenging than other platforms.

Which other platforms? Microsoft does a fair job of backwards compatibility with Windows, but certainly Apple does not. macOS developers have to keep up on maintenance, or their customers can't play their games after a few OS updates.

consoles are totally closed platforms with NDA and a lot of i$$ues that make it hard for an open source engine to support then.

Quoting: gbudnyI think it's far more important for Microsoft that Linux users have some doubts about all the work done by dead companies like Loki Software. I think about the open source libraries used in creating native games for Linux. This mistrust of Linux users to own companies is beneficial for Microsoft.

except that , this is not how things works.

gaming on linux was dead, we were receiving less and less ports and losing the small marketshare we had, a few people are stubborn and would never use windows but the vast majority of normal people couldnt care less and went back to windows as soon as they realize they were losing access to some incredible games and softwares by using linux.

honestly i almost gave up, we had not game engines so i tried to develop one, we had no video editors, no tools like "substance painter", not to mention the issues to install an game that i had no guarante would work on my video card or if i updated the OS, evne open source native games had issues.

meanwhile an game running on wine, used the native python in case the game had python scripts, the native java in case the game had java code among all the other code on it...
if an game is writen using vulkan wine just passthrough the vulkan calls to the linux drivers.

linux was dying without any hope to recover until valve made proton.
if we grow the marketshare we will have more native ports and an proper support from game engines like unity that currently threat us as second class citizens.

speaking of it, nowadays almost all games use thirdy party game engines, and their support for an platform is as good as the engine support is, its pointless to talk about the good work of companies that support linux like loki, loki probably had full control of their own code, unlike anyone who uses unity.
if unity ignore the native libraries that linux have and make their own libraries and port then in order to support it, then praising our libraries is useless.

Quoting: gbudnyIt's just not too entertaining for me to play games for Windows.

games are games, i dont see things like "games for windows" they are just games that happens to support windows, consoles if they can (since consoles are an curated market that only accept games from big publishers and sucessfull indies) and in some rare cases mac or linux.

most normal people just wanted to play the games their friends were playing or the ones they saw an ad for, the difference between an gamer and an linux gamer was that linux gamers only cared about the games that supported linux, and the normal gamers cared about games in general , they purchased consoles to play their exclusives if they cared about then, or played on pc if they dont wich means they had access to everything else, and then there is the linux hipster guys who played only a few games that supported linux and claim these are enough despite not knowing what they were missing, sigh.


seriously, i wont deny that i had a lot of fun with the lemings clone that was better than the original (pingus >>> lemings ms-dos) and a LOT of fun with frozen bubble (thanks in part to the awesome musics, but im just adctied to those puzzle games) but come on, ignoring games like ocarina of time because they dont have an port for linux?

let me tell you something, the reason why i and many people love linux and open source , is not because its an beauty ideology that we support but because such ideology fucking works, if we had to chose between playing our musics, animes, movies, games and using linux what you think the vast majority would do?
linux dont have an small marketshare just because people dont know how to install an OS, ask anyone on my country what they did when their computer came with an crap OS like Satux, they shoved an pirated copy of xp on it.
one of the biggest reasons why linux dont grow is that when people finally give it a chance they regreat.
valve is fixing it.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyOK, I don't think much of some of the stuff gbudny is saying.

But there is an issue with old Linux native games not running on modern Linux (to be fair, even Windows' once-impressive backward compatibility has been slipping in recent versions). But it seems to me like it could be a pretty solvable issue. I mean, all the code from then is available, right? And the Linux kernel itself as I understand it is very backwards-compatible, so it's all about libraries and stuff, yes? So, like, shouldn't it be possible to make Flatpak-ish sandboxes that reproduce various vintages of Linux, using old libraries (or, where they'd actually work fine, new libraries renamed to look like old ones)?

good luck solving dependece hell for packages that arent distributed anymore.
maybe you can just rename an new library for it old name in some cases...
the issue is if they rely on an fork of the library


Last edited by elmapul on 24 February 2024 at 9:26 am UTC