I've played Age of Decadence and Dungeon Rats on Lubuntu and Linux Mint and had no issues (but we were using GOG version, I don't know how to install Steam on Lubuntu, there's always some problem which I didn't have a couple of years ago). My friend played Age of Decadence on Linux Mint and finished it without any problems. There is a reason why this game has a platinum rating on WineHQ. I don't see why a port would be needed really when even a noob like me can make it work easily.

Quoting: g000hBetter a WINE port than no port at all.

Since the developer cant/wont support the "port" - there is literally no difference between buying them on GOG and running them through whine and what is proposed here. In fact you might well be better off going that route, as you can apply wine patches/options as needed.


I realize I come off as a "negative nacy" here, but you are really worse off with a port that the developer does not have the competence to support, so I don't understand the need for a "port".

Quoting: kirikaI've played Age of Decadence and Dungeon Rats on Lubuntu and Linux Mint and had no issues (but we were using GOG version, I don't know how to install Steam on Lubuntu, there's always some problem which I didn't have a couple of years ago). My friend played Age of Decadence on Linux Mint and finished it without any problems. There is a reason why this game has a platinum rating on WineHQ. I don't see why a port would be needed really when even a noob like me can make it work easily.

Well, in my case I'm running Debian, and have more pain when it comes to messing around with WINE than the typical Ubuntu user has. Even for your case, you're not running Windows' Steam client on WINE, so you had to use the DRM-free GOG version instead.

For me, if I can't get a game working with the WINE that is released as a regular Debian package, then I generally don't bother messing around with it any more.

Debian 8 (Jessie) has WINE 1.6.2-20
Debian 9 (Stretch) has WINE 1.8.6-5

However when a suitable Linux WINE-port package is released on Steam or GOG, then that usually works fine for me.

I'm perfectly fine with Wine "ports" (or whatever name nitpickers would want to give them) and love the Topware guys for what they did with Wine, but there has to be some measure of support when you release a game on Steam.
What happens when they upgrade the game with some feature > the port doesn't work anymore and the community guy that did the port is nowhere to be found? You can argue that the same happend for some native Linux games, but is even more bound to happend with Wine.
Like I said, I'd love to see more Wine "ports" for older games as long as they are supported (or at least until the game's itself developments stops), but as it looks now for these games is a bit like asking for trouble.

On steam, there are some games not listed for Linux but you can install them.
Better than nothing.
If I can play, I really don't care if it's wine port, native or whatever.

Holy shit!

Okay. I love The Age of Decadence, I think it's a great game and I'm super down to help.

Here is what I can offer.
For a Wine port I'm totally willing to do it for free only asking for some basic credit in return. I'd be willing to provide some basic support to whatever extent I can. After all it does run out of the box and it does crash occasionally, and I can do virtually nothing about it other than recommending running the 64 bit version because that lets you avoid the out of memory crashes at least.

But also after some research apparently it seems Torque is supposed to compile and work on Linux after all already, so if the developers are interested I'm willing to research this further and try making a full native port if it's feasible, and support it, as long as I get the credit and at least some money from the Linux sales (with no upfront payment). I'm willing to negotiate this further, but I think I'm being very reasonable here. And I think this is the preferred path to take, if it's actually available, for obvious reasons.

As for my capabilities, well, I know how to code, I've made games before, I'm working on my own engine and I have already helped bring one game to Linux. Besides, what do you have to lose with a no upfront payment deal anyway? :)

So MaximB, please pass this offer to them.

Either way, this is one of the best games in the history of the RPG genre (which is why I enjoyed it in Wine tremendously despite the occasional crashes) and it should be on Linux and played by more people, and I sure would be happy to do what I can to help out if I can.

Thank you so much qptain Nemo!
I'm happy that you also love the game, they worked on it very hard.
Originally it should have been released several years ago, but thankfully it was delayed (to switch engines, make better graphics, make the game better).
The main dev even posted the legendary "lets play thread", wayyyy before the game was released to take criticism that helped make the game better.

I've let the programmer (Nick) know about it and he will contact you. (note that he lives in Europe/Ukraine so timezone may be different from were you live)

About the ports, I think there is no point in making a 32-bit port as it's going obsolete each year.
Better concentrate on the 64-bit port first.

Thank You,
Maxim.

Hey guys,

First of all, thanks for the interest and replies. For the record, Nick (our programmer) and I agree with Guppy and dubigrasu - we shouldn't release anything we can't support. Here is what I said on Steam months ago:

"The new Torque 3D version supports "being run under Linux using OpenGL for rendering", which isn't the same as a proper port. It's "work in progress", which is neither reliable nor bug free yet. We can't release a Linux version and hope it works. If we sell our game and it doesn't run, we can't say that we thought it would and point fingers at the engine developers.

We did update the engine 6 month ago or so, which caused freezing for all Radeon users (which means half of the players) and it took us several months to fix it. We've even reached out to AMD who were kind enough to help us. This is just a quick example of what might go wrong when you update even a well-established and long-running engine. The Linux port isn't ready yet but when it's stable enough, we'll definitely consider it.
...
While some people would be willing to accept risks, many others would feel (rightfully so) they were tricked into buying a game that doesn't work. Since the issue is engine-dependent, we won't be able to help people having problems and it's not something I would be comfortable with.

We'd like to bring our game to the Mac and Linux markets but only when we know for sure that it would work without any issues."

We appreciate qptain Nemo's offer but have the same reservations. It's no a matter of money (and yes, any work should be paid for) but the same concern - what if something goes wrong and you can't or don't have time to fix it?

As many people pointed out the game does work on Wine, so anyone who's interested is able to play it.

Quoting: VinceHey guys,

First of all, thanks for the interest and replies. For the record, Nick (our programmer) and I agree with Guppy and dubigrasu - we shouldn't release anything we can't support. Here is what I said on Steam months ago:

"The new Torque 3D version supports "being run under Linux using OpenGL for rendering", which isn't the same as a proper port. It's "work in progress", which is neither reliable nor bug free yet. We can't release a Linux version and hope it works. If we sell our game and it doesn't run, we can't say that we thought it would and point fingers at the engine developers.

We did update the engine 6 month ago or so, which caused freezing for all Radeon users (which means half of the players) and it took us several months to fix it. We've even reached out to AMD who were kind enough to help us. This is just a quick example of what might go wrong when you update even a well-established and long-running engine. The Linux port isn't ready yet but when it's stable enough, we'll definitely consider it.
...
While some people would be willing to accept risks, many others would feel (rightfully so) they were tricked into buying a game that doesn't work. Since the issue is engine-dependent, we won't be able to help people having problems and it's not something I would be comfortable with.

We'd like to bring our game to the Mac and Linux markets but only when we know for sure that it would work without any issues."

We appreciate qptain Nemo's offer but have the same reservations. It's no a matter of money (and yes, any work should be paid for) but the same concern - what if something goes wrong and you can't or don't have time to fix it?

As many people pointed out the game does work on Wine, so anyone who's interested is able to play it.

Well that's a valid concern. My answer is this: if I'm paid for the port, I will do everything I can to support it for as long as possible. It's a matter of principle and integrity and so on. But also, no less importantly, if you say you're interested I'm gonna research it and see if it's really viable in the first place. Like, if I test the current version and it seems an absolute mess with no end of issues in sight that I can't hope to address in reasonable timeframe, I'll tell you that straight. But I think it's worth a shot. Because, this concern you raise is exactly the reason why I think me (or someone else for that matter) should do a native port: as great as Wine is these days, with Wine this concern will not go away fully very soon, and mitigating it will be much more difficult. With a native port and an open-source engine you'll always have more and better options for making sure it runs well for everyone. And also I'm simply hoping Torque is a good engine and its Linux port is in a reasonably good state so it can be adjusted easily and it will never truly paint us into a corner. It might be true, it might not be, but we'll never know if we don't take a good look at least.