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Quoting: GuestYou are right in that the ABI unstable nature of Linux makes it difficult to support well.

Quoting: Guest

Spoiler, click me

You are right in that the ABI unstable nature of Linux makes it difficult to support well. However, it is not impossible, but it does require knowledge and skills that your average developer will not have unless they are already very familiar with the platform.

Steam's runtime was a good attempt to alleviate this, however it creates problems of its own. We used the steam-runtime SDK at VP simply because it gave a nice consistent set of libraries to build against. However, it quickly became a problem that they were too old, and the toolchain used to build against them (gcc 4.5) was also getting too old.

Valve did work on a newer steam-runtime, but it was only usable from inside a chroot. This is no good when you are using an IDE or some other application which wants to call those tools - you either have to run said IDE/app inside the chroot (which can be a dependancy nightmare) or live with a relatively slow invocation of the chroot enviroment for every file compiled.

Yes I know this is where the fanboys start screaming "use makefiles!" but this not what game devs are used to on other platforms, and quite frankly, they are cumbersome.

I did actually start to assemble a custom "SDK" for VP's Linux stuff, based around GCC 4.8 (which was still fairly current at the time).. but other things stopped me getting it finished off. Building your own toolchain with crosstool-ng or the likes is certainly not what your average dev will be used to dealing with!

edit: I should also say that expecting a developer to recompile the game when there's ABI breakage is not an acceptable solution. You really cannot expect a a developer to support something forever, and "just release the source code" is not a viable solution. More work needs to be put into ABI stability on Linux, for it's own good.

Quoting: hardpenguinAlright, finally an answer! It's understandable that they prefer to focus on big platforms first. I only hope that they will do Linux at some point!

Quoting: ShmerlSince it's not their own Paradox Studio who have some serious issues with Steam lock-in in all their recent games, do they plan to release it on GOG? Other games from Haemimont came out there (Victor Vran for example).

Quoting: rustybroomhandleBah, it's not recognising my Logitech Driving Force GT.

Quoting: GuestI've played tomb raider and shadow of mordor with a controller for like 3-4 hours each but it was an unpleasant experience. But when I've switched back to kb+m the games became so easy that I needed to increase the difficulty. I'm playing hollow knight, dreamfall chapters and life is strange and some platformers with a controller and they feel ok. Everything else is terrible. However, the trackpad seems promising but I'm not sure about it and I don't want more unused hardware around :P

Quoting: rustybroomhandleVictor Vran as a character is about as "defined" as a dead insect smear on a car windshield. And how does "story" figure in the multiplayer

Quoting: rustybroomhandleEither way, if someone says they don't like playing a game because of whatever, it's nobody's job to argue with them.

Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: lagh@liam: Have you actually been in contact with the developers?
How do they justify this behaviour?

As noted:

QuoteI've sent an email to the developer to see if we can get this cleared up, as I never like to outright not support a small developer, but nothing sounds good here right now.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: KimyrielleI skipped on Victor Vran because I am not too eager to play games that force me to play a male character, at least not unless premade female characters become just as normal.

As @Xpander was pointing out, how can you apply it to any defined story character? It's one thing if you have a generic character builder in a flexible RPG, but it's another thing if some story aspects are locked. Do you also refuse to play any adventure game, because they don't let you selecting the character? Games can be quite different in this aspect.

Quoting: lagh@liam: Have you actually been in contact with the developers?
How do they justify this behaviour?

QuoteI've sent an email to the developer to see if we can get this cleared up, as I never like to outright not support a small developer, but nothing sounds good here right now.

QuoteConsidering the developer has moved on to making the sequel, which might support Linux, this will seriously impact my decision to support them.

Quoting: inlinuxdudeAnyone know if the Link has been hacked to run standard Linux or Android? I could use another cheap Kodi box...