That's great news! I enjoyed the first one a lot, so I'm happy we'll finally get to experience the sequel. :D

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I played the new kitchens with a friend yesterday, and they're very good. Awesome game, and I'm very happy to have it on Linux. <3

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Looks great—backed!

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Quoting: GuestI hope to see Linux version of DiRT Rally 2.0 soon after it gets released, meanwhile I will play it via Proton!

Consider waiting so that Feral will get a cut of the sale?

EDIT: I'm playing BattleBlock: Theater and Overcooked! 2 online co-op with a friend, and Pikuniku solo. All native games.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: ShmerlQuite interesting. They list DRM-free download in the Kickstarter campaign. Do they plan to release it on GOG or itch.io?

Here's what they told me on Twitter:

QuoteHey, the drm free version was primarily for those that backed it on Kickstarter, that said we would like to have the game available on GOG if we can manage it.

I wish that so many developers wouldn't view DRM as GOG or bust though, when there are great DRM free alternatives like Itch and GameJolt. Getting on GOG is a crapshoot.

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Quoting: LakortaApparently GNOG does have a Linux download (it isn't marked as a Linux game on it's store page). If you try to start the game through Steam it will complain about not finding an .exe file, starting it directly from the installation folder does work. I tried playing it for a minute or so and it seemed to work fine.

According to SteamDB, the Linux depot seems to have been added several months ago, yet I find no news post or discussion thread announcing the Linux version on Steam. I wonder why that is.

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QuoteIf the game starts with a mouse cursor and no actual graphics, a quick fix is to start it with this option:

-show-screen-selector

Thanks! :) I ran into this issue when I tried to play the demo on Itch yesterday.

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Quoting: TheSHEEEP

Quoting: flesk

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.

Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.

Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!

Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.

Which is a very large amount of work to set up and maintain. You have to do configurations per distribution platform per OS per version per <possible other configuration>.
And then you need to react to API changes, etc.
In large companies, you have people who just maintain the CIs as their main job, because while it does make things easier, it is still far from easy. I've been using a few of those at work and none of them are easy to use if you need to do some more configurations.
And then you still have to upload every single build to the distribution platforms without such an API. So you have to do it anyway if you are on more places than just Steam.
Then you have to make a news post on all the platforms as well, etc.

It might still be in total less work than writing a launcher yourself, but a launcher comes with a LOT of added benefits: News posting within the launcher, version management, mod management, crash reporting (can be done inside the application as well, but is MUCH easier to do in an external application), various settings that don't really fit in the game options, etc. And all of that fully independent from the distribution platform...

Of course, such a launcher would then have to be maintained itself per distribution platform per OS, but launchers do not change often once functional.

The biggest downside is likely the cost. After all, you already pay the distributor cut (which WOULD include the traffic cost for your game bytes), and in addition to that you have to pay whatever traffic is needed so people can download/update your game via your launcher. So you likely need a CDN as well. And so the costs rack up.

You'd have to do the math per case, but in the end, it might just be cheaper to not let your launcher do the downloading/patching. That doesn't mean you can't have a launcher anyway, of course (see Paradox games).

Yes, I agree that it might be a lot of work if you don't have a skilled developer on your team, which might be the case for lots of indies. I'm not sure if dedicated software is necessary though, when providing example templates for each combination of engine and CI/CD platform would be enough. Of course, it might be easier to market and charge for a software solution, if that's the goal.

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Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIf I ever make a game of my own, I'll only actually distribute a launcher to each platform. That launcher will then take care of actually downloading/patching the game. Sure, it would mean having to maintain my own server(s), but I've been using Amazon S3 & AWS (and other providers) for quite a while now... it's not that difficult.

Seems to be the only way to prevent having to maintain different builds across the various platforms, each with their own uploading, etc.
Also has the added benefit of being able to serve as a built-in mod-manager.

Or perhaps why not create a cross-distribution build platform that can build and handle the distribution to steam, gog, itch.io and so on. Could potentially by worth some real money for game devs?!

Such things already exist and is known as continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) in "regular" application development. The idea is that you use software (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Travis, Circle CI, etc.) to pull code from a repository when you push changes, and then build and deploy to the store fronts you want your game on, eg. whenever you version tag a commit. For this to work, however, the stores must have an API or software that makes it possible to automate the process. Itch has Butler, GameJolt has a similar tool that's in beta, and Steam has SteamCMD, though I've not used the latter.

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Quoting: liamdaweAlso, to those asking about A Hat in Time, VP simply told me to speak to the publisher which I've done so. Waiting on a reply.

I wonder what that's supposed to mean. If there's some sort of NDA in place, you'd think they'd broken that already by accidentally leaking the game twice now, and shoveling inquiries over to the publisher. It doesn't seem like a secret they're keen on keeping at least, if there's anything to it at all.

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