I posed a question on Twitter recently where I asked developers to jump in with thoughts on essential things to know about when bringing a game to Linux. Let’s look over some answers!
In this article I will go over a few useful answers, giving full credit to the person who sent it in with a link to the tweet they sent to us. I will then give my own thoughts on each point, with any relevant links to help. There's likely hundreds of things we could point up, but these are what I consider to be some of the more common and important issues to keep in mind.
Some of the answers made me laugh, let’s start off with a good old joke about Arch Linux (source):
I enjoy a good poke about distributions here and there, but it’s actually very true. Of all the distributions there are, Arch does end up being the most problematic. That's not saying Arch is bad, but being on the edge (it gets newer software faster than most other distributions) obviously increases the amount of issues that are likely to come up, since it's had less time in the oven to work out issues.
Test on Ubuntu and if you can, SteamOS too. If it doesn't work on other distributions, they likely have workarounds as they are likely doing something different. Do not feel the need to test every distribution around, it will be impossible and it's just not needed, don't overthink it. Don't be afraid to limit support to the main bigger distributions either. Some people may not like the idea, but it's too much work for little gain most of the time. Support the big distributions, forget the rest (at least until you're much more familiar with Linux).
One from David Gow (source):
It doesn't necessarily need to be SDL2, there's also SFML and likely others. The point is, projects like that can make your life a lot easier. You might be wanting to keep everything small, but these projects are bigger for a reason, as they cover tons of edge cases and nuisances you likely haven't even thought of.
There's a reason why Valve, Feral Interactive, Humble Indie Bundle and many others use SDL2 for the Linux ports. Heck, even the Unity game engine moved over to use SDL2 in Unity 5.6.
This next one comes from none other than Timothee Bessett, formerly of id Software (source):
I think this is an important point for any developer to remember. Linux users want your game to do well, we will often help you test for free, because we want to help. Any time I’ve seen a developer call for Linux testers, they end up getting overwhelmed with the amount of people willing to offer their free time to help out. Opening up a private beta to a few select people is always an option too, there's many ways to get users involved early.
However, this is not a replacement for your own testing! Linux is free to download and use forever, it can be installed by itself or along side Windows & Mac. You can install it inside a virtual machine too if you want to just give it a look over.
This little tidbit comes from Holarse Linux-Gaming, our German friends (source):
This in particular is something I’m keen for developers to know about. Please, for the love of my sanity, don’t put a plain folder of “Game Name” inside my home directory. If you want to know where to store config files and saved games, you can find more info here.
As an example, Unity games tend to be in /home/user/.config/unity3d. Notice the dot before “config”, it’s a hidden directory so it doesn’t pollute a user's home directory and fill it to the brim with random folders.
Another one from Holarse Linux-Gaming (source):
You likely know what this means, but in case you don't: "This" is not the same as "THIS" when it comes to filenames on Linux. A crash in a game that's absolutely bugging you? Check you're looking for the right filename. This single issue has tripped up a lot of developers I've personally spoken to.
Let’s break things up with another amusing one, this time from a Feral Interactive developer (source):
I would be lying if I said this didn’t make me laugh quite a lot. You think some bug reports you got from Windows were weird enough? Prepare yourself.
The same Feral Interactive developer also put forward probably one of the most important points possible (source):
The amount of times we’ve seen developers announce a Linux port, be it on Steam’s old Greenlight platform, Kickstarter or wherever else, only to announce much later they can’t do it due to something they use being Windows-only is quite staggering. Check early and often that the tools, middleware and whatever else will be able to work somehow on Linux. Don't get stuck in the professionally embarrassing position where you have to u-turn on platform support.
Asking for help is not embarrassing and should not be seen as any kind of weakness, if you put out a call for help finding replacements or getting something to work on Linux, you might be surprised to find people able to help out quite often. I've seen hundreds of developers chatting away on Twitter, Reddit and other sites giving out help and advice about Linux issues.
Another one from a Feral developer (source):
The amount of times I've seen developers put up builds where they talk about knowing nothing about Linux: how do you expect to fix bugs in it, if you don't know the first thing about the platform? A little early research and testing will go a long way. The terminal might seem a little scary at first, but from someone who doesn't consider himself even remotely smart: just do it! Learn it and you might find a new friend. Still scared? This site might help you with the basics of the Linux command line.
If you plan to release your game outside of Steam and you want to use a handy installer, take a look at MojoSetup. GOG, the well known game store actually use this for their Linux releases.
An important point I would like to also raise: don't expect Linux sales to make you rich. It's a smaller platform. Bringing a game to Linux isn't just about getting sales from the additional platform, you should also keep in mind all of us likely know people on Windows & Mac we will end up recommending the game to, especially if it has any form of multiplayer. The extra advertising through various Linux websites and the extra word of mouth can be useful.
If you're wondering whether you need to make a 32bit build of your game, in my honest opinion you don't need to bother. 64bit only is fine especially since our own statistics tell us out of 1921 people who answered about their distribution, only 1 person is on a 32bit distribution.
Also, please don't take loud and idiotic users to heart. All communities will have trolls and haters, please do ignore any you find.
If you're trying to port to Linux and you're stuck, don't fret! Take a breath, come have a chat. We have a Forum, our Email inbox is always open, we have an IRC channel, Discord and more.
Finally, if you are considering bringing your game to Linux — thank you, can't wait to try it!
Please do share any other general tips you have in the comments. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
In this article I will go over a few useful answers, giving full credit to the person who sent it in with a link to the tweet they sent to us. I will then give my own thoughts on each point, with any relevant links to help. There's likely hundreds of things we could point up, but these are what I consider to be some of the more common and important issues to keep in mind.
Some of the answers made me laugh, let’s start off with a good old joke about Arch Linux (source):
QuoteIf you are getting completely impossible and weird bugs that is almost impossible to reproduce, check if they are running Arch Linux…
I enjoy a good poke about distributions here and there, but it’s actually very true. Of all the distributions there are, Arch does end up being the most problematic. That's not saying Arch is bad, but being on the edge (it gets newer software faster than most other distributions) obviously increases the amount of issues that are likely to come up, since it's had less time in the oven to work out issues.
Test on Ubuntu and if you can, SteamOS too. If it doesn't work on other distributions, they likely have workarounds as they are likely doing something different. Do not feel the need to test every distribution around, it will be impossible and it's just not needed, don't overthink it. Don't be afraid to limit support to the main bigger distributions either. Some people may not like the idea, but it's too much work for little gain most of the time. Support the big distributions, forget the rest (at least until you're much more familiar with Linux).
One from David Gow (source):
QuoteUse SDL2. Or use something which itself uses SDL. Under no circumstances write X11 code directly.
It doesn't necessarily need to be SDL2, there's also SFML and likely others. The point is, projects like that can make your life a lot easier. You might be wanting to keep everything small, but these projects are bigger for a reason, as they cover tons of edge cases and nuisances you likely haven't even thought of.
There's a reason why Valve, Feral Interactive, Humble Indie Bundle and many others use SDL2 for the Linux ports. Heck, even the Unity game engine moved over to use SDL2 in Unity 5.6.
This next one comes from none other than Timothee Bessett, formerly of id Software (source):
QuotePlayers want you to succeed with your Linux release. Get them involved, for instance have them test stuff up for you.
I think this is an important point for any developer to remember. Linux users want your game to do well, we will often help you test for free, because we want to help. Any time I’ve seen a developer call for Linux testers, they end up getting overwhelmed with the amount of people willing to offer their free time to help out. Opening up a private beta to a few select people is always an option too, there's many ways to get users involved early.
However, this is not a replacement for your own testing! Linux is free to download and use forever, it can be installed by itself or along side Windows & Mac. You can install it inside a virtual machine too if you want to just give it a look over.
This little tidbit comes from Holarse Linux-Gaming, our German friends (source):
QuoteFor your files and savegames there is XDG (like %approot% on windows
This in particular is something I’m keen for developers to know about. Please, for the love of my sanity, don’t put a plain folder of “Game Name” inside my home directory. If you want to know where to store config files and saved games, you can find more info here.
As an example, Unity games tend to be in /home/user/.config/unity3d. Notice the dot before “config”, it’s a hidden directory so it doesn’t pollute a user's home directory and fill it to the brim with random folders.
Another one from Holarse Linux-Gaming (source):
QuoteYes linux filesystems ARE case sensitive
You likely know what this means, but in case you don't: "This" is not the same as "THIS" when it comes to filenames on Linux. A crash in a game that's absolutely bugging you? Check you're looking for the right filename. This single issue has tripped up a lot of developers I've personally spoken to.
Let’s break things up with another amusing one, this time from a Feral Interactive developer (source):
QuoteSomeone WILL play your game on their work render farm, and report the bugs [..] I'd be lying if I said this had only happened once. 128 cores!? 1TB RAM!?
I would be lying if I said this didn’t make me laugh quite a lot. You think some bug reports you got from Windows were weird enough? Prepare yourself.
The same Feral Interactive developer also put forward probably one of the most important points possible (source):
QuoteUse cross compatible tools whenever and where ever, anything can turn into a crutch when you try and port
The amount of times we’ve seen developers announce a Linux port, be it on Steam’s old Greenlight platform, Kickstarter or wherever else, only to announce much later they can’t do it due to something they use being Windows-only is quite staggering. Check early and often that the tools, middleware and whatever else will be able to work somehow on Linux. Don't get stuck in the professionally embarrassing position where you have to u-turn on platform support.
Asking for help is not embarrassing and should not be seen as any kind of weakness, if you put out a call for help finding replacements or getting something to work on Linux, you might be surprised to find people able to help out quite often. I've seen hundreds of developers chatting away on Twitter, Reddit and other sites giving out help and advice about Linux issues.
Another one from a Feral developer (source):
Quoteembrace the shell, the sooner the better. The last thing you want 2 hours before release is to be fumbling around learning bash
The amount of times I've seen developers put up builds where they talk about knowing nothing about Linux: how do you expect to fix bugs in it, if you don't know the first thing about the platform? A little early research and testing will go a long way. The terminal might seem a little scary at first, but from someone who doesn't consider himself even remotely smart: just do it! Learn it and you might find a new friend. Still scared? This site might help you with the basics of the Linux command line.
If you plan to release your game outside of Steam and you want to use a handy installer, take a look at MojoSetup. GOG, the well known game store actually use this for their Linux releases.
An important point I would like to also raise: don't expect Linux sales to make you rich. It's a smaller platform. Bringing a game to Linux isn't just about getting sales from the additional platform, you should also keep in mind all of us likely know people on Windows & Mac we will end up recommending the game to, especially if it has any form of multiplayer. The extra advertising through various Linux websites and the extra word of mouth can be useful.
If you're wondering whether you need to make a 32bit build of your game, in my honest opinion you don't need to bother. 64bit only is fine especially since our own statistics tell us out of 1921 people who answered about their distribution, only 1 person is on a 32bit distribution.
Also, please don't take loud and idiotic users to heart. All communities will have trolls and haters, please do ignore any you find.
If you're trying to port to Linux and you're stuck, don't fret! Take a breath, come have a chat. We have a Forum, our Email inbox is always open, we have an IRC channel, Discord and more.
Finally, if you are considering bringing your game to Linux — thank you, can't wait to try it!
Please do share any other general tips you have in the comments. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Mountain Man Jul 5, 2017
Quoting: HoriLearning bash has the second advantage of being helpful on Mac also.If only for the purposes of transferring large number of files from one location to another. I've found the OSX GUI often chokes on the process making the command line the only reliable method for getting it done.
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Quoting: gojulQuoting: Maweki I am German and there are a lot of games that have a problem with comma being the decimal point in my locale. Often enough, even recent Unity games, save floating point data locale independent and parse them locale dependent, leading to crashes, bugs, and corrupted saves.
It's easy enough. Just use Double.Parse with the current locale as separate parameter. It's not magic. I think I've added LC=C_ALL as a environment variable to about half of all Steam games I play.
Same here, I'm French and for quite a lot of games (at least 10 / 20% I had to add LANG=C before the command to launch the game. Examples include Anna Extended edition, and so on. Most of the affected titles are indie.
Same here , i'm Turkish and i'm suffering this LC_ALL=C problem.
Even i filed a report on Steam Github about that and i also discovered Danish and Russian users are suffering from that too. Even some Greek user was suffering from that problem on GoL too.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4792
Steam Client is only properly working on an US English or UK English locale.
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Quoting: Mountain ManQuoting: HoriLearning bash has the second advantage of being helpful on Mac also.If only for the purposes of transferring large number of files from one location to another. I've found the OSX GUI often chokes on the process making the command line the only reliable method for getting it done.
Off-topic, but ironically, this is also true on Windows, especially for long path names on network locations (cygwin, cmd or powershell, it doesn't matter; but the windows shell won't do it sometimes, at least on 7).
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Quoting: LeopardSame here , i'm Turkish and i'm suffering this LC_ALL=C problem.Same for Russia. Especially if you run a game while switched to the russian layout. It brings all sorts of weirdness such as non-working keys (partially or fully) or inability to rebind them. It doesn't even depend on the LANG variable and happens in many games. Unfortunately, most of the games are made by english-speaking folks that don't have secondary layouts to test the game against. I don't expect this to change so I have to adapt to it myself and anyway almost always translations suck, I prefer the original language. After the initial issues with locales in Steam I ended up switching to en_GB.UTF-8 system-wide (as I said, translations suck, including the system software ones) and setting english layout as default. There are also issues with the input method, namely iBus that's default on Ubuntu and Unity/Gnome DEs. At least in couple of games it brings keyboard issues like stuck or non-working keys. After switching to plain XIM it all goes away:
Even i filed a report on Steam Github about that and i also discovered Danish and Russian users are suffering from that too. Even some Greek user was suffering from that problem on GoL too.
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/4792
Steam Client is only properly working on an US English or UK English locale.
export GTK_IM_MODULE=xim
export QT_IM_MODULE=ximDespite the var names it affects not only GTK/Qt software but also games.
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I think developers ought to use LANG=C (en_US-UTF8 might not be installed) in their startup scripts if they don't plan to test and support multiple locales the right way.
I think games and programs should use keycode rather than keysym internally for keybindings. Keybindings like shift+semikolon might not work if it is defined as keysym, because semicolon on norwegian qwerty is shift+comma already. If it was shift+keycode 47 instead then it would work on norwegian qwerty too, although it would be shift+ø instead of shift+semikolon. Definitely show the keybindings to the user as keysym though. To differentiate KP_7 and KP_HOME(numpad) a bit of keysym is needed as well.
I think games and programs should use keycode rather than keysym internally for keybindings. Keybindings like shift+semikolon might not work if it is defined as keysym, because semicolon on norwegian qwerty is shift+comma already. If it was shift+keycode 47 instead then it would work on norwegian qwerty too, although it would be shift+ø instead of shift+semikolon. Definitely show the keybindings to the user as keysym though. To differentiate KP_7 and KP_HOME(numpad) a bit of keysym is needed as well.
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Quoting: KetilI think developers ought to use LANG=C (en_US-UTF8 might not be installed) in their startup scripts if they don't plan to test and support multiple locales the right way.Oh, that's for sure. Overall, Linux unicode support in games is lacking. I'm always suprised to find a working russian chat in a game because usually trying to type in non-latin layout results in:
I think games and programs should use keycode rather than keysym internally for keybindings.
- displaying empty spaces instead of chars: Factorio in en locale because the default font only contains basic ASCII set, works fine in ru locale or after manually overriding the font in the data files; recently even that has been broken and fixed after my report;
- garbage: Rust and Unity-powered games in common, in Rust it shows some random arabic letters and squares though I can read russian messages of other players;
- or just nothing at all: Natural Selection 2 a year or two ago (works just fine these days) or Dying Light last time I checked.
It saddens me more sometimes as the game actually can display unicode properly but the unicode input is broken in some way. So I feel like a dog understanding everything but being unable to answer (without resorting to translit or plain english). It's worse though if unicode is broken completely so I neither can read nor write. Can't suggest anything to the devs as I'm no expert in XInput/SDL quirks, and there sure are many.
Also, that doesn't apply to me directly as we don't have such things in russian, but many west-european folks (French, German) say that diacritics are often broken as well. But they at least have a big set of ASCII chars that's sufficient to write with. There are also combining diacritics that are added to a base character and a wide range of eastern languages with wildly combining characters (see hindi for example). Supporting THAT is a serious challenge on any platform though.
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Quoting: GuestI would recommend building under the previous Ubuntu LTS version, so for example at the moment it would be Ubuntu 14.04.
That's a bad advice, since it severely limits compiler features. I don't think anyone should worry about supporting previous LTS of major distros.
Last edited by Shmerl on 5 July 2017 at 6:10 pm UTC
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Quoting: ShmerlI partially disagree. I think you should at least wait 6 months, maybe a year from an LTS is released until you start compiling against the new one unless you have a good reason, like using features of the newest C++ version not available in the older LTS.Quoting: GuestI would recommend building under the previous Ubuntu LTS version, so for example at the moment it would be Ubuntu 14.04.
That's a bad advice, since it severely limits compiler features. I don't think anyone should worry about supporting previous LTS of major distros.
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Quoting: GuestLooks like you haven’t followed the discussion. The point is to support most distros actually in use by using an "old" glibc and libstdc++. Also, no, it does not "severely limit compiler features".
Not sure how you can achieve that. If you use some older libstdc++ you can't for example use new features like C++14 and etc. I.e. you should expect that something as old as LTS older than the current one, won't have some language features. That limits what you can use.
That said, you can simply use Rust, and forget about woes of libstdc++ ;)
Last edited by Shmerl on 5 July 2017 at 8:58 pm UTC
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Philadelphus Jul 5, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlParadox should unstick their head from the sand, and fix the engine. I suspect their general neglect to make their tools 64-bit compatible, forced Obsidian to release Tyranny in 32-bit only (because it used Paradox account integration libraries). It created the expected mess of lacking LFS and crashes on large XFS partitions. The bottom line - no excuses. 64-bit is a must today. (Luckily Obsidian finally released 64-bit version of Tyranny this June).Ah, interesting. I've only heard it from Paradox's side and wasn't aware of the problems you mentioned. I guess I'm less informed on the matter than I thought
Some engines have a lot of work to make them 64-bit, and understandably it can take time. But not doing it at all with excuse that performance is OK as is, is just silly. Beamdog for the reference reworked their current generation of Inifinty engine to 64-bit.
Quoting: natewardawgOh, I'm fully in agreement that it doesn't make sense to make two builds. And I'm not actually a 32-bit apologist or anything, I'm just discovering I've been misinformed—so thanks for the info.Quoting: PhiladelphusSerious question, are there actually that many 64-bit executable games out there and is it actually beneficial?
I don't believe the argument is really one of how much benefit 64 bit has over 32 bit. Rather, it's an argument of how beneficial is it to ship both 64 bit and 32 bit builds. If you're writing your own engine from scratch, it's quite a waste of time to make sure it's 32 bit compatible on Linux, just make it 64 bit.
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