Latest Comments

"Compared to the funding goal of 900,000 (which again contain all your mentioned costs) these 200,000 sound quite "substantial"."

Well both the Kickstarter fees and the credit card fees are %-based. The physical reward fees are also proportional to the amount of backers and the contribution amounts per backer. It depends on which reward level people are at. Declined payments and the like probably also has a certain proportionality. 400 pledges at the $25 level amount to $10000. So does a single $10000 pledge.

But the latter has many, many, many, many, many times as high costs associated with it. But in general, the more pledges, the more money they have to spent on manufacturing physical "stuff" and shipping that same "stuff" to their backers.

I was a (happy) backer on Broken Age. I am very fuzzy on the details, but almost immediately after the campaign ended, they shared a breakdown of the campaigns various costs and stuff on their backer forum. I think something like 40% of their receipts went to various fees, expenses, backer rewards, overhead of running the campaign itself, etc. I don't think Double Fine, having no prior Kickstarter experience, expected it to be so much.

I believe that between them Kickstarter and the credit card companies take away about 10% of the pledges. So if you pledge $50, that is approximately $5 in the pocket of Kickstarter and the credit card companies. If you pledge $100, it is about $10, etc.

My point is simply this: We shouldn't infer a $200,000 budget for the Linux port just because that is the distance between the base goal and the Linux stretch goal.

I am not claiming that it is a small amount or trying to justify it as such or anything. Just explaining that there are other factors/costs involved than just making(and testing etc) the actual Linux port. In addition to the things I listed earlier, there is also the matter of having a buffer for unexpected expenditures.

"How can they estimate any costs whatsoever, when they apparently are entirely clueless how much effort it's gonna be?"

A very good question. Cost estimation is always to a certain extent a mixture of art and science. But it would seem in this it is in the best case scenario a rather rough guesstimate of sorts. I suppose often you would tend to set up what you believe to be a sort of worst case scenario of what you think it would take in terms of manpower.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

That's too bad. It is quite a good point and click adventure. I played it on Android.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: KristianIt appears they aren't even sure about which engine they will use! There is a comment about looking into using Unreal engine near the earlier linked comment about a Linux demo.

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: dmantioneWell, it's a process... many developers know Unity allows near-free Linux ports.

Then why would you need an extra USD200,000? Can't be attributed to pure QA.

Best guess is they are planning to outsource the work to someone else.

Well $200,000 extra in pledges is not $200,000 extra to spend on development, you have to subtract Kickstater fees, credits card fees, declined payments/chargebacks, manufacturing of physical rewards, shipping of physical rewards, etc

Compared to the funding goal of 900,000 (which again contain all your mentioned costs) these 200,000 sound quite "substantial".

QuoteNobody says that the entire net amount after that will go to the stretch goal. They might use part of that for other things/expanding the game or something. But even still an expensive Linux port might well eat up the money that is left over after all those various fees and expenses.

How can they estimate any costs whatsoever, when they apparently are entirely clueless how much effort it's gonna be?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: ProfessorKaos64

Quoting: KryukoItaliaunixcomI'm trying to update but i'm still to v2.70 and 355 nvidia drivers... =/

You have to install the steamos-beta-repo package and update. I would not, since it actually softbricked a bunch of folks on the main thread on Steam Universe.

Yep! Mine is Softbricked...... The Problem is the new Nvidia Driver. Ill wait for a Fix

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Cost Based Ability Colors

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I don't know if I'll have the will to wait that long, but apparently I'll have to wait until Fedora 25 to have it working OOTB...

That being said, which card manufacturer(s) do you advise? Are there manufacturers that are known to do very good cards without superfluous features? (like "look, we've put 32 Gigs of GDDR5 on this one!"))

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Their loss - looks like they gonna miss out on at least three sales from GOL so far then!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

It appears they aren't even sure about which engine they will use! There is a comment about looking into using Unreal engine near the earlier linked comment about a Linux demo.

Quoting: rustybroomhandle

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: dmantioneWell, it's a process... many developers know Unity allows near-free Linux ports.

Then why would you need an extra USD200,000? Can't be attributed to pure QA.

Best guess is they are planning to outsource the work to someone else.

Well $200,000 extra in pledges is not $200,000 extra to spend on development, you have to subtract Kickstater fees, credits card fees, declined payments/chargebacks, manufacturing of physical rewards, shipping of physical rewards, etc

Nobody says that the entire net amount after that will go to the stretch goal. They might use part of that for other things/expanding the game or something. But even still an expensive Linux port might well eat up the money that is left over after all those various fees and expenses.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: wojtek88What GPUs are supported by AMD GPU PRO?

Officially this GPU's : http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDGPU-PRO-Beta-Driver-for-Vulkan-Release-Notes.aspx
It also works with GCN 1.1 , you just have to enable kernel switch
With Linux kernel 4.8 GCN 1.1 GPU's are going to be officially supported and with GCN 1.0 will work but you will have to enable kernel switch.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: dmantioneWell, it's a process... many developers know Unity allows near-free Linux ports.

Then why would you need an extra USD200,000? Can't be attributed to pure QA.

Best guess is they are planning to outsource the work to someone else.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Yep. This sounds suspect. A couple of years ago I would have backed this one, now I'm just laughing at their hollow promises!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: kingofrodeoI'll be taking the cynical approach. Since the $1.1 million is almost 100% certain, I won't fund the project and only will buy when the game is indeed released for Linux.
Seriously there's zero advantages for a Linux gamer back this project. So why not let the Windows players take all the risk and fund the game for us? ;)

Exactly my thoughts too :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: dmantioneWell, it's a process... many developers know Unity allows near-free Linux ports.

Then why would you need an extra USD200,000? Can't be attributed to pure QA.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Look forward to the day when games will be released for GNU/Linux only. It will be the end of all these stories.

Yes people keep telling me that my thinking is wrong, unpolite, politically uncorrect.

But to be honest I can't see what Doze could ever contribute to my life, actually it caused me lots of pains in several occasions, so it would be a relief for me to see it go. About Mac, I have no sympathy at all for a rip-off of FreeBSD. If only FreeBSD people had used the GNU license...

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: liamdaweThis makes me even more concerned, the actual quote is:

QuoteIt's something we're exploring, but the main problem is that none of our team members run Linux

Someone better get Linux bloody set-up if they hit that goal.

But linux licenses are too expensive. They have finite resources!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Ah the dreaded "middleware" reasoning again.

Why on earth do developers not look into first and plan ahead?

So frustrating.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, it's a process... many developers know Unity allows near-free Linux ports, are willing to provide them, but have zero Linux experience. My experience with testing a few Greenlight projects is that for a few days you are in heavy contact, things usually go smooth and after a while they decide to install Linux themselves.

And that's good. The gaming industry switching to Linux is a process, doesn't happen in one day, but step by step, developers are pushed towards it.

The Nightdive developers don't have Linux experience this is a bit of a surprise considering earlier releases, but those developers too will make their steps, and discover that releasing on Linux isn't rocket science too.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Stay away from this.

Linux as a stretch goal and no promise of day one release usually means huge delay or no linux version at all

Unity3d FPS games on linux usually means very poor performance

QuoteIt's something we're exploring, but the main problem is that none of our team members run Linux

This should make it clear to anyone they don't care about a linux version and will just compile one when they finally feel like it. It will run like shit ofcourse, because no one can be bothered to optimize, they don't even run linux.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

The wallpaper I made is more basic than many of the others here, because I am not a very great designer, but I felt it might at least be worth posting. This was made in Pinta, which is like Paint.NET for Linux with some extra limitations. In the very background there is blurred out Steam listings, all of which are for Linux/SteamOS. The line that appears to be a graph represents the amount of Linux Steam users, taken from this article. The top right is styled like the Linux Mint terminal, since that is what I happen to be using at the moment.

Honestly, I don't think my wallpaper turned out very good, especially compared to some of the wallpapers in some of the other posts, which are actually pretty good. I don't want to waste my work, so I will post what I have made and may try to improve and make a better wallpaper from scratch. I feel this wallpaper is a bit creative, but just doesn't look nice enough when everything was put together.

Here are the links to my wallpaper:
JPEG: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/528spgahzgq3bew/GamingOnLinux.jpg
OpenRaster: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/3oppmcwmkkykg3o/GamingOnLinux.ora

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: sergkWell, check this comment from one of the devs:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/1616384#comment-13772446

As usual. "We are completely clueless, but we promise nonetheless." As a burned "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" backer I will definitely refrain from pre-release funding.

This makes me even more concerned, the actual quote is:

QuoteIt's something we're exploring, but the main problem is that none of our team members run Linux

Someone better get Linux bloody set-up if they hit that goal.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: DevlinSo they are not making plans for their FIRST strech goal but I'm sure that they have plans to release other stretch goals day one, I cannot believe that they will delay localization or extended narrative after Linux version is released.

They should reorder the strecth goals and stop using Linux as a bait.

I would love to see them address precisely this. Someone should send a version of this comment to the developers.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: sergkWell, check this comment from one of the devs:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/1616384#comment-13772446

As usual. "We are completely clueless, but we promise nonetheless." As a burned "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" backer I will definitely refrain from pre-release funding.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: mulletdeathNice to see it might reach some of its cooler stretch goals; the campaign had seemed to slow down there for a while.

Yeah. They already hit the animator goal, which is nice. Too bad the Bonus Dreamworlds goal is out of reach. The rest of them are less interesting to me, but I can imagine some of you would shit your pants for VR, while others could use the localization. But what really tickles me pink is seeing consoles as the last, impossible stretch goals. :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: PublicNuisanceI am really interested in this game, waiting to hear back from the devs if there will be a DRM free option.

From the campaign FAQ:

QuoteWe plan on selling the game via online platforms such as Steam and GoG, as well as the Apple App Store for Mac. Backers of our Kickstarters may have access to direct download.

Thank you. I missed that. The developers got back to me as well. Tried the demo and enjoyed it. They have my pledge.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

[quote=WienerWuerstel]

Quoting: ElectricPrism

Quoting: niarbehtI wouldn't mind spending $300-400 on a even more dope RX 490, but I'm not sure how long before that will be a thing, have cash - want awesome open source graphics card.

Looks like the RX 490 will arrive at the the end of this year or (early) 2017 according to the AMD roadmap.

So it's up to you if you want to wait at least 6 months for the RX 490 or get a RX 480 right now.

Thank you for sharing your info. I think 6 months is too long to wait for the boost. I use my Linux PC professionally for work and need the best right away. I think I'll wait a few weeks and grab a xfx if their brand is good.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Well, check this comment from one of the devs:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/1616384#comment-13772446

View this comment - View article - View full comments

[quote=ElectricPrism]

Quoting: niarbehtI wouldn't mind spending $300-400 on a even more dope RX 490, but I'm not sure how long before that will be a thing, have cash - want awesome open source graphics card.

Looks like the RX 490 will arrive at the the end of this year or (early) 2017 according to the AMD roadmap.

So it's up to you if you want to wait at least 6 months for the RX 490 or get a RX 480 right now.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

That's very cool!
And it's something people could be pointed to when they say there's no money in Linux gaming.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

I had my hand hovering over the pledge button for this yesterday, mostly because of the strength of the team they have on this, but it was the fact that we might never see a version that stopped me. When it comes out, I'm pretty sure that It'll be damn good though.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Nice to see it might reach some of its cooler stretch goals; the campaign had seemed to slow down there for a while.

View this comment - View article - View full comments