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Quoting: "MaximB, post: 1842"I really don't get people who buy from Ubuntu Software Center, I mean why would someone want to lock himself to use only one OS ? o...forgot about the Windows users...

Well, I can think of one reason: At the moment the GNU/Linux version of Braid is only available through the USC (legally at least)...: http://braid-game.com/news/2011/06/braid-is-now-available-in-the-ubuntu-software-center/

I'm playing with the thought of buying it there, but haven't done so yet.
I'm also not such a big fan of the USC idea. One of my concerns is security, since there is nothing indicating if you are using a secure connection or not.

But if anyone has tried it, I would be interested to know if stuff bought on it is then easily portable to other distros, i.e. can be easily saved as a standalone package.

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So about that Desura interview

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Besides, I would hate to have to have an Ubuntu VM or something just because a game I want to play on my Fedora box is only available through the USC. What would be the point of me doing native gaming in the end if I have to mess with other systems anyway?

Here is a relevant quote from Alexander Zubov of Steel Storm fame on the matter:

QuoteThe Linux market is very fragmented. USC is a good solution for Ubuntu market. However, while Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distributions, it doesn’t represent the whole market. Hopefully with Desura releasing their Linux client things will change and game developers will be able to cover most of the Linux market.

http://www.pressxordie.com/2011/06/16/interview-kot-in-action-talks-steel-storm/

And it just seems more and more promising every time I think of it. :D

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That's crazy. Then I am just as confused as MaximB.

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Anything you buy through USC as far as i know locks those items to your Ubuntu single sign on account.

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Ah, yea I guess I assumed that anything you downloaded through the software center would work on other distros of linux. Does the Ubuntu Software Center apply some kind of DRM? Anyway, if all that's true, then I guess it really is just convenience, people will pay for that.

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But then you are locked even more, Linux Desktop is small, but Ubuntu is even smaller.
I would prefer installing Desura that works on all OS's knowing I won't be bound to Ubuntu .

P.S
I do use Ubuntu at home, but I want to be able to move to other distro at will knowing nothing will keep me in Ubuntu.
(They did piss me off with Unity, and now that Gnome3 is released I am only left with the old Gnome for a few years and then KDE4.6, and maybe I'll try again E17).

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Convenience? The Software Center come with the OS right? It's not like steam or Desura that you need to log into and such. Anyway, I actually have no idea how well the software center does, it's possible it's not even that succesful.

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I really don't get people who buy from Ubuntu Software Center, I mean why would someone want to lock himself to use only one OS ? o...forgot about the Windows users...

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Sorry, it was my @#@!#$ modem again. Problem is you are not sure when it actually is able to post, so you have to keep telling it to post when it does. But it turns out it did post some of your previous tries, but just did not update. @&#%^!

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I do not see much competition:
Desura: Launch platform for Windows, Mac OS X, and all versions of Linux.
Ubuntu Software Centre: Launch platform for only one version of Linux.

Keep in mind, by all accounts the majority of Linux users are still using other distros, even if out of all the distros Ubuntu has the most users. But the combined forces of Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE and the rest still far outnumber the total Ubuntu user share. So for any serious company, it would be a serious mistake to lock yourself to only one distribution. After all, there is still a common if incorrect belief that the Linux market is still to small for any developers to be seriously interested in anyway. Why would anyone want to more than halve that market? As such, I can not see the USC as being a serious thorn in Desura side. Any smart indie would be considering them first and the USC second.

And this is coming from someone who was not even that intersted in Desura until a few months ago. :)

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I want to see it!

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The Fedora page is blank http://www.panda3d.org/download.php?platform=fedora&version=1.0.3&runtime
:/

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So now I can finally live out my fantasy of fighting with an armored rolling ball!

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A bit of native play http://linuxgamecast.com/2011/06/l-g-c-b-reel-%E2%80%94-a3p-acquire-attack-asplode-pwn/

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Cheers for the article! I have included the video which is on our Kickstarter page.

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Thanks mystery guest for the info :)

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Bullet Candy Perfect on the Ubuntu Software Centre:

http://www.charliesgames.com/wordpress/?page_id=283

Frozenbyte:

"We'll make Trine available on the Ubuntu Software Center shortly, there's just so many things going on at the moment that it's been progressing a bit slow (on our end). SG games will come after that as well."

http://frozenbyte.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=3599

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Thanks, Brandon. When I get to the point where I'm ready to delve into 3D, I'll check it out! Good luck with your game - it looks like a lot of fun!

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Cool! I'll need to check that out. Btw, in case you were interested, Helena will have a kickstarter page where I'll be giving out the source code to the engine for a nominal pledge amount. Could be used to make a kids 3D platformer, and comes with a level editor!

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Ok, I've reposted all of the articles I've written on my web site. So you can find article #4 in the series here, as well as a Post Mortem I wrote for the first Dirk Dashing game. Enjoy!
http://www.mygamecompany.com/articles/index.htm

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Thanks for the link. I'm not quite ready to venture into 3D yet - my 2D platformers are more than enough work for me! Though I have been starting to dabble in 3D, with the lighting and 3D planets in the background on The Adventures of Rick Rocket, and the new lighting and shadows in Dirk 2.

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You know Troy, there was [URL='http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1777096']this thread[/URL] on ubuntuforums.org. Someone was asking for a 3D platformer for kids. It got me thinking, if you could make something in the vein of mario 64 or such than ran on Linux, I bet a lot of people would appreciate it!

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Thanks dude. It seems like some of the terminal commands got messed up in the new formatting, but the information is good. I really appreciate it!

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Here you go! Though I notice they've lost the link for the 4th article since they switched to their new repository format, and the links at the bottom of each page that point to the next article in the series don't work. Maybe I'll have to repost these on my own web site. Article 4 contained tips for testing on various distributions, and how to deal with things like SELinux, hardware accelerated drivers for various cards, 32-bit vs 64-bit, etc.

1 - Introduction
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-1-r2372

2 - Building a "universal" binary for Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-2-r2377

3 - Installers on Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-3-r2389

5 - Marketing on Linux
http://www.gamedev.net/page/reference/index.html/_/reference/programming/platform-specific/linux/linux-game-development-part-5-r2421

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OOOh cool article. Could we get a link to those gamedev articles Troy? That information could really help me out.

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Rustybolts also had a few questions to ask

Rusty: Hi Troy!
I was wondering if you are a games player at all yourself? If so which genre of game floats your boat and from what period you got into playing games e.g the 8bit, 16bit era? Also what are your standout moments in games history in your time as a games player?

MGC: Oh, yeah - I love games! I've been playing computer games since the earliest years. My dad bought me an Atari 2600 back in 1980, and we played Pong, PacMan, Asteroids, and lots of other great games. I also had a friend with an old 8-bit Commodore 64 back in 1982 that we used to play games on. In 1985, our family bought a PC Jr, and one of my first games was Sierra's King's Quest, which I absolutely loved. He also bought a cartridge with the BASIC programming language on it, and I started dabbling in writing my own games.

I enjoy a pretty wide variety of games. Through the years, some of my absolute favorites included the Commander Keen games (particularly episodes 4-6), Wacky Wheels, Interplay's Lord of the Rings and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, Sierra's King's Quest and Space Quest series of adventure games, LucasArt's X-Wing and Tie Fighter games, some first person shooters like Quake II and Dark Forces, Disney's Jungle Pinball, Re-volt, and more.

My current favorites include a number of indie games, particularly Eschalon 1 & 2 by Basilisk Games, Fairway Solitaire by Grey Alien Games, Titan Attacks by Puppy Games, and Ancient Empires Lux by Sillysoft.

I still play a lot of the older games via DOSBox. There's something about the purity of the gameplay and the stories that is almost timeless. The older games focused a lot more on story and character development, and they had an undeniable fun factor while you played them. It seems like most newer games focus almost exclusively on combat, realism (in both gameplay and graphics), and darker settings (military missions, horror settings, or weird supernatural themes). That doesn't appeal to me at all.

That's probably the biggest driving factor behind the design of my own games. I'm trying to recapture some of the fun of those earlier games, because nobody makes games like that anymore. That's why my Rick Rocket game borrows a lot of elements from Dan Dare, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon, in terms of both story and art. That's why my Dirk Dashing platformers use the same slanted 2.5D look of Commander Keen, with traditional spy music, a cool cartoon spy that is not a bungling idiot or a dark, hyper-realistic CIA type, and a lot of fun gadgets, weapons, and moves. These are the kind of games I enjoy!

Rusty: Yeah really enjoyed the Eschalon series myself, looking forward to the third installment. Can you tell me a little bit on how you produce the artwork for Dirk, as some of that background art is gorgeous. Also I read in one of your monthly newsletters about a problem you had creating the secuirity cameras for Dirk, can you tell us a bit about this problem or any other problem like this and how you solved them.

MGC: Oh, thank you! I'm glad you like it! Hopefully that's an indicator that I'm on the right track with the improved graphics...

Many of the graphics are hand-drawn and hand-painted. For the background elements, I use a combination of acrylic paints, colored pencils, and colored markers. I draw and paint each individual background element by itself - this includes repeatable walls of bricks/stones, floor surfaces, trees, furniture pieces, etc. Then I scan them in, trim them, and scale them using GIMP. For the animated characters, all of the frames are hand-drawn, just like they are in a traditional cartoon. Then I scan them in, clean up the edges, and paint them in the computer.

I've had a few art pieces that posed challenges for me. The security camera you mentioned was one. I was having difficulty with the hand-drawn animation - the camera movement just wasn't coming out the way I wanted. So I built a paper mock-up, photographed each frame in the position I wanted, and then converted each photo into black and white line art and painted them. A fellow indie called me the "MacGuyver of video game production"!




Another art piece that challenged me were some background hills I needed. I couldn't get the paintings to come out the way I wanted. But I found an article on the Internet about how to convert a photograph into a watercolor painting using GIMP, and after some experimentation, I came up with the perfect background piece that I think complements the rest of the art in that scene.



Liam: Have there been any problems in porting/coding your games to the different platforms?

MGC: Not really. Most of my games use the same core game engine, which is built with cross-platform technologies. The initial port for the first game that used this engine took some work, but once that was done, it became trivial to do a build for any of my games on any of the 3 platforms.

Linux was probably the most difficult platform for the initial port. Even though I had developed the game on Linux, it wasn't easy to create a binary that would run on almost any distribution. There was almost no useful documentation available for doing this. Fortunately, Erik Hermansen at Caravel Games put me in touch with Gerry Jo Jellestad, who has done a lot of Linux game development and had experience with building distribution-independent binaries. Gerry was very helpful, and very patient as I bombarded him with e-mails over several months, asking questions and getting help for technical issues that I was running into. By the time I was done, I had two notebooks full of great information that wasn't documented anywhere else. So with Gerry's permission, I wrote a series of articles that captured what I had learned, and I published them on gamedev.net a few years ago.

Actually I've been thinking about turning those articles into an e-book. There's a lot more I've learned since I wrote them, like how to handle PulseAudio (which seems to be the norm on most common distributions nowadays) and how to build a binary against older versions of glibc so your game will run on older distributions. I've also talked with some other indie developers who would like me to write an article or tutorial about how to get started with basic development tasks, like compiling, linking, and debugging on Linux. When Dirk 2 is done, I might put that book together and sell it from my web site.

Rusty: Ok to keep the spy theme going ill end this interview with spy themed question.
Whats your most loved bond film and who is your favorite bad guy from the bond films (Odd job is my fave although I do have a soft spot for Jaws). Also if you wish you can end with anything else you wish to say to our readers.

MGC: That's a tough one! I enjoyed all of the Bond films, to one degree or another. I don't think I could pick just one, but my favorite movies would be Goldfinger, The Spy Who Loved Me, For Your Eyes Only, The Living Daylights, and Tomorrow Never Dies. And Odd Job would definitely be my favorite bad guy too!

Thanks, guys, for the great interview, and thanks to all of you for reading this and supporting me and my games! I really appreciate my Linux customers, and I'll definitely keep bringing you new games in the future!

Some cool pictures to end it with!
[ATTACH]166[/ATTACH][ATTACH]167[/ATTACH]

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I think the only three words are appropriate here: What The @#$% :P

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Hmm this video can be set to run at 720p, for me thats a pretty good resolution to view a video.

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