Quoting: HalifaxHeheh... Yeah, that's the thing about C and C++. They give smart people the ability to make exceedingly dumb decisions.

Ha ha, I know right. "Enough rope to hang yourself."

At the end of the day, you have to accept that people are typically working towards making sure that stuff works rather than stuff that specifically adheres to spec. Not a lot of programmers have complete awareness of what results in undefined behaviour, and certain (*cough cough*) compilers don't bother to highlight that too. It's easy to end up with a "this is what works for me" picture of things if out-of-spec code just happens to behave the same on every compiler and platform you usually work with.

I overlooked that line myself so many times ^_^

Quoting: HalifaxI've learned, man. When I hit those spots now writing new code, I stop - oh no, I know what this is. Let's step back and take our time, lots of REM statements, long descriptive variable names. As a matter of fact, let's just think about what we name the variables as long as the code we're going to use them in...

That's a good way to be. It's crazy to me that people seem to forget that 3rd generation languages exist to make things easier to read and work with. There's not much value at all in the fancy code that some people use to make themselves feel cool - the optimiser is only going to rewrite it anyway.

Quoting: HalifaxThat's one nice thing about open source code, many times it's been cleaned up internally just because you know it will be judged by other programmers. It's funny reading all the apologies from coders who decide to release their proprietary project on Github or something similar. They begin to realize people will now be looking at all the "shotgun code" and band-aides they left under the hood.

I feel like that's normal though - you sort of need more eyes and more time to mature (which in my experience most proprietary projects don't get because people only get put where the money is - in new features or new projects). Everybody's code is awful until it's been worked over a few times.

Quoting: HalifaxThere's usually 1,001 ways to go about any given task in coding, so this happens a lot.

But then there's the other side of that coin, sometimes you get code from someone else that is beautiful to look at, you want to copy its paradigms, learn from it. Improve your own style of coding by studying it.

Well said!

Quoting: wolfyrionVery nice and detailed article but it didnt answer my basic noob questions , just some questions from a noob respective :huh:

Alrighty, let's take a look at these!

Quoting: wolfyrionWell I havent done any programming since like 15-20 years , so I wonder How hard is to get to the industry ?

So far as porting goes, I've never chased a port, so I have no idea.

I've been an active and prominent member of the Double Fine community and have been running community events for years. I've also helped out with a few Linux issues here and there, and I think that that close proximity/high visibility as a cool Linux user who does stuff played a big role in me being offered the job.

In addition to the community work and general Linux help I'd given Double Fine contributing to me landing the port, I think some of the other developers I'd worked with over the years had put in a good word for me here and there (and vice versa). It's not uncommon for me to hear from one developer I've helped that they talked to someone who had nice things to say about me at E3 or GDC or PAX or where ever.

Maybe that's what it takes to break into the market - build meaningful relationships with people over half a decade and consistently demonstrate enthusiasm and ability. If that's the case, then that's not a good path - that's a lot of unpaid work right there.

Quoting: wolfyrionI mean what do you have to know? what I have to read? What programming languages you have to know?

I'm not sure - I've never really read anything about porting before and leaned heavily on my own experience as a Linux based game developer and awareness of what porter friends have gone through.

The only language you really need to know is the language that the game you're porting was written in.

Quoting: wolfyrionAre there any specific tools that you need for the porting? Do I need to know assembly ? Physics? Math? Gaming Engines? What compiler to use? etc etc.... PANIC MODE!!!

I'd say it depends on the project. I didn't touch do assembly with DotT. I didn't really touch any game code since that's all abstracted out from the platform specific code that I spent most of my time on.

For compilers, GCC and Clang are probably your best bet (but again, depends on the project). I did DotT's Linux builds with GCC, but also built the game with Clang. Building in multiple compilers is never a bad thing and can sometimes reveal stuff you might not have noticed.

If the game's written in a generic engine that you can get source for, definitely chase up that. If not, then you're as on your own as you would be with a game that was developed using a custom engine. You're not making a game, so to me, there doesn't seem to be much value in knowing how to use the engine to create a game - you're only adapting stuff that other people have made.

Physics and maths skills are good to have (I don't have these and wish I did), but I think in general, you're not likely to come across any of that kind of code that is platform specific. More important than those skills is the ability to read, comprehend, research and learn on the fly. It's less about what you know and how quickly you can find stuff if that makes sense? Programming's like that in general though IMO.

This quote from the super insightful David Gow is definitely worth taking onboard, I think:

Don't worry too much about having to know everything going in — not every port requires a knowledge of everything, and every port will involve learning a whole bunch of new things, be they languages or APIs or version control systems. Also, don't be afraid of asking for help — every porter I've met has been really friendly, and will no doubt be more than happy to answer questions, or give advice.

Quoting: wolfyrionFor me is like an endless road of knowledge , tools and information that I would just simply give up.
I would love to hear how you started with all these.

I feel like there are lots of different valid approaches here, and that because of my background my side-activities, I don't I make for a good example (I honestly don't think any one person can, and that's something I hope is reflected in the various porters' quotes that I've included in the article).

I have a mostly comprehensive list of Stuff I've Done over here [External Link], but it's probably difficult to put into a chronology. Here's a quick rundown on the stuff that seems relevant.

I first started programming in the 80s. My family got an Amiga 500 when I was 7 or 8, and my Dad and I learned to program together by copying examples out of computer magazines. Mostly I messed around with AmigaBASIC and AMOS at the time.

Later, when I got the laptop mentioned at the beginning of the article, I made a bunch of dumb stuff with QBASIC, VisualBasic and some other junk that I can't remember (maybe some Delphi thing? I have no idea).

I continued doing programming at school, but didn't really learn anything I hadn't already discovered on my own. I picked up Pascal, Python, Java and C/C++ along the way.

In the nearly 2000s, I put together a small team and started working on some Half-Life 1 mods. I didn't do much programming on those and mostly focused on game design and asset creation. It was around this time that I decided that making games was something I wanted to do (note, porting isn't making games).

I switched to Linux a little while after that and started contributing to Neverball [External Link] in my spare time. The goal was to use my day jobs (I did pizza delivery, retail, helpdesk, sysadmin, app dev and embedded dev) to get stable enough to start my own game dev studio, but that never really happened.

Around 2011, I started being more visibly active in Linux gaming circles, started tracking Humble stats [External Link] and helped form the initial SteamLUG community that grew out of the long running SPUF Linux [External Link] thread. I was also prominent in the Desura community and became a Desurium contributor when the client was open sourced. I feel that all this sort of platform advocacy and community engagement stuff has been helpful in having other developers take me seriously.

From this point on, I started making myself available to assist developers who were interested in supporting Linux as a favour. I never really thought much of it at the time and never kept records. Mostly I was just giving reassurance, offering advice on how to package things and helping identify bugs and stuff. I think between then and now, I've helped in that manner with maybe 50 titles?

Around this time, my friend flibitijibibo (Ethan Lee) did his first port, and ended up getting working with Humble to help cope with the increased demand for Linux support that their "must be cross platform" requirement drove. Linux porters seemed to be in high demand (everybody was busy). I was approached to do some Linux ports, but turned them down (some trivia: Bohemia were among these - I'm really happy to know they finally got Arma3 onto Linux!). They weren't titles I was interested in, and I wanted to make my own games, not other people's.

I started making my own games again in earnest in 2012 after recovering from a repetitive strain injury. I ended up in a small team working on a game [External Link] for the first 7DFPS. From that point forward, I have had at least one game development project on the go at any given point in time.

When Double Fine launched their crowdfunding campaign for what would eventually become Broken Age, I became active within their community, organising backer meetups [External Link], community development projects [External Link] and taking over Game Club [External Link] when it became too much for DF's Greg Rice to run on his own. I was motivated to do all this stuff by the company's enthusiasm for and commitment to Linux (and because their games were cool). As time wore on, I eventually made friends with a bunch of people who work there and was asked to help do informal pre-release Linux testing on a few projects.

When I heard that a simultaneous release for DotT Remastered wouldn't be possible, I offered to help out in any way that would make it easier for them, and eventually negotiated to help with QA. Toward the end of March, I was offered the port, which coincided with timeframes I had for looking for contract work to boost my savings so that I could keep doing my own game dev. By the end of April we had agreed on contract terms, and I started work on May 1st (not including the time I spent looking over the code before signing the contract).

Hope that helps!

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: STiATReally cool is that one to read, mentioned in the original article (I seem to have missed it):

https://icculus.org/~icculus/dotplan/SeriousSam-CHANGELOG.txt [External Link]

Daily log updates of the SeriousSam port of Ryan (icculus) Gordon, but writing not what has been done but what he's planning to do. Expect a lot of disappointment, and less "yyeeey" moments ;-).

That is a super cool piece of historic treasure, and I'm really happy that Ryan was able to share it.

For anybody who hasn't read it, it's probably important to read this introduction [External Link] to get some extra context for that changelog.

I'd have loved to have shared mine, but my commit history was pretty boring and my daily log is mostly shorthand gibberish that wouldn't mean anything to anybody :D

Quoting: STiATporting is like fixing a huge mess of a bug with a code structure you don't like, but you have to focus on rewriting as little as possible. Which is the usual bugfix procedure (if fixing the bug of somebody else). Changing less means less possibilities to break. Had to experience that the hard way, "that's done bad, this could be done better" ending up in fixing what i "fixed" or "beautified".

This is very true, although I find that it's not necessarily that things were "bad", but often just that they weren't done in the way I like to do things. Since you don't get to see or be involved with the decision making processes, it's easy to assume that everybody was making bad decisions, when at the time, everybody was working hard and doing the best with what they had.

You're totally right about fixing up and making things pretty being a trap. If you start down that road, you'll be shaving yaks before you know it and will probably have broken other platforms along the way >_<

View this comment - View article - View full comments

For anybody who's subscribed to the comments and has been hanging out for my article on porting, it's up now and can be found here [External Link] (a GOL summary article is on its way!) :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: tripyIf my memory serves right, it goes squished when I moved to my 1st flat.
I threw it away after that, it had lost its "superb".

Ah, rest in peace, awesome box o7

Quoting: Segata SanshiroGetting a bit defensive there. I'm sure Day of the Tentacle is a great game (a little before my time, but it's a classic I've always wanted to play). I'm sure you personally did a great job with this game.

I think there's a difference between being defensive and trying to explain a situation to reduce misinformation.

Glossing over that I can't find any communication from Double Fine where they'd said that the Linux port was "coming soon" before I started work (I did find "fashionably late" - is that it?) or anything that suggests they didn't have reason to believe a port would be ready within a reasonable timeframe, painting confirmation that buying the Windows version will get players the Mac and Linux versions when they're released (something some [External Link] people [External Link] actually [External Link] want [External Link] to [External Link] know [External Link] as clandestine behaviour comes across as super bizarre to me.

If they'd said "We plan to do a Linux version," when they had plans to not do a Linux version or if they'd said "The Linux version will be ready in a month," when they had reason to believe that it wouldn't be, then I'd get it, but I can't see any evidence of that ever having been the case.

Heck, even being grumpy about a post [External Link] letting people know the game ran in Wine/offering to help people who wanted to do that would make more sense to me :D

Quoting: Segata SanshiroIf you really like the company, then give criticism where criticism is due so they can improve. Also, they said PC.

If you read my previous post, I mentioned that I did offer some constructive criticism at the time - I contacted the person who made the tweet within hours of them doing it to help them understand that Linux users wouldn't appreciate the sentiment and to remind them that "PC" includes Linux.

Quoting: t3gI picked it up on Humble Bundle (DRM free download and Steam key) today after waiting a while for the port. I also registered the game on Steam in GNU/Linux to hopefully send some money towards Cheese''s way for the port. Thanks for helping in getting it out! :D

I want to highlight that I don't get royalties on this game so whether or not you buy it doesn't directly affect me (this isn't unusual for contracted ports and I feel well looked after). People should only buy the game if they want to play it or if they want to support DF for their efforts to support GNU/Linux :)

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: subThis port seems to be top notch, btw.
So far it worked absolutely flawless.

Glad to hear it's running well for you!

There's definitely room for improvement with the port, and if there's scope for a patch, I'll address what I can, but I've been surprised at how few problems we've had.

The biggest issue so far (how much can you tell from two days?) appears to be a Mesa bug, and there's also been some FMOD funkiness for particular ALSA configurations. Beyond that the only other bug-like thing I've heard of is that some WMs aren't going fullscreen nicely.

I'd give credit to the engine's design (both of SCUMM and the descendent of the Monkey Island special edition engine that sits around it) for the game's robustness rather than take it myself. There was a lot of existing abstraction that helped keep the impact of my own changes down. If I had to dig in and pull iMUSE apart for example, I don't think I'd have been able to put it back together as nicely :D

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Segata Sanshiro

Quoting: sub

after two months' worth of solid porting work, here I am!

So they were contracting you way after they were telling people the Linux port will be available soon?
That sounds like there was no or next to no Linux work done prior to that date?

They weren't just saying that it would be available "soon", they were saying "buy the Windows version now, because it will be available on Linux soon", which I thought was a bit of a shitty thing to do. Now I think it's more shitty considering it seems the port hadn't even been started.

Aaaand let's see how close to accurate your quotation is there...

.... Buy the pc version now, and when Mac and Linux versions are done you'll get access to them too!

Close, but not quite [External Link].

As I mentioned in a previous comment, a Linux port was planned long before I was approached. Prior to being offered the port, I had been negotiating to assist with Linux QA. You can say that "Cheese's port hadn't even been started," but to say anything beyond that requires a bunch of assumptions that you just don't have the details to support.

I actually spoke to the person who sent that out on the day it was tweeted and let them know that it was something that would upset some Linux users. They were confused and thought that Linux users would be happy to know that if they grabbed the Windows version during the launch sale they'd get the Linux version (that might seem obvious to us now, but it hasn't always been that way for Linux and Mac ports of Windows games). Who'd have thought that even though a message like that could make so many people grumpy, it could still be made by someone with their heart in the right place?

Quoting: tripyAnd I kept that strange triangular box as long as I could.

:O You had one of the triangular boxes?? What happened to it?

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Crazy Penguin

Quoting: Ehvis@Cheeseness, Good job on the mighty penguin showing purple tentacle who's boss. Love that picture!

Yes, me too! It is awesome! Perfect Desktop-Wallpaper :D

A bit higher resolution would be nice, so e.g. 1920x1080 :)

One step ahead of you. You can find that here [External Link].

Quoting: DrMcCoy

Quoting: subCan you explain in short how MM1 is (technically) included in the game?
Does it use the ScummVM engine?

TL;DR: No.

I've never looked at ScummVM's source, so I'm not in a position to have 100% certainty either, but I didn't see anything that indicated or suggested that ScummVM may have been used. FWIW, there are lots of code comments from the 80s and 90s that predate ScummVM.

The second video in the article touches on the challenges of getting Maniac Mansion to behave in this version of Day of the Tentacle (among a bunch of other interesting things). It's worth watching.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: Slackdog

Quoting: wolfyrionI was hoping for Maniac Mansion to be remastered as well but unfortunately is not :(

IIRC the Manic Mansion was playable as a bonus game in DOTT?

It is, and it's playable in Day of the Tentacle Remastered. It's the original version of Maniac Mansion and hasn't been enhanced in any way so far as I am aware.

There are community efforts to re-imagine Maniac Mansion like this one [External Link], but I'm not sure whether they're planning to support Linux.

View this comment - View article - View full comments

By the way, if anybody's interested in the penguin image at the top of the article, it's a piece of fan art I did when Day of the Tentacle Remastered was first announced in 2014, which we pulled out and decided to use as a promotional image for the Linux port. There are wallpaper sized versions up here [External Link] for anyone who's keen ^_^

I'd also like to draw attention to the Linux testing team. I wouldn't have been able to get DotT ready to ship without their efforts. They are cool people and deserve our thanks <3

Kevin Becker
Stanisław Gackowski
Jaco Gerber
grinsekatze
Sven "DrMcCoy" Hesse
Jennifer McMurray
Nemoder
Eivind K. Nilsbakken
Laura "Syd" Ramey
bucky's revenge
Daniel Scharrer
Tele42
Tin Tvrtković

Quoting: sub

after two months' worth of solid porting work, here I am!

So they were contracting you way after they were telling people the Linux port will be available soon?
That sounds like there was no or next to no Linux work done prior to that date?

Initially, I was negotiating to assist with QA and possibly provide some dev support. I'm not aware of what plans were in place for Linux support before the port was offered to me, nor of what expected timeframes may have been attached to those.

I don't recall any mentions of the soonishness of the port prior to my starting work, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to consider a few months to be "soon".

All I can tell you is that I am very thankful that there were no firm dates attached to the project while I was working, and the notion that anybody at Double Fine would hope to deceive Linux users feels very much at odds with the experiences I've had. Everybody was supportive, enthusiastic and excited to see Linux users getting the game.

Quoting: ArkonaI'm also developing my own original game. Hope some day to write about it here on GoL, like you now.

That's great to hear! I'm looking forward to finding out more. Best of luck with your project :)

Quoting: wolfyrionbtw Cheese I Had some fun with your lil octopus ^_^

Ha ha, awesome. I'm hoping that I'll be able to return to Above The Waves and work on an extended version later this year (DotT pushed out my plans for doing that sooner, unfortunately).

View this comment - View article - View full comments

Quoting: GuestI wonder if Oxenfree is just a visual novel / walking simulator, or an adventure game.

I feel like it's an adventure game, although there's not really an inventory as such and the majority of meaningful interaction is done through dialogue choices. I found the lack of a mouse interface cumbersome, but it didn't impact on my enjoyment of the game.

I did my first playthrough in one sitting and found it great it in spite of a bit more teen angst than I'd normally find palatable.

The game has content that isn't available on the first go round, so I'm looking forward to revisiting it again when I have time.

View this comment - View article - View full comments