Quoting: Bumadarfinished it on the ps3 (sorry but was free a few days and as it did not pop up for linux when released)

Yeah, I'm kind of afraid that this delayed release (due to bugs) is going to put a serious dent in the launch numbers.  I feel that Linux frequently gets an unfair shake due to these kinds of shenanigans.  It's been stated on the Double Fine forums (in a reply by Ron, to members' questions) that one of the ways Valve determines these numbers is by adding up how much time Steam folks play each game within the first few weeks after launch.

What are the chances that gamers like Bumadar are going to then spend weeks, and dozens of hours, playing a game they've already beaten (and find boring, in parts)?  

:(

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Quoting: alexThunderSeems legit. Still, I think he could have told this earlier.

Completely agree.  Lots of developers don't "get" Kickstarter.  They aren't sure if us backers are "pre-order forum denizens" or "mini publishers".  They don't want to "dump boring technical details on us" for some reason... and in reply, a dozen backers will post comments stating that they, too, are programmers, and would like all the low-level details that the developer is willing to provide!

I tossed him a few dollars... I hope he keeps us in the loop, technically.  It looks like it might make it now (they need another $50K in four days, not remotely unheard-of on Kickstarter), and I'd be interested in some updates regarding the pitfalls of porting a complex and stylized GUI from Unity3D v3.5 to v4.0... then I can pass on pointers and tips to other developers interested in porting to Linux! :)

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Done!  Hopefully, this is what Digitilus needs to build a really solid piece of the puzzle... perhaps they can build on this momentum, and this code, to get a more sizeable Kickstarter (or their own crowd-funding platform on their website) up to the required levels to get SKYJACKER completed.

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Quoting: HamishThis makes it more in-line with LGP's prices. Wondering when we will get more from either of them out on Desura?

Hamish, I've been in contact with Runesoft (last September), and they claimed that their path forward will depend on how well Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood, and their other two Desura games (Airline Tycoon Deluxe & Cultures: Northland) do.  Those are both priced, currently, at $14.99 USD.  I got the impression that they're seeing reasonably good success in their "porting-to-Mac" business, and are ready to return to their Linux roots, but that their resources are constricted somehow.  They have stated that if these releases do well enough, they'll be bringing the Ankh games (including one which has never been on Linux) and a new Jack Keane game they're working on.

For what it's worth, I think it's their porting engineer ("rettichschnidi") on Desura who is supporting customers directly, on the game's comment thread.  He seems like a nice guy, and has posted a public bug tracker for customer reports (as opposed to a faceless contact form, or worse... nothing).[url=http://www.desura.com/members/rettichschnidi][/url]

I have no further knowledge beyond that, but they must know that these releases are long in the tooth (64-bit ports are out of the question), and that response amongst even the most devoted fans will be somewhat lukewarm compared to a new game.  I hope that information is factored in to their expectations (or perhaps they're hoping that sales of those three games would, ideally, break even on the cost of updating/patching and earn enough to pay for the porting cost of new games).

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Quoting: x414e54Okay backed it. It does seem a lot just for a Linux export of a unity game, but I would like to play the game all the same.

And I agree, I really dislike primary platforms as stretch goals. If you are paying for your main and only platform and it does not make it then you end up with a game you cannot play. Yes you can cancel, but you may forget and cancelling is against the whole idea of Kick-starter, and could drop it back under their main goal. 

Stretch goals should just be extra things that really are not core to wanting to or being able to play the game.

So, the problem isn't exporting from Unity3D v4; there is an actual problem.  The game was built in Unity3D v3, before the Linux export was available.  Apparently, porting a project from 3.5 to 4.0 isn't always roses and rainbows, and he's not the first dev I've read about having some growing pains between versions.  Whether or not this specifically costs $200K in part (or substantially) is another issue.

I guess the thing to keep in mind here is that he's nearly finished with a game that requires $200K to get the necessary fit and polish to meet his standards for quality (which are pretty good, I'd say), and he's committing to a bit of extra work to be able to expand the game to more backers (us and the OUYA crowd, of which I also count myself) to be able to make his goal.  I agree that the wording in the announcement was insulting, and the way it was gone about was a "bit pants" (as my UK friends would say)!  But, everyone makes mistakes, and conveying meaning and emotion on the internet is very difficult.

Not that I'm especially a fanboy backer, but it is good to have good information;  thanks to Liam for posting to Reddit, and to American for the technical answer!

Having to rebuild a GUI from scratch, due to an SDK switch is language I understand.  I appreciate him leveling with us.  I'll go pledge and make a showing of it;  the game looks fantastic.

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Quoting: AnonymousI'd like to ask if it's possible to see other games (mainly the Alice games) on Linux as well.

Sad news there, buddy... :( 

I don't think that's actually a very good question for American;  in his recent Reddit AMA, he clarified that he has zero control over any of the Alice IP, and really doesn't want to work with that publisher any more, either.  They had his studio develop an "American McGee" treatment of the Wizard of Oz universe, called Oz... and then pulled the plug, leaving his studio out all the development money up to that date, and with no publisher for the game.  To make it worse, his studio would have needed a publisher at that point, because there was no way the old publisher, who owned the IP, would have given it to him for free.

So, any porting effort in the future would need to be initiated by EA (like that would ever happen).

Someone asked him whether he'd ever do another dark fairy-tale or children's story adaptation again, and he coyly replied that he is working making a version of Little Red Riding Hood, twisted with dark Japanese mythology (i.e., Akaneiro...)

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Here's the page I dumped on there;  there are quite a few older projects (like Double Fine Adventure) which are on the list.

http://www.gamingonlinux.com/crowdfunding/index.php5?title=Flibit%27s_old_page

Other contributors can copy game projects from it to the real main page set up by Liam, and we can delete it when it's no longer useful :)

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Wow, this is fantastic progress!  Nobody else is tracking these projects this way.

There are a whole bunch of missing projects, but I have a copy I pulled from Flibitjibibo's Linux crowd-funding wiki before he pulled it down.  I'll post that up in a scratch space on the wiki, and then post the URL here (people can migrate that info back in slowly).

It dawns on me that the wiki has all sorts of other nifty features (some of which is subsumed by wikipedia of course, but some which is not).  For example, we can establish a robust set of categories (graphic adventure, arcade, puzzle, FPS, etc) if anyone is interested.  Also, we can track projects that are already funded which have released, versus those who are still in progress (i.e., FTL in contrast to The Banner Saga).

If we wish to track games individually, with their own game pages, we could note things of interest to our community.  For example, Double Fine Adventure is built on the MOAI SDK & engine, which itself is licensed under a GPL-incompatible free software license, and they have stated that they're strongly interested in releasing their MOAI middleware stack (called 2HB) to the community this year sometime.  That tidbit (regarding 2HB) is clearly of interest to us, but probably won't land on Wikipedia until it's already  released.

Some things of interest to our community are not good things, however.  For example, on The Banner Saga, the game that was pitched to Linux backers, once the stretch goal came, was a DRM-free delayed release, without participation in the beta, of a single and multiplayer turn-based RPG, in a low-fantasy Viking style, with a strong story mode campaign, and a unique cel animated art style.  None of that is really a problem, as their schedule (which they've struggled to prevent from slipping further than it has) would surely suffer in adding on any beta, including Linux.  We don't have to be happy about that, but it's reasonable, and we are patient.  However, it was later clarified that the multi-player portion would not be a part of the final single-player game, and that experience would become a related free-to-play game of it's own, called The Banner Saga: Factions, which would come to Linux after Win/Mac release, and would be exclusively on Steam.

Linux backers were promised a DRM-free multi-player experience, and it was clarified during the campaign that for the purposes of the Kickstarter campaign, and regardless of opinions, Stoic Studios interprets Steam is a mild form of DRM, and that the game (as described at the time) would be made available other ways.  Now... it's increasingly likely that no such DRM-free multi-player experience will be made available (on any platform, not just Linux), though it was a campaign commitment. Perhaps I'm finely splitting an eyelash, but it seems that this kind of occurrence is going to become increasingly noteworthy as more of our crowd-funded games near completion.

Who is making progress?  Who is slipping their schedules and why?  What campaign assertions are facing scrutiny?

Also, some games that launched a campaign, and failed to fund, have charged on, anyway.  An example of this is Lodestar: Stygian Skies [External Link], whose modest campaign asked for only $16K [External Link] and promised to deliver the game as well as licensing the game engine under GPLv3 and game assets under CC BY-NC-SA.  It made about 25%.  The game's creator, Jason Taylor, forged on ahead, running an alpha-funding platform directly off the game's website, and continues to build it and send tweets with screenshots and progress updates.  Do such projects that continue to have a life beyond Kickstarter get noted somewhere, for reference when a release, or other wider publicity event, occur?   Lodestar is not the only one, and I'm certain that it, or other projects like it, will eventually end up in Desura's alpha-funding section, which is a press-worthy event for a Linux game.

Other weird corner cases exist, such as Haunts:  The Manse Macabre, in which the project suffered two dire blows (firstly, the schedule was unsurprisingly too ambitious, and second, that resulted in the programming staff abandoning it).  However, due to it's major funding source (a public works grant), the code and assets were destined to be open-sourced anyway (probably after release, though).  So, the project, while unable to deliver on all campaign promises, continues on under open-source community patronage, and is in a very roughly playable state (on one platform at least).  What is to be made of that?  The game assets in this uniquely art-directed endeavour are certainly of interest to some in the gaming community.

Perhaps this whole discussion is overly ambitious for a page that just popped into existence, but I wanted to at least begin a wider discourse of what we all aim to achieve.  Just simply listing projects, dates, and funding goals is already useful... but what does it look like six months from now?  How do we use it then?  What details to we care about six months beyond the deadline listed next to some funded project on the list?  We started to come up against some of these thorny issues on Flibit's crowd-funding wiki (which, nearing it's demise, he rightly called "moribund"), and I worry that any simple list will end up the same way without somewhere to link out and add project details that cannot fit on the clean, simple list.

Thoughts?  TL;DR?  Pizza topping suggestions?

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A wiki might work.  Then you could delegate the update work (to Cheese and Hamish ;))

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Sorry for the thread necro, but last week Born Ready Games (creator of SSZ) got close enough to the stretch-goal to commit to a delayed release on Linux & Mac OS X!  I was fairly certain this would happen (the campaign closed with $174.8K, plus $3K from PayPal), wth the PayPal left open for quite some time.  I strongly suspected they'd easily reach the final $3K within a month or so.

Here's the update in which they commit to a DRM-free release on GOG, and also Linux [External Link]

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