Quoting: commodore256I know, and the only way to get rid of bad package maintainers is to get rid of them, have the developer bundle the libraries like they do in windows. Also I used Ubuntu as an example because it was designed to be easy to use and it isn't fucking easy. If Ubuntu is suppose to be easy to use Linux, Linux is doomed and somebody having issues on Ubuntu is more likely to get support because it's the most mainstream, so If I have an Ubuntu problem, it's easier to get support for because there are more people that have the same issue and it's easier to search for that fix vs. if it happened in another distro.

What exactly inspired this little rant? So far all I have seen from you is one mention of a badly packaged program which was probably only a problem for a very short amount of time on one specific Linux distribution. People make mistakes. It happens to all vendors on all platforms. Deal with it.

Quoting: gbudnyI also use Mac, and I want to indicate that Apple removed Rosetta and many other parts of the Mac OS X that means you always have to use Mac OS X 10.6 or older, if you want to play some classic games.

Apple for the longest time was downright hostile to game developers, and bases their business on people using and buying the latest and greatest. This does not surprise me in the least.

Quoting: gbudnyI don't see this problem in Linux because I still can play SOF and Heretic 2 on Ubuntu 13.04 x86-64, and I think that worse problem now is the fact that I can't buy many old games for Linux, because are unavailable on eBay, amazon etc.

Indeed, and what liflg does with their installers is actually no different than what GoG does on Windows. Being able to run 14 year old binaries is actually pretty impressive. The bigger problem is as you say the abandonware issue, which GoG has been able to mostly solve on Windows but liflg has only had limited success in trying to fix on Linux.

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Quoting: commodore256McCoy, Do you not remember when a sudo-apt-get remove gimp in Ubuntu would uninstall Gnome and Xorg?

That is because of the way the package manager works. Nothing else. Still, there must have been a quite serious flaw in the way that GIMP was packaged for such an event to occur.

Gordon says in his talk that it is best for commercial game developers to avoid the package manager anyway, and on that I heartily agree. It is best left to free software applications and system components which are properly under the distributions or package maintainers control.

Quoting: Speedster

Quoting: commodore256Also, GlibC changes have broken the old Loki binaries.

But you can still run the old binaries with old libraries on a modern system...
http://www.swanson.ukfsn.org/loki/ [External Link]

And if you want convenient installers for them, you can find them here:
http://www.liflg.org/ [External Link]

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Everything seems to work okay for me. Reminds me quite heavily of Livalink.

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Quoting: Guestcommodore256, stop spreading FUD please. Either you’re intentionally trying to make Linux look bad to game devs, or you just don’t know what you’re talking about.

Well, to be charitable, he is probably trying to appear friendly to the developers, which in general is the best policy; spreading misinformation about how Linux works or how difficult it is to develop for serves no one, however.

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Quoting: rick01457The idea that SteamOS finally delivers us all from the blight that is distro fragmentation is a tedious one. The single best thing that Valve have done with bringing the steam client to Gnu/Linux is to pick a single distro and say that it will offer support on that distribution only (is it Ubuntu 12.04? I forget). By doing this, standards are introduced for any distro maker that wants to appeal to gamers. Introducing standards in this way negates the possibility of distro fragmentation causing problems to gamers.

Personally, I would rather people choose SteamOS as a standard than Ubuntu, as it is based on Debian and closer to upstream. Also, because it is gaming focused, it would be much better analyzed as a model for other distributions to follow in this regard.

That being said, most distributions already ship SDL as Gordon says, so that basically defeats the problem anyway, making this whole argument for the most part moot.

Maybe in game system requirements they should just say "requires at least SDL 2.x" like they used to say about DirectX back in the day?

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Godot was primarily targeted at mobile previously, meaning that the latest and greatest graphics were never its chief concern. That being said, now that it has its source code available we as a community could step in to fix that. Also, it is using OpenGL ES 2, not OpenGL 2, which is actually based on OpenGL 3 and fully API compatibile with OpenGL 4.1.

My main interest here is that Godot may finally help resolve the greatest issue with these game creation environments, which is that you never do actually have complete control or in effect complete ownership of your games. Since the main editor is free software, this is no longer an issue here.

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Quoting: simonI used to program some games. The Alt-Tab problem was solved when i Switched to SDL2.0.
The penumbra series and Amnesia TTD by frictional games have this problem. But Amnesia a machine for pigs don't. Why cant developers use 2.0? by doing so they will also support Wayland in the coming future.

Well, in the example cited, it is almost as if SDL 2.0 was not even released yet...

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Quoting: LinasTherefore I think that giving Ubuntu developers a privilege is kind of arbitrary when you consider the amount of work done by others.

Gift giving and charity in general are typically arbitrary or at the very least rather narrowly focused. One does need to look at such gestures in the thin context in which they are given.

I do however think ranking distributions based on whether they "deserve" something, as has happened in this thread, is a very sinister precedent indeed. :|

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Quoting: SamsaiWithout moderation the place could end up becoming a huge troll infested hole of hatred and that wouldn't be fun for either the readers or the article writers.

You mean Phoronix? ;)

With regards to the main discussion, I think Yahtzee's words have some relevance here:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2863-Bulletstorm [External Link]

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Quoting: Latest from RWSDecember, Friday the 13th was a lucky day for POSTAL fans across the world when RWS released the 1412 patch of awesomeness to update our ten year old flagship game, totally for free!

Well, as you guys liked it so much we thought what the hell, have some more! Also totally for free. RWS is the development house that just keeps giving. Now with 95% less bugs than 1412 patch thanks to our expanded and dedicated team of QA testers from the http://facepunch.com/ [External Link] forms. Thanks guys!

Now the bulk of the games features have been updated, our next priority is to get all these things to Linux and Mac on Steam, and also to the DRM free platforms such as GoG.com.

http://runningwithscissors.com/main/index.php?topic=1786 [External Link]

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