Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 5045, member: 122"Have you heard of/looked at [URL='http://nixstaller.sourceforge.net/viewpage.php?page_id=1']Nixstaller[/URL] (I did some hunting up and that's what Overgrowth uses)?

This is the first I've heard of it. Thanks for sharing the link. When I get around to updating my Linux dev articles and/or assembling a Linux dev book, I'll be sure to include it in the list.

Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 5045, member: 122"By the way, thanks for sharing those numbers. It's nice to hear that you've got good diversity amongst your customers. Off topic, do you have any other figures/stats that you make available? I had a quick hunt through your blog forum thingy, but didn't spot anything.

My current sales breakdown by OS is 60% Mac, 20% Windows, and 20% Linux. Most of the Mac and Windows sales are for Dirk Dashing 2 and Fashion Cents Deluxe. Most of the Linux sales are Dirk Dashing 2, with a few copies of Dirk 1 and The Adventures of Rick Rocket being sold too. I may post a blog entry with more specifics in the future, but I'm not prepared to do that yet. I'm kind of in a holding pattern. I haven't really even started promoting Dirk 2 yet, since I'm waiting on the writer to finish the strategy guide for Dirk 2 (should be done very soon now). Once that's done, I can start running the ad campaigns I've got ready to go, issue the press release, submit it various distribution channels, etc.

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Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 5036, member: 122"Sure, but is creating a package with bundled libs and no dependency metadata (you still get the benefits of being easily uninstallable, and some level of integration with users' normal methods of installing software) a better or worse solution than a standalone installer? I think this is what the Wolfire installer does. It seems to give the best of both worlds (or at least as much as is possible).

I see where you're coming from. You can certainly build a RPM or DEB that contains your bundled libs. But then you're locked into the install location that the packager chose, like Liam and others have said. I know a lot of Linux gamers like Liam that prefer to have as much control as possible over where things get installed on their systems, particularly proprietary, closed-source apps.

But if you want to support the widest range of distributions possible (which I think is important, since 40% or so of my Linux customers don't use a "major distro" like Ubuntu, Fedora, or SUSE), you would still have to provide something other than a RPM or DEB, because not all distributions support RPM or DEB. That means you now have 3 installers/packages to update & maintain: a RPM, a DEB, and something else (tarball, installer, or whatever). My time is valuable, and I'd much rather have a single solution to maintain that works everywhere.

You could just give people a tarball and expect them to extract and install the game themselves. That gives them the flexibility to install it where they want, and it works on any distro. Many users know how to extract tarballs, and some might even prefer it (don't have to execute an installer, just extract and go!), but it's not very user friendly. And contrary to popular belief not everyone that use Linux is that tech-saavy. My wife, for example =)

The other thing that RPM, DEB, and tarballs don't do for you is install desktop shortcuts, setup links in your system menu (which is located/structured differently on different distros), optionally modify your PATH so you can run it from the command line, etc. A good installer provides so much more than just dumping the files onto the user's system.

I would say the 2 best installers on Linux right now are [URL='http://installbuilder.bitrock.com/']Bitrock[/URL] and [URL='http://icculus.org/mojosetup/']MojoSetup[/URL]. The latter is free, and has been used for dozens of commercial games. Bitrock is expensive (wasn't when I first bought it), but is very powerful and easy to use. Both installers provide you with a single, user-friendly, and easy to maintain package that works on any distro.

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There are other problems with using RPMs and DEBs to distribute closed-source binaries, which I detailed in my articles. Mainly, package managers can't always resolve the dependencies, and even when they can, you have no idea how the dependent library the PM installed was built (and whether the configure options you depend on were built into it in a way that makes it compatible with your program - things like rpath, whether to use shared X11 libs, etc).

In my opinion and experience, unless your source code is open or you're willing to build packages for specific distros/versions, you should really avoid using RPMs and DEBs. A distribution-independent approach that doesn't use package managers is best for distributing a closed-source binary - it's easy to maintain (you have one binary and one "package"/installer to update for patches), and it "just works" on any distro.

I have one installer for each of my games, and I haven't found a distribution yet that my games won't install and run on. That includes both older and newer distributions.

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Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 5015, member: 122"The LSB (based on POSIX) also governs what stuff should live where, doesn't it?

Absolutely. That's what I was getting at when I said LSB. Either put it where it's supposed to go (according to LSB), or let the user decide.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought RPM and DEB did not give you the flexibility to decide where to install. Doesn't the package manager put it where it wants to (apart from the user)?

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It should either follow the LSB, or do what I did - and use a distribution-independent installer that lets users to choose where to install it.

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Quoting: "Bumadar, post: 4968, member: 93"the guys from the Xenonauts kickstarter had a questionnaire about which packaging and such people preferred, pointed them to the same article and told them to contact you. Just curious if they ever did?

Nope.

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Quoting: "Cheeseness, post: 4964, member: 122"Hard to know what their plans will be for packaging. Windows and MacOS have a single binary that downloads the rest of Steam and then includes games in its own self-contained location (pretty much how Desura works). That's definitely an option, but who knows how they're planning to handle dependencies. I did shoot them an email suggesting that might be a good topic (amongst others) for a future blog post.

I left a comment on their blog to point them to my [URL='http://www.mygamecompany.com/articles/index.htm']Linux Game Development[/URL] articles, which talk about how to handle dependencies and packaging, but my comment never showed up. :(

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Thanks for sharing the news! I just hadn't gotten over here yet! You beat me to it! haha

By the way, I uploaded a "Bloopers" video that shows some of the funnier bugs found during the game's development:
View video on youtube.com

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The character art is too weird-looking for me and the story seems bizarre, but it's got some neat game mechanics.

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This game looks better and better every time I see it! Awesome!

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