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The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

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Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#41

Post by Jaecen »

gcb wrote: post #37

and.... the humble bundle is dead. good while it lasted. clicked the very first icon there, and the movie ONLY had cinematics. not a single slipt second of gameplay. Indie games came a long way, but they are now just the same as big studios. milking any branding they can. humble bundle unfortunately being one of them :(

I assume you're talking about the Anomaly icon, which is the only one without gameplay (and is also the third icon, but maybe that changed). I'm not sure why you'd base your opinion of a game, let alone the continued success of the bundle and the indie game industry itself on the content of a single video link. The Humble Bundle continues to provide what it always has, and the game it promotes continue to be created by small independent studios, distributed DRM free on a large number of platforms. The choice of using a cinematic rather than gameplay video hardly impacts these other factors.

If you're concerned about the game itself, it's been out for a while on a number of platforms and is well-reviewed, so finding gameplay videos should not be difficult.

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#42

Post by Stormbringer »

soci wrote: post #38

Any clue how an independent game developer can build the same app for multiple platforms without wasting a lot of time? Being a sole developer I find it quite difficult to develop for multiple platforms at the same time unless there's a framework that allows me to do so. Are the people behind the games in the bundle using a sort of "multiplatform-framework" ?

Focus on gameplay rather than graphics.

Which is to say; make a game with compelling and interesting rules that doesn't rely on performance

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#43

Post by doomlaser »

soci wrote: post #38

Any clue how an independent game developer can build the same app for multiple platforms without wasting a lot of time? Being a sole developer I find it quite difficult to develop for multiple platforms at the same time unless there's a framework that allows me to do so. Are the people behind the games in the bundle using a sort of "multiplatform-framework" ?

Write your code in C++. Use OpenGL 1.x for graphics. This will allow you to easily target pretty much every platform in existence now. People used to use SDL as a general wrapper for OS specific stuff like setting up your window context and getting UI events, though I'm not sure if it's still in vogue now.

That said, writing games is one of the hardest types of software engineering task, in my experience. On top of that, all but the best games tend to have a very short lifespan compared to other kinds of software.

You've really got to love making games to stick around in the field long enough to get good.

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#44

Post by dorian-graph »

moondowner wrote: post #35
rcfox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the sale is over, but: http://www.gamemusicbundle.com/

There's a similar music albums bundle sale at the moment, but it's not exactly the same (not pay as much as you want, but 10$ for 10 albums, which is great also!) http://www.soundsupp.ly/

Wow, that's awesome. Thank you for the link.

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#45

Post by collinjackson »

robocat wrote: post #27

Nexus owners: Edge didn't work on my Nexus (neither Edge Classic nor Extended). The other HD apps seem to work great. Permissions: All apps except Anomaly only asked for Network Communication. Anomaly needs Network Communication, Modify/Delete USB storage, and Prevent Phone from Sleeping.

It should work now on the Nexus One, try the latest version 1.82.3

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#46

Post by vog »

soci wrote: post #38

Any clue how an independent game developer can build the same app for multiple platforms without wasting a lot of time? Being a sole developer I find it quite difficult to develop for multiple platforms at the same time unless there's a framework that allows me to do so. Are the people behind the games in the bundle using a sort of "multiplatform-framework" ?

I don't know about proprietary games, but Free Software games commonly make use of very good libraries and APIs, almost all being cross-platform. SDL, Qt, and OpenGL come to mind. Also LUA as embedded language for scripting, and highlevel libraries for various programming languages such as PyGame.

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#47

Post by rdouble »

soci wrote: post #38

Any clue how an independent game developer can build the same app for multiple platforms without wasting a lot of time? Being a sole developer I find it quite difficult to develop for multiple platforms at the same time unless there's a framework that allows me to do so. Are the people behind the games in the bundle using a sort of "multiplatform-framework" ?

use Unity

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#48

Post by gcb »

Jaecen wrote: post #41
gcb wrote: post #37

and.... the humble bundle is dead. good while it lasted. clicked the very first icon there, and the movie ONLY had cinematics. not a single slipt second of gameplay. Indie games came a long way, but they are now just the same as big studios. milking any branding they can. humble bundle unfortunately being one of them :(

I assume you're talking about the Anomaly icon, which is the only one without gameplay (and is also the third icon, but maybe that changed). I'm not sure why you'd base your opinion of a game, let alone the continued success of the bundle and the indie game industry itself on the content of a single video link. The Humble Bundle continues to provide what it always has, and the game it promotes continue to be created…

it's the first icon if you follow the path.

well, i base that on my knowledge that cinematic scenes are the blame of gamers. so a bad way to promote something.

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#49

Post by replax »

icco wrote: post #26
moxiemk1 wrote: post #11

Now I know what Android users feel like when people announce endless iPhone-only mobile apps. I was super bummed that I missed the last Humble Bundle, since it was chock full of games I had been meaning to buy. This one is smaller, though, and the having the "cool" feature targeted at a group I'm not in makes me feel like the bundle isn't really worth paying attention to. This is the first time I have ever felt left…

Being a long time Linux user, I am very aware of the "I don't want you as my customer" feeling. Being a software developer, I have never understood the decision on why to essentially limit the number of customers you can have. I think the only thing worse than not supporting the majority of platforms is not making them have feature parity.

While I can understand not porting e.g. a DirectX game to Linux/OSX or any other program which heavily relies on OS specific libraries/features, I could not yet understand why not to port it when it is possible with little effort. I'd really like to hear an explanation from someone with knowledge in that matter, unfortunately the only example I can come up with at the moment from the top of my head is WoW/Warcraft/Starcraft. It runs on Win/OSX but has no Linux client. I do not understand why Blizzard would not release a Linux client for which no support will be available. A small team could probably achieve a port in reasonable time and create the update infrastructure around it.

Re: The Humble Bundle for Android (and Mac / Windows / Linux)

#50

Post by replax »

soci wrote: post #38

Any clue how an independent game developer can build the same app for multiple platforms without wasting a lot of time? Being a sole developer I find it quite difficult to develop for multiple platforms at the same time unless there's a framework that allows me to do so. Are the people behind the games in the bundle using a sort of "multiplatform-framework" ?

You can use OpenGL & Qt for that matter. You can write proprietary software if you purchase a Qt license. In fact, programming with Qt is usually write once, compile for: Windows, OSX, Linux, Android. Most of the time, you will not need to adjust a single line of code for it to work. Given that you keep the other platforms in mind while designing your e.g. UI.
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