81–90 of 103 posts
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The upside is you actually get it on your Android phone :D But I agree, the Market is way overdue for coupons, discounts and other promo options.
You mean besides a whole crapton of 1 penny apps? That was one hell of a discount if you ask me.
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How ironic that Blizzard, by far the brightest star in releasing simultaneous Mac AAA titles, is being singled out here. I'm going to pull a justification out of my ass: if you support things halfway and do things halfway the brand suffers. Before they'd make a linux client they'd do X-Box then PS3 then Wii for sheer ROI reasons. They aren't doing those either though even with larger consumer bases.
Yes I agree with you in regard to Bilzzard. To be more precise, my questions is: You have an OpenGL based game running smoothly on OSX, you decide not to port it to Linux. Why? 1. ROI 2. "Have to" offer support for Linux to maintain brand image - very hard 3. hurts game image "game for geeks" Obviously, it is hugely dependent on the piece of software you have.
Essentially, a sort of background process monitor/snooper that tries to detect cheating behaviour and block or report it. I have no idea if that could be ported to Linux, and whether in doing so they'd:
1) Get grief for requiring it to run as root
2) Fail to detect all sorts of 'easy' cheats, ruining the online services and leaderboards for everyone
3) Interact horribly with the general fludity/flexibility of a Linux system.
4) All or none of the above.
I'd start picking a different challenge mechanic than "Beat the average" since the average is sensitive to distribution bring dominated by poor Redditors and incentivizing "Pay us $5.50" does not result in hugely more successful outcomes. How about hiding the average and offering the bonus to anyone paying $25+? Or even $10+?
First off, they test the hell out of everything. They've tried dozens of variations with different offers, forms, and copy. This is what won. "Beat the average" is a compelling call to action. Think about it, would you rather "pay $10 to get X" or "beat the competition with $10"? The latter has bite to it.
It's also about brand. The only way theses offers stand a chance with consumers and developers in the long run is by staying Humble. It's in the name after all. These guys take it VERY seriously. And it's been paying off - their bundles have been doing better and better because people know the name. They trust the name. And they want to give money to support it, along with charity & game delopers.
Does the road end there? Certainly not. But I have huge respect for these guys. I totally trust that they know what they're doing here.
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Yes I agree with you in regard to Bilzzard. To be more precise, my questions is: You have an OpenGL based game running smoothly on OSX, you decide not to port it to Linux. Why? 1. ROI 2. "Have to" offer support for Linux to maintain brand image - very hard 3. hurts game image "game for geeks" Obviously, it is hugely dependent on the piece of software you have.
ISTR that they have some fairly sophisticated anti-cheat stuff running (esp. for WoW & Starcraft) Warden, I think it's called. Essentially, a sort of background process monitor/snooper that tries to detect cheating behaviour and block or report it. I have no idea if that could be ported to Linux, and whether in doing so they'd: 1) Get grief for requiring it to run as root 2) Fail to detect all sorts of 'easy' cheats,…
AFAIK it doesn't require root/administrator on Windows and Mac either.
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.
As of at least a year or two ago Qt as been LGPLv2 and thus you can write proprietary software with the free Qt license as well. The only thing you can't do (without releasing your code) is make changes to Qt itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How ironic that Blizzard, by far the brightest star in releasing simultaneous Mac AAA titles, is being singled out here. I'm going to pull a justification out of my ass: if you support things halfway and do things halfway the brand suffers. Before they'd make a linux client they'd do X-Box then PS3 then Wii for sheer ROI reasons. They aren't doing those either though even with larger consumer bases.
Yes I agree with you in regard to Bilzzard. To be more precise, my questions is: You have an OpenGL based game running smoothly on OSX, you decide not to port it to Linux. Why? 1. ROI 2. "Have to" offer support for Linux to maintain brand image - very hard 3. hurts game image "game for geeks" Obviously, it is hugely dependent on the piece of software you have.
good example of this is with HoN (Heroes of Newerth) where I believe the guy that looked after the Linux port left, leaving S2 having to outsource all their updates every week. The community is fairly good at hacking their way round day to day issues, but it's far hassle free and I'm sure is costing S2 more money than it's making them.
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Looks like you can't give all your money to them though. You can only control the ratio between tip/developers/charity. Which means you'll end up giving half your money to Child's Play, even if you go full charity.
You can indeed by clicking the disclosure triangle to the left of the charity slider. Perhaps it is too small?
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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/St…
If I had to take a guess, it would be that it probably has something to do with the wild constellation of libraries any given Linux machine could be using, not to mention version of those libraries. Do you build your game to support ALSA, or OSS, or Pulse Audio, or all three? (I'm not a Linux dev so these examples might not be technically right but it's in the spirit of my point.) Do you use the dependencies present…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/St…
If I had to take a guess, it would be that it probably has something to do with the wild constellation of libraries any given Linux machine could be using, not to mention version of those libraries. Do you build your game to support ALSA, or OSS, or Pulse Audio, or all three? (I'm not a Linux dev so these examples might not be technically right but it's in the spirit of my point.) Do you use the dependencies present…
So its really just a matter of groupthink about "Linux isn't viable" thats the block, here.
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" ?
Apportable helped Osmos and EDGE cross-compile their Objective-C code bases on Android using GNUstep and other open source libraries.
"Apportable is a venture-backed team of six engineers, looking for a few more. We're solving some ridiculously hard problems porting iOS to Android. Our software is already being used by some of the world's largest and best game developers"