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One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

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Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#81

Post by schemescape »

Pannoniae wrote: post #62
schemescape wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I published a not-super-popular (edit: but free) esoteric programming game on Steam and of the I'm sure the hardware survey is biased towards Linux, but it's still a surprising result! Especially so, given that I originally only released the game on Windows (and later added Linux support after getting multiple requests to port the game).

Thank you for showing me this wonderful game. That 5% is going to get a tiny bit higher:) You could consider having a donation "DLC" for the game, I would happily pay for it.

Thanks! Honestly, comments like this probably have a more positive impact on me than the small amount of money I could have made by selling the game :)

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#82

Post by schemescape »

versteegen wrote: post #65
schemescape wrote: post #8

One issue with publishing a browser-based game that this article glosses over is: managing save data. The browser provides Local Storage, but that isn't reliable as a "source of truth" since browsers (mostly on iOS, I think) may delete the data periodically (thanks, iOS, for deleting my Wordle history!) or when clearing browser history. Aside: the worst situation is when publishing on itch.io and playing on an iPad--…

What about calling navigator.storage.persist() to prompt the user to allow persistent storage? Wow, thanks for the warning about that itch.io problem. It's discussed here: https://itch.io/t/2636350/localstorage-doesnt-work-for-html5... and behaviour of Safari's default-on "Prevent Cross-site Tracking" here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/63922558/safari-localsto... So this is happening because itch.io hosts the…

I had never heard of navigator.storage.persist(). I will give it a try, thanks!

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#83

Post by tonyedgecombe »

versteegen wrote: post #63
tensor wrote: post #43

I suppose Steam handles Windows game installation, so you don't need Windows installer code signing. But it's worth pointing out that for non-Stream applications, compared to the cost of signing a Windows installer, the $99 yearly fee for Mac is an absolute steal. For windows, you need to get an EV code signing certificate and the cheapest option is $150 US per year, but you ALSO need a >$100 token device. Typical pr…

That's horrible and dastardly, but at least it's far easier for users to bypass SmartScreen on Windows than the block on Macs. I wonder how many Mac users actually know how to. If you just get a regular (cheaper) code signing certificate I realise SmartScreen will still block you anyway until enough people have installed it, but how many is "enough"? Also, previously: "Microsoft Defender SmartScreen is hurting indepe…

I think the regular (cheaper) code signing certificates are going away soon.

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#84

Post by cageface »

ryandrake wrote: post #3

If I had a time traveling magic wand, the one Software Thing I would wish for would be that native, cross platform toolkits had won the war rather than the whole industry punting and declaring The Web Browser to be the target platform, or these super-high-level Game Engines. For decades, I always hopelessly thought the OS and hardware gaps would eventually be bridged by something like Qt or SDL or wxWidgets, and we'd…

Flutter is actually pretty close to this right now. I'm building an app that targets Windows, Mac, iOS and Android and so far it's working really well on all of them with more than 90% code reuse.

If Google doesn't give up on it I think it's going to be a much better stack for cross platform applications than the browser is.

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#85

Post by forty »

AgentME wrote: post #39
nine_k wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would make such a platform less of a compromise than a web browser? How would programming in C++ be less pain than programming in JS / HTML / CSS? At the very least, JS code won't write past array bounds, or smash the stack. From relevant olden times, Lisp and Smalltalk environments were closest to the ideal. They were expensive though, and nobody distributed them for free, as Netscape did with the browser. They…

I think people really underrate browsers. The browser standards are open and have multiple open source implementations. People associate browsers too much with annoying trashy ad-based and other questionable websites to see how good they are themselves. Electron has an annoyingly heavy download size but it's not the only option for native releases of web-based apps. Windows and some other OSes have built-in browser w…

I'm not really sure for how long we will have multiple implementations. And we won't have for sure any new implementation, we are stuck with the 3 we have and can only hope the 2 non chrome ones will survive.

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#86

Post by reactordev »

iamstupidsimple wrote: post #69
reactordev wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a market but not for the hobbyist. You have better luck on iOS than macOS for games. However, tools, you can make a killing selling simple tools with sexy UX on Mac.

> However, tools, you can make a killing selling simple tools with sexy UX on Mac. I've been thinking about doing something like this recently but I'm not a heavy mac user these days. Any tips on what people are looking for in small tools?

Know your market. If you aren’t a heavy Mac user then you probably should develop for your space. Any attempt will be met with headache as you fight Apple certification, design aesthetics, and enshitification of your code base to support the nuances of Apple.

Ask yourself, what tools can I build that are not only useful to me, but maybe useful to others, and start there.

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#88

Post by guraf »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #66
nine_k wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They showed time and again that they don't want a too-wide developer audience. They already have too many apps, and see the choice fatigue in users. They want big companies professionally produce polished stuff that commands, say, $14.99 in app store, of which $5 is Apple's share. They want stuff like Beatmaker or ProCreate. Small fry need not apply; if they insist, they should at least clear the threshold of owning…

> They showed time and again that they don't want a too-wide developer audience. Indeed. And that is (one reason) why Mac will never be more than a third-rate platform. As I said, they're shooting themselves in the foot.

They've been at it for over 40 years and grew to the most valuable company in the world. In many computer fields they still are THE platform (anything design for example) so clearly the software they do have is plenty.

Can you elaborate what you mean by shooting themselves in the foot?

Do you see them as a centipede who sacrificed one foot in exchange for all the riches in the world?

Or do you mean that if they were more open to developers they'd somehow be even bigger? What's bigger than a trillion dollar company? Would they be intergalactic?

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#89

Post by alberth »

npunt wrote: post #9

Great read, very eye opening. > Similar to developing for macOS, a Mac is pretty much required for developing for iOS and there’s the $100 per year developer membership fee. I think the combined income of both iOS and macOS (95% of which comes from iOS) barely covers the cost of the membership fee and the cheapest Mac Mini. I think this contextualizes the post well, seems like overall revenues might be in the <$10k o…

For $100/year developer fee, you’d expect better developer documentation in return.

Just say’n.

Re: One game, by one man, on six platforms: The good, the bad and the ugly

#90

Post by chpatrick »

nine_k wrote: post #45
AgentME wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people really underrate browsers. The browser standards are open and have multiple open source implementations. People associate browsers too much with annoying trashy ad-based and other questionable websites to see how good they are themselves. Electron has an annoyingly heavy download size but it's not the only option for native releases of web-based apps. Windows and some other OSes have built-in browser w…

Browsers are absurdly well-optimized for performance. If you know how to tap it, you can make screaming-fast apps of various kinds, with top-notch graphics, font rendering, accessibility support, audio, video, etc. They also have really solid networking capabilities, as long as you don't need raw TCP or UDP. In particular, HTTP/2, HTTP/3, WebSockets, and WebRTC allow for a lot of advanced things. By now, you also hav…

No idea why you're being downvoted, you're completely right. And all that runs on every phone and computer from the last 10 years or so
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