Please port it to linux because we linux user want an native version. Not an version that run with wine.
When we linux user must use it with wine why the mac users don´t must be use wine too for that? why they become an native Version and Linux Users not??
While I haven't bought any of your games, yet, I would buy the linux versions. I have wanting the games for a long time now, but having to get to some windows first to me always was too much of a hastle. And I love playing the classic SCRUM-MIs on my Android!
BTW: As I know you guys do download games (and therefore I guess DRM), there is a Linux-Download-Games solution by linuxgamepublishing. So If you don't want to reinvent the wheel cooperation with those guys might be an idea.
When we linux user must use it with wine why the mac users don´t must be use wine too for that? why they become an native Version and Linux Users not??
I don't know for sure, but I'd say that even today the number of Linux users that would buy Telltale games is dramatically smaller than the number of Mac users that will buy it. So economically makes sense.
Not saying it doesn't make economic sense to port to Linux (I'm guessing it doesn't though), but sure makes sense that it'd be Mac first.
Sorry, man. It's been the "year of Linux desktop" for each of the last 10 years, and it's still not there yet. Not even close.
I don't know for sure, but I'd say that even today the number of Linux users that would buy Telltale games is dramatically smaller than the number of Mac users that will buy it. So economically makes sense.
[...]
65% windows users, 18% Mac users, 17% linux users.
Oh-oh, what happens here? How come the potential market for Mac is 5 times bigger than linux, but the actual sales are the same?
My educated while partisan guess is that linux people are biased to be interested in smart, brain-challenging, funny, indie games which are also downloadable, reasonably priced and with fair and not vexing user license agreements.
All TTG games and policies qualify for that.
And as for the "reasonably priced", see also the graph for voluntary price. Surprise, surprise.
WoG has no copy protection whatsoever - ToMI has real DRM. That alone might scare off a number of Linux users. But you do support your argument with some real numbers, so hats off.
Even still, I have a tough time believing that the number of Linux sales for ToMI would approach Mac sales. Something tells me that WoG (which I bought, and I think is one of the most under-rated (and also most pirated) games ever) is a pretty special case. But I have no numbers to back me up!
It would also be interesting to see how the Windows version would run with the OpenGL renderer. Such a version could improve performance for Wine users.
From a developers point of view I would dare to predict that at least the Qt launcher will come to Windows for future releases. There's no point in having different launcher versions to maintain, and the Internet Explorer dependency of the current one has sporadically caused issues that should vanish with the Qt launcher in place.
WoG has no copy protection whatsoever - ToMI has real DRM. That alone might scare off a number of Linux users.
Well, ToMI and the other games do have copy protection, but the policy is very friendly: for example you are entitled to install it on different machines, and to share it with your family members, by simply sending an email to the support team.
And it's just that: essentially just copy protection, none of the obscene features that more general DRM can have, for example to revoke your right of use, no silent updates, no spyware, no system encrustment, no need to constantly been online, no ridiculous hassles, or whatever. As DRM goes these days, it's a very mild kind.
None at all would be better, of course, but the TTG choice is very acceptable, both technically and in principle, in my opinion (and I have in general very strong opinion against DRM).
Oh, and another important point: I also guess linux people are probably more biased than other OS users to buy something which is advertised and available online instead in the brick and mortar stores.
One important reason why users with basic needs (web, email, basic word processing and accounting...) become windows or mac users, is that to satisfy those needs they walk into a brick and mortar store, and if they say "Hello, I need a computer" they are sold a windows PC, if they say "Hello, I need a computer. One that works for heaven's sake", and the price doesn't knock them out, they are sold a mac.
They don't even know there are other options. In particular they don't know, or are not used/comfortable with the idea, that perfectly legit, safe and apt software can be available online, whether free or for a price. They are used to get it off a physical shelf in a physical packaging.
Creating a linux version should not be a big problem if you allready have a Mac version. The graphics and the sound code would be the about the same.
About creating a version usable on all linux distributions: You just need to ship the used libraries with the game and thats something you would do on all other platforms anyway. (And write some small 2 line shellscript to tell linux it should use the shipped libs)
For feature games you should may think about using SDL for the actually system dependant code. (SDL is a free lib which provides things like window-initialisation, input handling, multithreading etc. in a platform independant way)
I run Ubuntu (and Debian) on all my PC/laptops (no MS Windows in my home at all). I play games, Wine usually works fine (not perfect, but fine), but a real native port would be excellent.
Don't think that we linux users don't exist because we download the Windows version!
Linux users are all nerds and know well enough how to use a Windows emulator for games. Making TTG create a Linux port, when the market share for Linux gamers is so small, would just take time away from their making other cool games.
Linux users are all nerds and know well enough how to use a Windows emulator for games. Making TTG create a Linux port, when the market share for Linux gamers is so small, would just take time away from their making other cool games.
I vote against.
Thanks, buddy. As you can see in this thread, not every Linux user is a "nerd" and not every nerd can play ToMI in Linux. And the "World of Goo" example showed, that the market share for Linux doesn't have to be small.
... provided this is not too difficult to build / support for TTG. I guess it would be the case, as TTG games are already being built on multiple platforms, many standard components available on Linux seem to be used already... (Opengl, qt, fmod ?)
If multiplatform support (Win/OSX/Linux...) is thought from the beginning it could be pretty straightforward, I guess ? (it's different from the case of a windows-only game using DirectX)
IMHO, the only real hassle/hurdle is : ensuring the games works on most distros and continue to work in the future. (as the libraries versions evolves, which ones should be statically built / supplied, what package format should be used etc.)
The Icculus guy wrote an article about this. I'm sure there's a "reasonable enough" solution. But to make it easy for TTG, they could maybe just support the main/current distros and up-to-date ATI/Nvidia GPUs (and the community would do the rest).
And here is also a vote for a native Linux port. Actually I am wondering, because I know far more Linux users than Mac users. So do not only watch to the USA. However, the Mac version already contains everything that should allow easily switching to Linux as well. Kick out the IE and use Qt for the launcher and you are already there to reach a small market with loyal customers It is just a devil circle with the game industry. I am 100% on linux and bought both S&M seasons as well as the Monkey island. Not every sold windows version is actually for a windows user
And as already noted the current launcher is a pain for wine users. I found it pretty sad that nobody at TTG actually seems to try, if it is working with wine also and find a better solution. (Because the main game runs fairly fine).
I'm putting my vote in for Linux ports of TTG games.
I used to be a Linux-only user, but mostly use Windows nowadays because I got sick of not always getting the full experience when playing through Wine. I like native, fully supported versions of my games. I think that whenever developers make versions of their games for OSX, they could also try and port it to Linux.
another "me too" from a linux user.
although, I would be still happy (but not as happy) if you change the awful launcher to a more friendly one - or allow command line options. I completely missed the special treasure hunt in ToMI because of the launcher.
Absolutely a Linux port would be excellent. I am still struggling just to play Sam & Max half of the time because of the darn launcher (contrary to popular belief, it still isn't all that easy to get to work all of the time).
I'm an exclusive linux user (Ubuntu specifically with an interest in trying Gentoo), and would love Linux support.
Don't have VMWare or Virtualbox OS because you still need to buy a copy of the OS to use it with, and even XP is still far too expensive to be worth it.
Funny thing is Telltale Games titles run practically flawlessly under WINE anymore... but IE doesn't, and due to the registration and "play" buttons being in an HTML menu, registering the game or running the game works off-and-on between versions.
There's a lot more interest in Linux ports than I'd imagined. This thread has stayed on the first page (as far as I know) since I've subscribed to it. I hope that this support makes Telltale lean more toward doing this sooner, rather than later!
However, the Mac version already contains everything that should allow easily switching to Linux as well. Kick out the IE and use Qt for the launcher and you are already there to reach a small market with loyal customers
I'd be more than happy if they'd just switch to the Qt launcher for Windows or give us a command line launch option. WINE's implementation of mshtml is unfortunately lousy, it gets patched and broken against gecko all the time. All the TTG launchers were broken from March to September 2009, and it seems they broke it again now in February 2010. The games themselves have worked great for a long time.
Unfortunately, I think supporting Linux is hard. There's so many distros, configurations, library versions and wine/driver issues and if they first say they support Linux they'll get all sorts of support issues to deal with. I'd be happy if they put a litttle effort into making it easy to run under WINE but if you get problems, you're on your own and it's not officially supported. That would be good enough for me.
I think the other part is the money. I'd love to see a Linux version but well... I've already paid for the Windows version - and I have a Windows partition as a backup - and I'm not *that* fond of Linux that I'd pay another 35$ just for the privilidge. Unlike the Mac version, which I imagine brings in more genuinely new sales.
I am an Ubuntu'er, and I always think (at least) twice before buying games for my laptop. I bought 1 of the Strong Bad games for the Wii and one for my laptop.. I'd like to try out the TOMI games, but can't even get a demo working past the launcher despite all the instructions on the forums.
I think that although the number of Linux users is relatively small, you might find a disproportionate number of people interested in these games.
Unfortunately, I think supporting Linux is hard. There's so many distros, configurations, library versions and wine/driver issues and if they first say they support Linux they'll get all sorts of support issues to deal with. I'd be happy if they put a litttle effort into making it easy to run under WINE but if you get problems, you're on your own and it's not officially supported. That would be good enough for me.
I don't think it would be nearly that hard to support. Afterall, linux is based on a community, and I'm sure there would be loads of support in said community. I do agree that it could be unofficial, but it would be nice to not be through WINE. A shell script to install the game would be really easy, and debian would work for the other popular distros.
Speaking of Debian, they could make some deal with Canonical (Ubuntu company), with their new software store in future versions. They're going to start offering products, and they could put Telltale games in their offering, and maybe gain many new customers beyond all of us who want a Linux port currently.
Comments
When we linux user must use it with wine why the mac users don´t must be use wine too for that? why they become an native Version and Linux Users not??
BTW: As I know you guys do download games (and therefore I guess DRM), there is a Linux-Download-Games solution by linuxgamepublishing. So If you don't want to reinvent the wheel cooperation with those guys might be an idea.
And those people will buy the game if it is a native linux binary.
Yepp. Only real issue with Wine/Linux is the launcher. The game itself (like any Telltale game) works really good in Wine.
(How? How did you solve the launcher problems and manage to play the game?)
Voilà
http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10820
I don't know for sure, but I'd say that even today the number of Linux users that would buy Telltale games is dramatically smaller than the number of Mac users that will buy it. So economically makes sense.
Not saying it doesn't make economic sense to port to Linux (I'm guessing it doesn't though), but sure makes sense that it'd be Mac first.
Sorry, man. It's been the "year of Linux desktop" for each of the last 10 years, and it's still not there yet. Not even close.
Mmmh, I challenge that.
Ok, linux desktops are a fifth of Mac desktops, approximately: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
And nonetheless, here's the numbers for the sales of World of Goo: http://abauchu.net/blog/post/2009/11/03/World-of-Goo-and-its-Linux-market-shares
65% windows users, 18% Mac users, 17% linux users.
Oh-oh, what happens here? How come the potential market for Mac is 5 times bigger than linux, but the actual sales are the same?
My educated while partisan guess is that linux people are biased to be interested in smart, brain-challenging, funny, indie games which are also downloadable, reasonably priced and with fair and not vexing user license agreements.
All TTG games and policies qualify for that.
And as for the "reasonably priced", see also the graph for voluntary price. Surprise, surprise.
Even still, I have a tough time believing that the number of Linux sales for ToMI would approach Mac sales. Something tells me that WoG (which I bought, and I think is one of the most under-rated (and also most pirated) games ever) is a pretty special case. But I have no numbers to back me up!
It would also be interesting to see how the Windows version would run with the OpenGL renderer. Such a version could improve performance for Wine users.
From a developers point of view I would dare to predict that at least the Qt launcher will come to Windows for future releases. There's no point in having different launcher versions to maintain, and the Internet Explorer dependency of the current one has sporadically caused issues that should vanish with the Qt launcher in place.
Well, ToMI and the other games do have copy protection, but the policy is very friendly: for example you are entitled to install it on different machines, and to share it with your family members, by simply sending an email to the support team.
And it's just that: essentially just copy protection, none of the obscene features that more general DRM can have, for example to revoke your right of use, no silent updates, no spyware, no system encrustment, no need to constantly been online, no ridiculous hassles, or whatever. As DRM goes these days, it's a very mild kind.
None at all would be better, of course, but the TTG choice is very acceptable, both technically and in principle, in my opinion (and I have in general very strong opinion against DRM).
One important reason why users with basic needs (web, email, basic word processing and accounting...) become windows or mac users, is that to satisfy those needs they walk into a brick and mortar store, and if they say "Hello, I need a computer" they are sold a windows PC, if they say "Hello, I need a computer. One that works for heaven's sake", and the price doesn't knock them out, they are sold a mac.
They don't even know there are other options. In particular they don't know, or are not used/comfortable with the idea, that perfectly legit, safe and apt software can be available online, whether free or for a price. They are used to get it off a physical shelf in a physical packaging.
About creating a version usable on all linux distributions: You just need to ship the used libraries with the game and thats something you would do on all other platforms anyway. (And write some small 2 line shellscript to tell linux it should use the shipped libs)
For feature games you should may think about using SDL for the actually system dependant code. (SDL is a free lib which provides things like window-initialisation, input handling, multithreading etc. in a platform independant way)
I run Ubuntu (and Debian) on all my PC/laptops (no MS Windows in my home at all). I play games, Wine usually works fine (not perfect, but fine), but a real native port would be excellent.
Don't think that we linux users don't exist because we download the Windows version!
I vote against.
Thanks, buddy. As you can see in this thread, not every Linux user is a "nerd" and not every nerd can play ToMI in Linux. And the "World of Goo" example showed, that the market share for Linux doesn't have to be small.
... provided this is not too difficult to build / support for TTG. I guess it would be the case, as TTG games are already being built on multiple platforms, many standard components available on Linux seem to be used already... (Opengl, qt, fmod ?)
If multiplatform support (Win/OSX/Linux...) is thought from the beginning it could be pretty straightforward, I guess ? (it's different from the case of a windows-only game using DirectX)
IMHO, the only real hassle/hurdle is : ensuring the games works on most distros and continue to work in the future. (as the libraries versions evolves, which ones should be statically built / supplied, what package format should be used etc.)
The Icculus guy wrote an article about this. I'm sure there's a "reasonable enough" solution. But to make it easy for TTG, they could maybe just support the main/current distros and up-to-date ATI/Nvidia GPUs (and the community would do the rest).
Cheers !
And as already noted the current launcher is a pain for wine users. I found it pretty sad that nobody at TTG actually seems to try, if it is working with wine also and find a better solution. (Because the main game runs fairly fine).
Linux? Probably.
The Game? Definitely, if they made a text only version compiled for that architecture.
NetBSD toaster
I'm more of a FreeBSD guy, so here's a vote for a *BSD version!
I used to be a Linux-only user, but mostly use Windows nowadays because I got sick of not always getting the full experience when playing through Wine. I like native, fully supported versions of my games. I think that whenever developers make versions of their games for OSX, they could also try and port it to Linux.
I completely switched over Linux and, as there are a few good native games now, I almost stopped using wine
greetings from a ubuntu-user
although, I would be still happy (but not as happy) if you change the awful launcher to a more friendly one - or allow command line options. I completely missed the special treasure hunt in ToMI because of the launcher.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqysNHX5-NQ
I'm an exclusive linux user (Ubuntu specifically with an interest in trying Gentoo), and would love Linux support.
Don't have VMWare or Virtualbox OS because you still need to buy a copy of the OS to use it with, and even XP is still far too expensive to be worth it.
Funny thing is Telltale Games titles run practically flawlessly under WINE anymore... but IE doesn't, and due to the registration and "play" buttons being in an HTML menu, registering the game or running the game works off-and-on between versions.
I'd be more than happy if they'd just switch to the Qt launcher for Windows or give us a command line launch option. WINE's implementation of mshtml is unfortunately lousy, it gets patched and broken against gecko all the time. All the TTG launchers were broken from March to September 2009, and it seems they broke it again now in February 2010. The games themselves have worked great for a long time.
Unfortunately, I think supporting Linux is hard. There's so many distros, configurations, library versions and wine/driver issues and if they first say they support Linux they'll get all sorts of support issues to deal with. I'd be happy if they put a litttle effort into making it easy to run under WINE but if you get problems, you're on your own and it's not officially supported. That would be good enough for me.
I think the other part is the money. I'd love to see a Linux version but well... I've already paid for the Windows version - and I have a Windows partition as a backup - and I'm not *that* fond of Linux that I'd pay another 35$ just for the privilidge. Unlike the Mac version, which I imagine brings in more genuinely new sales.
I am an Ubuntu'er, and I always think (at least) twice before buying games for my laptop. I bought 1 of the Strong Bad games for the Wii and one for my laptop.. I'd like to try out the TOMI games, but can't even get a demo working past the launcher despite all the instructions on the forums.
I think that although the number of Linux users is relatively small, you might find a disproportionate number of people interested in these games.
Go on!!!!
Charlie
Speaking of Debian, they could make some deal with Canonical (Ubuntu company), with their new software store in future versions. They're going to start offering products, and they could put Telltale games in their offering, and maybe gain many new customers beyond all of us who want a Linux port currently.