Humble Indie "Frozenbyte" Bundle 3 Slows Down

[TLE02]

@DoctorPhil
I don't care about the games becoming free software. It is nice if they do, but it is not a requirement. My opinion on what should and what should not be free software (and when it should become it) is more Erik Raymond'esk. What I do care about is that they make native Linux clients. That is why I was so enthusiastic about the first two bundles (well actually I missed the first one, but got as part of the second one and made a second donation).

@snuwoods The fact that game developers make native Linux clients means that we should be grateful, not that we should just take whatever comes out of it and never say another word. About the Oilrush game I think this whole thing about the Linux community being ungrateful because we haven't thrown money at the pre-order is a little exaggerated. It isn't even release yet for crying out loud. I'll buy it when it is released, simply because they are as Linux friendly as they are. But since I like the single player (campaign) part of games, and that is one of the things still not finished, I really see no reason to buy it now. And what about consumers that would just like to see a review or two of the final product before they buy it. Why don't we wait until it is actually released before we declare it a disaster.

About running these games on embedded GPU's you are probably right. I mean, I don't follow neither games nor drivers religiously, so I don't think it is something that you can expect people to know. But now that I check, it turns out that the Humble Bundle actually have a page with hardware requirements. I just assumed that they were simple, low weight, games like the other ones. So there I spoke before I thought.

[AnonymousCoward]

Maybe it slow down because linux users wanted open source games, mac users changed to linux or windows, OR, maybe it slow down because some game launched and steal all the attention.
I am not sure, but i believe the a company called valve released a new game, they are calling Portal 2, you guys should check its a nice game.
Seriously, i dont know the other gamers, but, for me its difficult to came here instead of play Portal 2.

[bdhamp]

So compared to previous bundles... This one might feel underwhelming as a whole. Or one might say people were spoiled by the previous ones.
Though I'm still going to get it.

This.

I purchased this bundle and paid the same as I did for the previous two. I am satisfied by my purchase. However, I made the purchase this time more out of a sense of duty to supporting Indie games and games for Linux specifically.

Unfortunately, this bundle only really has three playable games for Linux, two of which are almost identical. I got more out of the previous bundles, more variety and more enjoyment.

Those who don't do this primarily to support the idea probably don't feel as motivated.

[Remco]

I bought the bundle. I was convinced by the source release of Jack Claw. I must say that I'm a little disappointed. Jack Claw has source available, right, but it is released under an obnoxious non-commercial license. So, it's not open source. This doesn't inspire much motivation to replace all the bad parts of the engine (Fmod, DirectX, PhysX, Windows Media), and it can't be used to create games to be included in a Linux distribution (this is even explicitly forbidden).

So it's pretty much useless.

[elanthis]

@DoctorPhil
I don't care about the games becoming free software. It is nice if they do, but it is not a requirement.

Interesting factoid. A LOT of the game developers (who are not game publishers, do note that) are actually in favor of mandatory Opening/Freeing of games after ~5 years. Opening them immediately has a lot of problems, not just commercial (think of peer-to-peer versus games where an open client means you'd lose that few months-years of playable time after a games release before all the cheats and bots become common place), but keeping them closed also has some huge problems. Unlike movies or music, you can't simply transcribe a game to a new format to keep it up to date with modern technology. You need access to the source code to keep porting it to newer systems so that newer generations can experience the game. Given how games are a part of our lives and have had an impact on my many people, preserving them and keeping them available is just as important as movie preservation. There's also the issue of games that go out of print but which can't be freely acquired because the copyright term length is so ridiculously long (which has become less of an issue of late thanks to gog.com and a lot of classic games showing up on Steam, but there's still a lot of old games you can't legally get anywhere). Finally, there's the problem with games that rely on server components that simply go offline, making them either crippled or entirely unplayable.

There are a precious few games that are still commercially viable after 5 years. Almost all of those are owned by Blizzard. While a few big publishers would vehemently fight against such a law, there really would be a large amount of support from smaller publishers and especially from the actual developers and designers.

This coincides nicely with some of the copyright reform talks RMS has given. My only complaint with his talks is that he lumps games in as purely software, or as being two separable parts between the software and non-software. Which just shows how much he (and the vast majority of other Free/Open proponents who don't use or own game-friendly platforms) simply doesn't understand anything about how games are made or how they even work. You can't treat them as non-software because of the inability to simple transcribe/re-encode for updates, but you can't treat them the way RMS wants "general" software to be treated because the "secret sauce" nature of a game is actually _important to the gamer_ for at least some amount of time when the game is new. It needs to be specially treated with a third set of rules compared to RMS' simple "GPL for software, 5 year copyright for everything else." The hard part is coming up with both the rules and the mechanism for ensuring them.

Kind of a tangent, sorry. Just something I was surprised to hear a few months ago when I was talking Open games with some devs while working on my article/presentation for Open Source and Games. Research is fun, but man does it suck when it undermines several of your original assumptions you already wrote a lot of text on.

[dredhammer]

The reason sales may have slowed may be the fact that there was only 1 new game available for play.
Shadowgrounds 1 and 2 are available for linux on tuxgames and if you caught the tux game sale earlier in the week then you may have already bought it. If you are on windows its being sold drm free @ good old games.
Unlike the two previous bundles where all the games were "new", its like if they released neverwinter nights 1 with all its expansons, sacred gold, X2 or X3 linux/mac versions in the bundle most linux gamers may already own the games.

[wirrbeltier]

I've bought it. Even though I didn't get any of them to work yet (and, al least in the case of trine, probably never will with free drivers), I'm happy with the purchas.
I simply wanted to support game developers treating linux as a viable platform, because I think this could help widespread adoption of desktop linux.

<detour>
I think the free-games-after-5-years idea is great, but I think most game companies larger than "your little indie garage shop" will fight such a proposal with fire... Those companies have been making too much money in the past from the "media company" mindset, where they just need to rake in money from selling *copies* of software.
Their business model only makes sense when the numbers of copies is limited, therefore they have to control the circulation of the software (of which they make money by selling copies) as tight as possible.
Before this open-sourcing can gain acceptance with non-indie developers, the big ones have to undergo a change in mentality, at the very core of their money-making strategy: not making money by scarcity (=their interrest is keeping overall numbers low, lest people pay for it, up front and usually quite large sums), but by tapping into abundancy (=their interest is spreading as many copies as possible and then cash on somthing else than an entry fee).
The indie bundles are great examples of how the latter works, rendering the companies way more money and publicity than they would have had before. App stores also go in that direction, steam as well... Perhaps this also was the rationale behind this ubuntu software center.
</detour>

[DeiF]

Trine was good. I enjoyed it, though it is a Lost Vikings clone, and too much plataforming and little puzzling, but meh.

I tried Shadowgrounds and closed it after a while. I found it boring.
The 32-bit only release was a disappointment.

I haven't tried the other Shadowground game, but if it's like the other one I won't even try.

Jack Claw sounds like fun, but it's Windows only, not finished and has a non-commercial license.

Splot doesn't even exist yet.

I payed 14$ and so far a lot of disappointment.
I missed the other bundles, and would change this one for World of Goo and Braid.

[pingufunkybeat]

I've bought it. Even though I didn't get any of them to work yet (and, al least in the case of trine, probably never will with free drivers)

Trine almost works with free drivers (you need s3tc!) There is a shader bug that makes everything quite dark, but otherwise it works. Turo from Frozenbyte is trying to help the Mesa devs debug this one on bugzilla. Since at least one mesa driver can display it correctly, it shouldn't take too long to hunt this bug down.

Shadowgrounds crashes with the latest git stuff on r700 though.

[wirrbeltier]

Trine almost works with free drivers (you need s3tc!) There is a shader bug that makes everything quite dark, but otherwise it works. Turo from Frozenbyte is trying to help the Mesa devs debug this one on bugzilla. Since at least one mesa driver can display it correctly, it shouldn't take too long to hunt this bug down.

Shadowgrounds crashes with the latest git stuff on r700 though.

Oh nice, sounds even better! I'll look into it when i have the time to tinker with my computers a bit again.
I'll report back then, hope it works with my trusty r300 gpu.