Humble Indie Bundle V Launches

[TobiSGD]

Wait, you really think that this petition was reasonable and not a flame? May I cite some of the expressions you used?

this trust has been violated

horrible precedent

merely to con Linux users out of their money

threat of non-native binaries

Actually you are blaming the developers to con the money out of you in your petition, and these are exactly the words you have used. Do you really think that sounds reasonable and not like flaming to the developers of Limbo? Or any other development team that may be not able to currently afford a native Linux port?
So as I read it your standpoint is: Hey, if you can't afford to make a native Linux port, please don't make the effort that it at least runs non-native on our platform, we won't buy that crap, give us native or die.
If that is your definition of reasonable and not damaging I would like to see what happens if you are intentionally unreasonable and damaging.

[Hamish Wilson]

Your reading is off - I said that including WINE wrapper games in the Humble Bundle will encourage other developers to follow suit, which will lead to less native Linux games being produced as it will encourage more developers to opt instead for half-measures thinking that Linux users will pay for these "ports" anyway just for the sake of running it on Linux.

I never necessarily said that Humble Bundle or LIMBO were conning Linux users (though the state of LIMBO should have been made more clear), I was stating it sets a bad precedent. You should also notice that I said you should buy the Bundle to support the other developers (I am a big fan of Frictional's games, for instance, and would not want to hurt them) and even the Bundle guys themselves, and noted that you can give LIMBO what you feel is a fair amount of money when doing your purchase.

I am not attacking anyone - I am attacking a potential outcome. My writing was actually fairly clear on that.

[grantek]

Well Limbo worked better for me than Psychonauts. Ryan Gordon fixed some bugs that should have been caught in QA (actually not even QA, they should have been caught in unit testing in the development phase), and now the game is just "unstable", but playable. I love the work the guy does, but he seems to only be employed on fixed-term contracts so doesn't have time to fix bugs once a port is shipped. Case in point, Super Meat Boy is still unplayable, there are acknowledged bugs that reliably affect everyone and have no workaround, but haven't been fixed since January.

I'd like to run a Kickstarter fund or something to hire the guy for a year just to go through his bug database and fix stuff.

[uid313]

So email the games devs? Phoronix users don't really have any control over the source code of the hib games.

I've emailed HIB.
I encourage others to do so too. Address is contact -at- humblebundle [dot] com
I'm bringing the debate into the public.

[curaga]

Frankly I agree. Shipping with winelib is equal to shipping a GBA rom just because a decent emulator exists for linux.

[TobiSGD]

I never necessarily said that Humble Bundle or LIMBO were conning Linux users (though the state of LIMBO should have been made more clear), I was stating it sets a bad precedent.

Your exact words:

It sets a horrible precedent for the future, encouraging developers to merely put out unoptimized Windows binaries of their games running through a WINE or similar layer merely to con Linux users out of their money.

How can it be a precedent for future developers running their games with Wine to con the money out of you if it is not exactly that: a con?
IMHO, and I think you will of course deny that, you single handedly, with writing this petition, have done more damage to Linux gaming than any developer could have done with making their game work with Wine instead of producing a native version.
Well done.

[Hamish Wilson]

Well Limbo worked better for me than Psychonauts. Ryan Gordon fixed some bugs that should have been caught in QA (actually not even QA, they should have been caught in unit testing in the development phase), and now the game is just "unstable", but playable. I love the work the guy does, but he seems to only be employed on fixed-term contracts so doesn't have time to fix bugs once a port is shipped. Case in point, Super Meat Boy is still unplayable, there are acknowledged bugs that reliably affect everyone and have no workaround, but haven't been fixed since January. I'd like to run a Kickstarter fund or something to hire the guy for a year just to go through his bug database and fix stuff.

I think we can all agree that Ryan Gordon is as close to they come to being a living god.

Your exact words:How can it be a precedent for future developers running their games with Wine to con the money out of you if it is not exactly that: a con? IMHO, and I think you will of course deny that, you single handedly, with writing this petition, have done more damage to Linux gaming than any developer could have done with making their game work with Wine instead of producing a native version.
Well done.

People have done that before and conned Linux users out of their money, by putting out a WINE or Cedega build and then abandoning it (Corel anyone?), and as I said before I never actually said that the Humble Bundle guys were conning anyone. On the other hand, has there ever been a company that has put out a WINE wrapped binary and then later put out a native version? I am not ignorant of the industry, and I have trouble thinking of any.

Conclude as you wish, but I am not going to loose sleep at night about it. Instead, I will keep playing, buying, and supporting native Linux games. I will contribute to the Humble Bundle and their developers when I feel they deserve my support (and I will be buying this bundle, just waiting for some more credit). I will use WINE where appropriate, recognizing it is very useful software but should not be used in lieu of actually building Linux infrastructure. I will keep supporting the developers that have put real effort into their Linux support, such as Frozenbyte (who have done an awesome job in everything they have done for us) or Kot-in-Action Creative Artel who got horrible panned and flamed on this very forum (read that, and then see what it really means to be unreasonable) and really did get some people to conclude that Linux was not worth their support (thankfully not the views of the actual developers).

I will keep working on my own game development skills and keep working on my own free software projects, in order to better the Linux ecosystem. And I am not going to believe that a company that made $7.5 million in revenue from the Xbox Live Arcade service in 2010 alone deserves sympathy for not putting in the same work that Frozenbyte did for Trine (since I have now learned they had to replace the exact same audio layer).

So, conclude as you wish. I will keep supporting Linux gaming, thank you.

[yogi_berra]

They used wine, cope.

[whizse]

Is it actually compiled against winelib?

From looking through the package it looks like it's just the repackage Windows binary, if it was winelib it would be an ELF executable, right?

[grantek]

Is it actually compiled against winelib?

From looking through the package it looks like it's just the repackage Windows binary, if it was winelib it would be an ELF executable, right?

Correct, they used a redistributable install of Crossover (so they probably got direct help from CodeWeavers) to wrap Wine around the Windows binaries. The reason for this is they don't have full access to the Windows source code, having used Wwise, a windows-only middleware package to do sound effects.

To do a full port they'd have to rewrite their sound engine to implement the work that Wwise does, and they apparently don't have the resources to do that.