Humble Indie Bundle V Generates Five Million USD

[smitty3268]

No, I'd have skipped a framework tied to a single for-profit company with a long history of being barely legal jackasses all together, right from the beginning.

Which is probably why you are posting on a Phoronix message board rather than creating award winning games.

The Bastion devs don't care about linux. Or Windows. Or any thing related. They just wanted to make a cool game, and picked out what they viewed as the best possible way of doing so given their economic situation.

I, for one, am glad that we have the ability to play these games on linux. If people don't want to play them because they use mono, well, that's fine too. Just don't play them.

[directhex]

Aww wtf I got references on that yesterday. Well that'll teach me, only sticking to google's summary.

There are three Mono-based Humble Bundle games:

• Bastion
• Spacechem
• Atom Zombie Smasher

Yes, and that's still my point. They could go crossplatform from the beginning, with no strings attached. That's what I want to see and wonder why the use of SDL isn't more widespread, from a technical standpoint.

They *did* go crossplatform. Using Mono means the game works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobiles.

And they *did* use SDL. MonoGame, the framework they used, uses Tao.SDL, a binding to SDL, on non-Windows platforms, as a back-end.

If they had gone for "only" C and SDL, which is pretty obviously what you're calling for, then they would not have been able to sell hundreds of thousands of copies on the Xbox, because SDL isn't an option to Xbox developers.

Which still doesn't mean microsoft should have any say in Linux-related matters?

Who said they have a say? They didn't publish Bastion, Warner Brothers did.

Not Bastion here and now, stuff ported from xna tomorrow. Leaving the patent can of worms aside, mono stuff has to follow whatever microsoft release first on the c#/.net/xna front, correct? I mean, it's on the front page of the monogame site: "allowing xna developers to port to other platforms". That screams second class citizen to me.

There are a whole bunch of XNA developers in the wild already. MonoGame's first priority is to enable those developers to go from being "Windows and WP7 and Xbox 360" developers to being "Windows and WP7 and Xbox 360 and Mac and iOS and Linux and Android and PS3" devs. It's perfectly possible to write new games directly for Linux with MonoGame, which is why I've submitted a package for it to Debian - so people can build cross-platform game code really easily and target a whole bunch of platforms.

I'd love to get facts on how mono is immune to Embrace, Extend, Extinguish though (I really do).

It's not. Mono has been embracing & extending .NET for years, which is why it's ended up overtaking .NET in many areas. For example, MonoGame is the only way to publish an XNA game for the Windows 8 app store - Microsoft XNA games cannot be sold via the app store because they do not integrate with the Metro UI, but MonoGame developers do not have this restriction, because MonoGame is Free Software and Free Software can do whatever the hell its developers want it to. Even Microsoft used Mono-based Unity3D to make iPad and Android ports of one of its games.

No, I'd have skipped a framework tied to a single for-profit company with a long history of being barely legal jackasses all together, right from the beginning.

And skipped the possibility of selling your game to 70 million Xbox owners, presumably?

[PsynoKhi0]

Which is probably why you are posting on a Phoronix message board rather than creating award winning games.

Erm... Nothing to do with anything but nice try. Bastion won awards for its style of storytelling among things, that's creative talent, something complete separate from the framework the game used. Stay focused on the discussion at hand, will you?

The Bastion devs don't care about linux. Or Windows. Or any thing related. They just wanted to make a cool game, and picked out what they viewed as the best possible way of doing so given their economic situation.

I, for one, am glad that we have the ability to play these games on linux. If people don't want to play them because they use mono, well, that's fine too. Just don't play them.

Which is exactly the perfect example of what I find way too short-sighted.
The point with my post is to raise the question of whether it's the way to go or not, if that's sustainable in the long run.

[PsynoKhi0]

There are three Mono-based Humble Bundle games:

• Bastion
• Spacechem
• Atom Zombie Smasher

I knew about the two latter ones, I was darn sure I had seen found references about S&S using monogame.

They *did* go crossplatform. Using Mono means the game works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and mobiles.

Notice the "no strings attached" in the same sentence.

And they *did* use SDL. MonoGame, the framework they used, uses Tao.SDL, a binding to SDL, on non-Windows platforms, as a back-end.

If they had gone for "only" C and SDL, which is pretty obviously what you're calling for, then they would not have been able to sell hundreds of thousands of copies on the Xbox, because SDL isn't an option to Xbox developers.
[...]
And skipped the possibility of selling your game to 70 million Xbox owners, presumably?

Which would have left them with "only" pretty much everything else?

Who said they have a say? They didn't publish Bastion, Warner Brothers did.

Aww come on, stop picking out single sentences and putting them out of context of the whole post...
Their say in what direction c#-related technology takes, controlling the pace of development, breaking compatibility, pick your poison...

There are a whole bunch of XNA developers in the wild already. MonoGame's first priority is to enable those developers to go from being "Windows and WP7 and Xbox 360" developers to being "Windows and WP7 and Xbox 360 and Mac and iOS and Linux and Android and PS3" devs. It's perfectly possible to write new games directly for Linux with MonoGame, which is why I've submitted a package for it to Debian - so people can build cross-platform game code really easily and target a whole bunch of platforms.

Again... Why not pure SDL from the start? And again, what technical advantages does xna have over SDL? I mean, choice and competition is good and all, but the new kids better bring something better to the table. "Personal convenience at the expense of long-term sustainability" doesn't count.
Also, I see you have personal interests in the matter, could a more objective approach chime in?

It's not. Mono has been embracing & extending .NET for years, which is why it's ended up overtaking .NET in many areas. For example, MonoGame is the only way to publish an XNA game for the Windows 8 app store - Microsoft XNA games cannot be sold via the app store because they do not integrate with the Metro UI, but MonoGame developers do not have this restriction, because MonoGame is Free Software and Free Software can do whatever the hell its developers want it to. Even Microsoft used Mono-based Unity3D to make iPad and Android ports of one of its games.

Free software... Erm, quite a mess there though http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing. And not everything is free.
Point taken on mono passing .net... Maybe? I found a handul of copy-paste press releases claiming that, that's pretty much it, though no I never got past the 2nd page of search results. Also this page lists what's left to do on mono vs .net, so it's at least lacking in some areas.
We'll see how relevant the win8 app store integration, while technically nice, is in the marketplace soon enough.
And about microsoft using mono, that's cool and all though it's still their technology, they have nothing to worry about patents and such.

To make things clear here, I see microsoft as an arrogant company hellbent on controlling the computer industry from top to bottom, through more or less obvious means. And they have very shifting positions towards open source. So I'm very skeptical about things like mono. (And before anyone tries WINE is a completely different beast, since they have no ties with microsoft, and while I do use WINE it's a last resort)

But hey, here's your chance to persuade me it's all in my head. Good luck...

[directhex]

I knew about the two latter ones, I was darn sure I had seen found references about S&S using monogame.

Nope. OpenGL, SDL, Fmod, Lua.

Notice the "no strings attached" in the same sentence.

Developers pick their platforms fully aware of the platform's requirements and limitations. There are no strings for the developers that they didn't start off seeing.

Which would have left them with "only" pretty much everything else?

If it costs a million dollars to develop a game using an off-the-shelf engine, or two million to write your own engine, plus a hundred thousand per extra platform to port to, which are you going to pick? Especially on a limited starting budget.

Aww come on, stop picking out single sentences and putting them out of context of the whole post...
Their say in what direction c#-related technology takes, controlling the pace of development, breaking compatibility, pick your poison...

That "say" doesn't affect anything already produced, though. They can't break Mono's ability to run .NET 2.0 or 4.0 apps without breaking .NET's ability to run .NET 2.0 or 4.0 apps - and given .NET is an ECMA published spec from a dozen companies besides Microsoft, I really don't think the impending doom scenario is realistic.

Are new libraries produced which Mono often doesn't implement? Yes. WPF isn't implemented, for example.

Are new language or runtime abilities produced which Mono often doesn't implement? Actually, no - Mono implements new .NET features before .NET does. One of the main features of .NET 5.0 has been in Mono for years, and that's long been the way things go.

Not to mention Mono-only advantages, e.g. the Mono.Simd library allowing hardware accelerated datatypes when executing on Mono (and unaccelerated on .NET)

Again... Why not pure SDL from the start? And again, what technical advantages does xna have over SDL? I mean, choice and competition is good and all, but the new kids better bring something better to the table. "Personal convenience at the expense of long-term sustainability" doesn't count.
Also, I see you have personal interests in the matter, could a more objective approach chime in?

Development in garbage collected languages is faster and less buggy than in manually memory managed languages like C. By leveraging middleware, you can receive pre-solved problems that otherwise every game needs to implement from scratch every time. Could Bastion be written in C and SDL only? Sure. But it'd be far less productive than using a framework to abstract away the busywork - and for an indie developer, time is literally money.

Typically, a game ends up being written with two main engines - a graphics engine (almost always in C) and a logic engine (almost always something nicer like Lua, which designers can use, as well as developers). Mono's an increasingly popular choice for the latter, with Unity3D, The Sims 3, and various indie titles like those already mentioned, using it to develop games faster, with far more expressive logic engines than would be allowed by using something home-grown or low-performance.

Free software... Erm, quite a mess there though http://www.mono-project.com/FAQ:_Licensing.

It's really not as complicated as people make out. LGPL runtime, MIT for Mono-provided class library, other licenses for non-Mono libraries bundled in for convenience like SharpZipLib.

And not everything is free.

True, iPhone and Android development with Mono is a paid commercial product.

Point taken on mono passing .net... Maybe? I found a handul of copy-paste press releases claiming that, that's pretty much it, though no I never got past the 2nd page of search results. Also this page lists what's left to do on mono vs .net, so it's at least lacking in some areas.

Mono is missing large Microsoft classes like WPF, but is pretty much always ahead on the technology part - not to mention being cross-platform. And the only people who moan that Mono is incomplete are people who refuse to use it - people developing for Mono either use the available classes, or use the fact that it's Free Software and add the missing classes

To make things clear here, I see microsoft as an arrogant company hellbent on controlling the computer industry from top to bottom, through more or less obvious means. And they have very shifting positions towards open source. So I'm very skeptical about things like mono. (And before anyone tries WINE is a completely different beast, since they have no ties with microsoft, and while I do use WINE it's a last resort)

Microsoft are interested in only one thing: making money. It's 2012, and they can't pretend they set the agenda anymore (e.g. on mobile they're a bit player). Making .NET more attractive generally increases their ability to sell Visual Studio, so it's in their best interests for .NET to remain attractive. Far from attacking Mono, the first external contributor to ASP.NET MVC4 when they started releasing it under a GPL-compatible license was Miguel de Icaza.

But hey, here's your chance to persuade me it's all in my head. Good luck...

It's all in your head. In the 11 years Mono has been with us, here's a partial list of things Microsoft has done to play nice with it (note that Apache 2.0 and Ms-PL licenses both include patent pledges, i.e. have no patent concerns):

• Released .NET Micro Framework under GPL-compatible Apache 2.0
• Invited Mono developers to speak at Microsoft conferences
• Removed doubt about ECMA334/335 patent concerns, by issuing a patent pledge similar in language to Oracle's ODF patent pledge
• Released ASP.NET MVC 1, 2, 3, and 4 under Ms-PL then Apache 2.0
• Released IronPython and IronRuby under Ms-PL then Apache 2.0
• Released F# under Apache 2.0
• Paid the MPEG-LA a license fee for every Linux user using Moonlight

Here's the complete list of times they've acted against Mono:

[AJenbo]

Developers pick their platforms fully aware of the platform's requirements and limitations. There are no strings for the developers that they didn't start off seeing.

I think you will be supriced how ofthen this does not happen. Besides they might never have expected to go beound Xbox, lucky them.

[PsynoKhi0]

Nope. OpenGL, SDL, Fmod, Lua.

They've got themselves a fine game still.

Developers pick their platforms fully aware of the platform's requirements and limitations. There are no strings for the developers that they didn't start off seeing.

In case it was unclear: "no strings attached" as in "not bound to one single vendor".

If it costs a million dollars to develop a game using an off-the-shelf engine, or two million to write your own engine, plus a hundred thousand per extra platform to port to, which are you going to pick? Especially on a limited starting budget.

Any one of the existing open source, independent game engines.

That "say" doesn't affect anything already produced, though. They can't break Mono's ability to run .NET 2.0 or 4.0 apps without breaking .NET's ability to run .NET 2.0 or 4.0 apps - and given .NET is an ECMA published spec from a dozen companies besides Microsoft, I really don't think the impending doom scenario is realistic.

Parts of .net are ECMA standards. Parts.
And I think that the fact it "doesn't affect anything already produced" is where we have our biggest mindset difference. What's been done and is available here and now is one thing. It's what's coming that troubles me, e.g. mono gaining too much traction, and microsoft showing up to point out at some fine print or some bullshit double meaning.

Are new libraries produced which Mono often doesn't implement? Yes. WPF isn't implemented, for example.

Are new language or runtime abilities produced which Mono often doesn't implement? Actually, no - Mono implements new .NET features before .NET does. One of the main features of .NET 5.0 has been in Mono for years, and that's long been the way things go.

Not to mention Mono-only advantages, e.g. the Mono.Simd library allowing hardware accelerated datatypes when executing on Mono (and unaccelerated on .NET)

So basically you have 2 frameworks that should to the exact same thing, while being a knock-off of Java, and supposedly aiming at interoperability. Except they don't really do that, and keep chasing after each other on different fronts. Sounds like a lot of wasted double effort to me.
The mono.simd is about the only thing I could find mentioned about mono overtaking .net.

Development in garbage collected languages is faster and less buggy than in manually memory managed languages like C. By leveraging middleware, you can receive pre-solved problems that otherwise every game needs to implement from scratch every time. Could Bastion be written in C and SDL only? Sure. But it'd be far less productive than using a framework to abstract away the busywork - and for an indie developer, time is literally money.

Typically, a game ends up being written with two main engines - a graphics engine (almost always in C) and a logic engine (almost always something nicer like Lua, which designers can use, as well as developers). Mono's an increasingly popular choice for the latter, with Unity3D, The Sims 3, and various indie titles like those already mentioned, using it to develop games faster, with far more expressive logic engines than would be allowed by using something home-grown or low-performance.

My bad, I probably gave the impression I was completely clueless when it comes to game programming, but I knew this much already, I'm just not much of a coder myself (poking around the Warsow source though), that would have saved you the trouble.
So to reformulate my question about the technical advantage of xna over SDL+whatever, how's the performance like for the end product? By what orders of magnitude is xna development faster than an SDL-based solution?
See Ryan Gordon's talk at the latest flourish, seems to me SDL simplifies things quite a bit. Does xna abstract e.g. the d3d code in a similar manner?

It's really not as complicated as people make out. LGPL runtime, MIT for Mono-provided class library, other licenses for non-Mono libraries bundled in for convenience like SharpZipLib.

And ms-pl for monogame, which is more or less like GPL just not compatible with it. Surprise, surprise.

True, iPhone and Android development with Mono is a paid commercial product.

Well, since we were on the subject of free software, I meant free as in freedom.

Mono is missing large Microsoft classes like WPF, but is pretty much always ahead on the technology part - not to mention being cross-platform. And the only people who moan that Mono is incomplete are people who refuse to use it - people developing for Mono either use the available classes, or use the fact that it's Free Software and add the missing classes

More double work.

Microsoft are interested in only one thing: making money. It's 2012, and they can't pretend they set the agenda anymore (e.g. on mobile they're a bit player). Making .NET more attractive generally increases their ability to sell Visual Studio, so it's in their best interests for .NET to remain attractive. Far from attacking Mono, the first external contributor to ASP.NET MVC4 when they started releasing it under a GPL-compatible license was Miguel de Icaza.

Let them make money, as long as they compete on equal terms instead of saying "if you're doing something better, we prolly have a patent on that". I'm not holding my breath though.
And I wouldn't call de icaza an external contributor. He's an MVP...

It's all in your head. In the 11 years Mono has been with us, here's a partial list of things Microsoft has done to play nice with it (note that Apache 2.0 and Ms-PL licenses both include patent pledges, i.e. have no patent concerns):

• Released .NET Micro Framework under GPL-compatible Apache 2.0
• Invited Mono developers to speak at Microsoft conferences
• Removed doubt about ECMA334/335 patent concerns, by issuing a patent pledge similar in language to Oracle's ODF patent pledge
• Released ASP.NET MVC 1, 2, 3, and 4 under Ms-PL then Apache 2.0
• Released IronPython and IronRuby under Ms-PL then Apache 2.0
• Released F# under Apache 2.0
• Paid the MPEG-LA a license fee for every Linux user using Moonlight

Here's the complete list of times they've acted against Mono:

Want me to make a complete list of times they've bashed and/or strong-armed companies using Linux/Android?
As you pointed out, mono serves THEIR interests, why should they go against mono itself? What I'm concerned about is them using mono as a vector for other dirty work.
A few points in your list of contributions though:
ECMA 334/335 doesn't cover all that is needed for complete interoperability, as pointed out in the licensing FAQ of mono.
The MPEG-LA license fee is nice, though moonlight is only OK for SUSE customers due to the patent covenant.
So my head is fine, thank you very much.

[directhex]

In case it was unclear: "no strings attached" as in "not bound to one single vendor".

Assuming "Microsoft" and "The community that made MonoGame" is a single vendor, yes. Otherwise, you've disproved your own point.

Does xna abstract e.g. the d3d code in a similar manner?

Yes. MonoGame.Framework.Linux.dll uses SDL and OpenGL, MonoGame.Framework.Windows.dll uses DirectX with Direct3D. The same game just needs to be recompiled against one or the other.

And ms-pl for monogame, which is more or less like GPL just not compatible with it. Surprise, surprise.

What are you implying with the "surprise surprise"? Microsoft themselves have been moving away from Ms-PL onto (GPLv3-compatible) Apache 2.0, and their other licenses (Ms-RL, Ms-LPL, Ms-LRL) never got any traction.

Well, since we were on the subject of free software, I meant free as in freedom.

Then there's nothing to worry about, Mono is Free software.

And I wouldn't call de icaza an external contributor. He's an MVP...

Code he writes is not (c) Microsoft Corp, and he is not employed by Microsoft Corp. This is the usual definition for "external contributor".

Want me to make a complete list of times they've bashed and/or strong-armed companies using Linux/Android?

So you're saying that Linux is not safe from Microsoft patent claims, regardless of Mono?

ECMA 334/335 doesn't cover all that is needed for complete interoperability, as pointed out in the licensing FAQ of mono.

So which specific namespace, method, class, property, or extension method, outside the ECMA335 core, do you think infringes on a Microsoft patent? ECMA334 covers the language, so C# is safe, ECMA335 covers the bytecode format, so the runtime is safe. That leaves specific classes and assemblies on the "not covered" list. You feel System.Windows.Forms is infringing on patents? Npgsql? Mono.Security? gtk-sharp?

[smitty3268]

Erm... Nothing to do with anything but nice try. Bastion won awards for its style of storytelling among things, that's creative talent, something complete separate from the framework the game used. Stay focused on the discussion at hand, will you?

My point was that people who are obsessed with the legal license instead of things like creativity, or pure technical points, tend to not be as successful in such a business. People selling software for a living are often more practical. You can view this as either a negative or a positive - I'm sure you view political purity as more important in your life, so i meant no offense.

Which is exactly the perfect example of what I find way too short-sighted.
The point with my post is to raise the question of whether it's the way to go or not, if that's sustainable in the long run.

There's not really any point in raising that question. People have already made up their minds, and the history of this forum and others has shown that they never really change it no matter what happens.

People will either believe that MS is going to kill Mono somehow, or they won't.

Objective reality, and facts, have no part in such a discussion. Everyone has already made up their minds.

So bringing this up is just going to start another flamewar - or else people will ignore it entirely and move on.

Recently a poster here admitted that MS hadn't decided to kill Mono yet, but swore he would be back in 5 years saying he told us so. I refrained from mentioning that people were saying the exact same thing 5 years ago. I'm quite certain that in 5 years, people will still be saying the same things.