@JibbSmart: I'm working quite a lot with linux, even right now that I'm writing this post. In my company there are many professionals working with linux but no one who ever said: "Oh if there was a Portal 2 on linux...". I even got some of them as steam friends meaning even the hardcore administrators tend to use Windows for gaming.

@Rondidon: Too late? Market too small? Think about AaaaAAAAaaaa on consoles! That would be nice. Have you ever heard anything about the Editor of this horror game amnesia? It supports Linux development but where are the games? Why don't studios say "Wow what an opportunity, we are developing for linux!!"... Because it is a too small market. Just my oppinion...

It`s about target group-oriented thinking and getting a unique characteristic to Gamestudio. As JibbSmart and me have written before.


Linux and Mac are perfect markets for Gamestudio. Gamestudio is not an Unreal Engine 3 when it comes to usability for professionals. Everybody knows that. For Conitec and JCL, it`s all about finding the right marketing niche.

Almost all Linux users are techies! I believe they would love to have (and pay for) an engine like Gamestudio to play around with (or develop seriously).

I love that you said that, because this means I can do this awesome reply. Here is what they (developers of Amnesia) actually said:



Perhaps not quite as enthusiastic, but given the tone of the rest of the article, I think it's pretty much that.



Here's some more hard facts regarding distribution of sales when targeting Mac, Linux and Windows.

Frictional Games (Amnesia):

source: link

2D Boy (World of Goo):


source: link.


Put in other words, not targeting Mac and Linux could mean losing 35% of your downloads, potentially more so in actual money (since Linux users are, if you trust the data, willing to pay more).
Anectodial evidence is nice and all, but not very helpful. Here's another story: I know two people who own linux and would love to see more games on them - both of them NOT buying games they were interested in because they were only avaible for Windows.
This proves nothing, of course - just as your story does not make anyone any smarter. But the data given above is a much better indication, since it's sample size is actually big enough for useful conclusions.




PadMalcom, we've discussed the problems with console-development before a thousand times. Short story: Without the platform owner (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo - take your pick) giving you explicit permission AND a devkit, you won't make it far.
This means that porting to those platforms would benefit at the most the absolute best games we have here. Perhaps not even them.
Mac and Linux support is someone everyone can benefit, and something that has proven time and time again to be worth it. If Conitec were to invest that time into porting to XBox/PS3/Wii instead, that would be wasted time for 99,999% of the community - perhaps (IMHO) for all of us.

If you still wish for that, could you at least do it in a new thread? This one should be about porting to Mac/Linux.

Thank you. That`s 100% correct.

Again: I believe that many Linux users would pay for a great game developing suite like GameStudio. Techies and Open Source fans want to develop, not only to play. Most likely the market for a tool like Gamestudio is even bigger than the Windows market.

I am pretty sure that this thread would be taken more serious by jcl if there would be no console [or whatever] discussion...

And PS3 has a really complicated sdk [the reason why they needed to send out sony-teams to the dev at the beginning], xbox360's license is also quite odd if you are not using XNA [if I remember right] and wii license is also not really cheap - have you never wondered why you have to "ask" for the price of the license?

Linux and Mac are the way to go!

id software always used to get a lot of business from Linux users because almost all of their games ran natively on Linux. For every issue of the Linux Magazine that talks about gaming on Linux, id gets mentioned simply because they support Linux on so many levels.

If Gamestudio allowed users to develop games for Mac and Linux as well as Windows, it wouldn't just increase its user appeal and value but also its presence in the world of game development.

Since we currently don't support Mac and Linux, it's perhaps worth thinking about it the other way around: Targeting Mac and Linux could mean 54% more downloads of our games.

I hope JCL writes three or four sentences about how difficult it would be to port Gamestudio to Linux (or Mac) and a potential timeframe.

Another game, Lugaru, by Wolfire (developers of the very highly anticipated Overgrowth, which will also support Mac and Linux):

Source.

once there is an android port with an opengl renderer it probably also wouldn't be much of a problem to get the engine running on osx and linux. (i don't know what gui toolkit they will use for the new WED. hopefully not mfc again. :))

but the more platforms you support the more maintainance work will have to be done and this will suck with such a small team.