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Where Can I Find Linux Porters?
David asks: "Many small software developers would love to get their software up and running on Linux, but where can competent Linux porters be found? I ask because, a while ago, I released a shareware game called Lugaru. I developed it for Mac OS with the intention of porting it to Windows and Linux. I was able to easily find several developers willing to port it to Windows at a reasonable cost (a fair portion of the sales) but I am clueless about how to find people with the Linux expertise. It is frustrating because I get many emails and forum queries asking me about a Linux version. I really want it to happen and am willing to pay - the problem simply is that I don't know how to go about finding Linux developers. So, I ask Slashdot."
How about posting a request on sourceforge.net with the description of the needed porting skills?
Or even looking at the already ported applications similar to your and asking the developers if they are available, or can they point someone else?
I get cold contact requests from these guys on LinkedIn all the time. I imagine if you sign up, you can find them pretty easily too.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I believe this is your answer
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
off topic
For running a cross platform API, I'd suggest Qt. It is free for OSS dev's and a license for commercial is like 1500 USD if I remember correctly. It's very quick to learn and also supports OpenGL addons etc. Ports code to Mac, Win, and *nix.
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
I have a small team of Linux developers that are looking for some work of this nature. We would be more than happy to help you. Send me an email or message on /.
I'll update my profile to have my current email address. krakrjak at gmail dot com
Make it open source and you will surely get lots of volunteers.
Does shareware still gives money these days? I doubt, but again it's only my humble opinion.
...If you told us what APIs and toolkits you used (I went to the site, couldn't see this info anywhere). If you meant to be multi-platform, I assume you're using SDL or some such? If not, then my recommendation is to port to SDL first of all.
Then it really is mostly about minor tweaks to get running "everywhere". Well, assuming you've got a somewhat sane codebase.
I say this as someone with absolutely no experience :-p
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I beleive the site is www.guru.com, it lets you post project offers, and potential developers/clients bid on them.
But couldn't you just write it in Java?
That's usually where I have all of my porters. But then again, last I checked they did not have the Linux variety on draft.
Linux porters can probably be found at the Linux Hotel.. Whatever that is.
Smeghead every day of the week.
It's one thing to port applications. It's another thing to port a game. If only there was such a thing as universal graphics library that ATI, Nvidia and every other game vendor agrees on for all macs, linux and windows...the gaming world wouldn't be so one sided.
I don't know of any hotels running Linux, but when I do, I'll let you know of their porters.
Ohh, you mean THOSE kind of "ports", as in TRANSPORTERS to another OS language?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I read porter as poster.
Linux trains
Linux cruise ships - plus you can learn how to code in Perl at the same time on a cruise.
But seriously, just because you want to port something doesn't mean other people want to port it, so you would be better off trying to contact people interested in your game in the first place, who can code for Linux or who have ported before, as they are most likely easily "rewarded" by special insights into how the game works, or you could also reward them with special game tokens (like having an island named after them or a building in a standard or Linux-only map) or other things.
Hope this helps.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
W00t!!!
Open Source it!
It's called SDL.
Check out your local Linux Users Group. I'm sure you'll find lots of resources there.
Cross-platform development begins with designing it from the ground up with the idea of porting it in mind. From what you said, you had the idea of porting it from the beginning. You should have designed it to be easily portable. Now someone gets to have a bitch of a time porting it because you didn't care enough to figure it out in the beginning. Woohoo.
What you reap is what you sow
Anyway, good luck to him but I think $20 for a game is above a reasonable Linux price point. For the most part, you can't sell Linux desktop users much of anything (except distros, and barely that) but you might be able to sell a decent number of games like this at $5, but not $20.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I was just about to post the same thing; chuckled when I saw this first :)
Have you tried posting a story to /.? That would definately get you in touch with a large number of linux devs.
While this doesn't answer your code directly, depending on what toolkits you use etc. will depend on how easy it is to make a Linux port. For example, if you use a large amount of Cocoa-only library, it will end up being a large amount of work. Some libraries (remember Loki?) particularly may be easy to use on Mac and Windows platforms, but not on more free platforms.
This is in part why the SDL was created. Linked with openGL and openAL, it should be much less laborious for a Linux hacker to get your game working.
Can you determine how involved a port is? The API of your game is well-abstracted from the actual platform, then finding someone capable of porting the game should be much easier than someone who isn't.
Finally, some of the more obvious places to look for people capable of porting said game, is to look through some opensourced projects. This has the advantage that you can get a sense of what someone is capable of doing, being able to see the person's source code, etc.
Linux Hotel.. Whatever that is.
...
It exists
http://www.linuxhotel.de/
Ask Icculus.
Ryan C Gordon is the one to thank for the Unreal ports, and a Linux game porter community surely exists at his site.
Check out http://icculus.org/
You could try posting a request on either site, www.linuxgames.com or www.linux-gamers.net. The keep track of many open source and linux games along with porting progress of games, i.e. Ryan Gordon ports.
I've heard of lazy before but this is ridiculous. Surely a cd, even with the printed title sheet can't weigh more than 300-400 grams?
Next time, try clicking the "Read More..." link below each story summary on the front page.
I would suggest finding some windows porters that can use a cross-platform toolkit of some sort e..g Trolltech's QT or WXWidgets. Even better if you can do it yourself, although it would need a C++ background which might be difficult if you are used to objective C.
I think it also depends on what you are porting. The above might be better for non-game programs. QT only if you can absorb the cost of getting yourself or other devs the licence for the toolkit, or wxwidgets if you can handle the fact that people consider it less mature. Both toolkits are fairly good at mac, windows and linux so would prob. need minor platform specific adaptations depending on what you need.
Just to be complete some people like GTK as a toolkit but the windows and mac support (IMHO) is pretty god awful.
These should help getting a cross-platform app, and if you transfer your original app to the platform of choice you can maintain one codebase. Just to note that you might lose some of the nice Cocoa goodness in that case, but the programs should 'fit' into the OS.
Savoir-faire Linux is one among many. I think the magic spell is "consultant". (yes, this is shameless advertizing)
The guy at icculus.org does a lot of porting to Linux. It's his fault there's a UT2k4, Descent III, Postal 2, America's Army, UT2k3, and Serious Sam 1/2 for Linux. Maybe contract him?
I'm sure most GNU/Linux users would use shareware. Make it FOSS and they'd buy it.
This question is not a bit surprising considering people with multi-platforms and multi-languages skills are unlikely to be welcome by companies.
Since the begining of my career, 10 years ago, I have been writing multi-platforms softwares and doing large ports. Though it is a feat in itself, I usually hide this fact to employers because they tend to think as follow: "if someone spends time with other operating systems and/or programming languages, then she/he will spend less time with our usual target platform and language. Therefore, she/he is less qualified."
As far as I know, it is untrue statement and porting experience brings a developer to develop higher quality softwares. Porting tends to make your code stronger as a better quality and more stable is a direct result.
There are few specialized people and companies, just like me, but that's about it. Besides, OSS community tends to have better porting knowledge than others - even though many main actors don't port themselves, they have to correctly integrate ports from other people.
Just few thoughts for you guys..
Dropping a couple grand on a good port isn't going to be a problem soon, buddy...your little game just got posted on Slashdot. I predict a 1000% rise in the amount of sales over the next week.
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
eom
Can you post entries on Monster, HotJobs, Dice, etc.?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Put a case of them in an obvious place, and VOILA instant developers...
Send me an email request, and I'll send you a resume and a quote.
The company name of the people who make the only good editor in the world?
Lugaru makes Epsilon which roxxs, and has done so since the 80s when I started using it.
...and what version of Linux would this be for?
har
My second thought was to imagine a group of snappy-looking bellhops asking "We'll be happy to carry your Knoppix CDs up to the room for you, sir."
I've used Kasamba to hire inexpensive free lance programmers for big, and small projects. Like eBay, you need to be aware of who you are hiring, and what you are receiving back, but with proper guidance, you can get a good value on the site.
www.kasamba.com
The easiest way to get a game that is portable across OS's is to use a cross-OS toolkit. That being said, the game is already developed, but perhaps anyone else looking at cross-platform could use something like OGRE for 3d-type stuff.
The biggest advantage you can have, (aside from doing the porting yourself) is to use laguanges, toolkits, widget sets, etc. that ARE cross-platform. It is good to bone up on coding in a portable fashion. Then, when your looking for someone to port it for you, you can be rest assured that it will be a relativly minor process, mostly compiling and debugging.....
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
LGP might be interrested and they know people who might be willing to port a game.
If you have a game publishing proposal, please see our contacts page for information:
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/contacts.php
impossible to find. even a scan of it. coolest tech posters ever and can't get them.
Hyperion Entertainment does ports to MacOS and Linux for hire, specializing in games. If you're willing to pay, it's doable.
That means disciplining yourself right out of the starting gate to either using portable API's and toolkits, or else isolating all non-portable code into a what should work out to be a very small amount of the overall code. If the code contains more than about 20% non-portable code, then generally speaking it's probably infeasable to port it, and it would probably be more practical to rewrite it from scratch with the same design spec.
From the sound of things, this is a project that was started with the good-hearted _intent_ to port it, but without the serious design decisions and disciplinary practices that are necessary to have made in the beginning to make it practical to port it.
Sorry.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Mac OS X? If so, you've got the skill to do it yourself. OS X is pretty much FreeBSD, and FreeBSD is a very well behaved Linux. ;-)
Actually, both of them strive for POSIX compliance--you shouldn't find much you can't work through.
You'll probably want to change the name of your game as the folks at Lugaru Software, makers of an excellent Emacs clone for the PC, will likely seek to have words with you if you don't.
I'm a big fan of Epsilon, Lugaru's main product. It's great. It ran on the DOS and Windows platforms years before gnu-emacs did. They have a great printed manual, and their pricing has always been reasonable for a highly polished commercial product.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Cedega?
"For the most part, you can't sell Linux desktop users much of anything (except distros, and barely that) but you might be able to sell a decent number of games like this at $5, but not $20."
I can only speak for myself, but I spend $5 per month on Transgaming and then go out and buy $50 shrinkwrapped games on a semi-regular basis. $20 seems like a great price for a reasonable game, and his sounds pretty interesting.
You can't even get a movie ticket in most countries for $5 (try $10)... why would it be too much for a game offering more than a movie's worth of entertainment.
I generally find that any good porter goes with linux...but if you really need some suggestions...
Cole Porter
Stovepipe
Edmund Fitzgerald
Try this site. Open bidding for software projects.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
http://www.freshports.org/ If they work on FreeBSD for free, most of them can be persuaded with money to port to Linux as well -- it is not that much worse :-)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I am to (stupid|lazy|ignorant|important|stingy) to (do my own research|make use of appropriate commercial services|read the fucking manual|use google|pay for advertising). Please take care of my (personel problem|hardware issue|software issue|publicity|homework) for me. Even though my pathetic plea is in no way related to news, nor does it have any more significance than my stinky underwear, I'm sure this request is worthy of a front page story where it will be viewed by many thousands of (dorks|nerds|geeks|lusers|hax0rs|trolls) who have nothing better to do than reload slashdot all day. Thank you, and I apologize in advance if this is a dupe.
Posters, please be aware that every joke on the word 'Porters' has now been done. Several times.
You should make the demo run for..
28 days
6 hours
42 minutes
12 seconds
Pay close attention.
You could miss something.
Eschew Obfuscation
http://www.gamedev.net/
good luck with your game. I hope you find the talent that you need.
There is a definite formula here. If you have a program or game that you want to sell, post as "Need Linux Porters" on /.
Perfect!
How about here?
If I am reading the forum link correctly, it sounds like you are using OpenGL, SDL, and OpenAL. It should be trivial to port your software to linux.
:)
I recomend you do it yourself
as good a place as I can think of. You can specify your request based on contract length/type, and treat it as a regular job (since in the ask/. you mentioned you'd be willing to pay).
If you are going to look it at like a job, treat it like a job and do job searchs, interviews, etc. If your org isnt big enough to really justify this (or its not a really big market segment to you), then my only other idea would be to see if there is a CS department at the local college that is willing to farm out people (again on a piece-work style contract) for the summer or an internship-style possition.
What you want to stay away from IMHO is a OSS-style community development for a port. I define it as a product in that from the management perspective your responsible for delivering something. With many OSS projects, you are only attracting people who are interested in that project, and not just anyone who's technically able. With actual work, you have access to a much larger pool of labor that is willing to and able to produce a satisfactory end product (in this case the port) even though some/many may be un-interested in the content in the same manner as OSS comunity project developers.
I'm just looking at it from the business perspective is all. Different advice for different objectives.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Lugaru's a 3rd person "shooter" type game where your avatar is a Lagamorph- a humaniform rabbit.
Since it's 3D, your suggestions are a little less than helpful for this gent's problems...
Now, considering that they're coming from MacOS to Windows to Linux (from what I gathered from the forum discussions...) it's not as hard as it could be. Technically, the studio could do it all themselves as most of the libraries for game development of this type tend to be the same ones for Linux and Windows as well.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Dude, step three is "???", or optionally "...", step four is "PROFIT!!". Get your trolls right please.
An acceptable option when first porting is to use winelib to compile the windows version, then go through the code and make everything native... of course the best option is to port to cross platform libraries like SDL for graphics, and some cross platform gui library like WX (don't flame me too much this is just an example)...
Linux developement is like sex in high-school. Way, way more people talk about it than actually do it.
I thought this guy was looking for someone to carry Linus around.
Then I thought he wanted someone to carry Linux CDs around.
Glad I read the article!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
WINE provides a set of Windows compatible APIs running on top of Linux. In theory this allows a developer to trivially 'port' to Linux by doing a recompilation of their unmodified windows source, against WINE. The result is a binary which runs natively on Linux.
Then there is the (possibly) more well known binary compatibility aspect of WINE, which allows Windows binaries to be executed with Linux.
You can write code that runs on Mac OS X right? Why can't YOU port it to Linux? Serioulsy I don't see anything magic about Linux. I think what yu really mean is that you wrote ther game using a grphics AIP that is not available on Linux and you need to port to a new graphic API.
Your first task is to select a graphics API that runs under Linux. If you are smart you will pick one that is multiplatform then when you port to it your game will be multiplatform
The first step is yours, choose a graphics platform or API. Once you do that you can find some forums oremail lists associated with it.
Why don't you put up some flyers at a local university? There are lots of competent unergrad C.S. majors who would love to get their hands dirty, given a little guidance. If you're not near a university with a C.S. department, I wouldn't worry. I'd expect you'll get a few offers from your post here.
Didn't anyone notice that this was the best way to advertise his game. Ask for "help" on slashdot and start a viral marketing campaign for free. I wonder how his sales were today, compared to his past averages.
I downloaded the demo before I realized what was going on. I guess I'm as gullible as the rest.
duh
He frequents both those forums, and is such a suttle read combining overzealous pedanticry with sarcasm; resulting in the most unrefutable unrelenting trolls that my olde english ears hath ever see^H^H^Hheard.
What a twat-en!
Obligatory plug for wxWidgets. :-)
Where the license is free, it works on all platforms, and you can do lots of things with graphics, buttons, dials, etc.... - Just like Qt!
Someone put a black hole in my pocket and now I'm broke.
that's actually a pretty sucky deal. They charge you per developer and per platform just to use their library... there are plenty of free alternatives including nave apis, gtk, and wx.
Furthermore it's pretty irrelevant for a commercial game that's already written against win32 and either cocoa or carbon. He was asking who he should hire to port the game for him. He doesn't even care what API they use.
fanboys...
In a Linux Railway station, of course.
I love this game. it feels a bit sharewary to start with, but you get into it.
It's got a weird atmosphere to it, quite violent. However the music, quests, huge size and sparse decoration of the maps make it strangely peaceful.
Getting rid of the attitude that "java is slow" would only be of benefit to Sun stockholders, because frankly java is slow. On my system, even the Notepad demo that comes with the Java SDK can barely keep up with my typing. I've yet to use a computer where Java's poor performance was unnoticable.
Well [open source] would sort of guarantee it wouldn't make any money wouldn't it?
Make the engine Free but make the assets proprietary.
The company I work for might be a good choice. We do custom software development. I know we have some great linux hackers working for us who have experience with opengl.
www.pnwsoft.com
Joel Voss is one person in particular who would be good for this project. You might ask our CEO about him.
-Brendan Miller
Pacific Northwest Software
There are far more game players running Windows than Linux.
I'd say keep the windows port you've got and find a distributor instead.
Besides, Linux users don't really want to pay for anything anyway.
Loki used to port a few major titles to linux, but alas they are no more and since them dying off linux gaming has gotten even worse, if that was even possible.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
At this scenario, Java rules!
http://www.ieaa.org/~adrian/
A couple thoughts.
/dev/dsp is always going to be the sound card and /dev/js0 is always going to be the joystick. If you want to detect them, great, but let the user specify.
/dev/js0 on a particular boot and /dev/js1 on the next boot.
First, I've seen various system-specific mailing lists be used by people who are interested in hiring someone to do a job. Perl-specific mailing lists, SDL-specific mailing lists, and so forth. This is one way to find people familiar with a system.
Second, if you are doing a closed-source game for Linux, be aware that binary compatibility is a *bitch*. I have done a fair amount of work on getting older Linux binary games that I've purchased to work, and I'm pretty much convinced that it's not reasonable to just ship "a Linux binary" in the same sense that one ships a Windows binary that one simply expects to work. In the past, companies that have attempted to do Linux ports of their games have generally not had a binary that continues to work for more than a year or several. The Linux world is not really oriented around guaranteeing binary compatability -- vendors do not generally feel constrained to make sure that software written for their distro a few versions back continues to work. This is *not* a minor undertaking. Much as I love Linux, I would suggest that a better target for a "second platform port" would be the Mac. You appear to have done that, and if you're really pleased with the results, you've made your money back and all, then it might be worthwhile to consider Linux. In general, though, folks attempting to do commercial Linux releases have not done very well -- I understand that Jagged Alliance 2, for instance, shipped something like a couple hundred copies in the first few weeks. That was a pretty high-profile game with a solid port, and no fancy requirements (3d, etc).
Third, be aware that the state of 3d under Linux sucks. I'm sorry, but that's how it is. ATI and NVidia ship binary drivers that produce friction from the kernel folks. The fastest cards with open-source drivers are some of ATIs, and those drivers are *not* rock-solid. Linux was actually better off in the 3d arena a couple of years back, when Matrox had good open source support and ATI was allowing open source drivers -- the state of Linux 3d has actually regressed.
Fourth, if you do this, if at *all* possible, use the existing standard libraries. SDL is the closest thing to a standard game development environment out there across Linux distros. SDL_image and SDL_mixer are also good sidekicks. SDL has lots of oddball competitors that are more or less a pain to get running on various systems.
Fifth, take a look at the strategies that Loki and the other Linux game developers used for deploying patches, for dealing with shared/static libraries, for handling installation/uninstallation, and so forth. The installer world for Linux is not currently suitable to do a Windows-style "download this file and use it" and vendors currently aren't really set up (with the possible exception of Linspire) to provide for-sale applications through their package management system.
Sixth, *let users specify devices*. Nothing is more annoying than some random developer who decides that
Seventh, be aware that Linux currently is not capable of maintaining joystick orderings, so if the user has two joysticks, one may wind up being
Eighth, furries rock. Good job.
Nineth, while this almost certainly isn't appropriate for your game or your scale of operation, be aware that some of the most technically successful cross-platform vendors have built VMs and then targetted that VM. Sierra's AGI and SCI engines, Lucasarts' SCUMM, Infocom's Z-engine (and the free competitor, TADS) all made for generations of highly-portable adventure games (yet none of these games were extremely sluggish or technically limited for their day).
Tenth, let your users toggle between full screen and wi
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
But this is the guy they've been looking for -- he knows the second step!
Shareware is a fairly foreign concept on *nix - there doesn't seem to be anything that makes it between a full professional package (or a boxed game from Loki) and free, even with a lot of people migrating from the windows environment where shareware happens.
With enough effort I could be proved wrong. Also I'd be interested if there is anyone that reads this that actually paid for XV since I've never met anyone yet who has.
Hi there.
Just say that your program can't be done on the linux platform. And before you can say "Where Can I Find Linux Porters?" it has been emulated on, ported on and rewritten for Linx, various BSD's and amaiga.
>> the only good editor in the world?
There's this fantastic text editor I saw called "notepad.exe". I really like it, but you have to buy a bunch of utter crap that comes bundled with it...
http://request-header.info
I wouldn't waste time porting it, most Linux users have taste and that game looks terrible.
Sounds like we need a site similar to http://jobs.perl.org/>
Rather than out-sourcing the porting project, why not re-write it for Linux yourself using a cross-platform tool development like REALbasic?
x /
Then you control the code and you have just one code base to manage, rather than two or three. These guys tried that and were quite successful:
http://www.realsoftware.com/users/commercial/spam
Heck, you can still do your development on the Mac and cross-compile to Linux and Windows. Or just get the free version for Linux and develop for Linux on Linux.
--
Matt
I never really paid for it, I donated him 20 bucks for it. I thought it'd be nice to give back what the author gave me.
Check out rentacoder.com.
Specify your criteria, escrow some money, and wait for the bids to roll in.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Ryan C. Gordon would be the first person I'd contact to do a port of a Windows game to Linux. If he isn't able to do it (probably due to time restraints, rather than anything else), he will probably know someone who can.
Ryan "Icculus" Gordon
I hear he recently lost much of his nerve, was kicked out of his parents' house in New Jersey because they thought his "Linux porting venture" was just another bad move. He dropped out of High School, doesn't have any education outside of reading Bill Ball novice Linux "technical" manuals. He got his first Linux porting job at Loki Entertainment Inc, situated at Tustin in California. Worked next to Sam Lantinga the maintainer and founder of Simple Directmedia Layer. After Loki went under bankruptcy protection, Ryan fell apart. He was living in his office for awhile, and that is when he incurred much butt sex. Sam Lantinga went on to better things, and now works at Blizzard Entertainment Inc for only God-knows-what in World of Warcraft. Ryan returned to his parents' backyard, porting some U.S. Army propoganda software as well as Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Tournament 2004, and FriedChickletts MUD. He's pretty much unimpressive, and generally unavailable for porting jobs. I suppose that's why Linux Game Publishing was not willing to hire him to port Candy Crunchers. I also hear Ryan has taken a liking to homosexual lifestyle, (NOTE: goatse balls, men, and Lenin poster) which explains why his choice of books is rather questionable in the "gender-confusion" sort of way.
I think you're wasting your time asking for burned-out hashish-eaters, like Ryan. You should contact the Alpha Troll in Linuxgames.com forums for all your porting needs.
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: ridIcculus
worst troll ever.
I downloaded the demo for the Mac (LugaruMac.zip) but I cant even play it because there's no working executable or launcher included.. :(
...at your local Open Source Liquor Store.
Personally, I prefer FreeBSD Stouts.
I'm not sure if this is the case for your software, but too many programs are not designed to be cross-platform from the start.
Often, they are written for a particular platform and then someone expects them to be ported after the fact. The result is usually a clumsy and inefficient program that looks like it was meant for another operating system.
Programs need to be designed to be cross-platform, not ported to be cross-platform. If you want an app to be portable, use GTK/C++ or Java/Swing or TCL/Tk. Too many people use Visual Basic or MFC or Cocoa and then have trouble porting.
Porters don't run on Linux. They run on tips, good will, and the occassional stolen mint from the hotel lobby.
By default, those benchmarks are biased against certain languages simply because not all languages had programs done for all types of speed tests. For example, if you give 0 to the weight of those tests/algorithms that were not done on Java (10 in total), you will see that it actually outperforms C++. Depending on the weight you give certain tests, you will be able to put almost any language into a favorable light.
You can see, however, that the language "D", is number one most of the time because it had programs made for it for all of the tests.
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
the demo for the game doesn't work. good luck getting it to work on linux if the native version doesn't even work!!
Talk to Transgaming. They will help you accomplish one of the following, at either no or minimal expensive:
1. Make it work in Wine (cedega). Most likely free.
2. Make it work using a Wine 'shell'. Most likely free or close to free. Moderately kludgy; you end up distributing your own Wine installation with your system.
3. Use winelib to do an automatic port. Kludgy, but very workable.
4. Build a custom hand-made port.
Transgaming is very good at all of these things, and this is their only business. Obviously, which technique you will use will depend on your budget.
And for all those that say they don't do Mac -> Linux, don't believe them. Transgaming works with many platforms; their most visible work is with x86 windows->linux, but they do all kinds of interesting things going back and forth between PowerPC Mac, x86 linux, x86 windows, x86 xbox, PS2, and other random stuff.
Keeping in mind that your linux port won't be profitable, unless you wrote very, very easy to port code, so options one or two are most likely the best.
Wine performance is really good, and given that you are porting over an existing code base rather than building a new project from scratch I'd suggest just using Wine.
For your next game, use the cross platform SDL stack and OpenGL; but for now, use the Windows port and either Wine or Winelib.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Porters eh, did any one read that as Linux geeks acting as a caravan of human beasts of burden, aka a Sherpa. I can just about see myself bearing the burden of an endless stream of computers with sound blaster audigy cards and having to get them working in asla, or some other menial yet difficult task ......
You missed one, Canada. Might I suggest one.
Try asking http://icculus.org/~icculus/. He used to work for the Linux game publisher Loki and currently works porting games to Linux/OS X. He has worked on some big time titles such as UT2k4, Postal 2 and ArmyOps. He should be able to help you or point you to someone who can.
One should try out solutions provided by www.mainsoft.com.
Cheers,
Robin.
In a world of Free/Open-Source Software, who the hell wants shareware?
You're more likely to find people to attempt to reimplement (ie obsolete) your app with an open version than what you're looking for. Stick to Windows or OSX where you actually have a user base.
I don't mean this to sound like "piss off, your proprietary garbage isn't wanted here", just saying it's probably not a wise investment if you're actually going to spend money doing it.
Dems dose fellas wit da red hat....
Why in the Linux Hotel of course.
Why would anyone want to use a text editor that is not vi?
Be an ethical human being, and release the source code for your app under a suitable license. Lot's of people will be more than happy to port it to GNU/Linux and *BSD for free. The problem is that you are looking to benefit from GNU (Using it's libs, and selling to it's userbase), without giving your sources. That's unfair and unethical.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
>Black people?
No sir, I think he meant this:
http://www.voresoel.dk/main.php?id=70
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
I clicked on the read more link 5 times, refreshing the page between each... the first 4 times I got "Error" nothing for you to see here move along... etc.
:) because I have enough karma loss, I just wanted a FP for once and wondered if everyone else was having trouble entering the article since I almost never see an article with no comments...
posting anon
I'd like to say to the programmer that Lugaru is awesome. Kung-Fu rabbits. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for posting that link. It seems like the only job board other than dice.com which has a clue.
I honestly find every single other board than these two to be totally useless. My first annoyance is with boards which have no concept of "contractor", making it difficult to search for gigs.
My second annoyance is almost all of them require java or javascript. That's truly the sign of a second or third rate webmaster. It makes it impossible to surf with a non-j browser; as well as opening up your browser to java script attacks.
Again, my thanks. This site seems useful.
need someone to carry your code?
HA. onedollaaa! i carry loooong time
Yeah, for real. I tried changing "Lugaru" (which OS X tried to open in Photoshop) to "Lugaru.app" and when I ran it, it tried to open in Classic, which of course isn't--and will never be--installed on my new laptop.
If this guy hasn't even updated his game to run on OS X, when he originally wrote it for the Mac, it makes me suspect he isn't at all serious about porting it to Linux, and he probably only submitted a question to be posted on Slashdot as advertising to milk the last few dollars out of this project, apparently from Windows users. Wonder if it runs on XP... there's always DOS compatibility mode.
Granted they have ported from other platforms to OS X, but the folks have massive expertise in C, C++, ObjC and ObjC++.
http://www.omnigroup.com/games/
Contact them and explain your set up and get some useful feedback from folks with a lot of experience.
From building the AT&T Wireless Axsys system for years dealing with a massive amount of various toolkits, this group has the background to help. Not to mention they understand OpenGL inside and out.
Xv is shareware? Holy crap, I never knew that. I'd heard the name somewhere, but have never used it myself. It's kinda hard for me to have spent money on it since as far as I knew until 10 seconds ago, it was just some free-as-in-beer picture viewer that simply hadn't been packaged for my distro.
Word-of-mouth sales needs word-of-mouth, if you get my meaning.
they are very good
http://aspseek.org/ml-devel.php
Slashdot = Sarcasm
Third, be aware that the state of 3d under Linux sucks. I'm sorry, but that's how it is.
Wrong. nVidia's Linux drivers are as fast, and almost as full-featured, as its Windows ones. Using an ATI card in Linux is worse than it is in Windows, it is true, but modern cards should still be able to play the sort of game the poster described, which is designed to accomodate lower-end systems.
ATI and NVidia ship binary drivers that produce friction from the kernel folks.
Sometimes the latest binary drivers won't work on the latest kernel, but otherwise this problem is decidedly minor. It is certainly not considerable enough to say "3d under Linux sucks".
The open-source drivers are uselessly slow, by the way, so I'm not sure why you brought them up as an alternative to binary ones.
Thirteenth, expect your port to lose money.
If you read the summary, you'd know that the poster's approach was to offer a share of the profits to porters. I hardly see how that could possibly lose money. I guess that comment was in keeping with the overly general nature of your post (such as when you suggested he use SDL, though he already said that he had).
People making ports to Linux may want to consider 2d strategy or adventure games as good options for ports.
I play games like UT2004 on Linux, and I play Windows games on Linux with Cedega. While it's true that Linux games are not big moneymakers, it is not true that Linux cannot support 3D games for technical reasons.
I have to somewhat disagree with you here. ATI drivers for Linux do suck, but there's nothing wrong with NVidia's. The speed I get on games on Linux with my NVidia card is indistinguishable from the speed I get on Windows XP. Indeed, some of the OpenGL demos I've worked on have run at a faster FPS on Linux than on Windows! However, this may just be a coincidence, or an effect of having services on Windows that may take up more processing power than those on Linux.
I agree with you somewhat about the binary support though. But it's not quite as bad as you make out. Neverwinter Nights, for example, was released three years ago, and the binary still works under modern systems.
Is the monster a werewolf?
Linuxuniversity.be can help you, They give free support . They have a telecoms background not gaming http://www.linuxuniversity.be/
at a linux hotel , duh
Frankly my past experience is that if there are professional developers that can actually port from Mac or Windows to Linux that have time on their hands, steer clear. I was a long time DOS/Windows developer, I still do all my hobby projects primarily in Windows (Visual Studio is awesome) and later port to Linux so I can use them on my work machine.
It ends up, I started working for a company that releases a program that approximately 1% of the computing world uses (do the math, it's alot), and I was given the task to port the product to Linux. Well, let's just say, back then (circa 1999), it was a nightmare to an extreme since cross platform typically meant implementing the Win32 API on Linux (wine sucked then too). And well, the end result was to eventually build a team of 20 Linux porters responsible for the 40+ Linux platforms we need to support.
We look high and low for these guys and we jump for joy when we find one that's even moderately experienced.
If I were a shareware shop with limited resources looking for someone to port my project to the least used gaming platform, I would seriously prefer to hire on a university grad or two to do the project. One guy to do the code since it appears that most of the code is cross platform anyway (opengl openal etc...) and one guy to make builds and packages for the major disti's.
The alternative is unemployed hackers since the guys who have experience doing this type of stuff are too busy.
Err... How is that relevant? BTW. notepad.exe suck really bad. If thats your idea of a good editor you should give away you computer(s).
... doesn't mean they will actually pay for or use one. There are a lot of people asking for Linux ports for political reasons, even if they wouldn't use one.
I suspect this is especially the case for shareware, Linux doesn't have any shareware culture. Shrink-wrapped software is tolerated, free software is embraced, shareware is shunned.
Vacancy: UNIX Systems Support...
BSCS - 3rd Semester - "Linux Clustering: Avoiding Compound Strain Injuries"
Many of the games are win/Mac/Linux, but they sell something like 5% to linux users The rest being Win/Mac with lots of MAC sales - they buy. Apparently we (linux users) are a cheap bunch of mofos... We already knew Macs are for spendy people. As for that 5%, given that much less than 5% of gamers use Linux, I'd say that's a pretty good score. Then you might argue that there are many more games available for Windows, so you'd expect the few commercial linux games to sell better. Then I could state the number is that low due to lack of interest rather than being cheap mofo's. After all linux users tend to be serious guys that like to get work done, and play nethack or install-the-operating-system for leisure...
I teach game development and do alot of 3D modelling. Alot of what you say above is false out of the box.
The state of 3D on Linux is far from sucking. Proprietary Nvidia drivers on Linux cannot be beaten, out-doing their Win32 counterparts alot of the time, even where frame rate (Q3a, Doom3, UT2004, AA) is concerned. Nvidia on Linux is an industry standard 3D animation platform in the feature film industry, for good reason. When teaching game development, if my students are sitting at machines running Nvidia binary drivers on a Linux OS, I'm having a very good day. Naturally, I'd love it if an open alternative could compete - you seem only aware of the open-source drivers, which are essentially blind to the rich talents of the Nvidia GPU. ATI's fglrx drivers are now (finally) on par with Win32 where pixel/vertex shaders (GLSL ) are concerned and close to a performance equal generally. The installation process is slightly more annoying, that is all. Many non-free distro's handle this for the user automagically (Mepis Linux comes to mind)
Secondly, binary compatibility is no more troublesome these days than it is between versions of Windows, eg running a game made for Win95 on XP - occassionally an issue. Installation of binaries can be done easily using a system like Autopackage if one doesn't want to find and or become an *.rpm/*.deb package maintainer.
Where devices are concerned, the trouble you speak of is many years in the past - udev works in userspace, and uses hotplug calls that the kernel signals whenever a device is added or removed from the kernel. Permissions, naming and control is all done in userspace.
Finally where sales of Linux games are concerned, I tend to agree that it is perhaps a little harder to market to Linux users, though from experience I am the first to buy a game that comes out for Linux. You will find though that due to existance of compatibility layers like Wine, publishers simply don't know how many Linux users are buying their games. I can account for around 14 windows games I've bought with the pure intention of playing them on Linux (for instance). Linux desktop market share is widely considered to be above or equal to that of the Apple OS. Whatever kind of market it is, it's growing.
Lastly, for the grandfather, Ryan, of Icculus is your best bet for a Linux port.
PS. Game development, as a culture, needs free software if a) small to medium sized developers are to survive and b) if micro-markets (like that of the indie-film industry) are to burgeon. Tools are increasingly expensive and publishers offset this cost with IP tradeoffs (buy outs). If I were you I'd ship the engine as free software (binary checksum for login, cheat protection and validation) and sell the data and/or subscription time. More on why here.
Where can I find linux posters? That's the second time I read the title like that.
If you are capable of writting a game like this, then you are more than capable of porting it to whatever platform you wish. I think this is just a vanity post - trying to get attention.
Mmmm Linux Porter. Although you can't beat a good Linux Ale, either.
I am Sr level Software engineer looking for a job - I have worked on 2 emebedded application ports to Linux, I have experience with cross-platform user interfaces as well. I prefer Qt, but I recently discovered Ultimate++ which looks really cool. I do have some experience with wxWidgets as well.
If anyone wants my services feel free to contact me. I prefer salaried, but will entertain 1yr or longer contracts. I will not relocate. I am in the north-Baltimore, MD area.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
(sorry couldn't resist)
here ... Oh you don't say ...
Mmmmm. Beer.
It will report variations from POSIX in standard error-message format, so editor features like ^[-x next-error will work (;-))
Congratulations, you're now a Linx porting expert!
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
http://www.rentacoder.com/
as long as ur able to QA the work urself
Wow - for a second there, I read "Where Can I Find Linux Posers?" My first though was, of course, "Right here on Slashdot!" The number of people here to profess a love for Linux, and a hatred for all else, without providing so much as an inkling of suggestions that they may actually be well-informed on the matter, is astounding. ...actually, the number of people who profess an uninformed love for X and hatred for Y here, in general, is astounding...
My name is Porter and I use linux!
Oh shoot, I guess I should have read the entire article first.
These guys would probably do the job - and they have quite a bit of experience porting Linux applications. The guy who runs the site was the founder of Loki Software - the now defunct Linux software company.
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
There are over 20,000 coders listing Mac and Linux in their areas of expertise at www.RentACoder.com, so you can post a project there and get competitive bids. (Notice: I am the owner of RentACoder.com). Good luck. Ian
But, it seems Ryan's already got us beat to the punch- he's contacted them already and is offering to do the work for free...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...our efforts will prove not to be in vain. We're sorting out an 11th hour rendering bug on one game and should have that one out the door in another week or so. Also worth noting is that we're trying to lever a couple more betas out the door, and Michael's scored a gem (can't say what it is) with the prospects of an even bigger one (sequel to the one we scored...) if things work out as well as we hope them to.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...if Majesty doesn't work, have you bothered to let us know it's broken? If not, how do you expect us to fix it for you (speaking as an LGP representative right at the moment...)
To the best of MY knowlege, Majesty works just fine- or at least it did with Fedora Core 3 when I'd last installed it all on my laptop. And so did Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri. I don't know what distribution you're running, or if this just recently broke on you- but I've a little difficulty believing you 100% on this one.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
the BSD Stouts and the Windows Lite beer.....
They don't use linux, they use NegrOS
Didn't take him too long. Here's a screenshot from Ryan Gordon's ~/.plan.
Have been converting application to Linux for a few years now, espically from other Unix (64 bit) platforms. Done some migrating MS Windows stuff too.
Would be glad to help out....send me an email if intersted.
The lunatic is in my head