Where Can I Find Linux Porters? 375
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."
sourceforge.net (Score:2, Informative)
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?
Re:sourceforge.net (Score:5, Informative)
Re:sourceforge.net (Score:2)
Re:sourceforge.net (Score:2)
AC followed a good point with a gratuitous Mac-slam and got modded to hell. The first point still has some value though.
If the author has the talent to write it under the MAC platform, he should take a stab at porting it himself. Failing that, try posting your project someplace like elance or guru. just don't take the lowest bid
India? Russia? Romania? Argentina? (Score:4, Informative)
Interested (Score:4, Informative)
I'll update my profile to have my current email address. krakrjak at gmail dot com
Re:Interested (Score:2)
I have a small team of Linux developers that are looking for some work of this nature.
What's funny is that I have personally offered to a few Win32 shareware/freeware developers to port their apps to Linux or to a cross-platform toolkit (wxWidgets is my choice), FOR FREE! The responses were all either absent (i.e., no response), or they were not interested.
Completely weird.
Re:Interested (Score:5, Insightful)
if you're just some random guy asking for their source.
Re:Interested (Score:3, Informative)
Make it open source (Score:3, Interesting)
Does shareware still gives money these days? I doubt, but again it's only my humble opinion.
Re:Make it open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmmm, get a few bucks off of shareware or make no money off of open source. Tough one.
Also it should be noted, that many open source projects don't get enough volunteers and end up half finished on source forge rotting with some Alpha
Open source computer game business model (Score:2)
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.
Re:Make it open source (Score:4, Insightful)
It probably helps to get free advertising from the slashdot editors.
Re:Make it open source (Score:4, Interesting)
Worked for me. I had no idea it existed until this article. Now that I've seen the page, I can't wait to try the game.
I know it's a little off topic, but I've been very impressed with some of the independant games I've seen. Another favorite of mine is Tread Marks that was about tanks that race and shoot each other with the futuristic weapons they pick up. It had deformable terrain (picture big craters) that worked very well. I haven't seen that feature in any game since.
Now this one comes along with karate bunnys. Now that's cool. And you can be sure I haven't seen it anywhere else.
I guess I have a point somewhere... Oh yeah, here goes: This is something I haven't seen before. It looks cool. It's something I'd probably never see unless it was on
TW
Re:Make it open source (Score:2)
No, the windows culture is similar to the the mac crowd in that respect. It's interesting to spend a year or so in the linux world and then go back to using windows and find that every and any little "free" widget you come across is either adware or shareware; whereas even the major stuff in Linux is totally, 100% gratis.
It's a definate culture shock; and frankly it makes me appreciate our *nix culture that much more.
Re:Make it open source (Score:4, Informative)
Having bought a powerbook about 6 months back, I find I'm having identical thoughts. Sure it's pretty and all, but then I want multiple desktops: $40 to codetek (I passed and use a different open source program, but you can't directly send windows to other desktops which sorta blows). Want to have mouse buttons programmed into the corners of the touchpad -- $15 for sidetrack. Anyway, I like my powerbook and all, but I don't feel any desire to replace my desktop linux system with an iMac. When I first got the powerbook, I was seriously considering doing just that, but after a few months, I discovered that I like linux better because the mac is missing some features I feel are indispensible (others in addition to the things mentioned above).
Re:Make it open source (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see it that way after about 7 months of daily usuage of Panther, and a varied set of linux distros, mainly SuSE 9.1, as well as Ubuntu/kubuntu/mepis/knoppix/SuSE 9.3 and one of the BSDs for a short time (test systems, not my main desktop -- although I do believe I'll go with 9.3 on that -- I really like ubuntu though, hard decision).
I will grant you that osx artwork is typically better than what you find on linux machines. But after a while, usuage, not eye candy, becomes more crucial. So here's how linux beats osx.
I could think of more if was sitting in front of my powerbook instead of my linux system. Sadly, there are trackpad issues keeping linux off my powerbook -- eventually though, someone will reverse engineer the trackpad and then I'll have nice looking machine, running a nicely performing OS. Can't wait.
Try guru.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Try guru.com (Score:3, Informative)
What U porting (Score:2)
Re:What U porting (Score:2)
Already invented, its called OpenGL. In combination with SDL and maybe something like Physicfs for the file access it brings you to all platform with little or no code changes, just a matter of recompiling.
I find Linux porters in the following places (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I find Linux porters in the following places (Score:2)
People get interested in doing works when there's money involved. Advicing him to find a hobbyist to do it in exchange of game tokens is probably not what he is looking for.
Re:I find Linux porters in the following places (Score:3, Interesting)
My advice is to find a forum where these people hang out and post some messages. But he'd have to be careful about appearing to be spam and copying the same message on lots of forums. I understand my advice isn
Re:I find Linux porters in the following places (Score:3, Insightful)
If the code is such that it would end up being a major rewrite, and the market isn't all that big, and the cut offered isn't juicy enough, then it isn' t worth the time.
Not saying an
Re:I find Linux porters in the following places (Score:2)
Did you even read t
I love his commenters!!! (Score:2)
And that's in a single, not very long, thread! (OK, the 2nd isn't exactly wrong, just irrelevant...)
Anyway, good luck to him but I think $20 for a game is above a reasonable Linux price point. For
Profit (Score:2)
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 m
Re:I love his commenters!!! (Score:3, Informative)
The real question is, not will it sell, but will the licensing allow me to purchase a license for the game and have all platforms available to p
Re:I love his commenters!!! (Score:2)
Again, I wish him luck, though.
Re:I love his commenters!!! (Score:2)
Basically what has happened is Linux has moved from the Bleeding Edge market to the Corporate Desktop. Our company has also baught a package for $300.
Re:I love his commenters!!! (Score:2)
I believe you are right. these guys [garagegames.com] sell indie games based on the torque engine (which they license to hoddyists/indie devs). 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...
Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
Yes before anyone mentions it, I saw his UID
how portable is the code to begin with? (Score:2)
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 w
Re:how portable is the code to begin with? (Score:2)
Re:how portable is the code to begin with? (Score:2)
Assuming the windows port doesn't have any other major depencies (e.g. to play video, etc.) it should be fairly easy to port to Linux. Especially considering (at least at one point [I'm assuming]) it was compiled under gcc.
And I would hazard a guess most competent programmers with some Linux experience should be able to take on such a project.
One address: (Score:5, Informative)
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/ [icculus.org]
Re:One address: (Score:3, Informative)
I assume that, since there's a Mac version, there's an OpenGL renderer for it (looking at the webside, it looks like it's 3D). That should ease the porting effort a bit.
Depending on what you're aiming for, exactly, you could also potentially contract with Linux Game Publishing (http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com [linuxgamepublishing.com]
Re:One address: (Score:2)
Re:One address: (Score:2)
I just want to say thanks to LGP as well.
Re: Where can I find Linux Porters? (Score:2)
Use a cross-Platform toolkit (Score:2)
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 peo
Somewhat helpful, for other possible games... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Job websites? (Score:2)
Linux Porters? (Score:2)
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."
lgp (Score:2)
If you have a game publishing proposal, please see our contacts page for information:
http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/contacts.php [linuxgamepublishing.com]
UNIX Magic *poster* (Score:2)
Shameless Plug (Score:2)
Porting begins at $HOME (Score:2)
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
First, change the name (Score:2)
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.
rentacoder.com (Score:2)
FreeBSD porters are easy to find... (Score:2)
Looking at the demo... (Score:2)
28 days
6 hours
42 minutes
12 seconds
Pay close attention.
You could miss something.
Have you tried gamedev.net? (Score:2)
Re:Have you tried gamedev.net? (Score:2)
there are much better places to go -- gamedev is a waste of time. other
Despite all the lame comments (Score:2)
good luck with your game. I hope you find the talent that you need.
Re:Despite all the lame comments (Score:2)
It is quite possible to include some reasonable controls that determine exactly how this is done. For example...allow the modification of a post only for the first 5 minutes or so after the initial submission. Or simply keep it in a queue until a five-minute grace period is up. After the grace period, it can be added to the other posts, and will no longer be editable. Second, any moderation that may have occurred within that period (assuming there is no grace period) is forfeited. This will prevent the kind
Linux porters? (Score:2)
dice.com or the local college. (Score:2)
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 (aga
For a second there... (Score:2)
Then I thought he wanted someone to carry Linux CDs around.
Glad I read the article!
WINE? (Score:2)
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.
Re:WINE? (Score:2)
Re:WINE? (Score:5, Informative)
The source compatibility mode is not restricted [winehq.org] to x86 machines!
You take the source code for the program to be 'ported' and the source to wine (available under the LGPL) and compile them both on your target machine. The result is a binary (with the WINE libraries compiled in) that will run on any (non-x86) architecture running Linux.
That's how it works in theory (your real life experience may differ).
Re:WINE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux game ports (Score:5, Informative)
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
rentacoder.com (Score:2)
Specify your criteria, escrow some money, and wait for the bids to roll in.
Icculus (Score:2)
Mac Demo not working (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It would be helpful (Score:4, Informative)
Or better, if you'd read liks he provided before posting:)
[pasted from forum]
My new engine uses OpenGL, SDL, and OpenAL
Re:An uneducated guess... (Score:2)
Re:An uneducated guess... (Score:2)
Saying Java is good because it works on all OSs is like saying anal sex is good because it works on both genders.
Re:An uneducated guess... (Score:2)
Re:An uneducated guess... (Score:4, Informative)
Riiight.
C++ is considerably faster than Java according to the Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks [debian.org]
Re:An uneducated guess... (Score:2)
Re:An uneducated guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
He is asking about game not GUI application.
is free for OSS dev's and a license for commercial is like 1500 USD if I remember correctly.
1. He would obviously require proprietary license, look at shareware definition
2. and for example gtk is free for any use (proprietary and OSS) just as many others. Qt is probably the most expensive toolkit around.
It's very quick to learn and also supports OpenGL addons etc. Ports code to Mac, Win, and *nix.
So do many others
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
3d development (Score:2)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
wxWidgets (Score:2)
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!
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:2)
Most of it mostly worked. Dire development environment when contrasted with, say, Visual Basic or Delphi, but maybe that can be traded-off against the zero licensing cost. However, having found a show-stopping bug that nobody will respond to when posted to the relevant mailing lists and the potential of unbounded time whilst tr
Re:Qt toolkit (Or Similar) (Score:3, Insightful)
Try this. Compile your program and wxWidgets with -g3 debugging symbols. Run your program in GDB. Type ALT into a select box. See where the program crashes. Fix that code.
How hard is this? You have the source code to wxWidgets, you have the source to your app... This is a trivial problem.
Re:off topic (Score:2)
Which part of "if you use our stuff to make money you pay us, if you use it for a free project you don't" is a pretty sucky deal? If you build on the efforts of others you need to go by their conditions, otherwise you use something else or do it yourself.
To see what happens with shareware and *nix look at XV - the famous appication everyone had and no-one paid for. I wish him luck, but having an
Re:off topic (Score:2)
If a way exists of making money from selling software on Linux I think it's more likely to be through selling games than selling any other kind of program.
Re:off topic (Score:2)
Re:Porter! Woohoo! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Hah! (Score:2, Insightful)
> I predict a 1000% rise in the amount of sales
> over the next week
Why did you think he submitted the story to Slashdot?
Re:Hotels (Score:2)
Re:Unix developers is what you want (Score:2)
Re:GENIUS really (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GENIUS really (Score:3, Informative)
Shareware on *nix? To see what happens with shareware on *nix, look at XV - the graphical appication that at one point was seen everywhere, is a good program used extensively even now eleven years after the author last updated it but almost no-one has ever paid for despite the asking price being cheap.
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
Re:Winelib (Score:3, Informative)
The problem comes in if the Win32 app in question was built with MFC or ATL. Perhaps there's a free version of those somewhere that I don't know about, but you would have a hell of a lot of trouble porting those kinds of apps.
Producing compatible versions of MFC & ATL would be a good companion project to WINE if its not already been done by so
Re:How could you be so daft and pick the name Luga (Score:2)
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...