GNU/Linux Game Porters Needed !

Posted: 4th November 2009 by Maxim Bardin in Uncategorized
Tags: , , ,

In the recent years the desktop user-base of the GNU/Linux OS is growing, and with it the demand for native games for this platform.
There are some game developers who port their games to GNU/Linux themselves, but some don’t have the time or knowledge for it.

Luckily we have a few professional GNU/Linux game porters :
Linux Game Publishing
Ryan Gordon aka icculus
Frank Earl (former LGP employee)
Igios (They work with LGP on some project)
Dave D. Taylor (former employee of id software, while he is currently employed at Naked Sky Entertainment, he would be happy to port more games to GNU/Linux as a pay projects).

There is also id software’s Timothee Besset who ports all id’s games to GNU/Linux, but as he works with id software I doubt he could also port other games to GNU/Linux.

The problem, or perhaps the blessing is that all of those people/companies are currently very busy porting games to GNU/Linux and can not except more porting projects at this time.
Therefore I am looking for more people/companies who port games to GNU/Linux.

A few months ago I’ve contacted Steve from Soldak, the developers of the action cRPG games : Depths of Peril, Kivi’s Underworld and (in development) Din’s Curse .
All of those games have a native MacOSX clients and they run on Wine 100%, BUT as we all well know – most GNU/Linux users won’t buy a game that doesn’t have a native GNU/Linux client (for good reasons).
So I’ve managed to convince Steve to port his games to GNU/Linux (which shouldn’t be hard due the the already developed MacOS clients).
The problem is that Steve doesn’t know how to port his games to GNU/Linux and needs help with this issue.
So I’ve tried to find a GNU/Linux game porter for him, that was a harder job then I originally thought it would be…
I’ve contacted LGP, Ryan and Frank, all of which where too busy with other porting projects that they couldn’t even replay to my emails (except LGP which said that they are full of work for at least a year).

Finally yesterday I’ve emailed Igios, which said that they might find the time to port those games because they already have a MacOS client and it would be easier to port them to GNU/Linux.
The ports for Soldak games are not confirmed yet, but Steve has promised to keep me updated on this subject.
If anyone is interested, the thread could be found HERE.

I know of other game companies who think or thought about making a GNU/Linux clients for their games, but they had to abandoned the idea because they didn’t know how to make it and there was no GNU/Linux porters available for the job.

So if you know of any other GNU/Linux porters please replay to this thread and let us know about them.

Also at this notice I would like to thank all the people who asked from Runic Games to make a native GNU/Linux client for their game Torchlight.
While there is no official replay from the developers at this thread, I am sure that they cannot miss it (and i’ve PMed one of the devs again about it).
They are currently busy working on a MacOSX client, so the GNU/Linux port will be considered afterwords.
I am sure that at one point or another there will be a native GNU/Linux client for Torchlight.

  1. oxbown says:

    Man your blog is really good…continue posting news i’m very interested in linux gaming!!
    pd:U’RE GOD!!

  2. Rifat says:

    That is really interesting to see just a single comment related the topic. If you search the GNU/Linux distros’ forums; there are millions of threats which are bagging for the native ports for the Windows games… It seems that the actual problem in here is to convince game developer companies to open their “installer’s” code….