No DeathSpank for Linux
October 18th, 2010 by CrusaderSome unfortunate news by way of the Hothead Games forums (thanks nod51), where the developers of Penny Arcade Adventures mention that their most recent title, Deathspank, won’t be coming to Linux after all:
Hi Nod, there are no plans at this time to bring DeathSpank to Linux. Sorry we can’t support Linux like we did with the Penny Arcade games!
Linux support had been part of the project plan when the game was first announced 2 years ago.
October 18th, 2010 at 10:08 am
:(
October 18th, 2010 at 10:23 am
Too bad for them.
Less money for them…
October 18th, 2010 at 11:44 am
It was an RPG I was really looking forward to and had followed it since it was announced. I get a feeling they have the Windows and OSX version so entrenched with Steam that they don’t want to make a stand alone version.
I guess Mincraft is the only in-development RPG (if you can call it that) Linux has right now, though I guess Caster 2 could be called a RPG if I stretch the term to include Minecraft.
October 18th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Somehow I was never going to hold my breath when it came to this game. And it is not as bleak as you make out nod51, we do have the very Linux friendly RPG Indie developer Basilisk Games, and there is also Dungeons of Dredmor which is being developed by Gaslamp Games if you are into dungeon crawlers. Granted none of these games would offer the exact same type of experience as DeathSpank, but we are hardly deprived of RPG games on Linux. And dimko wins the reward for best attitude. :D
October 18th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so negative.
First I have heard of Dungeons of Dredmor, looks great, I need to expand my Linux gaming from only this site and happypenguin. For multi-plyer (not MMO) RPG fun I am not sure there is much to compete with NWN yet, but DeathSpank would not have competed with NWN either.
I was thinking of trying to rewrite the NWN engine in JMonkey as someone did have a NWN model loader for JMonkey at one time.
I am really hoping Rage has some good RPG elements and co-op multi-player.
October 18th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Sacred: Gold would be fabulous for multiplayer RPG fun if anyone had a server and actually turned up.
/me wipes away tear…
October 18th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Hey, it was not meant as a complaint about your post, just a rebuttal. To expand on what Basilisk is up to, they are working on an expansion to Book II at the moment, and then they are going to release Book III and a science fiction based RPG using a brand new engine, so I think we can expect some interesting things from them. I have absolutely no idea about the state of multi-player RPG games on Linux though.
October 19th, 2010 at 3:25 am
I was wondering when somebody from linuxgames.com was going to talk about us. :)
Yes, Dungeons of Dredmor will be coming out for Linux. Presuming that we survive long enough to make a second game, our second game will be coming out for Linux — and so on, and so forth. At the end of the day, everything we do is cross-platform; if you look at the Dredmor code base, it basically consists of Sam Lantinga’s superb libSDL library, and about five other open source libraries linked together with a small wad of duct tape. I have no idea what we’re going to do about distribution and that sort of thing, seeing as how Linux doesn’t have a Steam-like system… I’m not even sure what we’re going to do about efficiently packing binaries. I’m certainly open to suggestions from members of the community.
Fun fact: our Linux policy actually stems from the fact that I started out in the game biz 10 years ago working for Loki Software. I wrote the GL driver for Myth II, and did most of the port work on Loki’s port of FAKK 2. I don’t know if that’s a seal of quality any more, but I like to think that it gives us some Original Gangsta Street Cred.
Hit our website up at http://www.gaslampgames.com – we have pictures, and video, and stuff. I think there’s some video on Youtube, and we blog frequently. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a game to ship…
– Nicholas @ Gaslamp
October 19th, 2010 at 10:52 am
In regard to above post about no steam-like system have you looked at Ubuntu’s software centre you are now able to buy commercial applications from there.
October 19th, 2010 at 11:01 am
I hate to plug a distributions, but Ubuntu added a ‘For Purchase’ in Ubuntu Software Center. I doubt it has DRM stuff like Steam, but it does allow for a simple Ubuntu purchase and install. I think a .sh with a Loki installer would be the most generic though.
*rant*
There may be other methods for other distributions, and if Canonical really was about ubuntu (the word not the distribution) they would have made a Steam like for Linux instead of for a specific distribution. Maybe the ‘For Purchase’ feature is more generic than I give it credit for as I haven’t bought the DVD player, perhaps it is a .sh and not a .deb.
*/rant*
Another thing is to have a benefit of having an purchased account (taken from Minecraft):
1) accomplishments post to [your favourite blog site] that you set up at your web site. *pictures twitter: ‘I just killed my first dragon [link to auto game screen shot in users account] in Dungeons of Dredmor [link to gaslampgames twitter account]*. hmm may be a security nightmare having all those user account passwords if they are willing to give them to you in the first place.
2) updates require an account
3) downloadable user made content as well as the ability to post your own mod/content others can d/l
4) back up saves for you
There may be more but #1 no DRM, #2 we get an advantage to buying it. All the above won’t stop pirating, I don’t care about (1) but promotes the casual community, I would rather just pay for (2) than have to go d/l a pirated version again, (3) would promote a geek community, and (4) might be a cool way to play on your computer, go to friends and able to continue your save. I think the old ‘your just getting the game’ concept is hard to sell now, ‘your getting a service’ people shell out all sorts of money for. You will have a monthly web payment as accomplishments, updates, user content, and saves all go through your servers, but like Minecraft, maybe get a Amazon cluster thing and scale it with sales (which I hope are good!).
my 2c
October 19th, 2010 at 4:26 pm
That’s sad. They probably even had a build running !
October 19th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Rustybolts/nod51:
USC is interesting, but not helpful as a general solution. I still use Slackware Linux, so that leaves me (in particular!) out in the cold. What’s more likely is that we end up talking to somebody like Linux Game Publishing.
This is one of those things where no really good solution exists. This is all some ways in the future, though; first, we have to finish making the game and then we can look into selling it.
- Nicholas @ Gaslamp