3 ms·

Precisely, and developing for Windows is much easier than Linux anyway because it doesn't suffer from the same "lets break userspace every 2 years" problem.

kungtotte 6y ago
Yeah, there's never any issues keeping games working on Windows...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  There are sometimes problems, sure, but compared to Linux, where an application compiled 2 years ago for the same distro often won't work on the current version, it's pretty damned good at compatibility.
  - alternatetwo 6y ago
    Age of empires 2 works out of the box on windows 10 ... The game was compiled with Visual Studio 6.0 ... Even that still runs on Win10. So yeah, it's pretty damn good.
  - account42 6y ago
    > where an application compiled 2 years ago for the same distro often won't work on the current version Ship non-system libraries with your application instead of assuming they will be in /usr/lib* and that's a solved problem. Valve even does that for you with the Steam runtime. This isn't any different on Windows - if you don't bundle your dependencies (including MSVCRT / .NET / whatever) then you will run into problems.
mhh__ 6y ago
I know that games are hectic and everything but I am still genuinely confused that porting a game is this complicated. The main meat and potatoes of the game is either nearly platform agnostic (Vk, OpenGL, or emulation) or usually similar in principle (audio). Maybe I've been spoilt by only working on open source projects where people try to write good code because it's public.
- FrojoS 6y ago
  If you see how hard of a time publishers have to get their games running on the wide range of Windows PCs, especially at release, it's easy how they don't want to add a second operating system to the requirements as well.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  We didn't port our game Void Bastards to Linux because the sales are _so_ low we won't see a return on investment. Yes its easy these days, but there is still a few days messing around with builds and a few days testing. There is a good chance we won't see a week of salary as a return.

kungtotte 6y ago

Yeah, there's never any issues keeping games working on Windows...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
There are sometimes problems, sure, but compared to Linux, where an application compiled 2 years ago for the same distro often won't work on the current version, it's pretty damned good at compatibility.
- alternatetwo 6y ago
  Age of empires 2 works out of the box on windows 10 ... The game was compiled with Visual Studio 6.0 ... Even that still runs on Win10. So yeah, it's pretty damn good.
- account42 6y ago
  > where an application compiled 2 years ago for the same distro often won't work on the current version Ship non-system libraries with your application instead of assuming they will be in /usr/lib* and that's a solved problem. Valve even does that for you with the Steam runtime. This isn't any different on Windows - if you don't bundle your dependencies (including MSVCRT / .NET / whatever) then you will run into problems.

mhh__ 6y ago

I know that games are hectic and everything but I am still genuinely confused that porting a game is this complicated. The main meat and potatoes of the game is either nearly platform agnostic (Vk, OpenGL, or emulation) or usually similar in principle (audio). Maybe I've been spoilt by only working on open source projects where people try to write good code because it's public.

FrojoS 6y ago
If you see how hard of a time publishers have to get their games running on the wide range of Windows PCs, especially at release, it's easy how they don't want to add a second operating system to the requirements as well.
jay_kyburz 6y ago
We didn't port our game Void Bastards to Linux because the sales are _so_ low we won't see a return on investment. Yes its easy these days, but there is still a few days messing around with builds and a few days testing. There is a good chance we won't see a week of salary as a return.