Torchlight 2 on Linux(wine)

[Schim]

I understand I am not Runic, and there are very smart people working with numbers who probably know more than I do. They have access to sales figures by platform for Torchlight 1, and all of that fancy stuff. But while my anecdotal evidence cannot support generalizations (which I understand my supposition is based off of), I do know that if Torchlight were to be made available as a direct port for Linux, even just for the most popular distros, my father would be more than willing to pay for it to support something he really believes in.

I think the point Brian and others are trying to make is that your father would likely be one of only a handful of people who would pay for it. For a small dev team of <35 people, it doesn't make any good business sense to spend several months working on a TL2 port for an OS that less than 5% of the PC using population would even use. Let alone, how many of those 5% Linux/wine/etc users would even BE interested in paying for TL2? The return on investment for something like that would be so small that they could better spend that exact same amount of dev time making something for a platform that would SELL (say the 360/PS3 for example).

Really not sure why people are failing to grasp this concept.

And my point was that while 20% of computer users might own a Mac, I do not think that the proportion of those willing to purchase TL2 who would not already have a Windows version would be much higher than the Linux port. I am highly skeptical of Mac ports for games like Torchlight increasing sales enough to justify the costs. Though, as I said above, I do not have access to sales figures Runic has, so I suppose they might know best.

It might be worth pointing out that Frozenbyte realeased Linux ports of Trine and Trine 2, despite the fact that they are smaller than Runic. If they found it worthwhile, I wonder why Runic might not. Complexity? Possibly. But then again, is it really worth the complexity porting to OS X, too?

I'd really like to see a Kickstarter for projects like this.

[JediFreeman]

Hey guys, I am just going to clarify things as straight forward as possible.

We are not a huge development team. We have to focus very tightly on our projects. Right now we are working on getting Torchlight II launched on PC. After that, we will be working on releasing the Torchlight II mod tools and working on bringing Torchlight II to OS X.

At this time there are no plans to bring Torchlight or Torchlight II to native Linux.

I suggest if everyone wants to continue discussing the merits of Linux gaming, head over to the off-topic forum and start a more general thread on the subject.

[gold163]

From what I can tell Linux ports are usually a labor of love from that one guy on the development team who actually uses Linux and wants to see it succeed as a gaming platform. I'm not saying it's impossible but unless there's someone in Runic who really wants to see a Linux port happen and is willing to put in the stuff to see it follow through, it's probably not going to happen. I think the only reason why OSX has been seeing a resurgence in gaming is precisely because there are game developers out there who like and use Apple products these days. I know that a lot of people at Valve and Runic use macs. I don't know if any of them use Linux. Just my two cents.

[wbox]

Ah calling TheLurker a troll, how amusingly silly. It's just easier to deny the truth by attacking the person speaking it then accepting it I suppose.

Nothing personal, but people who refuse to read the first post and decide to pull random "facts" about something they don't know nothing about deserve the title.
First of all, wine is not an operating system that needs a port, it's a program that runs windows software on mac and linux systems. Using wine instead of porting the client to osx would, in fact, cut down expenses for Runic.
Second of all, a site based in the states, counting operating systems sold in the states, where both apple and ms are based, is hardly a reliable source of information.
You can't count how many linux systems were sold because most distros are free. Except for enterprise linux that aims at corporate market and not end users. There's your 1% share, RHEL & SLE.
Regarding the "buy windows" argument, I can only speak for myself and not the majority of long time linux users, I'd much rather boycott apps that won't work on wine than sell my soul to ms.
I'm from Europe, every hardware store in the city has linux systems for sale, exact same hardware as ms systems, minus the OS licence price.
It's not that I can't afford a licence, it's just that I don't want to sign their TOS or allow the corporate clowns to root my machines whenever they feel like it.
I'm aware this isn't the place for rants and I'm going to keep my mouth shut from now on, just wanted to say your perception of truth is flawed.

[Zidders]

You've got your official statement from Runic. The answer isn't 'no' it's 'not at this time'. That doesn't mean they'll never make a game for your OS, it just means it's not very likely. You never know. Things may change. I certainly don't think it's something worth digging claws into each other over. I mean, really. You folks need to stop throwing around words like 'troll' when describing people that disagree with you. Same with 'fanboy'. If you're a fan of mac, awesome. If you like Windows, awesome. If you love linux, awesome. Are any of those really worth being asshats to each other about?

[amb2010]

-snip-

Where to begin...

My perception of the truth is perfectly fine but if you still want to insist it isn't then please provide evidence that the statement "M$ has the lion's share of the market while Mac and Linux fight over the mouse's (Mac is winning)" is false. That's what TheLurker stated and what I was saying was the "truth".

As for the "troll" comment, if you feel you're of the intelligence to prove someone wrong and that they have no clue what they are talking about, then do so. No need to call names in an attempt to invalidate them, that just ends up with you being around the same level. Perhaps a cave troll that doesn't survive off toe jam but off cave mushrooms for example, only slightly better.

Wine OS: No one said it was one, although the thread did turn into a discussion of porting to linux instead of the original topic of wine. However while it's not an OS it does need a port, hence the need to adjust the client to work better with it.

Surveys: You..hit the nail so hard on the head and then promptly tripped and poked your eye out with the hammer. Those surveys, while a majority of the Windows and Mac stuff is determined on a per-purchase basis is not solely gathered from that since as you pointed out: Linux isn't sold so it has no data on it. It is incredibly easy to tell what OS you have over the internet, the data for those surveys is gathered from information stored on web servers. Yes, even your wonderfully secure soul-saving Linux allows web servers to store information about your OS. I take it you never noticed those nifty littler signatures that tell you what browser and OS you're running? TheLurker's post though was for the U.S and therefore a bit improper considering the game is worldwide but it is still very valid data, or at least as valid as possible (not everyone is connected to internet).

"Ms hardware": Oh please don't be so silly. There's no such thing as "MS Hardware" or "Linux hardware". That stuff ended decades ago when hardware stopped being dedicated to OS's, well aside from Mac...they're a bit late to the party. I have seen numerous Linux computers being sold in stores in the U.S as well so I don't quite see the point.

Boycotts: Then so be it. If you want to let your obstinate soul prevent you from enjoying a wonderful market because the devs have financial sense than so be it. Don't wine about it however. Also it's best not to be a blatant fan of Linux, it kinda ruins all credibility when it's so obvious that you're biased towards Linux. All OS's have their strengths and weaknesses, it just so happens a strength of windows is games and it's a weakness for the other two. Don't blame developers because your refusal to use a system prevents you from playing it. If you must blame something (aside from yourself that is) then blame the OS development companies or people blindly buying the respective OS's. That's what makes the share %s so horrible anyways.

(aha puns are fun )

[Thion]

If you have a computer which chipset supports IOMMU like Intel's VT-d or AMD's Vi, you can always put it into a Virtual Machine, from what i've heard it works very solid with little to none performance drag.
With such features on the rise, porting a game becomes more and more obsolete.

I think the goal should be perfecting the game on Windows and then working out the Virtualization / wine support on Linux / MacOSX.

Always consider the greater good, porting a game for a small userbase with a little development team when it can be (relatively) easy virtualised isn't a good effort / benefit ratio.

[Myx]

Anyway, my question is; Would it be possible to make it run better under wine? If I download torchlight it will install but not run under wine. However, the steam version runs FLAWLESSLY. No, thas not right. For me and alot of people, the steam version of Torchlight 1 runs better in linux(with wine) than it does on windows!

Since nearly everyone else hasn't tried to answer your (OP) question and have since gone off an a native Linux tangent, I thought I'd give it a go.

The version of Torchlight 1 you download from Runic to run on Windows appears to contain DRM that simply doesn't work under Wine. Steam has a different approach to DRM that works fine under Wine.

I'm not aware of any indication of what DRM Torchlight 2 will contain if you get it directly from Runic although it may be the same. It is likely that the Steam version of Torchlight 2 will also work fine under Wine, or will soon after as the Wine community makes it happen. I'll be giving the Steam based Windows version a try under Wine ASAP on both Linux and OS X (prior to its OS X release) Hopefully someone who gets into the beta will try to get it running under Wine and share the results.

I'm was a little surprised Torchlight 1 worked better under Linux using Wine than Windows on the same laptop, but I put it down to good implementation of both Linux for the O/S and Wine for the Windows API.

[Morbus]

Thank you for the re-rail, Myx.

Something to know about Wine is that depending on your Linux installation it can be sensible to download different versions of Wine, they don not all work the same with every game. Instead of using the system's Wine installation, extract the Wine archive you want to use to /home/[username]/wine and keep it from the rest of the system. You can now delete wine and use different versions more easily. You can also install a real windows license in your Wine if you want to experiment.

[xani]

If you have a computer which chipset supports IOMMU like Intel's VT-d or AMD's Vi, you can always put it into a Virtual Machine, from what i've heard it works very solid with little to none performance drag.
With such features on the rise, porting a game becomes more and more obsolete.

Sadly 3D accerelation is "not there yet" when it comes to virtualisation. I use it in a bit different way, when I want to play games I run Windows but I have Linux VM on it on which I do most stuff

I think the goal should be perfecting the game on Windows and then working out the Virtualization / wine support on Linux / MacOSX.
Always consider the greater good, porting a game for a small userbase with a little development team when it can be (relatively) easy virtualised isn't a good effort / benefit ratio.

Yup, let Runic release game first

[BrianW]

Unfortunately, we've massively derailed here. If you guys want to have a discussion about linux gaming, then please take it to off-topic. Thanks!