Torchlight 2 on Linux(wine)

[Merodach]

Yes I understand there won't be a native linux client, and I don't expect there to ever be, unless the games becomes uber popular. Torchlight 3/mmo??? Also the OGRE engine is crossplatform, so it shouldn't be that difficult.

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!

So I wish they could make the regular version run under wine. What is valve changing to make it run? I want this so I could just buy the regular version and have my own copy on my hard drive.

[D2Hans]

It might be the dlls that are missing or not correct. Wine may not have all the needed dlls for the game to function correctly

[Paws]

viewtopic.php?f=30&t=20336

[turnipz]

If it uses pure opengl it should be easily doable, I think its when you start throwing other technologies in like update managers or browser based login screens and such that it breaks.

[BrianW]

Yes I understand there won't be a native linux client, and I don't expect there to ever be, unless the games becomes uber popular. Torchlight 3/mmo??? Also the OGRE engine is crossplatform, so it shouldn't be that difficult.

viewtopic.php?p=179655#p179655

[TheLurker]

Desktop/Laptop OS market share #'s for Linux are barely worth mentioning. Linux deserves neither the time nor resources it would take to ensure conversion of this title for such a paltry potential market, WINE/OGRE-compliant or no:

Spoiler: show

Actual percentage %'s are cut off in this window. Open pic in separate window to show totals on the right:

March 2012 Market Share



(NOTE: Laptop OS market share included in 'Desktop' category.)

Market Share Numbers Available Here

Mac OS #'s are barely justifiable for making the argument for a Runic Mac Port as it is. However, at least they're gaining (slightly) vs. where they were two years ago (by all of ~1% - woohoo! Break out the champagne, guys! We're gettin' RICH!):

Spoiler: show

April 2010 Market Share

Don't like it, go install another partition and use a supported OS on it.


I'd love to still get new movies available on Betamax too, folks - but it ain't gonna happen.


-TL


P.S. Yes, we get it - you like your operating system, and are loyal, rabid users. But it's not realistic to expect a port when it doesn't make economic sense, and it never will be (no matter how 'easy' you think the port is). Want to play lots of games? Use Windows.

[D2Hans]

Yes we know that linux does not have that large of a pie but it is much more difficult for them to get larger share of the pie since most prebuilt computers will either have windows or osx installed.

1% can still mean a large amount of users and with Linux there are not as many choices for native running games as there are for windows.

I do agree that Runic should focus on the Windows and then Osx. Since most linux users are likely dual booting into windows anyway

[xani]

Percent of OS installed on computers DOES NOT equal number of gamers on them.
Take into consideration that tons of those windows boxes are computers at work so most likely they won't be used to play games

As for TL2 on linux, I'd wait till release and see if it works with wine, who know, maybe it will "just work"

[hawkn]

Percent of OS installed on computers DOES NOT equal number of gamers on them.

That goes both ways. The majority of Mac owners I know aren't exactly the definition of "competent" computer users, and certainly don't game on them (That's not to say all are - most Mac users I know only check their email on them). That's not to say Linux doesn't have gamers, but it's certainly not a large enough group to warrant an entire port, when Runic is such a small studio.

[xani]

Percent of OS installed on computers DOES NOT equal number of gamers on them.

That goes both ways. The majority of Mac owners I know aren't exactly the definition of "competent" computer users, and certainly don't game on them (That's not to say all are - most Mac users I know only check their email on them). That's not to say Linux doesn't have gamers, but it's certainly not a large enough group to warrant an entire port, when Runic is such a small studio.

Smaller game studios released tri-platform releases (like frozen bytes's trine/trine 2) It's just if you don't plan for it from start then later porting is harder. And tbh even tho I use Linux all the time and use Windows basically only as a platform to play game, I'd rather have some bugfixes/balancing/content than linux port. Altho would be nice if eventual incompatibilities with wine would be fixed, it is much less to do than full port and it allows to play game on linux (macos have wine too afaik)

[hawkn]

You still have to look at the sales figures though, and then come up with an argument as to why Linux is worth the effort. I doubt a <5% sales boost would be more beneficial than patches/new content/new games.

I'm not trying to be mean to Linux users, it's just that it doesn't make a lot of sense to port.

[turnipz]

Good news is linux is moving towards becoming a total newb operating system, with ubuntu trying to move away from the terminal entirely, even going as far as to hide it. Definitely makes it more palletable by the masses, I'm really hoping windows 8 fails miserably; dealing with such a garbage OS is not fun.

[hawkn]

I can agree with you there, if I want to deal with a touch screen interface wanabe, I'll use a tablet. I mean, the dumbed down GUI works great on Xbox's Dashboard, or my phone, but not on my pc, where I have a mouse.

[BrianW]

We always keep our options open, but I'll say this: the Linux platform is heavily fragmented and it maintains too small of a percentage of the consumer market for us to justify spending significant time and energy to port the game over at this point. Conversely, if you look at the US consumer computer market, you're possibly well into the 20 percent range at this point for active users on the Mac: that's one unified platform to support, which is a pretty big market! What it comes down to is that you have a solid bloc of consumers using Windows systems and another solid bloc of consumers using Mac systems, but it's an entirely different story when it comes to Linux (Linux being any number of a zillion different operating systems -- granted a majority of those, but not nearly all, are Debian-based). While it would be neat to be able to do some kind of Linux port, we are very selective about committing resources to the projects we choose to do. I hope this clears things up for you!

[wbox]

Would it be possible to make it run better under wine?

One way to make it run better is to join winehq mailing list, submit test results and bug reports. If that's too much work for you, buy crossover.
Complaining about it here won't help much, it will upset a couple of trolls but that's about it.
~my2c

[amb2010]

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.

I never really understood the demand for ports. I mean I understand it sucks not being able to play the games you want and stuff but it just doesn't make much sense to me. Linux and Mac's(to a lesser extent) just really aren't gaming platforms. Mac has the potential to be one but Linux is just far too varied to invest into currently so I doubt it ever will be one. Complaining (not saying anyone in here is complaining) about not being able to play X game on Y computer OS is as silly as going out buying a PS3 then complaining about not being able to play Halo. It's quite clear Halo is an Xbox exclusive and therefore if you want to play it, you should get an Xbox just as it's quite clear that if you play to play PC games, you get windows. Is it silly to have "exclusives"? Yeah but it's unreasonable sometimes to expect developers to develop for every platform, that gets to be pretty costly.

[gold163]

The idea is that in the modern age consumer-available operating systems should be able to handle more than just certain specialized operations. The demand for ports is there because certain people would rather not go out and purchase Windows just to be able to play the games that they want to. Not that I agree with it, but people like to assume that porting across different PC platforms would be easier than porting across different console hardware. And maybe it is, but it still isn't enough to entice developers to go multi-OS.

I understand the demand for ports but at the same time I also understand if a developer refuses to do it. It would be nice to have an ideal, catch-all platform but there's a difference between that and the reality we have to accept, which is that Linux has not proven itself to be an economically viable platform for game development as of yet.

The reason why the word "troll" is being thrown around is because that post veers so far off topic and doesn't really address the question at hand. Anyway, it seems to have sparked a heated debate that's been closed before, so... success? Still, the point has been made: you can try to emulate a Windows game all you want on Linux, but if you really want better performance then you should be using Windows instead of asking for technical support for what is essentially an unsupported emulation.

[BrianW]

I will try to explain what the issue is in a very succinct way: go to Best Buy or hop onto Amazon and try to find a Linux PC that random person x can just get. There's your answer.

And let's try not to call each other trolls. Thanks!

[Schim]

While I exclusively use Windows, I am completely in support of Linux ports for games, especially those which tend to draw the label "indie". My father is the stereotypical Linux user. He is a computer engineer, and has been for a long time. Before Linux he championed Unix. Even now he pushes the idea of me booting Ubuntu or Fedora as my main OS. In my experience, many of the Linux crowd are very similar to my father. The people who use Linux are much more likely to support something like Torchlight than an average Mac user, as I've noticed. Torchlight is a game made great in large part because of the ability to mod the game to heck and back. While OS X is not bad by any means, it is a very closed, one-size fits all type of system. The type of people who will be interested in Torchlight I do not see as people who are Mac users. In fact, Torchlight flirts with an almost open-source policy due to the openness of the game that Linux itself is built upon. While 20% of the market may be using an Apple computer, I do not believe that a Mac port alone would be that much more profitable than a Linux port. Let's face it: By and large, most people using a Mac computer and care enough about small, independent games will already have the game through Bootcamp. I think that the Humble Bundle sales have proven time and time again that Linux users are willing to shell out the most money for games such as Torchlight because it's promoting an ideology they wholeheartedly agree with.

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.

Torchlight 2 on Wine will, hopefully, be much better than TL1. I tried running TL1 on it a few times and it wasn't up to snuff. That might have been the fault of my admittedly poor-quality Netbook, but I still expected it to be much more fluid. Here's hoping for round two!

[Brixtan]

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.