Comments - ssokolow

Take a look at the GitHub commit history. While a new release of the client may not yet be ready, Karol Herbst has been working on it steadily all along.

Github.com

...and, if you look at the network graph, there are even more commits still to be merged. (Which, therefore, don't show up in the main stream yet)

Github.com

As a programmer, I can reassure you that this kind of time-taking isn't out of the ordinary. (especially for something as complex as Desurium)

You've got a complex, in-house codebase that was never expected to be open source when it was originally written (which means a very fragile, in-house build system designed to be used only by the guy who wrote it and knows it intimately) and now you've got just one person trying to retrofit it to not only be robust enough for anyone to build it, but also to use system libraries rather than bundled ones AND to build on OSX too.

I'm not even sure "quadruple bypass surgery" is a strong enough analogy for how complex it is. The only thing MORE complex would be if they were trying to open-source code never intended to be installed on end-user machines.

...plus, the main hold-up for getting it packaged and into distros is the bundled libraries. It's already not THAT difficult to build from the GitHub repo and someone's even set up a PPA nightly builds. (Which I run without trouble)

That works perfectly and thanks. I just bought the full version.

As for the apology, don't worry. Bugs happen to everyone and your fast response has already been thanks enough.

Demo isn't playable on dual-monitor Ubuntu 12.04 with nVidia binary drivers systems because it fullscreens by default and its TwinView fullscreening is broken.

It fills one monitor, draws as if it's filling both, and doesn't register clicks on the visible half of the options button.

Furthermore, it refuses to un-fullscreen. If I manually edit ~/.config/unity3d/Apparition Games/Micron/prefs, then it is briefly windowed before resetting to its broken fullscreen view. (And that was harder to find than it should've been because it was in ~/.config/unity3d rather than something like ~/.config/micron or ~/.config/Apparition Games/Micron.)

That may be because the default behaviour of nVidia TwinView is to report 2560x1024 (the combined native resolution of both monitors) as the only available resolution and many games are written with the broken assumption that the list of available fullscreen resolutions will always include things like 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, and so on like it does on Windows.

(And, while I COULD enable resolution changing, that breaks a lot of other things on my desktop like sticky note placement so, if I have to choose between my comfy desktop and Micron, I'll pass on Micron.)

Any chance you could get this problem fixed before the sale is over so I can decide whether I want it?

Legally, the Desura guys don't have the power to give out free copies of games. You have to ask the developers.

Is there any chance we Humble Bundle buyers could get Desura keys so we can have Botanicula alongside our copies of Samorost 2 in the list?

It still won't launch from Desura unless end users perform a fix.

PLEASE add "#!/bin/sh" (without the quotes) as the first line of Rico.sh. That's how Linux knows how to execute a shell script. (Some GUI tools do mimic the Windows "detect by file extension" behaviour too, but the Desura client isn't one of them.)

Without that fix, attempting to start a freshly-installed copy of Rico just opens Rico.sh in the user's default text editor.

Details at En.wikipedia.org

Likewise.

That's like responding to "My Windows PC keeps crashing" with "Buy a Mac, like I did". It's not very helpful... especially since Steam for Linux is still in closed beta and this game probably isn't offered via it even if you are OK with DRM.

Same. Would also like to know.

There we go. Most of the symbols may have been stripped, but the ppoll() call it's hanging on is inside pa_mainloop_iterate() in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpulse.so.0.

In other words, the game is probably failing because I followed the recommended approach to disabling PulseAudio on Ubuntu-based distros. (Remove the daemon but leave libpulse because programs link against it)

(I don't need anything beyond the features ALSA dmix brings and PulseAudio has a LONG history of growing new 100% CPU consumption bugs every time they claim to have fixed the old ones I encountered... so I just gave up on it.)

Given that Skype 4 (but not 2.2) is the only other application I've run into which breaks when you "apt-get purge pulseaudio", and that it breaks by inducing a 10 second delay in audio, I'd say that means it's Super Office Stress's fault rather than mine.

I finally got around to finding time to try this out, but it doesn't want to work.

The 64-bit Linux version shows the window but it stays black without printing anything to stderr while the 32-bit version won't run because I lack the 32-bit version of libpulse-simple.so.0.

According to strace, it gets stuck at "ppoll([{fd=13, events=POLLIN}], 1, NULL, NULL, 8" but, since I don't know whether this is multi-threaded and strace isn't good with multi-threaded apps, I could be wrong.

I don't really have much experience with C or strace, but fd 13 seems to originate in "pipe2([13, 14], O_CLOEXEC) = 0" which would indicate that the program is stuck waiting for something to write into fd 14.

If it'd help, I can paste the full strace log somewhere.

Here's the simplest solution I found:

1. Add "#!/bin/sh" as the first line in Rico.sh so, if it were run in the right folder, Desura would launch it rather than opening it as a text file.

2. Create a file named Rico.sh where Desura is looking that contains these three lines:

#!/bin/sh
cd rico-a-tale-of-two-brothers/
exec ./Rico.sh

...then mark it executable.

No problem. However, at the moment, there has been no progress because life got very busy and, with September courses approaching, I need to get several other, more high-priority TODOs out of the way.

You could always use PlayOnLinux to set up a Wine prefix that'll stay on a specific version of Wine. (Among other things, PlayOnLinux can automate downloading specific versions of Wine and installing them inside folders in ~/.PlayOnLinux/wine/)

I used it as an automated way to set up a Wine prefix for the copy of Legend of Grimrock I bought off GOG.com.

My only caution is that their "stable" release isn't always as stable as the "old" version your distro packages.

Looks nice. I'll have to buy myself a copy as soon as I can finish writing an LD_PRELOAD hack to make SDL lie to Dredmor about available screen resolutions. (So I can run it windowed at 1280x1024 rather than 2560x1024. Dredmor really shouldn't be limiting windowed mode to available fullscreen resolutions but it does.)

(I have a dual-monitor Linux desktop using nVidia TwinView and I've had too many bad experiences with letting games change the desktop resolution. My usual approach to "fullscreen" games is to make them borderless, always-on-top windows on my left-hand monitor. There used to be a trick that worked using xrandr, but the nVidia driver now validates modelines.)

This is the special edition with more stuff. The original, less featureful version is still free.

For Mac users, you shouldn't need to use the terminal to move the expansion into Dredmor's .app file.

If I remember my Mac-using friend's comments correctly, if you trigger the context menu on an .app "file", there's an option to open it like a normal folder. (That'd be right-click on two-button mice. I can never remember whether it's Ctrl-Click or Cmd-Click on one-button ones)

Any suggestions what I might try adding?

(Sorry for the delayed reply. I'm behind on studying for an upcoming exam.)

Does anyone know if the "download without the Desura client" option has been populated for this too?

The response I got from Spiderweb Software literally said

"Gameolith has an exclusive on the game for a few months."

However, they also said this in a previous message, so I wouldn't hold my breath:

"Thank you for writing and for getting our game! Sadly, our time is very limited right now, and getting Linux versions of our games integrated into Desura is a very low priority. Sorry about that!"

I just got a response from Gameolith and, apparently, Spiderweb Software arranged the exclusivity deal before it was ported to Linux and Desura didn't clear it with them before offering the Linux version.

I just got a response to the message I sent to Gameolith. Apparently, the exclusivity agreement was made prior to Avadon being ported and Desura added the Linux version without double-checking that it was OK or notifying Spiderweb Software that it had been done.

Here's the GitHub feature request for chat if you want to keep an eye on it. At the moment, they're still working to get the new build system complete and solid so future development and releases will be much simpler.

Github.com

The main concern I see with using a custom theme to add web-based chat is how difficult it would be to migrate users to a native chat system later on.

I tried doing that when I set it up on my brother's Ubuntu 12.04 machine and it wouldn't start, but then, when I tried running it again, it said something about an unsupported platform.

I'd paste the full error, but he's out at the moment and the game works fine on my Lubuntu 11.10 desktop.

Ugh. Well, for the record, it works beautifully in Wine if you get fed up with fighting with a shameful port that was probably only sloppily written to qualify for the Humble Indie Bundle.

What's the difference between AlterEgo and AlterEgo Full? (If there isn't any, you really should merge them into a single entry that'll install on both Windows and Linux)

Either way, thanks for the port. The concept looks clever, I love platformers, and it's always satisfying to be able to play ones that'll run on my Linux box without Wine or an emulator.

Same... though I probably wouldn't have ever used them anyway.

At the rate I encounter Humble Bundles with new Linux games and GOG.com sales with ancient DOS/Windows classics, my "to play" list is likely to never get short enough to justify buying from a site without a Steam-like client to sweeten the pot.

I just asked them. Apparently it's because Gameolith.com has an exclusive on it for the next few months.

I worry about how that might affect Linux users who've already paid on Desura, but it's a relief nonetheless.

It WAS available (non-demo only) for the Linux versions but now it's not. Here's hoping it's because there was some kind of incompatibility discovered with the Desura packaging process.

It really wouldn't do well for their reputation if it turns out that removing the Linux version from Desura was a response to too many Linux people politely asking for Desura keys to go with their Humble Bundle purchases since Steam users already got keys.

The most recent update seems to have broken this trick for getting DoD to offer single-monitor windowed-resolutions on a desktop which only offers 2560x1024 as its fullscreen resolution.

Ubuntuwiki.net

What alternatives do I have to running DoD in VirtualBox if I refuse to just let games trash my desktop stickies with auto-fullscreen behaviour by changing the resolution? (Preferrably ones that don't involve me writing an LD_PRELOAD hook or a patched SDL to lie about fullscreen resolutions that don't really exist)