https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/qeqn3b/despite_having_just_58_sales_over_38_of_bug/ jump to content my subreddits edit subscriptions * popular * -all * -random * -users | * AskReddit * -movies * -funny * -pics * -gaming * -news * -todayilearned * -explainlikeimfive * -worldnews * -tifu * -aww * -LifeProTips * -videos * -IAmA * -TwoXChromosomes * -askscience * -Jokes * -mildlyinteresting * -Showerthoughts * -books * -nottheonion * -science * -gifs * -dataisbeautiful * -Music * -OldSchoolCool * -Art * -space * -sports * -nosleep * -DIY * -Futurology * -food * -GetMotivated * -history * -Documentaries * -photoshopbattles * -gadgets * -philosophy * -WritingPrompts * -UpliftingNews * -EarthPorn * -creepy * -InternetIsBeautiful * -listentothis * -announcements * -blog more >> gamedev gamedev * comments * other discussions (4) Want to join? Log in or sign up in seconds.| * English [ ][] [ ]limit my search to r/gamedev use the following search parameters to narrow your results: subreddit:subreddit find submissions in "subreddit" author:username find submissions by "username" site:example.com find submissions from "example.com" url:text search for "text" in url selftext:text search for "text" in self post contents self:yes (or self:no) include (or exclude) self posts nsfw:yes (or nsfw:no) include (or exclude) results marked as NSFW e.g. subreddit:aww site:imgur.com dog see the search faq for details. advanced search: by author, subreddit... this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2021 4,107 points (97% upvoted) shortlink: [https://redd.it/qeqn] [ ][ ] [ ]remember mereset password login Submit Link Submit Text Get an ad-free experience with special benefits, and directly support Reddit. get reddit premium gamedev joinleave599,191 readers 2,103 users here now 4 Rules of /r/gamedev 1. No show-off posts. Feedback, praise, WIP, screenshots, kickstarters, blogs, memes, "play my game", twitch streams. Use discord, /r/indiegames, /r/playmygame or /r/gamedevscreens. 2. Be specific about your question. If you are a beginner, read the FAQ. If you need to use screenshots, that's ok so long as is illustrates your issues. 3. Do not solicit employment. Use /r/inat or /r/gameDevClassifieds. 4. No paid assets. Use reddit ads instead. Free assets OK, be sure to specify license. The rules designed to reduce spam. For questions, get in touch with mods, we're happy to help you. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Our Discord --------------------------------------------------------------------- Filter Posts * Unfilter * Resource * Events * Games * Only Questions * No Questions --------------------------------------------------------------------- FAQs & Wiki * Getting Started * Engine FAQ * Wiki * General FAQ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Socialize * /r/gamedev Discord server * /r/gamedev IRC channel * live development streams --------------------------------------------------------------------- Weekly threads [FF] Feedback Friday [SS] Screenshot Saturday [STS] Soundtrack Sunday [MM] Marketing Monday [WIPW] WIP Wednesday [DD] Daily Discussion [QS] Quarterly Showcase --------------------------------------------------------------------- Related communities 1 2 /r/LearnProgramming /r/GameDevClassifieds /r/PlayMyGame /r/IndieGames /r/GameDesign /r/DevBlogs /r/GameJams /r/LevelDesign /r/GameAssets /r/GameAudio /r/OpenGL /r/Unity3D /r/UnrealEngine /r/TrueGameDev /r/gamedevscreens /r/TheMakingOfGames TigSource IndieDB CompoHub Game Conferences /r/gamepr GameDev.net /r/playertodev r/JustGameDevThings /r/GameProduction/ a community for 13 years MODERATORS * message the mods * Moderator list hidden. Learn More discussions in r/gamedev <> X 4102 * 288 comments Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from the Linux community 56 * 14 comments How much money my small game (made in a month) earned after 1 year on Steam 38 * 3 comments [TF1MgAmK] 0:24 How to make a SHOP system with Drag and Drop, and also TABS! Unity tutorial 6 * 14 comments Is 70/30 without funding a good publishing deal? 858 * 32 comments [R9-8-gPO] 1:30 Creating a Node Based Dialogue System 4 * 2 comments [RcDE1FxX] How you can DIY sword sound effects 6 * 16 comments How to avoid your game being called a ripoff? 4 * 2 comments How does localisation affect sales? 2 * 2 comments i need some tips to card game mechanics... could you help me? 2 * 2 comments How big of a deal is a non clean UV map in a unity asset? Welcome to Reddit, the front page of the internet. Become a Redditor and join one of thousands of communities. x 4106 4107 4108 ArticleDespite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from the Linux community (self.gamedev) submitted 11 hours ago by koderski@KoderaSoftware[5izbv4fn0m]3 [ks45ij6w05]4[pot_o_coin][Animated_H][gold_48][klvxk1wggf]5 [p4yzxkaed5][Rocket_48][silver_48]8& 16 more 38% of my bug reports come from the Linux community My game - DV: Rings of Saturn (shameless plug) - is out in Early Access for two years now, and as you can expect, there are bugs. But I did find that a disproportionally big amount of these bugs was reported by players using Linux to play. I started to investigate, and my findings did surprise me. Let's talk numbers. Percentages are easy to talk about, but when I read just them, I always wonder - what is the sample size? Is it small enough for the percentage to be just noise? As of today, I sold a little over 12,000 units of DV in total. 700 of these units were bought by Linux players. That's 5.8%. I got 1040 bug reports in total, out of which roughly 400 are made by Linux players. That's one report per 11.5 users on average, and one report per 1.75 Linux players. That's right, an average Linux player will get you 650% more bug reports. A lot of extra work for just 5.8% of extra units, right? Wrong. Bugs exist whenever you know about them, or not. Do you know how many of these 400 bug reports were actually platform-specific? 3. Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux. The rest of them were affecting everyone - the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs. That is just the open-source way. This 5.8% of players found 38% of all the bugs that affected everyone. Just like having your own 700-person strong QA team. That was not 38% extra work for me, that was just free QA! But that's not all. The report quality is stellar. I mean we have all seen bug reports like: "it crashes for me after a few hours". Do you know what a developer can do with such a report? Feel sorry at best. You can't really fix any bug unless you can replicate it, see it with your own eyes, peek inside and finally see that it's fixed. And with bug reports from Linux players is just something else. You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem. You just don't get that kind of engagement from anyone else. Worth it? Oh, yes - at least for me. Not for the extra sales - although it's nice. It's worth it to get the massive feedback boost and free, hundred-people strong QA team on your side. An invaluable asset for an independent game studio. * 288 comments * share * save * hide * report top 200 commentsshow all 288 sorted by: best topnewcontroversialoldrandomq&alive (beta) [ ] Want to add to the discussion? Post a comment! Create an account [-]TotalSpaceNut 474 points475 points476 points 10 hours ago* [ks45ij6w05] (10 children) Another plus is that the Linux reddit community is happy for you to post your game there. Edit: To expand on that, theres r/linux and r/linux_gaming both gave me a 600+ upvotes and the conversion was a lot higher than from your normal gaming subs. At the time i had it on itch, where people can pay you more for the game, they were incredibly generous with $10-20 tips being common. To boot they were a super nice community and non toxic :) Would do Linux again 10/10 * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Pandastic4 12 points13 points14 points 4 hours ago (2 children) What's your game? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]itsTyrion [score hidden] 44 minutes ago (0 children) Please tell me the answer isn't in the deleted reply.. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]JND__ 4 points5 points6 points 2 hours ago (3 children) Hey, Linux user here. I'd like to thank you on behalf of the community for sharing your game with us. Even tho Proton made gaming 100 levels better, native title always wins. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ryleu 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (2 children) except on older games like hollow knight if you're using wayland which is a bug i reported * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]JND__ 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (1 child) Yeah I kinda forgot that Wayland exist here :D My bad, but still... if a game comes native on Linux, I am always happy, mostly because I can bother the devs if bug occurs. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]_Oce_ 13 points14 points15 points 3 hours ago (2 children) I feel like the little effort required to install a different OS than the preinstalled one weeds out a lot of people. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]itsTyrion [score hidden] 42 minutes ago (1 child) I mean, it doesn't require that much effort anymore. However, enough people are not fed up(enough) and/or just accept changes as the way things are. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]triffid_hunter 547 points548 points549 points 10 hours ago* (36 children) Literally only 3 things were problems that came out just on Linux the thing is, the Linux community is exceptionally well trained in reporting bugs And with bug reports from Linux players is just something else. You get all the software/os versions, all the logs, you get core dumps and you get replication steps. Sometimes I got with the player over discord and we quickly iterated a few versions with progressive fixes to isolate the problem. You just don't get that kind of engagement from anyone else. This is the information that I firmly believe is missing from numerous other "Linux users have a disproportionately high number of bug reports" posts. As you note, Linux users are trained to 1) actually submit bug reports rather than just complain to their friends on social media, and 2) are trained to make high quality reports that effectively assist the developer in resolving the issue. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 213 points214 points215 points 10 hours ago (13 children) That was a revelation. You don't get more bugs to fix, you are just more aware of the bugs you already have. True, some of them are easier to trigger on Linux - specifically some race conditions - but they affect everyone, you just get vague "oh it crashes sometimes" reports that are not really helpful in fixing stuff. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]triffid_hunter 61 points62 points63 points 8 hours ago (12 children) some of them are easier to trigger on Linux - specifically some race conditions This sounds worthy of a blog post that I'd love to read - is it because Linux is unusually fast at some things compared to other OSes or just because it does things differently? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 74 points75 points76 points 8 hours ago (8 children) The timings are just different, so I suspect some race conditions are easier to catch on Windows and other on Linux - but these on Windows, I catch myself :) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]pipnina 27 points28 points29 points 8 hours ago (5 children) Are race conditions related to threading? Because Windows' thread creation and merging is SUPER slow compared to Linux'. Same for anything IO based IIRC? One of the reasons why loading a super-heavy modded Stellaris to the main menu might take 1m30s on my Linux + SATA-SSD system but take 8 minutes on my friend's Win10+SATA-SSD system, and over 20 minutes on another friend's Win10+7200RPM HDD system. It's an extreme case, but in a situation where fast creation and merging of threads, or heavy IO is being done, it will create notable differences. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 22 points23 points24 points 8 hours ago (0 children) 99% threads - due to overall small size of my assets, I just load all 0.5GB into RAM at boot. Some things just run in different order on Linux most of the time. Things like initializing starships. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]CatProgrammer 8 points9 points10 points 7 hours ago (3 children) I thought Windows thread creation was relatively fast, it's process creation that's much slower. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 14 points15 points16 points 7 hours ago (2 children) It doesn't really matter which one is faster - what matters it that they tend to run in different order. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]CatProgrammer 7 points8 points9 points 6 hours ago (1 child) Which is an indication that they use different scheduling algorithms, or possibly that some higher-level synchronization constructs (semaphores/etc.) are implemented differently. Makes me wonder how useful testing on different processors and architectures would be for games, as then you have hardware-level differences that can affect scheduling and ordering of concurrent operations and might reveal more race conditions. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]triffid_hunter 20 points21 points22 points 8 hours ago (1 child) Still, as a Linux power user with a generalised interest in software and a career in electronics+embedded, I want details! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 30 points31 points32 points 8 hours ago (0 children) There are not so much low-level details, really. I got a bunch of reports ("game is crashing when I have geologists, here are logs/ versions/cores"), I send out huge binaries with debug symbols with them, got a core back that pointed exactly to the problem. Fixed that and added a debug log there to just make sure it worked well, and after reviewing unrelated reports from windows I found that it would hit these players too, they just didn't report that. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]berryer 2 points3 points4 points 2 hours ago (0 children) With race conditions specifically, just having two sources of data with different timing behavior (regardless of whether one is better across the board, or just one branch) will make it way more visible * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) [-]suur-siil 73 points74 points75 points 9 hours ago (3 children) Linux users also enjoy it when a proprietary software dev replies positively to them and invites them to help with diagnosing the bug or testing the fix (instead of just "we don't provide support for Linux users, fuck off"). We acknowledge that all complex software has bugs, and just want our software to get fixed, rather than "I paid EUR5 for this, it should be perfect, sucks". * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Go_Padres 15 points16 points17 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Very true, and we're typically happy to work on a problem/bug because we usually enjoy tinkering with our machines and with it's software anyway. That's the whole fun of computing! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Marenthyu 2 points3 points4 points 4 hours ago (0 children) "I paid EUR5 for this, it should be perfect, sucks" Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBm_jfCsdqw * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]glemnar 16 points17 points18 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Hah, willing to bet a significant fraction of Linux devs are software devs themselves, versus just being generally trained to interact this way * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]FlukyS 12 points13 points14 points 3 hours ago (1 child) This is the information that I firmly believe is missing from numerous other "Linux users have a disproportionately high number of bug reports" posts. Well the biggest myth one was Planetary Annihilation and one of their devs on Twitter. I've been trying to fire fight against that one for such a long time. A former dev at Uber Ent said pretty flat without any real provocation "Linux was 0.1% users but 20% bug reports". It was widely shared, a top post on /r/gaming and /r/games multiple gaming news sites and gaming news shows on youtube picked up on it and signal boosted it. They didn't read the followup posts in which the dev admitted he didn't know what the issues were, didn't work on the port himself and then eventually he apologized admitting that he now knows a lot more about porting to Linux from the replies and admitted he was wrong. PA for those who didn't know had Linux as a stretch goal for Kickstarter and actually had a higher amount of users than 0.1% because people like me were buying the game because they said they would support Linux. Those users wouldn't be counted as purchases on Linux under the Steam stats. They went with Coherent gameface as the UI for the game which didn't work on Radeon or Intel graphics but didn't try and fix it or even refund users. They had an alpha and beta which were open to kickstarter backers and the game was obviously not tested on Linux at all. If you release any software you would at least play it once on the system you are targeting but even having 1 machine with Ubuntu on it was too much for Uber Ent even though they were literally kickstarted with that in mind. Like the OP the Linux people actually wanted to get the game running on Linux so there were bug reports. But the myth though was signal boosted way more than the truth which was those bug reports were self-inflicted. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]qwertyuiop924 [score hidden] 32 minutes ago (0 children) Ah yes. A variant on the classic "Linux users suck and are angry at us, Linux isn't worth supporting!" I mean, maybe Linux actually isn't worth supporting for you. I get it. I'm a Linux user but I can't expect to be everyone's priority. But have you considered why your Linux users are so bitter and abrasive? Because if all your Linux users are angry with you, maybe they have a reason. Like, for example, that you charged them the same price you'd charge a windows user for a buggy port that performs poorly and treat them like second-class citizens. Or maybe you released a mediocre-ish port, said your next game would get ported to Linux, never ported it, and couldn't even be bothered to confirm that the port wasn't coming. I mean, hypothetically. It's not like any game studio would do something like that... * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]pakoito 2 points3 points4 points 2 hours ago (1 child) 3) Have time to spend on this * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) load more comments (13 replies) [-]Heremeus 83 points84 points85 points 10 hours ago (1 child) Thanks a lot for this insight! That's very interesting and a side of linux support you usually wouldn't think off. As you said, sales do not justify the time invested in linux builds. But quality feedback and bug reports most certainly do! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]FlukeRoads 7 points8 points9 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Then just imagine the shoot up in sales as your now improved product gets a solid quality reputation on windows since you are shipping fewer bugs. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]TheSupremistGodot Apprentice 24 points25 points26 points 9 hours ago (4 children) This. This is what I wanted most devs on Twitter that complain about "fragmentation" to understand right off the bat. They should be happy they're getting bug reports at all instead of complaining, imagine leaving your game in a forever buggy state because you decided to ignore lots of useful info because of "market share and muh fragmentation it's too costly". Having more and more detailed bug reports doesn't mean the platform is buggy, it means your game is held to higher standards and you definitely should care about that, regardless of market share or profit. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]FlukyS 1 point2 points3 points 2 hours ago (3 children) This is what I wanted most devs on Twitter that complain about "fragmentation" to understand right off the bat Well most devs who complain about fragmentation probably are pulling that from before Steam had the Steam runtime available. That is a killer feature from a compatibility standpoint and doubly so when you use their Linux namespace runtime which means you can freeze your game in time pretty much because the compat features are locked in a container. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]TheSupremistGodot Apprentice 1 point2 points3 points 1 hour ago (2 children) Yes, I guess it's mainly because Valve isn't marketing the Linux runtime(s) nearly as much as Proton, if at all. I'm pretty sure if you ask any dev today they might say they know about the latter, but a lot of them might say they never heard of the former. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) [-]Jukibom 127 points128 points129 points 10 hours ago (19 children) Linux support is almost always worth it - even better if you can stomach your game being open source and linux people can submit bug fixes. I get an inordinate amount of bug reports or feedback from linux players and I'd say > 90% of them affect windows users too. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 45 points46 points47 points 10 hours ago (5 children) Ha! O only wish I could. But some of the stuff I work on requires signed NDAs :( * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Jukibom 27 points28 points29 points 10 hours ago (4 children) Yeah, it's a real struggle to maintain especially with any third party unity assets. Handling open source and licensed assets / libraries isn't really something that I've seen talked about much... I ended up adding a NO_PAID_ASSETS symbol to bypass code reliant on them and get at least a basic game running but I'm not sure how long I can keep that up without turning it into a spaghetti nightmare. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]TheRealMagentaPuppy 6 points7 points8 points 8 hours ago (3 children) " NO_PAID_ASSETS symbol to bypass code reliant on them and get at least a basic game runnin" Wym by this? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]PatientSeb 29 points30 points31 points 8 hours ago (2 children) I think theyre saying that they have a flag in their game, that when set to true - replaces the paid assets with either free ones, default engine equivalents (a cube instead of a character model, etc.), or just removes those assets/scripts from the game entirely Now they can push their code without the paid assets and make their game open source. This allows anyone who wants to pull the source code to build and run it, mess with the core mechanics, investigate bugs, and so on. It a decent solution for open sourcing your own game without exposing paid assets - but they've also pointed out that having this weird extra conditional layer for many critical assets (and their associated scripts) has led to less maintainability/modularity/ internal cohesion in their code. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Jukibom 4 points5 points6 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Couldn't have said it better myself :D * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]disintegore 22 points23 points24 points 7 hours ago (1 child) There is more to open sourcing video games than just the free QA labour you might get out of it. You are giving your users a permanent solution to the archival/longevity problem that plagues video games, as well as giving free reign to your modding community without having to invest any time into creating modding tools and SDKs and whatnot. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]qwertyuiop924 14 points15 points16 points 6 hours ago (0 children) 100% this. People worry that making your game open-source will cut into sales, but open-source code and free assets aren't the same thing: Doom and Quake are still worth buying today, in large part because they are open-source. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]recaffeinated 7 points8 points9 points 9 hours ago (10 children) Man, I'd happily submit code fixes on open source games. Paid for open source is the dream tbh. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Jukibom 15 points16 points17 points 9 hours ago (6 children) It's a pain in the ass and honestly a little bit stressful having your awful code out there for all to see but I think the benefits outweigh the downsides and I wish more games did it. I'd love to submit small bug fixes in some smaller indie games. I imagine it gets harder to manage with scale, though * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]nilamo 9 points10 points11 points 7 hours ago (2 children) The funny thing, is it doesn't really matter what the code quality is. Celeste is open source (or at least an older version of it is), and the code is almost horrifying. But it works. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Falk_csgo 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (0 children) yeah hiding bad code is even worse than showing it :D At least the open source mess can be solved the author has a chance of learning! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]kevingranade 3 points4 points5 points 4 hours ago (2 children) It DOES. Pros: game I never could have written on my own. Cons: 157 open pull requests, 1918 open issues. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Jukibom 1 point2 points3 points 4 hours ago (1 child) lmao yep that's what I expected! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]kevingranade 3 points4 points5 points 4 hours ago (0 children) But also: 29,208 MERGED pull requests 16,740 CLOSED issues * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Prior_Cardiologist21 8 points9 points10 points 6 hours ago (2 children) Mindustry follows a great open source model. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]recaffeinated 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (1 child) Cheers. Hadn't heard of that one, I'll definitely check it out. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]Livid_Charity7077 18 points19 points20 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Thanks for this post. I've sent some very detailed bug reports for games that were ported to linux, sometimes with patches or proposed fixes in third party libraries attached, and I hope they're similarly appreciated. For example, I remember once I was trying to track down an issue with how a game opened a config file (documentation wasn't clear) so I quickly strace'd all file syscalls to see where the game looked for its config. While I was doing so I noticed a bunch of failed attempts to open a library with a space in the name, like "libsomeextension-1.2 .so" -- note the space in the middle of the filename. The framework was also searching for the library with a ".dll" extension, so I'm sure the bug existed on Windows as well. I sent over a very specific bug report saying hey bud, check where you define the constant string for libsomeextension because it looks like you have accidental whitespace in a constant where you define this library name. The library was totally unimportant, I think a plugin to manipulate lights on a particular brand of keyboard. I'm sure they just shipped without figuring out why that particular feature wasn't working. There are bug reports like "it doesn't work," and there are bug reports like "here is the specific issue and proposed fix, sorry it's not OSS or I'd send a patch." * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]RiftHunter4 53 points54 points55 points 10 hours ago (14 children) There's a few reasons for this and the statistics answer some of it. https://ubuntu.com/desktop/statistics https://findly.in/how-many-linux-users-are-there/ Between those two sources, you can figure out that a typical Linux user speaks English, knows a good bit about computers, and probably works in the computer industry. So odds are they have already written a bug report before, potentially for work even. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 32 points33 points34 points 9 hours ago (11 children) Agreed. I found, however, that when people usually note that they get a lot of bug reports from Linux players that sounds like a bad thing - and it is not! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Brownie_of_Blednoch 17 points18 points19 points 9 hours ago (1 child) It's bad if for a lazy/bad Dev I guess * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ionlydosupport 6 points7 points8 points 7 hours ago (0 children) Even for lazy devs. People forget the mental effort to communicate to users and walk them through their problem until somebody figures out something is either worker or broken. Linux community wants vendors to be successful on their platform. The community have very specific rules because everything is better in practice. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Maelstrive 2 points3 points4 points 8 hours ago (8 children) Do you have data on distribution used for the most bug reports ? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 6 points7 points8 points 8 hours ago (5 children) Distribution - as in specific Linux distro? I'd have to check from the reports made, I don't note it specifically in issues recorded, because it's just not relevant. I got only one distro-specific bug report, and that was a misconfiguration of the window manager - and it was solved by other players on game discord before I even seen it :) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Maelstrive 2 points3 points4 points 7 hours ago (4 children) Distribution - as in specific Linux distro? Yes, I'm just wondering if you have higher % of bug reports from people using something else than ubuntu/Pop_OS! since they're considered "noob friendly" distros. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (4 replies) load more comments (2 replies) [-]qwertyuiop924 8 points9 points10 points 6 hours ago (0 children) It's also emphatically a cultural thing. Even if they don't work in computing, Linux users are generally taught that debugging is a communal process. If you come to the community with a problem, you'll be asked to help the community help you solve your problem by providing information and your own analysis if you've got the experience to do that. So the act of even getting help on a Linux system, or looking at help threads from other people who have had your same problem, teaches you how to write a good bug report. At least, that's how I learned. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]addicted44 2 points3 points4 points 7 hours ago (0 children) And probably equally importantly they've RECEIVED bug reports and can empathize with the developer they're writing the bug report for. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]iwakan 60 points61 points62 points 9 hours ago (8 children) This is a good message but I fear that many people are only going to read the title. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]akien-mga@Akien|Godot 55 points56 points57 points 9 hours ago* (2 children) Good way to lure people in: "ah I knew it supporting Linux is worthless, let's grab popcorn and get my preconception confirmed", and then they're tricked into learning a different conclusion ;) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 22 points23 points24 points 9 hours ago (1 child) Hey, as long as it works. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]vulpinemachine 2 points3 points4 points 3 hours ago (0 children) It worked on me! Thanks for the information I genuinely appreciate it. I've been binging best practices lately and this just hit me at the right time. Excellent information. I normally avoid early access but I'll be checking out your game ;). * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 35 points36 points37 points 9 hours ago (4 children) I think people who just read the titles don't actually make games. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]MeaningfulChoicesLead Game Designer 35 points36 points37 points 9 hours ago (2 children) Having spent a long time working in the industry I just wish this was true. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 5 points6 points7 points 9 hours ago* (0 children) It's true for me. YMMV, obviously. It depends on many factors. Oh, you meant the titles :) Sorry, got confused by the context. So... I think people who are in lead do :) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]t3chpr135t 1 point2 points3 points 7 hours ago (0 children) The sad true is that in every industry there are a lot of peopel who underqualified, uninterested in personal improvement inside their field, of even borderline stupid. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]tydog98 10 points11 points12 points 8 hours ago (0 children) People have seriously said the exact same thing you said except made it about how Linux was too fragmented and broken so they decided to stop supporting the game. Oh, and it turns out they got so many bug reports cause the game didn't even work at all on Linux. Many game devs took one guys claim as fact to further reinforce why they shouldn't develop for Linux. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Tachnoblade 11 points12 points13 points 7 hours ago (1 child) Advertise a game on r/gaming and you're left in controversial. Add linux support and advertise a game on r/linux_gaming suddenly you get a lot of support and interest in your game. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Timestatic 2 points3 points4 points 2 hours ago (0 children) Linux people are just happy that devs actually make a good native build for their game! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]paulsmithkc 34 points35 points36 points 9 hours ago (4 children) Is it possible that Linux users are more likely to: a) know how to report a bug b) follow through on reporting the bug c) actually spot bugs to be reported I think all of the above are likely. A sizable chunk of Linux users are in IT, CyberSecurity, and Software Development. All of which have professional experience in support tickets / bug reports. What is the percentage of falsy reported PEBKAC errors on Windows? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 15 points16 points17 points 9 hours ago (0 children) What is the percentage of falsy reported PEBKAC errors on Windows? Hard to tell, but in addition to these 1040 bugs I have 100 issues currently filed as "can't replicate" and I don't think single of them I got from someone playing on Linux. That would make it roughly 10%. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]qwertyuiop924 8 points9 points10 points 6 hours ago (0 children) It's also just a part of the culture. Linux users who play games run Linux at home. In the support contract-less world of using Linux at home, debugging is a communal activity, and the reporter is expected to actively participate in the process by gathering data, submitting findings, and helping to root-cause. If you come from that culture, the idea of submitting a bug along the lines of "it crashes sometimes maybe" is just... fundamentally anti-social. If you haven't made a best effort to at least gather data so the developer has a hope of debugging, you haven't fulfilled your end of the social contract. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) [-]mrogre43 36 points37 points38 points 9 hours ago (3 children) Same experience here. Linux folks not only are our most frequent bug reporters, but they're also the best at documenting their issues and sometimes just... give us code for UI improvements? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]CakeIzGood 13 points14 points15 points 5 hours ago (1 child) LOL "hey I think this could be better about your UI anyways I wrote my own version of it you can use it if you want" * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]mrogre43 9 points10 points11 points 4 hours ago (0 children) This is literally what happened and they weren't wrong * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]user4s 1 point2 points3 points 2 hours ago (0 children) give us code for UI improvements? LOL * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]jojozabadu 33 points34 points35 points 9 hours ago* (6 children) Hey this is a tangent, but since you made a thread about your game's development :) Has the game's name starting with a character 'D' been a challenge, a blessing, or inconsequential? My naive guess is that Greece is the only region people have that key on their keyboard. I did some quick (edit: steam)searches to see how I'd find your game if I'd heard its name and was looking for it. 'Delta' didn't match but 'Rings' had you as the 5th result. 'Deltav' works and seems focused on your game almost exclusively. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 34 points35 points36 points 9 hours ago (5 children) I don't have data to compare it to, but there were two things that made me use greek delta in the name: * It's a instant geek-filter, as almost everyone in my target audience will know what it means and it will put them into right mindset. * There is a game called Delta-V. Owned by Bethesda. I heard B's lawyers are bit trigger-happy. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Andernerd 11 points12 points13 points 7 hours ago (0 children) Given that second point I'm a little surprised you went with something so similar. But I guess it worked out! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]jojozabadu 6 points7 points8 points 6 hours ago (3 children) It's a instant geek-filter, as almost everyone in my target audience will know what it means and it will put them into right mindset. Neat, I knew it from Kerbal. There is a game called Delta-V. Owned by Bethesda. I heard B's lawyers are bit trigger-happy. I don't know much/anything about trademark law except what I read in the tech press (Monster, those litigious fucks), but I wonder if this isn't much different than naming a game 'spyderman' from a legal perspective. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 15 points16 points17 points 6 hours ago (2 children) DV is an actual term from rocket science, it's difficult to sue over that. And that's not even the complete title. My legal advice says we're good. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]jojozabadu 10 points11 points12 points 5 hours ago (0 children) DV is an actual term from rocket science, it's difficult to sue over that. I mean you could say Apple is an actual term from botany, but I don't think that would stop Tim Apple from suing you if you started making computers or opened a music store with that name. The history of Apple vs. Apple. And that's not even the complete title. That seems more solid. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]deadmansArmourNetherguild dev @DavidCodeAndArt 33 points34 points 35 points 10 hours ago (5 children) I was planning to release my game on Early Access as well for both Windows and Linux. Now I'm even happier with that decision :D Also, besides being good with QA, the Linux community is really supportive towards devs who release games with Linux builds. Even if it ends up being just 6% of the sale, having this base of support can be useful (not to mention it feels good to know that less people are excluded from playing your game, and its incredibly easy to release on Linux nowadays with engines like Unity supporting Linux builds). * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 13 points14 points15 points 10 hours ago (2 children) Oh yes, the community itself is awesome. When they see you care - they also care. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) [-]Maelstrive 4 points5 points6 points 8 hours ago (1 child) What's your game ? Please share on r/linux_gaming also :P * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]deadmansArmourNetherguild dev @DavidCodeAndArt 3 points4 points5 points 7 hours ago (0 children) My game, a strategy roguelite named "Netherguild": Itch.io link, Steam link. I haven't posted it in r/linux_gaming yet since I wanted to improve my Steam page first, but I am kind of dying to post there and share more about the game in general! Currently however I'm focusing on 1. trying to finish the opening cutscene as well as 2. finding an artist to redo the title design of the game, to fit with the new (unpublished) cover art I got :D * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]FlatAds 7 points8 points9 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Firefox has experienced a very similar phenomenon, bugs reported by Linux users helped the stability of other platforms. The importance of this cannot be overestimated: Linux users tend to be more tech-savvy and are more likely to help us solve issues, so all those reports were a treasure trove for improving stability even for other operating systems (Windows, Mac, Android, etc). In particular, we often identified Fission bugs on Linux first. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]dddonehoo 6 points7 points8 points 4 hours ago (0 children) As a Linux only gamer, you are the best. Thank you so much for the effort to accommodate the community. It goes a long way towards freeing up use of software and making it accessible to everyone. Especially in gaming, a sweet release from reality that reaches so many different people and cultures (non-techies in particular), it helps so much. I love this spirit! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Tsumanu 14 points15 points16 points 9 hours ago (0 children) Well, you just won another buyer * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Asherware 3 points4 points5 points 8 hours ago (5 children) I just came across the post at the exact same time I was watching this and now I'm tripping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGsajLIALJE * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 2 points3 points4 points 8 hours ago (4 children) Our game map in DV is directly based on Cassini-Huygens images :) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Asherware 1 point2 points3 points 8 hours ago (3 children) I guess I have to check it out now! Looks very cool! What a weird coincidence. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 3 points4 points5 points 8 hours ago (2 children) Do check the demo. It's free, and it's a complete game - you just need to buy it if you want load these saves you made in the demo :) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Asherware 1 point2 points3 points 8 hours ago (0 children) I'll definitely check it out! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ommnian 1 point2 points3 points 3 hours ago (0 children) Thats 100% fair. Thank you for having a demo :D * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]seldomseentruth 3 points4 points5 points 5 hours ago (1 child) I honestly wonder how much of this is due to piracy. I wish I could remember the game but a linux dev made a game and released it on Bittorant. He intentionally put a bug in the game on the illegal version. He said he got more bug reports from that title then total sales of the game. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]eachna 1 point2 points3 points 4 hours ago (0 children) This might be Game dev tycoon which had a semi-unplayable pirate mode * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]HorseFeathers55 16 points17 points18 points 10 hours ago (7 children) Now you are making me want to support Linux lol, have any data on the marketing side? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 13 points14 points15 points 10 hours ago (6 children) What kind of data are you looking for? I found that when you do honest support - not just being an afterthought, and most importantly - reading and acting upon the reports you get - you will get fabulous marketing by word-of-mouth. Is there anything specific you'd want to know about? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]HorseFeathers55 4 points5 points6 points 10 hours ago (5 children) Kind of was just asking generally about it, have my first game coming out late November and have been trying to find strategies to get it seen more, tried google ads for about a week and it really didn't do much so stopped that, have sent the game to a few curators on steam and got 1 review * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 13 points14 points15 points 10 hours ago (3 children) Well in my experience, the best general marketing strategy for independent developers is to get someone to record your game on YouTube. Ads are worthless in my experience - people just don't care about it. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]INITMalcanis 7 points8 points9 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Ads are worthless in my experience - people just don't care about it. More like: we just don't ever see them. Ad blockers are a thing. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]LinkedUno 4 points5 points6 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Not a dev, just a very conservative game buyer. I normally wait years to play games and wait for all bug fixes and dlcs, but I can confirm that the YouTube strategy works, especially if the game has a multiplayer component. In the last few years the only games I bought close to launch were multiplayer games that gained popularity in my circle of friends due to some twitch streamer or youtuber showcasing the game on their platform. Another tactic that you could try is to advertise your game on Reddit and give away a few game keys. A very kind indie game developer gave me one of his game keys and I really enjoyed the game, so I got all my friends to buy the game as well. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]HorseFeathers55 3 points4 points5 points 10 hours ago (0 children) Thank you for the advice, it really is much appreciated :) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]WaitForItTheMongols 2 points3 points4 points 7 hours ago (0 children) Post on Linux gaming subs saying "my new game came out and it supports Linux, would love to hear what you think!". You'll get a pretty solid conversion rate, as confirmed by at least one other commenter on this post. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]apyoung88 3 points4 points5 points 7 hours ago (6 children) Curious as I am thinking of how I want to incorporate bug reports into my game. How do you handle this? Is it in game, or do you link to an out of game form? Or something else? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]StuntHacks 4 points5 points6 points 7 hours ago (0 children) I think the best way that allows average users to send bug reports would be to add an in-game menu that then transmits the Report to an external bug tracker, where more invested people can discuss it * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 3 points4 points5 points 7 hours ago (4 children) I have game discord linked in the game itself, and it is a preferred way to report (as you can get community support 24/7 even if I'm asleep, and when I'm on the subject I can get real-time answers that would take weeks over e-mail). But I still do email support too, even if it's slower. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]idbrii 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (3 children) How easy is it for users to submit logs? Do your logs start with hardware and OS info? (I also dump the game settings at the start of the log and I log the current level and camera transform when report is clicked.) Including that info and opening the log folder along with discord when the player clicks a "report bug" would probably also increase the quality of reports. You could even compress the log and put it in an empty folder so it's exceedingly obvious which file to share and make it easier to include additional files (like the save file). Can you link directly to a discord channel or you have to use the server invite link? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (2 children) Yeah I don't actually have any in-game bug reporting, because the really important bugs that happen crash the engine anyway. Fortunately there are not many left (at least none I know of). Thing is, logs help for things that are anticipated. These that are not... not as much. Sometimes luck will get me the right data, but most of the time - no. What you really need are reliable replication steps, and these require a right mindset to procure. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]idbrii 1 point2 points3 points 2 hours ago (1 child) When the engine crashes, does it print a callstack to the log? Maybe you could cycle logs and allow them to submit the previous one? (Unity does this but if Godot doesn't support it, then the crash handler would have to be added via native code.) But I get your point that reports with good repro steps are invaluable. We log different actions the user takes, but you can't be exhaustive and it's never as good a someone describing both what they were trying to do and what they tried. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]GO_Nyxton 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (0 children) I imagine because the Linux community are much more accustomed to troubleshooting and being tech-aware. Generally speaking, they're used to being slightly more involved in the development of software than a regular Windows or MOSX user. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]adnanclyde 3 points4 points5 points 6 hours ago (0 children) A platform heavily populated by devs is sure to have the best reports. If I leave a bug report, you can bet it will have a 15 step procedure of how to reliably replicate it, with language that has 0 ambiguities. Because I know that that's the kind of ticket I love receiving. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]DisRapt0r 3 points4 points5 points 6 hours ago (2 children) No clue about bug reports or programming, but can't you add checkmarks to let people send data from their PC setup, game config/ log and maybe connection? If I encounter a game crash, as a layman, I have no idea where to find any relevant information that would be helpful for the developer. So I always assumed bug reports would have some attached logs. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 7 points8 points9 points 6 hours ago (1 child) I can and I do, but the key thing any developer needs is a way to reproduce the problem on my machine. When I can see the bug in front of my eyes, it usually takes minutes to fix. The days before are spent on attempts to trigger it on my side. Logs are one way to help with that, as they record what was going on with the game - but logs only cover things that we anticipated. You cannot possibly log everything, because that log would grow in by gigabytes per second, and would have a tremendous performance impact. The key difference, in my experience, is that the Linux folks are trained to do so instinctively, as that's what most of the open-source software they use expect. So I get the reproduction steps and many really relevant information in addition to all the things I thought of. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]DisRapt0r 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Thank you for the insight, learned something new today. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]meowitzher 4 points5 points6 points 3 hours ago (1 child) I was so prepared to come in here expecting it to be another "don't support Linux because they picked apart my unstable, poorly ported game" thread. I'm so happy that that isn't the case and that you not only took the time to read past the initial numbers and think about what was happening, but based on the fact that only 3 bugs were platform-specific, you clearly also took the time to develop a really solid Linux port in the first place. Great work! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 4 points5 points6 points 1 hour ago (0 children) A credit here goes to Godot Engine, it does all the heavy lifting. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]etaipo 3 points4 points5 points 1 hour ago (0 children) I wish more devs and publishers understood this. So many of them, even if they have a Linux release, will specifically say that they "don't provide active support" because for whatever reason they think bug reports are bad. Thank you OP * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]ryleu 3 points4 points5 points 1 hour ago (6 children) Out of curiosity, is your game open-source? I tend to be more likely to bug those because I know I'll be able to come back in 10 years and still have it working. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 3 points4 points5 points 1 hour ago (5 children) Unfortunately, no. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ryleu 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (4 children) Why would that be? I'm not asking you to make your code public, I'm just starting on my own project and I'm interested in other developers' opinions. Is it like a legal thing, or something else? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 3 points4 points5 points 1 hour ago (3 children) There are things in repository covered by NDAs and incompatible licences. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ryleu 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (2 children) Gotcha, that makes sense. Legal is a total mess. Would you open-source it if you could? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (1 child) With the experience I currently have with it, probably yes. Doesn't mean I'd be accepting many merge requests through - at least not in this stage of development. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ryleu [score hidden] 58 minutes ago (0 children) Yeah, of course. Open-source encourages (Linux) users to look at the code and point out specifically what probably caused the bug that they're reporting, though that's much less common than a straight up report. Thanks for letting me pick your brain! I have been leaning toward open-source, I'm just not entirely sure yet. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]mattias_jcb 2 points3 points4 points 9 hours ago (0 children) This is very interesting, thanks for sharing! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]mild_entropy 2 points3 points4 points 9 hours ago (0 children) This was a good read! Thanks for sharing your insight! Gotta say your game looks cool, and I'm thrilled there's a demo! I'll check it out * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Unrequited_Anal 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (0 children) wow, that didn't go the way I expected. Very interesting! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]CallinCthulhu 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Because the cross section of Linux users and people with programming/ admin experience is really damn high. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]AngryTrucker 2 points3 points4 points 5 hours ago (3 children) Do you plan on releasing the game fully or is this another project stuck in early access limbo for eternity? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (2 children) Current plan is to get to 1.0 this year and keep it there for a while in Early Access, for benefit of the early adopters. Game is fully playable now, I'm just adding content, and the only thing that keeps me out from release it the moment when I say "this is enough". * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]AngryTrucker 1 point2 points3 points 4 hours ago (1 child) That's good to hear. This post got me interested in the game but I'm very wary of early access. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 1 point2 points3 points 1 hour ago (0 children) I have a demo which is basically a full build of the game, you just can't load your saves. A good way to check if this is a game for you and if you like the current state. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]SkyMarshal 2 points3 points4 points 4 hours ago (0 children) As a Linux-only user since 2009, I regularly report bugs to key projects I care about, like my distro, Firefox, Wine, etc. Never bothered previously on Windows. Linux is, and feels like, a DIY group effort, where it is what you make it to be, and everyone is empowered to contribute even in small ways. So this isn't surprising. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]TheMagicSalami 2 points3 points4 points 4 hours ago (0 children) I mainly use Linux (Unix) for work and occasionally with the subsystem for windows. So I'm not a high and mighty have to use arch blah blah blah guy. But when I read the title in my mind I envisioned exactly what your findings were. People that are willing to fine tune their own operating system and report issues that they can't fix on their own are going to be much more likely to do so on other things as well. Great write up, helps show why for example I went with Bitwarden after changes to LastPass because they are open sourced. That leads to highly motivated individuals providing invaluable feedback to devs. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]kintar1900 2 points3 points4 points 4 hours ago (0 children) That's interesting! I play (and LOVE!) your game on Windows, and haven't run across a single bug yet. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]user381 2 points3 points4 points 3 hours ago (0 children) Linux users also probably much more likely to take the time to file a bug report than the average user. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]TheJewBakka 2 points3 points4 points 3 hours ago (0 children) Oui oui, biais d'echantillonnage. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]gnarlin 2 points3 points4 points 2 hours ago (1 child) What engine is the game using? Will you consider using a Freedom respecting engine for your games? Having a Free engine does NOT mean that you have to give your game away! All games fundamentally consist of two parts: engine and assets. Just because the engine would be Free (as in Freedom) doesn't mean that the assets wouldn't still be proprietary. You can then sell the combined part. Just imagine how faster and better the community could identify and fix bugs if the engine was Free? The community could also submit new patches and help improve the engine. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Voyajer 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (0 children) He's using Godot 3.3.2 from elsewhere in the thread * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]parasite_avi 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (0 children) Thanks a lot for posting this! I am not a gamedev nor did I buy your game and submit any bugs, but being a part of Linux community really made me quite a bit more demanding in terms of reviews and describing problems. Your post is just a heartwarming reasurrance that I am not wasting my time when I try to be elaborate with that sort of thing. Wish you all the best on your journey! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]HCrikki 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (1 child) The nature of support is a huge difference. With windows, 'update to the latest version' is the simplest solution, and devs releasing on steam can enforce that because games released there update by default. This ensures you almost never need to hear about issues whose solution is as simple as 'update and check if the problem still exists'. On linux, every distro is different and an update that works in ubuntu could fail on another because those dont have either the same libraries installed, the same specific versions or even the same necessary deps still available in their repositories. Simplest solution with that is releasing a universal build as snap, flatpak, or steam's flatpak-like format for linux releases. This would also adress longterm forward compatibility (after x years, your game wont suddenly start failing to run on most distros). Personally, I feel linux releases should be left to entities specialized to doing ports and with the inhouse expertise to do so efficiently. Otherwise, just make sure your game's windows build doesnt catastrophically fail to run adequately using Wine/Proton and be done with the subject. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]JeffJitsu 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (0 children) "Despite being..." * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]tasinet 2 points3 points4 points 1 hour ago (0 children) From what you report and your behaviour in this thread: I have to say, your community engagement is on-fucking-point. Kudos! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]meatpuppet79 7 points8 points9 points 7 hours ago (5 children) For my part, my studio won't be supporting Linux with our next project, not so much because of the vastly disproportionate bug reports, but the fact that around 2% of our sales are for Linux SKUs, and frankly, the cost of supporting that platform in manhours, not just for each main release, but every subsequent update, simply isn't profitable. Our games run ok through Wine, and that will have to do in the future. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 13 points14 points15 points 7 hours ago (4 children) Well that's a decision everyone needs to make themselves. I do have to wonder if my sales on Linux would be lower if I did not have native support? Possibly. It is profitable for me on the sale sakes alone - as it doesn't really take any extra manhours, except extra two minutes of automated build - but as I said, YMMV. I do however enjoy all the extra QA I'm receiving. And being liked in the community is a nice bonus too. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]meatpuppet79 4 points5 points6 points 7 hours ago (3 children) In our case, not using Unity but our own proprietary tech, support, particularly at the tail end of the product lifecycle has been difficult, and for what is mostly really weird reasons (bear in mind, I'm not a programmer, so I may be misunderstanding some of the issues), such as randomization and in particular the fact that the same seeds generate different random values on Windows vs Linux platforms, weird audio problems, and endless quirks with rendering what simply works on Windows and Mac builds. All this adds up to about a day and a half of work per update for a programmer, just for that one SKU, on top of the usual workload. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]sensual_rustle 9 points10 points11 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Engines need to be designed with Linux support in mind. If you guys made you engine with windows as the focus, making it spit out a Linux build would be really difficult. Beyond that even if you're using an engine that does port perfectly to Linux, the dependencies you import can be incompatible with cross compilation as a lot of packages have windows specific code for larger languages (c,c++,c#) * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 8 points9 points10 points 7 hours ago (1 child) I don't have all that experience with Unity, so I'll trust you on that. It was mostly effortless for me, but it might be due to using Godot instead. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Squidraider 1 point2 points3 points 1 hour ago (0 children) Made with Godot, Linux support AND a demo? Alright I'm going to give it a go tonight, you're ticking all the boxes for me! * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Last_Snowbender 4 points5 points6 points 5 hours ago (6 children) A few months ago, some indie dev on twitter made the same argument and it made me really salty. Just because a vast majority of your bugs come from the linux community doesn't mean it's their or the platforms fault. Linux users are WAY more likely to submit bug reports than a windows user. If a game doesn't run on my brothers PC, he'll ask me, if I don't know, he just ditches it. If a game doesn't work for me, I usually spend a good chunk of my free time to figure it out and fix it and/or contact the dev with most information possible. But then again, that's probably because of the demographic. I'd argue that most linux users have some decent knowledge about PCs and are used to writing bug reports. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 5 points6 points7 points 5 hours ago (5 children) Wait are you sure that was the same argument? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Last_Snowbender 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (4 children) Basically, yeah. He said something along the lines of "The linux community was very vocal about wanting a linux port but in the end they were only 5% of the player base but produced 30% of all bug reports". I can't remember the exact wording, it has been like a year ago on twitter, however, they've basically said: "Supporting linux is so hard and not worth it". * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Magnus_Tesshu 2 points3 points4 points 4 hours ago (1 child) Did you actually read OP's post? That is the exact opposite conclusion that they come to * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]Worst_L_Giver 1 point2 points3 points 4 hours ago (0 children) isnt op saying its a good thing tho * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]thisiskarsten 1 point2 points3 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Most of the time I figured out how to fix minor bugs while testing and reproducing bugs to file reports so yeah. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]JayCroghan 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (0 children) That's phenomenal and carries on from my own experience developing for Windows and Linux in the early 00s. I used to be the sole engineer on CS:S ZombieMod and something I found a huge help was including the symbol files with beta releases to the "good" players would result in far less work for me down the line. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]CorporalKingThumb 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Interesting, good to know. Thanks for sharing. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]sozesghost 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Your game was an instant purchase, thanks! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]selflessGene 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Almost everyone who uses Linux on desktop is either a software developer or a tech enthusiast. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]jefflunt 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Hmm. Very interesting finding. Thanks for sharing. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]okapi-a 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (3 children) If you'd like to further increase your "QA team", any chance of making it available for FreeBSD? Tends to be an even more technical group, at least on average. Would probably only garner 5% of the Linux sales in numbers but it'd certainly tempt me. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply load more comments (3 replies) [-]Lucretia9 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (0 children) This is what happens when the people who use the os are developers and are used to bug reports. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]aganm 1 point2 points3 points 5 hours ago (1 child) Where do you get the bug reports from? Do you have a bug report form somewhere, or simply the steam boards? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]ryleu 1 point2 points3 points 1 hour ago (0 children) This is so true. I never thought about it like this, but since switching to Linux (just because of the various issues I ran into because Linux is so much more fun to tinker with), I've written lots of bug reports. I'm a part of FTC and I've actually updated documentation for libraries I don't maintain and cleaned up a bunch of OpenFTC code through PRs. I don't think I would've done anything like this without the "training" that I have had using Linux. I think we should have uni classes that teach how to write good bug reports, type, and ask good questions. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]CharlieDmouse [score hidden] 56 minutes ago (0 children) I haven't touched Linux in years...but I immediately knew where this story was going. Love the community! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]ivancea 3 points4 points5 points 7 hours ago (3 children) So, you're receiving better reports from tech people you say? There's nothing strange there. If Linux were a OS used by, let's say, the same amount of people that Windows has, you would probably have the same reports. What does this mean? Nothing * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 7 points8 points9 points 6 hours ago (2 children) That's not accurate. A "common knowledge" is that supporting Linux will get you a lot of Linux-related bug reports and it will cost you much more than it will bring you. I did find, however, that reports are not platform-specific at all. It took some time to discover and I figured it's a good thing to share with the game development community. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]ivancea 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (1 child) Well, I didn't know there was that common knowledge. It's just ridiculous as you declare it. Of course supporting other platforms may bring you more bugs, as more complexity may be added, and more testing required. But it's all * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Cool, it just seems we frequent different communities. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]MasterDrake97 2 points3 points4 points 10 hours ago (13 children) Someone know how Proton/Wine/DXVK work with full DirectX games? * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 7 points8 points9 points 10 hours ago (4 children) Proton works pretty good with Steam - usually - but it's another layer that can obfuscate a bug. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]erwan 2 points3 points4 points 9 hours ago (3 children) So you believe it's worth releasing Linux binaries even if your Windows binary works with Proton? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 15 points16 points17 points 9 hours ago (2 children) Yes - but I might be tainted by the fact that Godot Engine makes cross-platform releases mostly effortless. It costs me about two minutes extra at build time and that's it. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]dotoonly 1 point2 points3 points 7 hours ago (1 child) wait you make your game with Godot ? What version of Godot is it ? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]WickedFlick 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (6 children) Proton is essentially a highly modified Wine with DXVK built in. It works very well for most DirectX games, which is why Valve is planning to have the entire steam library playable on the Linux powered Steam Deck. Probably not at launch, but so far around 85% of games already work on Linux, and once more online games start implementing the easy to activate Proton Anti-cheat compatibility thing that EAC released, it should be around 90 to 95% of games. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]MasterDrake97 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (3 children) How does Proton work? You just have the game on Steam and proton will try to run it? * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]WickedFlick 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (1 child) On a Linux install of Steam, you need only activate Proton for all games with a single checkbox in the Steam settings window, and then it will automatically use it for any Windows game in your Steam library that doesn't have a native Linux release. You can even use Proton for Windows applications outside of Steam by adding it as a 'non-steam' application within Steam. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]MasterDrake97 1 point2 points3 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Amazingly easy, thanks :D * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]aaronfrankegithub.com/aaronfranke 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Yes. You have to check a box in the Steam settings to enable for all titles. Then Proton will run the Windows version of any non-Linux game directly from Steam. It's very easy and requires no setup beyond installing Steam and clicking one checkbox. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) load more comments (1 reply) [-]Exotic-Knowledge-451 2 points3 points4 points 8 hours ago (5 children) What's the percentage of Linux users that Steam reports? Like 5%? It's hard to believe the number is so low. More people have been switching to Linux, and Linux has vastly improved for gaming, though it still has issues. It's just hard to believe Linux doesn't have a higher user base. And more users would mean more work to make it more user and gamer friendly. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]Andernerd 7 points8 points9 points 7 hours ago (0 children) According to Valve's survey, only just over 1% of active Steam users are running Linux. That number has been trending upward lately, but slowly. It's also possible that there are more Linux users than that, but they just aren't using Linux when opening steam. I don't have any proof of that, but it doesn't seem unreasonable to assume that some users dual-boot for gaming. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 5 points6 points7 points 8 hours ago (3 children) It's the 5.8% I quoted for me. I expect this number to rise sharply when deck releases. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Exotic-Knowledge-451 3 points4 points5 points 7 hours ago (2 children) Hopefully the number will increase as more people realize how crap Microsoft is, especially Windows 11. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]Narvarth 4 points5 points6 points 7 hours ago (1 child) This has never happened in the past (Vista, Windows 8,10...). People complain about the new version of Windows for a few months, then get used to it * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]gwern 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (2 children) "They Might Never Tell You It's Broken" - unless they're disagreeable opinionated Linux users, apparently! * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) [-]stevezap 2 points3 points4 points 3 hours ago (0 children) It could be an idea to make the Linux version cheaper (even if only a little). After all, they're doing QA for you :] * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]RhetoricalArousal 3 points4 points5 points 8 hours ago (19 children) From /r/all, I'd be frustrated. Linux has so many distros. How do you account for all the variance between systems in Linux. * permalink * embed * save * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 22 points23 points24 points 8 hours ago (7 children) Thing is, you don't have to. If there are distro-specific issues - believe me, users will figure them out themselves. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]akien-mga@Akien|Godot 13 points14 points15 points 7 hours ago (1 child) This. Linux distro fragmentation is rarely a problem, as it makes nearly all Linux distro minority platforms, and its users well aware that they cannot demand support if something is broken only for their exotic config. So they'll go the extra length to debug it themselves, raise bug reports with their distro, etc. I develop a cross-platform game engine, there's hardly any Linux bugs which are specific to a given distro - the few we've had were usually bugs in that distro or its default desktop environment. At most we can work them around, but most of the time the distro users will report it and get it fixed in their distro. Now, try to get a Windows or macOS version specific bug fixed by Microsoft or Apple... Apple releases a new macOS version, your engine breaks - either you fix it or you drop support. With Linux, "works in " is a clear sign that there's something that needs to be fixed in the distro or version. TL;DR: Test on latest Ubuntu LTS (maybe SteamOS 3 when the Deck is out), mention that it's the tested and supported config. The rest will just work or help you make it work. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]koderski@KoderaSoftware[S] 11 points12 points13 points 7 hours ago (0 children) Tell me about it. My latest platform-specific issue is actually Windows-only, caused by NVidia drivers. You can set MSAA override in the driver itself, and when you do, changing the resolution of your main viewport will cause the rendering to freeze. It took over a year for me to figure out what is happening - and when I did I did find that there is an issue for this already raised for Godot :) TBH handling this is a order of magnitude more PITA than the Linux-specific things I needed to handle. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]sqlphilosopher 2 points3 points4 points 5 hours ago (0 children) Not to mention there are distro agnostic ways to distribute software, such as flatpak and appimages * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (4 replies) [-]i915 6 points7 points8 points 8 hours ago (3 children) Steam runs games using environment from Steam runtime (Soldier, Scout and I think there was Heavy too) instead of libraries provided by user's distro. The only thing that could make any difference for developer between distros is kernel version but kernel ABI is stable and there for example shouldn't be any problem running statically linked binary on Linux 5.15 that worked on Linux 2.6 * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]RhetoricalArousal 2 points3 points4 points 8 hours ago (0 children) Oh, that makes sense that the platform would provide the environment. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (2 replies) [-]nivenkos 3 points4 points5 points 7 hours ago (2 children) Most distros are the same. The real issues are: * Display server: Xorg vs. Wayland - but users are normally aware of this at least, and XWayland works well if you just want to support Xorg. * Video: Variance of Video driver support - combined with the above. Like Nvidia doesn't have great Wayland support atm, support also varies a lot for integrated cards (e.g. on laptops). Nvidia requires proprietary drivers (although there basic FOSS drivers), AMD has good FOSS drivers but also proprietary drivers for some use cases. * Audio: Pipewire vs. JACK. vs PulseAudio vs. ALSA, but nowadays everyone is switching to Pipewire, and it has built-in compatibility. So for the most part it "just works". * Networking: Some people use nftables rules directly as a firewall, or Ubuntu's ufw, or firewalld, or iptables rules, etc. This isn't usually an issue, but it's worth being aware of the differences. * Init systems: Systemd vs. initrc, etc. - nowadays everyone is switching to systemd, and this shouldn't matter for games anyway. Of all of them, the video drivers is by far the biggest pain. But this exists on Windows too - with people having integrated GPUs, multiple GPUs, etc. just the driver support is usually a little better. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply [-]qwertyuiop924 2 points3 points4 points 6 hours ago (0 children) TBH just use SDL and test against both GPU vendors (which you should be doing anyways) and you'll probably be fine. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (1 reply) [-]one_comment_nab 5 points6 points7 points 8 hours ago (3 children) The variance doesn't really matter for a dev. What works on one distro, works on all of them. * permalink * embed * save * parent * report * give award * reply load more comments (3 replies) load more comments (30 replies) * about * blog * about * advertising * careers * help * site rules * Reddit help center * reddiquette * mod guidelines * contact us * apps & tools * Reddit for iPhone * Reddit for Android * mobile website * <3 * reddit premium * reddit coins * redditgifts Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. (c) 2021 reddit inc. All rights reserved. REDDIT and the ALIEN Logo are registered trademarks of reddit inc. Advertise - technology [pixel] p Rendered by PID 23372 on reddit-service-r2-loggedout-76d7bf7668-s8fft at 2021-10-24 23:00:44.955615+00:00 running 58c909c country code: US.