• AzureDiamond@sh.itjust.works
    33·
    1 year ago

    Interesting take. I wonder if the amount of platform dependent bugs is generally that low for games. I’m a developer, but not a game developer. I would assume that platform dependent stuff comes into play a lot more, when using shiny new tech like direct storage, which is probably used more by AAA titles and less by indie games?

    • uis@lemmy.worldOP
      241·
      1 year ago

      You don’t get many platform-specific bugs if you use cross-platform libraries like SDL2 for OpenGL/Vulkan context creation and human interface.

    • Ottomateeverything@lemmy.world
      71·
      1 year ago

      If you’re an engine developer, it’s a reasonably common problem.

      If you’re a game developer using a cross platform engine, it’s pretty uncommon, as the engine developer has already accounted for most of it.

      If you’re somewhere in the middle, it’s probably somewhere in the middle.

      It surprises me how many indie devs avoid some of the higher level / more popular engines for this reason alone. But I assume they just must enjoy that sort of stuff much more than I.

  • Adalast@lemmy.world
    23·
    1 year ago

    A. If you haven’t played ΔV, do it. One of the most amazing games out there imho. So good in fact that I just went to find a Δ on the internet so I could use it and not disrespect the dev and the game. B. He is such an amazing dude. I don’t know him personally, but I do know that when Ukraine was invaded he made the game free for months on Steam so people in Ukraine could get it and have something too distract themselves from the conflict. A+ move in my book right there. I had already bought the game at that point, but I wish I could buy it again just to support him further. C. Reading this almost makes me think it would be a good tactical move to offer early access games at a steep discount on Linux if it has this great of an effect. Pay back the “free” QA kindness of the community.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    21·
    1 year ago

    remember the other several occasions where developers hated actually getting feedback from these linux users cause they actually would have to fix their shit? but not many actually did

    cause i remember, they only care as far as money goes

  • 🐍🩶🐢@lemmy.worldEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    Image transcription. Pasted from source, Reddit Post

    Despite having just 5.8% sales, over 38% of bug reports come from the Linux community

    Article

    38% of my bug reports come from the Linux community My game - ΔV: 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 ΔV 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.

  • hiddenSin@lemmy.world
    14·
    1 year ago

    Could we do crossposts? This one is in two of my communities. If it was a crosspost then it would be only one post. Less spam.